Full Arms, Full Heart

Soon

2011-08-11T22:31:00.000-05:00

I'm still here. Still alive. (Thanks, Kate, for checking on me).

Still just keeping my head above water. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The one thing I've learned about surviving my current commitments and financial requirements is that I need more help.

On all accounts.

I've resigned to working a hardly part time schedule (30 hours a week). It's finally the kind of job I love, the kind the girls could be proud of me for doing. But it still requires me to be one place when my heart is in another.

My E's will start an amazing preschool/Montessori program in a week and a half, and as much as I initially resisted the idea, I'm sending them full days (9-3) instead of half. I've given up the garden, hired a housekeeper twice a month and created a word document grocery list descriptive enough to guide my husband through the store with 90% accuracy when I can't go. I'm making adaptations and lowering the self expectation, but these things take time.

My darling Eve, who's birth inspired me to begin this blog, just turned 2. Two! And she speaks in emphatic, full conversations now. I want to write all about her, to tap out gushing love letters to her and celebrate who she is. I want to, but unfortunately, that can't be hired out. It will come eventually. It will.

The girls are beautiful. They play together incessantly. Coming home to their shrieks of celebration and arms wrapped around my thighs is the best part of my day. They are my teachers, my fountain of energy when I have been depleated, my meditation away from the hardships of neuro therapy. They are the brightest light in my life.

Soon, I will write more. Soon, I will have more order to my life. Soon. I promise myself and you it will be soon. Please, my loves, don't slip out of my hands and into the world before soon arrives.

Permission

2011-04-20T22:47:00.000-05:00

There's no better way to kill off your few lingering blog readers than to neglect your blog, quit reading and commenting on theirs, and when you do blog, you only write as if Debbie Downer herself were guest blogging.

I'm giving myself a hall pass for writing at this blog. For the moment.

I'm afraid to write what I really feel right now, knowing that this general sense of overwhelm and depletion has got be only temporary, and the kind of words I want to write at this point are not the kind I want to send out into the universe right now.

I started this blog when I stayed at home with my newborn and barely 2 year old. I intended this blog to be about the fullness I feel from motherhood and raising daughters. My words here will somehow be rearranged for them someday. When I have the time. My own mother promises me that day will come--the day when I have time for myself or some higher purpose greater than food, shelter and safety. Eventually. I want to believe her.

What I don't want is to keep writing about how I wake up each day with the goal of just getting through it. There is no room for anything more than work and providing the basics for my children right now. There is no room for anything else, and when there is room for anything else it is crammed in so tightly and layered so thickly with guilt that the joy of it is gone.

But all of that is going to change. It must.

I'm going to find my way back to having a life that allows me to relish in my arms full of girls and delight in my heart full of gratitude. No one can do that for myself except me, and no daughter of mine is going to have an example of such current depletion for a mother. No sirree.

And this is the last you will hear from me until I get a better, brighter, grip on life. And I will. Bet my daughters' God given curls, I'll be back. As soon as possible.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. -Helen Keller

Mama Said...

2011-04-09T21:32:00.001-05:00

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend. - Bruce Lee

I'm just plain tired. Work. Mothering. Worrying about money. Feeling guilty for working more than I want to work. Feeling like I'm aiming for shared parenting but still doing the majority of the grunt work and domestic duty. Sleepy. Unexercised. Spent. Writing is just another expenditure of energy that I haven't really been able to afford. I should be doing 10 really important work and household related things right now. Even blogging brings me guilt at this point in my life.

Be like water.

I work with clients that have sustained heartbreaking tragedy in their lives. I see them treading in heartache and frustration. I see life dole out hardship that wasn't deserved and sometimes cannot be overcome. I see grief and loss. Daily. I try to help them find their way back to a life with which they can make peace without crushing their hopes of having the life that they truly want. I have a hard time leaving their stories at the door. It weighs on me. It moves me.

Be like water.

My girls are growing so. Their legs are long and constantly jumping. They are always wanting. Needing. Arms outstretched for holding. Begging. "Please!" Little hands always gripping mine, pulling and heaving me where they wish me to go. Climbing on me, wiggling upon me. Invading my every moment, even in sleep.

Be like water.

I mind just long enough to catch myself feeling stretched too thin, then become distracted by their pretend order at the Starbucks counter or their incredible hair. Both of them have curls resembling fusilli pasta that play in the wind like thick springs dripping softly from their heads. In their individual ways, they are both intense, with strong spirits, sometimes clashing hard against each other. Other times, holding snug to their likenesses and stitching themselves tightly with laughter and delight in each other. Such laughter waters me, replenishes me after a day when everything else has sucked me dry. I admire my little sprites with their enthusiasm and tightly sprung curls, and I feel too lucky. Their lives incredibly untouched by tragedy or hardship. Their hopes, dreams and possibilities uncapped by reality, thus far.

I want to protect them from life that can harden the softest of souls and turn what might have been a springy, little girl into a rigid, resisting woman. Yet I can't. I can try, but I am not in control. All I have is my wish for them within a Bruce Lee quote: Be like water.

Mama says: do as I say, not as I do. Save yourselves the battle, my loves, and just be like water.

Sleep

2011-03-06T22:35:00.000-06:00

Tuckered out.
Me.
All of us.
On a regular basis, it seems. And for me and Cristian, nothing is more restful than sleep with a daughter nestled near. I came home from work last weekend to find these lazy loves snoozing the afternoon away. They didn't even stir to the whir of the clicking camera shutter all up in their faces. I can't help but wonder what sweet dreams they might have dreamed within the warmth and stillness of each other's snuggle.
Be still my heart.

Motherhood is a Virtue.

2011-03-01T22:15:00.002-06:00

Today was rough.

Rough in terms of trying to be the mother I strive to be and failing.

Repeatedly.

Something about my three year old trying defiance on for size and my 19-month-old assertively demanding independence in the same moment doesn't gel. Not in the slightest.

Despite a glorious, sunny day, a long trip to two parks and a ride in the jog stroller, lots of outdoor time and plenty the opportunity to run it out, my children instead bottled it up and blew their tops onto each other.

I lost my temper. More than once. I abandoned my commitment to making a homemade dinner and eating together. Again. I tallied up the months remaining until Emery starts preschool next fall and wished for them to pass quickly, lest I go insane with the energy and attention she demands from me on my days home with her. Admittedly.

Then Cristian came home and reminded me (again) that they never act like that for him.

Which made my day that much rougher. Of course.

So it's me, is it? They only fall out with me, it seems. I'm their safety net. I'm their trusted spotter. They just free fall all their emotion and conflicted, confused, learning-how-to-live-in-this-wide-world energy into me, and I'm left to sift out the junk and hold tight the good stuff. To teach and reteach in a way that makes things right in the world. I'm left with the button pushing, frustration and anger hurled like a brick into my hardly rested head. I'm left with the limit testing to extremes. I'm left with the rough days. Alone.

And all complaints aside, that's okay. I'm their mother. I signed up for this (though somewhat obliviously) when I made that first wish on my birthday candles all those years ago, and I won't shrug off that responsibility if it's the end of me (which, obviously, it may very well be, but still). If anyone should be their safety net on this tightrope walk of life, it should be me. If anyone wholeheartedly wants and eagerly welcomes this job for them, it's me.

But it's still rough. And I'm still only human, mother and all. I have to forgive myself over and over again for losing my patience or for not having enough of it for the duration. I have to remind myself to step in their shoes and parent compassionately. I have to breathe deeply and lean hard into the kitchen counter top ledge, trusting it will hold me upright and not give in to my white knuckled grip in my seething, frustrated mother moment. I hold tight to my determination to respond, not react to the ruined hardwood table top we are in no position to replace or the drawn blood from a flipped-like-a-switch temper tantrum.

But it's not easy. It often wipes me clear out. It's a doozie on my character building, this motherhood thing. It's a bonafide purpose and lesson, if I've ever had one.

At the end of the day the only thing that makes this incredibly rough day less rough is my husband sitting down next to me and (finally) acknowledging my frustration with an, "I'm sorry you had a hard day." I inch a little further toward an even keel by seeking out pictures of the girls I'm raising when they were in a moment when they liked each other immensely more than they did today. I'm able to exhale a little more when I see these pictures of when they wore on their faces love for each other and honest happiness like I hope will eventually have permanence in their lives. I have to look at these haphazardly snapped small moments and wish for them so many more of equal or greater peace with each other, and a bond that will withstand and overcome the rivalry and rough edges in life.
That's how I make it through a rough day.
Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

Love

2011-02-14T21:47:00.002-06:00

Love is having a husband that can successfully double park, brave a 50,000 student university library singlehandedly with a one year old on his shoulder and a highly distractable 3 year old traipsing along beside him. Then, circumnavigate an unsympathetic, hard core librarian and resolve a diaper blow out followed by a one-year-old-choking-on-lollipop incident without so much as a flinch or a towed car.

Score.

Never mind the fact that said husband almost misplaced our 3 year old several times among the towering rows of books or that he actually stood on our daughter's shoe to tether her to him while his hands were full. Never mind the lollipop given to a one year old then accidentally jammed down her throat. Never mind. Love is blind.

And Love cracks me up into near hysterics with the charming, bare it all account of such happenings upon my return home from work today.

It just so happens, I somehow managed to be lucky in love.

Like I said before, score.

*picture by J.Cota, June 2009 (about 1 month before Evie was born).

The End of an Era

2011-02-02T21:30:00.110-06:00

I spent 17.25 cumulative months growing my babies, and 30 cumulative months feeding them. All by the Grace and the miraculous design of a woman's body. My body.

