The Heathen Housewife

Joe and I have been busy the last few weeks dreaming up gifts for the girls for Christmas. Christmas was such a magical time for me when I was little, a real bright spot of happy memories in a generally sucky childhood. I really hope and believe that my girls will have much happier lives overall than I did as a little girl, but the magic of Christmas – even though we are not Christians – is something that I want to share with them.

So, what to get? We put off buying toys mostly throughout the year. Yes, they get a few things here and there, for their birthdays and when the mood or need for a specific toy or craft supply calls. But most of the stuff out there is crap that will get played with for ten minutes while it’s new and then become detritus for floors and every other surface in our home. I thought shopping was going to be hard, but instead we’ve managed to find more than enough things to give the girls (probably too much) and hopefully keep us busy through the rest of the dreary winter days after the holidays are over.

I should note that I’m pretty picky about toys – I don’t like things that are battery-operated. I don’t like things that involve over-marketed characters like Dora or Dizzney Princesses. I made a couple of exceptions for characters that the girls really like that I feel a little better about. I really like to focus on more open-ended and creative toys, because that’s what’s good for the kids in the long run, and because that’s what they actually play with.

Let’s get shopping!

Learn To Dress Elmo (at Amazon) $20

Sophie is currently obsessed with Elmo – I don’t know why because we don’t let her watch TV. But Elmo is one of the few words she says regularly, and it makes her happy to see him. I went searching through the Elmo toys on Amazon and elsewhere looking for one that I could live with and that I thought we’d actually get something out of, and I think this one fits the bill. We already have a plain Elmo doll buried somewhere around here. I think it is one of the toys I put away last year during a major purge, and I should probably bring it back out, but am a little afraid of turf wars that might ensue.

Angelina Ballerina Doll and DVD (at Target.com)$15

Julie still has a minor obsession with Angelina, and she’s seen a doll at a local bookstore several times and practically begged for it. I knew that this is one gift she’d open and be really thrilled to see. I’m not sure how much lasting power it will have, and certainly we don’t need any more stuffed animals in the house, but I have a feeling this one will make her really happy in the moment.

Lap Harp with Carrying Case and tons of music (at Hearthsong) $80

This one is kind of expensive, but I saw it and wanted it for myself almost as much as for the kids. I feel like it’s kind of an investment because I think they’ll grow into it, and in the mean time, it’s a great toy for me to sit with them and interact, singing and playing together. I need every tool I can get to have fun with my girls in different ways.

Nyokki Holiday Plant Pet (at Hearthsong) $10

This one is just silly! I think it will go in Julie’s stocking, and I think they will both enjoy it – heck – we’ll all enjoy it. I probably wouldn’t have gotten this one if I weren’t already ordering from this catalog.

Wooden Stencil Box Playset (at Hearthsong) $13

I thought this toy looked like a great deal. It’s wood, it’s something they’ll be able to use for several years, it’s open-ended and honestly I bet Julie will use the pieces for other things besides just stenciling.

By the way, I used promotion code HSA056 to get all the stuff from Hearthsong shipped for $5.

Rollipop Set (at Creative Kidstuff) $34

I’ve seen marble-track sets all over the place for older kids. They look like so much fun, for them and for me! But I just don’t trust either of my girls to play with standard-sized marbles. Honestly, Julie puts things in her mouth more than Sophie does. Someone mentioned how worried they were about the beads my girls were playing with the other day – and trust me I was watching that game like a hawk. The moment anyone put anything in their mouth, we put it away. The marbles just have too much potential to roll off under the couch and someone finds them later when I’m not looking. Luckily, this set is made for toddlers. It’s a bit more simple than the older-kid versions, but still looks like some good fun, and a good gift to put Sophie’s name on.

Trampoline (at Creative Kidstuff) $70

This will probably be the big “Santa” gift of the year. It will go in our basement playroom. Julie has played on these at school in the past and enjoyed them, and we definitely need good ways to burn of energy when it’s too cold to go outside for days on end. This will also help build muscle tone and coordination.

I chose the local pickup option for Creative Kidstuff when ordering this online because shipping would have been really expensive for the trampoline. Lots of catalogs have various versions of this toy, and this one looked like pretty good quality, and the local-pickup option clinched the deal.

Fashion Designer (at Back to Basics Toys) $20

Joe and I both noticed this in a catalog and remembered playing with similar toys as kids. This isn’t the actual one I ended up buying – I found a similar one in a local store for $12 and picked it up. But the one in this catalog looks like maybe better quality than the one I bought. Julie loves doing art projects, and this will be a good way to keep her occupied at the table for a few minutes when she’s bored or when I need to start dinner.

