white picket fence

norah at 2

Norah turned 2 a few weeks ago. I think 2 year old humans are some of the funniest and strangest creatures on the planet. It's definitely entertaining to have one in our house again (okay, entertaining mostly, infuriating sometimes). This girl loves to be outside and moves FAST. So fast that you start taking pictures and realize they're all overexposed but that seems fitting somehow and you appreciate them anyway. 

She looks at the birds and the sky and likes to "help" me do yardwork. She loves her tricycle even though she can't ride it yet, she just wants to sit on it and put her special toys in the basket: her blankie and the little Woody and Jessie from Toy Story figurines that she carries everywhere these days. 

Her hair is a mess but I don't want to cut it. It's usually in 2 curly little pigtails with pieces falling out all over. I love it. 

She got this purple dress from my mom for her birthday. She calls it her "ballerina dress" and wants to wear it all the time... even when it has macaroni stains all over the front and grass stains all over the back. As you can see, in these pictures she is wearing it over her regular clothes. Because I'm not into having fights over the little things that make her happy. 

She has discovered the magic of the words "no" and "yes" and uses both of them equally though seemingly at random. When she says "yes" it sounds like "esss" and she nods her head and smiles an adorable teeny little. When she says "no" it may or may not be accompanied by an ear-piercing shriek. We take the bad with the good on this one. 

Our sweet Norah. We are so happy to have her. 

6 lessons: march 2013

You probably know I'm big on life lessons and this past month felt full of them. Okay, some of them might have just been mistakes that I'm attempting to gain something positive from. But some were pretty sweet things to learn, too. 

1. Sometimes your kids just cry and whine a lot. It's probably better to stop trying to analyze it and just move on. (See above. Norah has been fussy lately. Lesson 1a: at least when you hold your 27 pound toddler half the day, your arms get a pretty good workout.)

2. Roller skating is fun. Parades are fun. Roller skating in a parade is really, really fun. (Watch a video here and look for me at 0:59 and 1:53.)

3. Don't leave expensive and fragile items laying around if you're going to accidentally take a nap and the kids are playing nearby. Like say, the $500 glasses you just bought 4 months ago. D'oh.

4. But then also: Never underestimate the importance of threatening to take your business elsewhere. When Lenscrafters tells you there's nothing they can do about your broken glasses and you're just going to have to buy a new pair, tell them you'll probably buy something cheaper online. Then the glasses lady will be all "Well... maybe we can sell you an insurance plan and then say your glasses were covered previously." Still a ripoff, but not as big of a ripoff. Or maybe the lesson here is that I should have just bought cheap glasses online in the first place? 

5. If you're in a weird March cold snap but it's above 35 degrees, make your kids play outside anyway. Because you never know when it's going to get even colder, and on those 0 degree windchill days you'll be pretty happy you haven't already been stuck inside all week. 

6. And last but not least, when you take jumping photos, make sure to bend your knees. It makes your vertical look a lot more impressive. This is totally not photoshopped, and yes, I'm about as shocked as you are that I can jump this high. 

tuscan serifs (aka circus-y lettering)

My kids like to read the same stories over and over. I've realized there are a ton of truly horrid children's books out there, so I try to find ones that we all enjoy. Them for the story, me for the art and art direction, of course.

These are 2 of our current faves:An Oliver Jeffers classic, The Incredible Book Eating Boy, and Limelight Larry by Leigh Hodgkinson. Both are full of inspiring hand-drawn typography, but I kept coming back to the capital serifs on "incredible" and "Larry."

I've been noticing this type of lettering more and more; so I did a little research and learned that it's called a Tuscan Serif, or Bifurcated Serif. Most people, myself included, associate these with the circus or wild west-y type stuff. 

Anyway, the more I looked at it, the more I really just wanted to draw some. 

I know I've said this before, but it's always good to go back to your old loves. I've been doodling letters for about as long as I can remember. It feels so natural and comforting. 

