Shauna Niequist

Baby Favorites

2012-02-06T16:39:49Z

I'm by no means an expert on baby gear, and I'm not particularly picky about a lot of it, but there are just a few things I do really love. So whether you're a new parent or you're looking for a go-to list of things to bring to a friend's new baby, here are a few of our can't-live-without favorites:

Blabla kitty cat

Our friend Kelly gave Mac this sweet little cat, and it is his favorite, favorite toy--we don't leave the house without Kitty Cat. So soft and grab-able for little hands, and there are lots of really cute dolls to choose from.

Ergo baby carrier

We love the Baby Bjorn, but it very quickly wreaks havoc on the lower back. The Ergo is perfect for bigger and heavier kids--you can wear it on the front, the side, or the back like a backpack, and it's super-comfy for both parent and baby.

Hanna Andersson sleepers

I love these. I'm kind of a Hanna sleeper addict. Mac and Henry both wear them, they wore them in our Christmas card picture, and Mac wore the darling light blue & white striped sleeper home from the hospital. Love.

Baby Gap bundlers

Both Mac and Henry wore these every night for the first few months. I love how soft they are, and it's so great to not have to deal with snaps in the blurry, dark middle of the night. And like the Hanna sleeper, they've held up for both boys--no small thing.

Skip Hop play mat

Mac just loves this. He grabs the owls, he shakes the rattle, and he especially loves to stare at that crazy baby in the mirror while he's on his tummy.

Swaddle Designs blanket

This is my go-to baby gift. At a certain point, I bought a dozen to keep on hand, giving them to every new baby in our life. We have several, and we use them for newborn swaddling, stroller blankets, an extra snuggly layer on the boat, and on and on. They only get better with washes, and we just ordered a crib sheet made of their super-soft flannel, so that Mac's bed won't be so cold on these freezing winter nights.

Aden + Anais muslin blanket

If Swaddle Designs are my old standby, these are my new love. Basically, they're the perfect summer/warm weather alternative to Swaddle Designs flannel. Perfect for swaddling or laying over a stroller to keep out the sun, and really cute designs.

What are your baby favorites? What have you especially loved for your babies, or what's your go-to gift to bring a friend?

Wild Geese

2012-02-02T20:25:53Z

Some seasons call for a little poetry. This is one of those seasons. Not a bad one, by any means, but one of great intensity. This season feels rich and full, crammed with life and ideas and people and experiences. The day flies by in what feels like a flash, a gasp, and we sleep without dreaming, hard and not enough, and then we begin again, hurled out of a deep sleep with a baby's cry.

I'm writing the next book, and Aaron's recording the next liturgy. Late nights, stealing away at naptime for an hour at the coffee shop. A dear friend had emergency surgery last week. Another dear friend gave birth to a healthy baby boy last night. A friend went through a break-up, a friend had an accident, a friend is celebrating an engagement. I feel like my cell phone is a part of my body, waiting for text updates about a surgery or a doctor's report or a conversation. Travel, deadlines, a four month old. Creativity and laundry, nerves, sleepless nights. The feeling that there would never be enough hours in a day, no matter how many you had.

My mind wanders back to this line, "You do not have to be good..."

And this one: "let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

And this one: "your place in the family of things."

I have loved this poem for almost twenty years, and it still has things to teach me every time I approach it anew. My prayer is that it will do the same for you today, no matter your season.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

--Mary Oliver (Dream Work)

White Chicken Chili

2012-01-31T20:46:40Z

This is one of those go-to dinners that you can pretty much always throw together: frozen chicken breasts, canned beans, broth, jar of salsa--although fresh is better than jarred. Fresh from the store, I mean, like from the produce section. If you’re making homemade salsa, that’s fantastic, but you’re in a different gear, certainly, than white chicken chili gear. By all means, make homemade salsa. But then definitely don’t dump it in the chili. It would be both show-offy and sort of useless, like putting on makeup before bed.