I know this sounds like a lot of stuff. And it is. But remember, I’m a stay-at-home mom, so we need more toys to keep us busy all day than families with kids in day-care all week.

A couple of things we considered, but didn’t buy I think are worth mentioning.

View Master – remember this awesome toy? I really really really wanted to get one for my girls, but most of the reels are movie and/or over-exposed character related. Maybe next year.

Ed Emberly Drawing Books – Julie got one of these for her birthday, and it’s great! Both girls love to hang out in front of the easel with me while we draw animals out of it. There are several in the series, and they’re not even expensive. But we had already reached our spending limit, and I think we’d appreciate them more if we bought them in a month or two when the new starts to wear off the Christmas stuff.

In the interest of full disclosure, there may be a few other little things – stocking stuffers mostly. But these are the big ones, the ones I thought people with little kids like mine might be interested in. Next up, my own wish list…

If I weren’t trying so hard to blog every day this month, today would definitely have been a no-blog day. I spent my evening printing patterns for shipment, folding laundry, and generally attempting to dig out from under my desk.

I have a rockin’ awesome post I want to put together, but I have neither the time nor the energy tonight. Sorry!

The last day or so has been pretty blankie-licious for me. I know, I know, you haven’t seen much of the blankie lately, and I’m starting to feel a little lonely for it myself. Amazingly, though, considering how little attention I’ve given it over the last few months, last night and today were blankie-intensive in the best possible ways imaginable.

First, last night when we finally came in from the naptime in the car, Joe checked the mail and found a large envelope postmarked from Australia.

I had almost forgotten about the e-mail interview I’d done with the reporter from the knitting magazine a few months ago. She had said she wanted to mention my blanket in an article about all kinds of ways to use up leftover sock scraps, so I assumed it would be something like a one-sentence mention as part of a little blurb. Even so, I was very excited when I pulled the magazine out of the envelope and saw such a lovely glossy publication.

As I flipped through the mag, looking for my little project, I saw lots of pretty and interesting things – some project that I might actually consider knitting myself even. And then, I found the page…

90% of the article on that page is the story of the blankie. I was dumbfounded and thrilled. I felt a bit like I was on some kind of high for the rest of the evening.

The blankie itself has been hanging around at the store promoting my class, which started today.

(Thanks for the photo, Sarah!) I’m always nervous when I start a new class, and today was no exception. It’s always even a bit harder when it’s a new class I haven’t taught before, but I muddled through and everyone did okay and nobody cried or anything. Fun! Best of all, perhaps, was that the blankie had sold the class. None of my students were readers here (not yet anyway) so they were all entertained by the story of how I got the yarn and I didn’t have to worry about which piece of too-personal information they were remembering about me from moment to moment.

The blankie came home with me today, and as soon as I finish the Christmas knitting, I swear I am going to start cranking out squares again. Teaching classes always leaves me happy, fulfilled, and also a little drained from over excitement.

We had no plans for dinner, so we took to our newly opened culinary horizons. Out we went to Punch for Neapolitan-style pizza baked in a woodburning oven. If you live in the metro area and have not yet tried this pizza, you need to go there as soon as possible. It’s the yum.

Joe just *loves* it when I take his picture while he’s eating. Loves it. Really.

The school where Julie and Sophie attend (Sophie and I go to mommy-baby
classes one morning a week) has a little fundraiser evey fall. They have
us sell tubs of cookie dough to our neighbors, friends and coworkers,
then we pick it up and deliver it on the Friday before Thanksgiving.

Generally, I don't mind this. It's a good excuse to visit Joe's office
with the girls. Today, though, we got to the school only to discover the
cookie-dough truck had broken down and was running late. Which left me
in a bit of a quandry.

Should I take the girls home, strip their shoes and coats off, get them
interested in some activity (and in Sophie's case, the preferred
activity would clearly have been nursing to sleep because she hadn't had
much of a nap earlier because I hadn't wanted to get her down just to
wake her up in time in the first place) only to, 20 minutes later, round
up my little herd of cats, get their shoes and coats back on, usher them
back out the door and into the van (which we continue to love) and get
the straps buckled, amen?

Or should I make up some brief errand to pass half an hour, keeping them
in the car and saving us all some hassle. I chose this route, and used
the opportunity to justify a *bucks run.

