Category: family

Tikoli tea towels make cool gifts.

I know I’ve told you that my sister is an amazing writer,¹ and I think it’s pretty clear that she’s an amazing person overall, but have I mentioned lately that she’s also an amazing designer? I’d like to take the opportunity to direct your attention to some of her über-cool new tea towel designs at Tikoli.

I really love this one she calls kern, an elegant pattern which reminds me of stones. I particularly like how it coordinates with the fun swirly vortex of harmonie. She’s got two more new designs, as well, which you can see on the Tikoli website along with the established ones. (There are 9 mix-and-match designs now, in all.)

Kern (left) and harmonie (right), two new designs from Tikoli.

I know I’ve said it before, but these tea towels make very thoughtful gifts. They are earth-friendly, as they can be used for many purposes in place of disposable paper goods, and they come with minimal packaging. They are both compact and functional, which are two criteria that I like to use when choosing gifts. (I’ve found myself more and more turned off by the bulky, over-packaged and largely useless items that are so frequently marketed as gifts.) To top all that off, they are distinctive and very pleasing to the eye.

What’s more, there is a promotion going on right now to get 20% off purchases from the Tikoli online store if you order by Monday, December 20, 2010.² (Just use the promotion code MERRY20 .) You know what else is cool? Right now, giftwrapping is free. It is also very festive.

(You can also look for Tikoli towels at a retailer near you, but the discount won’t apply there.)

Images from tikoli.

¹ She can be pretty damn funny, too.
² If you want gifts to arrive in time for Christmas, you need to order by midnight tonight, though.

a little burnt out

Hi. It’s me again. You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t been posting a whole lot this month. It would seem that I’m feeling rather burnt out.

It’s been a rough stretch, for a variety of reasons. I’ve been feeling frustrated at my slow progress with my research. I’ve been trying to catch up with things that I’d let slide in November while pushing to get my work done. I’ve been feeling pretty run down, and caught a new cold complete with annoying cough. There has been not quite enough sleep, and quite a lot of worrying.

For those of you who haven’t been following my sister’s updates about my nephew, the last few weeks were pretty harrowing. Diego did end up needing surgery for the bowel obstruction, which was his fourth major abdominal surgery this year. Even scarier, he ended up in the PICU a couple of days after surgery due to a major infection. I’m happy to say that he responded well to the antibiotics, and things have turned around. They are even expecting to go home very soon, which is a huge relief.

It’s been very hard for me not to be out there with my family (hard, of course, being a relative term, seeing as I get to sleep in the comfort of my bed for a start, and am not going through all of the daily trials that my nephew, my sister, my mother and my brother-in-law have been going through). I have really wanted to drop everything and fly out there, but that hasn’t been feasible. John’s work schedule has been intense, and he’s had important meetings he couldn’t reschedule and that conflict with picking up the kids from daycare and preschool. We don’t have friends or family around who can step in to help out while I’m away. And I can’t bring the kids out with me to California and still be able to really help out. (Plus the idea of travelling by myself with both small kiddos is frightening.)

Anyhow, I feel like I’m starting to come out of my funk again. My cold is clearing up. I’m working out a plan to visit my family soon. I have a few days coming up which aren’t heavily scheduled, during which I hope to make progress on a number of things (including things related to some holiday that’s coming up soon).

I will hopefully be feeling feel less stuck, and might even get my bulb replaced.

return trips

We got home late last night from a trip down my in-laws. It was a pleasant visit, but ultimately very tiring, as all trips away from home with the kids are. No matter what we do, the sleep schedules get disrupted.

This trip, the sleep issue was compounded by some sort of bug Theo had, which gave him a runny nose and completely took away any impulse to sleep. We drove down Wednesday night, leaving after 8 in order to avoid the worst of the holiday traffic. The plan worked well, as far as traffic went. And Phoebe fell asleep within about half an hour of leaving home. Theo, on the other hand, did not fall asleep in half an hour. Or an hour. Or two. He did eventually fall asleep, but once we arrived, he was wide awake. Phoebe also woke up upon arrival, which was around midnight, but was willing to consent to go to bed after an hour or so of visiting with Grammy and Grampa. Theo, on the other hand, continued to be wide WIDE awake, and none of our usual efforts to settle him down had any noticeable effect. Even taking him to bed with me, rocking him, singing to him, sitting with John as he worked. Theo was just awake. The funny thing was that he seemed perfectly cheerful, except for those times when we suggested that it was time to think about sleep. At those points, he was decidedly, and vocally, unhappy.

