Further to my New Year’s Resolutions, I have some that are about finishing what I’ve started.  I guess that could be a good umbrella goal “finish what you start.”  Seems simple enough, but life and boredom often interfere with good intentions.  I have a couple of craft projects that have been going on for over a year, several years in fact.  It is time to get them done!  Brian laughed at me when he saw that I was giving myself a whole year to complete them, but when it has been 3 years already, another year doesn’t seem so long!

I have a sweater that I started knitting out of this beautiful baby alpaca yarn.  It is so soft and cuddly.  I figured if I was going to take the time to hand knit a sweater, it should be really nice.  And it will be.  If I ever get it done!

The second project on my list is a quilt.  

Great-Grandmother Sparks Tulip Quilt

My tulip pieces

A completed tulip square 

This is a more significant project.  I have an old quilt that was made by my great grandmother, whom I never knew.  Even though I didn’t know her, the quilt is one of my most prized possessions.  It is one of the things I’d grab if my house caught on fire.  In honor of her handiwork, I decided to make a replica.  Well, not an exact replica, but a quilt out of the same pattern.  I traced off the shapes and made pattern pieces.  The original quilt is pretty small, might fit a twin size bed, good for just cozying up.  My version will fit a queen size bed.  So, that was a bunch of pieces to cut out.  The pattern is a tulip shape, where four tulips make a square.  All the squares are different colored tulips, so it is very bright and fun.  I have all of my tulips sewn, but I need to cut out some more of the surrounding pieces.  Then I’ll have to sew up the pieces into squares.  Once all the squares are complete, I need to decide how I want them arranged and then piece the squares.  Then the big fun begins, backing, batting, and the actual quilting.  The original is hand quilted and I’m planning to do the same.  We’ll see if that happens in a year!  Very few people hand quilt any more.  We received several “homemade” quilts for our baby and only one was cut and pieced, and none were hand quilted.  But part of what is so special about my great grandma’s quilt is the imperfect stitching.  So, that is one characteristic I’d like to preserve in my interpretation.

I really should have a plan and timeline for completing these projects.  But those sorts of constraints tend to work against my creative urges.  (hence why its taken years to get only partially through these projects)  But maybe I’ll have some quarterly deadlines for progress anyway, just so it isn’t thanksgiving and I’m trying to complete a quilt and a sweater in a month!

New Year’s Resolutions are an interesting thing.  They are notoriously broken or forgotten about.  It was interesting just working at the Y last year, seeing all the people sign up at the new year and within a few months fall by the wayside.  I think the issue is that one day doesn’t change who you are or alter your well ingrained habits.  I think desires change as well.  I wanted to post some of my resolutions or goals for the year in a series this week, starting today with our financial goals.

We had a list of goals for 2007, most of which were not met.  I don’t feel bad about that because there were other priorities.  For example, one of the things was to buy another investment property.  But we’ve had a vacant unit for 6 months, so obviously it wouldn’t be prudent to buy another property until our cash flow is better.  That goal is on the list again for this year though.  I think we’d both like to find a property that doesn’t require as much work however.  With a baby we won’t be able to go through the same labor intensive process anyway.  And honestly, I question how much our labor paid off.  On our last building, we finished the work and started the refinance process expecting a certain appraisal.  The appraisal came in low due to the appraiser being overly conservative and running comparables against buildings that weren’t comparable.  Because of that, we weren’t really rewarded for our labor in terms of being able to extract cash for repaying the fix up costs, much less having cash for another purchase.  It was a very frustrating experience.  So, for the next building we may be looking for something that just requires some paint and primping up.  With the market down, we may actually be able to find something that is in decent shape and has cash flow.  Anyway, it’s on the goal list again, so we’ll see what happens. 

Also on my list is to re-read and actually do the exercises from Your Money or Your Life.  I’d checked it out from the library and read it, but I wanted Brian to read it too.  I think the exercises are best if done together as a couple.  So, I bought it for him for Christmas (but I guess it was for both of us).  Anyway, I think we’ll read a chapter at a time together and go through and do the exercises.  I think it would help to bring us where we need to be with our finances.  Not that we really have any issues looming, but with a growing family it will be easy to let expenses slip in here and there.   I guess I’d just like to have a better mental grasp on everything. 

