Re-Sorting It Out

At the suggestion of my friend Kelly, we tried a new way of further sorting our Legos. Well, we didn't really follow the method as suggested by the evil mad wonderful geniusus at  Evil Mad Sciensts.   But we did take some of their advice and find a way to make it work for us. Speaking of those Evil Mad Scientists...check out their fabulous Lego Abominations. Oh, and we are absolutely going to try something like this for next Halloween.

But anyway..back to Lego Organization.

We kind of like how our collection is, by color. Probably in large part because we like how it looks. And we all love to pull out "the black box" or the "dark gray box" or the "yellow box" and get to work. Also, there's something to be said for the spontaneity that arises from that sort of constructing. It's sort of organized, or it is one step into being organized, but you do have to dig around, and you often find pieces that you would not have intentionally searched for. So. We were not really willing to mix up the colors again, and it also seemed like it didn't really fit with the way we build. But I do think grouping some of the similar pieces together with in the "black box" would be helpful. So that is what we did. Whether or not it remains sorted in this way remains to be seen (and is fairly unlikely), but it made for a great "city," and it got lots of play for all the cool structures we made just by putting "like" pieces together. The boys then got out the dark gray and the white boxes and started making structures (towers) of their own. And then they populated the town. Fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Daily Max Visit

My sweet boy loves his chickens. He spends a little quality time with them every day, holding each one for good measure, trying to make sure they remain accustomed to being held. They are remarkably tolerant of this. And they are big and healthy. They will be 12 weeks old next week. Maybe we should throw them a birthday party or something.

Little Farmers

The boys and I took a roadtrip about an hour and a half west to one of the CSA farms from the market to help them plant 3000 bulbs of garlic. The reasoning was many hands make light work, and if they got 30 volunteers or so, we'd be done in a couple of hours. They only got a handful of volunteers, and three of them were us. But still, it was a fun outing. We were only really helpful for about an hour of the time. And I was very careful that we were not NOT helpful. So when the boys really lost interest and began rolling around a bit too close to the bulb planting, we took our leave. But it was fun to see the farm and help plant the garlic that I will greedily buy up in the late summer. They grow the most delicious garlic EVER.

It was a very warm November day, I think the temperatures got up to 69 degrees. Most people were in t-shirts. It has just been the most wonderful November. And October. It's hard to imagine better weather. Although it's not too hard to imagine the wintry weather that is ahead for us, in the not too distant future.

Max has always been a little farmer.

Otto tried to help plant the cloves, but you had to push them far down into the soil, and even though they had dug the holes, it was quite difficult to press them in, and the soil was dry. It scraped up our hands pretty quickly. And I was smacking myself that I didn't think to bring a few of the 127 pairs of random gloves that are lying around somewhere in our house, not to mention all the specific pairs of gardening gloves we have accumulated.

But Otto took over the job of cameraman and took a lot of pictures of Puffy, enjoying life on the farm.

We left at about noon and went to a nearby park to enjoy a picnic lunch. The kind farmers had offered us a real farm lunch at 2, when they were planning to be done with the day's planting, but we were hungry and pretty sure we might have particular dietary preferences that they might not cater to, i.e. "we don't eat vegetables." Well, at least some of us have those preferences. I would have LOVED the farm lunch. But our park picnic was pretty fabulous.

We left by about 2:30 pm and headed back to the city, making it home before rush hour. We listened to Lemony Snicket for our whole drive. This is just another benefit of road trips: the opportunity to listen to a big portion of our latest audiobook. It's getting really interesting, all these bits are intertwining, people are resurfacing. It's such a great series. I love how we all get sucked in to a  series, how we can't wait to read the next one and the next one, or hear it, or see it. It always feels so sad as it's getting closer to the end. There are 13 books in the series. We are getting dangerously close to the end. We can't wait to get there, and at the same time, we don't want it to end. But I am comforted to know that there are many more wonderful series for us to get sucked into in the future. I remember a few years ago, when we spent almost every night watching a few episodes of The Animated Batman, from the 17-DVD series that we got Martin for Christmas. Then there was Harry Potter (and still is, since we took a break from reading that after Book 5...even if we've not taken a break from the movies). And then Avatar: The Last Airbender. There's a long list of wonderful series ahead for us too, and although they don't seem like they'll have the power to grip us the way past series have done, I am certain I will be proven wrong, that we will be deep in the throes of some new series before we've forgotten the final words of "The End: Book the Thirteenth, " which I doubt very much will actually be, "the end." I'm happy we've still got "The Penultimate Peril" in between.

The MSI

is somehow smaller than I remembered.

And we still didn't manage to see it all. But we did meet Kate, the museum's current roommate. So that was pretty cool.

Eat Your Veggies

The Winter Market is open again at the Congress Theatre, an easy one block walk from our apartment. Even with this extremely short walk, we still managed to get pretty cold en route.

Inside the warm(ish) theater, they have blocked off the stairways where last year the boys ran around and snuck in the theatre to check out rehearsing bands.

