Knotty Strings

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Recent Conversations, or “Yes, but why?”

posted by lizzie    « No Comments »    tied to Simon, the day-to-day   

Simon: What are we doing now, Mom?

Me: We’re sitting on the IKEA bus waiting for it to take us to the train station.

S: Yes, but why?

M: Because it’s late and we need to go home?

S: Why do we need to go home?

M: Because it is dark and late and past your bedtime.

S: Why?

M: Because the sun went down and when the sun goes down we need to sleep.

S: Why?

M: So our bodies and minds can be rest.

S: Yes, but why?

M: So we can be happy and healthy and do everything we need to do.

S: Why?

It’s a fun stage. I’m trying to enjoy it as much as possible — even when we are on the third go around of the same conversation and I find myself trying to explain the rotation of the earth around the sun to a three-year-old.

And also, don’t you think I have a future in newborn photography?

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Chalked

posted by lizzie    « 4 Comments »    tied to Brooklyn, Oliver, Simon, the day-to-day   

Most of our stuff is packed away. Most of the toys. Most of the books. But the sidewalk chalk remains unboxed. The boys know exactly what to do with it, as you can plainly see.

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

A Special Thanks to the Twins

posted by lizzie    « 2 Comments »    tied to Uncategorized   

I posted this over at The Mother Runner, but I thought it was applicable over here as well. Besides, I’m too exhausted to write an entirely new post at the moment.

Every mother knows the feeling of having spent so much time doing something only to have it all undone in a fraction of the time. The block tower you spent at least 5 minutes building met its doom at the hands of a nine month old in 5 milliseconds. The cookies you baked were gone before you got to taste them. The sewing project you spent hours on got cut to shreds by a curious toddler in the time it took you to take a shower. The baby you made became a toddler and ran out of your arms before you realized he could even walk.

I remember when I was five or six years old spending an afternoon with my siblings peeling paint off our bedroom wall. It had started to chip a bit and we’d noticed some pretty wallpaper underneath. We chipped and pulled and chipped some more and then brought our mom upstairs to show her our discovery. It was only then that we realized she’d been the one to paint over the wallpaper and she was none too happy to see it exposed to the light of day again.

I was reminded of that this week as we contemplated undoing the painting of our apartment. We’d spent about 2 weeks painting it when we moved in two years ago and we are unexpectedly finding ourselves having to repaint it and move out in 2 weeks. On Sunday night I kept myself awake trying to think of best-case scenarios, hoping we’d somehow be able to get it repainted in half the time it had taken us to paint originally. This time we had two kids instead of one to work around, but we also had two helpers instead of none. My brother and sister who have been spending the summer back East (in DC and here) came to our rescue and by Tuesday afternoon had pretty much blown all my best-case scenarios out of the water. They finished the painting this afternoon, having spent three feverishly humid days with paint-rollers in their hands while I wrangled the boys and tried not to get in the way myself.

I know that back in the day people used to have big families because they needed lots of hands to run the farm. The grow-your-own labor force is less necessary these days, although it is probably still useful on occasions — like when you have to re-paint a room that has somehow become unpainted. However, it means a lot to me that my sis and bro volunteered for the job even though I have no control over their food and boarding. Having them take care of my problem without obligation kind of makes me feel like a little kid again. I owe them big time for undoing what I spent so much time doing two years ago.

Jarom, that’s the closest you’re going to get to seeing me shed happy tears over this, so enjoy it.

Friday, August 13th, 2010

We’re Moving

posted by lizzie    « 3 Comments »    tied to Brooklyn, housewifery, the day-to-day   

Last Friday our landlord told us she was raising the rent starting in October. We looked at an apartment Monday, applied for it Tuesday, and heard today that we have been approved. We’ll sign the lease next week and move at the end of the month. The next two weeks are going to be full of painting, packing, and purging. But we think it will be worth the effort.

The fun never ends over here.

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Three Years

posted by lizzie    « 2 Comments »    tied to Brooklyn, celebration, the day-to-day   

We celebrated our 3rd anniversary of being New Yorkers last week. Or of living in New York anyway. We have lived here longer than we lived in Hawaii, longer than I lived in Provo. My first memories of New York involve carrying all of our stuff up two flights of rickety stairs to our tiny apartment in the middle of the night; the infernal humidity brought on by a fierce rainstorm; returning our rental car and taking the train to Target to get ourselves a fan; our gas not being turned on for over a month; three lost boxes that did, eventually, find their way through the mail to us.

I know, it sounds like a miserable start, and yet I only have fond feelings for those days. A lot has changed since then. We made it through grad school, we got a real job, we moved to a “safer” neighborhood, we had another baby. But a lot has stayed the same. The summer humidity. The winter cold. The walking, carrying, catching (and missing) trains. Every day, despite its sameness, is an adventure. You never know what you will see or hear as you walk down the street. Every person is character. We’ve run probably hundreds of miles around Prospect Park. We’ve played in the Atlantic Ocean. We’ve made some great friends, some of whom we’ve already had to say good-bye to. We’ve picked up furniture off the road, we’ve become obsessed with real estate. We’ve learned the lingo and can sometimes talk back with the best of them. Sometimes I wonder, How do we manage to live here? How would we truly live anywhere else? So, I wouldn’t say we’re real New Yorkers yet, but we’re well on our way.

