Aloha & Mahalo | Hawaii Vacation

Having been to Hawaii a few years ago, we jumped at the opportunity to go again when there was a work conference for Mr. Fleece to attend. We packed up the family for a six-hour flight and were transported from deary mid-November Seattle to a tropical 80 degree paradise. Somehow we were able to convince my mom to join as well! We loved getting to see her take in the beauty and joys of Hawaii  for the first time. From the crystal clear ocean to the rich backdrop of the steep green mountains - its a decadent view for the eyes. The extra hands and free babysitter were just a bonus!

Our top highlights were snorkeling at Hanauma Bay at sunrise (free entry before 7am!), surfing for the first time with surprising albeit exhausting success, and multiple days of amazing boogie boarding at Kailua Beach! We split our time between resort life in Waikiki and a quirky I-can-hear-roosters-and-other-noisy-birds air bnb in Waimanola and took in the following:

- Watching the sunrise and sunset in Waikiki
- Attending a mini luua and seeing some hula dancers
- Swimming in the hotel pools with NLW
- Obama's favorite Waiola shave ice
- Farmer's Market in Kailua
- Tide-pooling at night
- Makapu'u Point Lighthouse Trail
- Watching a moon rising for the first time
- Swimming in the turtle pond/private beach behind our air bnb
- Good old-fashioned people-watching

We also ate really well on our trip. I can still taste the perfectly fried coconut shrimp, pork sandwiches, honeydew milk boba tea, and would highly recommend the wonder of the Japanese food court, Shirokiya where we met our friend KT.

Good-bye shorts & sandals,

-SJW

Baby Snippets | Reflections on parenting year 1

In honor of NLW's first birthday, I've compiled some thoughts and advice on having a little baby. You won't find a list of must-have registry items, specific brands, or techniques, but rather an inside look into the mindset and perspective I tried to maintain while being kicked around by the rowdy duo known as "Eating & Sleeping". The two crucial components that have caused parents grief for years and years and years. If you're not having problems or concerns about one of them, are you even a real parent? : )

 From our personal experience with this specific child, here's what I have to share:

- I often think of this season as the "easy days." NLW is a cheerful child, easy on the go, and still totable. The toddler years/multiple children seem much more daunting to me!

- Our "ups and downs" of parenting often occured within the same 24-hour period. We'd have a hard morning, a good afternoon, an awful night, and then a so-so early morning. Good to remember it comes in waves!

- No matter how the night went, I'd celebrate the morning with a big happy greeting and say "we made it through!" Life feels a little more manageable after 6am!

- Set a timer. Timers are your friend. I've been using timers for various things basically since contractions started :) 

- We were fortunate to have very few "sleepless" nights. NLW was pretty great at chunking sleep from an early age and soothe back to sleep. So I liked to think of the night wakings over the first year as "intermissions." I expect this disjointed sleep will come periodically and know that terrible hair-pulling, doubt-yourself sleepless nights may still be ahead with regressions, teething, and potty-training. Yikes! 

- Sometimes it's helpful not to look at the clock to see what time it is. If your baby is up and needs you, then you're up too!

- Getting out of the house has always been invigorating and energizing for me. It helps me enjoy the world around me instead of getting all tied up in the timing of naps and feedings. In the very early days, I would leave the door thinking "this could be a disaster" but for the most part, NLW has always done well out and about! 

- I think of the first 3-4 months as a free for all! No structure, no schedule, whatever works for naps and feedings.

- When with friends, sometimes I wanted to talk about mom stuff and sometimes I didn't. It was nice to have a group of people to dive into the nitty gritty of nap schedules and puree ingredients and others that were more interested in things I was reading or thinking about. Find outlets for both!

- If your baby can take a bottle use that to your advantage and get time for yourself. 

- It's okay to say "no", lessen your commitments, and step back while you acclimate to life with a little one. 

- Hard days happen. Your child will go on nap strikes and boycott food from his plate. Sometimes he'll wake up with poop all over his crib. I regularly say "It's part of life" and just try and roll with it!

- Singing our words in a made up tune was our number one way of dealing with a stressful situation. Crying baby? Fussy baby? Squirmy baby? Sing. Sing. Sing! 

- Playing tag with a baby is important. You tag in and out with your partner :) We'd say "I'm tagging out. He's all yours." and simply rotate until things cooled down or we regained some energy.

- If things felt hard or weren't going smoothly, I often reminded myself that "I wanted this!" and this hard thing is simply part of having a baby!

- Things can feel so important in the moment, but I'm honestly not going to remember how/when/or if NLW napped on a Tuesday in April. It all passes so quickly.

- Treat your first baby like it's your third.

- Avoid parenting blogs or speculating amongst friends and just ask your pediatrician!

- Put your phone away. Choose to cherish/capture certain moments without taking a picture. 

- At the same time, you'll also never regret having "too many" videos. 

- Ask for help!

- Say "yes" when people offer you help. 

- It's totally normal to look through photo albums of your baby at all times of day.

- Study your baby's face - it changes so much in the first year.

