Dear Benjamin

I have seen a number of posts recently where blog "authors" format the post as a letter to their children.  It's a very sweet idea, and since much of the reason behind this blog is to document this stage of our lives for our children to read later, I'm going to follow suit.  Many of my posts lately have been about Projects and getting things done --- but all the while, we are enjoying a very sweet and active little boy --- who just turned THREE.  So, Benjamin, this post is for you!

Dear Benjamin,

A few weeks ago, you turned three years old!  What a big boy you are now!  Sorry that it has taken me a few weeks to put together your three-year old letter, but with a new baby sister in the house, you are getting many opportunities to practice being patient.  Before your sister arrived, you had become accustomed to your parents jumping at every request and noticing every little thing that you did.  I expected Katie's arrival to shake your world a bit, and I'm sure it has, but you are adjusting magnificently well.  And you are proving to actually have a good deal of patience for a three year old - something we didn't give you much opportunity to practice before.

So how do I sum up the past three years of your life?  That's a hard one.  You have enriched your father and me in so many ways, and you bring such a new layer of joy to our lives that seems to get deeper with each day that you grow and learn and develop into your own person.  Has the time flown by?  Sort of.  Those first days at home with you as a newborn were tough.  I cried a lot, worried a lot, and mourned the passing of our "carefree" days before baby.  While we fell in love with you, both your father and I had to go through a lot of growing pains to make room in our lives for a new member of our family.  You have nicely paved the road for a more carefree beginning for your sister, though, as now we know how much fun children can be --- and we can endure her evening screaming a little easier knowing what the fun we have ahead. :)

In some ways, it's hard to believe you are just three years old --- it seems that you have been part of our family forever!  To me, it actually does not seem like you were just my little baby yesterday --- I'm quite accustomed to my talkative, curious and sometimes-demanding son.  But as you continue to grow in your independence, I do sometimes wish to slow down time just a little bit --- as it makes me a little sad to think about reaching the day where you won't call out for "Mommy snuggle,"  where me or Daddy are no longer your favorite playmates, and where boo-boo's don't require a kiss.

Benjamin, your development amazes us every day --- you have a wonderful, joyful personality --- and you are so full of energy and enthusiasm for life.  Parenting you is certainly a wonderful experience.

So what are some of your favorite things now that you are three?  Well, you love all things physical --- jumping, bouncing, running - you name it.  You spend a lot of time in our backyard - sliding down our slip n' slide that Grandma Susan and Grandpa Howard gave you for your birthday, digging with your excavator in your sandbox, poking at our overgrown herbs with a dowel rod, throwing rocks and dirt at the fence.  We recently enrolled you in swim classes at the YMCA, and while you tolerate the class, you LOVE the pool time with Mommy or Daddy afterwards.  You especially like to dictate what we'll do next: "Now Mommy and Benjamin dunk, now just Benjamin dunk, now Benjamin sit on the side of the pool while Mommy dunk, now Benjamin jump to Mommy, now Benjamin swim by himself (which involves me letting go of you for a moment to allow you to sink just a little bit before pulling you back out of the water)."  It is so much fun to watch the simple joy of a three-year old boy enjoying moving his body and learning something new.  Soon we start an introductory gymnastics class, and I am eager to see how you will like this as well.

While you certainly have a great NEED to move, your attention and perseverance to inside work also amazes us.  You LOVE puzzles right now, and we spend most of our free time together doing one.  While you can easily do all your puzzles yourself, you prefer that Mommy or Daddy do them with you.  Daddy laughs at this trait in you, which you so obviously got from me.  While you look a lot like Daddy, your preference for company is very familiar to me.  At first, we were only allowed to watch you do your puzzles, but now as you are learning how to play with peers, you let us put a few pieces in as well.  You are learning your numbers (I believe the highest you count right now is to eleventeen), and are quite interested in learning how to spell words.  Every night you choose several of your magazines for us to read to you --- either Baby Bug or Animal Baby.  You have a couple of years worth of each of these magazines, and we read them so often, you have almost all of them memorized word-for-word!  You can now spell the years (2008, 2009, 2010) for the publications, as well as the titles.  It's adorable to watch you use these letters to spell other things as well.  Just yesterday, we had a box sitting in the kitchen, and you looked at the letters on the box (Diapers.com) and spelled "B-A-B-Y  B-U-G.  That spells Box!"

