Cozy Rainy Day in the Kitchen

Katie and I spent a cozy day together in the kitchen, the rain swirling in grey mists outside. Aunt Jenny and Aunt Anna recently gave us some recipes to try: a vegetarian black bean chili, jalepeno biscuits, and in a Winnie-the-Pooh birthday card for my 30th, a recipe for honey cake. Today was the perfect the day to fill our home with homecooked, soul-satisfying yummy yums.


We began with the honey cake, which was a revelation to me in the flavors it layered: honey, cinnamon, coffee (I used decaf of course, being pregnant), and orange. I could predict various combinations of those flavors working well together, but could not have imagined them harmonizing so well all at once. Our whole house smelled of honey and citrus as Katie and I sang and played.

The black bean chili may well be one of my new favorite dishes. I love black beans, for starters. There is barely any fat (a few tablespoons of good olive oil) at all in the chili. All of the flavor derives from cumin, cinnamon, and chili powder, along with seasonal orange zest and juice from two lovely ripe oranges. Some diced tomatoes, garlic, and onion round out the flavor profile. I served it with a dollop of lowfat plain yogurt on top, the coolness a welcome juxtaposition to the hot and spicy chili. Katie liked it, as well. She loves complex flavors. And I loved the aroma of orange cooking on the stove and complementing the notes of the honey cake.


As an accompaniment, we made biscuits laced with jalepeno cheese. The liquid in the biscuits is supposed to be half and half, but I had some heavy whipping cream remaining from another recent use, and so I went all for it. Flaky, golden, rich, and delicious, the biscuits were melt-away tender with just a hint of bite.


Oh how I adore good, savory, heartfelt, nourishing food. I made Bill a chicken breast to go with his dinner as he needs different proteins. But for me, the vegetarian chili---hearty, robust, healthy---is just what my body has been craving. Thank you to Aunt Jenny and Aunt Anna for sending along such delicious recipes!!!

Before heading to the market this morning, we took joy in finding all the evidence we could find of an early morning rain. Katie found wet streets, mud, water droplets on leaves, a puddle, and grey sky. We also looked at the footprints our shoes made on the driveway after being on the wet grass. Nature has so many lesson plans already built-in: I love it!

I have never suggested these carts to Katie, because I love being able to see, kiss, touch, and talk with her directly as we traverse the market and so I always put her in the front of the cart. However, Katie saw a row of these on our way into the store, and entirely of her own initiation, she asked to drive one around today. I never would have predicted that she would want to, but she loved it. Such a cart is good for multiple children, as I realized, so they might be handy in the future. :-) Difficult to manuever though, for the mommy.

The honey cake recipe is inside the birthday card from Aunt Jenny and Aunt Anna. I was showing it to Katie, and then we continued our measurements.

Well, time to get this wrapped up and to get myself ready for American Idol. Was it just me, or was the premiere really hilarious? I laughed out loud several times...

Hope all have had a beautiful day and found happiness within.

Visual and Language Arts

Katie and I started our new art class this morning, and the program is fabulous. We are taking an Abrakadoodle class through the City of Temecula at the CRC. Abrakadoodle is a franchised program, http://www.abrakadoodle.com/ , and I was very pleased with the lesson structure. Our young teacher, Miss Megan, had just the right pacing and tone, transitions were smooth and quick, and art history and storytime were integrated with a kinesthetic laboratory situation for the children. The class is a small class of six.

Today our focus was on Van Gogh. The lesson began with "circle time" in which Miss Megan introduced the children to Van Gogh and her helper doggy named Splat. The children then learned a little about Starry Night, and Miss Megan demonstrated the project the students would then complete. The multi-step instructions were so clear that, once we had our aprons on, Katie went over to the table and began using her paints in the method instructed to create yellow and silvery white stars on her black paper without needing me to re-tell her the instructions. We then glued rectangles and small squares together to create a city scene. When the project was finished, Katie took it to the teacher to be framed, and all the students created a gallery by the circle time area.

Miss Megan then read a touch and feel book about Van Gogh which featured many of his works, and the children were able to touch different parts of his paintings, like "sand" and the fur of a peach.

After storytime, each child was called up to get his or her work of art and show it to the class.

I am very pleased with the class, and Katie really seemed to enjoy it. And it is really neat that she will be getting systematic instruction in many of the classical and modern painters.