In the end, Theo finally crashed some time after 5 in the morning. I was asleep then, after hours of passing Theo off between me and John, with me periodically falling asleep for too-short stretches. At 7:30, a moderately well-rested Phoebe came in to wake me up. I pulled her into bed with me, hoping to get a few minutes more rest. Theo was asleep in a portable crib at the foot of the bed, and while he didn’t wake immediately, it wasn’t long before Phoebe started to meow. (She is often a kitten these days.)

Thanksgiving day was a blur of trying to prevent tantrums, and I mostly didn’t have any. Theo, on the other hand, demonstrated that two-year-olds really do need more than 2 hours of sleep a night, and would cry at the drop of a hat. Well, we didn’t drop any hats to test that, but he certainly cried about a large number of other things. Like being offered breakfast. Or not being given breakfast fast enough. Or not being given the right cup. You should have heard the shrieks of outrage when his banana broke. And that was just the first 15 minutes of being up.


Theo on Thursday, coping with the ordeal of having been given a cracker.

Thursday night also didn’t give me enough sleep, though part of that wasn’t Theo’s fault. (I ended up staying up till 3:30 working, after finally getting Theo to sleep at 11:00.) Most of Friday was a blur, too. Remarkably, Theo was a completely different child by Friday night, and went to sleep without effort. He was utterly charming on Saturday. This was apparently a cue to Phoebe to act out, lest we thought we could get away with a tantrum-free day.

We headed home late Saturday, and happily both kids slept the whole way home. They unfortunately both woke up upon arrival home at 1:30 or so, but we managed to get everyone settled again moderately quickly. (Though I did have to take Theo to bed with me again–he had a cough that kept waking Phoebe.) Miraculously, Theo and I slept till 9:30, and Phoebe slept past 10:00. There weren’t even any tantrums at breakfast.

Anyhow, I’m not really sure what my point was. But it feels good to be back home.

—

In other news, I was thrilled to learn yesterday that my nephew, Diego, after things had been steadily improving without surgery, got to go home from the hospital. Unfortunately, he had a setback again in his recovery, and he has had to go back to the hospital today. I am still hopeful that he can avoid another surgery, as things are not as bad as they were a week ago, but it is still very worrisome. It is all so hard a little person, not to mention on the bigger people who take care of him. Once again, I’ve been trying to figure how and when I can make it out there to see my family again.

blocked

My nephew, Diego, is back in the hospital again. I don’t remember when the last time I wrote about him was. I know some people who visit here have kept up with the updates on my sister’s blog.¹ For anyone who hasn’t followed there, I’m happy to say that Diego successfully reached the end of his treatments about 3 weeks ago. It was a long hard road, with chemo and radiation treatments following the successful removal of the tumor back in May. The last chemo treatment meant that Diego was going to finally get to start healing and get back to normal life. And the last week or so, it sounded like he was really getting some energy back.

But cancer treatments are really hard on a body, especially on such a little one. Now he is in the hospital with what appears to be a bowel obstruction. He had one a few months ago that needed to be addressed surgically. It sounds like there is reason to be somewhat optimistic that the obstruction can resolve itself without surgery. We are really hopeful that this will turn out to be the case, as another major abdominal surgery will surely impede his progress getting back to normal soon. Any positive thoughts and prayers you want to send his way would be appreciated.


This somewhat unrelated photo was one I took in May.

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¹ My sister has done some really powerful writing on that blog, while documenting Diego’s treatment and the emotional rollercoaster they’ve been riding. Her posts on finding meaning and how they found out about Diego’s cancer are two recent ones that I’ve found especially moving.


sleeping around

I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. I realized that I have been in and out of an alarming number of beds the past 10 days.

Two Thursdays ago I headed down to New York City for BlogHer. I stayed in a hotel with one friend the first night, and with another in another hotel the second. Then I headed home for one night before we went as a family to New Hampshire for a couple of nights. We got home so late on Tuesday night that I ended up sleeping in Phoebe’s bed with her. The next night was back to my own bed, and the following night we hit the road again to visit my in-laws, where we stayed for 3 nights. That makes 6 beds in 10 nights.

