A Holiday Record

This weekend, Mark and I presented ourselves at celebrations for four Thanksgivings, one Christmas and a birthday. Which is a record, even for us.

To be fair, some of those celebrations were combined, and one of them was so fast it was almost a drive-through celebration, but our weekend was jam-packed nonetheless.

Wednesday - we loaded up the creatures (canine and human alike) and more stuff than anyone should ever need for 5 days on the road, but that's parenthood right?... and hit the road. Even though the car eventually smelled like dog and diaper, I couldn't help but feel thankful for my little family, scooting away down the highway. And for the cheap gas (down to about $1.65 here). And for no wait at Cracker Barrel (amazing). And for my sister's warning about a 20-mile traffic jam on southbound 85. And for Nathan's sweet voice, which did not stop during the entire five-hour journey between our house and Dad's.

Thursday - we had Thanksgiving "lunch" with my stepmom's family in Fort Mill SC, and then stopped by my aunt's place in Charlotte, since my Grandpa B was visiting there and wanted to see us (read: Nathan) for a few minutes. By the time we got home it was well after dark and we all just crashed. And Nathan finally figured out that Dad's cats are not puppies, and call them cat! So... yay for progress. Bad holidaygoer moment: I got away with no turkey and I am not ashamed to admit I am happy about that. I had a great meal of venison stew with mushroom gravy, salad, broccoli casserole, hawaiian roles, deviled eggs, and root beer. And a few bites of cranberry sauce. Not the real stuff, but the canned stuff. Which I am also not ashamed to admit that I love.

Friday - We spent the morning visiting at my mom's house, since I had really been missing my pups who were staying there. (Well, that wasn't the whole reason, but it was part.) Nathan called Grandpa S's toy poodle a cat. So much for that progress, huh? Then we had lunch with my sister, ran into an old friend from high school (Mark's constant fear in Huntersville... although he remembered this friend!) , and made our way to my MIL's house to celebrate Mark's birthday. And Thanksgiving. And Christmas. (Well, St Nick's day, a week early.) Barbara made us an amah-zing crab meat au gratin for dinner (for which I will post the recipe if I ever get it) and we had two birthday cakes for dessert. We opened presents and laughed and enjoyed each other's company. Bad wife moment: I forgot Mark's birthday presents in Raleigh, so he opened nothing -- nothing -- from me or Nathan on his birthday.

Saturday - While Mark drove down to Clemson for their big rivalry game, Nathan and I rode to Lake Wateree with Nick and Barbara, for Thanksgiving in the double-wide. Except for a short visit to the new house to see how the building is coming, we pretty much just ate all day.
Bad mom moment: I fed Nathan a jalapeno (in the hopes of deterring his begging me for bites of my food) and while it didn't seem to faze him in the moment, he was up pretty much all night, groaning and trying to find ways to sleep with his butt in the air. Poor kid. His head probably hurt, too, from saying boat three hundred times over the course of the afternoon (mine did). Seriously, enough with boat.

Sunday - Mark's stepsister Emily and her husband Trey joined us for one more feast. I escaped turkey once again when the double-wide served up sauerkraut and sausages and three kinds of pie instead. Yum! Mark's family calls it choucroute since it became a favorite during their summers in the Vosges in France. But really, it's sauerkraut. (Don't tell them it's German though.) A friend of a friend, who lives in France, happened to post a recipe for it today, so if you want to try the "French" version (it's the same), check it out. Bad family member moment: we didn't take any group pictures, even though we were all together. The stars (meaning Emily's, Mark's, and Barbara's rotating work schedules) so rarely align to put us all in one place at one time that we were really dumb to let this photo-op slip by. But in unrelated good news, Nathan finally did pass that jalapeno.

We had planned to spend the night again in the double-wide, but with Nathan notoriously sleeping so poorly there, and with us wanting to break up the drive some, we opted to head back as far as my mom's for the night. But then when we got there, Nathan was sleeping so we ended up coming back to Raleigh anyway. One more bad mom moment: Nathan's diaper got so full on the way home that it leaked not only through his long-johns and corduroy pants, but also the blanket in his car seat and into the car seat itself. Clearly we need to plan better for longer-than-expected car rides. But now he's clean(ish) and dry and we're at home in our house, which is exactly the right combinations of peaceful and chaotic, clean and messy, empty and crowded, chilly and blanketed, and full of love. And the fact that I have such a place to call home makes me truly thankful.

