Confession

Notice the clutter covering the kitchen counters. ugh

My mom is an organized, orderly person. She keeps a clean, generally clutter-free house and although it drove me crazy as a child trying to meet her standards, I now greatly admire her ability to do so.

So during her visit last month, when she was admiring my creativity and various sewing projects and said to me, "grandma and I just wonder where you find time to do it all," I laughed and told her the way I "do it all" is by being a terrible housekeeper.

"I will walk past piles of toys and clutter on my way to the sewing table," I said.

And she responded with something like, "but that's okay. I think it's better to be making things and creating than cleaning up all the time. I wish I was more like that--able to ignore the messes and be creative. You can always clean, but you can't always sew."

Here is where I pause so that all my siblings can shut their dropped jaws. I know, right? Who knew our mother favored creativity over cleanliness. Who knew?

Up until that conversation I have always thought of this as a major weakness for me. I love to make things and hate to clean up afterward. I will step over toys and piles of laundry and full of dirty dishes and (heaven help me), I will even clear off a little spot on the kitchen counter just big enough for cooking dinner. I am not one of those who can't cook a meal until the kitchen is clean. No way.

More than I care to admit, I've been mortified when someone stops by unexpectedly and they get a glimpse into my cluttered life.

But, hey, mom says its okay. So, at least today I feel a little less pressure to make a major overhaul of my housekeeping skills. Like that will ever happen.

A new thrifting treasure

A few weeks ago we had a very lucky thrifting day. We found ourselves a copy of this book for 65 cents. It actually turned out to be an even better deal than we knew at the time, because it is currently out of print.

We love Ed Emberley's drawing books. He uses basic shapes drawn out step-by-step that turn into unique animals and faces and other everyday objects. His method is easy enough to make anyone more confident in their drawing skills.

In fact, recently 4-year-old Owen has taken to drawing more than just scribbles and random shapes. I think it is because he discovered that he could follow the few steps given in this book

to draw animals and he and I and Jeff and James were amazed at the final product. It gave him the confidence to draw more.

For quiet time today I surprised him with a new notebook just for his drawings and I can't wait to watch the pages fill up and a new little artist finding his own style in our house.

What a difference a year makes

My parents were recently here for their annual Halloween visit. They've been coming to Oregon for Halloween the past few years, as our G&G Troxler did when we were little. Halloween is definitely a holiday better spent with children, and we love visitors.

Last week, while waiting for them to arrive, I couldn't help but think about last year's visit. Mom came alone to rescue me from weeks of pregnancy-induced sickness and serious neglect of my children and my home. Also, Jeff was out of town and the thought of making three meals a day for children in my current state overwhelmed me to tears.

She came and stayed longer than her usual three days (because she lives by the adage that guests and fish stink after 3 days), cooked delicious bland meals that soothed this pregnant lady's sick stomach, sewed a vampire cape, cleaned my house every single day, did all our laundry, let me sleep in, transported James to and from school, and listened to me complain about feeling crummy and how I would never, ever have any more children.

I cried after she left. However, I also found within myself a renewed energy to face the difficult weeks full of nausea that were still ahead.

This year Mom and Dad came together once again, and we had great food, watched some great football (go Ducks!) and baseball, and even enjoyed a rare sunny Oregon fall day.

Needless to say, I am so, so happy to be here in 2009 with Henry making me smile and fall more in love with him everyday as opposed to there in 2008 when he mostly just made me run to the toilet.

To all you nursing mamas

I just finished reading The Birth House, by Ami Mckay (thanks Ilene for the recommendation), which was a good read except for the fact that I think it diverged a bit too much from the birth stories that it promised to tell. The few birth stories it shared were fascinating and I love, loved all the references to the natural remedies used in the older days.

In the story, Miss B is the resident midwife and healer of sorts in the small Nova Scotia village who has a vast knowledge of herbal tinctures for use by women in every stage of their "courses". Her willow book is an encyclopedia of remedies like:

• rubbing dill seed oil on a colicky child's belly
• sage to help with afterbirth pains, but careful! it dries up milk. brew sage tea when weaning a babe
• brew mother's heart with babyberry bark to make a tea to stop excessive bleeding

Being a nursing mama myself right now, I was most interested with the references to the galactagogues: natural agents which promote the secretion and flow of breast milk. I discovered this tea which includes a combination of three galactagogues--fennel, anise and coriander, and have been drinking it daily. It is surprisingly delicious, soothing and promoting healthy lactation for this little chubster:

H1N1?

Whether the actual h1n1 virus really did invade our house is yet to be known; I'm assuming it did on the basis of the high fevers, bad coughs, and congestion that have manifest themselves in my boys for going on 4 days now. This thing is really quite bad.

I did what the CDC requested and kept them home from school, and it has been an interesting week to say the least. James, who has a pretty great immune system and didn't miss a single day last year has now missed three in a row and might even miss the whole week. Jeff mentioned today that the school district attendance numbers have been so wonky that they can't even use them to calculate statistics like they normally do.

I'll say I have never administered so much ibuprofen, tylenol and squirts of anti-bacterial gel in my years as a parent. But surprisingly, having three boys quarantined at home has been calmer, and less stressful than I expected at the beginning of the week when I realized the normal schedule was going to be thrown out the window. I'm sure it is just because they have very little energy to fight with me or each other.

Even stranger than how calm I've been is how the littlest Fuller appears, so far, to be immune to this thing. He's been a bit grumpier and more whiny than usual, but the things that appear to make him grumpy and sleeping bad are not the things that are making the other two grumpy and sleeping bad.

Here's to hoping that this is our one and only rendezvous with the swine and that the youngest and oldests in the family never get it.

Three things. . .

. . .that completely overwhelm me:

1) the constant clutter of daily living, including, but not limited to: cooking, eating, getting the mail, wearing clothes and sleeping in beds

2) switching out my children's summer and winter clothes and trying to keep all the sizes organized for next year's use

3)the lack of freedom to buy on a whim that comes along with living on a tight budget

. . .that I really love:

1) cooking more soup and comfort food for dinner on cool fall nights

2) college football games every Saturday

3) the peace-of-mind that comes along with making that tight budget really work each month

What are you making?

When I find myself at the cutting counter, the employees will often ask, "what are you making?" I want to work at a fabric store just so I can ask that very question. I would love to hear what projects people are creating in their heads and piecing together in their sewing rooms.

Sometimes I think I hear creative juices bubbling as women read the pattern books or browse and handle the prints and textures on the fabric aisles. I get a litle giddy when I'm among seamstresses; I always just want to glean a tidbit or two about their technique.

If you ever want to make my day, just ask me what I'm working on--but then again, I might talk too long about it. So as long as you're willing to tell me what project you have in your head or on the cutting table, we could sit and talk about it all day.

It is also for this reason that I want to work at a grocery store. It is, in my opinion, another place where creative juices bubble in the minds of the aisle browsers. If I was a grocery checker I would pose the same question over and over to my customers, "what are you making with all these ingredients?" I also know that 75 percent of them would stare at me blankly with nary an answer to that, because they know that they will be asking themselves that question at dinnertime tomorrow when they realize that nothing they bought will actually make a meal.

So, in case you were wondering, at the moment I am working on a meatball gnocchi for dinner and a diaper bag for my sis-in-law. Thanks for asking.