I don't take it for granted that I had the fortune to feel my babies turning and stretching within me until they came through me into this world. I don't gloss over the commitment and devotion it required to stick with breastfeeding even when I had a newborn that wouldn't latch or suckle well for 9 weeks straight. I don't downplay the surrender it took to feed my children on demand around the clock in attempt keep my supply adequate. I'm proud of myself for the courage I conjured up to stick to my guns and pump at work no matter what, even when I was the only one that continued breastfeeding past a few months, even when there was no privacy, even when the career oriented world around me misunderstood me and rolled their eyes with annoyed judgement at my perseverance. It wasn't always easy, yet it was the simplest, most practical thing in the world for me all in the same moment.

47 consecutive months of physically sharing my body without even a moment in between for myself. 47 consecutive months of offering it up to love. I wouldn't have had it any other way. I wouldn't take a minute of it back. I'd do it a million times over again if I had to. Though, I'll never have the chance. That time has stepped behind me, now. Forever. It's something to celebrate. It's something to mourn. I admit, I'm doing a little bit of both. At least, I managed my one lone BF picture I had been wanting, by which I'll remember the tight view, the heavy eyed gaze of a soothed babe, the silent connection, and the gracious giving for the taking.

Not that I could ever forget.

18 months

2011-02-01T20:58:00.046-06:00

A year and a half ago we met for the first time.
7:25pm on a Friday, the sweltering heat tempered by a long awaited torrential downpour.
You were gorgeous.
And long.
Dark headed and curly haired.
Easy as pie.
All of which I am not.

Your dad held me as I cradled you close into my nearly bare chest.
We hovered you above the warm water of the labor pool and pleaded for you to breathe.
So you did.
At that moment, everything within me softened, everything within me felt complete.
I could hardly believe my luck.
And that was only the very beginning.

18 months later everything is the same yet different.
Your dark hair has given way to a honey blond hue with tight curls that threaten me daily with their frizz.
Your eyes are the color of faraway dark blue skies bringing a welcome rain.
You are still long.
Still as easy peasy.
You are even more gorgeous.
And I still can't believe my luck.

Some say the second child throws them for a loop, but if anything, my love, you have made my life easier with your even kilter, hilarious antics and agreeable cooperation. Still, you are strikingly strong in spirit. Bound and determined by all means to carve out your own path in this world. My little adventurer.

You don't care for sitting down to learn your ABC's or watching TV. The world is to be discovered by you, and the only way to learn it is to experience it. And so you do. In constant motion. You taste the world, roll around all over it, hang upside down from it, spin completely to see all of it, and open your arms full spread as you breathe in brisk wind that sends everyone else in this family running for warm cover. You are unafraid and wide open. My little brave heart.

There is such a gentle spirit within you that I'm sure was born with your first breath. You are innately tender. You love to take care of baby dolls to the point of practically being obsessed with them. You love changing them, mothering them, and patting their backs with such a gentle compassion as you quiet their "cwying." You love on other babies with incredible quiet patience, dole out hugs and kisses, and when you are concerned about any of us, you cock your head, lean in to get a glimpse at our eyes and with a furrowed brow and adorable sincerity ask, "you 'kay?" My little nurturer.

You are the best snuggler in the family, offering up your soft weight to soothe me from long, tense working days. Yesterday, I held you into me, so solid, your legs dangling so far down my thighs that I could not deny your growth. You snugged in like you always do, head nestled against my neck, your curls tickling my cheek, your arms tucked down in between our bellies, a hand on your belly button, and a paci suckling in your mouth. I wanted to make time stand still for that moment, but instead I'll settle for writing about it so that you at this very second will never escape me.

There is still some baby in you. Not much, but it's there. I'm holding on to it tightly. Even as you slip so willingly, almost eagerly through my reluctant grasp, longing to catch up to your sister and her friends. I promise to let you go, though, when ~~I am~~ you are ready. But not now. Now you are 18 months, and I've got a lot of holding on still to do..

Happy 18 months, Eve. Not quite a baby. Not quite a little girl. Yet quite enough to fill me to the tippy top.

Do what you love

2011-01-30T21:55:00.001-06:00

On Monday of last week, I thought I had a new career path. I had negotiated a great schedule for working in the Neonatal ICU that didn't involve me being away from my family 4 or more days/week. I was feeling slightly smug about my successful wheeling and dealing. It seemed as if I could have my cake and eat it, too. Sure, it was a little more time away from the family and quite a bit less money, but this way I could show the girls what's important: do something you love and do it well, despite the sacrifices.

Then, Monday afternoon, I received a phone call from the hospital. The powers that be started backpeddling on our negotiations. They reoffered me the position with less pay and more required hours just a few days before I was to start! Agh! I was incredibly disappointed and admittedly sulked a bit after hanging up the phone. I wanted to take the job. I wanted to say yes, and finally feel alive about my job. I wanted to have a career instead of what I consider just a job to get us through til the girls are in grade school. I wanted to contribute something positive to all those tiny little new souls and their tender hearted parents at such a vulnerable moment in their lives. I wanted it pretty badly.

But per the negotiations, I couldn't agree to the added hours and meager pay as compared to my current contract jobs. I wanted it, but not for the sacrifice on my family. And maybe I won't be doing something I love with all my heart when I'm working out of the home, but I'll have more time to do what I love in my home.

Perhaps that's just an important lesson and example for my girls: don't be disuaded by all the things that seem to matter, but don't quite measure up when you put them up against your family. I suppose by turning the hospital job down, in a bigger way I am leading that example I intially intended: do what you love and do it well, despite the sacrifice. What I love most is my family, and I need to love them well, no matter the career sacrifice.

Now that I'm here, I realize it's actually a better trade this way. Now there will be more time for squishy cheeks pressed high from laughter, blonde curly cues, and a tall drink of a Ph.D candidate taking a much needed break from data analysis:

And that's the way I like it.

My Pretty Little Horses

2011-01-24T22:26:00.015-06:00

Every morning sometime around 3am, almost without fail, I stir in my humongous bed at the sound of quick pitter patter of 3 year old feet slapping across the tile trail from her room to mine. I roll over and barely lift an eyelid just to confirm the culprit. She hoists herself up the mountain of poofy bedding and slides across my back into the duvet nest between me and Cristian. She takes what feels like forever to settle, arranging the sheet just so and squirming her body in the position that consumes the maximum circumference possible. Often, she situates in a horizontal stretch between the two of us so that our bodies cummulatively spell out a giant "H" as we sleep. Sometimes, it's incredibly annoying for all her tossing and wriggling and pillow stealing and complaining of needing help to go potty just when I think we can drift back into sleep. Still, she is warm and snuggly.  And to be honest, I've come to appreciate our skinny little slight that balls up and stretches out in the space that needs filling in our vast expanse of a bed. I love the way her hair splays in tight curls across my pillow smelling of California baby aromatics and tentatively clean locks. I love to hear the rhythm of her breath, the only movement in my unusually stilled child.

Her sister is the easiest baby to put to sleep. Ever. In the entire world. Put her in the crib wide awake, little to no transition, and leave. The girl just obliges and hangs out quietly until she's asleep. But she often wakes in the night calling my name or sometimes, her father's. I hear her cry through the monitor for something specific: a diaper change, 4 ounces of cool water downed in loud gulps, or a paci lost to the ocean of carpet beneath her. Always, Cristian or I go to her. I snuggle her and sing an extra verse of "All the Pretty Little Horses." Half asleep and drowsy, she sings along with me. She knows all the words at the end of each line and slurs them through a paci plugged mouth between gunks. I smile. I  roll her tight in a tubing of blanket and nestle her in close to her babydoll and stuffed pug. I stroke her unruly, corkscrew hair and run my fingers across her smoothly soft, rounded cheek. Sometimes I just sit an extra few minutes and admire her adorableness by the dim glow of the monitor light. I imagine it won't be long before she can scale out of her crib and join the rest of us in our big bed mid night.  My children seem to be led by a gravitational pull towards our room when the moon shines.

I never thought I'd say this, but the break in sleep doesn't bother me so much anymore. They return to sleep and I hold on to my wakeful moment for just a minute longer. I find myself in the still silence of night and drink in the absence of noise and movement and dutiful rushing from one commitment to the next.  I lie delighted in a blanket of darkness, punctuated only by soft nightlights, the heater cycling on and off, and the presence of little girls dreaming.

All the pretty little horses, indeed.

Raising Spirit

2011-01-20T21:30:00.023-06:00

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them. --P.J. O'Rourke

I used to be the world's best mother. I knew how to parent successfully and how to make children behave appropriately. I had the whole attachment parenting thing pegged for softies with children that breastfed until 6, and I assumed it wasn't really for me or my children. I knew parenting wouldn't be easy, but I also knew that with effort, I could do it well and have great, beautifully behaved kids to show for it.

And then I had Emery.

Straight out of the gate, I ended up doing loosely defined attachment parenting by instinct. Go figure. Also, it was the best parenting approach for Emery, who seemingly needed to be kept out of an overstimulating daycare, and wanted to be held and rocked and carried backpack style her entire infancy and toddler hood.
I digress.

Her spirit can be overwhelming to me. I've written about it before, and I write about it now for a cathartic outlet, and with hope that I can connect with someone else in similar shoes.

The pressures of being a parent are equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious parent, and really look to that little being's mental and physical health, is a responsibility which most of us, including me, avoid most of the time because it's too hard.--John Lennon

Her intensity has such potency and often impossible for me to reign in. It astounds me, sometimes terrifies me, and often annoys me to my core. I'm slightly ashamed to write that last sentence. I even wrote and erased it twice before I left it for revealing, but it must be written. It's the truth, and it's better out than in. So much for my pre child parenting philosophies. I can now conclude that effort on my part has little to do with behavior on hers.