This is what you make on cold, weary nights, nights when you are so worn through and chilled to the bone that the only thing that will cure you is something thick, spicy, and eaten with a spoon.

A couple great things about this soup: first, it’s gluten-free and dairy-free, things that are very important in our house. This is a good one to bring to friends who just had a baby—warm, easy, comforting. Bring a big container of the chili, and then in another bag, the chips, salsa, cheese, avocado, etc.

And this is a perfect Sunday afternoon football meal—great with beer, big piles of chips. For crowds, I like serving traditional beef chili and this one, too—two big bubbling pots on the stove, counter full of bowls of toppings for both.

This is an endlessly versatile recipe, like all my favorite recipes are. You can add a can of corn or even corn with peppers. You can use tomatillo salsa, if you’d like, and a can of diced green chilis, and then it’s Chicken Chili Verde, which is lovely for a change. You could add a can of black beans, if you’d like, for a little color, and for their mineral-y, almost chocolate-y flavor. To make it even one step easier, you can use a rotisserie chicken, skin removed and meat shredded.

I wouldn’t add kidney beans, because that would make it too much like a plain old chili, and because, to be honest with you, I don’t like kidney beans. There really aren’t too many things I just don’t like, but kidney beans are one. For the record: I also don’t love ham, cinnamon or white chocolate. But I digress...back to the chili at hand.

White Chicken Chili for 6

1-1.5 pounds chicken: breasts, tenders, or boneless skinless thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces. Cook in a large stock pot or Dutch oven over medium heat.

Add one container of salsa, preferably fresh. Or green salsa, as we discussed above.

Cook until chicken is almost cooked through, about five minutes.

Drain all 4 cans of beans. Add 2 cans as they are, and mash 2 cans with a fork or the back of a wooden spoon, then add them.

Add four cups of broth.

Bring to a rolling boil, then reduce heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally.

Simmer for at least 30 minutes, but, really, the longer the better.

Serve with cilantro, wedges of lime, sliced avocado, shredded cheese, chips, sour cream, and salsa. I will warn you, however, that sometimes what began as a thoroughly virtuous soup becomes a very large meal consisting mainly of cheese & chips with a very occasional bite of soup. Or at least that's what I've heard.

Custom Canvas Giveaway Winners!

2012-01-30T19:16:24Z

Thanks for sharing so many great quotes...a few of my favorites:

From Gillian:

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all. Shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things will fill from behind, from beneath, like water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” --Annie Dillard

From Julia:

“You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
-G.K. Chesterton

And from kottley:

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last,

"what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.”

― A.A. Milne

Great, great words. I might be calling my friend Holly for three more canvases. :)

And now, to the business at hand: with a little help from http://www.random.org/, we have 4 winners!

First, the Custom Canvas Winner: Lindsey

Lindsay’s comment:

"For now we live between already and not yet, memory and hope; we live between the times. Until the promised future arrives, we will always be in transition...faith is faith precisely when it points away from itself toward its object- toward the God who is love, and therefore toward the promised future. Faith lives by the promises of God , and we are saved in no other way than by hope" Karl Barth

January 24, 2012 | Lindsey

Lindsey, please send me a message, so that I can connect you with Holly, and she can get to work on your custom canvas!

And the three Valentine’s Day canvas winners are Anna, Jessica, and another Anna, with these comments:

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case you fail by default. J.K. Rowling

January 24, 2012 | Anna

***

"Living Water, swallow me

Deepest River, wash me clean
Jesus Savior, more of Thee
Jesus, more of Thee

Come and ruin me with Your love
So no other is enough
Come and leave Your mark on me
Jesus, more of Thee

Deep is the stain inside of me
But deeper the River that washes me clean
I've been the one who cries in the night
But You've been the Friend of my life." - Watermark

January 26, 2012 | jessica brazeal

***

It is never wrong to do the right thing.