Friday, August 6th, 2010

When I go to school

posted by lizzie    « 4 Comments »    tied to Simon   

That’s what we keep hearing about these days. When Simon goes to school, he is going to be five. He is going to have a black party, with a black cake, and he is going to share with his friend Daniela (his baby-sitter). He is going to take the train to Coney Island. He is going to run a half-marathon. He’s going to go to Tradewise (grocery store) and then take a train to IKEA and when he’s done with IKEA he’s going to go to school. He’s going to school on the other side of the park. He’s going to wear a t-shirt, shorts, sandals and sunglasses when he goes to school. And after that he is going to have a pudding pop.

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Just Beachy

posted by lizzie    « 3 Comments »    tied to Brooklyn, Oliver, Simon, running   

We ran to the beach on Saturday. You can read more about the run here. It was a momentous occasion, not only because it was our first trip to the beach since we moved here 3 years ago, but because we got to introduce Oliver to the ocean. Oliver is our water baby. He comes crawling as fast as he can whenever we start running the bath water. There have been a few times that he has almost gone head first into the tub, such is his love for the water. We expected him to love splashing around in the Atlantic. We did not factor his hatred of cold into our expectations. It went something like this:

Yeah. Oliver+Ocean=not so much. His brother, the one who runs in the other direction when the bath water is running, couldn’t get enough of the water. He begged us the entire time to take him back in the water. We’d take him until we couldn’t stand the cold any more (or the shells we were standing on), and then we’d warm up and he’d ask to be taken out again. Not at all what we expected. Not by a long shot.

I, for one, can hardly wait to go back in a couple of weeks.

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

Let’s Play a Game.

posted by lizzie    « 12 Comments »    tied to artistic endeavors, contests, visitors   

Abby and I were talking about movies this afternoon. Specifically Charlie St. Cloud. I knew nothing about it, despite all of the posters on the train platforms. There is a picture of a guy lying on the grass named, presumably, Charlie St. Cloud. And then there is this tagline: “Life is for living.”

“Abby I don’t know what this means. ‘Life is for living.’ What is this movie even about?”

We watched the trailer and discovered that Mr. St. Cloud does have a life, and he is living it, but not necessarily in a conventional way. We were not interested in him or his troubles, really, so we turned our attention to mockery.

“I saw on a poster at Jay Street somebody had written ‘Clothes are for clothing,’”Abby said.

Brilliant, I thought. Brilliant.

Which brings me to the game. Please submit your Charlie St. Cloud tagline parodies in the comment section. If you feel so inclined, you may include a brief synopsis of the the film that would be described by such a tagline.

I’ll start. “Drinks are for drinking.” A teenage boy gets a job at a juice bar where he meets the girl of his dreams, only to find out that she is his cousin. Or is she?

Your turn.

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

You’ve probably already seen this

posted by lizzie    « 5 Comments »    tied to video   

but in case you haven’t I thought it my duty to share it with you. I don’t even know how many times we’ve watched it. It’s hilarious.

I love that the guy who pulls the tree off is just lying there with it on the floor. Awesome.
And in case you really live under a rock, here’s the original:

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Charlie and Lola Dolls

posted by lizzie    « 4 Comments »    tied to artistic endeavors, craftiness, kid stuff, the boys   

Months ago I decided to make little felt dolls for Simon, based on the Charlie and Lola characters. He was super excited about it at first, and so was I. The first day I managed to cut out everybody’s head and hair. And then the problems started coming up. How would I attach their clothes? Did I want them to be thicker, stuffed dolls, or fairly flat? Would glue work, or would everything need to be sewn? The answers, apparently are yes and yes to the latter two questions: the dolls are flat, but they are also stuffed. The hair and clothes were originally glued on, but it didn’t take in all cases and they ended up needing to be sewn as well. (The eyes are all sewn on.) And then there is problem of Lotta’s hair. I just can’t get it. I’ve cut out hair a couple of times and it just looks awful. I’ve officially delegated it to Micah, but I think cutting Lotta’s hair is probably ranks at about 58th on his to-do list. Sizzles would be easy to finish . . . if I would just sit down and finish. Maybe by the end of the week. But I wanted to show them off anyway as a means of motivation. So, here they are.

They are fun and Simon still likes them. At the beginning I also had plans to make an alligator costume for Lola and other little things that are in the books/show but at this rate, I might have completed a few things by the time Simon learns to drive. If I do anything else any time soon, I’ll make a Soren Lorensen doll. Soren Lorensen is Lola’s imaginary friend and plays a pretty big roll in some of the stories, so I think he’s earned my efforts.