For more pictures of our record-setting holiday weekend, click here.

Handy Man

I don't usually give credit to Mark for being particularly handy. Maybe it's because I grew up with my mom, who is pretty much the handiest woman I have ever met, and she set the bar for handiness kind of high. Maybe it's because part of being handy, for me, means being efficient (read: fast), and speed isn't really Mark's forte. I don't really know why, honestly. Especially since he has proven his handiness once and for all with this awesome baby gate at the base of our stairs.

He built the whole thing, one piece at a time. From spindles to rails to hinges to latch, including the stain work on the wood and installing a matching half-banister to the wall to hold the other side of the gate up. It looks like it was always there, huh?

Yaaaay hinges!

He even had to cut out part of the baseboard to make it flush with the wall. A delicate task, using a not-so-delicate saw.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm impressed. Nathan and I both thank you for preventing a fall! We love you!

Requisite TP Picture

Doesn't every toddler have to do this before graduation to bigboyhood?


(Try to ignore how disgusting my carpet is. I don't know where we keep the vacuum. And I wish I were kidding about that.)

Pretty Much Mozart (For Real)

Remember that recorder Nathan got in his Easter basket this past spring? This and this were his first tries at it, and since then he has mostly been using it as a big yellow drumstick.

But today, after months and months of "encouragement" from Mark, Nathan played that recorder all by himself.

Even though I know it says more about his lack of walking skills than plethora of musical talent, I still think it's cool that from now on and forever more, we get to say that our son has been playing the recorder since before he could walk.

(If you want to watch this in higher quality, just click on the video and it will take you directly to the youtube site, where you can select "view in high quality" in the bottom right corner of the video.)


It's a good thing we like this one note, since he hasn't figured out that mashing his fingers down the right way will change the pitch. I think my parents used to call this little ditty "the monotone march" when I was first learning to play. I like it. In a way that only a parent can.

Nathan's "Hat"

Some of Nathan's new favorite words are clothing words. Every day while we get dressed he says shoe and sock over and over again since those are the two he knows best. (I'm trying to hold off on teaching him shirt because of this problem.)

He also knows hat and he thinks that everything on anyone's head is a hat. (Including Mark's hair. At some point someone is going to see Nathan grab a fistful of Mark's hair and yell hat! and they'll think Mark is wearing a toupee or something!)

So guess what he kept saying when he found these orange cones to play with?

Hat!

New Green Jacket

Want to know what I spent (part of) my birthday money on? Of course you do: a new jacket! I needed something that was casual and sort of lightweight, but still warmer than just a hoodie. The last jacket I had like that was what I wore around Germany in the fall of 2000, and suffice it to say it was not warm enough. Anyway that thing doesn't fit anymore and I have no qualms about admitting it!

So when I went shopping this time, I found a rack of jackets that I really liked... windbreaker, fold-away hoodie, fleece lining, and reversible to boot! I had it narrowed down to the brown, gray, and black (typical Erin jacket colors) when I decided to make Merritt proud and throw caution to the wind and get a really fun coat. I don't know if it's really a statement coat or not, but for me anyway, it's a fun jacket.

I promise I don't look like a linebacker in real life. I hope not anyway.

Mark laughed when he saw that this was my idea of throwing fashion-caution to the wind. What can I say, I'm boring. Except in my new fun jacket!

If you want to see more Merritt-inspired ideas on how to look nice, even if you're a fashion dunce who rarely puts on legitimate clothing and strictly adheres to a once-a-week hair-brushing policy (like, um... me), then head over here for practical and budget-friendly ideas. And in the meantime try not to be too "green" about my new jacket. Happy Birthday, me!

Read & Ring

If you're not prepared to embrace that I am still a full-on band geek, read no further.

Remember how I told you about the Raleigh Ringers last December, when we went to their Christmas concert and it was amazing? Well, since then I have become sort of a groupie. Listening to their CD's (yes I own all of them), watching their tour schedule online, preparing to order my early-bird tickets for their Christmas concert again, etc.

