Review and Giveaway- Canvas Factory

Hello, lovely readers!

As you are no doubt aware, I recently moved.

Moving is hard as hell. There's the stress of going through everything you own and putting it in boxes, then there's the stress of relocating all those boxes, and then there's the stress of trying to figure out how to take them out again and put them into an entirely different space with entirely different needs. If you've never done it, it's hell, trust me.

One of the fun things about it, though, is getting a chance to make stuff you already have perfect for the first time. For me, that's been all about putting my art on the walls.

In case you didn't know, I have a lot of art and photographs, and I take its placement very seriously. This time around, I am straight up killing it in the gallery wall department. Behold-

That's the wall behind me in my office right now. A thing of glory, isn't it?

But what about my treasured family photographs? I started to put them up, I shuffled frames a million times, and I got to the point where I was pretty happy with what I had. Pretty happy, but not awesome purple gallery wall happy.

It's not bad, right? But it's not perfect. Just looking at this collection of photographs, I knew what was wrong. I needed my wedding picture to be bigger. Those are 5"x7" prints of the girls' school pictures. And they're GORGEOUS. But an 8"x10" photo in a landscape orientation just didn't fit. It's my favorite of our wedding pictures (and if you don't know Cheryl, our amazing photographer, you should 100% check her out and then throw all your money at her), and this was the largest print I had. When we got married and lived just the two of us in our Pilsen apartment, that was fine. And when we lived in our crowded condo in Hyde Park, that was fine, too. But we're suburbanites now. We show off our pictures like we mean it.

And that was when the amazing people at The Canvas Factory came calling. Seriously, it's like they have psychics on staff, just waiting for bloggers like me to have photograph printing needs, and then they pounce.

They offered me a free canvas print, to try out. So I did what any totally obsessive new homeowner would do- I solved the most pressing and important problem in my life. What to do about my wedding portrait.

Picking out how I wanted the print done was AMAZING and easy. They give you all sorts of filters and alterations to choose from- I could have had my wedding picture not only in black and white or sepia, but they gave me all sorts of options for softening, sharpening, fading, texturing, modifying the picture in any way I could imagine. They let me choose if I wanted the photo wrapped around the sides, or if I preferred a single color for the visible edges. It was so detailed, but still so simple, I was completely confident about the finished product before I'd made all my decisions.

I submitted my order, and waited.

When you know something perfect is coming in the mail, waiting can be hard. And being used to being in the next day Amazon delivery area will spoil a person when it comes to waiting for mail. But even with my ridiculous impatience, it didn't take long. Less than a week later, I got my canvas in the mail. And it's everything I hoped it would be.

Ahhhhhh, soooooooooo pretty!!!!!!!

That's a 20"x16" printed canvas hovering about the three 5"x7" school pictures. And it looks SO MUCH BETTER. The color is amazing. The DPIs are crazy high. It's utterly gorgeous, even though I DID crop the picture a little, to center the two of us a bit more in the frame. It looks simply amazing, and it's incredible what a little change like having a high quality, gigantic and beloved image on canvas can do for a space.

It looks so good, people.

And it's a good quality framing job, too. It's all exposed canvas, of course, but the mounting hardware on the back is totally ideal, and makes putting it on the wall a breeze. And I mean, COME ON. How good does that look????

You know you want one.

And lucky you, YOU CAN HAVE ONE TOO!!!

That's right, the amazing psychics at the Canvas Factory are giving one of you lovely readers a code for a completely free 16"x20" print as well! WITH FREE SHIPPING!!!!

All you have to do is post a comment, telling me what picture you'd get printed gigantic and perfect if you could. You don't have to use that one, of course, I just want to know what wonderful memories you want writ large all over your homes. Because it's a beautiful thing to have your happiest moments preserved and presented so lovingly in your home. I smile a big warm smile every time I walk past it. It's rapidly becoming one of my favorite walls in the house. Yes, even compared to my lovely purple office.

So check out The Canvas Factory, and let me know what picture YOU'D get printed in the comments!

Taking a Tour on the Blogosphere Bus

I met the fabulous Lisa Petty, of Petty Thoughts, at Blog U, dancing like a maniac. Or maybe it was me dancing like a maniac. At any rate, she's fantastic. And she invited me to be part of an ongoing blog tour! I've had a ton of fun at every stop, getting to know different bloggers and their writing styles and processes. It's a been a helluva digital vacation! And now the planes, trains, and automobiles have brought us here- to my stop. So while you take in the lovely Chicago scenery, maybe visit the Field Museum and eat a veggie dog on the back steps, I'll tell you all about what I do.



What Am I Working On?
I'm still fiddling with my memoir (excerpt here), and increasingly desperately trying to get a literary agent. The fact is, selling a memoir is hard, unless you're a celebrity. And sadly, having a few enormously viral blog posts does not a celebrity make. Aside from that, I'm writing here, on the blog, and I'm working on a super secret project I can't talk about right now, but that will no doubt make me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams.

