the day eddie didn't actually break my nose

Back when my nearly four year old was not quite one, we did a baby signing class with some friends. In the middle of circle time, with him on my lap, I lifted him up to put him on the floor, and in protest, he threw his head back and slammed into my nose so hard I had to do everything not to drop him to the ground in my pain. 
"I'm fine, I'm fine. No big deal. Ha ha." I said, tears immediately springing to my eyes.


You think that would have taught me a lesson about guarding my face. 
Um, no.


Fast forward to this Wednesday morning. I was upstairs getting two of the boys dressed for the day. I was sitting on the floor, playing with Eddie, when Nick made his way up the stairs. Excited to see Dada, Eddie began to climb the gate that was protecting him from barreling down the beautiful green shag that graces our stairs. 
"Get down, Eddie," Nick said gently. Eddie replied with giggles.
"Buddy, get down on the floor," I said. Nothing.
So I gently grabbed him around the waist to pull him down to me. 
He threw his head back in protest... into my face.
Crunch. 
I don't remember what happened next. I know Eddie definitely ended up on the floor, I flew into the bathroom, shut the door and tried to stop the gushing, gushing, gushing blood.
"Uhhhh, I think my nose might be broken?" I half asked, shakily and squeakily.
"Okay guys, let's watch a show!" I heard Nick say through the closed door. He swooped the kids downstairs and turned on Curious George. Moments later he was back upstairs with a bag of frozen peas, two extra strength tylenol and was calling in to work to say he was staying home for the morning.
My hero.


My nose, cut on top, and throbbing all the way back to the middle of my brain, bled for a good 45 minutes. I hesitantly called in to the doctor, who told me to see an ENT, like today.
"I really think it's fine," I told her. She wasn't convinced.


Let me pause to give you this piece of advice: if you ever think maybe your nose is broken, never ever, under any circumstances, consult WebMD. It will scare you for the rest of your life with its description of instruments and resetting techniques and packing gauze. You have been warned.


I made my way downtown and sat waiting in the warm office for the doctor. I tried not to look at the various tools sitting around, or read the labels of what the drawers contained.  The doctor came in, did her examination, asked a few questions, and said, "You're fine. It's not broken, just bruised and swollen." Relief swept over me as I gave one more glance to the metal prongs sitting on the counter next to me.


It's still bruised and sore, but it's healing. And thankfully, I find it kind of funny. But if George is going to follow his brothers examples, my nose will be broken by 2012. Hopefully this time I've learned my lesson.

I am cute, but my head is very, very hard.

little moments

In the crazy, semi-controlled chaos that is our daily existence, there are days when I don't feel like I can get on top of anything. The sink is never empty, the laundry is never done, the boys are never bathed, and I don't brush my hair. Thankfully, those days are growing more seldom, but they do exist. 


But the best days aren't when I am super productive, finish the laundry, put the perfect meal on the table, or manage to look presentable and venture out the door. The best days are when I can forget all of those things and focus on the most important thing of all - my relationships. Especially with my boys. Thankfully, there is a lot of overlap in nap time most days, but I usually get a least a few minutes alone with each kid each day. Here are a few snippets of those moments. 

I am very smart and good at stacking.

Must... touch... everything.

Mama, take my picture. Mama, can I see it? Mama, can I take YOUR picture? Mama...

And finally, let me leave you with this:

Because that just about sums it up.

a vacation to remember

In my life before children, before marriage, before Nick , I did a lot of traveling. I guess you could say I had the travel bug, itchy feet, wanderlust. I would get home from one trip, and couldn't wait to plan the next. It started with a semester in Ecuador, living just outside the jungle. Next came Australia, Africa, Europe... Each adventure left me thirsting for more - a new country, new culture, new people.  


One summer I took a three week trip to Norway to visit one of my dearest friends, Ellen, who I had lived with during my time in Washington, DC. She was (and is) my kindred spirit and I so looked forward to being with her in her native land and experiencing her typical daily life. That was one of my travel criteria - the less touristy the better. I took my anthropology major seriously - I wanted to be as much engulfed in the culture as I could.


During that particular trip, we went camping in Sweden, hiking in the mountains in central Norway, on a road trip cross country to Bergen, and I took a couple of solo side trips to Stockholm and Copenhagen. But mostly I spent my days exploring Oslo while Ellen worked. I sat in cafes sipping coffee and reading, shopped at H&M far too frequently, walked in gorgeous parks and tried to generally blend in.


One morning Ellen told me we'd be going to a birthday party that evening for one of her friends.


"It's a shrimp party," she told me.
"A what?" I asked.
"A shrimp party. Fishing boats come into the harbor and sell their freshest catch. They boil the shrimp right on the boat - they're amazing." 
I had been a vegetarian for ten years, but ate seafood on occasion. This sounded perfect, and a true cultural experience to boot. 


We arrived at the party and I immediately felt fashionably inferior to all of the beautiful Europeans I was surrounded by. We each grabbed a glass of wine and I stood by Ellen's side as she mingled. As I looked around the room, I noticed that the bar was set for dinner. Platters lined with fresh bread, plates filled with butter and herbs, and extremely large bowls filled with shrimp. 


Full bodied, heads on, antennas sticking up, black beady eyeballs staring at you shrimp.
It was a shrimp party and I was kind of starting to freak out. The line for dinner started to form and the party goers began to ooh and ahh over the shrimpy spread. People loaded their plates with bread and mounds and mounds of the little suckers.


