Exciting News!

My dear friend Sarah Pahnke Reisert and I are launching a new blog! We'll be posting about parenthood, fashion, crafts, pop culture and all the other subjects dear to our hearts. Go check it out!

Salt & Nectar

Play Kitchen

Let's deal with the formalities first. No, you may not have Ron. Sorry.

Ok, now with that out of the way. Ron finished Griffin's play kitchen and it's so adorable!

Inspired by this post, Ron built this amazing play kitchen for Griffin's Christmas present. He took to it immediately, particularly after Daddy showed him how to saute his vegetables. He was also a big fan of the rolling pin. Most of the accessories came from Ikea, including the amazing little stainless steel pots. Hopefully, this will inspire a life long love of food and cooking.

His future spouse can thank me later. :)

Halfway There!

Over halfway there punks!!!

This pregnancy is going SO fast. I anticipated it would but the speed is taking my breath away. I've received a couple of requests for belly pics, so here you go.

I actually am taking them every week like I did with Griffin. I'm sort of hyper-paranoid about doing for this baby what I did for Griffin. I'm not journaling regularly like I did the first time but that was more about dealing with being pregnant than something I was doing for the baby. Otherwise, I'm taking belly pics, doing the same pregnancy yoga DVDs, and trying to eat healthy. I also plan to do the picture a day for the first year of his life - this time with less creepy baby monitor shots at the end of the night because I forgot. :)

The second trimester is going swimmingly. I really think it's the best part of being pregnant. You have a cute belly. No one is making ridiculously rude comments about how big you are yet. You feel great. You start feeling the baby move regularly. Speaking of! I don't know they say you feel your second baby move more but holy cow. He actually woke me up the other night because he kicked my stomach so hard it moved my arm. I'm choosing to believe the second baby theory and not that this baby just might be more active than Griffin.

I think of how this baby will be compared to Griffin a lot. The first time you have no clue what your baby's temperament will be and it really doesn't matter since you have no experience either way. But this time I spend a lot of time worrying this child will be difficult or colicky or just plain old bad because I know what I would be missing. Griffin is SO good. What if I've used up all my good baby cards?!?

I guess doesn't much matter at this point. Plus, I could win the baby lottery in other ways. I mean this baby could be RED-HEADED. Think about that! ;)

Tunisia

This is Nicholas and I in front of the beautiful city of Tunis, Tunisia, in 2008.

This is what the streets of Tunis look like now.

It has been very difficult to watch this all develop. In some ways, I am very happy for the people of Tunisia. There are so many rights as Americans that we take for granted, the most important of which is the basic right to participate in our government. Every citizen of Tunisia deserves that same right. They are a wonderful people with a magnificent country - not to mention, an important beacon of light in a very complicated part of the world.

At the same time, change comes at a cost. So many have already lost their lives and it is probably unrealistic to thing no one else will. The country will be in a state of upheaval and with upheaval always comes tough times and sacrifice.

I don't know what will happen in Tunisia but the one thing I do know is I am so grateful I visited there. It is all to easy as a citizen of America to forget that we are also citizens of the world. However, when you have traveled to place, when you have walked the streets that are now ablaze, news stories stop being just news stories and start being real. I feel invested in the people of Tunisia because I've walked among them.

December Daily: December 16-25