PAGE CXVI

last tuesday, our church got the band, page cxvi, to share a concert at The 400 building and it was wonderful. they are a band/project/trio whose goal it is to revive some of the lyrics of hymns, making it more accessible to the modern ear, and sing and play the heck out of them. it was rest for my soul. you can check them out here.  they have some youtube videos on their site, but also make sure to check out their new 'lullabies' album...
i love it.

you know what else i love? c.s. lewis' chronicles of narnia. 

it relates because the name, page cxvi, comes from a reference to page 116 of their copy of 'the magician's nephew'. it is the passage that describes aslan singing narnia into existence: 

“In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.” 

OATMEAL DON'T GOTTA BE SWEET

recently, i discovered that YOU DON'T HAVE TO EAT OATMEAL SWEET!

if savory oatmeal sounds strange to you at first, it's understandable. but know this, it works. it works well. 

this is my favorite breakfast these days (and sometimes its dinner).

using some chicken stock helps boost up the flavor,

 and something about the texture of the oatmeal, and the salt + cheese + egg combo on the top makes this hearty and delicious.

ingredients:
2 c. rolled oats
1 c. of water + 1/4 c. of chicken stock
salt & pepper
shredded parmesan cheese
olive oil fried egg
cut up scallions or green onions

directions:
1. cook oatmeal in water and chicken stock for 5-10 minutes, until oatmeal is cooked.
2. heat up some olive oil, fry up an egg.
3. place egg on a heapful of oatmeal, sprinkle salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese over egg and oatmeal, top it off with some scallions.

so easy, so good.

MODERN MONOCHROME

dark wall + wood + copper = i could look at this photo all day.

from house & garden

BRUNCH, SCENTSY AND BABIES

the remnants of a harvest brunch

I love brunch.

 Breakfast and breakfast foods are my most favorite meal of the day, so the idea of an elongated meal that happens mid-morning because you got to sleep in that morning and includes the possibility of spiked drinks, makes me a fan. If I have a good reason to throw a brunch, I’m probably gonna do it. 

My sis-in-law has recently took up the side gig of being a scentsy consultant, and when she said she’d come up to share the scentsy love at a home party, I decided brunch needed to be involved. We ate, we sniffed (scentsy products), and we exclaimed over babies. My friend Andrea brought over her little one, Max, who happens to be Sloane’s buddy at daycare.There’s something about two little lumps sitting next to one another with their chub hands reaching and grabbing for each other that makes me giddy.  

i love the light that comes through that window/door

amy doing her thang

emily and diane with max & sloane

chillin'

and diane and addie got sloane this adorable hat from peru. it has llamas on it!

also, if you want to pick up some goods 

- scents & warmers that also act as decorative pieces - 

for your home, do it here.
this one is my favorite, this and this one is also really cute

AFTERNOON WITH PAPA

on sunday afternoon i had to run a few errands so sloane and ken had the afternoon to themselves. 

while i was out, i got the following picture messages. these are pretty much the best.

1. 'ready for a sunday afternoon stroll'

2. no caption..... (yes, that's sloane, in the garage)

3. 'attempted to put on the bjorn by myself...success!'

4.  andwhat i found when i got home: pleased papa, sleeping baby

FIVE THINGS

 spotted: handsome mustached husband rocking the bjorn with baby inside.

 close up: strawberry-topped baby snuggled into papa's chest

 what last saturday looked like: we took turns sleeping with sloane all day

what today looked like: haven't-showered-for-a-couple-of-days hair

victory: scored a sweater for sloane for 99 cents

HOT NOODLES

i’m dragging this week. it happens. there’s nothing wrong and Sloane has been sleeping so much better (double celebratory fist pump to the heavens), but i feel somewhat muted, and have been feeling a little bit like i sobbed for hours the night before (i haven’t) – u know that drained feeling where you also feel like your face is puffy...? mayhaps it’s fluctuating hormones, maybe it’s wanting to spend the day with S. instead of being at work, maybe it’s want of sleep, but most likely it's the colder weather. or a combination of all the above. i'm not complaining, i'm just telling it like it is. and i'm also serving up some context for this super easy noodle recipe that i want to share.

a shout out to my mother-in-law who taught me how to put this little number together. it's perfect for cold days, especially after a long day of work, when the last thing you want to do is slave over the stove. it's quick, hot, and fills you up in all the right places. we already had this for dinner twice this week. it was just that kind of week. 

hot noodles with pork and spinach, serves 2

i eyeball/taste-test everything as i go, so this is an approximation. also, it's super flexible... this recipe is not really a recipe, it's more like a suggestion. as long as you have some sort of broth + noodles + meat + vegetable combination, it works. 