So when they offered the opportunity for community members to come ring with them one after noon, I jumped on it. They called it an event for "advanced ringers." Now I will say that I am not a ringing dunce... I can sightread better than most, and quick bell changes don't intimidate me. But I can officially tell you, after spending the afternoon with RR, that I am officially not an "advanced" ringer. Who knows, maybe other people messed up as much as I did. Maybe other people were lost as much as I was. But honestly I only got about 75% of the notes that flew by. I think if we had rung anything through even a second time, I would have nailed some of those parts. But for a read-only event.... yeah I'm pretty much intermediate. :)

That being said, no one cared that we didn't play perfectly, and there were times the whole group was totally lost too, and I learned a lot. And at the end of the day, I have had a great toddler-free afternoon, doing something I really enjoy, with other dorks/groupies that I could totally relate to. And I learned that I'm fine putting my (not-so-) secret dream of being a Raleigh Ringer on hold for another year or two.

Yes, He's Always Been This Loud

Nathan came to choir with me this morning and since the childcare people didn't show up, he got to stay in the rehearsal with me. He had on his new "Yes, I've always been this loud" t-shirt that is super-cute (I love waffle weave) and was super-cheap (thanks, friends and family sale). And let me tell you, he lived up to his shirt.

He spent most of the rehearsal trying to "sing" along with the choir (really it was close to a yell), he flapped his arms when Karl directed, he clapped his hands when Karl clapped rhythms, he showed everyone his fake laugh, and he crawled all over the room asking for "daddy" and his "tractor" (as you can see in the picture above it's one of his favorite toys, and therefore also one of his favorite words), neither of which were present, obviously. But he was a good sport and no one seemed to mind... too much (insert denial here).

At least he looked cute. (And yes, I did look for a matching shirt for Ashley but small as she is, even she won't fit into a onesie.)

Carolina Fall

I don't know if these pictures Mark took are actually good or not, since I'm not a real photogropher (nor do I have the eye of one). But I do know that they really capture what a fall day in North Carolina looks like, for me at least. And therefore I like them evenif they're not actually art. Which is how I feel about most art, by the way. And wine. But I digress.

Enjoy the fall pictures.

Fork, or ....?

As I've mentioned before, Nathan is a talkative little kid. Seriously, it's nonstop chatter with him. He's either talking or sleeping. (I stand by my statement that I don't know where he gets it. Really. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

We stopped counting words he knows a while ago. Around fourteen months, I counted up the fourteen words he was using the most at that point, but since then it's been close to four or five new words a week. He learns them really fast now since he can repeat (or try to) most simple sounds we offer him (and some complicated ones, like our last name... but that's a video for another day). Which means it's really fun to teach him new words right now. For instance, I had a bad mommy moment today when, while changing his diaper, I said the word poop and he repeated it and I cracked up and then we said it to each other over and over again for the next ten minutes, laughing all the way. (I'm sorry but Nathan saying poop is just funny. Yeah I am mature like that.)

And a couple of weeks ago at a church dinner, we were trying to get Nathan to say the words of things on the table... cup, spoon, juice, bread, noodle, etc. He was yelling them out (did I mention he yells a lot? Have I thanked Ashley for that yet today?) and laughing and having a grand old time. So we move on... "Ok Nathan, now say fork."

Can you imagine how a toddler, who speaks well but far from perfectly, would say the word fork? Go ahead, try it in your head.

And that's the story of how my son (loudly and multiple times) dropped the f-bomb at church.

RSS Reader = YAY

I have finally really joined the blogging world by making the decision to read blog posts by way of RSS feeds instead of hopping to each site individually. I feel so, like, technical-savvy or something.

Now I can see on one screen who has updated, and if the update applies to me (which is handy for coupon/financial/parenting blogs), and I don't have to do so much clicking around and waiting for pages to load. Which not only saves me a lot of energy (mouse clicking is exhausting, y'all; I played enough solitaire in college to know that), it frees up more of my hard-to-find blogging time for one of my favorite things: commenting! (You know I have always had a somewhat-skewed idea of how much the world needs my opinions on things. I make myself feel better about this with the reminder that all bloggers love commenters.)

