lastly

This is my closing post. I haven't updated "homefront" much since 2012-2013, and even then it was infrequent. Apparently my blogging heyday was during the era of one child, when though it didn't feel like it then, I had time and a little energy for it.

I loved this space for awhile, and I hope Jude will treasure it one day.

Bits of our life together are now shared from Instagram, where posting takes all of 30 seconds from start to finish. My username is "emklooster" if you want to follow.

Peace and love, 

Emily

twenty-fourteen

We don't do a Christmas/update letter, but I think there is value in mulling the year over, and feeling a measure of gratitude about our growth and experiences.

Theo and Mae (October 2014)

Some 2014 highlights...

First, I was pregnant for most of the year. Highlight? Not really. Just a fact that affected my experience. We found out almost immediately after the turn of the year, initially an anxiety-ridden surprise that soon morphed into a source of joy.

• We joined a new church that is about one-sixteenth the size of our former one.
• My brother's band, Escondido, played Founders! We all went to cheer them on.
• Jude played soccer with the parks and rec program and had a good time running around a field in a mob of short teammates. We made some new friends watching the games.
• Jono and I saw The National play a show at Calvin and we were six feet from Matt at one point. He'd been drinking. The show was incredible - Mae's first, in utero.
• My side of the family took a rainy, buggy camping trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes. It was kind of a pain and we decided never to tent as an extended family again.
• The kids and I took a trip to Iowa with my family for my cousin's wedding.We caught up with family and canoodled with a tiny pig at one of their farms.
•  We went to Lake Michigan for our anniversary and just sat on the beach for two hours, undisturbed. Our new idea of luxury since having kids.
• We decided to send Jude to our neighborhood school, after a two-year process of mulling over all of the options, and even enrolling him at a different school first, until we saw there had been a tuition hike. He was off to kindergarten at Congress Elementary in early September!
• Two days later, I gave birth to Mae Leona, and our family is complete, God willing. I took three months of maternity leave, and we spent our days feeding, sleeping, walking Jude to school and back, meeting great-grandparents, and going on fall hikes at Aman Park, Seidman Park and some trails near an orchard.
• We went to Lake Erie to be with Jono's dad and step-mom for Thanksgiving. We hiked out to Point Pelee, the southernmost tip of Canada, and spent time gazing out at the lake from the two picture windows on their back porch.
• We followed our new tradition again this year of getting a Christmas tree at the farmer's market, on foot.
• I went back to work in December and things got real. Jude had his first Winter Program at school, which was kind of a mess, but also cute.
• We were interviewed by our public school system for a promotional campaign that includes a set of parents from each school around the city. Suddenly as of January, we are on a local commercial, the radio and a billboard. The resulting fame has been overwhelming (just kidding!).

So there it is, 2014. We loved you. I hope you're grateful for your life this year as well, even if nothing is perfect.

this is beautiful.

maple syrup fest

I plan to make the maple syrup fest at Blandford an annual tradition. Here's the fun from this year!

Learning about animal tracks

Checking if the sap is running

Boiling it down the way they used to

The last step in the process

Fuel for making the syrup

jude and lucy

I don't know anything more pure than a budding friendship between pre-schoolers.

Jude hasn't yet noticed Lucy's arm around his shoulders. Give it 3, 2, 1...

Jude's friend Lucy comes over every few weeks for a morning to play. Her parents are friends of ours, and the two of them used to go to daycare together almost full-time for a couple of years where they apparently bonded for eternity. Or at least until kindergarten. Whenever they see each other again, it's as if no time has passed.

Lucy is opposite from Jude in every way. She loves chaos, naughtiness, hugs with people other than her mama, cheap thrills and making messes. I think her influence will do him good, and I approve of each and every time she force-kisses him, puts her arm around him when he's distracted and can't fight her, and/or splatters something on the wall near him so that he can tell on her.

The other day as she was leaving he refused her advances to hug him and she put her face right up to his and raised her voice, saying, "BUT I'M LEAVING NOW!" (As in, don't you understand the significance of this moment?)

When we asked Jude who his best friend was, he said "Mommy". I will tell him he said this when he is 15. We then said, "What about Lucy?" He got a huge smirk on his face, giggled and said, "Yeeeeees", all drawn out as if he was relishing each letter in the word.

