way back in the third week in Advent i posted that our house was officially on the market. and here we are, all the way into the fourth week in Lent. i can finally say that we have sold our house! even though the past 3 weeks have been a rollercoaster of ups and downs waiting for an offer to come in (it came in three weeks ago), waiting for the inspection (2 weeks ago), waiting to hear from the buyers what they wanted us to do (that came last week) and finally, this past weekend, we know that they’re officially buying with us having to do minimal work to the house. whew.

finally. i can share with you a description of our new home. the home we’ve been planning to raise our three (maybe more?) children in at least until they come home from college, and hopefully until kenny and i move into the st. barnabas retirement village in our golden years.

6 acres of grass and trees. yes, it’s a lot of mowing and we’ll be investing in tractor/mower of sorts. the home is just over 100 years old and although it’s been updated throughout, it still needs just a few touches to make it our own – mostly paint, so it’s going to be easy to move right on in. kenny and i are eagereagereager to get our hands in the dirt and start on a vegetable garden, re-cultivate the already-existing raspberry bushes, and begin planting all that english lavender i’ve been dreaming about (inspired by walking up to ellen’s front door every monday in the spring/summer/early fall). we have a barn (you can see it if you enlarge the third picture) and we plan on getting chickens either this spring or next. kenny is researching beekeeping for our very own honey and honeybees will be good for our garden. i can’t wait to learn to can (or “put up”) this harvest season.

and we’re having a baby in june…we’re going to be very busy!

we can’t wait to have visitors and overnight friends. we are already talking about overnight camping and pigroasts and hayrides. please come for a country visit! i am eager to feed you good, fresh food.

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since my mom asked for pictures from last night’s post (i’m hoping it was pictures of sawyer’s new haircut, and not the bathtub incident), i pulled a few from this week and took one this morning.

also, heather mentioned in a comment below about using clippers on her two-year-old’s hair. heather, i would LOVE to use clippers. i think it might be easier, and i’m not opposed to shorter haircuts either. but kenny has the aversion to clippers simply from experience. he grew up one of four boys who all got their hair cut with clippers once every few months by their dad. he thinks the clippers made his hair wire-like. that, and by the time it was the third or fourth boy’s turn, the clippers were very hot, and one small movement led to a burn on the scalp.

we’ve also used bribery and reward. we put them in front of their favorite videos, give them M&Ms and once they hear that first “clip” it’s all screams. we’ve given them the comb to play with and brush their hair with. it’s the scissors that freak them out. i guess it’s just something we have to outgrow. eventually.

our friends amy and roger have a 3 month old son, owen, who spent a few hours with us this week so amy and roger could have uninterupted conversation for 2 hours straight. we love having “baby owen” hang out with us. rowan likes to sit in his bouncy seat and ask over and over when baby owen will be arriving. sawyer likes to crouch down next to him and point very near to his eyes and say, “baby!” rowan discovered holding him this past week, and now he associates the pillow they’re leaning on in these pictures with “holding baby owen.”
note sawyer’s very long (very “euro”) hair:
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this morning, kenny gave the boys whistles (rowan is actually playing his uncle andrew’s recorder) and this was a shot i snapped of them playing and dancing at the same time. it’s our st. patty’s day tribute. note sawyer’s shorter do:
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kenny and i just spent 20 minutes wrestling and pinning down sawyer so we could cut his hair. why don’t you read about the horrors of cutting your toddler’s hair in all these parenting books? are we the only ones who have a screaming, writhing child once we get out the scissors and comb? do we have special children who actually have nerves in each of their hairs that make haircutting painful?

rowan is the same way. it’s impossible to cut his hair. he screams. i hold his head still. kenny cuts. snot, tears, and bits of hair are flying and this makes said toddler even more irate.

when is the golden age where they just don’t mind haircuts?

my mom has a picture of my older brother’s first haircut. he must have been around a year old. he was in a barber chair (rowan hit the last barber we took him to…before we even put him in the chair) with an old man barber standing behind him. there was a “before” and “after” picture. i think a lollipop may have been in the after picture. but no screaming, writhing child.