How Does My Work Differ From Others Of Its Genre?
The memoir? It differs from others of its genres by somewhat defying genres. It's a story of the many ways our brains can try to destroy themselves, with tumors or poisons or chemical imbalances. But more, it's a true story about the power of love bold enough to stand defiant in the face of death. It's a love story, and an offer of comfort to anyone suffering from mental illness who ignores their own pain as immaterial or unreal. It's about surviving a death sentence, and collapsing under the weight of freedom. I'm not sure I've ever read a memoir with those particular themes.


Why Do I Write/Create What I Do?
I can't not write. I moved to Chicago for art school twelve years ago. And when the dean of the Art Institute welcomed us to the school, he said most of us would never work making art. Very nearly none. "So if you can do anything else, do that," he said. And it stuck with me, because I could. I dropped out of the Art Institute because I knew I could do something else. But there is one thing I can't stop doing. Since I wrote my first poem at age five, I cannot stop writing. Haiku, novellas, short stories, slam poems, fiction, and nonfiction... whatever is happening in my life, I am compelled to continue writing. Lucky me, the blogosphere is welcoming to folks with my particular writing handicap- namely, an addiction to an audience.

How Does Your Writing Process Work?
I'm a follower of Earnest Hemingway's methodology. "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." I sit down to write, and I write until it's done. I ignore my children, I don't eat, I don't get up to use the bathroom. I just sit and write and write and write. Sometimes, I get an idea for a post or a chapter or a poem when I'm not at my computer. I turn it over in my head a while, coming up with phrases I like, examining the sides of the issue, or my perspectives on it, and then when I sit down to write I jump around a bit, make sure I hit all the salient points. But for the most part, I just sit and write.


...and that was the Becoming SuperMommy stop on the Blogosphere Express!



Let me introduce you to your next stops!

Celeste McLean is the writer behind the widely unread blog Running Nekkid, where she writes about grief, mental health, and her Pacific Islander ancestry. She left her tropical paradise island home twenty years ago and has been trying to figure out how to go back ever since. She currently lives in Seattle with her husband where they raise two children and tolerate one very demanding cat.

Get a feel for her by reading a few posts before you get to her station. Big Hair No Pants is a heartbreaking and beautiful tribute to her father. Then read For Ian, a Memory, which is an equally beautiful love letter written back before her husband was her husband. They are utterly marvelous posts, and your day will be inexpressibly richer for having read them.

Tamara Woods was raised (fairly happily) in West Virginia, where she began writing poetry at the age of 12. Her first poetry collection is available at Sakura Publishing and Amazon. She has previous experience as a newspaper journalist, an event organizer, volunteer with AmeriCorps and VISTA, in addition to work with people with disabilities. She has used her writing background to capture emotions and moments in time for anthologies such as Empirical Magazine, her blog PenPaperPad, as a contributing writer for the online ‘zine Lefty Pop, and writing articles as a full-time freelance writer. She is a hillbilly hermit in Honolulu living with her Mathmagician.

Get acquainted with her by reading her dystopian fiction, and watch her read a poem from her book- Hot Comb Self-Deception. It's wonderful.

Melanie is a recovering nerd who has always considered herself a writer, but barely considers herself at all anymore because three kids. She is mom to Moo, Slim and The Geel and is proud to say that so far the kids have fared much better in her house than the houseplants have. The NotsoSuper blog was born out of frustration and the not-so-thrilled feeling she got when she found out she was pregnant with The Geel.

She calls herself the NotsoSuperMom because she does not want to give anyone the false impression that she is trying to "do it all." She's not even trying to do it right. She'd just like to get something--ANYTHING--done. She writes to escape the laundry and to pretend that someone is listening to her. She was recently featured on In The Powder Room and you can find her on facebook and the twitter.

Get to know her delightfully self-depreciating humor in her post, Annie Get Your Gun (or the Night I Almost Shot My Yoga Pants). Then read her beautifully vulnerably post about the day she lost her first grader, Little Moo Lost.

Karyn is a lapsed social worker, work-at-home mom, and one-quarter of Team Pickles. Along with Ben (the thinker), Molly (the doer), and Ian (the Brit), she battles for truth, justice, and the Canadian way in a world where parenting and puns go hand-in-hand. Follow their adventures at PicklesINK and get short bursts of funny on Facebook and Twitter.

To give you an idea of why I'm crazy about Karyn (and it's not just her rock awesome moves to the Spice Girls), start out with her brilliant post- Are You Elsa or Anna? What Frozen Says About Depression. It's beyond insightful. Then for some more parenting depth and conversation on kindness, check out A Passion for Compassion.

Snapshot of a Perfect Life

My three little angels.

I'm sitting at the computer.

I haven't had breakfast, but I've had half a banana. And I'm not really a breakfast person, anyway. I'll make some juice once the moment has passed.

But then, the moment might not pass.

It's been going on half an hour of perfect, domestic bliss.

I sit at my computer, catching up on my favorite blogs, answering my email, updating my calendar.

DD and SI sit peacefully at their little table, playing with the activity books Grandmommy brought them from South Africa. They're identifying vegetables, coloring trucks, making up stories about all the little chicks in the pictures.