After our morning class, we went over to Amie and Boppa's, and my dad and I left early for the library in order to meet with Marie, the VP of Toastmasters membership. She has asked me to help draft some materials for potential new members and also for members once they commit. I will be working on the first half of the project this week, and we sat down for a confab about what that should entail. We had six guests at our meeting today, and I hope we are able to retain them and build our club's membership.

Toastmasters was really fun today. My dad gave the impromptu topics, and our Toastmaster John really led the meeting well. Daryl, in making a metaphor for his speech, showed us how to peel a banana upside down like monkeys do, and this entertained us all to no end. I am sure it will be an inside joke with our club. Steve J. gave a remarkable presentation of Brutus' speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caeser and then used it for dissecting some of the speech's rhetorical effectiveness. I served as the General Evaluator today, a role in which I manage the evaluation team and comment on the overall flow of the meeting. I absolutely love Toastmasters and building connections with these awesome people. It is a beautiful gift my mom has given me, to watch Katie for part of every Tuesday, so that I can keep myself in balance and open new opportunities to myself. And I love spending that quality time with my dad so much. I know we will never forget this adventure we are having together.

Katie is snoozing right now...in a totally new place. Aunt Diane and Uncle Brad Lambert gave her a sleeping bag with a water bottle and flashlight for Christmas. We were trying it out before bath and she LOVES it. She was talking about how safe she feels in there, all zipped in. She told me that she likes it because if she hears a noise, she can hide in there. Because she knows that Aunt Diane and Uncle Brad are Skya's family, she also was saying how Skya the doggy gave it to her also. So after our bath just now, and after getting all cozy in jammies, Katie begged for me to alter our routine (which is me taking her downstairs for time with Daddy) and to zip her up in her sleeping bag. She said something amazing, "I want to sleep in there, please." She said she likes it better than her crib, because if she hears a noise in her crib she can't hide herself. She has never asked to sleep anywhere other than with me and she usually doesn't fall asleep without a cuddle session. So now she is sound asleep in her sleeping bag on the playroom floor. I zipped her up and she fell asleep all by herself. I am in awe of this sleeping bag!

And Bill will appreciate this: as she was climbing in and getting her cozy blanket, she also reached out for her nearest Rubik's cube and said, "I want this in my sleeping bag, for comfort." Seriously. Our daughter is cuddling with her Rubik's cube. :-)

Roses and Rememberance

It was fitting that we ate our lunch by Nana's roses today, as two new pink buds bloomed in the warm winter weather. Three years ago, we planted Uncle Eric's ashes there, to become part of something living and beautiful again. I wish Katie could have known him, but they were souls passing in the night: she was conceived a month after he passed away from us. He invented so many of our family expressions/neologisms, and I will make sure she knows that and knows of him, a larger-than-life character who brought so much joy to my childhood. We miss you, Uncle Eric, but I promise you will never be forgotten.

Aunt Debbie and my cousins were also there with us, and we spent time in the front yard playing tag and tickle. Katie also had fun pretending to be Nana's cat, Boxer. She has such a vivid imagination!

So it was a beautiful day...

Mommy and Katie ready for a trip to Nana's...

Playing on Nana's front lawn...

Katie playing in one of my favorite childhood spots...

Amie gives Katie a flight...

Happy Katie and her Great-Aunt Debbie...

An Afternoon with Friends

Katie and I took the morning easy, as I slept rather poorly last night. We colored a little, and she astounds me with how she is already starting to pay attention to coloring in the lines. We also pratice writing with pens and pencils, and her details are so precise. Her nimble fingers help me cross-stitch and she also has a new set of lacing boards on which to practice her own sewing, which she does well. She is quite dextrous and has such excellent fine motor skill. She walked at 9.5 months, so I know that she has always had pretty great control of her body---in both fine and gross motor skill---but still, it is amazing to see.

After a relaxing morning, we got dressed and met a group of awesome friends at Sweet Lumpy's in Old Town (they moved to a new location on 3rd Street). I had such a great time with Meline, Lauren, and Sameera. I am so lucky to have such intelligent, passionate, thoughtful people as friends. Really. I loved the ease of conversing with all of them, and I wish we could get together more often.

Katie had an awesome time in the relaxed atmosphere of Sweet Lumpy's. We ate outside, and Katie explored the hay bales, said hello to some dogs, and danced on the little wooden outdoor stage and loved the pumpkins out and about. Madeleine was, as always, an angel. She smiles all the time and is beginning to do the cutest wave EVER! Lauren is such a great mommy, and she impresses me to no end by making all of Madeleine's baby food herself. Meline is working hard as usual to make life a better place for everyone, and part of our lunch was discussing the business of promoting a fundraiser she is coordinating as a philanthropy for local soup kitchens. Sameera is doing well at Berkeley, and is taking the time to explore the beauty of that campus and its environs.