Now, while you are a delightful little boy, don't let me get you thinking that we aren't having some challenges in our efforts to parent you right now.  You are certainly three - full of opinions and desires - which don't always line up with ours.  Particularly when we're trying to get out the door!  You sometimes leave us at a loss as to how to re-act, so Daddy and I both recently re-read Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood, and you seem to be responding very well!  In fact, you like to use it on us "Mommy, do you want mint ice cream or chocolate ice cream for dessert?...Okay!" or "Mommy, you can eat one more bite of dinner, and then it's time to do puzzles."

Okay, sweet boy, your sister is up from her nap, so I'm going to end this letter now.  We just love you so much, and are so proud of the person you are becoming.  I'll try to write again soon!

Love,
Mommy

Blueberries!

Hi friends! This is Mark writing. Last Saturday, Benjamin and I had a killer time together that I thought would be fun to share here on the blog. We picked blueberries! Katherine and I did this way back when we were young and without kids - I think it was the summer of 2002 in Corvallis, OR. We both remember it being lots of fun and had hoped to go the last couple years. Our feeble efforts weren't helped by the fact that the previous two summers were excessively dry, enough to make for a paltry blueberry crop. The place we went, Moorhead's Blueberry Farm, offers updates on the state of the berries. We also have some friends who went and reported it was pretty dismal last year. But things are different this year - we got a few nice rains, and we have a three year old! It was a disgustingly hot day, and we didn't get there until about 10:30am, so the sun was fierce. But that didn't stop us from having a great time and coming home with some darn good eats. I loved this activity for a few different reasons:

1. Like most, we have a busy schedule, so it was precious to spend some quality time with Ben. His character is shining more every day, and it really is a joy to witness.
2. While we don't do it often enough, I really like the idea of buying locally grown food - it's fresher, supports the local economy, and is cultivated for flavor rather than transportability.
3. I think it's great for Ben to see that food comes from things like plants and animals, not just the grocery store.
4. We got some outstandingly delicious berries - noticeably better than the ones at Kroger.
5. $3.20 for two pounds of blueberries, $2.00 for snowcone afterward. Not bad for good food and good entertainment.

Ben had a ball. I had to spend a few minutes explaining that we wanted the blue ones, not the red ones. And at first he just wanted to eat them. (See the children's book Blueberries for Sal. Apparently this is normal.) They encourage sampling at the farm, so I ate a few too. But after putting them in the bucket for a while, I asked Ben if I could taste one of the ones he picked, and he replied, "No daddy, we have to save them for our pie." Shafted! We made a great team. He really put his small frame to use, climbing under the bushes and finding berries the adults couldn't get to. While he was down there, I would go for the ones higher up. We shared a bucket, and he'd pass it over when my hands were full of berries.
     Here's a few photos from the blueberry farm:

3-year-old access to choice berries.

Sweaty boy enjoying a well deserved snowcone.

Katie's Room

Katie's room is just about finished, so I'm going to go ahead and post the pictures now.  There are two things still to be finished on her room:

1. Replace her crib.  After much consideration, we decided it was time to replace her crib with a new one.  I was reluctant to do so mostly because I am quite attached to this crib.  It was what my sister and I slept in when we were babies, and we also used it for Benjamin.  But when we reviewed the recent guidance from the CSPC regarding drop-sided cribs, we decided it was just too risky to continue to use a 30-year old drop-side crib that was getting a bit loose in the joints.  So on Monday, Mark is going to pick-up a new crib from IKEA.  For anyone else who needs to replace their crib, the IKEA has a very simple model for $100, and it feels quite sturdy!