- Getting take out is almost never a bad option. Don't get mopey if you didn't have the chance to buy groceries or make dinner.

- I have so much more empathy toward other parents now! You just never know someone's full story, or what the past 24 hours have been like for them. 

- Saying aloud that it's been 6.5 months since I slept through the night sounds worse than it really was.

- A new normal will emerge. Embrace it, knowing that it might change again in another few weeks!

- There's so many cute and adorable and special and ordinary moments that occur. I really love being a mom to this little boy!

- SJW

A Kick in the Pants from Mr. Aesop

I've been child-rearing for an entire year now. Twelve complete months of the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the sweet and the smelly, the messy and the slightly-less-messy. And while I've been caught in the crossfire of decision paralysis related to food, naptime, milk, and sleep, I've never questioned whether I'm a good mother. That said, when I came across the succint little fable "The Crab and Its Mother" I felt the weight of parenthood in a fresh way.

An Old Crab said to her son, "Why do you walk sideways like that, my son? You ought to walk straight." The Young Crab replied, "Show me how, dear Mother, and I'll follow your example."
The Old Crab tried but tried in vain, and then saw how foolish she had been to find fault with her child."

Thinking through meals, activities, childcare, toys, schooling, routines, and books to read is of course important and influential, but the words I say, the actions I take, and the responses I display is the real curriculum in these younger years. So when normal frustrating events occur...like when it takes me way-too-long to open the baby wipes, or when I misplace three different items in the span of two days, or when I'm running late for a meet-up, or when I forget something and have to run back into the house for a third time, I want to go easy on myself rather than falling into an angry, melancholy, disparing, or finger-pointing headspace. 

I want to be a patient, logical, kind, self-controlled, good-humored woman who will in turn model these traits for NLW. I know he already has bits of me in his demeanor and personality, but I want to keep rubbing off on him in the best possible way knowing that he's likely to follow in my crabby footsteps. 

You can't have your crabcakes and eat them too,

-SJW

Life Wright Now | Summer 2019

The summer has swished away into cool crisp days and I'm ready for our fall line-up including pumpkin patch adventures, birthday celebrations, a new season with Seattle Rep, and a trip to Hawaii!

Here's a quick glimpse of how we rounded out our summer:
- Trips to the zoo
- Free author events at Book Larder
- Ice cream at Frankie & Jo's (our new favorite since Mr. Fleece can eat everything on the menu)
- Rollerblading at Green Lake
- Weekly library pit stops
- Visits to Lincoln Park in West Seattle
- The Seattle Children's Museum on repeat

WATCHING | We recently purchased a second-hand outdoor baby swing and NLW is loving it! His face lights up, he smiles, he giggles. It's the cutest.

I'm currently binge-watching season 3 of This is Us...cue the emotions. I'd also recommend this feel-good remake.

EATING | Lazy Susan, Citizen's sister restaurant, just opened up two blocks from us, so we took a family date night there...and ran into two different sets of neighbors. We also tried this little gem of Thai street food.

In my own kitchen, I made BBQ sauce for BBQ chicken and modified Rosie Daykin's Zucchini and Couscous Salad from Let me Feed You. I added marinated artichokes, sauteed the zucchini, replaced pine nuts with almonds, and used Trader Joe's Israeli Couscous.

READING | I finally finished re-reading Jane Eyre. This novel was required reading for me in high school and I recall enjoying it, but reading it for fun as an adult is another endeavor altogether. The language is rich, witty, descriptive, and beautiful. Every other page I was making a note of a phrase, exclamation, or description. Other favorites from the summer were Brainiac:Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs by Ken Jennings and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. My bookmark is currently in Great Expectations by Dickens.

LISTENING | Melted Ice Cream by Lucia and the Lumineers new album III :)

Stashing sundresses,

SJW

Very Blackberry Merry

Wild and free, blackberry bushes nestle their way into the side streets of the Queen Anne neighborhood each summer and bestow tart little bounties to all that pass by. I can't pass up free ingredients, so it's been a family affair of urban fruit-picking - even Ebony got in on the fun. Here are a few of the treats I made from our fruity summer treasures:

These Blackberry Muffins are now included in my baking repertoire

I modified the Pistachio Raspberry Loaf from Rosie Daykin's Let Me Feed You and also whipped up some Blackberry Syrup for weekend pancakes. (pages 252, 30)

I had never heard of "Blackberry Fool", which is essentially blackberry whipped cream but the children's book A Fine Dessert by Emily Jenkins cleverly depicts the receipe across four different families and time periods. 

It was nice to have some inspiration and a narrow focus for my all-too-rare baking endeavors!

Rumble and Ramble in Blackberry Bramble,

- SJW

Guest Blogger | Laundry Room Re-Do

I can't pass a Garage Sale or Antique Store without thinking of my mother. For as long as I can remember, she's been collecting, buying and re-selling, or restoring vintage treasures. We share a joy of creating fun and bring spaces, and an eye for retro or nostalgic pieces. Here's her latest project in my childhood home.

--
BEFORE (yikes!)

 AFTER (yay!)

