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. 

One of the best things about little kids is that they don't know how things are "supposed" to be done and so they do, if they are left alone, what they think up themselves.  I think kids learn so much by trying stuff out, and trying to do things that we adults are just sure can't be done.  We're probably right, we've got a lot of experience after all, but how much more satisfying for a kid to have his idea taken seriously and to have the chance to try it out and to learn for himself whether or not it works!

Whenever I can I like to provide things for my kids to work with and then just see what they pull out and what they make.  Gus has made all kinds of things just from paper, cardboard, and a couple of markers, including a really fantastic treasure map!    The other day I saw him take out his markers and a little canvas and create a new piece for his museum.

At two and a half Abe likes to write "notes" to all the important people in his life, and he really, really likes playdoh.  He has a set of clay working tools, but prefers to fashion his own.

He really concentrates and sometimes spends twenty or thirty minutes quietly working on making something.

Here he is proudly showing off his creation, which he brought me and said "Abe make a Handful!".  No grown-up would ever come up with that.

Coach Pitch

It's almost soccer season so I'd better get the baseball pictures posted or their time will have passed.  I don't believe they are too exciting for other folks, but for me they are sort of revolutionary.  I was there, I saw Gus playing, but somehow looking at these pictures of him makes me really see how much he's grown up.  He is so much more in control of his body.  He looks like he really knows what he's doing.  And that makes him look so grown up to me.

His coach (in red) and I actually went to high school together.  We had Spanish class together.  It's so fun to be back in Austin where that kind of accidental history can happen.

I made end-of-the-season cupcakes for both teams at the last game.  So easy.  Especially since my mom did all the decorating! 

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!

Chess: Not for the Impatient

This is the board as it stood when Gus got to say "checkmate" to me for the first time.  He and I are learning together.  All our other games have ended in a stalemate, sometimes legitimately and sometimes I have to do a bit of wrangling to get it there.  I'm glad that I finally have a (very, very) basic understanding of chess, but it is not the game for me.  It is so slow!  Gus likes to talk through all his possible moves and the various possible consequences of those moves while I slowly lose my mind.  I like to make rash and dramatic moves and see what happens.  Losing pieces is mostly what happens, but on the bright side it speeds the game up and makes Gus happy.

I'm going to keep reading the chess books we got from the library and see if I can learn some fancy moves or patience.  And I'll keep playing with Gus since he keeps asking me to play, but I think a good chess computer/video/handheld game is going on MY wishlist for Gus' birthday present!

Good Byes and Hellos

I think we've been back in Austin long enough now that we are all realizing we aren't going back to Durham, we won't be seeing our North Carolina friends anytime soon.  It was really hard for Gus to leave his best friend (Vinicio; this is their very last good bye hug--it lasted over a minute) and he's started mentioning him a little bit more, wanting to write letters and things like that.  I know when school starts up again (Gus cannot wait and wishes school were here already several times a week.) that he will have less time to miss his friends but I am not hoping he just forgets about them.  It's a hard balance since there is no point in wishing we lived in NC because we don't, but those were important years for Gus and I hope he remembers them.

It's been a little bit hard for me too.  I still have very good friends in Austin and I've been seeing them and of course all our family is here which is just so wonderful.  But I miss my good friends in Durham too, and I miss our routines and favorite activities.  I do not miss our horrible rent house though!  And, I was worried that I had gotten so used to the North Carolina landscape (just imagine being in a forest of pine trees, even in your own yard) that I wouldn't like it here anymore but I LOVE it here.  It is so much more beautiful here (to me) being able to see the sky and having a few magnificent trees to look at and appreciate rather than 40 identical trees.  I grew up here and I guess it's affected my tastes because even though I wish summer weren't so hot and I wish more flowering things could grow here I think it's worth the trade to have sky and beautiful Live Oak trees and more space.

With only a month of summer left I really want to make the most of it so I'm working on a list of things to do...at least one thing a week out of the house out in Austin.  Enchanted Rock is one (which is a little bit crazy because it is going to be so hot, but I'll just sherpa up with a bunch of water bottles and snacks).  Oh my, that reminds me, it has been GLORIOUS having our refrigerator back!  It has in-door ice and cold water dispensers that I just love every single day.  I'll never take them for granted.  We'll go to the Children's Museum which I know Abe will enjoy but I'm not sure if Gus is too old now.  And I'm still looking around for 2-3 more good ideas.  Indoors I want to do some projects with more direction to them.  Gus just finished a great drawing class (I will scan his self portrait and post here soon...it's bigger than my scanner so maybe I'll take a picture of it?  I don't know, I'll figure it out.) and I want to build on that so I just requested Artist to Artist from the library.  I think Gus might find it fun to make artwork following the different styles.  I also found a used copy of Kristin Nicholas' Kids Embroidery and I think Gus will really like making some projects since he likes to sew.  Even Abe should be able to get in on the fun! 

We lost one fish but the other four in our new aquarium are doing well so maybe we can add a few more soon.  And Gus bought a chicken (a white silkie) to live at my mother's house.  That turned out to be a near-disaster when the thing was petted for one minute and then hopped immediately through the fence and disappeared!  Thank goodness chickens really prefer to be around other chickens because the darn thing did come back on her own and is now safely locked in a pen until she gets bigger! 

I welcome all great ideas for things to do with the rest of the summer!

A kid's work is never done.

Especially when his lazy parents never bothered to rake last fall.

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.