Feminine Friday

I gladly participate in feminine friday again this week and am taking my cue from the Barefoot mama. Her wonderful entry goes in search for the missing cute little girl dresses of yesterday. Now I am giving the subject a twist though. In my childhood, dresses were out. One of my biggest laments of being a child in Belgium in the late seventies and into the eighties is the lack of beautiful dresses. I was a girly girl. I loved dresses and would have kept them nice and clean too! For my confirmation, I ended up with a white pantsuit combination because it was impossible to find a nice white dress for the occasion. I am glad that as an adult I can find all the nice dresses and skirts that I have missed all these years.

Now that I am mother of a cute, wonderful 14 month old boy, my biggest frustration is the absence of cute, wonderful clothes for him! Where are the little sailor outfits? The tiny suits? The pants with white shirts and little ties. I am all too aware that dressing up has long gone out of the window for anything but weddings and funerals -and even there you can find yourself out of luck- I want to dress my little boy nicely. After all 'gentlemen' are one half of 'ladies and gentlemen'.

I can understand that in any given children's store, 70 percent or more of the clothes are intended for girls. After all, who does not fall in love with the cute little cardigans or sweet little dresses that the fashion industry allows those under the age of six. (After that age, mothers of girls run into a whole new set of problems.) But from the age of one, it seems boys are supposed to fall into one of the following three categories: basketball players, camo-wearing soldiers, or foul mouthed rappers.
Even if the slogan or picture is not offensive, the colours are loud and the style is ultra casual. Only now, around Christmas, you can find some cute little suits and shirts. Simply finding a real shirt with buttons is a challenge throughout the rest of the year.



Of course I am not sending my son dressed in a 3 piece suit to play in the sandpit, just as mothers of girls know that there is a time for a bit of lace trim, and a time for T shirts and knits. But when we go to church on sunday, or on a visit to grandma, I want him to look dressed up. After all, I am raising the next generation of gentlemen. If I want girls in 20 years to find men who know how to wear something else aside from track suits and jeans, I need to teach him now, or the idea of wearing a tie will be foreign and ackward to him at age 16.
Real men, know how to dress. And it is up to us mothers, to teach them.

Knitting

I am learning to knit. Well, I am beyond the first stages of learning and into the fact that I am actually knitting things. Simple things. I have knitted three scarves, one shawl, and two pairs of baby bootees. The first pair was my very first knitting project. I am proud to say that it actually looked like baby bootees. A bit less proud of the fact that they would be rather big for any baby of the human variety, but maybe Sasquatch has a newborn that is in need of a pair. Especially if he has two different shoe sizes.
My second project was a lacy shawl. I could of course not start with a scarf or a hat like a normal human being. But the shawl worked out and after that came the scarves. And then I found courage enough for the second pair of baby bootees, which actually look very nice.

I turned to knitting after my son was born. Since I was about ten, I have done embroidery: napkins, handkerchiefs, display projects, pincushions I have love it. It takes a bit of time though to set up nicely, to have all the threads at the ready, the scisors need to be close by, to find the next stitch you want to add. It's a lovely passtime for long, leisurely hours of silence and contemplation, with beauty growing beneath your hands. But long, leisurely hours were a thing of the past with a newborn, and still are with a todler.

Embroidery didn't fit in this season. I tried, I wrestled, I promised myself to find time, but as you read in my previous post on this, I just could not do it. After a lot of frustration, and inspired by the book: "no idle hands, a social history of American Knitting" I decided to learn how to knit. After all, if pioneer women on their wagons, between cooking, child care, and birthing found time to knit,
I should be able to find the oportunity too, right?
To my surprise I actually did. While knitting always has been a problem, this time, learning from a cheap booklet, it actually 'took'. The rhythm sooths me and allows me to focus on other things. For a few weeks I managed to get up at 6.30 am and put half an hour of knitting and contemplative prayer in.

During the day I find that simple knitting is easy to carry along. I can even carry it with me while I walk behind my little boy playing in the garden. So many things have been 'knit in' these scarves. Laughter, worries, warm rays of october sun and the occasional autumn leaf that had to be plucked out... I think it makes them more precious.

