Her Blog

I’m Moving!

Wed, 6 Aug 2008 08:12:03 -0500

“What?” you ask. “Didn’t you just move? Isn’t this a little, you know, soon?” Well, to top off our physical move, I’ve decided to move my blog from iWeb over to Blogger. I’ve gotten a little tired of iWeb over the past few months, especially when I’ve been apart from our main computer and unable to log in and post. I’m sorry, iWeb; we’ve just grown apart. You couldn’t give me the sidebar I need.
So my new online home is silgeland.blogspot.com and things are pretty much set up over there. My archives are all there, limited as they are, although the comments were not able to make the trip. I’m bummed about that because having people comment is one of the best parts of writing online. Rest assured that any comments you’ve made will be mourned and missed. I’m not really happy with my banner yet so I’ll work on that soon. Rob thinks he’ll probably set up a blog elsewhere as well, so you can keep a look-out for that. The content here at www.silgefamily.net will go gently into that good night whenever our annual iWeb account expires, and we'll eventually have this address point somewhere else. In the meantime, please update your feeds, links, bookmarks, and the like. I would so hate to lose you!

Culinary Arts

Mon, 4 Aug 2008 08:52:00 -0500

After the life-disrupting turmoil that has been moving, I feel like I am back into the swing of things in the food and cooking department. I really love cooking and eating and food in general and I like to go grocery shopping because I get to walk around contemplating all the foods I might get to cook and eat, especially if it is a fun grocery store of some type. Having your kitchen all packed up in boxes definitely puts a damper on such pursuits, so this summer has seen a gradual rediscovery of my enjoyment of cooking somewhere between the blender and the lemon zester. Since we’ve moved here, I’ve started to make a conscious effort to include Grace in cooking. I hadn’t ever really done that before, viewing the kitchen sometimes as a personal retreat and sometimes as a place where I must be EFFICIENT and STREAMLINED to get dinner on the table. Toddlers do not contribute to either of those, in case you were wondering.
However, I realized that I really want to share preparing food with her, or any child of mine, male or female. It would thrill me, of course, if she ends up thinking it is a fun and relaxing (and delicious) part of life, but even if she doesn’t end up watching the Food Network to wind down after a busy day, I want her to know her way around a kitchen and have an understanding of our relationship with food, where it comes from, and how the choices we make affect the world around us and our own health. (I type this beneath the picture of cookie dough with M&Ms in it. Well, they’re a sometime food. And it was made with whole wheat flour.)
My first instinct was to be really dubious about cooking with Grace. “But she will make a mess!” I thought. “And it will take so much longer!” After some toddler cooking sessions, I regret to report that both of these are true. But really, what is a bit of a mess? And what was I obsessing about time for? When I try to cook on my own, I have to fend off an attention-seeking toddler waltzing around my legs; including her almost makes it easier. Sure, cooking with her takes more time, but it’s time we are doing something together and she is learning and having fun. Isn’t that why I’m staying home for the time being, to get to be the one to do fun things with her?
So Grace is in LOVE with cooking now, and dashes to drag a chair into the kitchen to stand on whenever I suggest it. My current dilemma is trying to find ways to include her more. Baking is great; lots of counting and dumping and stirring and measuring. Making real food (you know, like dinner) is more difficult as it so often involves sharp knives and boiling water and the stove. What can I say? Grace’s knife skills are not quite up to snuff. Maybe when she’s 3. Anyway, sometimes she will content herself to watch me work while holding a wooden spoon in one hand and a whisk in another, but sometimes we are back to the manic toddler circling my legs as I try to dice and saute. Then I am back to waiting until Rob is home or starting Sesame Street on the Tivo. (Or Zoboomafoo. Have all you mom types seen this? It’s all about animals and Grace is a big fan.)
They say that children are much more likely to accept food that they have helped prepare, but I think that might apply more to older children. I think the time interval between the preparation and the eating is still too long for Grace to make the connection that she is eating something she helped make; at 2 and 1/2, she still has a pretty limited view of time. She does usually enjoy the fruits of our labor, though. A little while ago, we made this chocolate loaf cake and one evening we were eating the last pieces of it. Somehow she decided she wanted my piece, even though I had already consumed it at that point. Peevish and cross, she tried sticking her fork in my mouth to get the cake back but when told that the cake was all gone and had gone in Mommy’s tummy, she took her fork and started poking me in the belly with futile protest as to the lack of cake available to her. Her understanding of the digestive system is showing great improvement, although her grasp of sharing not so much.