But Max and Otto still enjoy the view from above, as Martin and I mill about, getting radishes and greens and pork loin and ordering crepes and croissants.

Our downstairs neighbors run the crepe/bakery stand, which is always pretty busy. That's Loralys in center, the blond girl in a big rush to get the croissants to the masses.

And here are some of the masses, enjoying those croissants.

November...How Did We Get Here?

Wow. It's November. I don't really know what happened to our whole October. Well, I do. But it went by so fast—even though it had several moments where time seemed to stand still.

One of those moments was an entire day, when Martin had yet another heart procedure to try to get his off-beat heart to conform to the expected rhythms. As we all know, Martin resists conformity, and apparently, his heart agrees. In the last two years, Martin has had a series of electrocardioversions and one radial ablation, which didn't have the desired effects, and his cardiologist wanted to take it to the next level. It was another radial ablation, but this time a more intense one, more than 10 hours of burning away bits of his heart. Martin left for the hospital at about 7 am, was under by 9 am, and he wasn't awake until about 8pm that night. 

We went about our day, pretending everything was quite normal. We went to Party City to look for ideas for Max's upcoming Super Mario birthday party, buying gold stars and gold confetti and a disco ball pinata (which we would turn into a piranha) and red and green bags for our party favors. And when we were done with that, we strolled through the Halloween aisles, and we bought some Halloween decorations. I congratulated myself for buying them in the first week of October, when it actually seemed possible we would get them up and enjoy them. We even bought several strings of orange pumpkin lights, deciding that we would finally take the steps necessary to light up our porch. As I was checking out, I chatted with the clerk about installing them, explaining that my husband has promised me this outdoor lighting possibility for years, and that this year I was finally going to take him up on it. And in my head, I added that he was most definitely going to be around to put up these lights for us, and I imagined him struggling with the lights and uttering his usual, "Agghhh" when things frustrate him. It was reassuring to think of him this way, rather lying flat on a table.

We walked around the neighborhood, admiring people who had already put up ghosts and scarecrows, and we took note of what ideas we would steal for ourselves. Ghosts made from leftover plastic bags? We have plenty of those and could envision how we would do it. We talked eagerly about our plans for Halloween, for Max's party, for all of the fantastic things we would do in this lovely October month.

In other words, we were able to distract ourselves until around 4 pm, when I called to check on things at the hospital, using the number they provided for such a service, and the hospital could not even locate Martin. I was transferred from department to department, until someone finally said somewhat unconvincingly that he was still in surgery and to check back in a while. When I did check back, it was 6pm, and the cardiology department was closed, so I kept getting an answering service. Again, no one knew who this patient was, where he was, or what his status was, so we finally decided to head over there ourselves. When we showed up at the hospital, they found him right away, he was still in surgery, and we were shown to the family waiting room, just off the room where Martin was in a deep sleep, completely unaware of the passing time. We sat there, watching some strange TV show, since we couldn't figure out how to change the channel. It all felt a bit surreal, as hospitals often do. But finally, they called us in to see a groggy guy in an ill-fitting hospital gown and a funny hat, who, by all reports, came through the procedure perfectly well. It was already after 8 pm by this point, however, and visiting hours were over, so they wheeled him away to his room, where he stayed the night. 

We picked him up the following day, and although he had ambitious plans of joining his office for a river cruise party, he realized he was barely able to walk up the stairs to our apartment. So we spent a quiet weekend while Martin recuperated on the couch. 

And the next week was Max's birthday. My parents arrived on Tuesday, Max's birthday afternoon, and stayed until Thursday, when my brother and his kids showed up to take over our guest suite. Then we had the party on the following weekend. And then it was time for the planning and execution of the boys' Cossacks costumes.

And in between all of this was the fact that we finally enrolled in a class, and we spend Monday morning in a family pottery session, and then hang out at the park for a while afterward, and on Thursday, Max has his piano lesson. For the last several weeks, I have had appointments on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a half hour massage (which sounds much more decadent than it is—it is more of a pressure point treatment to try to relieve painful spots in my hip and in my back). And on Wednesdays, we have ice skating in the morning and we have been attending events with our co-op in the afternoon. All of this is to say our dance card is full. And I am a bit more used to being a wall-flower. Or at least to sitting out a few songs in between the really good ones.

So that is how we found ourselves the weekend before Halloween with no pumpkins.

This was absolutely not an acceptable place to find ourselves, and we resolved to remedy it immediately. Luckily, we knew just where to go: Honey Hill Orchard in Waterman, Illinois. We usually head there in late September, we pick apples, we select pumpkins, we pick raspberries (and then we come home and make jam). But this year, September got away from us as well. And as luck would have it, the apples had an early and short season this year, so that by late October, there were no apples to be picked at all. But we took a tractor ride to tour the orchards and were dropped off at the pumpkin patch. You can see how delighted Max is by the whole prospect.

 

  

The above picture doesn't really capture Max's mood, because actually, he was very excited to run out in a field filled with pumpkins. And the boys carefully surveyed their options, looking for the right shape and the right weight for their jack-o-lantern plans.