I love Old Town Temecula. I often forget how much I really love it. It has an easy atmosphere, and I need to make it a point to go down there to people-watch more often. It bustles with a relaxed activity, if that makes sense. No one seems in a particular hurry, yet there is such energy there.

After our hours-long lunch, I came home and make a quick visit with Katie to Mom and Dad's. It was getting really dark by then, but we played in their backyard and replenished bird feeders, fed the fish, and observed a stunning magenta and light pink sunset. The simple beauties of life...

Loving January

Usually I have a bit of sadness once the Christmas season is over, and I remember thinking many times this December that I would feel that way more intensely this year. Once the decorations came down last week, though, I definitely felt ready to move forward and to embrace a year of changes and meeting goals. 2010 is going to be quite a year!

I am so excited about my pregnancy, and the image of Little Sib's heart beating yesterday is permanently in the fiber of my heart and mind. We're still in the first trimester, and already Little Sib is such a person. I cherish that little heart beat. Already a person in there... and was from the start. And to know that person will keep developing, all the way through birth and then to Katie's age now and beyond...well, life is nothing short of miraculous. Katie was once at this stage of her life, and now look at who she is...

I often discuss with Katie her beginnings in my womb, and when I do I run into a failure of our language and measuring system. She is technically, from the date of her birth, 2 years old and 2 months plus some days. But when I discuss her WHOLE life with her, she really is 2 years old and 2 months and some days PLUS the 8 months and 1 week she was in my womb. We need some way of denoting that for our children, for those of us who feel strongly about the origin of life. I tell her all the time about how she went to Crater Lake with me and her daddy...and to Bodega Bay and all around the Bay area and to Ashland... I mean, to me, she was there. She went to Disneyland with me when she was just a few weeks old (in my womb). If I wrote that sentence without appending "in my womb" people would think I meant a few weeks old after birth.

Anyway, Katie and I, awake at 6:00 AM, spent most of the day in our jammies, eventually emerging in exercise clothes to take a walk. I am feeling great (a little tired here and there) but GREAT with this pregnancy and am excited about training for another natural labor (and increasing stamina for caring for two small children at once).

After our walk, Katie slept, and I plowed through 6 chapters of "escrows" for my final real estate course. I am not much for making resolutions: in the words of fellow Toastmaster Bob Freels, now is the time to make actual goals, not resolutions.

My goals (outside of those that daily center on Bill and Katie) are many before birth:

1) Finish my last real estate course this month, test prep for one or two months, and sit for the licensing exam. Definitely needs to be done, and will be done, before labor.

2) Finish my first Toastmasters manual (6 more speeches + the 4 I've given) to earn my Competent Communicator distinction

3) Make Katie's 3rd year scrapbook and have it ready to go (I always have them designed and filled with mounts and doodads by Feb or March and then finish filling in all her pics by her birthday)

4) Finish my cross-stitch sampler (on hold during the season of making Christmas gifts)

5) Continue my nightly studies/meditations/gratitude journal

6) Give time to the planning and celebration of David's wedding to Ashley (in May, and very likely in my backyard---but they want to check a few more venues first)

7) Build and nurture friendships and relationships with good people: set up lunches and activities, be more open to going out, initiate.

These are not necessarily in order of priority...

Life is full and busy and beautiful, with a balance of productivity and relaxation. I am loving January this year...so much always going on! Can't wait to see friends tomorrow for lunch, too! FUN!

First OB Visit for Little Sib

I have been really looking forward to my first OB visit for Katie's Little Sib! Being back at Temecula Valley OBGYN with Katie is a beautiful experience, recalling many months of our visits together when she was in my womb. I love being able to show her everything, the place where I sat on my last visit before her birth... She got to meet Dr. Elfelt, the doctor who cared for her and we saw Dr. Glaser (who was on-call to deliver her) pass by. It is a widely-reported phenomenon that women tend to become a bit enamored of their OBs, and I am no exception. For me, it was like seeing old trusted friends who helped to bring into the world my most precious treasure. I have so much appreciation for Dr. Elfelt's expertise and skill and the way he projects a friendly authoritative confidence in his explanation of everything. I know we are in extremely capable hands at TV OBGYN.

