Dear Jenn,
so the house that you love (I don't mind it) and the neighbourhood I hate. I guess it's not necessarily a deal breaker. It's not like I spend a lot of time out of doors. With climate change we may be in the midst of a new paradigm of wet weather that we won't emerge from except in a geological timescales. Perhaps small is beautiful after all. There are things that can be done in small spaces. I guess those half dead Lombardy poplars at the back fence could be removed and replaced with other trees that are more amenable to my sensibilities. The shed could be turned into a greenhouse or something too. In any case, I'm trying to think beyond my comfort zone.
Of course, the money is another issue. It's a sad state of affairs that I don't actually have any idea how much money I make. Indeed, I don't recall my hourly wage. I'm not really detail oriented as it turns out. I remember Angeline's birth like it was yesterday but I have to think about it for a bit to remember the date of her birth. I'm trapped in a pre-calendar, pre-clock mindset or something. But back to the cash. I don't even know if we could get a mortgage big enough to buy another house but then again, they sure wanted to throw money at us last time. Far more than we were willing to take on but we were both working then.
I want my kids to have friends in the neighbourhood that they can play with and Ni will miss having Elijah across the street. I'm unsure of what or who is in this new neighbourhood. The indicators were a bit damning when I was there. Granted a very brief time period.
All that to say, that I'm willing to consider it.
Love Reade.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Thinking about our place and a new computer
Dear Jenn,
So I've been thinking about getting a new desktop for the family. One that would be down in the living room area. I've also been thinking about our old one and using it as a server for our video, pictures and anything else we have that we'd like to access. It could also be a backup for the computers we have. I like redundancy I guess.
I'm unsure about the timing though. Should I buy it sooner rather than later? It's not like we've saved up for it but we do have a line of credit.
With the changes you've made to the house and your thoughts about things lately it just makes me think that maybe an upgrade would be good for all of us. Making the old computer into a server with Ubuntu server software and then having access throughout the house wherever that house ends up being.
These are my thoughts for now.
Love Reade
So I've been thinking about getting a new desktop for the family. One that would be down in the living room area. I've also been thinking about our old one and using it as a server for our video, pictures and anything else we have that we'd like to access. It could also be a backup for the computers we have. I like redundancy I guess.
I'm unsure about the timing though. Should I buy it sooner rather than later? It's not like we've saved up for it but we do have a line of credit.
With the changes you've made to the house and your thoughts about things lately it just makes me think that maybe an upgrade would be good for all of us. Making the old computer into a server with Ubuntu server software and then having access throughout the house wherever that house ends up being.
These are my thoughts for now.
Love Reade
Friday, December 31, 2010
Out with the old...
Dear Reade,
It's New Year's Eve. 2010 has been quite the year. Full of fun. Full of frustration. Full of...okay, it's a good thing that I have written records of some of the many things that happened this year or I fear I mightn't remember.
The year our little girl turned one. Learned to walk. Started talking. Today she said, "Sit in box. Boat." The year she had her first salon haircut. Her first pee on the potty. She's a perpetual helper, adorable and funny and lisp-y and wonderful. And she removes my keys from my purse most everyday and puts them somewhere clever.
The year our boy turned four. Started practicing on an Early Rider for his two wheeler days. Started pre-school. Wanted to sleep over at someone's house without us. Started saying how much we didn't love him because we wouldn't give in to his demands. And this very day sat on my lap facing me, wrapped his arms around my neck, ran his fingers through my hair and let me enjoy the sun beaming on him and I as we rested at the table after lunch.
This year you finished your final full time semester of your degree. Wow. I'm so proud of you. Amazed at the work you've done to get through courses and assignments and exams while still being present to the kids. And to me. While still being in touch with your friends and keeping up on assignments at Springboard and taking out the trash. You've been swamped so many times and come up for air and kept going. I'm proud. And grateful. And glad to celebrate being done this phase of our family life.
This year I resigned my position at First. Fourteen years of being on staff at one church or another and I'm so glad not to have to juggle all of that with parenting our children and being a hub for our family life. I'm glad to be able to be with our kids day by day. To be here to send you off in the morning and welcome you home at night.
What a year. What a life. I'm in love. With you. With our kids. With our lives right now.
Love, Jenn
It's New Year's Eve. 2010 has been quite the year. Full of fun. Full of frustration. Full of...okay, it's a good thing that I have written records of some of the many things that happened this year or I fear I mightn't remember.
The year our little girl turned one. Learned to walk. Started talking. Today she said, "Sit in box. Boat." The year she had her first salon haircut. Her first pee on the potty. She's a perpetual helper, adorable and funny and lisp-y and wonderful. And she removes my keys from my purse most everyday and puts them somewhere clever.