Halloween 2012

These two are just my favorite.

smoke ring for my halo

There's something about February and March that make me want to revel in melancholy. Kurt Vile's music is kind of far-off and intimate at the same time. This is the official video for his song, Baby's Arms off the album Smoke Ring for My Halo.



Just a little ear candy for this late winter thing we all have to slog through.

making, doing

To pass the time well in winter, I've made a goal of either taking the boys on an outing or doing some sort of planned activity each day, so they spend only some of their time making their own creative fun while I get things done. For me, it's easier to connect and focus on them well in the warmer months when we can just run outside together or when it's obviously a great idea to go to the zoo because the weather's so good. In winter, it's easy for me to fall into a ho-hum pattern of ticking off the to-do list and letting them make their own fun, which is healthy at times, but not all the time.

I made the conscious decision to be an at-home parent for a few years, and I don't want to forget the most important component of that is my boys and the time I spend fully present with them.

(I like this poster, and this artist.)

By Danna Ray, on Etsy

In the planned activities vein, we've done some of these easy, at-home projects which took little effort but paid off in a learning experience and/or no-TV versions of entertainment.

1) SCRIBBLING

We do a lot of scribbling, planned and unplanned. We've tried the approved surfaces like dry-erase and chalkboards and mirrors with dry-erase markers, and Jude has tried some non-approved surfaces like walls, bathroom drawers, and one small, premeditated scribble on the top of each of the books on our bottom shelf. He wouldn't be Jude if there wasn't some sort of order to what he was doing, even when misbehaving.

Theo's first scribble

2) PAINTING

Jude loves to paint too, and Theo pretend-paints next to him because he's too crazy to be allowed near real paint. Here's the bathtub version of that. I used Jono's shaving cream, a muffin tin and food coloring:

Jude painting with shaving cream and food-coloring, yay.

3) BAKING SODA AND VINEGAR (endless possibilities)

I don't have what it takes to be a kindergarten teacher, and the thought of homeschooling scares the living daylights out of me, so the prerequisite on everything we do is that it will take me no longer than ten minutes to get things ready. So obviously we had to try baking soda and vinegar experiments - big results for microscopic amounts of effort. I added food coloring to the vinegar for some added shazam.

He did this for half an hour.

4) FREE STAMPS

On day we had Jude's friend Lucy over and we did some stamping with toilet paper rolls. I made simple stamp designs on one end of the roll by cutting about an inch up repeatedly and bending back the resulting tabs. They're primitive, but still appreciated by the three and four-year-old set.

5) SALT LETTERS

The other day I tried a Montessori-type activity I found that was super complicated. I poured salt into a wooden box and Jude traced letters into it with his fingers, using his flash cards as a guide. I was sweating bullets after prepping that activity. Never again.

6) UP-CYCLED SNOW GLOBES

The furthest we've gone into craftiness is making snow globes together this past Christmas. It's a little tough doing this with a four-year-old, but I let him pour the glitter in and fill the jars with water, and that was enough for him to feel fulfilled in the project once he realized how fun they were when they were done.

We used old salsa and baby-food jars and plastic figurines from the craft shop, plus some water-resistant glue to adhere the figurines to the insides of the lids. You could toss anything into these: Fisher Price little people, transformers, or whatever small toys you have underfoot.

7) CLOUD DOUGH

The last easy thing I've tried lately is cloud dough. Eight cups of cheap flour and one cup of baby oil in a plastic tub and we had an indoor sandbox. Jude made mini sandcastles using my smallest leftover containers to mold the towers. I have no photos of this because flour is boring to look at, and though I've already subjected you to the serene, non-events of our household, a photo of it crossed a line I had somewhere.

If you're a parent who prefers not to spend a morning prepping for a ten-minute thrill, these projects are for you :)

michigan winter

i love the beach in winter.

ewok or owl

This post is total nonsense, but quick survey: when I look at Theo, I'm reminded first that he is a beautiful boy, and second that he resembles two creatures:

baby ewok

owl

What do you think? Am I way off?

Either way, he's delicious.

ho hum...

Another day with the two small ones. These two photos make me laugh.

Lunch

Dinner

Theo has face-stuffing down to a science.

redonk

Everything about Theo is ridiculous. (In a good way. Hello.)

His hair. I kid you not.