I have found that knitting has a wonderful calming effect on me, which in turn has a postive effect on everything around me, even my household, though at the moment the house doesn't reflect that as we are still trying to get organised after three weeks of sickness and two weeks of traveling. I have found that it is easily tucked in little pockets of time, while relaxing and sometimes even while busy. I have found that it allows me to be actively engaged with my son and my husband while I am just knitting or purling along. Of course this might also be because I barely have a pattern to follow and am just knitting straight on. I am learning quickly to knit blindly to make it even easier to knit without too much attention.

No wonder that knitting has been a symbol of domesticity for so long, when it combines both convenience, practicality and creativity, in one simple craft.

One of those days

Today was one of 'those' days that all mothers seem to know. And I am writing this when it is only 11 am. Who knows what it still has in store for me?
It started with a bad night of sleep. Then with Joseph waking up at 6.30, after days and weeks of solid sleep till 7.30 and lately even 8.30 am. But no... he was awake, awake, awake and wanted out of the bed.
Okay.. without even much of a grumble (good mommy!) I took him downstairs. He wanted out of the sleepsack so I helped him and then went to make him a cup of milk. Somehow, someway... someWHY... in the few seconds that I had my back turned, he managed to take his diaper off. I had spotted it and immediately resolved to put a new one on as soon as I had put the milk in the fridge. By the time I had done so, Joseph had celebrated his accomplishment by peeing on the floor. And sitting contently in the midst of it.
Thank goodness for hardwood!

So, several paper towels, a dishcloth and a new diaper later, morning was back on track. Until my son saw me put on my computer and insisted that he gets to see duck. Since he does usually see him in the morning, I put him on my lap to go to youtube. He immediately slammed his skull into my face, crushing my lip against my teeth. Luckily no blood, but definitely swollen. After duck and after dadda had left for work, he tried to gauge out my eyeball during a session of 'let's climb mommy'. He failed, but was sincerely dissapointed that he was not allowed to push his finger into my eyesockets. Ah... the hardships of todler life. I am telling him often how he has such a cruel, cruel mommy.

The last incident so far was a new one on me. Joseph has been drinking out of a cup with a straw for months now. He is very proficient at it and while there has been an occasional few drops spilled, there have been no major accidents.
Today however, he decided, while I took my eyes off him for a second, that the lid needed to be pried off the cup while it was still half full of milk.
Once more I say... Thank goodness for hardwood.
Thank goodness for washing machines.

It is now 11.20 am... Thank goodness for naps.

Addendum: my beloved husband reminded me that he was the one who actually carried our little boy downstairs while I was shrugging into a robe. See... despite the fact that he has been weaned for nearly two months now, occasionally when he is hungry in the morning, Joseph just looks at mommy and thinks: FOOD! My not being too grumbling happened after I came downstairs and had Joseph on my lap. I did explain though that 6.30 am is way too early to be up.

Duck... duck... duck... duck... duck.... duck.....GOOSE

I was out of inspiration when I started this post. I always have such great ideas to blog about when I am in the car, when I am folding laundry, when I am singing the alphabet song. But when I here, sometimes I just get a whole head full of... blank. So I look around me for inspiration. And what do I see at a foot distance on my desk? A small rubber duckie with a flower necklace around his neck. Looking a bit further on the floor, I see a rubber duckie with a crown and a purse. On the hearth there is a duckie nativity. And I am sure that if I took the effort to just stand up from this chair I wouldn't even need to move more than a few steps away to see more ducks littering my living room.

Lest you think this obsession with duckies is mine: the blame for ducks scattered around belong to my fourteen month old son. He is fond of duckies. He is VERY fond of duckies. Okay... he is obsessed with duckies. How that happened, I do not know. One day, after a bath, he didn't want to let go of his rubber duckie. Probably he thought it was something fun to chew on.