Our daycare was closed for vacation last week, which somewhat prompted the trip to New Hampshire. We had lots of fun visiting Storyland on Monday and Tuesday, a theme park that is geared towards younger kids. We even met up with some friends there. Wednesday I managed to get Phoebe off to preschool, and Theo and I mostly hung out and napped for the day until it was suddenly time to pick up Phoebe. On Thursday, Phoebe went into work with John, and Theo and I spent another day together doing largely nothing, while I tried to do laundry, get ready for the next trip, and squeeze in some emails. (Who are these stay-at-home parents who actually manage fun projects with the kids? I think they are myth to make me strive to behave better. Like Santa. But they don’t bring me chocolate.) And then we headed down to the in-laws, where John’s two sisters were also visiting for a celebration of John’s dad’s 84th birthday. The trips and visits were all lovely, but our schedules have been completely whackadoo. And I’m really zonked now.

So if you’ve wondered about the stretch of silence around here, it’s because I’ve been all over the place and haven’t had much time to myself. My “spare” moments have been eaten up largely by work stuff. I’m happy to say that I have managed to keep up with Project 365, though, so if you want to see some of what I’ve been up to, you can see some of it in my Flickr photo stream.

I’ve got more stuff to say (when do I not?), but will have to get to it later. (Yeah, “later.” We know what that means…) For now, I am hoping to get to my bed before I fall asleep here on the couch.

By the way, please check out the July Just Posts, which Holly and I finally got up today. I ended up throwing up my post in a hurry before packing up my laptop at my in-laws. I learned later that all the links were broken. (Throwing up a post, indeed…) The links are fixed now.

don’t it make my blue eyes red

I’m back home now, in case you were wondering. I had a wonderful visit out in California with my mother, sister, brother-in-law and two adorable nephews. It was great to spend time with all of them, and to be around to help out when an extra pair of hands was needed. My mother’s art show went very well, too.

I got to spend some good bonding time with my nephews. I’m totally smitten with both of them. Diego was pretty wary of me at first (who wants company around when feeling icky?), but we had some quality time together, and by the end of my stay, he even let me get a few snuggles in. My younger nephew, Mateo, is too cute for words. He’s about 17 months old (which is 5 months younger than Theo), and a very happy little guy. I can’t wait for the 4 cousins to get together again–the last time was when Mateo was just 7 weeks old.

I have found myself frequently wishing that Massachusetts and California could somehow be neighbors. Whose idea was it to put all those big states¹ in between?

I took the red-eye back home on Thursday night, arriving Friday morning. I don’t know why I ever expect to get anything like a reasonable amount of sleep on those flights. The flight from West to East Coast is barely over 5 hours, and it’s not like you can actually easily sleep the whole 5 hours. (Well, not without fairly extreme measures.) I think I managed at most 2 hours. My flight arrived around 7:00, and I’m quite sure my eyes were nice and red. After getting some breakfast at the airport to kill a bit of time (despite my stomach’s insistance that 4 am was no time for breakfast), I took an airport bus out to near John’s office where he was able to meet me. (I’d taken the train in to work and the airport on my way out, but the train schedule didn’t mesh well with John’s work schedule for Friday for him to pick me up at the train station.) I then spent several hours hanging out zombie-like in John’s office, and even curled up in a ball on his office floor getting a couple more hours of sleep.

It was also wonderful to be reunited with Phoebe and Theo, of course, later that afternoon. John dropped me off at home, and then picked them up from their daycare and preschool to bring home to me. I got tackled in the best sort of way.

The last few days have been a blur as I’ve struggled to re-adjust to this time zone.

And now I’m heading into another work crunch time. There’s another conference coming up in just over 2 weeks, and my research group has a poster in it. I haven’t committed to going to the conference myself, and so I don’t have to go. However, it’s a conference I’d really like to go to, as it looks like a fantastic program. The trouble is, it’s in Albuquerque, which is awkward to reach from Boston. (There are no non-stops, and the schedules are tricky. There might be another red-eye involved.³) Plus it would mean leaving John alone with the kids again–for the third time in three months. Ack! Is that considered spouse abuse? Right now, I’m feeling just too tired to take on another big trip, but perhaps in the next few days I’ll feel differently.

In any case, I have a lot of work to do for the poster for the conference, and other work-related projects involving staring at my computer. Eye strain, here I come!⁴

—————

¹ Big red states.²

² Red like my sad weepy eyes.

