Word for the Year

One of the in vogue topics for bloggers during the turnover of the year is to reflect on the working out of their theme word from the previous year and choose a new one. I like this idea; it reminds me of the way that we choose an ornament each year based on something meaningful from the events or trends of that year. What is harder for me to grasp is how a theme word can be chosen in advance. Maybe because it feels like I've been living in the just-getting-by stage of life for so long and planning ahead for a vision for the year just hasn't been something that I've been able to think about. I also have this irrational belief that there will be life changing surprises in every year (like there have been in the last few) so it is better not to set my heart on my year going a certain way or being able to meet particular goals.
As I've thought about it a little more, I realized that there is another way to look at it. There could be something to focus on that transcends life events and takes the state of my heart more into account than trying to control what happens in my life.
Looking back the word for last year was obvious and a little amusing as we experienced Stretching in many ways, both literal and figurative. My body grew and stretched with my third pregnancy, our family grew by one in our nuclear family and one in my family of origin (with a little extra surprise tossed in at the end of the year with the fullness due in August). We were stretched relationally as our children grew and our marriage dynamics shifted, our church life changed, new opportunities arose and the question of how little sleep you can really survive on was tested to its limits. We commemorated that with a rubber band ball as our Christmas ornament this year.
We do have some priorities for this year. Like 2012, we are hoping to have an off year for babies. This gives us an opportunity to address some of the lingering house projects, look into education and enrichment activities for the older kids, have a few months of largely uninterrupted sleep, finish moving in (now that we have been here for almost two years) and so on. One of the consequences of that stretching has been going into crisis survival mode for too long between Jonathan and me. We are ready to remind ourselves of what it means to grow in our marriage. Another benefit of moving out of crisis mode is finally setting up a viable housekeeping system so that things meet a minimum standard of decency most of the time and I am able to attempt a few of the creative projects that so delight my heart. I have loved being part of BSF over the last couple of years but there is so much more that we could do as a family to grow closer to God.
The word that came to mind as I thought about all of these things is Refresh. When you refresh something, you aren't starting with something new. You are taking something that has been there, sometimes for a while, and making it new and clean and better while still retaining the essential character. Having a fresh attempt at something that has been tried before but maybe had to be set aside or just didn't go that well in the first place.
This isn't really a year of starting brand new things for us, we hope, but of finishing, going back to things that we started but got sidetracked from, moving forward from what we have and making it what it should be. We moved in, mostly, but there are a few areas that still struggle with how they are set up or were never finished at all (office, I'm looking at you) and our lives are just enough different with a preschooler, a toddler and another baby that some reevaluation is called for. Now that Inessa is going to bed more or less at the same time as the other kids, what will that mean for time that Jonathan and I could spend together? Babysitting is still a challenge but, like many families, we need to learn how to date without leaving the house. There are so many things that Ellie is ready to learn that require more planning. I love the idea of a card file system for managing chores and teaching the kids how to help and I did have one set up for my old household. But now I have double the square footage and two more children and it just needs to be refreshed for how life looks now. Gardening is one of my soul refreshments and, while I still have a little one who will probably eat any yard debris that she can get her hands on, I also hope that some of the time that we spend outside over the spring, summer and fall can go into just enough fresh veggies for snacking and salads this year.
This sounds ridiculously ambitious in some ways but these are all goals that I hope to revisit this year. Sometimes refresh means resting and sometimes it means doing something with the rest that you are getting along the way. I hope that this year will be both of those things.

Knocking off and Knocking out

When you have just a little bit of fabric and just a little bit of time, what do you do?

Look at cute dress and shirt tutorials online and make your own knockoff version of a simple pattern, obviously.

I may have bought this fabric simply for the delightful exuberance of the pattern since I don't remember if I had had something specific in mind. There was just enough to make a shirt for my tall little girl. It is lined in a white linen/cotton blend.

It is a little snug, which is what happens when you are making up a pattern and have limited fabric but it will also be a darling summer dress for Inessa next summer. I can just picture her toddling around in it.