Along with streamlining our finances and saving money, we’ll continue to simplify our life as much as possible.  Brian has been going through the basement pulling things to post on craigslist.org.  He’s sold a couple of things so far.  Whatever doesn’t sell there will be in a big yard sale this spring/summer.  Then whatever is left will be off to Goodwill.  I’d like to purge as much as possible.  A person really needs very little.  We have all sorts of crap we don’t use.  We’ve even talked about moving into a smaller place, a two family unit perhaps, to motivate us to downsize further.  It would actually be nice to get rid of so much junk that the house would feel too big and then move to a smaller space.  That would be more efficient than moving and then trying to deal with whatever didn’t fit!  Either way — whether we stay here or move into a smaller place, it will be nice to have less stuff around.  The other compelling aspect of moving into a two family would be the financial benefit.  Right now we have equity tied up in our home that we could be using to generate cash flow from an investment property, and we also have a mortgage payment.  With a two family, that equity could be transferred into an investment, and while one apartment wouldn’t pay the full mortgage, it would pay a good bit of it.  That would free up cash for us to pay off our student loans faster.  I am very grateful for my education, but it is amazing what a burden those student loan payments are!  It would be nice to have those paid off as soon as possible.  Then once we had the student loans paid off and that cash free, we could consider a single family home again.  I don’t know how likely that scenario is; we are both pretty comfortable in our house.  But it is under consideration.  It is important to think outside the box and challenge preconceived notions about what you really “need.”  Resolving to continue simplifying means constantly asking yourself whether all the stuff in your life adds value or just drains resources. 

We got the last few necessities for the baby this weekend.   We went to the Cotton Babies store here and got a stash of cloth diapers.  I’d already purchased 4 one size pocket diapers that were a sampler pack of different brands.  Our favorite was the bumGenius.  So we bought 6 more of those.  We also bought 5 bumGenius all-in-ones.  They don’t have the pocket to stuff, so they are more convenient, but they come sized so you have to buy more as the baby grows.  We got them in the used bin for $10 each though (as opposed to $16 new).  That gives us 15 diapers to start with.  When we figure out what really works we’ll buy some more.  We may not like dealing with the pockets, who knows until you try? 

We also got the Chicco Travel System Saturday.  Sunday morning we put it together.  It was a bit daunting when we first took it out of the box, but came together fairly easily.  We tried it out with a teddy bear, which is completely misleading since it is going to be about 9 lbs heavier with baby in tow!  But it was fun.  We made a video of it with the digital camcorder that Brian’s parents got us for the baby.  One day he’ll be able to watch it and see how brilliant his parents were, ha!

So now we are pretty well set up, just waiting for him to make his grand appearance.  I’m sure I’ll be more than ready by the end of January.  In the meantime, I’m going to try to enjoy the luxury of quiet and solitude. 

I did quite a bit of cooking over Christmas and even more eating!  My stepdad sent us a Honeybaked Ham, which we enjoyed on Christmas eve.  And then I made a giant turkey for Christmas day. 

Yes, giant.  As in, I wasn’t sure it was going to fit in the pan.  The small grocery where I shop only had 20+ lb turkeys.  Way too much for the four of us, I knew.  But the turkey breasts were so much more per pound, that it was exactly the same price to get a breast as a whole bird.  And with needing to stock a freezer for after the baby comes, I figured leftovers weren’t the worst thing. 

So, after taking a day to rest and recover from the holiday, I set out to do some marathon cooking again.  Thursday I did my shopping for all the supplies, and then Friday I spent the whole day cooking.  I found my recipes by googling “freezer recipes” for both turkey/chicken and ham.  I don’t think I made any of them exactly as the recipe stated.  I have a really hard time following a recipe for anything other than baking (when it’s disasterous not to!)  So anyway, I made a Santa Fe Turkey Casserole with turkey, frozen mixed veggies, pinto beans, cheese, tomatoes, peppers and onions; a turkey/veggie/rice dish; a turkey/veggie/cheese/noodle dish; turkey manicotti (recipe was for ham, but I had lots of turkey).  Then I used the ham to make Scalloped Potato and Ham Casserole, cheddar/broccoli/ham wraps, and a ham and pineapple pizza.  Oh, and I made some Vegetable Bean Chowder, which used the ham as well.  Susie was pretty excited to get the ham bone when I was finished! 