Sadly though, this is about as much drawing as I've done in the past month or so. My current sketchbook is much larger than I normally use, about 9x12, and I'm starting to realize it's just not working for me. I have no desire to work in it and that's pretty unusual for me. I'm all for trying new things but this time I struck out. It just goes to show how the right materials really can make a difference. Has something like that ever happened to you? 

garfield park conservatory

Going to the conservatory in Chicago has long been on my list of things to do in wintertime. It's such a relief to enter into the hot greenhouse on a cold day. It smells like LIVING things and gives you some hope when it's freezing. Since I'd been down in the dumps last week, I decided this week would be a good time to visit. It gave me something to look forward to and was a great kid-friendly outting for the morning. 

The kids had a great time, it was almost empty so we had the run of the place, and best of all? It's free! We did make a small donation, but still... cheap thrills. 

David never stays still long enough for me to get a decent photo anymore.

I loved the shape of these ferns.

Nature is weird. I have no idea what this thing is but the colors are pretty terrific. Next time I want to go back by myself with a sketchbook and about four hours of free time.

january days

pigtails. runny noses.

long hours playing outside on the unseasonably warm days ("mommy! stop taking pictures please!!") 

long baths when I can't think of anything else for us to do.

art projects that are really more about making a mess. and then eating paintbrushes. and then having a meltdown when I take the paintbrushes away. sigh....

and that's what we've been up to the past few weeks. 

remembrances of elections past

2000. I was 20 years old and a junior at Iowa State University in Ames. I skipped marching band practice in the afternoon to drive the hour home to Grinnell and vote. My polling place was Bailey Park, the elementary school my younger brother went to. It smelled the same as I remembered, in the way that schools always evoke scent memory for me. I was really excited to vote in my first presidential election, but I was also really excited to have a home cooked meal with my family for dinner. I drove back to Ames and settled in on a huge design project I'd procrastinated, par for the course. I stayed up all night working and listening to election results on public radio. By the time I went to sleep around 4 or 5 am, my project was done but the election was decidedly not. 

2004. I was 24 years old and living in Chicago. I'd recently moved from Wicker Park to the Ukranian Village, but my polling place was still in my old neighborhood. In the morning before work I walked up Leavitt past the Holy Trinity Cathedral, a landmark I still dearly miss from my days in the city. It was snowing very lightly and I was listening to the new Kings of Convenience on my very first iPod. I remember that happy walk so clearly as if it were only a few months ago, but for the life of me I can't remember anything about what I did that evening as the results came in. 

2008. I was 28 years old, living in Wheaton, and six months pregnant with my first baby. I woke up "early" at 7 am (oh, the olden days) and ate a big bowl of oatmeal and berries while watching TV news in bed. I remember still feeling that warm-oatmeal-belly feeling as I walked in the chilly morning into the polling place, the basement of a swanky retirement community a few blocks from our house. The baby was due January 17, and that night as Mike and I watched election coverage on MSNBC we wondered what it might be like if I went over my due date and our first baby was born into a world with the first black President of the United States. (And as it turns out, I did. On the day of the inauguration I had my very last prenatal appointment, the non-stress test where you sit in a room and listen to your baby's heartbeat for half an hour. I dawdled afterwards, playing hooky for a few hours so I could go home and watch the inauguration coverage before I went back to work. David was born 2 days later.)

2012. I am 32 years old and still living in Wheaton. The kids woke up early today, Norah at 5:30 and David not long afterward (damned daylight savings time), so we ate our cereal and bananas early and read a library book about animals. Mike and I took turns getting ready and by 7:30 we loaded up and headed to the polling place, still that same swanky retirement community. We were happy and excited to take the kids to vote. On the way in, David asked, "are they going to be here? do we get to see them?" and I realized he was asking about Romney and Obama. I guess we had built up voting a little too much. Sorry to disappoint kid, but this is actually going to be pretty boring for you. The lady who looked up our voter information said, "well, what beautiful children you have," and of course we agreed. David squirmed around at my feet in the election booth, and Mike filled out his ballot with one hand while holding Norah with the other. Afterwards we parted ways, MIke to work, and the rest of us home to watch Super Why and clean the house before a playdate this morning.

I'm a pretty non-political person. This election cycle has been tiresome for me and I'm discouraged by the media hysteria and the deep divides and the blatant disregards of truth and common sense. And the campaigning, oh the campaigning. It puts a twist in my stomach to think of all those millions of dollars spent that could have fed hungry people or cured sick people. But. This is the system we have, and it's better than a lot of the alternatives. So I'm happy to stand up, take part, and be counted. 

