We Christmas, and then we post-Christmas.

So how cute are my sweethearts, in their Christmas duds? We missed church (cancelled due to Midwest weather) but dressed for dinner anyway. Peter is quite the stylish guy these days, and Grace - always lovely in the Christmas dress of the year.

After the fun of Christmas food, (stollen and quiche, various rich desserts, yummy salmon... ) we've gotten deeper into the cookbooks, and yesterday we made heart waffles, with the vintange waffle iron from Nana. Upcoming: Grace's awesome birthday cake, chocolate with chocolate frosting. Frankly, a day where you play outside on your snowshoes and then eat chocolate dessert is a pretty stellar day. We've had several in a row!

Vanity hat blogging...

That Nana of ours? Chooses some awesome hats. Grace and I are now Warm Ear Twins.

Our week in gingerbread.

Peter's school hosted an all-kindergarten gingerbread house building extravaganza this week, and I've never seen 100 kindergarteners and a metric ton of candy coexist so peacefully. Each kid had a clean, dry, one-pint milk carton to use as a base, and they used frosting to glue on candy, graham crackers, whatever.

I noticed that many a kindergarten mother was the Project Designer, and many a kindergartener was relegated to the sidelines. Luckily I lack the desire to perfectly orchestrate each aspect of my kid's aesthetic life, and we ended up with a Peter Original, which is pretty fantastic.

Then last night, per Peter's long-standing request, we made gingerbread. I have a lovely Bundt pan that a friend gave me years ago, and it's now well-seasoned and pops out a gorgeous, detailed cake every time. We used a recipe from our trusty Williams Sonoma Holiday Cooking With Kids cookbook, which I dearly love because I'm confident I can make each of the recipes.

The kids sniffed the molassess and were alternately thrilled and dubious, and we added more ginger and cinnamon than was called for, but the cake was both attractive and really tasty - I think a homemade lightly orange flavored ice cream would go nicely but was not in a position to whip some up right the minute the thought struck me. Maybe next time.

So today's photo array: kid, gingerbread gingerbread gingerbread, mama. Enjoy!

Lucias and Starboys, oh my.

It's Saint Lucia's feast day, and we did her thing: our girl dressed like Lucia and our boy like a Starboy; we made lussekatter, the traditional Swedish buns that (as you can see!) mimic Lucia's sad pre-martyrdom situation of having her eyes put out during torture (mideval images of her include her with eyes miraculously restored, but carrying around a spare set on a plate); we processed to the Santa Lucia music, borrowed from Italian gondola drivers; and just for fun, we photographed the various Lucia images in our house. There's a candleholder, various ornaments, two tree-toppers, one Lucia and one Starboy on some vintage textiles, and one tattoo. See if you can match them up!

Snow day!

We have a snow day today! (Not pictured.)

It's been busy here, and I haven't posted any pictures or witty commentary from our delightful Thanksgiving, which was rich with grandparents and cousins. So in the spirit of that great scene in The Princess Bride where Indigo says, "Let me explain," and then pauses, overwhelmed by the task of describing recent events coherently, and then says, "Let me sum up," - well, let me sum up.

Halloween: fun! Parental trip to Montreal: good! Thanksgiving: very, very good. It was the first time we've had my side of the family all out to Nebraska and the kids did beautifully, the weather cooperated, and we polished off a 30lb turkey in record time. Lindsey and Elise are fabulous cousins and it was really joyful and noisy to have all the kids together in a herd. Peter's recent concert at school: quite nice. Today: snow day! School was cancelled last night for the kids, and I decided late in the day not to go in today since the roads are (as predicted) dicey. We're spending the day working-ish, napping, watching movies, and I took a brief run that was fun except for the driving snow. My knee is healing up very nicely (twice-weekly physical therapy is helping), and I'm expecting to slowly add mileage in the next couple of months and plan to run a half marathon in the early spring.

The kids are delighted by their first snow day of the year - we'd had only one small snow weeks ago, and now we are snow city, baby. We had great dinner guests last weekend (a dozen students and then friends of friends from Montana, on different nights) so the house is reasonably clean. It's finals week for me, so I'm really hoping the snow is plowed by tomorrow morning or I have to start negotiating with a bunch of students whose travel plans preclude later finals. I am looking foreward to the break, although I'm teaching a full load in spring plus an interterm class (my bad) so I won't get a ton of time off.

So: busy, winter, healthy, growing and stuff. That's our update.

Oh, mama.

So.... sometimes, a mama thinks to herself, you know what would be fun?

Something new would be fun.

Something a little different.

Something permanent, on her arm.
Something, possibly, like a Salvador Dali painting of Saint Lucia. Rendered in tattoo ink. Fun for the whole religion department! (Yep, that's my skeptical husband and my amused colleague, who kindly accompanied me, provided commentary, and filmed the whole thing.) (Which, might I just add? Hurt so much that most of the commentary involves comparing this experience to childbirth.)

While my parents are probably cringing and picking up the phone to call and ask me about Hepatitis B-slash-C, and bemoaning my general lack of sound judgement, I have to say, in my defense: my kids? Are pretty excited. As are my students, interestingly enough... after one of them raised his hand politely and said, "Dr. Wilder, I know this is off-topic, but what's with your arm?" and I showed them, the general consensus was that I look tough. Given that I am a mid-thirties mama with a non-threatening smile, this has to be good for me, right?

