Greta Girl: Newly 4

My Greta Girl is newly 4.
She is currently singing... "And we'll make a lovely dress for Cinderelly!" in the next room, and waiting for the glue to dry on one of her puzzle pieces (which broke). She can't conceive of the idea of moving on to one of her other puzzles until this one piece is dry and this one puzzle completed.
And that's my girl. She is systematic, and extremely focused on one thing at a time. While simultaneously silly and prancy, full of songs and chatter.
Now she's singing "Once upon a dream" from Sleeping Beauty.
(We have stemmed the tide of princess love for as long as we could. But she has fallen in love all on her own, and as it isn't infatuation, but just a sweet affection for pretty songs and dresses nothing can or will be done about it. )
Facts of note:
Shoe size: 9
Height: 41 inches
Favorite Food: Buttery Noodles
Favorite Sweet Treat: Tootsie Pops
Favorite Movie: Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty
Favorite Play: Crafts, and imaginary play in her room involving bits of this and that stacked here and there.
When she grows up she wants to: "Play with big girl toys, play with mommy and daddy, and big girl puzzles." (Direct quote)
Unfavorite Food: Potatoes, things that are green, any soup.
Unfavorite thing to do: Sit on the potty
Current philosophies: "My heart and my whole life make funny sounds. And Piglet's heart makes a sound too, It says "Pig-let, Pig-let, Pig-let."
And lastly, an exchange between Greta and her daddy at bedtime on Christmas Eve.
"Daddy, I just need someone nice to listen to my problems."
"Ok, What's the problem?"
"My tummy really doesn't want to go to sleep."
"Ok, How about if your head goes to sleep and your tummy stays awake?"
"Ok, And daddy, I have another problem too."
"What is it?"
"It's a stuffy one."
"Ok...."
"My bottom really doesn't want to go to sleep either."

Love you sweet Thing!

Happy (fill in the blank)!

Happy Birthday Greta! Happy Anniversary Us! Happy Christmas Everyone! Happy Birthday Dad!
Happy What Have You!... but please don't put me in charge of the party.
I am partied out. As I usually am, after the Colossal Party that is December.
My little girl is another year older and had her first real birthday party with little friends, games, goody bags and a pinata*. Kent and I celebrated our 6th year of marriage!
Jesus was born so we celebrated that with the usual Christmas fanfare (which I can never have enough of, so we try and do it all), and we celebrated my dad's birthday the last half of the day.
It all writes down easily enough, but I just about cried every single day as I was just barely paddling from one celebration, or gift purchase, or dinner potluck to the next. Not tears of sadness of course, mostly the heavy drag of sleep deprivation (from weeks of family illnesses), and the mounting hysteria from unceasing to-dos could no longer be contained inside of my person, and were leaking out in the form of tears. Totally healthy.
Christmas, just as I crossed the finishing line I finally ran out of steam. So I slunked around in my pj's all day and then slept in them (oh look! I'm ready for bed.) I could make a Christmas Roast Dinner and bang out another birthday cake**, but the Christmas miracles stopped at makeup and teeth brushing. As it was, it didn't really matter.  The party was with family and for family, and that's what mostly mattered.
See I have always had a terrible fear that I might take living for granted, and that I might somehow miss out on the 'muchness' of everything, and bitterly regret it. This shows itself most around milestones and holidays where I do my best to celebrate things up to the rafters. But especially at Christmas, where the pressure to celebrate is great, and there is so much to take in.
And although I can't even begin to post all the pictures, or make a perfect recap of each special moment or milestone, I will tell you that our holidays were Merry and Jesus made them bright.
I hope yours was too!

Xoxo!

Ps- Oliver is crawling. We are upping our game.
 


*Which was a total bust, because we failed to give her the ground rules for pinatas before hand. So when the thing hit the ground (after it's round of beatings) and her cousins pounced on it to rip its delicious insides out, she totally freaked. Whoops! Forgot to tell her that her beautiful rainbow colored pinata was supposed to be crushed to paper pulp, and its insides distributed among the quick and hearty.
It was slightly traumatic. But now we know. Learning the ways of the world one year at a time.

**For my dad's Christmas Day Birthday, which I didn't give nearly enough thought to. I only just remembered about the cake on Christmas Eve when all of the stores were already closed. It was providential we had a box of coffee cake mix on hand...and that my dad likes coffee cake.

Yoga Baby

Oliver has been trying to crawl lately.
He hasn't quite figured that out yet, but in the process he is learning some good yoga poses...

Blogs to books

You can tell a lot about a person by their books.
But taking it one step further, if you have a blog, have you ever thought about turning it into a book?
I have been thinking about doing this lately. 
I love the idea of being able to someday hand this over to my kids and say Look! This is me and you and everything in between.  All the things you don't remember, and maybe didn't realize, (like for starters, I'm a person to.)
This blog started out as a coping mechanism during my first trimester with Greta, and over time has turned itself into a little time capsule, a Captain's Log, or in a lot of cases, a non-crafty person's excuse for a baby book.
But, it's a little slice of our life and history.  And maybe someday they will want to know what it was like for me to give birth to them, raise them, what were my likes, my loves, or simply what did we do with all of our time?
I would love to read my mom's or grandma's thoughts as they started families, and started building their lives with their husbands, children, and careers. Wouldn't it be fascinating to be able to read their blogs or those of your great or great-great-grandmothers?