But you know I love her anyway. Immeasurably so. I swear the adoration and appreciation I have for her could fuel every blessed beat of my heart from here to the age of 100. You knew that already, I'm sure. Any mother would. And even if it takes me the rest of my life to show her, she'll know that, too.

Still, it's kind of embarrassing to admit that my very young child makes me feel so nuts. It's tough to admit that she is so incredibly perceptive and sensitive and needy and articulate and intense for a 3 year old that I don't know how to guide her behaviorally without feeling that I'm crushing her emotionally.

I'm vulnerable. I'm frustrated. I don't know what the heck I'm doing. I've never actually raised a child before, let alone a child that's "normal" and healthy, but not necessarily typical in regard to sensory processing.

Train the parent and spare the child.--Duane Alan Hahn

I have many moments of brimming tears lately. Tears for watching how out of control her sensations can throw her and how explosive her emotions can be in reaction. Tears for disappointment in myself for being so floored by the disposition of a child I love so much. Tears for worry of failing her. Tears for exhaustion of my patience.

I'm not even close to the parenting expert I was before she made me a mother. And as the saying goes: the more I learn, the less I know.

But see, she feels everything. Everything. From the tiniest bump in fabric to the difference in texture between applesauce brands. Let's just say that if a pea were wedged beneath 20 layers of mattress and she sat atop, she'd be deemed princess.

For instance, dressing. (insert exhausted sigh here) Her sleeves have to be rolled smoothly exactly 3 times, sometimes 4, at equal widths, and often it takes several tries to get it just so. Her sock seams, when she agrees to tolerate socks for short periods of time, have to be positioned approximately 1/4th inch below her toes. Panty elastic has to lie precisely on some imaginary groin line that seems to change every time. Sleeves cannot have elastic and pants legs cannot touch the top of her feet Zippers have to be zipped, then unzipped, then zipped again. Her shoes have to be adjusted to some kind of unpredictable level of tension. Winter is the worst. Long sleeves and pants required! Fun times. Often, it takes her 30 minutes to adjust to a new outfit. It's a nightmare--a controlled process of a nightmare, but a nightmare all the same.

I try to be thoughtful about buying clothes that are comfortable for her. I allow her to choose her clothing for the most part (I just hope other people don't judge and shrug off the ones that do). I've forge getting dressed into an obstacle course or a game so she doesn't notice the seams and waistbands and elastic that appear to feel like tourniquets and restrictive bindings on her skin. I try my best, but so far, my best hasn't quite been good enough to produce consistent agreement with dressing. Naked is her favorite outfit.

She needs constant hard proprioceptive sensory input: jumping, tight hugs, wiggling, rolling, running, swinging, etc. We can't go out to eat because she seriously cant. sit. still. She touches other kids too much for their liking and practically breaks my neck for all her wrestling caliper "snuggling." And I haven't even touched on eating, sleep, attention, bathing, fine motor coordination,or auditory processing.

Funny thing is, most outsiders might not even notice. She masks what one would consider stereotypical sensory difficulties with articulate expression, stunning memory and sociable personality. Observers might just consider her meltdowns to be typical toddler behavior or assume she is an ill behaved kid with a nonchalant parent, neither of which is the case, obviously.

It's difficult to admit, but Emery is challenging to parent. I mean, I figure all kids are challenging to parent at one point or another, but Emery seems to be consistently challenging. Even so, she has moments of tenderness and compassion and gentleness that seem beyond most adult capabilities. Her potential is astounding if only I don't screw her up with all my exhausted, aimless, sometimes drain circling parenting and patience burned at both ends.

The irony of it all is that I'm an occupational therapist. I'm the professional that is supposed to be able to help kids with such sensory processing issues. Me! I'm supposed to be my own help! No one can help her better than I? I have all the best answers? Seriously? Lord, help me.

Therapeutically speaking, I've helped other parents, I think. I've helped other kids, I hope. To give myself credit, I've probably helped Emery over the years with all the things I have done to modify her sensory diet, acknowledging her feelings regardless of how over the top they seem to me, and accepting her intensity with wide arms. But that doesn't make parenting her easy and it doesn't make me excellent at it. It doesn't mean I always instinctively or philosophically know what to do. I feel like my running thought train is currently: "Why didn't that work? What do I do now? And will someone please tell me if I'm doing this right?"

In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck -- and, of course, courage. --Bill Cosby

I don't live in a clinic. I don't have sensory swings hanging from all the ceilings and blown up bouncy blobs and rope ladders and oodles of time to spend one-on-one with her. I don't have a squad of peer examples. I just have a working class life a house, a family and career that keeps me sprinting. Daily, I have to do housework or meet work requirements or tend to Eve when Emery is having a meltdown. I know what I would tell myself from a professional standpoint. I know what to do, and what to look for, but I have 10 billion other things to do everyday and Emery demands too much of my time for me to do them all. So something gives. Every single day. And I don't feel so good about that, but that's how it is. I can't do it all. I want to, but clearly can't. I need to work on accepting that more readily because it guilts me pretty regularly.

Lately, when I have time, which I honestly don't, I do some reading, relearning, questioning and trying and failing and trying again. Turns out, I'm no parenting expert and my children are not beautifully behaved despite my best efforts. I don't know as much as I'd like to know about parenting. I don't even seem to know all that much about what I do know.

But what I know is that she has incredible spirit: strong, persistent, and yet still remarkably tender and fragile. I know I have to learn how to raise such spirit well and do right by her, even if I for all my education and professional experience I still feel like a babe in the woods.

I'll let you know how it goes...

In the meantime, I'll just keep my original parenting mantra I picked up from my prenatal yoga teacher 3 years ago:
I am the best match of a parent for my child, and my child is the best match of a child for me.

And in the grand scheme of things, I know that mantra is pure truth: I will be the best mother she could have because I couldn't stand to offer her any less that that, and she and her sister are surely everything I need to challenge myself to fully develop spiritually, emotionally and wholly on this journey as a mother.

While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.--Anonymous

I'll raise her. She'll lift me.

Wordless Wednesday: Giggleboxes

2011-01-19T21:03:00.000-06:00

Every Wedding Has a Story

2011-01-11T22:05:00.001-06:00

My brother and sister in law's involved an ominous prewedding septic tank overflow at my parent's house,

which happened when Emery flushed while I was taking a shower. It resulted in an inch of sewage on the tile floor, a heck of a lot of dirty towels, a very concerned Emery, and my first shower in the two days I'd been there cut very short.

However, it all was resolved just in time for us to go to shine up for the rehearsal dinner. The bride's broken bustle on the morning of the wedding was mended, and she managed 6 inch heels and a nervous stomach without so much as a stumble, bless her. Best of all, the January weather could have fooled me offering a gorgeous, cloudless, sunny day for them to remember their whole lives through.

Despite not having much time to write or practice, I said my piece at the rehearsal dinner (which Cristian refers to as a novel) Emery didn't completely steal/wreck/distract from the show as the flower girl, and the happy, young, newly college diploma'd couple pledged their lifelong commitment to each other in front of 150 friends and family.

I wrangled tired kids, and did bridesmaid duties gladly, but I am so completely relieved that the wedding is over and I don't have any siblings left to marry off!

My rehearsal dinner speech, which I whipped up that morning to the background noise of a septic tank, and didn't even practice once, but I think I got my point across. I don't expect anyone to read this. As far as you are concerned, my post was over at the last picture. It's long. It took me almost 8 minutes to speak it. It's purely for documentation purposes. And for my mother, of course.

When I was a young girl on the verge of 9 years old, and Jay wasn't quite two, my mother came to help me with my hair in the bathroom, and revealed that she and my father had a surprise for me. I could tell it was something of big dream caliper by the way she said it, by the enthusiasm in her voice. I reeled with sudden excitement and crossed my fingers as I shrieked with hopeful anticipation : "Is it a puppy?" I asked? "Better than a puppy!", She answered me. She said it with such certainty, that I knew it could only be one thing: the biggest of all of my big dreams. " A pony!" I shrieked. " No." She said firmly and shook her head. I felt a sharp twang of disappointment. Then my mother slyly smiled. "Better than a pony." she assured me. Better than a pony? "Does she not know me at all," I wondered? Of course, a pony trumped everything in my 9 year old world. Everything except for one precious miracle I didn't even guess was possible: a baby.
And so it was.

I spent the next several months planning all the fun I'd have with my new baby sister, the doll dresses she'd wear, the frilly names I might name her, such as Rosey or Lizzy, the anticipation of being able to play house with less pretending now that I'd have a real live baby to use. But alas, my dreams of a baby sister, a lifelong best friend and girly confidant of my dreams, were jilted by the arrival of a spirited, rough and rowdy baby brother. Jordan Lee was his name, and Jay pronounced it "Jo-wee," aka, Joey.
Joey was a boy through and through. He never did wear doll dresses or answer to my girly names of Rosey and Lizzy, but he did occasionally accommodate my demands for playing house and agree to various other instructions I bossed to him over the entirety of his childhood.

He tolerated, or more aptly put: relished in the multi set video productions and makeshift theatrical performances written and directed by yours truly and his older cousin. Joey obliged us with such roles as baby in the jungle, baby vs. the 5 foot shark, baby superhero, acrobat baby, and baby sings the Beatles. I even cast him as the Angel in a 3 man Christmas play hoping the nature of the role might offset the intensity of his terrible twos, which it did, but only for the duration of his role. He was a talented thespian right from the start, it seems. I'd like to take credit for fueling an early fire and teaching him everything he knows for his eventual starring role in his high school production of Oklahoma, but indeed, the talent was all his own.