The year our boy turned four. Started practicing on an Early Rider for his two wheeler days. Started pre-school. Wanted to sleep over at someone's house without us. Started saying how much we didn't love him because we wouldn't give in to his demands. And this very day sat on my lap facing me, wrapped his arms around my neck, ran his fingers through my hair and let me enjoy the sun beaming on him and I as we rested at the table after lunch.
This year you finished your final full time semester of your degree. Wow. I'm so proud of you. Amazed at the work you've done to get through courses and assignments and exams while still being present to the kids. And to me. While still being in touch with your friends and keeping up on assignments at Springboard and taking out the trash. You've been swamped so many times and come up for air and kept going. I'm proud. And grateful. And glad to celebrate being done this phase of our family life.
This year I resigned my position at First. Fourteen years of being on staff at one church or another and I'm so glad not to have to juggle all of that with parenting our children and being a hub for our family life. I'm glad to be able to be with our kids day by day. To be here to send you off in the morning and welcome you home at night.
What a year. What a life. I'm in love. With you. With our kids. With our lives right now.
Love, Jenn
Sunday, December 26, 2010
He's four!
Dear Reade,
It's hard for me to believe that four years ago at this time we had never met Adoniram face to face.
Here we are, four years into his life and he's wrapped around my heart and yours and evidence of his presence is everywhere...
He's four. He says he feels different today. Taller. And he spotted a contrail this morning out the bathroom window. A great start to his fifth year.
Love you,
Jenn
It's hard for me to believe that four years ago at this time we had never met Adoniram face to face.
Here we are, four years into his life and he's wrapped around my heart and yours and evidence of his presence is everywhere...
He's four. He says he feels different today. Taller. And he spotted a contrail this morning out the bathroom window. A great start to his fifth year.
Love you,
Jenn
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Still
Dear Reade,
It's the middle of the night and I'm awake again. For a few weeks now I run out of energy and the ability to be awake by the children's bedtime and fall asleep in that process. And there's a great deal of delight in being snuggled up with one or the other or both of our kids.
The corollary to falling asleep at 7 p.m. is that by the wee hours of the morning I am awake.
By the time our children awaken at 5 a.m. I am sure I will be more than ready for sleep. :)
As I sit quietly in these morning hours I read and look and dream. Cooking and baking ideas. Crafting. Beautiful knitting projects. Emails from our family and friends. These still moments are so needful for me. I crave quiet and still and so I am grateful for this space.
Rest well my love,
Jenn
It's the middle of the night and I'm awake again. For a few weeks now I run out of energy and the ability to be awake by the children's bedtime and fall asleep in that process. And there's a great deal of delight in being snuggled up with one or the other or both of our kids.
The corollary to falling asleep at 7 p.m. is that by the wee hours of the morning I am awake.
By the time our children awaken at 5 a.m. I am sure I will be more than ready for sleep. :)
As I sit quietly in these morning hours I read and look and dream. Cooking and baking ideas. Crafting. Beautiful knitting projects. Emails from our family and friends. These still moments are so needful for me. I crave quiet and still and so I am grateful for this space.
Rest well my love,
Jenn
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Permission
Dear Reade,
A quiet Sunday afternoon consisting of chocolate chip cookies, milk, sumo wrestling practice, book reading and tower building. Boy-o just asked "Can Daddy have permission to come feed the fish with me?"
Yup.
Hope it was fun.
Love, Jenn
A quiet Sunday afternoon consisting of chocolate chip cookies, milk, sumo wrestling practice, book reading and tower building. Boy-o just asked "Can Daddy have permission to come feed the fish with me?"
Yup.
Hope it was fun.
Love, Jenn
Monday, November 8, 2010
perfect...
Dear Reade,
I am a one woman comedy fest of errors right now. A perfect storm of shit and spills and chaos. I know parenting life isn't primarily consumed by these kinds of days, but the last few days have been...
Perfect.
Really.
Really?
Really.
After washing blueberry smoothie off the floor, myself and then the ceiling I went racing downstairs to deal with Boy-o's "catastrophe." "Mama, it's really bad." And I found the unplugged telephone (the one I leave unplugged so that the kids don't cut us off from the outside world) off the hook. Girlie followed us downstairs leaving a trail of liquid poop in her wake. All over the plastic straws the children spilled earlier. All over the single carpeted space in our entire home. After I cleaned her up and washed the carpet and cleaned up the kitchen floor and threw away the straws -- with the help of my very helpful children...ugh -- I asked Boy-o to come wash his hands. Instead he picked up the organic dehydrated cane sugar and stuck his hand in the bag.