We are blessed with not one but two different drive-through *bucks
nearby, and I chose the slightly further-away one to kill an extra
minute or two. I ordered my usual mocha, plus two kiddy cocoas, extra
whip. The girls love whipped cream as much as I do, I'm afraid.

Well, Julie immediately took too big a swallow and managed to
hilariously spray chocolatey foam from her mouth just as I was getting
ready to help Sophie with her first taste of cream. So Sophie had to
wait while I cleaned that mess up. It really wasn't so bad and I was
pretty successful, especially considering that I was wearing my handknit
cream-colored bavarian twisted-stitch vest.

But by the time I came at Sophie with her cup once more, she was eager
in the I'm-almost-two-I-can-freakin'-do-it-MyselF! way that she's
adopted lately. So she grabbed it and dumped about a third of the
(thankfully diminutive) serving down her front. So I wiped her up a bit,
gave her her cup back and sat down for a moment to relax, sigh, and take
a picture.

We drove home and I ran in to get clean clothes, which we changed her
into in our blissfully huge and empty third-row bench (avoiding the
whole herding cats phenomena yet!)

Whew! The rest went just as planned. We wnt back and picked up the
now-waiting tubs of dough, visited Daddy and his coworkers with
amazingly smiley and well-behaved little girls, and now we are sitting
in the garage while the girls get a little nap till Daddy arrives home
or someone wakes up, whichever comes first.

I even have som knitting in my purse.

So remember how I was just talking about Joe being horrified by my desire to eat five brownies? Guess who just ate pretty much an entire bag of pork rinds in less than an hour. It is so unfair that he is perpetually skinny despite eating his fill of fat and salt, while I am a chubby-wubby who eats only a small fraction of the naughty stuff I would if I could get away with it.

We are watching Casino Royale on DVD, a surprising thing because it came out of my Netflix queue, and because he actually wanted to watch it with me. It is rare that we both want to watch the same program at the same time.

And now I must really crack down and finish the class handout for Saturday.

Even though we Kangs are all creeping stealthily back to health, the living is not all that easy around here today yet. Last night Sophie woke up in the wee dark hours and would not be immediately soothed. I wanted to avoid driving Joe out of the bed (as we had unwittingly done on Saturday night – he showed up in the morning cold from having been on the couch, leaving me to wonder what was wrong with the guest bedroom bed besides a few scattered items of mine to be removed). So I took Sophie down to the guest bed, and we ended up sleeping with me propped up on pillows and her in my arms. I think she needed the upright position to help the snot drain. But we got a couple more hours of sleep, and all survived another day.

Joe is sick, but is being stoic about it. He’s grumpy, but in a quiet way. Julie is mostly better, with a bit of a cough now and then. I – I am full of snot to the point that I’m wishing it were a valuable commodity. We’d be rich. Oh, my life is so interesting!

I am starting to get nervous about the holiday knitting. I started the socks this afternoon, but didn’t even get past the toe shaping, so I will get them both past that point tonight, then save the cruise-control stockinette of the foot for public knitting – those will practically knit themselves. I also realized that I need to type up handouts for my class starting on Saturday, so I’ll put a little time into that tonight, plus start up a couple more mitered-square samples to show them. Perhaps next week I can do some of the little mittens and then it will be clear sailing to finish Joe’s clogs in time. I did get some of the edging done on the charity blankie last night, but I don’t knit all that quickly and there wasn’t that much time. It would be nice if I could finish at least one side before I set it aside again for the personal stuff. I’m overwhelmed!

I have to say, though, I glanced at my server statistics the other day – it’s amazing how many more people read your blog when you actually write every day. It makes way too much sense!

Crap! I’m editing this at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning. I wrote up the rest of this post last night and I would have sworn I pushed Publish Post, but here we are the next morning and it’s still sitting here waiting on my screen. At least it didn’t all get deleted. Ah, I see a little error message that says securityToken: Your request could not be processed. Please try again. Ack! I was busy lounging on the couch with my knitting and did not realize that I needed to try again. I hope this doesn’t disqualify me from that nifty NaBlogEverydayforaMo thingie. Why, oh why can I not remember the proper name of it? ACK! Must go finish drying my hair before Sophie gets bored with the Lego.

Gah! I am still so incredibly tired and crabby from this neverending cold. Julie was awfully squirrelly today, and I was trying to think up something to do with her that would be fun and also kill some time while Sophie was down for her nap. I’d been craving those crunchy-edged brownies again, and now that Julie can eat wheat (it’s going fine – she’s eating all the wheat we are and there have been no problems. We’re going to start with the soy as soon as we get around to it.) I figured she’d like to enjoy some brownies with me.