When his eyebrows came in they looked like they'd been painted on and plucked.

When his eyelashes came in, they were twice as long as mine.

When he got past the squinty newborn phase, his eyes opened up and stayed the size of silver dollars.

When his hair came in, it was ridiculously high and fluffy, courtesy of the double crown on the back of his head - two hair whorls that mirror each other exactly and are about an inch apart.

When his teeth came in, there was a howdy-doody gap between the two front ones.

Wild Man is taking requests. His hair tuft is not.

He has the same cleft chin as the rest of us, but when you add it to the other stuff it kind of fits the bill.

His cheeks are so fat now that someone we didn't know said, "What's the name of the one with the fat cheeks?"

He is ridiculously loud, to the point where Jono said to him one evening, "Theo, you don't belong in my family." (He was joking, of course. A little.)

He fell halfway down our long-ish staircase, giving himself a black eye. He cried for about 30 seconds. (This is the opposite of the behavior we typically see in another small person who lives here.)

He's all about cheap thrills, wherever they may be found.

Theo seems to be wired for the extreme, both in his personality and his physicality. We've enjoyed watching one ridiculous thing after another occur in and around him, and I'm sure we'll be entertained by this for years to come.

Pretending Real Things

Jude is four now, and the flavor of the things he says is morphing along with his age. Here's a sampling from his third and fourth years (so far):

"Theo's head looks like a blueberry."

"I like this kind of baby. This is the baby that I wanted."

"I'm pretending real things."

"Can you go in the window room and stay there?" (He wanted to sneak chocolate chips from the cupboard.)

"I'm making this go away so you can't see it." (Said while spreading sand around that he wasn't supposed to throw out of the sandbox.)

TMI: "I made a J! I'm going to try to make a U." (This was said in the bathroom, and I'll let you guess what he was talking about.)

"Theo is like a little crumb."

"Fee's dream is to join the circus."

Talking about his little stuffed dog; "Do you know what Puppy doesn't do? Bite. If you put your hand by his mouth he licks it. If you put your hand here [by his nose] he does this. [Sniffs]. You can touch his fur like this. [Strokes gently.] Don't pinch Puppy. Only a teensy weensy bit."

I love this little dude.

happy new year!

Please excuse the lame "shutterfly" branding of this card, and my month-long silence. Click through twice to see it larger, if you want to see Theo's cheek to face ratio with greater accuracy.

Stationery card

View the entire collection of cards.

Homebrewing

Brew time means it gets hot and steamy over here.

For Jono's birthday this year he wanted a home-brewing kit for beer. I got a few family members to go in on one together, and now he reminds me of a moonshiner during Prohibition. There are bubbling jugs tucked away in our basement and coat closet almost continually.

So far his brews have been delicious, and it saves us money. Jono's favorites are heavy on the hops, while I prefer porters and stouts. He has brewed two different recipes for me now (out of four total, I think).

I'd recommend DIY brewing for anyone who loves micro-brews and doesn't make six figures ;) We got our kit at a local make-your-own stuff shop called Siciliano's, but I'm sure you can get kits and recipes online as well.

Here's one I had the other night. Yum.

Milk Stout

the dragon mask

This is not a Halloween post, unfortunately ;)

Both boys are on a daily inhalant medication, a mist they breathe into their lungs through a nebulizer machine and mask. Jude has grown out of his more extreme symptoms but still needs seasonal treatment (fall and winter), and Theo is now on it as well because of his recent asthma episodes. In spring, once the cold/flu/respiratory virus season is over, I'll take them both off of it through the summer.

We had another ER visit with Theo about a month after the last one, and this time he was admitted into the children's hospital where we had what they called an "aware" sort of situation (eight or nine docs lined up at the door to check him out), and he was close to being moved to the ICU before he turned around.

Election night jitters

Trying to remove his IV

The nebulizer mask is a dragon, in an attempt to make it friendlier for children. I don't know though. "Smoke" coming out of the holes in its beak-ish nose? It would be horrifying except the dragon has orange raised eyebrows that give him a more benign look. But either way. "Now, young child, put this rubber serpent thing over your face and breathe deeply."

The med is potentially life-saving for our kids though, so I appreciate any effort that makes giving it to them less creepy.

For Dad

A special edition (for Grandpa G):