She Laughs at the Days

Wait, didn't I just write your 3rd birthday letter? Has it already been a year?

And yet, when I look at you I can see the changes this past year has wrought, imperceptible at first from one day to the next, but looking back I wonder where my baby girl has gone.

To start with you are taller, and you are slender, barely any baby fat is left. You've suddenly started doing things independently, emerging from the bathroom wiped and washed and clothed. You've started wanting to stir your own yogurt and choose your own outfits and do your own "school work", and make your own bed, meticulously. I feel a sudden twinge whenever you come out of the bathroom as I realize that in the past month you have suddenly grown up in one more area without me saying or doing anything, besides not running to wipe you the instant you called. You got tired of waiting until I was finished whatever else I was doing before coming to help you.

You can pronounce the letter l now. Sometime this yea…

Well, when you are a girl who loves pretty things and girly things, it seems that the best way to celebrate your 4th birthday is with a tea party, complete with mini tarts, sandwiches, finger jello and homemade chocolates.


Thanks to a tip from Mary about oiling the poor thing the sewing machine continued to bravely soldier on, which is a good thing, because I didn't really have a back up plan of this tent didn't workout. The Girl begged to sleep in it tonight, so I let her of course. (This used to be shower curtains at my MIL's. I tried dying them to use in my living room but the color was wrong. It's a perfect tent though. What you can't see is the window at the back with white curtains that can tie back, and that you can close up the door by sewing yourself in or out. Now that's done, I can maybe get some sleep.)

Little girls on their best behavior. I've been taking cues from Montessori with the Girl and it works. If you slow down and model proper and caref…

You emerged tiny and slippery. Your body was warm and firm. I found strength I didn't know I had birthing you. It was not the strength of stone, firm, hard, unmoving, but the strength of a young willow; the ability to bend, and not break, to yield to the storms instead of resisting them, to hold my arms up in surrender and let the forces around bend and shape me all the while trusting that it would not carry me away, trusting in the rock that holds me but no longer trying to be the rock. I learned at last not to try and uselessly fight the way things are, but to face the way they are and find a way through it instead. It's hard to believe that such a tiny bundle could bring in her wake such great wisdom and peace, but you did.

It's been really great to not have any depression this year, at all. I don't know why, but I'm grateful. Babies are a lot of fun when you're not feeling overwhelmed by life. And you are especially fun, perhaps the funnest baby ever. I hear…

I've been wanting to participate in boo mama's house tour since the last time she did one. Why? Oh, for the same reason that I like to bare my soul to the internet. Who knows. Anyway, we don't really get into Christmas decorations, but here is what you would have seen if you came to my house during Hanukkah last week.


Every night they would take turns to paint another candle flame until the whole menorah was lit.

These little stars were painstakingly cut out by my 6 year old, and the the Girl embossed them with a swirly pattern using the end of a wooden spoon. The silver ones are old foil plates. (I stole this straight from this months issue of family fun magazine.) They look much prettier than I can show in the photo.

And here is this year's home made menorah. Yes it looks like I just drilled holes in a 2 by four, but really it's white birch, and has such pretty colors in it. And I loved how this years was so sturdy and solid compared to the clay ones that we made la…

I hope everyone who celebrates Hannukah had a good time because we certainly did. I'm starting to get this whole holiday thing down and find the memories in it for my kids. It's harder than you might think to do that with a holiday you didn't celebrate when you were a kid. But we baked and sang and gambled for chocolate until we were almost sick. We made cute homemade decorations and the kids got to light candles each night and take turns updating the menorah we painted on our window. There was even dancing this year.

My sewing machine is making unhappy noises that may imply that I work it too hard. I don't know why it would feel that way. I finished all of the gifts that I had planned so far, except the
pajamas I was making for the kids. It turns out those are pretty hard to throw together without a pattern. It always irks me when I can't figure out a pattern myself and have to buy one instead. I mean, what's the point of sewing gifts out of what you have on han…

I love it when I throw out deep thoughts and don't even get a comment, let alone discussion or disagreement. And since i love the thunderous silence of an empty inbox so much, here's something cute my kids are doing.

I blame it on Shrek the Third, though part of it is my fault. I mean, if they had already heard some of the great songs in the soundtrack before they watched the movie they wouldn't
keep yelling, "Mommy it's a Shrek song." whenever they hear it on the radio.

Right now the boy is in the shower singing at the top of his lungs, and carrying the tune very well I might add,

"Everybody's got soul, got so much soul....

You've got soul and I've got soul,
Everybody's got soul...

got so much soul."

In the other room the Girl is yelling, over and over again, the only line she remembers from a Beatles song.

"Live and let die!
Live and let Die!
Live and let Die!
Live and let DIE!"

She says die so gleefully that it's really hard not …