Table and Chairs

I can't take credit for this project at all. When I saw it on a little blog I check in on sometimes, and by "sometimes" I mean three times a week religiously, I knew it was perfect.

We have an old IKEA side table (similar to the LACK side table) that has gone through many reincarnations. A few years ago Ada got two SVALA chairs also from IKEA (though these aren't available something similar is). These inexpensive items have served us very, very well over the  past couple of years while they waited patiently for something more inspired to happen to them.



I ordered some fat quarters from the Amy Butler Modern Midwest line -seriously, some of the raddest fabrics around. Not to girly, nothing too precious as we do have a little boy in the mix now too. Granted, he still can't sit up on his own yet - he's only 3 months old. It won't be long until he's sitting at this table and I'm just not going to dwell on the bittersweetness of that.

I used my pinking shears simply because they were upstairs. My regular sewing scissors were downstairs and I was too lazy to go get them. If you use pinking shears like I did then take extra care that each of those little points is flattened down with the ModPodge. If one or two sticks up you will definitely find them once dry because those things get hard and pokey.

Off to the races. The key here is to not be too perfect. Anyone who knows me in real life knows that normally I would measure and be obsessed with precisely 90 degree angles on all pieces, perhaps going so far as devising a mathematical algorithm to assure that each pattern occupied an equal amount of surface area on each chair. So to suppress the urge, I had a glass of wine while doing the first chair.



I spray painted the once-pink side table turned kids table (for about half the price, by-the-by) a gender-neutral buttery yellow and called it good.

The result is happy and fun, just what I was looking for without even knowing what I was looking for. Ada calls them her "fancy, beautiful" chairs, which, when translated, means that she approves!



Full instructions can be found HERE. Props to Kelle Hampton for being so crafty and kind enough to share. In case you've been living under a rock and haven't checked out her blog yet, you should.

Catskills

A couple of weeks ago Tim had a vacation week. For the second half of the week his mom was here, which was heaven. I count myself lucky that I totally get along with my mother-in-law. Five whole days of the adults outnumbering the kids was bliss and I celebrated by doing things like taking a bath and cleaning out the garage with my husband. We know how to rock our free time.

Actually, we do know how to rock it. We spent a couple of days checking out the Catskills. It's close enough to get away quickly and on a whim. The drive is pleasant, especially when the kids sleep most of the way. She wakes up cranky in the afternoon. "Don't take my picture!"




These getaways are so different than the romantic stolen weekends Tim and I knew pre-kids. Anyone with kids knows exactly what I mean. Meals are in whatever restaurant you think might not mind a tantrum or food all over the floor (we ordered in one night). Sleep is scarce as the toddler is all out-of-whack. The first night Tim slept with Ada while I slept with Ingram. At one point, I was loudly whispering to Tim, "psst. Hey. ppppssssttt. She's about to fall off the bed." He flung his big daddy-arm over her little sleeping body and just like that she was safe. The next night I was in bed with both kids.




Most of the activities are geared toward keeping the toddler happy. As such, the very first thing we did was ride on a train.



It was a advertised as a beautiful tour of the fall foliage. A storm a couple of years ago sat over the Catskills for a few days, drowning everything and, in this case, making miles of train track unusable. So we went about 0.2 miles in one direction and then backed up and went another 2 miles in the other direction. As if Ada cared about the brevity of the ride. She was on a TRAIN!



She was happy to just be on the ride.

 

Holding her new gingerbread kaleidoscope. Of course, we visited the kaleidoscope shop down the road from the train station.

 

It was a beautiful old train car decorated for the season. The family had fun with it:



Aaaannnd here's what it looks like when they pose:



My little buddy. My smiles. Little peeper. Ugh! He's now 3 months old and the deep inky blue eyes of a newborn are replaced by eyes as blue as a clear lake. Oh, and by the way, he is insanely cute.




The trip took us to little rural towns. You can feel the smallness of these towns. When I was young, growing up in a small town like this was a disaster. I mean, why didn't we live somewhere cooler? Now, as a parent, I can't think of a better place to raise children and I see that others feel the same way.

In one small town, the name of which I don't remember, I stood in a bar and grill with Ingram wrapped onto my chest and a fork in my hand. I was feeling a little conspicuous. Small towns are friendly and it's easy to strike up a conversation so I turned to the lady sitting near us and rhetorically asked,

"Do you miss the days of standing up to eat?"

"No," she said matter-of-factly. "But I do miss my son at that age." Something about the delivery mixed with the body language convinced me that this woman would stand to eat all of her meals for the rest of her life in exchange for just 60 seconds of cradling her infant son one more time.  I know - like know it deep in my soul and in my bones - that in 20 years I will feel like that about my kids. What sunk in deep with me, what really ate at me the rest of the day and is still eating me, is that I can hold them right now and smell them and feel their bodies and listen to their breath and really take it all in, appreciating them as they are in this moment but in 20 years I will still long to come back to right now for just one little sip of their sweetness. I will always crave them.