Joey is also incredibly loyal in character. This UT longhorn used to shave a double T in the back of his head and then color it in with red marker when he would come to visit me during my college days in Lubbock. I still have the picture of the back of his little chili bowl cut head that I keep just in case I ever need it for blackmailing purposes, but Joey's has yet to give me a reason.

Joey is also very protective, and I doubt anyone would argue me when I say he has a lot of gall. He was 12 when my husband, Cristian, and I first began dating. Joey once tagged along on a tour of the Stockyards, and when Cristian went to make his romantic move and hold my hand as we walked, an ever watchful Joey broke in between us and firmly chided Cristian, who had several feet and 100 pounds of muscle mass on him. Joey was not intimidated, insisting that I was his "Sissy," and he was going to hold my hand instead, to which Cristian kindly obliged. I had always sorta longed for the stereotypical protection of an older brother until that moment when I realized that Joey would do.

Let me tell you that Joey is every niece's dream for an uncle. When Eve was born, he came to spend the evening with me when Cristian had work he couldn't miss and I was recovering from childbirth with a less than 3 day old baby and a 1 year old fuss pot. I remember the girls put on their best crying marathon that night, and I was sore and sleep deprived to the point of near insanity. I thought I'd scare him clear away from ever visiting our house again, and possibly make him reconsider fatherhood altogether, but he was relatively unphased and dutiful. He patiently lulled a fussy Emery to bed that evening when I couldn't quite manage it. He continues to babysit when I'm in a crunch and shrugs off the incessant sometimes intolerable din of the Lieneck house. It fills me to the very brim to see how he has won a coveted place in my daughter's hearts as a doting and playful uncle. He's going to be an incredible father.

He's a musician with more talent than he has yet to realize, a good field scientist with an affinity for rocks, of all things, a dear friend to me, and to my delight, to Cristian as well. He's also a big goof, a bit of a space cadet, and a darn good sport for being the brunt of much of our family teasing.

23 years after a memorable surprise announcement from my mother, I found that my big dream for a pony was replaced with a bigger, better dream I didn't know I even had. And now, I wouldn't trade my baby brother for any sister in the world. I'm so grateful Jay and I landed Joey for a brother. If I could have told my 9 year old self about the catch of a woman Joey would bring home to us someday, I'm sure I'd never have longed for that sister in the first place, knowing that down the road, I'd get her anyhow, which brings me to Melissa.

Mel, we are so glad that tomorrow you will officially be a part of our family. You've felt like family for so long, have found your way into all of our hearts, loved us despite ourselves, helped us, changed my children's diapers and cared for them as if they were yours, endured games you can't stand with forgiving agreement, accepted our eccentricities, and tolerated us in ways few ever would. Best of all, you have never waivered in loving my brother with all your heart even despite his many quirks and strange tendency to wear house shoes when you go out on the town. God bless you, dear woman. Joey is a very lucky man, and I am a very lucky sister in law.

With all my heart I wish for the two of you to find the thick warmth and richness that comes with a long, happy marriage. Pay little attention to the marriage jokes all the men in my family throw at you. Though there is some truth in humor, having a life partner that despite your imperfections, still manages to see you perfectly outweighs everything else.

May you, too, discover many years from now, that sometimes the surprise in life together is that big dreams you thought you wanted, can render bigger better dreams you didn't even know you had, and a happier ending than you ever thought possible.

Cheers to my brother, Joey and his beautiful bride, Melissa!

Begin Again

2010-12-31T16:31:00.000-06:00

There is something I find remarkable about tonight, New Year's Eve. The world keeps spinning at the same speed, the oceans continue their ebb and flow, and nature marches on without notice. Yet tonight, the entire world's population of human beings seem to take a breath, a pause, a sidestep perhaps to reflect, to close. Not all of us celebrate, but all of us begin again. Tomorrow.

I go back and forth about new year's resolutions. It's impractical to wait until the new year to change something that needs changing within myself, and it's trendy to create a resolution I might not have invented otherwise just because it's January 1st and everyone else is doing it. That said, I wholeheartedly love standing beneath the sunrise of each new year. I lean into the horizon in anticipation and adventure of what possibilities might find their way to me, what dreams I might pursue, what enlightenment may arise with persistent effort.

I love marking time with where I am, where I once was, and where I might be. I love thumbing through my best chapters in the here and now, dog earing each page as if to punctuate it's presence with significance. Then, with gentle forgiving, I note what no longer serves me, tempted to tear it clear from my bindings, but resolving instead to just let it be as it was written. No matter, at each new year, good chapter or not so good, I feel inspired to turn to a fresh page and keep writing.

I love the beginning of each ride round this carousel. Even though each dark, cold January only leads round to yet another dark, cold January, the former is never the same as the latter. The cycle round treads the same path at the same speed, but the scenery, the music, the experience is always different; and that somehow always makes every January 1st feel like the start of an adventure to me. It's a new page, a breath, a pause in my incessant step to start the same ride over again and see what I can see new.

My girls will grow one year older this coming year. Life will continue to touch them, amaze them and delight them with discovery, I'm sure of it. My heart will continue to burst at it's seams with love for them, this I know, but the rest is up for discovery and exploration.

I'm welcoming 2011 with open arms. Odd numbered years have trended towards shiny and bright on my timeline, so I can only hope to have my room filled with light before 2011 is said and done.

Happy New Year. May yours be filled with love, which is, in turn, our brightest light.

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas in Florida

2010-12-29T22:08:00.000-06:00

Mug Shots with Santa

2010-12-17T21:22:00.001-06:00

Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny f*&%ng Kaye.

--Clark Griswold

Lesson learned. Again. Santa is still scary, and only worthy of pictures with sullen, morose, trance-like expression interspersed between fearful wails and parental clinging. Next year, I think we'll just ride the train.

Trains don't have beards or freakishly white hair. Perhaps Santa has freakishly strong hearing aids as well because it wasn't until we got to the train that she directed a whisper at him: pink play dough, Santa. Pink play dough!

Crossroads

2010-12-08T23:01:00.000-06:00

I was driving home from yoga, the practice still resonating like a humming vibration of resolve within me when I saw a shooting star burning across the sky through my windshield. I wished without thinking: a baby... Surprised, I caught myself, shook my head side to side as if to erase the old wish ingrained in my heart from what is practically a lifetime ago, and sputtered direction and happiness, is what I meant. A sense of direction and happiness. Is it odd that I have this reflex of wishing for a baby as if I were still struggling with infertility? Old habits die hard, I guess. So my true wish was for direction and happiness in my career, because truth be told, I've got both in my personal life and none whatsoever in my work life. So I wished on that giant ball of something burning through the atmosphere more for fun than belief that it meant anything, and drove on home.

************************************

The phone rang while I was opening the mailbox. Caller ID said it was my weekend job calling. The girls were in the car listening to Christmas music. I tapped on the glass. They waved through the tinted window and stretched against their car seat belts to remind me my time was limited. I answered the phone. A job offer for more work. With decent pay. And NICU specialization training. They really need the help. Could I consider it?

************************************

I took my first job out of school based on money. We were so poor. Cristian was going back to graduate school, and we wanted to buy a house. I didn't know then the repercussions of taking a job just for sheer financial incentive, but I learned quickly. It wasn't long before I quit that job and landed another similar one. I looked for other jobs, but the ones that sparked the flicker of interest within me didn't pay near what I was already making, required lots of out of pocket expenses for continuing education, and our finances could never justify the cut. There was always something to pay for: a car in the shop, an infertility treatment, graduate school tuition, a baby, then another. And now, 7 years later, I'm still making excuses.

*****************************************

I can't even fathom what it must be like to truly love my job. I'm skeptical of other people that say they love theirs. My husband is one of them, lucky dog. Some days I kinda like my job, but most of the time I'm counting down the minutes until I can come home again, hardly ever even stopping to run errands on the way back for missing my girls. The brutal truth of it is that I'm afraid of the kind of example I will set for them if this is the example they are given. How can I tell them to reach high if I won't do it myself?

******************************************

I wished upon a star on a hot August night as I sat on the back porch with Eve during her witching hour and caught a light blazing across the horizon. A shooting star. I was home then. My maternity leave extending months and months in front of me. I was so lucky. I wished on that star that I could stay home with the girls for as long as I wanted. I wished it hard, then lowered my eyes onto my newborn daughter, well knowing it was not to be.

*******************************************

Direction in my career path. A chance at career happiness and specialization. A baby, not mine, but nevertheless babies! The honor to love and assist many, many precious babies born too soon and thriving even so. That's what they offered me.

But it's at the cost of working more, of missing more days with my girls, of juggling work schedules between me and Cristian as we continue the tag team parenting that exhausts us.

I asked for this, didn't I? Wished for it. All of it. But I can't have it all. I'll regret leaving the loves of my life as I walk out the door for work 4 days a week. I'll regret not taking the job I'd love for the one that has me treading water in frustration. Something has to give.

I know what I should choose for my family.
I know what I should choose for me.
Why must the best choice for each be down different roads?

Victory Dance

2010-11-30T22:46:00.000-06:00

If you could see me now, you'd witness some egotistical fist pumps, and a little shimmy to the tune of "30 posts in 30 days!" Apparently, I'm not lacking in pride.

