Empty Shelves

Phew.

Sorry for the crappy picture. It's night time but I couldn't not participate in the yarn along! Today my mom came down and helped me unpack and organize things and was a HUGE help, and now we have a little knitting/reading corner in the living room, which is where I'm sitting as I type this. It is a lovely little corner beneath a huge window that looks out onto the deck. I love it. Once things are a bit more settled (and sometime during the day!) I will take pictures and post them. 

The hatbox is stuffed with hexipuffs.

As you can see, the bookshelf in the background is decidedly empty.  All of our books are still packed away, and my Kindle is practically dead. (Keith just found the power cable, so, yay!) Not much reading for me.

I did, however, manage to dig up my yarn swift, and when we moved I made sure my stash was readily accessible, so I wound up the third and last skein of yarn for Hamako and joined it the other day. That's all the knitting I've done this week. Hopefully by the next yarn along I will have a finished baby blanket to show you! :)

We are here.

Our furniture is here. (Most of) our stuff is here. The internet is here. Our new washing machine is here (but no drier).

I wouldn't say the moving process is entirely over, but this is where we are.

Michael knows his way around, is now proficient at climbing steps (and getting better at coming down them), and usually loves his new room, though not napping in it. The kitchen is almost entirely unpacked, as are our bedrooms. The living room and dining room are still in pretty severe disarray.

Yesterday Michael kicked/threw a soccer ball around the driveway, and we discovered a gravestone in the back yard. (I guess the previous owner didn't know about it??)

Our first real dinner, cooked by me last night, was salad and pumpkin mac-n-cheese. The perfect meal for early autumn!

Aaaaand I think Michael is now throwing his snack on the floor in the next room, if his repeated exclamations of "throw!" mean anything, so I will finish typing and leave you with a few pictures.

Helping Papa put together the bed.

Matthias the Squirrel

Housewarming gift from a friend

Seven Quick Takes (13)

1. I should be packing right now. Or at least taking a shower. But instead I am typing my (probably) last blog post ever from this apartment. We are so happy to be moving to our new home tomorrow, but just typing that out makes me feel a little emotional. (Hey, cut the pregnant lady a break. She's allowed to get teary-eyed.) This place has been good to us.

2. One of the best parts about living here has been our landlords. Last year they moved in downstairs, which could be potentially awkward, right? But it's been great. They're just good people. For example, my landlady the other day invited Michael downstairs to come see the kitty, which made him SO HAPPY. (Although now whenever he sees her, he starts crying to see the cat.) She's helped me carry groceries into the house more than once since I've gotten pregnant, offered to buy things for us from the farmer's market, and to top it all off last week she and her husband gave us a gift card to Babies'r'Us for the twins. How sweet is that?

3. I suspect Michael might have an ear infection, so I've been trying to call the doctor's office to make him an appointment. It took three tries. Try #1: I get to option 1 on the menu (making an appointment is option 3), when Michael starts crying. I turn around to see he has bitten a piece of plastic off the medal on a broken plastic rosary. (He is past that stage of putting things in his mouth, so I'm not sure exactly what he was thinking.) I hang up the phone and get the piece out of his mouth and decide that when he starts eating random crap it's time for a nap. (And I'm sorry, I really hope that rosary wasn't blessed because it's in the trash right now.)

4. Try #2: I wait a bit for Michael's nap to "take." When he settles and seems to be asleep, I call the doctor's office again. This time I get to option 2 on the menu before there's a knock on the door. I'm still in my pajamas. I hang up, get dressed quickly, and answer the door. It's my landlady, apologetically letting me know that some Italian guy is coming by to look at the house in the late afternoon. (Our landlords are selling this place.) We chat for a bit, and then ... Michael starts crying.

5. Fastforward to try #3: I finally get through the menu ... and have to leave a message. So, hopefully we will get him in for an appointment sometime this afternoon.

6. I have to say that this pregnancy has been kind of difficult. As a family we have dealt with a lot of stuff in the past few months that would have been challenging WITHOUT pregnancy hormones thrown in ... know what I mean? Between dealing with various crises, extended family drama, Keith working in overdrive to finish his degree a few months ago, house-hunting and moving, etc ... I feel like I've been in "survival mode" off and on for the past several months. As my due date gets closer, this has become harder for me to deal with, and it's taking its toll on me emotionally. I feel like any day the twins are just going to "show up" and I won't be prepared, at all. But I am trying to let go of things I can't control (including things that have happened in the past few months) and just live in the present and know that I am where God wills me to be at this moment.

7. Did you know that September 22nd is not only the first day of autumn ... but also Hobbit Day? Happy happy happiness!! It's also, sadly, the day after we move, so I'm afraid a day of feasting with friends hobbit-style is out of the question ... but I want us to celebrate it somehow! I'll think of something. :) Also, Michaelmas is a week from Sunday! So we will have to do something special then too.

Linking up with Jen for her Seven Quick Takes.

House and Home

Today, we bought a house.

