I have over 200 incomplete posts in my drafts folder. Yikes. And
that's just here, at the WordPress site, where I've been for less than
a year. Lord knows how many drafts are sitting over at Typepad. I dare
not look.

In an effort to clear this cache out a bit, here's a look at some
things I was going to write about but didn't get around to finishing.

***

Swell Stocking-Stuffer for Your Music-Loving Hubby

Or for any lover of contemporary music, really. Doesn't have to be
your husband. Your sister, your teenager. It's just that Scott's the
music buff in my life, so I relate all things musical to him.

And also, these are his books I'm recommending. Not his as in he
wrote them. His as in he keeps leaving them all over the house. Some
are from the library and some he picked up with the one measly Amazon
gift certificate I shared with him after spending all the rest on
crafty books for my own self. Um, I mean on inspiring and creatively
enriching resources for my darling children. Yeah, that's the ticket
(she says, hastily shoving her hot-off-the-presses copy of Stitched in Time behind her back).

Anyway, these music books. They're a series of little bitty paperback books called 33 1/3.
As in: thirty-three and a third. Like, you know, those round black
things they used to scratch music out of back in olden times. Each
volume is a kind of extended essay on a single record album. I think. I
mean, it's not like I've actually read any of them. But I listened ever
so intently when Scott raved about the awesomeness of the concept. One
book: one album: one deep exploration of musical themes and lyrical
themes and the life-affirming statements of painful, screeching guitar
solos and all that stuff people like Scott think about when they do
this thing that is so unfathomable to me where they just sit and listen to music.
I don't do that. Music is for singing, or for cleaning to, or for
entertaining children in the car, or for getting teary-eyed over when
it's your daughter practicing on the piano she got from the Make-a-Wish
Foundation

Obviously, I wandered from the point. The point was: Scott loves this series of books and I thought someone on your Christmas list might, too.

***

The next draft was begun in mid-November. I'm not sure why I didn't post it, or what else I might have been going to say.

What We're Up To These Days

Let's see. You already know we're reading zillions of picture books
for the Cybils. I think I'm up to 76 books read so far, with another
five in my TBR pile and several more waiting for me at the library.
Saturday is Scott's library-run day (honestly, I don't even try any
more, not with the action-packed Wonderboy/Rilla combo), so I'll most
likely curl up for another reading marathon tomorrow afternoon.

I tried to cut back on out-of-the-house activities this fall, but
bit by bit the schedule filled up again. We've got a pretty good rhythm
going, though. Jane is taking ballet, Jane and Beanie are in a
children's choir that practices once a week, and Jane, Beanie, and Rose
are all in a very nice little drawing class they begged and begged to
squeeze in, and I'm glad I succumbed to their cajoling. Our
sewing/laundry room walls are filling up with some truly gorgeous art
in chalk pastels. I hope I'll be up to maintaining the art class
dropoff/pickup schedule after the baby comes in January, but it does
leave me with an awkwardly sized window of time to fill with my little
ones. Sometimes I do a grocery run during the window, but if I don't
get the coveted fire-truck cart that seats two children, I'm sunk. This
week I took a less productive but infinitely more pleasant approach and
simply buckled them into the Awesome! New! Double! Stroller!! (thank
you, Mr. Wonderful, you know who you are) and went for a, you guessed
it, stroll. Did a little window shopping on a quiet street full of
craft stores and antique shops. Bought each of us a teeny tiny bag of
teeny tiny sandwich cookies. It was lovely. And when I picked up the
girls they were full of chatter and excitement because two of them are
about to graduate from chalks to watercolors, and one of them (Beanie,
let's brag on the seven-year-old) had just completed a picture which
was chosen to go in the 'gallery,' aka the studio window that fronts a
busy street. Miss Bean was positively glowing. When her grandparents
come for a visit next week, they will have to drive by and admire the
display.

Wonderboy has speech therapy twice a week and PT twice a month. PT
is a bit of a hike (up a busy highway to the Children's Hospital) but
it coincides with choir, and the other moms have been wonderful about
keeping an eye on the girls for me (mainly Rilla) while the boy and I
slip out for his session. This was supposed to be a three-month burst
of PT to help him past a growth spurt (bone grows faster than muscle,
so whenever he hits a spurt, his already short and tight muscles get
even shorter and tighter), but the therapist would like to extend it
for a while. She's doing some pretty intensive deep-tissue massage and
stretching with him. We're giving it another few weeks before we make
the call.

So all of that, plus my OB appts (which, gulp, just hit the
every-two-weeks mark this week, which means we are really very close to
the end of this pregnancy, which is sort of mindboggling because it
feels like it's only been a few months so far), makes for a pretty busy
schedule. Much busier than in our mellower Virginia days. But then, my
girls are getting big. Their interests are tumbling out of our home,
which is right and proper.

***

Oh, look, the next draft isn't really a draft—it's just an
unpublished baby ticker. I think I've stuck it at the bottom of a few
other posts.

Wow, I REALLY need to find that box of baby clothes I know I saved when we moved from Virginia.

***

One of the drafts is called "Peace Comes Dropping Slow." That's
all there is, just the title. I vaguely remember meaning to describe
some particularly chaotic and noisy scene that had just taken place,
making a mockery of the Yeats quote at the top of this blog. Of course,
every single day provides, oh, dozens of such moments. "Peace" as
applied to this house refers more to a state of mind than any kind of
sensory description, you understand.

***

Whoops, the 7:00 bird just cooed.
The "big noisy peace" (as Sandra Dodd calls it) will commence any
minute now. Actually I can't believe it hasn't begun already—kids are
sleeping late this morning. But I should go. I didn't make it very far
through the big pile o' drafts, did I?