Cooking all day is so exhausting, but I know it is worth it to not have to worry about meal planning right after the baby.  I made a menu card listing everything I’ve made so that Brian or I can check that and choose a meal.  I’d read that you can just keep a white board on the outside of the freezer to keep track of what you have in there.  Seems like a good idea if you do this all the time.  But in this case, I probably won’t want to go down to the basement just to see what Brian can thaw for dinner.  I’d rather have something close at hand; and we can just mark things off as we eat them.  I’m curious how the dishes are going to turn out when thawed and baked.  Some better than others I’m sure. 

We awoke to snow showers and a blanket of white this morning!  I love snow!  Everything seems so still and perfect in a fresh snow.  When I got up at 6am to feed the cats, it was still dusky out and everything was so hushed.  Snow seems to envelop the world and bring everything closer. 

We have about 2 inches and there is more on the way this afternoon.  The more the better, I think!  Maybe if we get enough, it will last until Christmas.  That’s a long shot in St. Louis, where the weather changes so dramatically from one day to the next.  It is supposed to be nearly 60 next thursday!  So, not much chance for a white Christmas.  I guess that is okay.  I want to deliver some cookies and treats to our neighbors and friends, so clear roads are better for that!  And Brian’s parents are driving down, so they’ll appreciate clear roads as well. 

I have a baby shower today.  Hopefully the inclement weather won’t put a damper on the fun.  The roads should be pretty well cleared up by then.  And the second round of snow isn’t coming until later.  I made dark chocolate truffles last night as thank you’s for my shower hostesses.  I hope they enjoy them!  They didn’t turn out very pretty, but they taste good!

I had a marathon cooking session yesterday.  I made 3 dishes of enchiladas and spanish rice, 10 quesadillas, about 20 burritos, and a batch of black bean soup.  Phew!  I was exhausted after all of that!  But it was a good start on the after-baby freezer stash.  We had one of the enchiladas/spanish rice dinners last night.  They turned out really good.  I hope they are as good after being frozen.  I read a couple of different opinions on freezing enchiladas.  One said not to put the sauce and cheese on before freezing, but that is just making things more complicated in my opinion.  I figure you can go to the store and buy frozen enchiladas with the sauce and cheese all over it, so why not at home?  I guess we’ll see come February! 

I guess mending those sheets got me in the mood to sew.  Occasionally I enjoy it.  I had to do so much in school that I got rather burned out and don’t sew very often.  Everyone always asks if I make my own clothes since I’m a fashion designer.  Uh, no.  I like to design things, not sew them up.  It is much more gratifying to draw a picture and have it come back to you all made up!  But anyway, sewing can be useful.  We are planning to cloth diaper our baby.  Not the traditional white squares with pins, mind you.  The world of cloth diapers has come a long way, baby!  These bumGenius are our favorites so far.  We’ll probably stock up on them.  I thought about making my own, but the fabrics aren’t exactly cheap, and the construction is complicated.  Frankly, I don’t think it is worth my time.  Along with the cloth diapers, it is best to use cloth wipes.  Now this is just a square or rectangle of fabric, so it makes sense to make this myself rather than pay a couple dollars per wipe.  I did a little research to determine what type of fabric to use, and saw that terry cloth works well.  We just so happened to have some old towels in the yard sale pile.  They had a couple stains, but hey, I’m making reusable toilet paper, right??  They’ll probably see another stain or two before little one is through with them!  So, I took a big bath towel and cut sixteen 8×8″ squares, and ten 4×8″ rectangles.  I figure I’ll mostly use the larger ones at home, but the smaller ones will be nice for packing in the diaper bag.  Really I have no idea what will work best.  That will be trial and error.  But the towel was very nice plush terry cloth, so they should make good wipes…thick enough for clean hands, and soft enough for happy baby.  Some people keep them in a wipes box with wipe solution (baby wash and water), or you can just keep the wipe solution in a spray bottle and wet them as you go…again, I’ll have to see what works best.  Back to making the wipes, after I cut the squares I finished the edges with a tight zig zag stitch on my sewing machine, so that they won’t ravel and fray.  I used different color thread to liven things up a bit, but you could just do all white.

Step by Step:

1. Find old towel destined for yard sale or trash.
2. Cut out 8×8″ squares, or 4×8″ rectangles, or a combination of both.  You can cut around any bad spots, or holes in your towel. 
3. Set up zig zag stitch on sewing machine (I used the widest zig zag stitch, with a stitch length of 2, so the stitches are close together).
4. Zig zag around all unfinished edges. 