Hot Summer Day

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:17:38 -0500

Late July in Texas puts me in the mood for 70s psychedelic rock from San Francisco. Or perhaps less obscurely, some Cuban music magically transplanted from 1950s Havana and a mojito in a glass dripping with chilly condensation. Or maybe more honestly (and more pregnancy-friendly than the mojito to boot), just really good air conditioning.
Probably nobody but my dad recognizes that song, but I know we all can agree that temperatures above 100 degrees make for steamy hot days. It has been a pleasant surprise to realize that it is already the end of July, however, and that the hot weather doesn’t stretch out too interminably before us. There’s August, then September, and then in October it will start to be pleasant again. Moving and unpacking and being pregnant have made this summer just fly by so far, and I don’t imagine my perception of time is going to really slow down anytime in the near future. Probably not until I hit about the 34-week mark of pregnancy and start to moan about how I have been pregnant FOREVER and how I cannot be convinced that I will not continue to be pregnant FOREVER into the future. By that time it will be November and the weather here will be downright brisk and lovely; I will be able to enjoy it thoroughly as time creeps tediously by and I convey the enormity of my belly around.
Speaking of pregnancy, I am 18 weeks pregnant now and although I hesitate to mention it out of fear of angering whatever minor Greek deity might handle us pregnant types, I think I may have finally turned the corner and started to feel better. The past 4 days or so have found me with much more normal levels for a human of energy, good cheer, and stamina. Grace woke up on the early side this morning so I feel like I could benefit from a nap this afternoon, but in general I am feeling so much better. And in just 3 weeks or so we reach the exciting milestone of finding out the baby’s sex! Even more importantly, we’ll get a really good look at the new baby and get to check out how he or she is developing.
I am a little surprised that I have started feeling better, although that sounds weird. For a while there, I just thought this was going to be how this pregnancy felt for me-- no typical 2nd trimester buoyancy and renewed vigor and joyous appetite and all that. I am quite happy to be wrong. I get the impression that these last 4 months have made Rob averse to the idea of a 3rd pregnancy for us; it has been pretty miserable at times and Rob has had to pick up a lot of slack. Stopping at two biological children isn’t an idea that’s a huge surprise or disappointment or anything for me. Although we’re not ready to make any definite decisions, we’ve often talked about pursuing adoption as a way to grow our family. On the other hand, the adoption process might not leave me in any better emotional or physical state than a pregnancy, from what I understand. We’ll see...
As the temperatures outside rise each day, we’ve taken to playing in the water. It’s amazing! Water cools you down! We can all thank that high specific heat capacity and high latent heat of vaporization. There is a fun sprayground in our neighborhood (must upload some of my own pictures...), and then of course the low-fi option of the sprinkler in our own backyard. I really should get a little pool for back there as well. And what I REALLY want to do is go swimming in an actual pool, but my plans for this are hampered by my lack of a maternity swimsuit. My search is hindered by my concurrent desires to not spend more than about $40 (swimming season is only about another 8 weeks, may not be pregnant again, etc) but at the same time not wear something that makes me want to weep. I am actually working on sewing one right now. This may sound like crazy talk, but I am a pretty prolific and serious sewist so maybe it will work out. If so, we are hopping in the car and heading to a delightful afternoon of splashing in the cool turquoise haven of our neighborhood pool.