The past week or so has been a little rough around here. There was a kink in the mortgage process and things were a little uncertain for four or five days. Which was really, really hard. I had started packing and then stopped because I just couldn't. I couldn't pack away the home we had when the home we hoped for might not happen. I've written about disappointment in house-hunting before, but when you are literally a week away from closing and something comes up? Ugh. I shed some tears.

But we got through it, and today's the day we signed the final papers. Now our bookshelves are slowly emptying (so many books!), I am gathering more boxes, and we may move as soon as this weekend.

(This is also why it's been a bit silent around here. First I was discouraged, then I was busy.)

We're gonna need a lot more boxes for all those books!

We had our walk-through for the new house yesterday. I hadn't been in it for more than a month. It's a little weird, the way "home" is building up around this place and yet ... "home" is still this apartment. Keith and I have lived here since getting married; Michael's been here his whole life. It will be weird to see our furniture in another place, along with all our other things, because they feel like they belong here.

I wanted to take pictures of all the rooms before packing, but instead found myself capturing corners, little places and gatherings of the things that hold meaning for our family. The owl cookie jar, a gift Keith gave me last birthday, sitting next to the plants on the kitchen counter; the kitchen Madonna standing amidst the teacups on the shelf above the sink; a sunny corner of our back porch where the rosemary plant sits by the fire escape.

I feel that being a homemaker can be such a challenge. We are called to keep our eyes on the next life, and yet as homemakers--wives and mothers--we are called to make that vision present in this life for our families, and we do that using tangible things. A home is so much more than the material, but the material matters. Material things communicate and make possible the rhythm of our life.

I know how we live here. I don't know what that looks like for our new home yet. So while I can picture cooking in the kitchen or the boys playing in the backyard, I still have trouble picturing the material aspects of "home" in the new house--our couches, my teacup collection, the kitchen Madonna near the sink. But I know that when we move and the Madonna is in her place, and owl cookie jar somewhere on the counter, they will soon feel like they belong there; that "home" will continue to spread over this house as it has already begun, and then slowly grow into it, sinking down roots, accumulating meaning and stories and love.

Soon Michael will wake up and we'll head over to the new place to do some cleaning, so maybe I will have pictures for you soon. :) In the meantime, have a Michael:

Making Way

I am blogging from a new (to me; definitely not new-new) laptop because mine decided not to recognize its power cable anymore. The one I'm using now is my husband's old computer (and it has its own issues ...), which means it's Linux, which means I only got to use my shiny new Windows Live Writer once. Sigh. I have had so much trouble with the pictures in this post, so if any of the formatting is weird, I apologize.

If all goes well (say a prayer for us that it does!), we are closing on our new house two weeks from tomorrow. Have I started packing? No. But. I have started sorting through things in an attempt to prune and organize them, a sort of making way for packing. Lately I've tackled my crafting supplies.

This is the kind of thing it's kind of difficult to do when Michael's awake, but we manage. Until he gets mad because I won't let him dump all the buttons out of my new button box.

Or mad because I put the lid back on this lovely little sewing tin I got for a dollar at an estate sale, contents included.

(Button box on the left)

I love how this is full of little bits and bobs of the previous owner's work, including that crocheted lace. Unfortunately everything has a musty smell to it; does anyone know how to get that out?

I've also been going through my Grandmom's crewel and embroidery kits, I still need to go through some fabric I have tucked away (not much), and then, there's the yarn. Oh yes, the yarn. Would you like to see it?

Here is my yarn shelf:

But it is kind of deceptive. Only the prettiest yarns get to live on the shelf (and yes, there is a lot of Tosh there). There are various cardboard boxes and a canvas grocery bag that hold the rest (along with various WIPs). So here it all is spread out on the bed.

Toddler included for size comparison. ;) 

Colors make me happy :)

]Actually, it's not as "bad" as I thought it would be, if by "bad" you (who I presume would be a non-knitter) mean "having too much yarn." Especially considering that half of that yarn is from Knit Picks. Much of the nice yarn is destined for specific projects; much of the less-nice yarn is either left over from something or else was bought before I really knew what I was doing in terms of stash enhancement. ;) 

The top half is arranged according to weight, from worsted through lace, except the top right corner which has crochet thread. Then the middle is all Knit Picks yarn. And yes, most of it is varying shades of teal, because I bought it to knit flowers for our wedding. At the bottom, from left to right, are a few skeins of crappy acrylic (and no, it is not a coincidence that that's the corner where Michael is sitting), balls of leftovers, some miniskeins destined for hexipuffs, and balls of handspun from my mom. 

Michael was pretty happy the whole time. Mama was a little stressed, since just beyond the Knit Picks yarn was the Very Nice yarn that Michael was not allowed to touch and yet found very attractive. Then it was time to put the yarn away, and he was none too pleased. It ended with him angry-crying outside the bedroom door, which I closed until I could find a better time to put things away when he wasn't looking. Not even my offer to play trains with him made up for it. 

But now, at least, things are a little more organized. Next up: Keith's art supplies ... maybe. It's pretty scary in that corner.