Well, that one duckie turned into three duckies. Then there were duckies on his birthday cake.... and from there on a whole ducky empire started to build. My fourteen month old son who never wanted anything to do with any of the stuffed animals that were bought for him, went to bed with a stuffed duck today.
We noticed that his fondness for ducks started to become larger than life when in every single book he could spot a duck from a mile away. In Maisy takes a bath, the duck drifting in the bathtub became Joseph's main character. He even fills out the sentence: "Maisy takes a bath with .... 'duh'.
Things really got out of hand though when mommy remembered a cartoon character from the Netherlands and decided to show it to Joseph. By now I know the begin tune of "Alfred Jodocus Kwak" in three languages and am blackmailed into showing it three times a day on the computer. During our thanksgiving trip, Joseph rushed through every person in the airport that had a laptop to call out excitedly: "Duh, Duh" in the hope that they would show him the video. Even computerised cash registers are seen as potential duck - deliverers. And I would have never in my life thought that I would have occasion to invent a word like 'duck deliverers".

Anyhow, to allow you all to share in the duck enduced madness, here is the English version of Alfred Jodocus Kwak, aka, my sons obsession.

December sixth is Saint Nicholas day in many countries around the world (december fifth in the Netherlands). In the US the tradition is only observed by some people, mostly Catholics. Finding the Saint Nicholas cookie cutters too late on a website to have them delivered, I decided to shape some homemade speculaas dough by hand. With a bit of imagination, you can recognise a bearded man, with a miter, bishopsrobes, and a staff in his hand.

On the evening of December fifth everyone puts their shoes in front of the fireplace and in the morning, the good Saint leaves candy and small gifts. Joseph received a little nativity scene and a pair of boots to use in Belgium at Christmas, mommy a knitting book and daddy a calender and a few cans of imported nalu.



We were extremely lucky to have a REAL Saint Nicholas near us. The local Orthodox Church has a yearly festival for this advent Saint. With the blessing of the local bishop The Reverend Father Thomas Moore is Saint Nicholas for one day. In memory of the Saints generosity, the children get one gold Chocolate coin, and on my request, Father blessed our Joseph. Unfortunately the only picture I managed to snap had Joseph looking the other way.
If you are ever near Columbia around this time of the year, come and visit. The festival is small, but wonderful!

Soup

Maybe it is a coincidence, or maybe on some days I share a few braincells with Shannon from "after the fire". But I made soup today. As a child I never liked soup, now as an adult, I love it. It's warm, it's filling, it's cheap. Unfortunately, my husband does not share my enthousiasm for many soups, but he loves my split pea soup.
Split pea soup is probably one of the easiest and most forgiving dishes. I have made it with beef broth, I have made it with some vegetable stock cubes. I have made it with plain water and real bacon... the only other ingredient really needed is.. you guessed it: split peas.

So for everyone who wants to make an extremely easy soup on a cold wintery day:

- Grab a crockpot or otherwise a large dutch oven cookpot
- Put in water
- Put in split peas
- Add extra flavour with some stock cubes, bacon, a hambone or whatever you have around.
- Put on low simmer for hours and hours till everyone is begging you to serve it.
- A great finish are some chopped up hotdogs or smoked sausage. If you prefer a vegetarian option; how about some garlic croutons.

There is just something about that big bowl of soup that allows you to relax on the couch and listen to the sound of the rain, the crackling of the snow or just the silence of the falling darkness. There are few things that will make a gathering as informal and friendly as a big bowl of chunky soup. It speaks of oldfashioned hospitality and welcome. It tells you the hostess does not feel the need to impress you and that you do not need to impress anyone. It whispers: be comfortable here. And don't we all want to be comfortable on those dark wintery days?

Welcome back

I've returned from the land of headcolds and wonderful family visits to find a wonderful surprise on my blog.

Elizabeth, from "a merry rose" has given me my first award! With apropriete pride I display it here, and want to thank her for encouraging me. I was having some trouble getting into the blog spirit amidst all the holiday preparations, and to find this really put me back to the keyboard!
Thank you Elizabeth, and I will strive to flutter my wings.