RH is on the floor, a wooden spoon in each hand. She crawls around the room, tentatively tapping them against everything. Tap tap on the laundry basket, still full of clean bibs. Tap tap on the floor, and a pause to eat a forgotten Cheerio. Tap tap on the door of the toy oven. She rolls onto her back, tap tap on the hanging straps from the back of her high chair. Tap tap on the coloring books, which she takes the time to pull off the shelf, as though as an afterthought. She stops as she passes by her sisters, sitting up on her knees to peer onto the table top, to see what they're doing. They coo at her, and go back to sharing their crayons.

"Thank you, DD."
"Thank YOU, SI."
"Say 'you're welcome' to me!"
"You're welcome! Say 'you're welcome' to ME!"
"You're welcome!"
"Mommy! We are SHARING!"

I'm afraid that if I get up, I'll break the spell.

"We are sharing!"

They are smiling and laughing, playing. Despite the fact that I am not a participant in their games, I am an essential element.

Every few moments, somebody calls for me. To see what they're doing. To see what somebody else is doing. Everybody is happy, and they need me to be here to see it, as though it's not happening if I'm not documenting it.

RH, pulling herself up onto their table, DD showing her the eggplant in her book. SI giving her a princess coloring book to look at while they play.

They hand her books to distract her, peel the paper off their crayons, and take the paper to the garbage can.

"Look, mommy! I gave RH a coloring book!"

"Look, mommy! I put it in the garbage!"

"Mommy! RH is next to your chair!"

"Mommy! SI and I are sharing!"

Not every day is like this. Not every moment is like this. This moment is going to end, and there will probably be tears, and there will be shouting, and there will be banged elbows and spilled potties and fights over throw pillows. But right now?

Just add a cup of tea, and life would be perfect.

...who am I kidding? Life is perfect anyway.



-------


Linking up with Motivation Monday.

Let's Do This Every Year

All the best things for Mother's Day.

I think we may have found the perfect Mother's Day tradition.

While I spend a glorious extra forty minutes in bed, M and the girls make breakfast.

Heart shaped goat cheese omelet? Yes please. :)

Over breakfast, I am presented with some goofy token of my family's appreciation of me as a mother.

You know. Because I love Star Wars. And despite sharing her name, have never dressed up as Princess Leia.

Everyone gets a chance to play with my silly new toy.

Space-Princess DD

Space-Princess SI

The girls don't care if they don't exactly get it, it's still fun.

The littlest Leia

Of course, M gets in on the action.

Princess Daddy

Then, like a freakin' rock star, M takes the kids out to run some "Special Mother's Day Errands," and I stay home. Alone. To, say, take a hot bath. Maybe the first real, long, hot bath I've had in five years. Maybe in so long I've actually forgotten how one enters a bath so hot it's nearly scalding. Maybe.

With an icy glass of dry soda, the Stravinsky's Firebird ballet, and tea-tree and lavender bubbles? Ohhh yess....

While I soak in the tub for a glorious 80 minutes, I actually get to read a book.

FYI- if you're into thrillers, mysteries, horror, that sort of thing... this is PHENOMENAL. I could go on hours about how brilliant this book is- if you can believe it, I would call it a feminist serial-killer-who-brutalizes-and-violates-women book. Didn't know that sort of thing exists. Well, it does, And it's awesome. It's US release is next month. (Many many many extra thanks to Poppa for bringing me back an inscribed copy from London!)

After my long hot soak, I take a long cool shower. Then the girls return laden with gifts for their incredibly refreshed, incredibly happy mother.

If you live in/near Chicago and you've never had chocolate or ice cream from Margie's Candies, all I can say is... what have you been doing with your wasted life?

After a quick lunch of muffins (also courtesy of M's "Special Mother's Day Errands") the kids ALL nap, and M and I lounge around and devour way too much of the fruits of his labors. You know, while I finish my book. For real.

Seriously- it's set in Chicago, it has references to The Maxx, it's filled with wonderfully crafted characters and vivd historical references, and it is SERIOUSLY a page turner. You want to read this book and talk to me about it.

After nap time. we play and cuddle and laugh and have fun for about two hours, and then head out to a restaurant for a delicious Mother's Day dinner.

This involves DD plastering every inch of exposed skin with her marinara sauce. I mean look at her, the kid is orange.

And then? Home. And bed.

I love my goofy girls. :)

...and of course, more chocolates. :) Best. Mother's Day, Ever.

Neminems for Everybody

My adorable terrorists

When I was pregnant with my twins, a lot of people made jokes about the horrors of parenthood.

One of those jokes, one that you hear all the time when you're pregnant, is that you'll never get to go to the bathroom alone again.

Of course that wasn't true.  Of course you get to go to the bathroom alone.  At first, it's even easy to go to the bathroom alone.

But...

Things change.  As your children change, the realities of life with them change as well.  So when you say to a pregnant lady, "You'll never use the toilet alone again!" what you're really saying is, "There is now going to be a window of time in your life, lasting from weeks to years, where you going to the bathroom is the most fascinating thing in your kids' lives and they will not let you keep anything that good to themselves."