January 26, 2012 | Anna

***

For you three lucky girls, send me a message with your full name & mailing address, & Holly will send out your canvas in time for Valentine's Day. :)

Lots of good things coming up here: this spring we’ll do two book giveaways from friends I can't wait to introduce you to, if you don't know them already—Untitled from Blaine Hogan & 7 from Jen Hatmaker. I’m reading both right now & can’t wait to share them with you.

Later this week, I’ll post the white chicken chili recipe I made with my sisters-in-law last night, and next week, a few of my favorite baby things.

Until then: love, grace, good books, hard laughter, and lots of time around the table. XO

15 Pounds of Awesome

2012-01-26T17:37:26Z

Mac is four months old today, and he is just nothing but fifteen pounds of love and awesomeness. He’s all smiles—that’s like his thing, smiling with a side of laughing. When that baby smiles, everything stops for me. I am totally, completely, one-thousand-percent in love with him.

He’s a laid-back, happy baby, and he basically gets passed from grandma to grandma to aunt to papa to dad to mom, with the occasional sort-of strangle/sort-of hug from his big brother. And he rolls with it all. He’s been to Dallas, Atlanta, Palm Beach, South Haven, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, and Appleton, Wisconsin. Not bad for four months.

Everyone says that when your baby is born, your other children suddenly become giants, and that’s absolutely true. Henry became practically an adult the day we came home from the hospital, and he’s proven to be a fantastic big brother. He loves to dress just like his little brother, so every day he comes into the nursery when I’m changing Mac to see what he’s wearing, and then finds something similar. Darling.

Even after four months, I confess that I’m still having trouble finding the right words for how I feel about this baby, about this gift, about the depth of gratitude I feel for his healthy birth and for each passing day of growth and thriving life.

Five years ago, Henry's birth was the beginning of our parenting journey, and he has brought us joy and laughter and love every day. Right alongside our joy and gratitude for Henry, though, there were years of longing, praying, losing, hoping, trying not to hope. Mac is the answer to every one of those prayers and every one of those tears.

Every parent believes their baby is a miracle. And they’re right. And so do we.

Every parent believes their baby is absolute magic. And they’re right. And so do we.

Here’s to four months of our magic, our miracle, our baby Mac.

Giveaway: Custom Canvas from Livingston & Porter

2012-01-24T16:04:59Z

It’s a new year, and it’s time for a giveaway!

I love this one: my sweet friend Holly from Livingston and Porter will paint one of her amazing custom canvases for the winner.

You know, of course, that I’m a words person by profession. And that carries through all of my life—I love to be surrounded by words: quotes, fragments of poetry, lines from songs, passages from scripture. Naturally, then, Holly’s canvases are totally my jam.

(Yeah, I absolutely just used the phrase "totally my jam." What?)

I have Holly’s work all over my house, literally, and last Christmas, she painted custom canvases for my husband, my mom, my dad, my brother, and my best friend. Seriously, I’m a fan.

I love giving these canvases as gifts—I chose my dad’s life verse (1 Corintians 15:58), a quote about peacemaking for my mom, and a much-loved Nietzsche quote for Aaron: “One must still have enough chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”

For a friend with a darling new baby girl, Holly did a canvas in the softest, sweetest pink, and in white it said, “The day you were born, the world had to make room for a little more fancy.” Come on.

For the winner, Holly will do any color, any shape, and any quote for you—so cool, right? You can peek at her Etsy site for examples, or totally dream up your own. Also on her site are all sorts of treasures—vintage books, things she finds at estate sales. The girl’s got style.

All you have to do is leave a comment with your name and your favorite quote—and it doesn’t have to be the one you’ll choose for the canvas if you win. Just share with us some words that move you.

One entry per person, and the winner will be chosen at random at noon CST on Monday, January 30^th. Simple enough, yes?

My favorite quote, of course, is in the photo, and that canvas is hanging right in my kitchen, where I see it every day. Splendid torch, indeed.