This laundry room re-do is awash in bright colors and vintage containers. The colors were inspired by Hudson Bay blankets and old camp chairs. A camp/cottage theme is evident throughout.

Picnic baskets make for excellent storage, tucking away a myriad items from tools to cleaning supplies, extension cords to old sheets. Baskets can be transformed by painting them any shade you desire. The examples here were picked up at garage sales and flea markets ($5-$15).

Coffee cans are a real eye-opener lending a jolt of color and are great for storing smaller items like cleaning brushes, stray buttons, safety pins, or loose change that ends up in the laundry. These cans turn up regularly at estate sales, usually in the garage (nominally priced).

My husband has a colleciton of vintage advertising yardsticks which we used as shelf edging. My favorite is for a rendering company -- "Highest Cash Prices - Dead Horses - Cattle." You don't see that every day! The yardsticks were purchased at antique malls and feal markets ($1-$3).

The letters, door hardware, and metal shelf brackets all came from Hobby Lobby.

This room will help to wash away my laundry day blues!

- MJE

More posts from my mom:

If I Ran the Zoo...Or the Container Store

Baubles Bangles and Beads

Doubled Up | Olympic Peninsula Adventures

It's not up for debate, the Pacific Northwest is beautiful. With a plethora of geological beauty and unique destinations, we may never leave Washington. There's just too much to explore! Having never been to the Olympic Peninsula together, we road tripped out west in July... twice. Mr. Fleece and I planned our own family trip for the long 4th of July weekend and then we ventured out again with my parents during their visit, adding in a pit stop to Victoria, B.C. Given that Mr. Fleece fell ill on the first excursion, it was nice to get a second chance so close together!

The Peninsula is a bit sprawling, and hot destinations aren't close together. Here's some of the ground we covered:

- Purple Haze Lavendar Farm (great for pictures)

- Hurricane Ridge/Olympic National Park (amazing views, easy hikes)

- Lake Crescent (breakfast at the lodge, enjoy lake views)

- Rialto Beach (sandy Pacific Ocean beach)

- Ediz Hook (rocky beach)

- Elwha River (adjacent to Madison Falls Trail, a tinsy .3 mile walk to a rewarding waterfall)

I discovered I'm all about that lakehouse lifestyle. The first trip, we stayed on Lake Sutherland in this air bnb which provided access to a community dock for swimming along with kayaks and stand up paddleboards to borrow. We also had out own hot tub to retreat to, a great front-row "seat" for 4th of July fireworks. Other lakes I want to visit: Ozette and Cushman.

Victoria was also lovely! A beautifully clean city with gorgeous flowers, gardens, parks, and playgrounds around every bend. We explored the harbor area and our neighborhood beach, Gonzales Beach, along with Pebbles Beach, Clover Point Park, and the world-famous Butchart Gardens. Some of the best food of our trip:

- Red Fish Blue Fish (salmon talcones are yum if you don't want fish & chips)

- The Hive Eatery (amazingly delicious sweet & sour asian-syle pork burger!)

- Kid Sister Ice Cream (located in a cool back alley in Chinatown) 

Water, Bridges, Ferries, oh my,

- SJW

Guest Blogger | Dairy-Free Vegetarian Meals that Keep You Full - Part II

Continued from Part I....

Outside of my own kitchen experiments, blogs are another major source of culinary inspiration. Perhaps the most-cooked recipe of all time in my kitchen is this Zucchini and Red Lentil Curry from Dishing up the Dirt. For a nutrition boost, I serve it over quinoa or brown rice instead of white rice. And for simplicity's sake, I always cook the lentils in water rather than broth. But other than that, I tend to follow the receip pretty much as-is. Because it reheats beautifully, I often have individual portions stored in tupperwares in the fridge and freezer, ready for transport to the office. (Not to Mr. Fleece: the dollops of Greek yogurt on top is completely optional!)

This Vegan Taco Salad from The Crunchy Radish is admittedly one of the most time-consuming recipes I've every made, and yet the flavors are so good that I'd be remiss if I didn't share it here. The walnut chorizo alone is reason enough to bookmark this recipe, as it would also work well stuffed into a baked potato, or mixed into a quinoa and black bean "burrito bowl." I typically don't make the vinaigrette or cashew cream suffested, and instead whip up a tofu-based jalapeno ranch dressing.

Dinner isn't the only meal that should keep you satisfied -- a heart breakfast can also help contribue to keeping your energy up throughout the day, and keeping the mid-morning hunger pangs at bay. For leisurely weekend breakfasts, I like a balance of sweet (whole grain pancakes, whole grain French toast, whole grain muffins, granola parfaits, fruit smoothies, etc.) and savory (usually an egg and veggie scramble). On weekdays, however, a protein packed porridge hits the spot. This PB & J Overnight Oatmeal is literally the only breakfast I eat on weekday mornings between Memorial and Labor Day, and the peanut butter and chia seeds add fiber, protein, and healthy fats, which all contribute to satiety.

Do you have a favorite dairy-free vegetarian recipe? Do tell! 

- Kelly

kellytoups.com