shiso mama

Are you doing anything fun tonight, friends? We’re going to be spending the kid-free night cooking and eating with friends (who are bringing over a deep fat fryer, yay baby!), celebrating a birthday, and counting down until midnight - although, if recent history is any indication, you’ll find me face down, asleep on a plate of pommes frites, a fried Twinkie still clutched in my hand, by 10:30 or so. Happy new year, and we’ll see you next year!

I hope you’ve been having a great holiday season so far. We here at Casa Otis celebrate Christmas, and we still have a last few-minute things to get ready before the big day (including decorating the tree and gulp! sending out very late presents and holiday cards). Be safe, be merry, and we’ll see you soon.  xo!

We are back, but thanks to our very own little germ sponge, we are feeling under the weather. Our trip was — hmm, mixed, I guess?

In Jamaica we swam and sat on the beach. Doing such relaxing and aimless things used to make me a little antsy. But now? My lazy butt loves it. I knit a good portion of the baby sweater I’m now making for spawn #2 with Otis happily digging in the sand beside me. If only the sun came out during our visit, and we didn’t have hurricane-force gales blowing us all over the beach (see it blowing Otis’s hair around? No wonder each and every Jamaican we encountered referred to him as a girl).

Then we headed to New York. It really feels like the Christmas there, especially up on Fifth Avenue, with the tree at Rockefeller Center, all the holiday decorations, and every girl under the age of 12 carrying a shopping bag from the American Place. Our hotel was across the street from Ground Zero, where, unfortunately, construction continues unrelentingly from 5am until as late as midnight. That was somewhat of a disaster, but it was still fun walking all over the city (we made a pilgrimmage to the Makie store) and visiting friends, even with a sick, feverish Otis. I will sadly admit, though, that as close as New York still feels to my heart, finally, on this last trip, it no longer feels anything like home anymore.

But you know what finally happened during this trip that is MOST exciting to me?

Drawing happened! Finally! Otis started drawing a lot during this trip, always requesting his art supplies, even sitting for long stretches while I sat in bakeries and chatted with friends. During our last trip to Taiwan, I stocked up on these fantastic, thin sketchbooks at Muji (we wnt teo the new store in Manhattan, though it’s disappointingly sparse compared to the ones in Asia), and they are light enough to throw into my purse with a packet of oil pastels without being cumbersome. Do you have any idea how happy this makes me??

We’re really big into the alphabet around here these days. It started out with these cocktail napkins that our good friend had printed up for our wedding (which we only got around to using now, 5 years later - it seemed like such a shame). Otis became obsessed with “reading” the napkins, often substituting his own name for one of ours (”Mama and Otis!  Otis and Baba!”). But the M in my name was of particular interest, because he realized that it became a W when inverted. Nowadays, he’s on the lookout for letters everywhere we go, excitedly pointing them out to us. But strangely, most signs seem to read O-T-I-S. And, of course, he’s obsessed with singing the ABC song:

We’re off tomorrow for a long weekend in Jamaica (we go somewhere sunny every year for F’s work) and then we’re headed to New York City and Brooklyn for a few fun days of visiting friends and nostalgically pointing out sites that mean nothing to Otis (”See that, baby? That’s the restaurant where your baba and I went on our first date, even though he claims it was still platonic back then!! sniff! bawl!”). We’ll try to fit in a post or two while we’re gone. See you soon, friends!