In other words, this is a blog post about poo.

There's a lot of interest in poo over here.  My kids are interested in ANYBODY's poo, a potty training side effect I'm sure, and lately M and I have been INCREDIBLY interested in RH's poo.

Why?

Because there hasn't been any.

You got that right.  We are now on day five of Poop Watch 2012.

No, she's not constipated.  She's just not pooping.

Yes, I've talked to the pediatrician.

But this is a fairly normal growth spurt.  How do I know?  Because when DD was about three months old, she didn't poop for ten days.

Yeah, ten days.

On the one hand, there's a lot to be said for the poop-free model of infant.  Babies are nice and all of that, but they do poop and scream and puke.  Well, most babies.  Not mine.  Mine is poop-free.

On the other hand, you find yourself just... waiting.

DD freaked me out something fierce when she stopped pooping.  The last day that she pooped was the day that we got in our car accident.  And when you have an infant in the car while your car is totaled on the freeway, any change of behavior seems... ominous.

Not pooping?  Was it some sort of horrible bowel trauma?  Did we have a gremlin that caused our car to spin out on the ice, and then hid itself inside of my infant daughter's colon to cause more mischief?

I doubted it.  But it was possible.

Every day for ten days I called our pediatrician, to inform her that my very cheerful three month old would not poop.

And then... it happened.

We were driving back from Minnesota in Grandpa's car (ours having been totaled on our way TO Minnesota), the last day of the weekend after Christmas.  Traffic was epic.  There was gridlock down the expressway all the way from the Wisconsin border to our front door.

And somewhere around Schomburg, the screaming started in the back seat.

Now, anyone who's had an infant in the dead of winter knows that babies are like petruschka dolls.  There are layers and layers of garments.

First, there's the diaper.
Then there's the onesie or shirt.
Then there's the overalls or crawler.
Then there's the coverall for the crazy cold.
And then there's the car seat.

Ladies and gentlemen, by the time we got home, the poo had seeped all the way through all of those layers to the car seat.  *Barely*.

And, ladies and gentlemen, we were stuck in traffic, unable to either pull over or exit the vehicle for so long that the poor thing was practically cemented in to all of that stuff.

Poor Grandpa.  His Jetta probably still smells like infant excrement.

The passenger side got the worst of it.  I got a concussion.
Aside from that, nobody was harmed.

It was horrible.  I still think back on it as the worst poo I've ever seen.

Well, except for maybe that one time that Poppa put the girls to bed in their pjs without any diaper on, and they were thinly coated in their own feces from their necks to their toes when I got them out bed in the morning... but at least that was fresh.

So, M and I are currently quite fixated on RH's poo.

DD and SI cannot fail to notice this.  The moment RH whines, a big sister chimes in.  "Did her poo?"

"No, I don't think so."

"She did!  She get a neminem!"

And then we all march off to find out that, no, she does not in fact get an m&m.

...but I get m&ms.

As the majority of American parents are probably aware, bribery is essential to potty training children.  Now, SI was basically potty trained in eighteen hours.  But DD has been much MUCH more work.

We've reached the point where, most of the time, she poos in the potty.

And then she watches me put it in the toilet, and we flush it away and wash our hands.

And then she gets an m&m.

Actually, at this point the m&m isn't really important.  It's more the fact that she can jump around and scream for joy and sing and announce to the world that she could have a "neminem."  Because she pooed in the potty.

And everybody poops.

And we have a lot of m&ms in the candy dish.

And that means that now NOBODY is allowed to go to the bathroom without my children present.

Having a potty training kid watch you sit on the toilet is... a unique experience.  She is not content to merely be in the room, no.  She isn't content to merely engage you in conversation about all of the details of your endeavor.  She is not content to merely give you a high five when you're done, and then run screaming through the house telling anybody there that you just did it!  You just pooed in the potty!

No, she wants to see.  They both want to see.

"Mommy!  I want to see you poo in the potty!"
"You can see me from there sweetheart, please just... stay over there."
"Is you pooing mommy?"
"You is!  You is pooing in the potty!  Yay!"
"Yes honey, please... just... stay over there."
"I want to see!  I want to see your poo!"
"When I'm done honey, then you can look in the potty, but... please... not now..."
"Mommy mommy!  Is you doing it?  Is you pooing in the potty?"
"Yay mommy!  High five mommy!  You doing it!"
"I WANT TO SEE!"
"GET YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM THERE!  DON'T TOUCH THE TOILET!  STAY BACK!  BACK!  MONSTERS, BACK AWAY FROM THE TOILET!"
"Mommy is doing it!  Mommy is pooping in the toy-yet!"
"DO YOU GET A NEMINEM, MOMMY??????"
"Mommy gets a neminem!  Mommy gets a neminem!"

And at that point, you give up and weep openly into your hands while your child tries to pry your rear off of the toilet seat and cram her nose practically into your butt crack.

Or, of course, you can close the door and spend a few minutes with two small people screaming and crying and yelling and banging on the door and yelling, "I WANT MOMMY!  WHAT IS YOU DOODING?  IS YOU POOPING?"