Easy as can be!

Small Wipes

Large Wipes

In the wake of a billion dollar do-it-yourself industry, I find it fascinating how many of us have forgotten how to maintain our belongings.  I too fall prey to the “it’s broken, get a new one” mentality at times.  I certainly don’t know how to fix a toaster and even if I did, would it be worth my time for the $10 to buy a new one?  But if you take a global perspective, it is better to repair what you have rather than just tossing it out to pile up in a landfill somewhere.  I recently bought some sheets, got them home, laundered them, and discovered that one of the seams had a hole on the fitted sheet.  Frustrated at having a hole in my new sheets, I thought about returning them to the store.  But then what happens to the otherwise perfectly good sheets?  They get trashed.  So, I took 2 minutes and sewed up the seam myself.  While I was sewing, I was thinking about how many people wouldn’t even know how to sew up a seam.  With a fashion design background, I have a sewing machine and know how to use it.  But I certainly don’t know how to hand sew (anything other than a button anyway).  I think of our great grandmothers who sewed beautiful dresses and quilts all by hand.  That is a lost art.  I’d venture to say most forms of self-sustenance are lost.  At the risk of offending the masses, I’d venture to say it is largely laziness.  I really don’t care to take the time to learn to fix a toaster.  I’d rather enjoy my leisure time.  When I first got married, my husband wasn’t exactly Mr. Fix-It.  But he certainly is now.  Just this weekend, he repaired 3 of our second story doors so that they actually close and latch for the first time since we’ve lived here (and probably the first time in 50 years).  All it takes is trial-and-error and some self education, seeking out the answers from people who know.  I think past generations stopped offering advice because it fell on deaf ears.  You have to ask them if you want to know their “survival” secrets.  One must also be willing to risk making it worse!  Our first home improvement project was replacing the door knob on our front door….we ended up with a new door.  But that sort of thing hasn’t happened very often!  Most times we’ve found that the repair was much easier than we were anticipating.  Fear of the unknown keeps you inert.  Just taking a bit of time and a bit of risk can have a huge impact on reducing our waste.  Every little bit helps. 

I think we are finally going to get a deep freezer tonight.  I’ve been wanting to get one so that I could start preparing meals for after the baby is born.  Brian’s cooking skills are pretty limited, and if I leave the meal planning up to him, we could be living off pizza and french fries for a month.  So, I planned out some cooking days.  Friday I’m planning to have a Mexican Cooking day and make 4 different dishes using similar ingredients.  I’ll make veggie enchiladas and spanish rice for dinner that night, plus 2 extra batches to freeze.  Since I’ll be cooking up black beans for the enchiladas, I’ll make some black bean soup as well.  Then with some beans, cheese, and spanish rice, I’ll make some quesadillas.  And with any leftover fillings, I’ll make an assortment of freezer burritos for lunches.  I’ve posted most of those recipes here before. 

I usually make pancakes, waffles, or muffins on the weekends.  I’m planning to start making double batches so that I can stock up on those for breakfasts. 

So, after the mexican food this week, my next big freezer cooking day will be for sauces and fillings.  I’ll get a bunch of soy crumbles and tomatoes and make spaghetti sauce, sloppy joe filling, and taco filling.  I read in one of the many freezer meal cookbooks that you should label the item with name, date, as well as a “meal plan”…i.e. what to serve with sloppy joe filling.  That will be essential — not having to worry about whether we are getting well balanced meals.  If not labeled, the side dish might be french fries every night :)  I read four or five of those month of meals type cookbooks.  The logistical information was great.  How to plan the shopping, storage, labeling, etc.  But the recipes were just okay.  Most were meat dishes.  I’m thinking we’ll be better off freezing some of our normal staples and favorite meals.  

I’m also planning to just double or triple some of our dinners over the next few weeks.  I’ll make a triple batch of vegetable casserole, three dishes of mac and cheese, and four dishes of lasagna.  If we eat one each cooking night, I’ll have seven extra meals in the freezer.  I should also have 8 meals frozen from mexican cooking day, plus an assortment of sauces and fillings.  I probably won’t have a full 30 meals in the freezer by my due date, but even if I have half that many, I’ll have peace of mind that we won’t be eating junk every night.  I imagine we’ll also have some leftovers from christmas dinner, which I might be able to transform into something delicious for the freezer. 