ingredients: 2.5 cups of chicken broth, 2 cups of baby spinach (watercress also works really well), 1/2 cup of pickled vegetables (i found some at the asian market - if you can't find them, just use some onions), 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of sesame oil, 1 tablespoon of cornstarch, 2 tablespoons of minced garlic, olive oil, 1/3 lb of pork (chicken or beef could work too), noodles (i use asian noodles, but you could also use any kind of flat noodles, maybe linguine)

directions: 

1) boil water for noodles and cook them al dente

2) cut up pork into small pieces. combine soy sauce, sesame oil, corn starch and garlic together in a bowl. put the pieces of pork in the soy sauce mixture and set aside.

3) cook the pickled vegetables in some hot olive oil for one minute. set aside

4) heat up another tablespoon of sesame oil, and saute the pork in that until pork is cooked all the way through. combine pork and pickled vegetables together.

5) bring chicken broth to a boil. add spinach to the broth and let cook for one minute. 

6) put noodles in bowl, pour broth with spinach over the noodles, and top with vegetables and pork. 

enjoy and then go to bed early.

LISA CONGON'S 365 DAYS OF HAND LETTERING

i found this project really inspiring - i totally believe in the advice of 1) try, 2) be open, flexible and move on when necessary, and 3) find what you like and go with it - when attempting a creative endeavor. 

browse through her stuff, it's wonderful.

AN UPSIDE DOWN ODE TO SLEEP

This morning when I got to work K. called me to say he couldn’t find his car keys, so I checked my pockets and found them in there. Luckily he had a spare, and no one’s life was deterred, but after I got off the phone, I sat there, at work, unable to stop tears from leaking all over my face. Dammit! I thought, this is ruining my much-needed concealer strategically placed to hide the purple-patched indicators of how much sleep I didn’t get the night before.

Forgetting to leave the keys on the counter isn’t that big of a deal as an isolated event, but this is on top of a week where I’m feeling like I can’t catch my breath. Do you know what I’m talking about? And for some reason, this week, it’s forgetting to do the small but really important things of life that make me really mad at myself. Small but important like how this past weekend, when we were out of town, I locked my keys in the car and had no memory of doing so. It was embarrassing, and frustrating. And this all is eventually turning me into having characteristics of a person with OCD. I have to double or triple check everything, because either I can’t remember or even if I do remember, I think I might be wrong. So I do things like go downstairs after dinner has long been over to check the stove 2-3 times to make sure I did in fact turn it off, drive back into the garage after I’ve driven out to make sure I’ve turned the light off, look through my purse over and over again to confirm that I have keys, purse, phone. I mean, which is all fine. If that’s what I gotta do, that’s what I gotta do. But I try hard to keep this up and when I forget the littlest things, it makes me feel like a big fat giant failure. Go figure.

Can I blame this on being a new mom? Maybe. Can I blame it on the fact that my mind is constantly trying to maintain several lists in my head of things I have to get done for home, work, baby, friends, family, & myself, and sometimes things slip through the cracks? Probably. But so what? I’m so lucky in that almost (almost) everything that is on my to-do lists are things that I WANT to do. And they are all things I CAN do. I’d like to think I’m realistic about trying to achieve goals/dreams/balance. But the thing is, even the best-intentioned and able-bodied need sleep.

I’m not getting a lot of it. And while it’s amazing to me that I’m up and running these days, some days, like this week, I’m running on really low fuel. So if this post doesn’t make sense, you know why.

I got sick last week – which is rare for me– and it probably had something to do with my body not being able to fight off sickness as well due to lack of sleep. Sloane had been all over the place with her sleeping schedule last week, and by the end of the week, I was feeling it in my bones. Then we went out of town, and while it was a great weekend, I definitely didn’t get enough sleep during the weekend either and by the time this week was about to start I was already feeling a little burnt out. Earlier this week, Sloane went back to sleeping through the night for about 6 hours, and K. and I gave each other figurative high-fives and got all excited about having a couple more nights of 6 hours of sleep, but we got pumped a little too soon. Last night, the baby dragon was all in an uproar, for reasons unknown and even though I decided I should start letting her cry it out once in a while, her crying wasn’t letting me go back to sleep so I selfishly brought her into bed with us, which meant all of us were able to fall asleep. We’ll try again tonight. Some nights are definitely better than others.

