Blessings

Ethan,

I know your dad has already begun a journal of sorts for you, but I already have this blog and I may as well write in it, right? Three months late. :) Or months or years late, if you want to take into account how long I've had this and how long it's been since I wrote in it.

Today seems like an auspicious day to start up again since it was the day of your baby blessing. I read somewhere once that in Bali (I think), babies are carried by their parents for the first 180 days of their lives, no part of them ever never touching the ground. They aren't named and are simply kept alive, carefully. It isn't until the end of that 180 day period that they are celebrated with a grand party, given names and allowed to touch the earth, the rationale being that if a child that young was to die, it belonged to the gods anyway, not to their human community on earth. Once that period of limbo passes, the babies then belong to their families and are tied to the land. While I wouldn't ever say you belonged to the gods at pretty much any point past the moment you left my womb, I thought it a good parallel to begin writing to you today, the day you were celebrated and officially "sent off" onto your great journey of life. Plus, several local people I admire (Lara, Princess Lasertron, your dad of course) write monthly letters to their babies and I want that record for you, too!

We aren't religious. We both grew up Catholic but left the church for varying reasons, the explanations of which I'm sure you'll be subjected to throughout your life. I feel more spiritual-agnostic, personally, and I think your dad feels the same (although he'll gruffly say he's atheist-agnostic. Get a drink in him and he'll soften up). Regardless, we both felt it was right to have some sort of ceremony officially welcoming such an amazing addition to our lives--you-- and speaking to the hopes we have for and promises we make to you as your parents. Plus, it made your Grandma Magnuson really happy to have something slightly resembling a baptism. ;) So we planned this totally personalized, non-traditional gig with secular readings, a Beatles song, a pagan ritual, Christian oil to rub on your body, and invited lots of people who love you.

It was great. It was a beautiful, cool and sunny fall day out. I filled your tummy ahead of time so you'd be content and quiet throughout. You wore this ADORABLE hand-woven jumper and booties we bought in Guatemala in 2009 (we figured we'd have a baby someday). Your grandma and great-grandma Magnuson made some little hors d'oevres and I bought cupcakes and pumpkin whoopie pies from my friend Joni. Your Mimms (Grandma Lawson, just in case that nickname doesn't stick) listened to the ceremony via Skype; unfortunately, the video feature wasn't working. What can you expect from a free service, right? Several of our closest friends came, some with their own babies. Everyone spoke some words of blessing or wishes for you, and wove a ribbon onto a wreath for you to represent their sentiments. And we, your mom and dad, were humbled and pleased to find ourselves surrounded by people gathered there for a common purpose-- to show love and honor to our greatest joy, our first child, our unbelievably perfect boy. You.

Welcome to this life, Ethan. You're going to love it.

A very nice surprise

Last night we were afforded a rare opportunity--to spend a little time with an elusive cousin of mine, Kathryn, my aunt Angie's daughter. I hadn't seen her in at least five or six years, and Melissa hadn't seen her in nearly twenty! Kate is visiting Omaha to meet her boyfriend Steve's family and will stay until the 2nd, so hopefully we'll get to meet up again. As for last night, she and Steve came over and we all visited for a couple of hours.
















In other news, we have finally finished painting the cabinets! Who knew this would take so dang long for us? Unfortunately, we STILL haven't been able to agree on a color to paint the doorjambs and windowsills. What goes with cottage grey/green and coffee brown? Eric's new kick is a very light mint green, borrowed from an idea I'm going to use in the main-floor bathroom (next project). It's going to look fabulous in the bathroom, but I seriously doubt it'll look good in the kitchen! Any suggestions?? We have kind of a brick/ochre red paint, as well as a light almond-colored paint. Both purchased for other projects and thrown aside at the last minute in favor of a different color. Creative people change their minds alot....right?

So here are new kitchen pictures. If you have an idea of a paint color to complement this scheme, PLEASE let me know so we can finally have this done and move on to countertops and the floor!



Don't mind the refrigerator hodge podge, please. :)

We love DIY!

Eh, kinda. We've been toiling in spurts over this kitchen for so long, I've forgotten what it feels like to really cook something that requires more than a pot, cabbage, sausage and stock. There's been drywall dust everywhere and it gets into everything, and when I've gotten it cleaned up, it magically reappears! But I'm ahead here...

So, Eric stripped the awful polka-dot-and-spiral wallpaper we've lived with for over a year, and scraped off the remaining residue. We had an uneven area patched and re-plastered, and primed everything so we'd be ready when we finally chose colors and painted. Mind, we hadn't agreed even ONCE on colors! We have a new stainless dishwasher and will be acquiring a new black fridge and stainless/black range in the coming year. Why? We think black fridges and ranges look cool, that's why. And our current stuff is O-L-D old.

Up there's Eric knocking out the wall above our cabinets. Hence the dust! We're putting in opaque sliding doors on tracks there, for storage. Our kitchen is pretty small so that will be handy. I enjoyed Mike's ancient shop vac! Look at that thing, it's like 25 years old and it spits dust up out of the vents on top. Looks like an easy Christmas present to me! (Shh, Sue) I might leave the insides of that one cabinet painted red, just for kicks.

Here's what the inside of that wall looks like,
complete with vintage Pepsi can. The cord goes
to our doorbell. Below are an admittedly cruddy
yet effective shim, and the crumbling ceiling inside the wall space. I'm actually excited about the ceiling part--I think we'll cover that up with those pretty aluminum (or are they tin?) patterned ceiling panes (? I know nothing) that you see in lots of restaurants around Omaha. That'll be pretty slick! Too bad you'll only see them as the sliding doors open and shut. Unless I can talk someone into putting them elsewhere too...




On Saturday morning-ish, we went to Lowe's to choose paint. No, we hadn't agreed on colors yet. What's going to look good with stainless AND black AND doesn't remotely resemble the palette the previous owners had? That pretty well eliminated any fall colors--no reds, oranges or pretty orangey-yellows. I liked grey but Eric didn't. He liked some yellow rock color but I didn't. We couldn't agree on a green or blue, didn't want white or cream. He wasn't game for my all-out vibrant-Frida-colors Mexi-theme (I already have free reign over the main bathroom). And we thought brown would clash. The only thing on which we could agree was a sand-textured paint I'd seen in a friend's house, because it would disguise the old-house irregularities in the walls. After squabbling quietly in the aisle and somehow making each other crack up in the meantime, we began to piece together a color scheme that may or may not work. Here is the main color, a dark grey-green (compromise!):



We're pretty pleased! It looks like a professional stucco wall and it's a nice color. I think the first picture looks like suede. Yay! The texture in the second pic is a little easier to see. And here's most of what I can get for the kitchen:

We spent tonight touching up thin spots and correcting mistakes, and trying to squeeze in some studying (me) and gym time (Eric), so we haven't done the doorjambs or windowsills yet. You'll have to wait and see what those colors are. :) I'll probably spend tomorrow night doing that while Eric finishes up the cabinets.


After this...countertops and floor!