I'm currently working on a project with students involving religious expression and tattoos, and I've been thinking about this for a while. I like the saints, I'm drawn to Lucia; this particular rendering of her doesn't pull any punches. She's a martyr, which means that the traditional folk images of her, blonde and pretty with a crown of candles, serve to obscure the part where she was murdered and had her eyes put out. This image gives you a full sense of her martyrdom: the candles are represented, rather than fully drawn, and she is both present and not present.

On my arm, she is fully present. Honestly, I love how it turned out (less pink now than in the image above.) I think it's gorgeous. And it's fully hidden under short sleeves; I don't think I'll be socially unacceptable in most circles.

It's important to do something new every now and then. I think I'm good 'till mid-2010.

Pumpkins in the sun.

We're now no longer snowy, just a bit chilly. I took the kids on a bike ride yesterday morning after the usual scouting for mittens and warm pants. It was beautiful - hawks were circling, the leaves are changing, and even though it was cloudy, it was so good to be outside. Then in the afternoon we carved their pumpkins, the preparation for which has involved a lot of drawing and re-drawing the ideal jack o' lantern faces. Grace stuck with her plan, while Peter had several possible designs and then improvised a new one on the spot. I just drew a face - I think it looks a lot like last year's, although I haven't gone back to verify this. The sun came out in time for some pictures of kids and pumpkins on the porch.

Today no one wanted to go on another bike ride with me, so I had an hour outside to myself on a gorgeous, 60 degree day. Cycling is easier on my knee than running, plus it's much, much faster so I got to see a good bit of my usual trail without working very hard at all. Next weekend I'll see if I can coax Grace to ride to a nearby lake with me; if we met Mike and Peter there we could all bike around the lake a bit and then Mike and the kids could drive home.

Our other weekend fun (really) was harvesting the last of our carrots. The kids were thrilled, the adults realized that teensy carrots are what you get if you plant midway through the season, but we kept at it. They were tasty, and we left the smallest ones for the resident bunny rabbit. We finally got around to some transplanting, too - I think some of our hostas are a good 20 years old and were sorely in need of attention. We relocated some unhappy ones, divided some of the huge ones, and filled in some spaces in the bed in our front yard that were bare. I moved a hydrangia that wasn't getting as much air circulation as it needed to another part of the front yard, which is filling out nicely. I still need to find a new home for one sad peony, and in a perfect world I'd also have time to shift a bunch of purple coneflower from the shady part of the backyard to the sunny part of the front yard, but you do what you can. Next weekend we'll put in our tulip bulbs, and maybe a few other things if we're inclined. I'm excited for spring already, making mental notes about which vegetables we're going to start inside, which ones we'll just plant outside from seed, and where I'm going to put the lettuce this time (in a little bed under the stairs that's mostly sheltered from the sun.) If only each week had one more day.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

We are not in the woods, and neither dark nor deep. But it is snowy here. We did not transplant, we did not put bulbs in, we are not quite done with fall. But winter has made its first foray into our yard, and luckily the kids rejoiced. (Peter rejoiced at 5am by waking me up and then going back to sleep with his knees poking my spine, which led to me giving up the ghost of my sleep about 5:30 and puttering around with coffee for a few hours.) I am deeply satisfied that we already bought them snow boots; any additional mittens and hats will just have to appear somehow.

I had planned to run the Chicago Marathon tomorrow. Instead I'm at home with an irritated IT band (tendon between one's knee and hip, the frequent victim of overuse injuries.) I am heartbroken, but realistic, and have scheduled the appointment with a sports injury doctor which I should have made a few months ago, in the hopes that I can heal up and start running again soon. (The primary symptom of an injured IT band is crippling knee pain about 2 miles into your run, which is as much fun as it sounds. It's even better if you're doing an out-and-back and you feel fine for, say, the first seven miles, and then suddenly you're a long way from home and unfit to do more than walk. Yes, that's the voice of experience.)

So instead we went to the talent show that's part of Midland's homecoming festivities, and it was good and our beloved babysitter was on homecoming court so we got to see her all dressed up. Today was still and yet more homecoming fun, but we're skipping the game because of a. the snow and b. a basic lack of football aptitude among 3/4 of the family. Peter was especially delighted with the chance to eat cotton candy, win prizes, eat more, win more, and see the dance team. Grace had more fun at the talent show, I think, but either way work events that are family-oriented are a nice change of pace.

Sometimes, Mama goes out of town.

Recently, I've been working on a project with some of my students. We're spending a couple of weeks reading articles and watching documentaries about tattoos, and then they're each going to conduct an interview with someone who has a tattoo with some religious or spiritual significance. Naturally, the kids have talked about this with me, and apparently have also listened intently.

Then this last weekend I was out of town for a conference, and Mike was Solo Parent. Now, Solo Parent cannot be expected to maintain the man-to-man coverage that Dual Parents have; Solo Parent does zone defense.

Sometimes, zone defense permits a certain... latitude. In this instance, the kids decided that Peter needed some tattoos. Luckily, they don't drive or have connections to good tattoo artists. Unluckily, I guess, they have markers.

These do not include the one on his butt, drawn (as were the others) by ever-helpful Big Sister. As I have told my students time and again as they contemplate their tattoo interviews: sometimes, people have images on private parts of their bodies. We do not take pictures of those.