You know how they say if you starve yourself your body will go into preservation mode and hoard the calories you do eat? Well, I’m finding that it does that for sleep as well. Even though I was getting an hour or two more of sleep each night, I found that I was even more tired than usual. My body was all, ‘Whoa whoa, are we doing this, getting sleep now? Let’s do it up!’

If I had to dish out advice for other new moms who were going to go back to work, it would be to make sure your babe will take the bottle. If it doesn't happen, you will still survive, and it'll all be fine. But it's one of those things that would help the transition a whole lot. The other advice I have to offer is to plan a lot and pray even more. Being diligent about planning and making lists really does help. Along with planning though, make sure you pray it out. It relieves the pressure, puts things into perspective, and you learn how to ask for help.

Boy this post is all over the place. Basically, I’m just writing my feelings. This is what I do. Some people eat their feelings, run their feelings, yell their feelings… I write my feelings. If you want the thesis of this post, it's that I'm tired.

If I squeeze my eyes shut and wish really really hard for time to stop, will it?

This morning, after that long night, I woke up, pumped, nursed and changed S., and then put her down on our bed next to K. while I got myself ready for work. And she followed me with her eyes, smiling big smiles at me the whole time. Love.

HAPPY HALLOWEEEEEN

i thought i would want to dress my baby up as an animal for her first halloween, 

'cause i'm kind of obsessed with babies dressed like animals

but then we remembered that we have a batman costume for rusty

(that's what he dresses up as every year), and so naturally....

ROBIN

she was such a good sport, especially with that mask

check her out - dressed up like a miniature superhero, straight chillin' 

(also, note the baby pumpkin, appropriately sized for baby human)

let me introduce, batman & robin, our very own (tiny) superheroes: 

FALL AT THE FARM

we went out of town this weekend (sloane’s first overnight trip!) and it was the most amount of good for seeing friends and new babies, but also just right for a trip to a farm on a bright grey fall afternoon. if you don’t know this about me already, i’m a sucker for almost any kind of event that happens outside especially if the weather is agreeable, so the outdoor fall celebration happening at cox farms is my totally my steez. yes, steez.

pumpkins, apples, kettle corn, barnyard animals, tiny tikes, corn maze, kitschy set-ups…it was a party for my eyeballs and i took a lot of photos, so I’ll share some with you here. we went there with our babies but didn’t end up taking too many pictures of them because they both ended up passing out. and maybe because i’m really tired right now but i feel like i have vague and sweet memories of falling asleep while being carried, you know, from when i was a baby. which is probably not a real memory, and more like a wish.
, 

is this tree half empty or half full

i spy...captain america!

it's like a pumpkin musuem

look at 'em 'kins shaped like swans!

got one

he is real suspicious of all the large pumpkins swinging around

anxious about you know what

piglets and their swirly tales

eyelash envy

bunnies and...abe lincoln?

i would like all these crates to take home

really is there anything pretier

rawr

exploring a corn maze

these stalks provide such great backdrop

with jaina - mamas and friends!

as we were leaving i noticed king kong waving us goodbye.

goodbye kong, goodbye..we had a great time!

BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB

hope ya'lls had a good weekend and that you are all properly prepared for frankenstorm if you're living in a place where that is predicted to hit. so far, nothing is happening over here, and believe you me i would much rather prefer no such freak hurricane to happen, but not going to deny that it would be real nice to have an excuse to stay at home from work for a day...such is life. you never get away from the snowdayy!! mentality of the yesteryears.

regardless, in the meanwhile, and therefore...

hunker down with some tunes, because these guys are good and i find myself constantly listening to them these days. here are three of their songs for you to check out.

the first video is 'always like this' from their first album, 'i had the blues but i shook them loose'.
 the second is 'dust on the ground' from their second album, 'flaws'.
and the last is 'shuffle' from their third album, 'a different kind of fix'.

PHOTOWALKIN' AND TALKIN'

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh friiiddaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!

and that's all i have to say about that.

last weekend, i met up with this super rad lady friend of mine to do walk the streets of carytown and put our cameras to use...i've been trying to practice with my dslr lately so i love any excuse to do so, especially if it means hanging with this friend on a beautiful fall day and roaming one of my favorite spots in the RVA. it was  great and laura and i are talking about a project we want to start together that i'm pretty excited about..stay tuned. and in the meanwhile, some photos from that day.  

laura photogging and stylin'

an urban waterfall

.. sloane got herself another giraffe!

he gave us a beautiful giraffe for $3

love the tambourine around his foot

check out the RVA stickers over the Lowes logo

Custer's last waistband and the cowboy prince -
he's adopted the life of a street peddler goes around selling the things he's made..including those clothes!

i'm into it..

and so is laura

hose