 

After we picked out our pumpkins, we took a walk through the orchards, crossing through the corn field. It was another beautiful October day, even though the sky was a bit overcast. We found milkweed pods and opened them, spreading their silky seeds everywhere. We counted the wind turbines. 

 

We were so distracted with all of that that we didn't hear the return of the tractor, also known as our ride back to the barn and store (and cider donuts!). It was about 30 minutes between drop off and pick up, so we were in for a bit of a wait. Otto wanted to be sure we didn't miss it again, so he decided to sit right down on our pumpkins and wait. 

 

  

But Papa had some other ides of fun things to do while we waited. The corn field had already been harvested, but Martin showed the boys they could pull up a stalk, root and all, then swing it around vigorously, let it go, and wheeeeeee!

 

 

And at last, our ride arrived.

 

 

And took us to the land of cider donuts.

 

And all was well again.

 

I could end this here, leaving you to imagine us going home, putting on some scary Halloween music, and carving beautiful fantastic designs all of those pumpkins. Alas. We came home with a trunk full of gorgeous gigantic pumpkins—bumpy beautiful pumpkins—just brimming with personality. We talked about our visions for decorating them, and Otto went so far as to draw his on paper first. We even played the scary Halloween music while we decorated gingerbread witch houses (another October must-do for us). 

But in truth, we never got around to carving our pumpkins. And we never hung up our orange lights or put up any other decorations. We also never got downtown to seeing Midnight Circus, the biggest October must-do we have on the calendar. It's the first time we haven't seen them in October since Max was born. 

Things got in the way. Wonderful things, like a writing project with my dear and amazing friend. And listening to the audiobooks for A Series of Unfortunate Events. And rolling down hills, and kicking up leaves, and making forts out of sticks. And playing with our chickens, watching them devour our kitchen scraps and crunch around in the piles of leaves we gathered for them. And drinking hot chocolate and watching movies. And building Legos. And taking a trip to Sterling to see some long lost friends. Worrisome things, like Otto's sudden limp, which escalated in three days to not being able to walk at all and required a doctor's visit and some tests (the limp is now gone, and I am hoping it was simply the result of one too many Cossack dances). Or a series of dental visits for Max, who nervously counted the days between each one. 

And so when Halloween night finally arrived, we had to look at each other in slight confusion to ask, how did we get here? But I could tell myself: this is indeed our beautiful house, and this is indeed our beautiful life, and although October seemed to slip away, it was not because we let the days go by unnoticed. We filled them up. We lived them to the fullest. It's just when your life is so full, there simply isn't room for everything. Time isn't after us, after all.

The Little Cossacks

It sounds like a children's book title, but really, it's what two boys decided to be for Halloween.

 

But where, you must be asking, where did you find those amazing costumes? It's not your custom costume, or actually, I suppose that's exactly what it is. A custom made costume.

The boys both helped with the design (and were very specific and particular clients). We found the "fur" for the hats in September. I used an old fleece hat of mine that has a very similar design as my template. I just increased the height and stuffed the top of it with some filling material so that it would stand up. It was a bit hard on my sewing machine, especially when it got really thick with multiple layers, and I broke a needle, but other than that, the hats were pretty simple.

Martin spotted the boots at Costco, so that was easy. And I bought the black pants at Old Navy (Max's are actually women's yoga pants), so all they needed was some trim down the sides.

The shirts were trickier. I put off that part for a while, looking around for some simple patterns for a coat, thinking I might find something at the thrift store that I could modify. But then it somehow occurred to me to modify a couple of Martin's old shirts, so that they would be long in the torso and shorter in the arms. After multiple visits to Jo-Ann Fabric to find a suitable trim, each time bitterly disappointed with the options, we went on the busiest day I have ever been to Jo-Ann's (the Saturday before Halloween weekend) and found the absolutely perfect trim: gold and black and silver, with shiny threads, which they both loved. 

The final results were close to what they had envisioned (which was this).

Here's Martin, modeling his red shirt (which was still in great shape, but he willingly gave it up for a good cause).

 

Snip, snip, stitch, stitch. And here it is on Max.

 

My only regret is that I trimmed down the length a bit too much.

And here is Otto, modeling one of Papa's blue shirts. (I realized the transformation would be a bit more dramatic when you could see how big these were to start). 

 

  

Here are my little Cossacks, demonstrating the Kazatsky. From Russia, with love.

 

 

We had the biggest haul ever. They boys were out at least 2 hours, which is at least double any previous Halloween outing, and Max was braver than ever, ready to go to any door, even if it looked dubious. Martin was out of town, but my friend Wendi came and joined us for the event, and afterward, we all came back here and ate soup and biscuits and sorted through the candy, sampling as much as possible.


In fact, Otto lost a tooth somewhere in a tootsie roll, and he didn't even realize it until later (apparently he had bitten on something "hard" in the candy and just spit it out). We looked in the trash for a short time but realized there were quite a few bits of spit out candy inside (they were willing to sample almost anything—if only Otto would give food such a chance!), and we gave up. The tooth fairy came anyway, to Otto's utter delight.