But don't you dare answer them, because if you do, you're just going to make it worse.

"I WANT TO SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!  DON'T CLOSE A DOOR, MOMMY!  DON'T CLOSE A DOOR!"

And if you don't answer them, they run screaming all over your house, terrified that you have disappeared while wailing, "Where is you, Mommy?  I want mommy!  Where is you?  WHERE IS YOU??????"

People don't tell you that when you're pregnant.

And yes, I get a fucking m&m.

So our house is filled with poo-sanity.  From SI's mispronunciation of her favorite bear, "Winnie a Poop," to  DD's bouncing m&m dance, to my attempts at stealth pooping, to RH total lack of poo.

And poor M.  He's just not as graceful when it comes to having the girls watch.  And if *I* have to deal with this shit (pun intended) during the day, he sure has to deal with it after work.

That said, I don't know what's going on in there when they're watching him, but I do know that yesterday DD was trying to cook her penis in the kitchen.

It can't last forever.  By the time these kids hit middle school, even the existence of this blog post will humiliate them beyond remedy.  I hope.

Very happy for somebody who hasn't earned
an m&m in four days.

And in high school. I will pull this out as a warning to keep them from getting pregnant.

But for at least the next couple of years, I will treasure my door-closed-toilet-time.  Because you never really appreciate what you have until it's gone.

...unless it's a poop-free baby.  That is easy to appreciate while it's happening.

The poop-free baby is pretty much a winner every time.

There's Room for One More

I apologize that the video embedded in this post automatically plays.  I have no idea how to make it stop.  Just know that the noise you're hearing is a video that is automatically playing at the end of this post- so go and pause or stop accordingly.  And again, I'm sorry.

Not from this year, but to give you an idea of what a seder at Casa SuperMommy can look like...

You might not be aware of this, but condos in Chicago are not known for their spacious nature.

Listings are, to say the least, deceptive.  There was one very spacious place that fit the description to a T.  High ceilings, lots of storage space, nice kitchen... but that was only the top floor.  All the bedrooms were in the garden level.  And those bedrooms... well...

This was the Master Suite.  And that's my husband with his head in a convenient hole in the ceiling.  Convenient because otherwise, he couldn't stand up in that room.  Or the bathroom.  Or any other bedroom, for that matter.

Then there's our condo.  We lucked out with this place.  We managed to snap up a place with probably 1500 square feet, with two bathrooms, and with a very useful three season porch.

All of this is relevant information when you find yourself hosting a seder for 27 people.

Allow me to introduce you to my dining room.  When we moved in, it looked like this:

It always looks worse before you unpack.

You wouldn't know it, but this dining room has space for my dining room table to fully expand- which it does spectacularly.

Just how spectacularly?  Enough so that I genuinely believed that I could squeeze the bulk of 27 people around it comfortably to celebrate Passover.

When I announced this guest count to Grandmommy and Aunt Genocide, they were... skeptical.  After all, they've been in my house.  They know exactly how much space I have.  Me?  I have a can-do attitude and an encyclopedic knowledge of the furniture in my house.

I was determined that I could make it work.

Ordinarily, my dining room looks something like this:

...littered with toy food, crayons, bibs, and other assorted grubling related garbage, of course.

Now, the big bookcases and the desk certainly couldn't go anywhere, but I figured we could relocate the unneeded furniture into our guest room/sewing room/soon-to-be-nursery for the time being and make a little more space.  Aunt Genocide offered to bring some folding tables that she *said* were 3'x5', and so I made a seating chart.

Not included- the seating arrangements.  More heavily planned than my wedding.

The explodey looking thing denotes the seat where Moses* (in this case Aunt Genocide) would sit.  Seats with stars (there will be more later) are high chairs.  The bench is the sewing bench from my sewing table, and I knew I could use an old couch cushion from the chaise lounge we got rid of a few years ago as its back (I keep it as a back support for times, like now, that I'm working from bed).  That whole wall, essentially, is windowed, so the window frame would serve to hold up the cushion just fine.

Yes, there would be no circling the table.  But at least there was a bathroom in either direction, so anybody *could* get up and use it if need be.

It's not just a matter of squeezing people in though.  There's also the seating arrangements to take into account.  There's family tradition to uphold.  The most important of these is that children and those who have never been to a seder ought to be as close to Moses as possible.  The next most important seating tradition is that husbands and wives do not sit together.  This applies to other coupled couples as well.  You have to enjoy your freedom by meeting new people, not by giggling under your breath about the unintentional sexual innuendo in our family haggadahs.

I put a lot of work into that seating chart.  I agonized over it.  I made sure the skinniest people were squeezed into the back, farthest from Moses.  I figured out which children would sit where, which parents were required to attend their children, which children could be counted upon to share the bench without complaint.  I mentally measured each of my guests to determine which of my largest attendees should sit where in order to get the most room in the cramped quarters.

But oh, the hubris of planning a dinner party.