***Late breaking news: Holly is the best, and not only is she giving away a custom canvas, but because there are so many comments, she's also giving away three Valentine's Day canvases! That means that on Monday, we'll annouce FOUR winners! XO***

On Writing & Creativity

2012-01-16T17:09:23Z

I am, as you know, working on Bread & Wine, my third book, a collection of essays about faith, family, food, friendship & life around the table. It’s due this summer, and I’m taking a little bit of a different tack than I have before.

I began again in earnest on January 3^rd, and I write between two and three days a week, depending on the week. I write sometimes at a coffee shop—there are four coffee shops in my rotation, and the one I choose for a particular day has everything to do with who’s watching my sweet baby that day. If I leave him with my mom, I go to the place nearest her house, and so on. That's all just about the same as last time.

I realized, though, that somewhere along the way I developed a bad habit, or at least what I think is an unhelpful habit for my current purpose. I slipped into writing a first draft, cleaning it up, reading through again, crafting first paragraph and last, and then pronouncing it nearly done, all in a day. That’s good, I think. It’s productive, and it lets me cross one essay off the list—one down!

But what it doesn’t do is force me to play in the messy, unfolding, rich, mulch-y creative wreckage. It’s tidy, it’s straightforward, it’s perfect for a blog post—and the bonus there is immediate feedback. But have I become so accustomed to immediate feedback and the tidiness of finishing a quick essay that I’m missing some of the deep, gutsy, creative work that’s yielded only when you let it sit and settle and marinate for a while? That's the question I'm asking these days.

Five years ago this month I was working on Cold Tangerines. I didn’t have a blog. No Facebook or Twitter. I wrote and wrote, and for ages, no one saw it. Occasionally my editor. Very rarely, a friend. It was a wide, sloppy, creative, beautiful mess. Bits and pieces, knit together and unraveled, over and over till they settled together like old friends. There were a few of those essays that I wrote straight through, in a flame of creativity and pure happiness, but I think that happened because I gave myself the protected time and space to write both good stuff and terrible stuff.

So I’m going back to that place. We’re going away with friends mid-February, and between now and then, my only goal is volume—words and words and words. Every story and idea and rabbit trail. Every question, dream, memory. Quantity, freedom, playing around with words.

It’s harder than I thought, mostly because I miss feeling like I’m producing—look at this finished thing I made today! But I can tell, at the same time, that it is yielding as sense of freedom and gutsiness, a depth that I hadn’t been hitting when I wanted a quick, clean 1500 words and a check off my list.

So here's to the mess, the sprawling, ugly-beautiful, chicken-scratched, rabbit-trailed, creative wandering. To the discipline it takes to stay there. And to the goodness we find when we linger there.

As always, for me, writing is more about learning than teaching, more about discovering than reporting, more about showing up than showing off.

Here's to showing up.

Four Words for 2012

2012-01-12T15:07:42Z

Hello again—and Happy New Year! We had a great, sunny, family-filled few days at the beach after Christmas, and then our first day back, I began writing again.

It’s great and hard and exciting and nerve-wracking, and I’m finding that adding three days a week of writing into life with two kids, etc., etc. to be a bit of a trick—the days are flying, and the house is a wreck, and I haven’t yet gotten into the groove.

I’m also attempting to reply to lots of very kind emails from the fall—thank you, first, for all your messages, and second, for your grace as I reply to them after such a delay.

Three month old, five year old, looming manuscript deadline, laundry pile-up, bursting inbox…this poor blog is always the last to get some love and attention, but as with all things this season, better late than never, yes?