As an aside about the brownie craving, Joe was headed to the grocery store last night to pick up some coffee because he had failed to mention to me that he was out of coffee, so I failed to buy him any coffee. He asked me if there was anything I wanted from the store, and I responded something like “I’d love to eat about five brownies right now, but I don’t need them, so no thanks.” He gave me a shocked look and said “FIVE?! You couldn’t really eat five brownies, could you?” And I gave him a shocked look right back and told him I’d done it before and will do it again. I was a little floored that after five and a half years of marriage, plus years and years of dating before that, he has yet to fully appreciate my immense cravings for and ability to consume sweets. I mean, he’s seen me head into the kitchen and bake a pan of brownies or a batch of cookies on a whim because of a craving. He doesn’t understand it, but I thought he was used to it by now.

Which leads me back to today’s brownies. We made them. I “only” at about three before I was full. I’m still trying to follow a reasonable diet, and I’m down about 15 pounds. I’m pretty happy about that, but I’m still a good five pounds over the maximum healthy weight range for my height. I’ve been sitting on a bit of a plateau for a few weeks, and I’m not too worried about it, but I do feel like it’s about time for me to buckle back down and start counting points some more.

But I feel like I owe a few answers to questions about what exactly I’ve been doing, what habits I’ve changed. And it’s nothing magic – I’m happy to share. I signed up for Weight Watchers online on September 3. I’m not going to meetings or anything – just tracking points online. The first week was super hard. I felt hungry all the time. I thought about food constantly. I made some hard changes. I’m not really proud about the little habits I’m about to describe, but I had fallen into them, and now I’ve mostly dug my way out of them.

I had been eating chocolate All.Day.Long. Lots of chocolate. Little bites of dark chocolate here and there for every reason and no reason. I cut that right out. For that bittersweet taste, I turned to an extra cup of decaf coffee with a bit of sugar and milk in the afternoon. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped. Yes, there are calories/points in the coffee, but it takes a lot longer to fix and consume a cup of coffee than it does to pop a square of chocolate in your mouth.

And here’s a thing that I realized about cravings. No matter how bad I crave something, I have two choices. I can give in to that craving – eat the chocolate – and I will still crave more. Or, I can suffer a while longer from the craving and maybe it will subside a bit. It helps if there is no chocolate in the house.

Bad habit number two involved Grande Decaf Mochas at *bucks. It had turned in to a more-days-than-not habit. I realized within a day that just one of those pretty much blew my points for the day. My goal is to rein in my points enough during the day so that I can have treat after the girls are in bed, and if I have even a tall, non-fat version of a mocha, it means that a treat after bedtime is going over the points. It’s pretty simple. But at least, even now that I’ve gotten a little sloppy on this habit – must re-commit to the program – I’m getting the smaller non-fat version when I must succumb.

Habit number three is a little more nebulous. I had just gotten used to eating big servings of everything I was eating. A typical breakfast used to be a fried egg, two pieces with toast with butter and jelly, and sometimes a piece of sausage too. Now, for the same breakfast I have the fried egg cooked with cooking spray instead of butter and one piece of toast, no butter, no jelly, but with a splash of Tabasco on it and the egg. Yum! Other mornings, I eat oatmeal with raisins or yogurt with fruit. But the egg with its protein really seems to stick with me.

Another example of this portion-size issue is Chipotle burritos. Joe is obsessed with Chipotle, eats there several times a week. We tend to get it for lunch on either Saturday or Sunday, too. Before I was pregnant with Julie, there was no way I could finish a whole burrito from there. I’d eat half and be stuffed. Somehow during the pregnancies my appetite stretched and I was eating the whole thing without thinking twice. Adding up the points in the WW calculator, one burrito was basically my food for the day. So I started cutting it in half before even taking the first bite and resigning myself to leaving the other half. The first time was really hard. I felt so sad that I didn’t get to eat the other half of the burrito, I gave myself a “bonus bite” – just one bite of that second half to help me feel better. But over the last couple of months, I’ve gotten used to the half-sized portion again, and now it’s enough.