please help us with your brilliant haircutting suggestions.

after the haircut, we put both boys in the tub for their bath. kenny does baths while i usually clean up dinner dishes, or lounge about with my bon-bons (just kidding). tonight, i was on the computer when i heard kenny yell, “ahhhh…shark in the water!” i have no idea how i instinctively knew what he was talking about, but the phrase just oozes dread.

nobody wants to be in the water with a shark. or a turd.

last summer, i discovered boba teas. fortunately it was just when they were hitting it big in pittsburgh-area asian restaurants, so i had a lot of places to find them.

a “boba”, or “bubble tea”, or “pearl tapioca drink” is a flavored tea or fruit drink that is served with a big fat straw. the “bubbles” or “boba” or “pearl tapiocas” are soft, larger-than-tapioca-pudding-tapioca, black spheres that you suck through the straw, and then chew on (like really soft licorice). kenny describes drinking a boba tea as “disturbing.” he hasn’t connnected with his feminine side yet.

in my humble opinion, the best place to get them is at Lulu’s Noodles in Oakland. a close second is The Rose Tea Cafe in Squirrel Hill. and recently, i really liked the one i got from the Orient Express, also in Oakland.

i drank so many of them last summer that it was very odd to me in late september when i was sipping one that made me queasy. like i’m-about-to-hurl queasy. then i found out i was pregnant, and i couldn’t stomach the thought of a boba drink for the past 6 or so months. finally, last week, i stopped into the Rose Tea Cafe and ordered one. I was so out of practice. I forgot which ones I loved and which ones to avoid. I bought a “honey tea” which is essentially an iced tea with boba. blech. half way through the drink i realized it was the milk teas that i like and not the regular black teas on ice.

so then kenny stopped on his way home from work yesterday and brought me home my favorite almond milk tea boba. it was heaven. and apparently quite embarassing to him. he covered it up with a to-go menu while he was on the bus, and informed a passer-by that it was “for his wife and NOT, absolutely NOT for him.” again…that feminine side thing he hasn’t connected with yet.

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he bought me a flute for my birthday! it arrived last night at 7:30 by FedEx, and it’s beautiful.

i had been lamenting the fact that i sold my old flute several years ago. i played from 4th grade all the way through 12th grade and admittedly, never became really good at it. i wasn’t challenged by the band teachers in school (i didn’t take private lessons) nor did i really care about challenging myself (i was more obsessed with “fitting in” than learning in junior high and high school [another thing i guess i lament]).

and kenny, being the natural musician he is, has been playing piano, banjo, accordian (another ebay purchase), low D and high D whistle and the uillean pipe chanter for a while now and the boys have their fun percussion instruments, i needed something to play along with them. and “chop sticks” and “heart and soul” on the piano get really old, really fast.

i can still play the B-flat scale!

tonight was the third dinner out for me in a row as well (what a gift!). mom took me out monday night with some friends to the “church brew works” and treated me…kenny suggested we go out for thai last night…and tonight we shared dinner with our church for a lenten course that is taking place each wednesday in lent. i’m a bit afraid that i won’t know how to make dinner again tomorrow night!

here’s an obvious statement: when two people become friends or spouses, they influence and introduce each other to certain things, habits, or tastes. i’m thinking mainly these days about how we influence our children’s tastes and preferences and how they make their own (or what they’re born with).

i now watch football on sunday afternoons, which was unheard of before i met kenny. although he’s not a sports kind of guy, he enjoys football and golf. i don’t understand the golf thing yet, but i get why he likes football. i can appreciate musical theatre music more now, and break away from the “singer-songwriter” genre every now and then.

kenny, on the other hand, eats breakfast. he never really did before he met me. in fact, breakfast is sometimes one of our biggest meals of the day. and it always includes coffee (his influence). he actually enjoys a few martin sexton songs, and puts cream in his black tea (or actually drinks tea now).