So I did it! I can mark NaBloPoMo off my bucket list now. It wasn't without difficulty. My sleep has suffered. My creativity has waned. My rambling has droned. My lameness has revealed itself. Nevertheless, I did it. I said more. Wrote down more. Attributed more. Stuck to it. And that feels really good.

They say it takes 30 days to start a new habit, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I've done that much. I'm looking forward to being finished with my day tomorrow and not having yet another commitment on my list. I do hope I can continue this trend of writing more, though. I owe it to myself after this month.

I'm also amazed at how easily writing came. I usually think about a post, then write it, then edit it, then post it. I didn't have time for that this month. I just sat down and wrote whatever came to mind. Obviously, without much of the thinking and editing, but you can see I did plenty of writing.

I'm sorry for the grammatical errors (Hi, Mom. Yes, I know!). I'm sorry for the 10 billion commas placed inappropriately (did, I, mention, I, love, commas?). I'm sorry for the lack of editing and often lack of cohesive expression. But I'm not sorry for writing so much. I'm not sorry for spending the time I didn't really have, nor for opening up my heart and allowing everything in it to flow out into my fingertips as they clicked across the keyboard, nor for revealing more of myself, nor for electing myself as the family documentarianista. I'm not even sorry for making up words such as documentarianista to make myself sound better. Not even one bit.

I'd like to add that for me, the most surprising and remarkable discovery of all is that some people have actually read this blog all month (you crazy nut, you!). I don't know who should be more embarrassed, me or someone that read this blog all month. Honestly, I don't know that people have been reading for sure, but I'm just guessing from feedback. I don't check my blog stats anymore. Haven't in years. I've made it a rule not to. When I do I start getting all self conscious about who is reading or even worse: who isn't. My filter gets thicker and more restraining. Pretending I'm just writing to the Internets without necessarily knowing to whom or to how many specifically keeps me honest. At least, that's the idea.

So if you have hung with me, thank you. You have been committed, too. And by committed, I mean perhaps you should be committed. To a mental hospital, that is.

But seriously, thank you for encouraging me this month. Thanks for reading and commenting. Thanks for tolerating post after post of gushing regard for my kids and blah, blah, blahing about my ordinary life. It wouldn't have been as fun without you.

I'm out.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

2010-11-29T22:04:00.001-06:00

And by wonderful, I mean: expensive, jam packed busy, commercialized, superfluous and energy inefficient. It's not even December yet and I'm already exhausted. Even so, there are gems of the holiday season, most of which revolve around watching my daughters experience it. And also, I confess, singing along to Robert Earl Keen's lude, crude Merry Christmas to the Family, a smackdown Cranium game with the family under the influence of wine, food I usually don't eat under normal circumstances, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. There. Now you know.

I'll admit, I have a long list of gifts the girls probably don't need. I'm tempted to buy them stuff I think they'd love, but then I know that's not the point. I don't remember the toys when I was little. Waiting to discover the toys? Yes, I remember that part well, but not so much the toys themselves. I remember candlelight service on Christmas Eve and riding home on a crisp December night with my cheek pressed against the car window in effort to spot Santa slipping through the starry sky. I remember my brothers sleeping in my room Christmas Eve, all of us sprawled across two twins pushed into one another, and waking up together to race out shrieking in discovery of Santa's delivery. I remember celebrating with my cousins, and my father's gourmet homemade Christmas lunch. I remember my grandfather hiding dollar bills in the tree limbs, and my grandmother's creamed eggs. I remember marveling at the tree and recollecting all the handmade, laminated picture, glued seashells on popsicle sticks kind of ornaments that decorated our kitschy artisan tree. That's what I remember.

And now it's her turn.

Even though I don't want to give in to total commercialism, the girls will not go giftless. Not even close, I'm afraid. I'm checking this list twice: matching retro tin Hello Kitty lunch boxes, Magna Tiles, Customized photo books of them with family, band in a box, A game, and an outfit or two each because the grow so darn fast. And then there's the grandparent spoilage, which negates all attempts at moderation.

Eat. Play. Love

2010-11-28T23:13:00.001-06:00

Nothing like having children to remind you how to do all three. It's been a good holiday chock full of family and all of the above. I have things to say, but I miss my sleep, and though I set out this month to say more than I've been saying, I also recognize the gift in refrain. So for now, because sadly I require a reminder, I am writing this message to myself:

When you eat what you love, don't think about how much and what's in it.

Find the play in everything.

Love more. Love more. Love more. Especially with crazy hair while still in your pajamas mid morning.

If nothing else, love more.

High Notes

2010-11-27T23:29:00.000-06:00

The thing about the holidays with small children is that I don't really get any sleep, and neither do my kids, which makes us all a little insane. But there are always some lovely high notes we hit somewhere in between exhaustion and caloric overload. Watching the girls play in the house I grew up in is one of my favorites. Seeing them run in the same yard and bang on the same piano that filled my childhood with magic is a decent trade for the off shedules.

Travel Dilemma

2010-11-26T22:58:00.000-06:00

We have an upcoming trip to see family planned. It involves a plane ride and the decision between a body scan and a pat down. It's like picking my poison. Can't wait.

Emery is thankful for...

2010-11-25T22:18:00.000-06:00

Red and white tents.
Which, after further investigation, I discovered is translation for peppermints.

She eats like a bird, and is pretty particular about the textures and colors she eats on a regular basis. However, I bribed her to eat an entire nutritious Thanksgiving dinner on the promise of a red and white tent.

Mom is thankful for...
Red and white tents, too.

Gratitude

2010-11-24T23:10:00.000-06:00

It seems, I have an extensive list of daily expectations. Things like expecting my car to start, the roof over my head to be seamless, and my computer to function properly. I take for granted that these things happen every day. I hardly even acknowledge their contribution to making my life better except to take notice when my roof leaks, my car needs a day in the shop or my computer crashes. Then the focus is all about what didn't work, and what is not going well. Of course.

But if I remove the everyday expectations for even the little things and let go of my tendency to focus on what isn't while shifting my appreciation to what is, it's almost astounding the sense of gratitude I feel.

Regardless of motivation or the fact that it was their job, the architect that designed my roof that doesn't leak and the roofer that pieced it together did me a huge favor. And I am grateful for that. The sun and rain nourished the spread of food that I will devour tomorrow, and the farmer that grew it no doubt worked long, grueling hours to nurture and harvest it. I am so grateful for that. I am also a big fan of the genius that invented our portable car potty for that moment today when Emery had to go "potty right now!" when we were on a long country road in rural Texas. Way grateful. I'm grateful that my mother put her chocolate truffles on the table tonight for sharing, and grateful for the student that gifted them to her. Not so grateful for the fact that they are now calling to me to stuff another down my gullet, but hey, that's beside the point.

When I really break it down into bits and pieces--all the menial expectations I have each day and the effort and energy it requires to meet those so called menial expectations--it's as if the whole world supports me in some way. It's astounding, the feeling of gratitude. Why the heck hadn't I looked at it that way before? Probably because I missed that yoga class. Good thing I got the message this go round.

You blog readers, my family, my friends, my co workers and all the other people in this world are tied into me in some way or another. You hold me up, and for that, I owe you. I owe the world. Thank you. I am grateful. Indebted. Honored. It's a lovely way to feel.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. May you relish in gratitude.

Bins

2010-11-23T22:53:00.000-06:00

I've spent a little time cleaning out closets this week, sifting through clothes too small, clothes too big, and clothes out of season. In the effort, I've acquired 2 huge bins full of clothes too small. Too small for Evie. Too small to ever be used in this house again. Too small or wrong gender. They overflow. The bins sit stacked in my laundry room, reminding me of how many forever too smalls I have with every entry and exit I make. Of course, some of the clothes are for passing on to someone else, but the others are clothes that don't fall into that category. I could donate them, I suppose. That's the sensible answer. But my heart has never been the sensible kind, and at the moment it wants to seal up those bins of too small, frilly onesies and boy clothes we never used and heave them up into the attic to wait. But for what? We've said we are done. Cristian isn't wavering, and honestly, I'm a little afraid to try to budge him because I don't know I want him to.

We got lucky twice. Two girls to love and learn and grow for the rest of my life through. What's more to want? They are enough.

But never having a baby tumble and stretch within me again will be sorely missed, and never again holding a brand new babe on my chest as I witness her first breath, and hear her first voice in this world makes me sorry. Never smelling that beautifully unfumed scent of baby head throughout the night as she nestles into me feels like a shame. And giving away those tubs of too smalls so that I don't have any to save for another round of miracle isn't something I've been able to do yet.

We are finished growing. We've said it. Discussed it. Agreed. But, I've said to him, Maybe later? Like 5 years from now? No, he says with complete confidence, and I nod knowing it's for the best. And then I scale the edges of my own comfort zone, Would you consider adopting internationally, perhaps? Twins or siblings, I'm thinking? No. Answered without even a moment of hesitation. That isn't his path. And his reply doesn't truly trigger disappointment. I'm just feeling options out, or making desperate attempts in avoidance of moving on is more likely, but then again, I know if he would have said yes... Well, if he would have said yes, I would know exactly where to put those bins and I'd have no trouble doing so.

But for now, they sit next to our washer, waiting for me to gather the courage to pick them up, offer them up to someone else who needs them, and let them and everything they symbolize go. For good. And though my brain and all reason says we are done, shut the door and keep walking, I'm pretty sure my heart will forever stay behind. So I've got bins waiting on a slow heart. They may be sitting there a while.