We're out of laundry detergent. Ditto eggs, black tea, and straws. :) Also dehydrated cane sugar now.
We seem to have no shortage of shit though.
It took a good hour into the movie I was watching tonight before I realized that I was clenching my teeth. Do you think? Am I a little tense?
I'm working on relaxing. It has been a crazy few days. Boy-o got sick in the night on Thursday. You had day surgery on Friday. The car inexplicably stopped working while you were out running errands. You headed off to class. Girlie and I got sick by lunch time on Saturday. I was supposed to preach Sunday for the first time in more than a year and a half and had to cancel (guilt free!) on account of puke-and-pooping-sickness. Last night in the middle of the night you got sick. And then today with the blueberries, straws, poop, laundry and the normal spills of milk and water and tea.
Today's episodes are just more in a long line of crazy things all coming together perfectly at the same time.
And I'm about to eat my first meal (aside from broth, apple sauce and water) since Friday. Just the thought simultaneously makes me salivate and want to throw up. Having carefully prepared this bit of leftovers I took one bite and lost my spoon in the bottom of the pot.
I'm getting another spoon. I'm eating some soup. Then I'm going to bed.
Our next scheduled "perfect" weekend is three years from now. Once it gets closer I might be feeling wistful. Without recording this in an archive I might crazily decide to bump up the next occurrence of a weekend of perfection. Who knows?
:)
Love to you,
Jenn
P.S. This is the reality of our day on only one level. People who I could not have got along without talked to me a various points throughout the day and made the difference between me being a slave in the midst of a crumby day and being able to laugh at the craziness of it all. I am so grateful for friends, for family (and that laundry detergent!) and for being in an entirely different head space than I was a year ago. Raise a piece of toast or a wine glass (depending on which end of the day you are at) to grace and the grandness of life.
To life!
I am a one woman comedy fest of errors right now. A perfect storm of shit and spills and chaos. I know parenting life isn't primarily consumed by these kinds of days, but the last few days have been...
Perfect.
Really.
Really?
Really.
After washing blueberry smoothie off the floor, myself and then the ceiling I went racing downstairs to deal with Boy-o's "catastrophe." "Mama, it's really bad." And I found the unplugged telephone (the one I leave unplugged so that the kids don't cut us off from the outside world) off the hook. Girlie followed us downstairs leaving a trail of liquid poop in her wake. All over the plastic straws the children spilled earlier. All over the single carpeted space in our entire home. After I cleaned her up and washed the carpet and cleaned up the kitchen floor and threw away the straws -- with the help of my very helpful children...ugh -- I asked Boy-o to come wash his hands. Instead he picked up the organic dehydrated cane sugar and stuck his hand in the bag.
We're out of laundry detergent. Ditto eggs, black tea, and straws. :) Also dehydrated cane sugar now.
We seem to have no shortage of shit though.
It took a good hour into the movie I was watching tonight before I realized that I was clenching my teeth. Do you think? Am I a little tense?
I'm working on relaxing. It has been a crazy few days. Boy-o got sick in the night on Thursday. You had day surgery on Friday. The car inexplicably stopped working while you were out running errands. You headed off to class. Girlie and I got sick by lunch time on Saturday. I was supposed to preach Sunday for the first time in more than a year and a half and had to cancel (guilt free!) on account of puke-and-pooping-sickness. Last night in the middle of the night you got sick. And then today with the blueberries, straws, poop, laundry and the normal spills of milk and water and tea.
Today's episodes are just more in a long line of crazy things all coming together perfectly at the same time.
And I'm about to eat my first meal (aside from broth, apple sauce and water) since Friday. Just the thought simultaneously makes me salivate and want to throw up. Having carefully prepared this bit of leftovers I took one bite and lost my spoon in the bottom of the pot.
I'm getting another spoon. I'm eating some soup. Then I'm going to bed.
Our next scheduled "perfect" weekend is three years from now. Once it gets closer I might be feeling wistful. Without recording this in an archive I might crazily decide to bump up the next occurrence of a weekend of perfection. Who knows?
:)
Love to you,
Jenn
P.S. This is the reality of our day on only one level. People who I could not have got along without talked to me a various points throughout the day and made the difference between me being a slave in the midst of a crumby day and being able to laugh at the craziness of it all. I am so grateful for friends, for family (and that laundry detergent!) and for being in an entirely different head space than I was a year ago. Raise a piece of toast or a wine glass (depending on which end of the day you are at) to grace and the grandness of life.
To life!
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