Two more things. This post was inspired by my friend Jake, who wrote this thoughtful piece yesterday. Also, if you'd like to take a break from punditry and general all-caps style election day internet ranting, maybe you'd like to read this wonderful Miller Williams poem.

how can it be?

I don't know how it's November. October was weird. I was sick and I skipped roller derby two weeks in a row and then we were out of town and then it was Halloween somehow? And I WAS in a good house cleaning routine and then the drawing took over my life last week. So things feel a little messy and unsettled.

And then there's the daylight savings time change. When the sun sets at 4 pm, these dark late afternoons start to fill me with an almost physical sense of gnawing dread. I know that sounds dramatic but that's honestly how it feels. It was never a big deal back when I was working, but now that I'm home I'm much more sensitive to it. 

So I'm going to crowdsource some help here. What do you do when it gets dark so early? And more specifically, a question for the stay at home parents: what do you do with your kids in the late afternoons? It's such a hard time of the day to begin with, and in wintertime it feels even worse. Any suggestions are appreciated, especially anything that doesn't involve TV, which seems to be my current (very poor) solution. 

there's a snake in my boot!

This is the first year David wore a costume for more than 3 minutes. It helps that he wants to play Toy Story all the time anyway, so this Woody costume had already seen some playtime action in the past week, long before trick or treating.  

Norah wore this same costume last year and it still fit, so I figured, what the heck. Halloween is not my favorite holiday so I'm pretty loathe to spend a lot of extra cash on something that doesn't get much use. Plus it's still adorable. Bonus. 

monthly snapshot: september 2012

What are we up to this month?

David has started preschool and seems to be happy with it. In true boy fashion, he won't tell me much about it other than, "I played trains. Miss Carrie sang with us. I ate my snack." Okay. He is obsessed with Angry Birds, and as I wrote on instagram earlier this week, I came up with a real-life sidewalk chalk version so we could all play. I still don't really get the "rules" David came up with, but we have fun anyway. Other current obsessions for David are Honey Kix cereal and the Wild Kratts show on PBS. 

Norah is turning into a real, tiny, human person these days. She says a ton of words, has her own set of very clear likes and dislikes. David was always a picker eater but Norah is our little piggie. I hear the word "more!" a lot out of this girl. She loves to explore and play with kitchen utensils and push the little shopping cart up and down the sidewalk. Her most favorite thing ever is the play kitchen in David's preschool room, which unfortunately means I have to carry her screaming out of the room after I drop him off in the mornings.

David and Norah have been playing together so well lately. They love jumping on the bed and knocking down block towers and chasing each other around the house. Classic sibling stuff! So much of what they do together brings back hazy early childhood memories of me and my older brother when we were young.  It's fun to watch them and brings such a relief to me after months of never being able to leave them alone in the same room together. 

Mike is just Mike, doing Mike stuff, being a hard worker and good husband. Last weekend he and David flew to Minneapolis to watch a Twins game with my brother and family, and they had such a fantastic time. Good boy's weekend. 

And me. I haven't been drawing/collaging as much lately, but it comes and goes. Last week I got a huge box of vegetables from a family friend in Iowa so I've been cooking my way through it. I made a few batches of this Chocolate Zucchini Bread, so amazing. We've had squash gratin and pasta with squash and my modified version of this vegetable pizza. And I bought my first butternut squash of the season, so it's officially Fall in my kitchen. 

I've been reading more, too. I finally picked up The Pale King and am loving falling back into the rhythms of David Foster Wallace's writing. I borrowed a book from my mom called Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, which makes me feel extreme gratitude for everything in my life, like the fact I didn't have to give birth to a baby on a covered wagon and then climb a mountain 2 days later, while half the people around me are dying of dysentery.

So that's us. How are you?

three and a half, one and a half

This was going to be a post about messes and whining and how much I detest (DETEST!!) sippy cups. But I can't do it. I can't complain*. They really are good and cute kids most of the time. 

(*Okay, maybe I can complain about one thing? David says the word Mommy at least 500 times a day. I counted and once he said it 37 times in the span of 3 MINUTES. It is probably about the most annoying thing in my life right now.)

Alright, complaint done. Now for some pictures.

Plus, the back of Norah's curly head is my most favorite thing in the entire universe right now.