On the day of the seder, when we were setting up for the first time, it became clear that this simply wouldn't work.  Why?  You can only fit five chairs along each side of my fully extended table.  That, and Aunt Genocide's folding tables are actually more like 2'x4".  Good thing she brought three.  What we actually had looked like this.

This meant moving Moses.

If you count the chairs, you'll find that we're at least four seats short.  Four.  That's a problem.

We squeezed.  We argued a little.  We scratched our heads.  I came up with a brilliant idea.  Every single piece of furniture needed to be moved- except the immobile desk and bookshelves, of course.  During naptime.  Mere hours before the seder.

This fits everybody!

It didn't work.  There was absolutely no way that people were squeezing into ANY of the chairs on the ends- including Moses.  We'd have to try again.

We added Aunt Genocide's last folding table to the mix, brought the side table back into the dining room, and tried again.  This time, we got a little more creative.

Start counting those chairs...

That's right.  We only managed to add two seats.  Just two.  We were still two short, but at least the people who *could* sit down were going to be marginally more comfortable.  At this point, my children were awake.  The seder was to begin in less than three hours.

This is when Aunt K, I believe, came up with the genius addition of our TV trays.  M and I happen to have a set of four, and this is where it all came together.  How can a TV tray make such a huge difference, you ask?

Boo-yah.  27 seats.

That's how.  Now, the TV trays are about four inches shorter than the tables, which posed its own problem.  But with the OED Concise Edition (two volumes) across one, my 1987 World Atlas on the other, and both protected under the table cloth by the girls' place mats... it actually worked.  The two TV trays in the middle just had to be recessed.  Which didn't make too much difference, since the side table is four inches TALLER than the other tables anyway.  In any case, it would work.

I started the seating chart over again from scratch.  I squeezed children into the end with Moses, which was good because not only do they take up less space than adults, they can't be counted on to stay seated through our family's typical 3-4 hour seder.  I removed and then put back my father's spot over and over again, unsure as whether he would make it (Poppa had spent the whole day at the hospital- nothing serious, but we had no clue when he'd return).

That was when people started cancelling.  From the time we finally had the tables set up until they were all set, we first lost one guest, then gained another, then lost another two, and then lost another one.  By the time we were counting out plates for the four courses (and one for everybody already on the table), our final count would actually be 24.  It was a huge relief.  I wrote and rewrote and rewrote the seating arrangement, desperately trying to maintain all the family traditions.  I almost succeeded.  And this is what it looked like:

Those blue shapes represent ceremonial objects.  Sadly, I didn't manage to squeeze in a real chair for Elijah.  He got his plate, though.  So if he had showed up, he could have eaten.

The rectangles are our family haggadahs.  Yes, they are that big.  The blue shapes are seder plates.  The squares are matzah plates.  I'm pretty sure I missed one or two on this diagram.

I managed to get most of our largest guests on the hallway side- good, because getting around them from the kitchen with hot food was going to be impossible.  My great-aunt Judy, a tiny woman, was squeezed between the two largest people there.  I'm sure by the end of the night she had a crick in her neck.

But of course, that's not all that went on the table.  By the time it was set, it looked a lot more like this:

The ovals are place settings (minus the wine and water glasses), the red clusters are charoseth, parsley, and salt water, the ovals are relish dishes, the tiny circles are bowls of nuts, and the larger circles are bottles of wine.  Which yes, we ran out of.

And if that doesn't seem crowded enough, keep in mind that there are 23 sets of elbows on this table, that there are pitchers of water, an additional three sets of candlesticks, that there are two ADULTS sitting on that sewing bench, and that the chairs all take up more space than usual because they all have pillows on them.  The seder requires that you recline- and that means pillows.  And that means chairs take up more space.  Or that people pull their pillows off their chairs, thus cluttering the area around the table further.

Then there's the food.

We served the first course- a hard boiled egg in salt water- in tea cups.  We had plenty of those.

Then there was the matzah ball soup.

Then there was the main course- black currant lamb (or not lamb for me and the other vegetarians), brown rice pilaf with cranberries, a green salad, Greek lemon potatoes, and roasted asparagus, onions, and sweet potatoes.

And then there was dessert- plates of candies, plates of Aunt Genocide's ingberlech, a tray of my friend Chris's amazing macaroons, my grandmother's pecan cake, fruit salad...

And then there was tea and coffee.

Everybody was stuffed.  And most were more than a little drunk- after all, the seder requires that you drink at least four glasses of wine.  At least.

It was chaos.

It was fun.

And now, thank God, it's over.

Coming up- recipes for a few of those amazing foods I just mentioned!

Today, here.  Next year... anywhere but my house.  :)



*Some say that the leader of the seder is acting as Moses- teaching the assembled people and leading them out of Egypt.  I like this idea.

Holiday Recap, or, Unintended Consequences of Birthing Favorite (i.e. "only") Grandchildren

The last night of Channukah

I have spent a great deal of the day thus far making plans for M and I to take the weekend essentially away from our children, in order to undertake The Great Ikea Adventure.