2. The other thing I want to do is to put some pictures on the wall above Katie's crib.  Again, IKEA is the go-to source for these (and, really, just about 50% of our household contents come from IKEA) - as they are very lightweight frames with plastic fronts, so if they did happen to fall in her crib, they could not do much damage.  My plan is to put five small picture frames above her bed: one picture of our family, along with four baby pictures of the most recent generation of Griffiths (Katie, Ben and cousins Josh & Nathan).  I'll try to post a picture when I do this.

Here is her room!  Check out yesterday's post for a comparison to the before model.  When we remodeled after Ike, we painted 3 of the walls yellow and the window wall a dark blue.  Mark re-painted the wall pink.  Fun to have a little girl!  Sorry this first picture is a little dark.

Here is a picture that Aunt Tita (Katherine III) bought during a trip Cuba --- an original work with a certificate on the back.  Very cute --- thank you for sharing it with us, Aunt Tita!

The quilt hanging above the changing table was made for the "next great grandchild" by my Grandma Kate (Katherine II) before she died 9 years ago.  Benjamin happened to be the next great grandchild (born 6 years later), so we received this quilt shortly before Ben was born.  We hung it above the crib when this was his room.

We updated our dresser/changing table by re-painting the knobs in pastel colors, and adding Katie's name to it.

Here is the other side of the room, which includes a few sentimental pieces.  I didn't get a good picture of it, but you can see a little bit of a lace heart on the pink wall behind the rocking chair.  This was something I had hanging on my bedroom wall from grade school to high school in my parent's house.  The rocking chair matches the crib, which my parents bought before my sister was born.

My Aunt Lisa gave us this boat that my grandfather had engraved for my grandmother (Katherine II) during a trip to Egypt.  You can see her name "Kate" on the side.

My Aunt Tita (Katherine III) made this lamp for Katie. So fun to have things from Katherine's II, III and IV in Katie's (Katherine V) room!

These are fun whimsical pictures made by the same artist - one my mother gave to me when I was in high school.  The other I found in a thrift shop when we lived in Starke.

 And finally, here is the gift that Benjamin picked out for his little sister before she was born.

I think I am now up-to-date with our projects.  I'll try to post more pictures and thoughts about our kiddo's in the next post.  It feels good to be blogging again!

Progress

I haven't written a whole lot about the kids lately, and as Katie approaches the end of the fourth trimester (really, already?!) and Ben recently celebrated his third birthday (big boy!), I know I owe it to them to document a few thoughts about our lives as a family right now.  But, instead, I'm going to post about our most recent accomplishment: Our Studio/Guest Room transformation!

Mark's percussion studio has been abused ever since we returned home from Ike: It became the dumping ground for anything that couldn't find a home.  That was then shifted to Katie's room (more on that later).  But, finally, we really needed it to be cleaned and organized - as it now also serves as our guest room.  Gramma and Granddaddy Griffith came for a 10-day visit earlier this month, so that was our motivation to get it into shape.  And we succeeded!  We're pretty proud of how we've modified the room and its contents to make it serve both as a percussion studio and as a guest room.  Here are the results!

This is the room in studio format.  The mattresses against the wall will hopefully someday soon be replaced with a nice-looking wooden cabinet housing a Murphy bed.

Look at Mark's nicely organized desk!

And now, here is what it looks like as a guest room!  The blue and green fabric panels that are hanging on the french doors (for privacy) are gifts from Gramma and Granddaddy.  They were handwoven in Mexico!

 The xylophone and vibraphone roll easily, so are pushed against the window to make room for the bed.

Mark's Cymbal Cabinet gets pushed against the wall as well, thanks to the addition of casters. Good job, Mark!

The other thing you can't see here is that Mark added a lock to the pocket door that separates the dining room from the kitchen --- which helps for privacy and to keep early-rising three year old's out. :)

So anybody wanna come visit and try it out? :)

Next up: Katie's room.  Here's the before picture, which actually doesn't do justice to how bad it was, because I spent a couple of hours cleaning it up before I took this picture! :)  It's almost done now, so stay tuned...

And another picture from about a month ago, just cause I think it's cute:

Family Photo Shoot

On Memorial Day, our very talented friend Staci met us at the park for a family photo shoot.  It was a hot, muggy morning as it had rained a lot the evening before --- but it made for some good splashing opportunities for Benjamin!