These are the four words that I’ve chosen to guide me through the coming year:
SMARTER, STRANGER, HEALTHIER, MORE HOLY

SMARTER

Once upon a time, like when I graduated from college, I was kind of smart. Or at least smart-ish. I read complicated novels. I read literary criticism. I read the New Yorker. I read in French. Fast forward a decade or so, and while I still read a lot, my standards have slipped. Now, instead of the New Yorker, I read US Weekly. Instead of reading in French, I read cookbooks with French recipes. And that’s not all bad, but this year I want to rediscover my inner smartypants—more Time than tabloids, more Joan Didion than Jenny McCarthy. I want to turn off the tv and pick up something meaningful, complex, challenging. I want to end the year smarter than when it started.

STRANGER

Along those lines, when I graduated from college, I was a little less consumed by consumer culture. I was a little stranger. I listened to more indie music, spent less time at Target, danced a little more to the beat of my own drummer. And this year, I want to reclaim that funny little indie artist girl. I want to buy less, consume less, feel less in line with a mainstream culture that has very little to offer in terms of depth and meaning.

I don’t want to watch the Kardashians. I don’t want to keep filling my house with stuff to make life more convenient—cheap toys, frozen meals, disposable everything. I want to be, consciously, a little weirder--creative, risky, gutsy. Generous, alternative, courageous. A little strange.

HEALTHIER

Let it be said—yes, let it be shouted across the internets—I’m not ready to go all upper-thirties Chico’s-wearing mom just yet. Four pregnancies (2 healthy, 2 not) in five years, along with a move, two books, and two book tours, have not been kind to my body. It’s time to make some serious changes.

For me, that’s about a lot more than a diet. It’s about my appetites, my beliefs about myself and about my body. It’s about exercise and time and self-esteem. I know I won’t do it perfectly, but I’m on it. Ready to learn a new way, ready to teach this old dog some new tricks in 2012.

MORE HOLY

It would sound better, I know, to say holier, but holier immediately makes me think ‘holier than thou,’ and that’s not what I mean at all. What I mean is holier than I was last year, and the year before. I want to be more like Christ—more forgiving, less angry. More able to sacrifice, less attached to my own safety and comfort. More prayerful and less fearful. More disciplined and less attached to my own preferences.

So there we are...2012: smarter, stranger, healthier, more holy.

What words are guiding you through the year?

Present over Perfect

2011-12-19T13:55:58Z

Here we are, Christmastime. T-6 days until the big day, and if your week is anything like mine, it's full of family parties and gatherings with friends, preschool Christmas programs and coffee dates with out of town friends just here for the holidays. And if your week is anything like mine, your gifts are mostly purchased but mostly not wrapped, and your laundry situation, after a busy weekend, is dire.

When I officiate a wedding, I usually meet with the bride & groom about a week out, and there are a few pieces of advice I always give. The first is that from this point on, nothing can get added to the wedding to-do list. Things can only be taken off the list, either completed or abandoned. But nothing gets added--no last minute project, no stroke of genius DIY thing you see on Pinterest. If it's not already on the list, no matter how charming, adding it will only make you crazy.

And then I tell them that while they can add nothing to the list, I can, in fact, add two very important things to their list. First: a no-wedding-talk date. Second: rest, whatever that means--sleep, an unscheduled hour, a walk, a bath.

They always look at me like I'm nuts. I can see them thinking, we're up to our ears in seating charts and programs to assemble and family drama to mitigate, and you want us to go on a date and then take a nap?

Actually, yes.

Because what will make their wedding day perfect is not the flowers or the favors, but a bride & groom who are happy, connected, present, patient.

And the same is true at Christmas. You can show up with your perfectly wrapped grab bag gift & your perfectly baked cookies...and your perfectly resentful and frazzled self, ready to snap at the first family member you see.

Or you can choose to rest your body & nourish your spirit, knowing that bringing a grounded, present self to each holiday gathering is more important than the gifts you bring.

So this is my advice to you this week: add nothing to the to-do list. Abandon well-intentioned but time-consuming projects. And make rest & space priorities, so that what you offer to your loved ones is more than a brittle mask over a wound-up and depleted soul.