To sum it up: there's a difference between like and love. I like reading all your blogs. But I love reading them through my new Google Reader.

(Should I be getting paid to say that? ...Yeah right like Google needs my endorsement for anything.)

Red, Blue, Purple... Whatever

I saw today on NPR's website that after being "too close to call" for almost 48 hours, North Carolina has officially put our electoral votes toward Sen. Barack Obama.

So after more than three decades of being a red state, we are officially blue.


But wait! On the NPR site, when you click on NC, it takes you to this site which says we went 50% and 50% for McCain and Obama. That's as close as you can get, people! So why are we blue then?

Maybe our electoral votes go to Obama since he's already been declared President-Elect? Nope, apparently someone from the Associated Press has hunted down every county's election board and determined that there are not enough outstanding ballots to make up the votes McCain would need to pass Obama here (that's 13,693 for those of you counting at home). Less than a percentage point. Amazing.

Wake (and Mecklenburg) counties are pretty blue, though.I really thought the election would be over by Tuesday. HA!! Funny how we're all still thinking and talking (and blogging) about it. I'm ready to move on already, and I promise that after I hit "publish post" I am going to chalk up my losses, get on board with all the newly elected politicians, and hope they can help us regroup, as a nation. I also promise to smack the next person who says "yes we can" to me. Seriously. Don't test me.

I really do love North Carolina, indecisive as we are.

Not So Much Sick

I had such a relaxing weekend! Here are some random updates:

1.) We had very few trick-or-treaters this year. We built a fire in the fire pit with Amy and Drew (our neighbors) at the end of the driveway and had some pizza and (ahem) beverages while we handed out candy, but there just weren't too many takers. Which is sort of surprising, considering it was a Friday night and the weather was gorgeous.

2.) Since my mom's hip is injured again, she opted to only (only!) do the swim and bike portions of her ironman in Wilmington this weekend. So while I had planned to spend the weekend at the beach with her, instead I was at home. Which might sound boring but it was actually rockin' awesome since I got to spend my birthday with Mark and Nathan, and I still got to see my mom when she came through Raleigh on her way home from the event.

3.) I had Pei Wei takeout on Saturday night for my birthday (extra spicy, Justin if you're reading this you should be proud) and then we had a restaurant dinner with my mom last night at Bonefish, complete with bang-bang shrimp for an appetizer and the nice fish dinner I had been hankering for for so long. When you add in the Halloween candy, this was a very culinarily appealing weekend for me!

4.) Nathan is feeling much better from the sniffles he had last week. I made the mistake of mentioning to Jenny when I was visiting her with the pumpkins a few weeks ago that Nathan had never really been sick (besides the whole hospitalized-due-to-weight-loss thing, but who's counting that? not me), and I think that was just tempting fate. Sure enough, Nathan has a little fever and runny nose and chest cough for much of last week. I was feeling really bad for him, he seemed so puny and was having trouble sleeping. But both the MMO director at church and his doctor (when he went for his 15-month checkup, he wasn't sick enough to take in for a sick visit or anything), after taking one look at him chattering and laughing away, sort of laughed at me and told me I didn't know what sick was. So. Here's hoping I never have to learn firsthand the frustrations of a miserable sick baby. And in the meantime, I'm glad the cough has cleared up and he's in a better mood.

5.) After an infuriating hive and allergy month in October, this month is off to a better start. I have successfully tapered off the steroid without a big flareup for the first time since this summer. I'm cautiously optimistic that this means I won't have to be on a steroid (or completely drugged with antihistamine or covered in hives with a swollen face, neither of which are better) for the rest of my life after all!

I'm almost scared to write that, though. Don't want to tempt fate like with Nathan's "sickness" last week. But I'm not really superstitious so... there it is.

Now That's (Chocolate) Amore

Mark made a birthday cake for me, with chocolate cake and chocolate icing and two (count 'em... two!) layers! I'm betting not that many husbands out there can make multi-layer cakes.

And I'm betting the ones that do wouldn't make a crust of mini-chocolate chips on the outer wall. Or pipe icing flowers in a ring around the top. Or write your name in cursive with an icing pen. Now that is love. (And I also got to eat lots of pretzels dipped in the leftover icing. Mmmm.) Thanks Mark!