I just LOVE Staci's work --- no more stiff, formal poses for the Griffith family! :)  She got some incredible shots of Benjamin - capturing his playful, happy nature!  But I was equally impressed that she managed to get a number of creative photos of our whole family --- which is not easy to do with a newborn, squirmy toddler, and post-partum mom (more on this later!)...

Here are a few of our favorites (okay more than a few!).  Staci, we'll be putting our order for prints in soon --- I just need to narrow down a fw favorites - I love them all!
 

Great day at the symphony

Hello everyone! This is Mark writing. Those of you who I talk to frequently know I don't speak very often about what's going on with the symphony - what repertoire we're playing, who's conducting, etc, etc. And especially how I'm feeling about whatever we're playing. In fact, I don't really talk about feelings much at all! Katherine asks almost every day how the rehearsal or concert went, and I usually respond with a short, informative statement  devoid of emotion. And in all honesty, since we entered parenthood it has been difficult to be fully invested emotionally at work when there's so much going on at home. Even though mine is a unique and wonderful job, I imagine this is pretty common for new parents. (I know we've been parents for almost three years now, but I still feel like a new parent.)
     So it hits me like a ton of bricks when, playing a concert, I find myself responding to the music in a very emotional and passionate way. It usually occurs once or twice each season, and wow is it special when that happens. Music can touch us in such a way that it really is difficult finding words to express what's happening inside. There's a certain part of human emotion that can perhaps be described with words, but positively resonates with certain music. That happened for me today in our performance of Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto.
    If you're unfamiliar with classical music, a concerto is a work featuring a solo instrumentalist accompanied by the orchestra. The piano concertos of Rachmaninoff are very, VERY special pieces. I fell in love with his second concerto way back in high school and his 3rd is equally wonderful. If you saw the movie Shine, then you may remember how this 3rd Piano Concerto was a central part of that movie. It's incredibly gorgeous music - lush, powerful, sweeping melodies; tender, delicate moments; rich harmonies. Today's performance was one for the ages. The orchestra sounded fantastic. The soloist, Garrick Ohlsson, is hands-down one of the best pianists for this piece. He has the technical precision to handle this concerto - one of the most challenging in the repertoire - with ease. He's a huge man, with large hands and amazing power. Yet he brings a certain grace to the quiet, introspective sections that balances out the powerful, passionate passages. It was simply a wonderful performance, a wonderful experience to be part of. It's days like today that I'm a bit overwhelmed with gratitude that this is my career. What a blessing when vocation and passion coincide!
  

Projects

I am now into my seventh week as a SAHM.  Still enjoying it immensely. This time around I am taking 6 months off from work!  I've added a ticker above as my "back to work countdown."  Not because I'm eager to return to work (just the opposite, at this point), but to help me remember to cherish this time --- as it is limited, in more ways than one.

Katie has been a bit restless this morning --- lately she's been super easy in the mornings - having a nice awake period just after Ben goes to school, where we can play and interact.  And then spends the rest of the morning dozing with a few breaks to nurse and get her diapers changed.  But for now, she seems pretty happy and settled into her bouncy seat for a little nap --- so I (hopefully) have a bit of time to myself.

When I'm feeling nice, I use these morning naps to do the dishes and laundry, clean-up and plan some meals and make grocery lists.  When I'm feeling selfish (as in right now), I catch up on email, post to this blog, or do "frivolous" things such as join facebook. :)  Having these little bursts of time is amazing - even when she is restless and needs help - as it is such a contrast to the end of my pregnancy, where I was working full-time, and just feeling generally huge and exhausted all the time.  Having a clean kitchen is a victory now - and Mark also seems to be enjoying my ability and energy to help out around the house a bit more.

I'm also enjoying learning how to be domestic.  Since we've been married, Mark has been the primary (and sometimes exclusive) chef in our house.  And especially in the recent past, I have done little more than make the token meal from time to time (however, Ben and I have become experts at making muffins together).  Part of this was convenience - Mark's schedule allows him to prepare dinner in the late afternoon - and the other part was that Mark actually became quite good and skilled at it - and it became a sort of hobby for him.  We have Alton Brown's full DVD collection, he subscribes to Cook's Illustrated magazine, and has taken a few cooking classes at Central Market (Houston's rather swanky grocery store).