but there are certain things that we will never change. i will never enjoy a “maple nut goodie” (old people candy) the way kenny does. he eats them on “special occassions” because apparently they’re the candy of the gods, or something. he will never put ketchup on his eggs. i love ketchup on a fried egg-on-toast sandwich. but he’ll eat it on his macaroni and cheese. but not on his hash browns OR french fries (mayo on his fries. blech. at least we agree on malt vinegar).

we often compete over which food or condiment rowan or sawyer will prefer. rowan didn’t touch his eggs the other day until i put ketchup on the plate. i win. sawyer didn’t eat oatmeal until kenny added a little salt to it. he wins. it goes on and on. so far, rowan and kenny seem to be more similar in their preferences, and sawyer and i match up more often. i wonder which direction the third boy will tip the scales? for each pregnancy, there is a 4 week period where i crave nothing but cheerios. i can literally eat 2 bowls a day (as a snack). kenny thinks i’m influencing the baby’s tastes by eating so much of what i prefer (he hate cheerios). but they still come out having their own preferences eventually.

i teased kenny the other day because he loves to get the boys wrestling. i told him that boys don’t naturally wrestle. they learn it from their dads who teach them to wrestle at such a young age because they can’t wait until their sons can wrestle. it’s such a guy thing.

these have nothing to do with my bread-making-in-Lent, but they’re just fun photos from dinner this evening. kenny made his famous (well, it’s famous now since we all like it!) pizza crust and we all got our own mini pizzas to roll out and bake. the boys love it. emma is my mother’s helper and the boys love her, too.
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when we were all sick a month ago (was it really that long ago already?), sawyer’s normal active personality took a back seat to his lethargy. kenny took advantage of it and posed him in some ragdoll-like positions. normally, he just doesn’t sit still long enough to get his photo taken, and these four are only a quarter of the ones kenny actually got.
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and i had to post a picture of some amazing cinnamon raisin bread I made a few weeks ago (yes, I’m bragging…it was that good. although i’ll add double the raisins next time).
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a little over a year ago, i wrote this post about Shrove Tuesday, or the Beginning Of Lent. It was written on February 8th – almost three weeks earlier than this year. today is Shrove Tuesday and we decided to join the masses in the parish hall to eat pancakes and sausage.

and so here we are in Lent again. i recently read this description of Lent, which i like:

“Lent is a time of discipline and preparation. Lenten disciplines are those which we undertake for a journey. Lent has been likened to a journey, with our ears attuned and our bodies leaning toward the wonder of the Easter announcement: Christ is risen!”

the housegroup that kenny and i belong to (which rocks, by the way) has taken a break from regularly scheduled programming to discuss the desires that the majority of us have in keeping a Lenten discipline (and holding to it even after Lent, and throughout the year). some of us are gathering for an early morning read-through of morning prayer. some are meeting on fridays for a time of more Book of Common Prayer reading. some are meeting for dinner to discuss how the week of disciplining is going (getting up extra early when it’s cold outside, and fasting through lunch once a week is not easy).

i decided last week to do something a little different this year. i’m baking bread as a Lenten discipline (this is news to kenny and I’m sure he’s not upset about this decision). i know it sounds silly that someone who enjoys making bread – the mixing and (especially) the kneading and the rising and the baking of it all – has chosen it for a Lenten discipline. i may like it, but it’s hard to do it on a regular, weekly, basis for me. i’m not too spry on my toes anymore (thanks to the in-utero son), and i prefer sleep over baking these days. and my ex-utero sons take up the remainder of my spare time. but while i was kneading a recipe for 4 loaves of white bread last weekend (which didn’t turn out so well), i realized that there is something to this “art of bread-baking” that can put you into a meditative state. my mind was working a hundred miles an hour while i kneaded (and kneaded and kneaded) this large amount of dough, and i realized that i could use this time for prayer and meditation. two things which are sadly missing from my day-to-day life. if i commit to make bread even two times a week, that’s two times (more than usual) during the week that i can’t do anything else but knead/think/pray.

i plan to give most of the bread away. that adds to the discipline part. however, i think that giving it away can include giving it to husband and children and not eating it myself.