³ Here I am, talking about all this flying around the country, and you probably are wondering about my stated goals of trying to cut down on my petroleum habit. Yes, I realize that I have a problem. But I’m also still working on my plans to address the problem, and the post wherein I will bore you with those details.

⁴ I figured I should keep up the red-eyed theme.

East Bay Open Studios (or, What I’ll be Doing This Weekend)

This weekend is the second weekend of East Bay Open Studios, an event during which artists around the East Bay (as in, the region across the bay from San Francisco) open up their studios (or other exhibit spaces) to visitors. It’s a great chance to see a wide range of artists–over 400 artists participate.

My mother, whose fabulous mixed media artwork you see below, is exhibiting some of her recent work along with several other local artists in Oakland, CA. I’ll be keeping her company during the show. I’m really happy that I get to be in town for this show, as I tend to miss out on such things due to living 3000 miles away…


One of 49 images from my mother’s collection of 6”x6” pieces entitled Butterflies at Iguassu.

More information on the show can be found here.

bear with me


A festive bear, as colored by Phoebe. (Age 4 and 1/4.)


A lovely picture Phoebe made for me this morning. Please note the 2 squirrels in the picture. One of them is climbing the tree, the other one doesn’t know there’s a tree. (So I’m told.)

Tonight I’m getting ready to go out to California for a week-long visit with my family. I’ve been hoping to get out there soon, and I was able to make it happen. (Have I mentioned lately how wonderful John is? He will be solo parenting while I am gone. The week will go fast for me, I’m sure it won’t go so fast for him.)

I’m really happy that I’ll be getting to spend some time with my mother, sister, brother-in-law, and 2 adorable nephews. I’m also happy that I was able to work the timing out so that I can attend my mother’s art show this weekend. (I’ve been meaning to post about that–maybe I’ll have a chance to in the next couple of days. In case I don’t, she’s participating in East Bay Open Studios.)

I’ll be taking the train in to work tomorrow morning for a meeting, then going to the airport for an evening flight. What I should be doing now is packing, and not sitting here at my laptop yammering. Then there’s that whole sleep business. I should probably be doing some of that, too.

removing the elephant

In case you haven’t followed the news about my nephew Diego on my sister’s blog, I’m very happy to report that the surgery went well. The surgeons were able to remove the tumor, which, by the way, was the size of a football. In the belly of a 3-year-old. And a not particularly large 3-year-old at that.

Thank you for all of your positive thoughts and prayers. The support really meant a lot to me and to my sister. While the scariest part is hopefully behind us now, the recovery process and treatment will continue to be hard. So, your ongoing support will also be gratefully accepted.

I feel that an enormous weight has been lifted now. It’s like that elephant that was standing on the anvil squishing my brain has stepped off. The weight of the anvil feels much more manageable now. I’m not sure the elephant’s entirely left the room, but his presence is less heavy now.

I know it seems rather self-absorbed to reflect on how this has affected me, compared to what my sister and brother-in-law and mother (who is also out in California) have gone through. But what’s a personal blog for if not self-absorption?

The last few weeks have been exhausting, even for me. I’ve been startled by how physically the worry has affected me. I have come to understand intimately the expression “worry oneself sick.” I had low levels of nausea virtually non-stop from the day Diego was first admitted to the hospital. My appetite was suppressed, yet I found myself eating anyhow. I have eaten far more chocolate the last few weeks than is quite good for me. I know this just contributed to feeling run-down. (Eating sugar has that effect on me.)

Remarkably, the timing of all of this worry exactly corresponded to our transition to new sleep arrangements. That Friday that my nephew went into the hospital was the day that I had determined would be the day we’d move Theo into Phoebe’s room. I found myself wanting a baby to snuggle with that night, but all the plans were in place. I’ve mentioned that the transition has gone well, overall. What I hadn’t mentioned was that in spite of no longer having my sleep disrupted by Theo, I haven’t felt particularly more well-rested.

And of course I know that all of my worry pales in comparison to that experienced by my sister, my brother-in-law, and my mother, who have experienced their worry and concern for Diego in a much more immediate and visceral way.

It’s been tough to be so far away from my family with all of this going on. The country feels entirely too large, and I find myself resentful of the distance between the coasts.

Image compiled from public domain images found at wpclipart.