There are a thousand examples of the portion-size issue, and after a few weeks of paying attention, I kind of figured out what I should be eating for most meals. I tend to be a creature of habit, so as long as I’m not going out to eat, it’s pretty easy to stick to my normal stuff. The less I can think about it, the easier it is to stay in line. This is a little cheesy, but I have been buying some Weight Watchers food – their Smart Ones frozen desserts and some of their frozen dinners. They’re easy, no-brainer ways to give myself a treat without having to calculate a bunch of points. And somehow, those tiny little desserts are usually enough. Even when the giant bowl of ice cream with chocolate syrup and nuts on top wasn’t enough. It makes portion control easy. And the dinners are nice for lunch some days when I want something more than just leftovers or cold cuts *again*. The ones I get are only four or five points, and it certainly doesn’t cost as much as going out to lunch.

So anyway, I’m no expert. I haven’t even reached my goal yet. But my wedding ring fits comfortably on my finger now, my pants are loose, the XL shirts are looking all sloppy on me and the L shirts are fitting just right. My tummy no longer looks five months pregnant, although it has never been flat and will never be flat. I feel better. I just need to re-focus and stay on this train a little longer.

It’s not really that huge of a secret – I just didn’t want to post about it till I had at least a little something to show off. I mentioned this Rainbow Socks pattern from Magknits a week or so ago. I wasn’t going to start it because there are too many other high-priority projects on the list, but, well, you know how it is…

This yarn has been calling me for ages, too. It’s Vesper Sock Yarn in Love Stinks (yeah yeah) colorway. Let me just say that I think this is a cool pattern. I think this is awesome yarn. But I’m kinda debating frogging the whole thing right now, for a few reasons.

First, I think the striping pattern on the yarn is a little too wide to maximize the effect of the short rows. Second, although I’ve done this type of Japanese short rows before, it’s been quite a while and I was screwing it up on the first few repeats – they look sort of lumpy because I wasn’t bringing the yarn to the front at the exact right moment during half of the turns. Third, and this is a little silly because I knew what I was getting into when I started the pattern, but socks are linked in my mind with simple, brainless knit-knit-knitting. It has to be something pretty wonderful to get me to do fiddly stuff on a sock, and I’m not quite sure this qualifies.

Even so, I’m kind of hooked and not quite ready to give up on these just yet. Luckily, I don’t have to decide right now because I’m going back to the charity blanket. My attitude has improved a bit and I know that bottom-line I want that project off my back and my plate as soon as possible. Especially considering that I have two pairs of mittens, a pair of socks, and a pair of felted clogs to make before Christmas. Not to mention a few other loose ends of which we will not speak till later.

Oh, and honey? You’re the one who likes to “knit” thongs. As much as I know you’d love to put on a wooly g-string and prance around for me, I’m afraid you’ll have to design that one for yourself. I think you’ll get a lot more wear and less chafing out of the felted clogs.

By the way, I talked to Molly’s mom this evening. Ron is out of ICU and doing as well as can be expected. The full story is horrifying – the bullet passed about a centimeter away from his heart. But he’s alive, he’s determined to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible, and he’s going to be okay. I’m so glad I still have a cousin Ron. Whew!

My cousin Ron was in a hunting accident yesterday. Apparently, he was shot in the chest and is now in ICU in Fargo. I don’t know a whole lot more because I was out of the house when his wife called to tell us. Joe found a link to an article about it here. His wife said he is stable and expected to recover, but still. I’m horrified. Because I’m feeling helpless and worried, I’m sharing this with you and asking you to think positive thoughts, send them your strength, and if you pray, do that too.

Here’s a picture of Ron and Molly with Julie from a couple of years ago at Christmas – aside from being great friends to me ever since I moved up here in 1997, they have been wonderful family for my girls, always welcoming us to Christmas Eve at their house and making our girls giggle when sometimes no one else can.

Thanks.

Oh, and by the way, we’re all one tiny step toward better with our colds. Sophie is still sad and clingy, and is eating only the broth out of the chicken wildrice soup I heated up for lunch, but at least she is eating something.

I’ll try to pull together an actual fun post for this evening. You want to see that secret, selfish project? I’m not sure how in love with it I really am, but it has been a learning experience so far, and I’ll tell you all about it later.

We’re still sick. I dragged Sophie in to urgent care this afternoon after waffling about whether to get her seen all weekend. She’s going to live, but let me just say that watching your toddler get a chest x-ray is not all that fun.

She slept on me, on the couch, for more than three hours this afternoon. At least I got a nap in for a while there too.

I’ve been upstairs twice getting her back to sleep, and Joe’s up there right now. I’m going to watch another episode of Grey’s Anatomy on the internet and go to bed. Sorry for the lameness.