2 sizes too big

2010-11-22T21:52:00.000-06:00

We find a delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Letter to my 17 year old self,

2010-11-21T22:34:00.001-06:00

17 was the year I lost myself. It took me 4 more years to find myself again. I was a senior in high school the month I turned 17. I spent a few months of my 17th year in 1995 and the majority of it in 1996. It was the year of the Macarena, Michael Jackson's split with Lisa Marie, Tupac Shakur's death and Bill Clinton's hay day. My world was untouched by anything bigger than high school drama, and I was just a small town girl that didn't know about much else besides a town of 3,000 people crazy about football. Think Friday Night Lights, the TV show. I swear the writers of that show lived my life.

Dear 17 year old Lindsey,

I'll give it to you straight: 17 is going to hurt. You'll falter and wander and your heart won't agree with your actions pretty much the entire year round. You are starting to feel so out of place in your little small town, but you can't quite articulate that yet because this is all you know.   Your community is filled with people you love, people that will be your friends your whole life through, and your whole life has been nothing but the rolling plains and country music and football, but it's not your perfect fit.  You will feel so much better when you can finally realize that.

You'll ignore the little voice in your soul that says football is one of the most ridiculous sports you've ever seen, and you'll continue to be a cheerleader because everyone seems to encourage it, and for the sheer thrill of being thrown 20 feet into the air and then falling back down into a threaded cradle of arms and pony tailed friends. You'll pretend you care when it's 1st and 10 and yell for them to do it again, but really, you just like to run and flip through the air and land with a perfect bound in preparation to do it all over again. This school doesn't have a gymnastics or diving team for all the emphasis on football so you do what you think is the next best thing. And that's okay. Let it be ok.

Also, Rabbit Hill in the summer: don't let the cops check your car because you think it's clean. Bad idea. Friends. Smuggled. Beer. Not appropriate. And your father will hold it over your head even when you are 32. Lifelong guilt trip precipitating. Get ready.

Your AP English class will be the first class where you actually feel enlightened and interested at the prospect of learning something. You'll lap up the assignments as if they were chai tea (you don't know what that is yet, but it's something to look forward to, I swear). You'll do exceedingly well in class, a first for your socialite acrobatic self, and you'll be vying for your teachers to recognize your dedication to the dance of words and literature. You'll sink in disappointment when they snub you and tell you giving you the highest mark on an essay in the entire class must have been a mistake, and then later when you overhear them tell someone you aren't the brightest light. I beg of you, Lindsey, don't let it take so long for you to believe in yourself again. Don't let those words stick to you with such an oppressive adhesive. They were just words, and your life is so much bigger than one measly year in rural public high school English. Don't let their reasonless distaste for you be so crushing. Don't assume you are better at cheering on a bunch of burly boys on a football field than you are at being a student.

Young lady, heed my advice and don't date jerks just because it's slim pickins in your small town and there's no one else.  I know you are desperate to be loved, but that guy will never love you back, which is probably a good thing. And guess what? You already know the man that will rock your world and you'll subsequently marry. He's been right under your nose all along. And he makes beautiful babies.

This year will sting, too.  The loss will knock the wind clear out of your chest. You will be introduced to death, and it will be searing and shocking. And you will never stop missing him your whole life through.

Your mother has a secret she'll never tell until your father can't keep it concealed any longer.  You'll worry she will die, too. You'll envision life without her. You'll want to ask her so many things without knowing how. You'll deny she hurts, deny she is afraid, too. You'll turn your back and run into the carefree arms of a teenage life, but your heart will be a heavy anchor of guilt dragging you back. In many ways, you'll desert your mother as she drifts in the throes of cancer. True to her nature, she will defeat what invades her and forgive you without ever holding it against you in the first place. Even so, you'll make it right one midnight when you feel as if you might burst if you don't do otherwise.

And Lindsey, this year feels like the pinnacle, feels like the end all be all of life: your senior year. But dear girl, this is only the beginning. Be gentle with yourself. Trust that whisper deep within you, and know that you are so loved. Someday when you are incredibly old and 32, you will feel so much love and have a heart so big you'll look back on your 17 year old self and wish she could see how solid life feels now, and wish you could tell her not to worry, eventually everything will be alright.

Love and faith, your 32 year old self

I want to protect my girls. I don't want them to be that lost 17 year old girl I was. I want to get this parenting thing right. I want Emery and Eve to know how to find their way without ever losing it. This year I want a letter from my 55 year old self that tells me I didn't completely screw up as their mother, that life is solid, not to worry, that eventually, everything will be alright.

Another lame excuse for a blog post

2010-11-20T20:46:00.000-06:00

So I'm a few days over the hump, but have not escaped my predicted tendency towards lame-o blog posting towards the end of NaBloPoMo.

Random facts for the night:

Emery calls my high heels Heel highs. I never heard a word reversal sound quite as endearing.

Cristian's least favorite words on any box of unassembled kid toys: Made in Taiwan

Words Evie says most: bubble bath. At least 50 times a day. She toddler hurdles into all 3 of our empty tubs at various points throughout each day, wallows around in there, and repeats bubble bath over and over as if it is what makes her world go round. When she finally gets a real one at night she wants out as soon as she gets in. Go figure.

We are going to the Orlando area to see Cristian's side of the family for the holidays, and I'm feeling awfully tempted to leave Eve for a little individual time with the family and take Emery to Magic Kingdom for a day. I know I'm crazy. It's Christmas time at Disney, and she's 3. But it's Christmas! At Disney! And she's 3! Help.

That's all I've got for tonight. See? Running on empty here. And I still have 10 days to go.

Pass

2010-11-19T22:44:00.000-06:00

I woke up at 4:52am, completed my final day of boot camp in 36 degree weather, showered, fixed everyone breakfast and got them ready, took the girls to the grocery store, unloaded groceries, went to story time at the library, picked out a new stash of books, came home, made lunch, fed everyone and cleaned the kitchen. All of that before noon. Then I worked 6 hours and came home to baths and bedtime for the girls. I was just sitting on the couch talking to Cristian complaining that I need to go to bed for an early workday tomorrow and then I remembered I hadn't blogged.

He laughed at my lunacy for joining NaBloPoMo (which I completely deserve) and then got serious:

"Go write something short like 'I blogged. The end." He said. I moaned at having to get my sore arse off the couch.
You can do it, he said. You are super mom.

How I needed to hear that. To hear that someone thinks everything I do is super hero caliper, even if it's my own husband. Because if this is easy to everyone else, I think I'm in the wrong game. Being a mother with kicks my rear end. Every. Single. Day. And I'll refrain from following that last statement with a "but it's so worth it" comment because we all know it's worth it. Who would partake in this kind of daily butt kicking in vain? Not me. So instead, I'll just reiterate: Being the best mother I can be kicks my ass. Period.
But I'm here, and I'm trying, and I hope they know I did my very best.

Now I'm going to go do some of this:

Dream Big, It's free

2010-11-18T21:00:00.000-06:00

I read a blurb on my browser home page headline today about how it's actually emotionally healthy to indulge in the fantasy of winning the lottery. Even if it won't happen. Even if you don't play the lottery. If you just take a second to imagine what you would do if you had enough funding to do it. In my fantasy I would do the following:

1. Quit all 4 of my jobs and just be home with the girls and Cristian for as long as I feel like it.
2. Pay off our mortgage and remaining school debt.
3. Buy my parents their dream house in the country no more than 15 miles away. Heck, while I'm at it, buy both of my brothers a house, too. This is a fantasy, right?
4. Hire a housekeeper that also organizes toys into perfect bins, grocery shops, irons, prepares gourmet organic, home cooked meals my husband and children will eat, and also washes, folds and puts away all the laundry. (come to think of it, maybe I should move this to #1)
5. Attend a yoga class 6 days/week.
6. Buy a house for our said housekeeper mentioned in #4 because she will be my saving grace.
7. When I'm ready to dip my toes into working again, start my own business.
8. Go to Italy with Cristian and drink wine. Lots of it.
9. Take more trips with our family and see the world.
10. Give it away, give it away, give it away.

You know, it's funny. The first 5 were easy. They are frequent flyer wishes, but beyond that, I got stuck. I'd never even allowed myself to dream much more than that. And even though #4 could never happen (but it sure felt good wishing that up), and number 3 and 6 are a pretty big stretch, the rest aren't completely out of my reach. Maybe they are at the moment, but not forever, and until I can fund it, I'll just keep dreaming it. Free of charge.

Words on Wednesday

2010-11-17T20:59:00.000-06:00

"I yuh you," she said today, over and over and over at my and Cristian's multiple requests. It was the first time we ever heard her say it. And all I could do was press my lips to her squishy little cheek and squeeze her with delight.
She loves us. She said so 50 gillion times today.
And I could not possibly love her more than I already do. Until tomorrow, that is, because as I have well learned, each new day as a mother always brings deeper love.
I yuh you, too, my Evie. To bits and pieces, I do.

Payback

2010-11-16T21:12:00.000-06:00

Wanna know how your parents get you back for all the heartache, back talk, missed curfews and poor behavior you gave them growing up?

They buy your 3 year old a giant pink plush pony that makes clip clop noises if you do so much as walk within a 3 foot radius, takes up at least 7 square feet of space in your family room, bounces your children precariously on it's back and sings cheesy jingles like "I'm a pretty pony, clippity clop, clippity clop, I love to have my coat brushed beneath the old oak tree.."

Must I go on? Can you not feel my pain already? And the real kicker is that both of your children will love it as if it were a real pink pony and risk their never previously broken extremities to scale up it's frame, sit on it's silky purple saddle and proceed to make the darn horsey sing endlessly. In less than 48 hours of receiving it, you will find that within every waking moment of your life there is a silent melody of the bellish recorded din regarding a pony's coat hygiene in the shade echoing in your head. Then, at your rock bottom, you will catch yourself humming it merrily while flipping the quesadillas.