"Take a lot," said tiny Ellen, "because once you peel them, they are fairly small."



Oy. I followed her lead and silently rallied myself to act as though this was totally normal for me. Cracking apart shrimp bodies and all.


We sat down and Ellen happily coached me through the process: "Just slip your finger under its legs to peel the outer layer off. As you come up to the neck, snap it back and its head will pop right off! It takes about seven or eight to fill a slice of bread."
Oh. my. goodness. I queasily began the process and silently apologized to the black shiny eyes staring at me. It's already dead, it's already dead, it's already dead, I repeated over and over. 


And you know, after I made it through the first ten, I was over it. I happily joined the Norwegian masses in the neck snapping of many little shrimp, laying them deliciously atop bread and butter between sips of crisp white wine.


But I gotta tell you, here I am eight years later and I haven't done it since. I'll take that frozen bag of pre-cleaned, deveined shrimp any day. 


Thanks for the memories, Norway.

tuesday treats: waffle cookies with lute

I am not gonna lie, I love bed time. Not mine, but the boys. I love those dudes with my whole heart, and they bless me everyday, but by the time we get through dinner, I am really really really kind of ready for a break. With that in mind, Lute apparently needs way less sleep these days. So, while the babies love their early bed time, Lute's has been pushed back and now he gets fun alone time with us. After the four thousandth game of Memory, I decided I needed to come up with some new projects. That's when the recipe for waffle cookies showed up in my mailbox. Who could resist that? It was so fun to do together and so easy, I thought I'd pass the recipe along to anyone who might need some new ideas. Or just need a treat, because they were pretty tasty.

See? You can have this much fun, too.

He basically did everything himself.

Nothing can be bad if it includes chocolate, right?

Almost ready!

In our cute little waffle maker inspired by my favorite Norwegian.

Deeeee-lish. They disappeared within 24 hours... They taste a little like a waffle, mostly like a cookie and are full of my favorite things... chocolate, cashews, coconut. Hmmm, might need to make another batch.

Waffle Cookies

(from Simple and Delicious)

makes 3 dozen

1/2 C brown sugar

1/4 C sugar

1/2 C butter, melted

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 C + 2 tbs. all purpose flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 C flaked coconut (we used unsweetened)

1/2 C chopped cashews

1/2 C mini chocolate chips

In a large bowl, combine sugars, butter, egg and vanilla. Combine the flour, salt and baking soda and gradually add to the sugar mixture. Stir in the coconut, cashews and chocolate chips. 

Drop batter by tablespoonfuls 1" apart onto preheated waffle iron coated with cooking spray. Bake for 1-2 minutes or until golden. Remove to wire racks to cool completely. 

And then try not to eat them all.

sometimes we iz dum

This weekend we got to watch one of my closest college friends get married in a beautiful ceremony downtown. We got to catch up with fun friends we hadn't seen in ages. We got to eat really, really good cake. And we were pretty stoked when we found a free parking spot right across the street on a Saturday night. Reveling in the wonder of an adult night away from children that included friends, celebration and free drinks, we walked the very few steps back to our car. I think Nick even commented, "I can't believe we got such a good spot." Then I saw the ticket on the dash. I was ready to take pictures of the spot and take that ticketer to court because I had checked high and low for any signs indicating it wasn't a kosher spot. Then I read the ticket: expired tabs. Like in December. And at that point we both felt like total idiots and there wasn't much more to say.


So Monday morning Nick took "my" car - the one that is not a minivan that I use to drive the rascals around. I could live without the car for the day and would go get the tabs that afternoon when he got home. Paperwork and cash in hand, I went into the licensing office, waited in a long line and finally approached the desk... to find out we needed an emissions test. Twenty minutes away and it was quickly approaching 5 o'clock. So I paid for a permit that covered our expired tabs for two days. 


All that to say, we got the emissions test and will get the tabs later today, but in the meantime the boys and I took Nick to work this morning to avoid any more ticketing. On the way home, Lute was asking me to tell the fifth story of the morning and my coffeeless brain was still tired from the early wake up.


"I think Mama is going to listen to the radio for a little bit," was my reply. Surprisingly, he didn't mind.


I turned it on and it was already tuned in to our favorite talk radio station. The host, a local man we've had the privilege of meeting, was talking about gratitude. This particular man has seven (or eight?) kids at home and was talking about what it's like for him and his wife to keep up with their kids and quell the chaos by being proactive. He talked about his desire for quiet in the morning to reflect and pray, but the reality of his life means that his mornings are spent picking up, organizing and preparing. I could relate to this on some level. I would love to say that I was disappointed that I had to clean up because I would rather be in prayer, but usually I am disappointed because I would rather be sleeping or checking my email. 


He was drawing his reflections from a chapter on gratitude in The Imitation of Christ (which I may have to add to the ever growing pile of books on my nightstand). The fact that we have to clean and prepare and manage chaos means that we have the amazing gift of family. How many people in the world would trades places with us to have the gift of children and marriage? We truly are blessed. All of the daily responsibilities that come with it are our opportunities to deny ourselves and grow deeper in patience, love, and gratitude. 


Talk about timely. Sometimes I get ticked off when God decides to time everything so perfectly that I can't ignore the lesson. Ticked off, but really thankful.