However, cooking with small children is not quite as glamorous, and cooking every day can get tiring, so Mark has welcomed my suggestion that perhaps I try to chip in to meal preparations during my leave from work.  This is all very novel to me, so I'm enjoying finding simple recipes (please share any of your favorite easy recipes or cookbooks!), and am rather pleased when some of them actually turn out tasting good!  In this process, though, we've learned that Mark is the pickier eater of the two of us - which he is certainly allowed when he's the one cooking. :)  He's been very gracious about eating my meals as well, only adding comments when I suggest making the same meal again.

All that being said, I read in a parenting magazine once that taking care of small children is about "as pleasurable as housework."  And I think there is real truth to that.  There are those adorable, perfect moments where you think this is why I wanted to have a family.  But changing the fourth diaper in an hour, doing an average of 10 loads of laundry a week, and needing to run the dishwasher every single day is really not all that fun.  Right now, I actually don't mind it, because I am so pleased that I can keep up with the housework during those few baby/toddler-free moments --- whereas I just could not when I was pregnant and working full time.  But it's always still with the knowledge that I'll need to repeat it all the next day (or let it pile up, if I chose to do something else, such as blog) :)

So what keeps me sane?  Projects.  I love Projects.  Just about any project will do.  It just needs to be something (a) useful (I'm not so into crafts, etc. unless I can fill a need such as give it someone as a gift, or spend time entertaining Benjamin with it) and (b) can't be undone the next day (hence the less-than-total satisfaction with dishes, laundry, etc).

Since I learned the helpfulness of having projects to do during my shorter (3 month) maternity leave with Benjamin, I looked forward to beginning a few during this leave with Katie.  Granted, days and sometimes a couple of weeks can go by without a whole lot of progress --- but even a few minutes chipping away at getting something done really boosts my spirits, and gives me something to think about and look forward to as I pace the floor with a cranky, sleepy (and sometimes screaming) child.

And we have many, many potential projects in our house.  Probably should have started with the baby room, as our daughter still does not have a room or a crib (she's in a bassinet in our room).  But we didn't.  We started with our living room.  Which makes sense, as we spend a lot of time in this room together during the day --- particularly because it also serves as our desk/computer room.

And this room has forever been a work-in-progress.  And we are almost done with it!  Close enough that I'm posting pictures!

So what are you looking at?  It might help to see the way-before picture --- this is actually a picture from just after we closed on our house - back in 2005.

I couldn't find pictures of it, but our living room was furnished with mis-matched items from the various stages of our lives.  And a lot of it.  Since we were able to claim a good portion of that from the flooding, we have been slowly picking out new furniture to replace it.  And we were able to finally finish this room over the past few weeks --- including Mark installing and programming an HTPC (home theater PC computer!)  Now we just have two components to operate our TV, Blueray DVD player and stereo!  And it's connected to the Internet, so we could stream TV shows and movies right to our TV.  And we only have ONE remote control for all of this (unheard of, I know).

So in these past few weeks, Mark hung our TV on the wall, did a BUNCH of wiring (so that the wires connecting everything wouldn't show), we bought a new bookshelf from Ikea to house the two components and still leave plenty of room for Ben's toys (no more wire crates!), and we bought a carpet for our floor.  Whew!  So fun to have it all just about done!

And here's our little girl, sleeping peacefully and allowing me to write this blog!



















So what is our next project?  Since we only have a three-bedroom house, we have lost our guest room to make it Katie's room (actually, right now, it's our junk room --- sorry, Katie).  So we're modifying Mark's studio to allow it to be a guest room when we have visitors.  But first, we have to do a lot of organizing in there to make more room.  That's our project for this week and next.  After that, Mark's big project is to build a Murphy bed.

Okay - this little girl's awake.  Probably should go be a mom now instead of just writing about being one.  Bye!