First of all, you must understand... I don't do so well at stores like Ikea.  I get agoraphobia on occasion, and nothing like a big box store will kick that in.  And no store is bigger, more filled with people and stuff, and more designed to totally overwhelm your senses than Ikea.  Add to that my rapidly increasing levels of nesting hormones, my obsessive need to plan, and my inability to walk for any meaningful length of time without a cane (yay SPD!), and it all adds up to a gigantic disaster waiting to happen.  Thankfully, sans grublings.

So why on earth are we doing this?  What could possibly have inspired us to go through the process of trucking ourselves out to the burbs to go through a process that will most likely result in at least one of us crying in public?  (The only Ikea trip that left M in tears was more due to manly shame than anything else- his pregnant wife was climbing all over the car using her mad knot tying skillz to attach far too many oddly proportioned boxes to the roof of our Kia.  Girl Scouts taught me well.)

How I decorate for the Holidays

We are going to Ikea in order to find a way to accommodate the innumerable presents that were heaped upon our children by their doting relatives.

This is not a complaint, but I'm just saying... I don't remember EVER having as many toys as my kids have right now.  I just stole away and entire box of toys that as Executive Parental Unit I deemed "outgrown," and their toybox STILL doesn't close.

So what on earth was involved in this veritable orgy of gift giving?  I couldn't even begin to catalog it.  But I can tell you without a doubt what the favored gifts have been, and I am extremely pleased to say that I am behind at least three of them.  Go SuperMommy!

(If you don't care about the details of the toys, skip to the picture of the man in the fancy pants for the heartwarming ending.)

SI and her new train

We had three distinct gift giving events.  First, our own small family Channukah celebration.  It was the first night of Channukah, and the girls opened presents sent from extended family members, from me and M, and from a few friends.

This night yielded two big wins for the kids.  First, their Melissa and Doug toy train set and toy truck and car set.  I'd just like to say, my girls LOVE cars and trains.  I think the idea that toys like this are so heavily gendered is truly unfair.  And I love that the first person to get them their own trucks- a great toy dump truck and fishing boat set- was my Granny- hereafter known as Great-Grandmommy.  She delivered them to the girls last summer with the announcement that SOMEBODY had to get our   little girls their "boy toys," because those are better toys anyway.  Great-Grandmommy, you rock.  The train and truck came from her sister, my great aunt Minda Rae.  They have been underfoot ever since.  It's kind of glorious.

Wearing their Channukah dresses from Great-Grandmommy

The next big toy excitement was over their "big" presents from Mommy and Daddy- that is, me and M.  As SI has been obsessed with robots for months now, we found her a super cute stuffed robot.  Despite the obvious reasons not to, she immediately named it "Blue Robot," and it became her very best friend.  For DD, we got an owl.  Now, this was a little trickier.  She has a serious case of the "me toos" when it comes to expressing her opinions.  So I simply filed a way a list of things that she announced she loved that morning while getting dressed, and when I found what was to be HER stuffed toy, her little voice announcing, "I love owls!" jumped back from my memory.  As it turns out, she loves this owl, too.

SI and Aunt Engineer play with the elephant bank

The next day, it was off to Minnesota for Christmas.

Yes, the very next day.

I can't even begin to recount all the gifts they received.  M's family utterly showered them with love and toys and all manner of things that little children absolutely adore.  It was five days of nonstop madness.

Aunt and Uncle Engineer got the children stuffed animal piggie banks.  Well, a piggie bank and an elephant bank.  They make noise and move around each time you put in a coin.

This was more excitement than my children could handle.  Cookies were abandoned.  All games forgotten.  Nothing was important anymore.  Not now that there were... pig and elephant.

DD insisted on posing with "her family" at least 100 times

The children spent much of the trip putting coins into the banks as fast as they possibly could.  It is due to this that they quickly learned that the coins that made the pig and elephant come to life were called "money," and from there it was only a few quick leaps of thought to the repeated squeal, "I love money!"  Adorable, yes.  My grandfather probably rolled in his grave a little bit.  :)

The girls were each given a gift by their cousins (we have a one-to-one gift giving ratio for kids, as there are SO MANY of them in M's family!), and I have to say... those cousins have spectacular taste!  It's amazing.  The girls only get to see most of M's family a few times a year, but M's aunts in charge of gift gathering for grublings seemed to read the girls' minds across the span of three states.  DD got what she has since called "my family," which is two little girl dolls, a mommy doll, and a daddy doll.  She carries them with her everywhere.

Yup, same zipper as on the show...

Then came the coup de grace, Muno and Brobee.  You see, my kids are OBSESSED with Yo Gabba Gabba.  For a whole month, the only way I knew to get SI to smile for the camera was to ask her if Muno had bumps, or one big eye.  The answer to both of those questions is "yes."  I searched EVERYWHERE, within a few pre-set limitations, for Yo Gabba Gabba toys.  I finally dug up some stuffed backpacks from Spencer's Gifts, of all places.  DD was immediately in love.  SI wasn't so sure.  She spent about five minutes looking Muno over, as if asking him, "Are you really who you say you are?"  Finally, she accepted that he might not be THE Muno, but he was at least HER Muno.  And just like that, Blue Robot was forgotten.  Possibly forever.