Button from Grandma Sherri's stash that she generously passed along to me. Not only do the kids love playing with them, often there is just the right button or two to finish off a project.

Purple Girl

Despite the reality of hand me downs from big sister, I hoped to have a few things that Nessie could look back on as uniquely hers. To differentiate, I've been inclined to go for things that are purple rather than pink even though she looks just as lovely in pink as Ellie did.

Some time ago, I was given a bag of yarn that included a couple of skeins of purple wool, almost a lilac color. It seemed the perfect yarn for the first handknit for Nessie. Given my current state of continual interruptions, a lace knit didn't seem feasible so cables it was.

Nessie's Antler Cardigan:

These buttons have been in my stash at least since we moved from our old house. I'm so pleased that there were enough to use here. I'm not particularly happy with how the placket turned out but you learn something with every project, right?

Summer Dancing Bird

 When a three year old dresses herself in character, you have to wonder how colorful she is on the inside too.

"I'm flying!"

This is my view a lot of the time.

For the record, that is butterfly shirt, pants, swimsuit, sash, cape, wings, necklace and rainbow headband. Fully decked out!

A 3-year-olds eye view

We took a trip to Seattle Children's for blood draws for Elanor and Peter. While we were waiting, Ellie had some fun figuring out how to take pictures.

Litter brother is on my level:

 But Daddy is bending down to fit in the view:

First selfie:

Mommy is a blur--or is it in a blur? I'm not so sure which:

Peter gets the phone:

Summering

Sisters:

The glory of spaghetti face:

"Beez, beez, beez give me the camera, mommy!"

Outgrowing the tricycle:

Floating in the breeze:

Practicing for Auntie Dodo's wedding:

Cuddle time:

Skipping the sunburn at the park:

Snuggler:

What's in a Name

We have gotten a lot of questions, quite justifiably, about how we came up with Inessa's name. After all, hardly anyone has heard of it.

We started out with a set of criteria that we use for naming all of the kids.
1. interesting, preferably spiritually oriented meaning
2. alliterative first and middle names
3. classic or traditional but not particularly common; naming statistics over the last 100 years gets consulted frequently
4. fits in reasonably well with the other kids' names
5. contains a nature reference that may be somewhat obscure; Elanor is a flower from LOTR and Peter means rock
6. doesn't sound too weird with our last name; everyone else's last name sounds so much easier to match than one's own--but they feel exactly the same way.
7. Minimal unfortunate nicknames. This is impossible to avoid entirely of course--someone will always think of something.

Jonathan starts connecting with the baby by browsing through name lists pretty much as soon as we know that we are expecting. I prefer to wait until we know the gender to start narrowing things down. So around the beginning of January, we were both on the hunt.  Irene had been on our short list of girls' names for Elanor because Jonathan liked the meaning (peace or peaceful) and I had liked it ever since reading George MacDonald's Princess and Curdie as a child. We went through some lists to find another name starting with I to match it, coming up with some real gems like Iphigenia, Ingeborg and the oh, so popular, Isabella. We were starting to wonder if either Irene wasn't a good choice or we would have to drop one of our criterion.
When I came across Inessa, I was initially hesitant because I had never heard it before--something that Jonathan has had trouble accepting in the past. However, the sound was lovely and the meaning was interesting--it is the Slavic variant of Agnes, which means pure or chaste. More people have heard of Inez or Ines which is the Spanish version. Jonathan liked it so we rolled Irene Inessa around in our mouths and ears for a few days. After a while, it occurred to us to switch the names and we both decided that we liked the sound of Inessa better as the first name.
In the final part of the evaluation process, we did a search for Inessa to check to make sure that there weren't any terribly unpleasant associations or people with that name. When first item that came up was a link for a butterfly entomology site, we discovered that Inessa is a genus of skipper butterflies--a perfect way to fit in that nature reference and one last confirmation that this was the right name for her.
We planned to call her Nessie but didn't think of Miss Loch Ness Monster until after she was born and the paperwork submitted but I don't think that we would have changed our minds at that point anyway.

And after all that, Ellie insists on calling her Nugget.

Peanut and Nugget