I guess I’ve been awol for December!  ‘Tis the season to be busy I guess.  We had a great stocking stuffer party on Saturday.  Seven people came over and a few others dropped off donations.  We had the veggie lasagna, which turned out great, and then proceeded to sorting and stuffing everything in the stockings.  We had more than enough.  Silly me, I’d been worried that there wouldn’t be enough to fill 25 stockings, but bless our friends, they were so kind and generous.  We sent 25 stockings as well as six boxes of movies, books, and food.  It was great.  I know the unit will be delighted to receive their goodies.   The post office provides free flat rate boxes for shipping things to troops, so I was able to go pick up a bunch of those for the packaging.  We shipped them out on Tuesday.  Hopefully everything will get there by Christmas! 

Meanwhile I’ve been working on our holiday letter.  We started the letter format last year in liu of cards.  Actually Brian sent a letter out while he was in Iraq for Christmas of ‘04, and everyone really liked that.  We found that people appreciate hearing how our year has gone, particularly those that live far away and don’t hear from us much.  And we’ve always enjoyed getting christmas letters from our friends.  Cards are pretty and all, but then I just feel bad about throwing them in the recycle bin after the holiday!  Some people save cards.  I don’t like having all that clutter around.  That’s how you end up 85 years old with a garage full of junk for your kids and grandkids to sort through!

We put up the christmas tree last weekend too.  The cats have not yet knocked it over, surprise, surprise.  They’ve managed to swipe a few ornaments off though.  They seem to like the tree skirt underneath, getting tangled up and dashing around it.  We’ve had a real tree I think once since we have had the cats, and of course they were climbing in it, so we just go with the artificial now.  It’s kind of silly to cut down a tree just to put in your house for a month anyway.  They’re really pretty and smell so nice, but really.  Unless I had enough land to get one with the roots and then plant it after, it would just be a waste. 

I received an email from Whole Foods (I don’t shop there, $$$, but they got my email when they bought Wild Oats) with this interesting breakdown of the winter solstice celebrations, so I thought I’d share:

Winter Holiday Traditions

Throughout our lives, each year’s winter holiday season is a much anticipated time. From late November to early February we have a virtual catalog of celebrations: Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Winter solstice, Sancta Lucia, Christmas, Kwanza, both Western and Chinese New Year and the interconnected Three Kings Day (Epiphany) and Candlemas Day (Dia de la Candelaria).
This clustering of holidays around the winter solstice — the shortest day and longest night of the year — is no accident. The solstice was a frightening time for our pagan ancestors, especially in the northern reaches of the globe, and its celebration was rooted in fear and superstition, which gave rise to traditions that survive to this day. These traditions help make individual holidays memorable and many, though not all, involve food, since food was of supreme importance when gods of thunder and goddesses of love ruled the world, and our minds.

Thanksgiving

Food is the main attraction on Thanksgiving, with the noble turkey taking center stage. But hidden within the turkey itself is an interesting piece of anatomy with a tradition all its own — a thin, V-shaped bone that is similar to our own collarbones joined together. Both the bone and the tradition surrounding it is variously called the wishbone, the lucky break or, in Britain, the merrythought. Care is taken while carving the bird to preserve this bone, which is then thoroughly dried and presented to two children, who each grasp a branch of the V and make a wish. The children then pull smartly and whoever ends up with the larger piece supposedly gets their wish. This particular “wishing” ritual probably originated in Italy before the Common Era and was brought to Britain by the Romans and to the shores of the New World by English colonists. It is part of a long established series of wishing and good luck rituals that include “first star,” birthday candles, horseshoes, the four-leaf clover and the rabbit’s foot.

Hanukkah

The eight-day celebration of Hanukkah is based on the professed miracle of one day’s worth of lamp oil (pure olive oil) lasting for eight days during the reconsecration of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Maccabees in 165 BCE. Olive oil being edible, it was inevitable that it become integral to this holiday’s food traditions, hence the pervasiveness of fried food on Hanukkah tables. Of those foods, latkes are perhaps the most common today and potatoes their most common ingredient. Originally, however, latkes were made from a variety of other vegetables, since potatoes were indigenous to the Americas and unknown to the rest of the world at that time. Sufganiyot — donuts without the hole — are another very popular fried food, especially in Israel, where they appear on street vendor’s stands up to a month before the holiday.