Emery and Eve, be forewarned: be good to your mother, lest she buy your children faux equine musical hell.

Infidelity

2010-11-15T20:48:00.002-06:00

I cheated, it's true. I submitted to a love affair with yoga behind my boot camp's back. I left one for the other today. I couldn't help myself. Though I love being outdoors and churning heat within while the air is frigid around me, there is so much lacking in the rote movements, stations and drills of my boot camp.

Yoga sends a wheel turning in my heart, speaks a poetry of movement and flow, encourages anything that doesn't serve me to precipitate from the gentle cleanse of an exhale, and seduces me with challenge,control and focus unlike anything else I've ever done. Oh, how I've missed it so! It was calling to me, whispering it's sweet nothings, outstretching it's arm and curling up it's index finger to draw me back where I've always known I belong. It waited for me. It will always be here within me. It's an old friend walking behind me, nudging me gently to fall back into it's wide arms when I will just take the allowance and do so. I'm in love all over again.

The studio was thick with energy, and after have such a long hiatus since I've stepped foot inside a studio (6 months, I'm embarrassed to admit) I was a roiling furnace of stress and junk inside: twisting and wringing and milking and expanding to my very edge, until so much of that noxious lump had seeped out of my pores and dissolved somewhere between my invigorating exhaustion and deepening breath. Nothing feels better than "flipping my dog" like a super star or mastering a smooth breath over the shake and resistance of my nervous system. And though there is certainly benefit to my boot camp, no circuit training quite measures up to accepting the stretch, the requirement of strength, and the fatigue in exchange for yoga's unraveling and unbinding. Nothing feels better than pressing my hands at my heart and reinstating the woman I want to be, reaffirming why I am here and for whom I do it.

It seems, I'm leaving my boot camp for an older lover. Ages old, but seductive still. And I don't regret it. Not one bit.

Emery and Eve in Down Dog

Free Years Owed

2010-11-14T21:13:00.001-06:00

That's Emery's answer to, How old are you? Which was asked of her several times today, her birthday party day.

Free years owed!, she says, with a fold at her hips to accentuate her enthusiasm. And then she's off, zipping and skipping and buzzing on a perpetual sugar high from today's exceptional dosage of cake and juice.

Despite a November chill, it was a lovely party in our enchanted forest, complete with bunnies, a chinchilla, a hedgehog, fairy wands and a flight training room for fairies (aka bounce house). True, she probably won't remember it. True, I didn't need to go to so much effort for a 3 year old. But I will always remember it, so that's enough, isn't it? And I have etched in my heart her obvious enchantment during her party while she was surrounded by all her little friends outdoors amidst music and animals and shiny, pretty things, which more or less sums up everything that makes her world go round at the moment. And that's all I needed to sign the check and stay up until the wee hours of the morning making fairy wands: my daughter, in love with life.

This one taken by a good friend who rescued me from having zilch pictures of my Emery blowing out her candles.

Buyer's Guilt

2010-11-13T21:29:00.000-06:00

I just got our digital family portraits in the mail today. As anyone can imagine, it was such a tremendous effort to have these pictures done. I had to rearrange my work schedule, and find coordinating outfits that fit not only our bodies but our budget as well. It took incredible multitasking smarts that took me 3 years of mothering to develop in order to get myself and the girls gussied up in record time, to convince them to be still long enough to have their hair done, and to get them to tolerate seams, cuffs sleeves and stiff, dressy shoes without having a major hissy about it. I loaded everyone into the car with all fingers crossed that no one would douse themselves in dirt or shake their heads in the slightest, which is about all it requires to loosen their tight curls into a Kramer-ish fro. I tolerated the sound of primitive grunting and evident discontent from a very unenthused Cristian, while I neurotically fussed over keeping everyone clean, on time and in order.

The portrait session itself was a nightmare, really. Emery kept flashing an anti-smile, was buzzing like a bee in a car, and never really stopped moving. At all. Eve wouldn't smile, or look at the camera. All she wanted to do was put rocks in her mouth or try to take a "bubble bath" in the koi pond. And Cristian was silently seething for the duration. Like an idiot, I took my chances with high heels, which greatly decelerated my baby and toddler catching, chasing, redirecting and carrying for the 3 inches of heel sinking into the well watered lawn with every step. I was sweating nervously and throwing out desperate, ineffective bribes like "Emery, if you smile I'll give you ice cream!" through my teeth with each smile at the lens.

I know my family couldn't stand that I drug them out on a Saturday night to a park they couldn't play in, insisted on cleanliness and clothes that prohibit allowance of wallowing in the dirt, and then demand they act as if that was our real everyday kinda thing. I know Cristian hates it--the whole process--from the getting ready, to the forced smiling to the coming home in pressed clothing on a Saturday evening when he'd rather be sitting on the couch watching a bunch of men rough each other up over a pigskin. And then there's the money. Holy Moley, the money. It makes me a little sick to my stomach, actually.

But I need these pictures. I need a moment captured of our entire family right now. I need a picture that actually contains me with proof that at this point in my life I do actually put on make up and do my hair, even if it's not the full truth. I need a snapshot of the girls through someone else's eyes so I can be honored at the glimpse of their equal beauty through the scope of another lens. I need a thousand words in an image that I can't possibly articulate in written description. I need the memory for me, and for them and for their children. I need these pictures of now as much as any mother needs a still shot of her young family when time is reeling in fast forward.

I wish I'd had these pictures 5 years ago, when I didn't quite believe I'd ever have a family so full and lovely. I'll be so glad I have these pictures 5 years from now when the girls are in grade school and won't quite fit on the crook of my hip and will no longer cling to my leg just so. I won't remember the money or the effort then, will I?

But for now, at the forefront is the money, and all the trouble it was to get 5 measly pictures out of over 100. The session didn't turn out like I would have wished. So many of the cute photo opps were heavily tempered with fussiness or escapism, but I think we got something, kinda.

They were worth it, weren't they? The prepping? The effort? The tolerating of an annoyed husband? Every hour of income I spent paying for these? Every last stinking penny? They are priceless, aren't they?
Lie to me and tell me they are.

The Cows Came Home

2010-11-12T20:18:00.002-06:00

You told me it would happen someday. You assured me way back when I had 2 children under two and was alone all day and evening with my girls, hardly sleeping, hardly catching a breath, two children in my arms at all times, each having incredibly different needs, each requesting my attention at all hours of every day so that I barely had any umph to function on a basic needs level. You encouraged me then. You said the time would be short. You said someday they'd become good friends--that they'd play together on their own, and that it would be lovely and so much more manageable. You said it would come to be. I'm not sure I believed it, but I sure as heck hoped it.

I was so tired. I didn't know anything other than what I was living then. I focused on someday and waited for it. You said it would be well worth it.

With time, the daily routine improved. Life regained some semblance. I could loosen the bindings of attachment-ish parenting a bit, enough to take a deeper breath, at least. I could step a little quicker and let my fuse out longer.

I was still waiting, though. You said it would happen. I trusted you mothers before me. I modeled to them and role played to them in the hopes it would happen. I told them that a sister is a best friend. Best. More than anyone else. No matter what. But they are so different. Night and day almost. Each her own. Still, I had faith. You said it would happen.

And guess what?

It happened!

Laughter so joyous it almost brought tears to my eyes. Twenty solid minutes in an empty bathtub without a push, without a shove, without grabbing of the other's toys or frustrated tears. There was only giggly, cooperative, silly, peek a boo playing, bubble bath pretending, tickling, mutually adoring sisters. Playing. By. Themselves. And I don't mean like in the same room, next to each other, trading a toy or working on the same project playing by themselves. I mean interactive, organized, taking turns, interactive play. Without me.

Which meant 15 glorious minutes outside of nap time all to myself to finish things up on the other side of the wall with no one tugging on my pant legs. Freedom to move, to be uninterrupted, to be what I haven't been in so long: efficient. And then, because I just couldn't help myself, 5 minutes of me peeking around the doorframe to watch what you said would come. To see Evie outstretching her arm to pick her sister "up, up, up!" To brim with endearment as Emery played peekaboo behind the shower curtain to a laughing audience of one, and allowed Evie to tickle her into hysterics. I held my phone in as close as I could get it. This was something I wasn't going to leave to the chances of my memory. They didn't even notice.

Soon enough they were back to their regular old parallel play and sisterly tiffs, but just before I put Eve down for nap Emery said "No, Mama! I don't want Evie to go to sleep because I want to play with her!"

It's official.
They are friends. Good friends even.
And you were right. Totally worth the wait.

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

2010-11-11T20:46:00.000-06:00

I currently have 4 contract jobs, all of which I juggle around and squeeze into my schedule as it allows. I only work when Cristian is not working so that we can keep the girls with us. It works out better that way on all fronts, we've decided. If I worked when Cristian was not home, practically all the extra money I'd make would go straight to daycare. So this is our lifestyle, and I'm generally good with it, considering our alternatives.

However, today I lost one of my contracts--my biggest employer--without warning due to a drop in caseload and rearrangement of staffing. It also happened to be one of my highest paying jobs so making up the lost income may require more work at a different facility.

I spent a little time on the computer today trying to reorganize my work schedule and see if I need to get another job or if my other employers already have the work for me. The girls were tugging at my jeans, dinner needed to be started, my to domestic to do list was waiting, and there I was having to be pulled in yet another direction I didn't want to be going.