Ps- Aren't these prints by Ideal Bookshelf awesome? You can order ready made prints of book collections or a custom painting of your own bookshelf! (Greeeedy fingers!)





 

The 5th Annual Christmas Concert

This weekend we held our 5th Annual Christmas Concert.
A very old fashioned kind of party, where you dress up, eat, drink,  play charades, and most importantly every one comes ready to perform something (with a Christmas theme).
Every year is different, but always so much fun!
The acts this year were so wonderful, and varied from silly to sweet, to just hilarious.
The week leading up to the party, I like to think about our friends and the fun little memories they are probably making with their spouses as they figure out acts, practice together, and do things that they don't normally spend the evening (or morning of) doing!
This year, Kent and I did a little ukelele and song medley of What are you doing New Years Eve, White Christmas, and this song from The Jerk, (which is not technically Christmas but is one of our favorites).
I have so many fond memories of us hanging out on the couch harmonizing the evenings away, practicing for the concert. Moments that are priceless.
We have lots of little parties and shin digs through out the year, but we generally keep them pretty low key.
But for the Christmas Concert, we pull out the stops, and really do our best to ring in the season. This year we took a little video, and made a short little movie of it*.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Fifth Annual Christmas Concert from Kent Walter on Vimeo.



 *I will not be apologizing (but really I am) for the very artsy (blurry) footage. It was my first attempt at video with our camera, and I only just found out that you can actually manually focus as you go...

Remembering Granny

 A lot has changed this year.
New jobs, new baby, new responsibilities. Our life is becoming fuller, and more fully ours.
But as our family grows and as we start building childhoods for our little ones, we are often saying goodbye to ours.
To the things that our childhood consisted of,  most importantly, the faces we grew up with. This year we lost my granny to cancer.
My mom's mom.  With the soft brown eyes and sweetheart face.
She always smelled amazing, like the perfume counter at the Bon Marche, like luxury. Her scent was her little stamp on a lot of things.
She perfumed her gifts and cards, and sometimes food. (I grew used to the occasional Estee Lauder in my salad. But I knew it was just because she had tossed it with her hands, and who cares, it was granny,  her cooking was legendary.)
Her passion and talent for cooking and baking is what I think I will always remember most. Such food!
Some of the best meals of my life.


Her dinners were something you wanted to dress up for, they were an occasion.
She loved beauty and the food was always a sight and the table was a spectacle. She paid so much attention to detail, she would cook, bake and plan for days leading up to a big meal. And from the flickering low light of the antique chandelier, to the things that sparkled and were placed just so at your setting. It said to me "I care about these details, and I want to share them with you, because I love you."
I really think her food was her message of love in a lot of ways. I was her granddaughter, so I know I saw her and related to her in a much different way than my mom or others did.
But this is how I want to remember her.
She said things like "It tickled me..." when something was nice.
She got her hair "did" every Thursday at the mall.
When she laughed, she leaned forward and looked around like a little girl caught with a secret.
Her tree at Christmas was covered in icicles and these amazing little mirrored disco balls.
When I was younger, we would each get our choice of candy bar (full size!) from the magical place over her refrigerator when we left after a visit. (I almost always chose Rolos.)
Her condo, though not too spacious, was decorated corner to corner, (thoughtfully) with pretty pillows, throws, artwork, and trinkets from Japan*.  Once when I was little, I spent the night at her house and stepping onto the bathmat in her bathroom upstairs almost changed my life forever, it was so soft...like walking on puppies...but flatter...and without the guilt that would obviously be attached to walking on puppies. To this day I think about getting to the point in my life where I can focus on getting my feet a bathmat that soft.

Granny's life seemed small. Neither she nor my grandpa Ray drove a car, so they lived most of their life (as I knew them) at home. They didn't travel or go visiting much. She was very private, and for whatever reason she cast a very small net around her. But what was inside of it was made lovely, and ran like clockwork.

My mom takes after her in some ways.
She cooks prodigiously, loves beauty, and shares it with us in the food she makes, in the fine little details at the table, and the attentions she pays us on our visits**.
I think Granny's legacy has become a part of my moms, and in a way mine.
And that softens the blow a little, when I have to say goodbye to old standards like "Dinner at Granny's house". Because they are still being found at Dinner at mom's house, and perhaps down the road, dinner are mine.



*Where she had lived for a few years when my grandpa was in the navy.
** Treats on our pillows, water in a carafe by the bed, fluffy towels...etc.

It's that time of year...

Yesterday we went to pick up our Christmas tree.
Kent and I realized that we have bought our Christmas tree from the same Home Depot for as long as we have been "we"! (Knocking on 6 years folks.)
It is thoroughly a tradition now.
We brought it home and Kent and Greta did a very thorough (read slow) job of stringing up the lights.
With She and Him Christmas playing in the background, and Greta's little heart brimming with excitement over the little decorations, Christmas just keeps getting better and better.
(Children do that!)

Ps- Greta got her own little tree for her room, and it is her pride and joy. She placed all the ornaments herself, (see them grouped at the bottom?). When her tree is lit, and the lights are off, she starts to whisper. Probably from awe and beauty.