With a first child, so much of the medical process is myserious, but now that I have been through all of the procedures once, I feel so comfortable and sure of myself. It really is fun to experience it all again, like some form of happy nostalgia. I even liked having my blood drawn today. Everything reminds me of Katie and I also feel joy to be experiencing it with Little Sib---so it is like my delight is a thousandfold.

I took Katie with me, of course, and Amie came along to help watch Katie during parts when I was being examined. I did take her through every step of my exam, though, so she could be part of the process with me. Katie even got to see Little Sib on the ultrasound monitor, which was really cool... She can see her brother or sister developing right in front of her eyes. She got to watch my doctor use his stethoscope and the nurse use the blood pressure cuff (90/60)---she has both tools in her toy medical kit at home. This pregnancy is an opportunity to teach Katie so many things---about the development of life, about the medical profession, about becoming a mommy. I am so excited!

Our appointment was lengthy. I actually moved from task to task with hardly any real waiting, but there was so much to do, including the onsite lab and a consultation with Dr. Elfelt in his office before the exam. But it is so exciting to have the process rolling along again... After I was all through, we went out for Costco pizza and berry smoothies, Katie's favorite. I am pretty tired this afternoon, and Katie has been such a good little girl all day long. I am just so thankul for both of my children and for Bill.

I can't wait to meet Little Sib in person in August!

Blue Moon New Year

2010 sailed in with the blue moon moonlight, through the avocado trees, touching ground on my grandpa's land. I spent New Year's Eve around the warmth of an outdoor fire, coyotes howling in the distance, Katie bundled up on my lap. Toward midnight, she and I crawled into our bed and I gave her a kiss and reminded her that she is the 5th generation of the Matics line to sleep on that land.

Katie loves to run on the land, and we play games with the citrus fruits. I had her help me build the fire, gathering kindling for the one of the most fundamental of human tasks. She and I walked the first tier of the grove together---crunch, crunch, crunch in the fallen leaves. We played hide-n-seek, letting the mountain air fill our lungs.

A small group of us spent the night, but we were joined by the rest of our extended family the following day. In the morning, my dad barbecued/grilled sausage, eggs, and toast. Katie and I shared a banana and a chocolate donut: my grandpa always had a chocolate donut and coffee on New Year's day. Katie and I ate ours and looked for birds and avocadoes just like Grandpa and I used to do. Then we hunted for avocadoes in the northwest part of the grove.

As more people arrived, we played games and ran the dogs. Katie loves Aunt Diane and Uncle Brad's dog Skya. ("See my new shirt, Skya?" "You are my favorite." "How was your day, Skya?") We also hiked to Grandpa's rock and told some of our favorite family stories there. After the hike, about 30 people all sat down to a huge prime rib feast. My dad did an exceptional cooking job on the prime rib this year, I thought. While Katie napped, a group of us cousins played a raucus and laugh-filled game of Catch Phrase, which involved all kinds of cheering. I love games with big groups of people---so much fun! Dessert followed, with Hannah's (Brandon's wife) delicious apple pie and several other treats.

Then we played our white elephant game, which is really fun with so many people. The gifts seem to be getting better and better, though every now and then there are a few clunkers. We ended up with some bath toilettries (Bill), a sock puppet kit (me), and a Santa candle (Katie). There is so much teasing and cheering going on as we play the game, so much mirth. It is one of my favorite traditions each year, but this year it was even more fun than usual.

I missed Grandpa, of course, and I spent some time sitting in his chair trying to think of him being there. In a thought experiment, I tried to release my mind from all sense of linear time (a human construct) and imagine us coexisting in the chair: him in the past and me now. Somewhere in the past, he is still sitting there... All that we think of as time is just a series of continous moments...

Anyway, it was a beautiful New Year's: full of family and nature and being out semi-far from civilization (though not as much as his land used to be). I love that we can focus on just each other with no technology (well, we do have cell phones): no internet, no working TV, nothing to distract us from what our thoughts and from talking with each other.

Katie loves it there. She said that taking a bath there was her favorite. She wants to spend the night again!

Yesterday also marked the one-year anniversary of my Gratitude Journal. Everyday for a year I have written down my thanks for several good and beautiful moments or experiences in that day. Even on days that have been harder, there are many parts of that day for which I have gratitude and I have learned better how to keep my mind trained on what is good and true and to let other things leave me. It is a good tool for me. I realize how many thousands of moments and memories I have been thankful for in 2009---and those were just the ones I wrote down. It is a powerful lesson for me. I began a new volume of the Gratitude Journal yesterday...

Happy 2010, readers!