Moving Parts

There is only about one hour of restful, quiet time in our household: the time between the boys' bedtime and when Mattias and I get ready for bed.  That hour is most often spent keeping up with the business of life; paying bills, answering emails, or catching up on work unfinished during our work day. But many evenings we find ourselves too tired to do anything useful, so we drink wine, talk, and catch up on our favorite TV shows. Our household feels like a machine of many moving parts.

The boys with Todd, the foster kitten

And like most machines with moving parts, it's prone to frequent breakdowns and needs constant repair.  With two kids life felt do-able, manageable even.  I kept up my appearances, knew what I was cooking for dinner most nights, and even had a little time for ambitious craft projects.  With three kids I am more in the business of damage control, and actual physical containment.

Pro tip #1: repurpose those Amazon.com and Diapers.com boxes to create a jail cell for your active baby. Pro tip #2: Bath tubs with sliding shower doors double as containment facilities for multiple children.

This past Thanksgiving was our first Thanksgiving in CA together, with both sides of our family.  We also had the pleasure of dog sitting our pal, Lucy, whose only allegiance is to food.  Since Anders loves to throw food on the floor, he had himself a worshipper.

We spent much of the long weekend outdoors in t-shirts.  No chill in the air, or need for burning wood in the fireplace, it didn't really feel like the holidays were upon us.  We met both the Harris and Cody families at Rancho San Antonio Open Space Reserve in Cupertino.  A one mile hike led to a working farm with animals, where we picnicked together.

The following day we went to Sunol Regional Wilderness.  We were thrilled to see hundreds of wild turkeys roaming around, along with grazing cattle. While the landscape lacks the vibrant color of the forests back East, it is beautiful in its simplicity.

Shortly after returning to SF I kicked into full-on-Christmas-crazy mode.  That meant putting up all the Christmas decorations and baking a double batch of pepparkakor.  How do I have time you ask?  I don't.  But there will be Christmas merry making damn it, even if it makes everyone unhappy.

Even with all the moving parts and self imposed holiday craziness, the more relaxed members of the family find a way slow things down.  They remind me to drink my coffee while it's hot and stay in my pajamas.

It's not so much stalling the machine, as it is recharging the battery.