Some Assembly Required

Mon, 7 Jul 2008 07:23:17 -0500

It seems we can no longer make a move without a marathon trip to IKEA. Whatever would we do if we moved to a city without one? This time around, our purchases included big shelves with doors for our master bedroom, a dining table (since our other one, which belonged to Rob’s grandmother, won’t fit in our smallish dining room), desks for the computer and the sewing machines, a piece of furniture for the TV and associated electronics, a dresser, and a big-girl bed for Grace. We told her what it was while Rob was putting it together and unprompted by us, she decided to try it out. Well, sort of.
By the way, check out Grace’s awesome purple room. I love how that paint turned out, as well as the robin’s egg blue in the living room and the lime/grass green in our bedroom. I am so addicted to bright paint colors... My only fear is that my house will come off as some kind of clown residence, but really, that possibility isn’t enough to dissuade me from picking all those lovely vibrant colors. Hopefully more pictures of the house will appear as it gets put together.
We’ve been spending a lot of energy putting things together lately. In the literal sense, there was the huge pile of IKEA furniture. Rob and I have become wise in the ways of IKEA since our first purchases there when both still single and in school. I remember how mysterious the almost-text-free instructions seemed at first, but now we expertly tell each other, “Find 6 of those tall turn-y things.” I still feel for the little confused man in the directions, though. I’ve been there, little cartoon man; I’ve been there.
In a slightly less literal sense, it seems like lots of labor is going into “putting together” our home in general-- organizing cabinets, finding places for the mish-mash of belongings floating untethered around the house, connecting up the TV/entertainment set-up, setting up my sewing workspace. I haven’t even begun to hang anything on the walls, although I hope to begin that this week. We do have most of the boxes unpacked. The only room with boxes still in it is the room that will belong to the new baby, and that includes boxes of things to be craigslisted/freecycled (yes, we somehow managed to move things halfway across the country and then decide we don’t want them) and the huge mountain of Grace’s outgrown clothes. I am considering not even addressing that particular task until we find out the sex of this new baby. What will I do with all of them if baby #2 is a boy?!
Unfortunately, things in our house have not just needed putting together but also repairing. Last weekend our air conditioning broke. In 95+ degree weather, that is something you really notice! Fortunately, it was fixed pretty quickly; we were only without AC for 18 hours or so. We had one miserable night but then they popped a new capacitor in and it is back to making our home livable. Then this past weekend, our garbage disposal and dishwasher both stopped working. It’s somewhat ironic because the lack of disposal and dishwasher was one of the things I was most bemoaning about our subleased apartment in New Haven, and here I am back to washing all the dishes by hand. Anyway, we are really glad we had our sellers pay for one of those home warranty thingies and Grace and I are sitting around today waiting for a plumber and an appliance repair person to come. In my more melodramatic moments, I am tempted to rend my garments, gnash my teeth, and demand to know why things keep breaking around here.
In the most metaphorical sense, we are working on putting together what will be our new life here in Dallas. As we find our way around our new area of town and locate the grocery store, the park, the place to buy dog food, I keep thinking about what our years here will be like, who our close friends will turn out to be, what will be our favorite places to go and favorite things to do. It feels good to be taking these steps toward being settled; I think we are well on our way to being home.

New Beginnings

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:00:51 -0500

Whew! What a month it has been! June has sped by in a blur of packing, driving, boxes, lifting, and now unpacking. All of us successfully made the long trip from Connecticut to Texas and we are now reunited in our new house where Abbey has chosen the pantry floor as her favorite spot and Grace has decided the converted one-car garage, which we’ll use as an office/sewing room, is called the “basement”.
I drove with Grace and my dad (who kindly flew up to Connecticut to accompany us down) and Rob drove about two weeks later with Abbey. It was kind of odd to be making the reverse trip that we took 3 years ago when we moved from Dallas to New Haven, but in all practical aspects the drive went well for both of us. Grace did great in the car, just about as well as a busy two-year-old could be hoped to handle a 4-day road trip. You could see her growing more fretful as the afternoon grew long each day, but there was a minimum of actual losing it. Unlike, say, that time we drove with friends to Niagara.
We spent a long two weeks apart as Rob finished up his last days as a resident and I handled some work being done on the house. Grace and I stayed with my parents for about half of the time and then officially started living here and stopped our daily 60-mile treks there and back. The Metroplex-- it is huge! Robert finally arrived, to much fanfare from Grace and me, and now we are happily ensconced amongst boxes in various states of unpacking and IKEA furniture in various states of assembly. Well, maybe “happily” isn’t exactly the right word. We’re working our bums off and living in chaos and eating like crap, but it is all just a necessary step to starting anew and making this place home. I think we’re doing a decent job maintaining our sense of perspective so we are bearing up under the havoc well.