Future American Idol?

I actually feel bad for that toy.  To be loved intensely for five days and then tossed aside?  But I digress...

The other huge Christmas hits were microphones and flashlights.  The microphones, sadly, do not have adjustable volumes.  But they have wrought a huge change in my daily life.  As many of our friends and family know, our children HATE singing.  The reason for this is that they love being sung to sleep, so much that they associate all singing with bedtime.  So unless they are not tired, not laying down, or have no wish to sleep, they feel they are being tricked when somebody strikes up a tune.  However, the microphones play the tunes to a few songs that I know, and I now frequently find myself with two microphones shoved in my face as I sing endless verses of "Old MacDonald Had A Farm."

The flashlights have been turned into SI's new favorite game of all time.  She calls it, "Light in the Dark."  It sounds religious, but actually it's quite literal.  I turn off the hallway lights, and then she runs around with her flashlight (a tiger that roars when his mouth opens to emit a beam of light) squealing with delight, roaring with the tiger, and announcing, "Make light in the dark!"

Grandma made that purple dress!

Then it was back to Chicago for the last night of Channukah, and immediately off to Guppy Lake for the SuperMommy family shindig and New Year's Eve.

Again, total present overload.  My mother went absolutely nuts getting stuff for the girls.  But the most beloved items of the trip were the following...

The vintage stuffed My Little Ponies made the top of the list.  I'm still patting myself on the back.  And intensely relieved.  If the girls hadn't liked them, I'd be playing with them myself out of pure determined pride.  Aunt Genocide was pretty floored when she saw them.  They're creatures of our own childhood, and it is a little strange to see them brought back to life, as it were.

DD lighting the wooden candles

Grandmommy got the girls a toy Menorah.  That was an enormous hit.  The girls took turns lighting candles all weekend long.  They even came to accept more singing- the Channukah shema in a variety of tunes.  So long as they were lighting the candles, singing was totally allowed.  It was pretty cool.

And then there were the books.  So many books!

The girls favorite two were, without a doubt, "It Happened in Pinsk," and "The Carrot Seed."  Although the Nutshell Library and the incredible pop-up book from Grandmommy are also instant favorites.

"It Happened In Pinsk"

It's odd.  I noticed as I was picking out books for my kids (like "It Happened in Pinsk') that really, I was passing along my own favorite books.  But the more books I got for the girls (they got a book apiece every night of Channukah), the more I realized that I wasn't passing along MY favorite books, I was passing along my mother's favorite books (Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library) that had been passed to me.  And more than that, I was passing along Great-Grandmommy's favorite books ("Harry the Dirty Dog" and "Blueberries for Sal") that had been passed first to my mother and then to me.

It's amazing to realize that children's books, GOOD children's books, are so incredibly universal that they transcend era.  That it doesn't strike my kids as at all odd that somebody would deliver coal, or that Sal's mommy's kitchen would have a wood burning stove, or that Pierre's mother wears an elaborately feathered hat.  It doesn't strike them as strange that the big brother in "The Carrot Seed" would wear knickerbockers, or that Irv Irving's telephone would have separate parts for the mouth and ear pieces.

Reading "Harry the Dirty Dog" with Grandma

A good story, with good illustrations, is basically immortal.  And that's pretty cool.

So the girls need about a bazillion feet of shelf space for all their new books, they need a new, more organized system in which to store their increasingly complicated toys, and I need about a month and a half to recover from the insanity that was December.

I suppose that if there's a moral here, it's Don't Have the First Grandchildren Unless You Have Tons Of Space.

Or, you know, do.  Because there are few joys greater than giving a gift that is well loved.

M and his swag

And truly, gift giving is my favorite part of the season.  I love to give presents.  I love finding things that tell the people I care about, "I KNOW you.  And I love you.  And in order to show you that, I have a physical object that you will love because it reflects something about you that can only be known by those who DO love and know you."

I got Grandmommy a super weird CD.  I got Aunt Genocide TMNT tumblers.  I got M a laptop skin that looks like a vintage boom box and a hoodie from his alma mater.  I got Aunt Engineer a beautiful upcycled sweater.

I love to give gifts.  Because when somebody opens the gift, and sees something that they really like, it's not about what that thing is.  It's about being loved.

So I am glad that my children are so crazy about all their new stuff.  Not because they needed a single piece of it (which they did- the dresses and the socks. THANK YOU!).  Not because now they have all sorts of new distractions that give me a little more time.  I am glad because they are so thoroughly loved by their family- by their aunts and uncles and grandparents and greatgrandparents... by friends they didn't know that they had.

Watching them play together is always pretty amazing.

My heart was warmed every single time DD grinned and said Thank You to another person.  I grinned seeing now only how happy my children were, but how happy their relatives were, seeing that they had succeeded in showing something simple like love to my children.

I love the holidays.  I love presents.  While I don't care what I get (although I ADORE the perfume M got me!), I care very much what I give.  And I really hope to instill those sorts of gift giving values to my kids.