The Winter Solstice

The celebration of the winter solstice is an extremely ancient rite that strongly influenced the founding of more modern holidays, including Hanukkah and Christmas. The Roman version of it, known as Saturnalia, was such a popular holiday in the early days of Christianity that the celebration of Christ’s birthday was set to coincide with it.
Because of the sheer age and pervasiveness of the solstice celebration, several of its own traditions became part of the Christmas holiday that eventually replaced it. Among them were:

• Kissing under the Mistletoe — This plant was revered by early Celtic and Nordic tribes who assigned to it magical powers that included protection from such things as disease, witchcraft and lightening strikes. The kissing legend probably derives from a complex and somewhat illogical Norse myth that relates how Frigga, the goddess of love and beauty, implored all living things that sprang from the earth not to harm her beloved son, Balder. Since mistletoe was a parasitic plant that grew on trees and not from the earth, it was excluded and its wood subsequently used by the evil god Loki to make an arrow which killed Balder. Frigga’s tears of grief turned the Mistletoe’s red berries white, and when Balder was later restored to life, she forgave the plant and made it a symbol of love, decreeing that anyone who met beneath it must kiss. When a man kisses a woman under the mistletoe, he must remove one berry and when the berries are all gone, there is no more kissing. A Christian addition to this plant’s lore relates how the wood was used to make the cross upon which Christ was crucified and as a result it was cursed and barred from growing in the earth and forced to grow on other plants instead.
• Christmas trees and wreaths — The Romans brought evergreen plants indoors to celebrate Saturnalia, a days-long feast and celebration to honor Saturn, the god of agriculture. This pagan tradition was kept alive in parts of northern Europe as the Roman Empire faded away. Beginning in Germany centuries later, it insinuated itself into the Christmas holiday and German emigrants later brought it to America. The tradition was solidified in the mid 19th century when Queen Victoria (of German ancestry) installed a Christmas tree in the royal palace. In America a decade later, President Franklin Pierce put one in the White House. By 1880, Christmas tree ornaments were being manufactured — the beginning of the end for homemade decorations such as popcorn and cranberry strings — and in 1923 President Calvin Coolidge switched on the lights of the first national outdoor Christmas tree.

In addition, myths and legends unique to Christianity were promoted throughout Europe to help consolidate the young religion. Others simply took on a life of their own and were embellished by imaginative entrepreneurs. Among these were:

• Sancta Lucia, or St. Lucy’s Day — This holiday occurs on December 13th in several European countries and denotes the beginning of the Christmas season, or advent. Though originating in Sicily to celebrate the martyrdom of a young girl, it is today most ardently embraced by Sweden and in America by Scandinavian and German Lutheran congregations. It was originally a family event in which the oldest daughter would don a candle-lit evergreen or Lingonberry wreath as a crown and serve her parents coffee and saffron-flavored buns while singing a song appropriate to the occasion. It is now a public event featuring a procession of young women — still filled with song and wearing candle-lit wreaths and white dresses — led by the winner of a beauty competition whose duties are often remarkably similar to those of a Miss America or Miss Universe. The candle-lit evergreen wreaths are hallmarks of pagan cultures that celebrated the triumph of light over darkness.
• Gift-giving and Santa Claus — This tradition originated with the story of the gifts of the three magi to the Christ child, which was joined centuries later with elements from the life of Bishop Nicholas of Myra (later Saint Nicholas). These events and legends metamorphosed into the Santa Claus of today — complete with sleigh and reindeer — when Clement Moore’s poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (also known as The Night Before Christmas) was published in 1823. A series of engravings in Harper’s Weekly appeared decades later depicting scenes from the poem and in the mid 20th century, Coca-Cola ran a print advertising campaign that further embellished — and firmly established — the Santa Claus phenomenon.
• Christmas stockings — this tradition is attributed to the original Saint Nicholas who is said to have left gifts of gold in the stockings of three poor girls who needed dowries. They had hung their laundered stockings by the fireplace to dry overnight. Centuries later, this fetching image was adopted by Clement Moore in his Christmas poem mentioned above.

Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa is a relatively new holiday, established in 1966 to celebrate African-American and Pan-African family, community and culture. The word kwanzaa is derived from the Swahili phrase “matunda ya kwanza” which means “first fruits.” It’s a secular event, running from December 26th to January 1st, with each day representing a different principle:

• Umoja (Unity)
• Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
• Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)
• Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)
• Nia (Purpose)
• Kuumba (Creativity)
• Imani (Faith)

A Karamu, or feast, is held on December 31st, featuring a wide variety of foods from Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas, representing the diversity of African peoples and their collective heritage.