You know that my intention for the season has been PRESENT OVER PERFECT.

I feel like every day this past week I was given an opportunity to live this out: a new friend invited me to a cookie exchange...on the only night Aaron would be home until Christmas, because of the Christmas Eve services at our church. We didn't have plans, per se, but I had a sense that we needed to be home together. And so I said no, which was hard for me, and our little family did approximately nothing--which was just what we needed.

I co-hosted a party the next night, and one of the things I brought was....frozen meatballs. You know I love to cook, and I was planning, of course, to make them from scratch. But it was too much--time and energy I don't have in this season.

And, of course, no one cared. That's the lesson in this for people like me who sometimes get wound up about doing things perfectly...90% of the people in your life won't know the difference between, say, fresh and frozen, or handmade and storebought, and the 10% who do notice are just as stressed out as you are, and your willingness to choose simplicity just might set them free to do the same.

My friends from high school always get together this time of year, and in the last several years we've started a tradition of building gingerbread houses with all our kids. This year, two of us have sick kids. I have a newborn. One is working full time in a new position. One is about 8 & 3/4 months pregnant. As the emails swirled around about a date for this year, finally one person said, "I love you all so much--enough to let tradition slide this year in order to keep things simpler this season." Ah, yes. Yes. Yes.

Present over perfect.

Quality over quantity.

Relationship over rushing.

People over pressure.

Meaning over mania.

Those are my guiding thoughts for this season, and the ones that I keep at the forefront of my mind as I look over my plans for this week. Nothing else to be added, except blessed little stretches of rest and space.

What does this mean for your week? What might need to be crossed off your list, or simplified, or postponed until after the holidays?

What might you need to say no to, in order to bring a whole, healthy self to the things you've said yes to?

The irony, of course, must not be lost on us: a season that is, at its heart, a love story, a story about faith and fragility, angels, a baby, a star--that sweet, simply beautiful story gets lost so easily in a jarring, toxic tangle of sugar and shopping bags and rushing and parking lots and expectations.

In our lowest, most fragmented moments, we feel out of control, controlled, in fact, by expectations and to-do lists and commitments and traditions. This is that season, we shrug, when things get a little crazy. No avoiding it.

But that's not true. And that's shifting the blame. You've been entrusted with one life, made up of days and hours and minutes. You are spending them according to your values, whether you admit it or not.

Let's be courageous in these days.

Let's choose love and rest and grace.

Let's use our minutes and hours to create memories with the people we love, instead of dragging them on one more errand or shushing them while we accomplish one more seemingly necessary thing.

Let's honor the story--the silent night, the angels, the miracle child, the simple birth, with each choice that we make.

Merry, merry, merry Christmas.

Winner of the Trade as One Giveaway....

2011-12-13T21:19:41Z

Maggieann930@gmail.com, you're the winner!

This is Maggie's comment:

"My favorite holiday tradition is waking up on Christmas morning to the smell of homemade cinnamon rolls baking in the oven. The recipe goes back to my great-grandmother's dinner rolls that she always use to make for every meal. My mom uses the same recipe, but to make the cinnamon rolls, she adds some other ingredients, including cinnamon, sugar and butter. She makes the best homemade cream cheese icing to spread on top. They're so delicious and they just melt in your mouth. They also provide for some great conversation around the breakfast counter. That's my favorite holiday tradition, and I hope one day to continue it with my kids.

I've just recently learned about Trade as One, and I love everything that they stand for."

Maggie, send me an email--sniequist (at) mac (dot) com--with your mailing address, and I'll put your goodies from Trade as One in the mail. :)

If you didn't win this time around, we've got some really great giveaways planned for the new year.

And in the meantime, my prayer is that we will choose to be PRESENT OVER PERFECT this season...that's my phrase for these weeks.

I'm doing less, buying less, saying yes to less.

I'm connecting more, listening more, resting more.

Wishing the same for you. Be courageous. XO