One of our less brilliantly successful forays into attachment parenting was The Family Bed. When Axa was born, we had a queen-sized mattress on box springs on the floor. Unfortunately, it was Tony’s old bed from when he was growing up, and he still had his old habit of sleeping diagonally on it. That technically still left half of the space on the bed open, but it was not very usable space, since it was bisected by him. I got my revenge when I was pregnant, because I slept on the wall side and rolled my very pregnant body right over him every time I needed to go to the bathroom (which at eight months pregnant was pretty often).… Read more
family
A Fossilized Birthday
Last Tuesday was Axa’s 8th birthday. We spent the morning at the Daytona Museum of Arts and Sciences. They had quite an interesting mishmash of exhibits, including a room devoted entirely to art depicting space flight, and another of Spanish conquistador weapons.
But Axa’s favorite, and the reason we went to the museum on her birthday (other than the fact that it was the first Tuesday of the month, and free to Volusia County residents) was the beautifully preserved fossil skeleton of a giant ground sloth.
On the way home from the museum, we finally had the experience we’ve been waiting for since we moved to Florida: an encounter with wild alligators!… Read more
The Familia Family’s Very Late Christmas Letter
I realized that not all of my faithful blog readers are also Facebook friends or email connections. So lest you miss the delight of receiving our family Christmas letter, here it is, reproduced in full (and for those of you who’ve already read it twice and are wondering when I’m going to stop posting it . . . um, sorry):
Dear Family, Friends, and Random People Whose Emails May Have Been Accidentally Added to our Mailing List and are Thus Subjected to the Annual Honor of a Summary of our Life,
It seems like 2012 was an unusually tranquil year. Maybe it’s because we only moved once, and it wasn’t even internationally, just cross-country.
New Year’s Eve in the Hot Tub
This year my parents planned a gala Bringhurst family reunion over New Year’s. Florida narrowly missed being the gathering place, but was eventually superseded by Utah. I’m pretty sure people didn’t take the weather into account when they decided to meet in Utah in the middle of the winter, but three out of five siblings living there ended up being critical mass. And since my kids adore a good plane flight, it worked out great for us too.
My parents rented a huge house near Salt Lake City, and the snowy scene was undeniably beautiful.
Raj, of course, thought that the best thing to do after two years of not seeing snow was to taste it.… Read more
A Peek into the Elves’ Sweatshop
So, will the airline count an over-sized shopping bag stuffed with tiny Christmas presents as a “personal item”? I’m going to say yes, because this stuff is not going to fit in our carry-on bags, at least if we want to bring clothes too.
Yes, I know that wrapped gifts are on the soft list of “Things to Not Bring on an Airplane.” As in, they are technically allowed but likely to cause delays, headaches, and tearing-of-hair in the security line. But what can I say? The children have been busily working away at them since Thanksgiving.
Every day I could count on having a few mysterious hours of silence, as they emerged from their rooms only in search of more scotch tape, construction paper, pipe cleaners, and other sundries.… Read more
Christmas Tree: Before
Raj got sick right after Thanksgiving, and the rest of us soon followed. I was the last to succumb, and last Tuesday I spent the entire day in bed. It’s the first time I’ve been that sick in quite a while, and I was amazed at how much my kids had grown up. They got themselves lunch. They brought me water and soda crackers. They got themselves dinner, and brought me some dinner in bed too. They fed my pets. And they mediated their own disputes. Somewhere along the line it’s happened: I am no longer parenting toddlers! They’re not quite adults yet, but they’re competent little people with real skillz.… Read more
Thanksgiving Menu – Florida
It’s that time of year when I have an excuse to get the kitchen really messy. We have a family tradition of spending the whole of Thanksgiving Day cooking together. For normal everyday cooking I tend to make the same 20-or-so recipes over and over, although every time we move I change things up to reflect which ingredients are cheap and easy to find where we live. But for Thanksgiving, I like to try new recipes every year.
I’ve come a long way from our first Thanksgiving as a little family, in which my freshman sister Hannah arrived just in time to prevent me from sticking the turkey in the oven completely unseasoned and with the giblets still inside their plastic bag in one of the mysterious cavities.… Read more
Sugarmoon
Yes, I’m in love. It’s hard to imagine a time when Merry and Pippin didn’t belong to our family. I carry them nearly everywhere with me, snuggled and sleeping in what looks to the uninitiated like an innocent little purse. In the evenings, Tony and I (and sometimes Axa) go out on the back porch and watch them climbing up and down the screens.
When we first got them, I would spend a couple of hours every night in a tent with them. They are so inquisitive and hyperactive that in the enclosed space they couldn’t help running all over me, and taking little flying leaps into my hair.… Read more
Junior Fashion Blog
Because I’m such a successful fashion blogger (not!), it doesn’t surprise me a bit that my daughter likes fashion too. Actually, I admit that she’s already way more fashionable than I’ve ever been. At least I can take credit for her first full year of fashion, though. Here she is ready to party on her first birthday:
That was more or less my last hurrah, since at about 18 months, her favorite phrase suddenly became “do it myself!” As in, “do it myself put on panties” (even though she could never figure out which way was up, and the panties invariably ended up being worn with both legs through one side, resulting in a lot of very stretched-out panties).… Read more
Summer Camp
For the past several months since we found out about it, Axa has been looking forward with great anticipation to Nature Camp at our local Environmental Center. And yesterday, the big day finally arrived. She’d had her backpack all packed up for days, and set out her clothes the night before. She even asked me what time she should turn off her light and go to sleep, which is a first for my little girl who (like her mother before her) often stays up reading until all hours of the night. Ah, the luxuries of homeschooling.
Yesterday as I drove her to the Lyonia Environmental Center, I reflected that perhaps this is a little bit how parents must feel when they take their child to school for the first time.… Read more