The Gamble Life

Merry Christmas!

When I first had Gus I was lucky enough to find a group of new moms all looking for friends too.     The group came together in a couple of different ways and has changed a little over the years when people joined us or moved away (or moved back, like me!), but the experience of those first few years of motherhood with this specific group of women and kids is going to remain one of the most important experiences of friendship in my life.

We don't get together multiple times every week anymore, we don't even all get along together anymore!  But we do make that effort to mark big occasions (like the second and third children most of us have had) and I think we all realize that whatever happens those years were so special and valuable. 

Our kids too seem to always know they are with good friends when we get together.  This week we held our annual Christmas Playgroup party and it was so relaxed and fun.  We've done a whole bunch of different crafts with the kids at these parties, from full-on decorated gingerbread houses, to gingerbread cookies, to little stockings, and this year I bought 6" grapevine wreaths, snips of greenery from our Christmas tree and our rosemary bush (smelled heavenly), and all the little garlands, random decorations and ribbons, and glitter glue I could find and let the kids go to town.

Some of the finished wreaths:

I think Vivian here is a Christina Hendricks lookalike in this picture!

 

I love how working with the exact same supplies the kids all made totally different wreaths!  Gus' wreath seems to me to be a pretty good reflection of his personality!  Look at that face, he knows it's wacky.

After they'd finished with wreaths the festive decorating spirit had awoken and all on their own they decorated my friend's playscape:

I hope you too have great friends in your life.  If you still have some ribbon or other decorations laying around how about tossing them to your kids and see what they do with them?  The playscape ended up surprisingly beautiful.

 

oh, I almost forgot, we do a gift exchange/name draw thing and my friend Kathryn made me so happy!

What could it be?

A butter dish!  The butter sits down in the bowl instead of sliding all over the plate.  I am so thrilled. 

Doubly Lucky

I'd never seen a double rainbow before.  These happened in Denver this past August while we there vacationing (me & the kids), working (Chris), and visiting friends (all of us).  We just stepped out and there it was!

I think it must be enhanced by the wide open skies Denver has.  That feeling of openness is something that makes me feel at home.  I loved Durham and by the time we decided to move back to Austin I no longer wanted to leave and we probably would have stayed except for having all of our family here in Austin.  But when I first moved there I felt positively claustrophobic because there are SO MANY trees and those trees are so TALL.  You are just constantly surrounded by trees and there is no long view.

When we moved back this summer I immediately felt relaxed by the space.  Driving down the highway felt beautiful to me...not because our highways are beautiful (no, they certainly aren't) but because the sky was so beautiful and it was there, all around me, visible. 

I know people who didn't grow up here who feel like our trees are small and few, who see acres of dirty grass and dull ground, but I see space and freedom and beautiful skies and a truly majestic tree just right when you need one.  It's nice to be home. 

First Days

Look at them in their new school shoes, ready to go!  Today was Gus' first day in elementary and Abe's classroom visit; tomorrow will be Abe's first full day of school.  It's such an exciting time and a little sad for the mom of course, but not at all for the kids; as it should be I suppose.

Other firsts, my mom's dog got another chicken and Gus' Sapphire would appear to be a rooster.  So...

These we've brought to our house and are keeping in a dog kennel until they are bigger.  We are handling them every day so that they will grow up more tolerant to small people in their space and to being petted (Although really, treats are the way to make that happen!  So I guess we're also going to be raising soldier fly larvae for our chickens; more on that later.).  We thought we'd go and buy an older hen but no one could resist the little chicks.

And Gus' first time roller skating!

I think I could accurately have been described as a roller rink rat in my early teen-age years.  I lived for Friday nights and roller skating.  It was so much fun, and I was never a particularly good skater either.  Next time I'm renting skates and hitting the floor too!

Chickens!

I grew up with backyard chickens, and with the one notable exception of being attacked by our rooster (short-lived after that!) I really enjoyed them.  Backyard chickens are the new cool thing to do so of course I had to join in.  I do not let a trend pass me by.

Right now our chickens are living with my parents, but our coop is built (and decorated by Gus!), and as soon as we get their run finished we'll be moving them into our backyard.

The day we brought them home was almost a complete disaster.  We bought the chickens from a local guy (Who turned out to be really horrible and was obviously not feeding the chickens because they were pecking each other to death.  It was gross.  We felt like we rescued those poor chickens.)because we wanted them old enough to live outside with the chickens my mom already had.  Gus had specifically chosen a silkie chicken and paid for her (we hope) himself.

We let all the chickens out into the yard except for Gus' silkie (Sapphire is what he's named her) because he wanted to hold her.

 

You can see that doesn't really look all that healthy here.  She's very small, even for a banty chick, and kind of bedraggled instead of fluffy.  Well, chickens are a group creature, they don't like to be alone and they get very nervous and scared and tend to just run around freaking out.  Kind of like Chicken Little actually!

About one second after I took this picture Sapphire jumped down and dashed through the fence into the neighbors' yard.  Gus immediately was hysterical (I couldn't really blame him since he just watched his first pet AND his five dollars disappear through the fence probably never to return). 

