Lord, That I May See

And Happy Birthdays to my two "bookend" babies! Rosebud and Sunshine, you encompass the year so nicely! We love both of our joyful, sweet and precious girlies. Happy end of 2012 and welcome 2013!

I wrote most of this post at the beginning of Advent.  Now it is the end and I am looking back happy with the beautiful simplicity of our month.  Thought I would go ahead and click "post" . . . despite the perhaps irrelevance of the post now. :) ************************* Simplicity. That elusive state, that place somewhere between nothing and too much.  A word used to christen a plain thing with an extra gloss of purposefulness or to tout a cool, new sleekness.   "Simplicity" is an in word, desirable   People talk about simple food and simple living, simplifying their possessions, their schedules or their wardrobe. When I look up "simplicity" the third definition reads :  absence   of   luxury,   pretentiousness,   ornament.  And that's the kind of simplicity I would like to talk about tonight.  This time of year is a crazy one.  Lists, and lists and more lists.  The Christmas season is here according ...

In lieu of a Friday Quick Takes post, on which day I will be home in the country, I thought I would post today. 1. My husband pulled an all-nighter last night. He said he dozed for about 45 min but that was it. The proposals and the designing had to get done, short week or no short week. That man is amazing. He was chipper as a jaybird this morning at 6:00am when he left the house. Does anyone want to know who deals with kids in the night? Hmm. Let me give you a clue. He is NOT the one of whom it might be said, as Sheldon says of Penny: "Shh, if you wake her she will maul you like a rabid wolverine." (Don't worry, nursing babies are safe, thanks to some miraculous instinct.) 2. I have put a little trampoline in the basement for the girls amidst the storage. I really am going to be assigning people 40 bounces and such when they get wild. This house is too small for rowdiness and winter is upon us. Ahh!  (I am blithely ignoring my husbands premonition...

My Grandma and Grandma visited today. We have lived in this house for over two years and this was their first visit. They don't drive much. My mom had driven them out to get a turkey at Whole Foods. Grandma and my mom went shopping there while the girls and I stayed with Grandpa. I was worried that Grandpa wouldn't want to be left in a strange place with me. He is often confused and can get anxious. But he was fine and so he and I watched the girls play outside and chatted and then when we came inside, Sunshine showed him all her favorite books and he looked at them with her. As I sat at the kitchen table, I watched my grandpa and his youngest great-granddaughter together. He talks slowly and quietly and so does she. He is interested in the little things that she is and oh-so-patient and she was patient with him too. I felt as though I needed to look and look at the quiet relationship before me, the old balding head and the young blonde one. I knew that in this time so...

Rosebud is taking a gymnastics class this fall. She is such a natural at it, with her lean, lithe body and fearless attitude towards danger of bodily harm. :) She is especially good at the bar. Last week they had a costume class. It was really cute. Rosebud plans to be a chicken for Halloween, but she must think the costume is a little embarrassing or something because she wanted to switch to a fairy for the class "so people won't say 'who is that girl with the chicken on?'"! I am enjoying Rosebud's personality so much, despite the parts of her that sometimes make me nuts. :). On Saturday she wanted to wear a pair of pants on her head to Turtle's soccer game, I think because she liked the way they hung down her back like long hair. When I objected that people don't wear pants on their heads, she said, "Mom, it's my head, not your head". That was a valid point, in fact, so I let her bring them. (Thankfully she decided sometime on the ...

Fall is a season I have always faced with sadness. Winter is coming, that season that I dread, and fall is the brief, brilliant precursor that is over too soon. It is true, though, that however brief, and however poignant the days seem, they can be some of the most beautiful of the year. Yesterday, we collected and identified leaves from our yard. We also made leaf rubbings and pressed the leaves between wax paper. Then the girls decorated our windows with the pressed leaves. It was a lovely morning and I thought how much there is to embrace about this season of harvest and color. The girls especially are teaching me, as they always do, to savor the moments of all days, especially these days of fall that they are loving so much.

We went on a nature walk today. We brought our "Nature Study Notebooks" for sketching and our field guides of wild flowers and birds, and had a great morning in the beautiful weather. In other happy news, yesterday we all heard the baby's heartbeat! 10 weeks is early to hear it, so I was excited. It makes it all real now, a little fig-sized baby swimming in there. And the 3 girls were with me, so that made it even better. :)   (Sorry about the picture quality recently.  Until I decide whether to pay $2.50 a month for more photo storage or do something like move the blog, Blogger will only let me upload pics from my phone. And I haven't gotten the hang of my phone camera yet.)