How could I not pine for one more minute of this?

They aren't tiny forever...

That bar and grill had a big wooden pig in the window (above) and a TV to which my daughter and husband were glued (below).

We wandered a lot that weekend. Ada thought it was pretty great...and she as right. It was pretty great. 

Just lovely New England town details to be discovered...

and some tiny hikes...

One day she'll be a grown woman and I'll look back at this picture to remember how very small she was compared to her dad...and I will crave to hold her little hand in mine once again.

One day, apros pos of nothing at all, Ada asked me if she could learn to ice skate. I don't know where she even knew about ice skating from. I kept meaning to take her one afternoon close to home but it's complicated since I don't really skate myself and, I mean, what do I do with Ingram? We happened upon a rink one afternoon. Open skate was empty -she had the whole rink to herself. So we rented her some skates, Tim took Ingram and after 10 minutes of coaxing her onto the ice she overcame her initial fear and discovered a new love. I was so proud of her for being afraid but trying it anyway.

We'll follow up on this at home. 

We were in the Catskills for 2 nights. It was so wildly estranged from any pre-kids vacations. It was, in many ways, a frustrating and tiring 'vacation' but I realized something so important: in 20 years I will long for my babies and pine for a time gone by, never to be recovered. It will ache but I will be OK if...IF I know that I didn't squander this time. However, if I feel that I wasted an opportunity to actively love them then that's regret. I can ache to cuddle them one more time but regret is a different, unwelcome beast. I'm working on being present not only for the gifts it brings now but the gifts it will likely bring in the future. 

Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude ⁱ/ˈʃɑːdənfrɔɪdə/ (German: [ˈʃaːdənˌfʁɔʏdə]) is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.^[1]

Hurricane Sandy swept through the area like a devil on horseback, destroying nearly everything she glanced at. Some families in our community still don't have power. Gas is a rare commodity so we've walked everywhere this week. I've reached out to everyone I know in the area, which amounts to a handful of acquaintances, but I reached out anyway, offering whatever I could: space, hot water, clean towels, warmth and hot coffee in the morning. Nobody took me up on it, for the record. My thoughts remain with those touched by Sandy, but especially those who suffered unspeakable loss as a result of this storm.

The pre-storm backyard. That bush straight ahead? A goner. Split in half by a giant fallen willow.

We fared better than most with just a tree down in the back yard. Not tragic exactly, but a bonafide bummer since that giant willow was my favorite thing in the backyard to look at, swaying gently and grandly there on city property about 10 feet from our back fence. Well, the wind blew and the tree broke at the base falling across our backyard, taking out 2 of the three sides of the fence and all of the mature bushes. It landed in the yard of a neighbor perpendicular to us, leveling his gazebo-type structure.

The morning after.

Tim and I heard the tree fall at about 5:30 pm. I felt the house shake. We looked at each other and as if an imaginary gun went off, we dashed from our respective start lines and raced around the house to the imaginary finish line in the basement about 3 minutes later. There we stayed for the rest of the night. The lights flickered a few times but we never lost power or internet. Nevertheless, nobody got much sleep.

The next morning the sun was shining and the birds were singing as though nothing had happened. Nothing at all. We tentatively ventured into the backyard to see the tree and assess just how much damage was done. This was just the beginning. All day, text messages, phone calls and emails streamed in and out.

Yes, we're OK. 
Yes, we are lucky. 
Yes, the hospital was hit hard. Really, really freaking hard. 

Oh, it's bad. Real, real bad. In fact, it's so bad that either nobody really knows just exactly how bad it is or nobody is saying it out loud. I hope the department stays afloat so that the brand new hire (e.g. my husband) doesn't lose his position. Tim and I have spent a little time this week speculating and, as a direct result, contemplating the vulnerability of relying on one income alone. With this achilles heel exposed, we're responding so that we don't get caught with our pants down in the future. That is, assuming we don't get caught with our pants down right now.

The morning after ... and after Tim found another use for his brand new light duty chainsaw. I'm on the phone reassuring someone that we lived through it.

Here's the schadenfreude part:
I should add at this point that I DO NOT derive pleasure from the fact that others are suffering, so maybe schadenfreude is a poor word choice, but it's the closest I could come. Ok, on with the story...Tim was supposed to be on call this week. But guess what? If the hospital has no patients in it then there is no work to be done. So he got an unexpected week of sort-of vacation. Nice for us. Sucks for everyone else.
See? Schadenfreude.

Now, we just cross our fingers that this doesn't come back to bite us in the ass. That wouldn't be schadenfreude. That would be more like hurricane Sandy whiplash and it would suck a whole lot cause we're just starting to really like it here.

We spent some of Tims surprise vacay cleaning up after Sandy. She's a messy bitch.