We had to leave before Sapphire was found, even though we got the neighbor to help us look around.  That neighbor has a giant garden and tons of shrubs and one little chicken could really hide in there.  I felt so bad for the chicken, who was just freaked about being alone with no other chickens (because they had gone to hide in the shrubs); and I felt bad for Gus.  It was a mess.

But yay for chickens really only wanting to be around other chickens because by the end of the day she'd come back! 

This picture was taken just six days later, and already she looks so much healthier!  I can't wait to bring them over here.

Invading Nature's Privacy

One of our last big social events before leaving Durham was going to a birthday party for one of Abe's friends.  This party was held at a park and when we were leaving we spotted a snapping turtle digging in the mud by the edge of the sidewalk.  Luckily just a few weeks before we had seen a similar sight at the museum where a worker told us the turtle was not stuck or struggling, she was digging a hole to lay her eggs!  That time we hadn't stayed to watch because it looked like it was going to take her all day long, so we were really disappointed when we went back about 40 minutes later and she was done and gone (and had hidden her spot very well!). 

We knew better this time and so we threw our schedule out the window, sat down right on the sidewalk and watched.  And I took pictures, over two hundred pictures, because I really wanted to get an egg being laid!

All I can say is, I am really glad there was no one in my delivery rooms trying to get pictures because I don't think I would have been as tolerant as momma turtle here!

She would dig with alternating legs, reaching down as far as she could and bringing up a scoop of mud in her foot.  It was really cool to see.

Almost everyone who came by thought the turtle was stuck and thought we should pick her up!  It was shocking, really, we are all so conceited that we think the turtle, who has been around far, far longer than we have, needs our help.  If you see a turtle "stuck" in the mud, please leave her alone, because she's working so hard...

to do this!

She would sort of catch each egg in her foot and then lower it down into the hole she'd dug.  We watched her lay about twenty eggs and with no end in site we had to leave and get lunch and nap taken care of so we didn't get to see her hide her nest when she finished.

Spring spring spring

The classic bubbles.  They never go out of style.

I remember walking around the hike & bike trail in Austin as a girl, and my dad stopping to show me how to suck the nectar out of the honeysuckle flowers.  I remember it as being the sweetest most wonderful taste ever.

This honeysuckle vine is growing at the entrance to one of the trails in our neighborhood and so I've gotten to introduce that tradition to my sons.  Gus adores them.  Abe is still making up his mind.

I've no idea what kind of flower/bush/plant this is but I just love it.  One thing I'll miss is how beautiful all the flowering bushes are around here and how long they stay in bloom.

Rat a Tat Tat Tap Tap Tap

Is what I've heard almost every day since we moved here but I'd never, not even one time, actually seen one of the woodpeckers responsible...until a day a couple of weeks ago!  Here he is, right off our back porch.  It was so exciting.  Does anyone know what kind of woodpecker this is?

Update:  Looks like a red-cockaded woodpecker which likes it here in North Carolina.  

Matching

I love putting my boys in matching clothes--luckily they seem to like it too.  This is the third year I've knit them matching sweaters and I hope to keep the tradition going even though the knitting involved obviously gets greater every year.

This is a lovely pattern, pikkuveli; not free, but worth paying for.  The yarn I used is Cascade 220 a nice sturdy yarn that comes in over a hundred colors I think.  It is not washable so the sweaters do require a little bit more care.  Gus' sweater is already showing a bit of wear, which is disappointing.  However he wore it at least twice a week since I finished it and he is not the type to take extra care of it just because I made it.  I regularly find pine straw, leaves, and sand from the playground in and on it not to mention bits of lunch.  I also saw him make a lasso out of it and play tug of war with it.  So all in all I'd say the yarn is holding up beautifully.

Abe's on the other hand is still pristine because he's only consented to wear it one time.  Here's hoping he likes it more next year!  Projects are ravelry'd here and here.

Gus Eats A Pear

Or tries to anyway!  Poor kid has no teeth.

Kids and Cars

Or maybe, my kids and cars?  Gus before him and Abe now absolutely adore playing in the car.  For a long time...like 45 minutes at a time.  And it isn't just my car, playing with the knobs and steering wheel and blinker arms, they both also love to play in the back of my mother's truck.  Something about being in the car (or truck) is just so exciting to them around 2-3 years old.  Almost every day after we drop off Gus at school we come home and Abe plays in the car before coming inside.  And even after 30 or 40 minutes he doesn't actually want to come in, but there is only so much I can do out in the car, plus there is the mid-morning poop to contend with!

If only riding in the car, in his car seat, were as fun for him.  Abe doesn't scream the whole time we're in the car or anything like that (thank goodness since we log a fair amount of car time taking Gus to and from school), but he does complain and demand:  about the sun, the wind, not being able to reach the books and toys he's thrown on the floor, wanting "wawa" or "etzel" or something mysterious that I can't decipher.  Just in the past day or two though he's gotten more interested in seeing and talking about the trucks and cars we see on the road "big tuck" "BIG TUCK"!  And in yet another sign of his genius, he identifies every VW Jetta that we see as "Dada!"

Since we're heading to DC shortly for a visit with some of my best friends I'm hoping that watching for big trucks and other exciting cars, plus hopefully a nice long nap, will get us there without too much screaming.  I should pack some earplugs though, just in case, because this kid?  He has LUNGS.