King’s Day and Candlemas Day

Rosco de Reyes, or King’s Cake, is central to the celebration of King’s Day and Candlemas Day. Originating in France but now popular in Mexico, King’s Day, January 6th, is the feast of the Epiphany, during which Rosco de Reyes — a round cake representing a crown — is served. Two plastic figures representing the infant Christ and a king are baked into the cake. Whoever finds the king figure in their serving must show genuine kindness to the person who finds the infant Christ figure, and both must work together to host a party on February 2nd, Candlemas Day, which usually features tamales and Mexican hot chocolate.
The Mexican tradition of serving tamales on Christmas is, like other traditions noted above, connected to prehistory. In this case probably to the Aztec celebration honoring Huitzilipochtli, their god of war.
Two other notable traditions that have no discernible connections to historical events or religion are fruitcake and eggnog. Fruitcake probably originated during the late Middle Ages as a wedding cake and became commonplace for celebrations of all kinds. Made with a quantity of dried or candied fruit and often infused with liquors, these dense butter cakes have a less than stellar reputation. According to the editors of the Joy of Cooking, “Many people feel that these cakes improve greatly with age, though not everyone agrees. …they have been reported to be enjoyed as long as twenty-five years after baking.”
Eggnog comes to us from a variety of English drinks made from milk, eggs and alcohol, usually wine. Now available commercially from October into January, eggnog has been associated with Christmas and New Year’s celebrations since the 19th century. Liquors used include wine, brandy, rum, bourbon and sherry. The origin of the term eggnog is obscure, but it probably came from the word “egg” combined with “grog” — a common Colonial term for rum — or “noggin,” a small wooden mug used in Colonial taverns.
Holiday traditions continue to evolve, within countries, communities and families. Each of us has fond memories of family and personal traditions, both large and small. Though they may be based on ancient superstitions and appear a bit silly if analyzed in a rational light, they nevertheless help bind us to our loved ones and inform our shared past, present and future.

We had a very nice trip home to see my family last week.  The car ride was a bit long and very uncomfortable, but it was worth it.  We stayed with my grandmother and she fed us non-stop!  We probably consumed a month worth of calories over 4 days! 

My cousin and his wife had a baby in October, so we got to meet him.  It’s strange, even though I’m having a baby in just a couple months, I still have no desire to hold other people’s babies.  It’s not that I dislike them or anything; I’m just not compelled.  Anyway, they are following the attachment parenting method with their babe.  It is one of those things that sounds good in theory, but makes me wonder about quality of life for the parents.  It is more of a simple-living approach, but at what expense?  Take co-sleeping, for example.  It gets a lot of heat from different “authorities” on the degree of safety (concern for SIDS).  But truthfully, it is done all over the world, and if done properly poses little risk to the infant.  But from what I have read, ”properly” means that the parents cannot sleep with covers on the bed, as the infant could suffocate.  That would never work for me.  I am only content to sleep with my giant down comforter.  I would feel naked without it!  Furthermore, Brian is such a heavy sleeper, I’d be worried about him rolling over on the baby.  And I sleep so lightly anyway, I think I’d be jolted awake everytime Brian moved or the baby wimpered.  Quality of sleep matters.  You aren’t getting much with an infant anyway, so it seems like you’ll want to sleep well when the opportunity arises. 

Over the holiday, I read a book that a friend let me borrow, The Baby Whisperer.  The author’s approach is somewhere between the Sears or attachment parenting method and the cry-it-out approach.  I thought it was a good read.  Some of her reasons behind avoiding “on-demand” feeding made sense to me.  Parent sanity is top on the list.  But also, she gave examples of parents feeding the baby too frequently, which with breastfeeding meant that the baby wasn’t getting the full cycle (to hind milk).  This was causing indigestion for the babe and no sleep for anyone.  I also appreciate the fact that this book was written by a woman who has been practicing what she preaches and has learned all this from her first hand experience, rather than by a doctor.  I think in general, people get overly worked up about parenting techniques.  I don’t think our parents were reading 58 books on how to raise their children.  And most of us turned out okay.  I, for one, don’t remember lying afraid in my crib.  I don’t seem to have any permanent scars from that experience.  But of course, this whole train of thought may be thrown right out the window when I actually bring my baby home!