The jobs I want won't pay me what I have to make to stay home with my girls part time, and the jobs that pay me enough aren't consistent nor are they jobs that fulfill me. I'm so jaded. I'm so tired of the bureaucracy of my field, the productivity standards, the feeling that I'm not helping in a helping profession. I'm stuck. I've considered specializing, but how can I possibly do the studying it would require? I've considered changing careers all together, but starting over is not feasible. I have a family to support and no trust fund available. Shoulda coulda woulda done something else, but here I am where I am and there's no time or allowance for options.

I blame the girls. Had I chosen a career after I had children, I'd be in an entirely different game. How they cleared the and removed the veil, but how can we possibly know what we want to do with our lives as teenagers? I got close enough, I suppose.

So this is it. This is my life, and it's not so bad. I suppose the grass might always look greener and plusher and satiated on the other side. I just need to find my peace with thirsty, crunchy grass. At least it's not bare dirt.

They say the darndest things!

2010-11-10T21:18:00.002-06:00

Emery loves to play restaurant. She takes our order, cooks it for us and then takes our money (nothing new there). Today, for a change, she asked me to be the waitress:

Me: Hello, Miss. My name is Mama, and I'll be helping you today. What can I get for you?
Emery: Um, okay. Well, let's see. (thinking really hard) TWENTY donuts!
Me: Alright. (glad this is just pretend) What else?
Emery: Another donut.
Me: 21 donuts? Wow! I feel sorry for whoever has to put you to bed tonight, but I'll put in the order.
Emery: And Strawberry milk ice cream with chocolate chip juice!
Me: (raising eyebrows, speechless, mortified, dumbfounded. Thinking: holy crap, all those carrots and apples in her lifetime and she comes up with chocolate chip juice????? Lovely)
Emery: here's my pay. It's number 1-2-D-6. (handing me a puzzle piece with a snap on it she's using as her coin purse)
Me: (smiling) I've got to write this down.

Three Years Old

2010-11-09T21:38:00.001-06:00

Letter to a 3 year old giggle box, chatty Kathy, high heel wearing ballerina,

The weather was gorgeous today. The sun cast a gentle warmth, the sky was a clear blue and the breeze was just strong and cool enough to keep me aware of the change that is happening. For the past 3 years, November 9th has brought sunny skies and the kind of day that draws me outside and settles me into just-right. It's a perfect likeness to and consistency with the way I feel about you, and the day you came into this world.

I'm at a loss of words today, unlike your past two birthdays when I gushed rivers of sentiment. I don't know what to say about 3 beyond being grateful at seeing how magnificently you are blooming and reticent at seeing you grow so quickly. No matter, though. This year, my love, it is you that has all the words.

But I will offer this: I will forever feel, deep down to the pit of my soul, that you came to be from the culmination of countless heartfelt wishes, miraculous fortune that somehow found us and to some great end. Some incredibly great end. Happy birthday, my beautiful girl! Three is the charm.

Love, Mama

A conversation with my 3 year old who has all the words this birthday:

Emery:   Mama, I'm free today because it's my birthday because I'm free, because my birthday is coming up today and I'm freeeee!!!!

Me: Yes, love, you are three. Happy birthday!

Emery:   Mama, am I still free?

Me:   Yep. Still three.

Emery:   I'm not going to be two today?

Me:   No. You'll be three for another year. You won't be two ever again. (snuffle, snif)

Emery: Oh, well, can my birthday come up tomorrow again? Because I'm free and I looove cupcakes and it's my birthday because I'm free!

Me: You can't have another birthday! You have to stay 3 forever! Stop having birthdays, for the love of God! Please!

Newborn Emery

One Year

2 Years

Today

Good Karma

2010-11-08T22:02:00.000-06:00

My phone died this morning. Again. Murdered yesterday by my 15 month old armed with an obsession with running things under the bathtub faucet. I knew she was playing with the faucet again. I was only a few feet away, preoccupied with mounds of housework. I just didn't realize what she felt the duty to submerge under running water. My bad, indeed.

The guy in the skinny jeans at the Apple store raised his eyebrows at me and said "you know, liquid damage is not covered by your warranty, and it's usually around $200 to replace." My face fell as I mentally calculated how many more hours I'd have to work to pay for this rather major oversight in child supervision. I could feel my heart sinking as I realized I'd be adding another work weekend to my schedule this month. I think Skinny jeans guy must have sensed my despair. He gave me a second look, then sent his fingers flying across his hand held Apple thingy, tapping, sliding and swirling them across and down the screen for a good 30 seconds while I proposed weekend work dates in my head. He made one final pull of his index finger across the screen and smiled. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do," he almost whispered as he leaned in close toward me, "You've only got 32 days left on this warranty. I'm going to cover it." If there hadn't had been a 3 foot wide Genius bar between us and the feeling that we were conspiring some kind of illegal trade, I would have wrapped my arms around him in appreciation. I managed a whispered "Really?! in disbelief and delight. And then he smiled, spun a 180 on one bright blue converse, and slipped into the back to retrieve me a new phone.

I thanked him profusely and told him how he'd made my whole week. He just shyly shrugged with a modest "your welcome."

He didn't have to do that. He didn't have to give me $200 worth of help because I overlooked my toddler for 15 seconds. He didn't have to, but he did.

And then I came home today and read my comments from the last few posts and my day was made again. People read this blog? And not only read, but encourage me? Women across the country, women that are busy with a million things on their plate and children at their feet, and women I've never met take time out of their day to send me a line of support and encouragement. You didn't have to, but you did.

People are good. Sometimes for no other reason than to see a smile of relief or to imagine a blogger on the other side of the Internets reading a compliment.

And it matters. It all matters. Every good action strikes a chord in us all and vibrates, no matter how easy it was to do.

Young Love

2010-11-07T21:42:00.001-06:00

My youngest brother is getting married in 2 months time. I swear he couldn't have picked a better woman to be his partner through life. I took some pictures of them when we all went to the beach this summer and oogled over their young love and giddy adoration for each other. I admit, I was slightly nostalgic of that innocence and fresh beginning. I was there myself just 8 years ago. I'm not so far gone I can't remember.

It's only a newly budded love even though they've been together since they were 14, and are now 22. It hasn't been aged by life's weather, both harsh and warm alike. They are stepping out into the world with eager, idealistic perspective, and rightly so. I suppose there's no better way to begin a life with your partner.

I feel slightly compelled to forewarn them that marriage isn't always as easy as the young love they have now, that life waxes and wanes and marriage right along with it. I want to protect them, to prepare them, for the endurance marriage requires. No one ever talks about the hard stuff. Everyone goes on and on about the love, but not the effort it can sometimes take to sustain it. Still, even if I did tell them, how much good might it really do them? They can't grasp it until they have lived through marriage's journey and feel the forces of life that can both pull them loose and thread them tight at the seams, either one.

Even if I tried, I wouldn't know how to tell them what love feels like after 7 years of marriage and 2 children. I'm afraid my words would send them running. For instance: love is using your wedding gift money to pay the electric bills, love is enduring army deployments and war, love is taking a step back or treading water in your career development for the betterment of your spouse's, love is living far away from your family because your wife would be heartbroken if she didn't live within driving distance of hers, love is sharing holidays and missing your immediate family even if you love your in-laws dearly, love is surviving infertility, love is sitting chest deep in a labor pool of blood and amniotic fluid because you are holding your wife up and she's too high on natural opiates and the thrill of a new baby in her arms to care where you are sitting or how long you've been sitting there. See? Downer, right?

Aged love is hard. It's easy. It's intense. It changes. He changes. She changes. It hurts. It lifts you up. There is no instruction book. There is no real right or wrong. There is only the two of you along with the bitter and the sweet that life throws at you along the way.

Some days, the rain will be pouring down on you both and you can't hear or see each other for the storm. Some days, taking cover under your own coat will seem more logical that trying to share it between the two of you. Some days, you will feel like you are pulling all the weight on your own. Even so, if you have the right partner, enduring the climb is worth it. Just duck your head, hold tight your hands, and keep walking. Just keep walking. With every steep step and every slip of footing, with every whispered sweet nothing and greater silent understanding, love grows deeper. It's better with age It's better with weather. It's richer and thicker and cozier, I think. And marriage, if you aren't mislead by it's requirement of effort, can always feel like even on the hard days, you've got someone to lean into and bring a piercing light.

A Rose by any other name...

2010-11-06T22:24:00.001-05:00

...would smell as sweet. Says Shakespeare.

So baby dolls by names like Keyekikes, Meeshee and Lokus are just as normal as if they went by more, say, utilized names. Hypothetically speaking, of course, because few baby dolls in this house are going to have utilized names, it seems.

I suppose I passed down my love for naming babies to Emery. She loves to name her baby dolls on a daily basis, though several have stuck and I have to keep Cristian straight on which baby doll is Suellie and which is Luellie.

She dotes on her baby dolls like a well seasoned mother, and loves to carry several at a time, like someone else I know. She lines them all up in bed for a good tucking in, then speaks to them in her gentlest mommy voice to say "No, I'm not reading that book. I already read it too many times!"

Humph! Well, a mother can only tolerate so many repetitions of Arthur Gets Chicken Pox before she goes berserk, right?

Pictured top to bottom, left to right: Emery, Ruby (the only one I named), Yoko, Meeshee,

Sullie, Lullie, Baby Everett (named after an adorable boy that's a friend of ours, even though the real baby Everett is clearly a boy and this babydoll is clearly not), and Keyekikes. Not pictured: Lokus.

Cop Out

2010-11-05T21:53:00.000-05:00

Day 5 of National Blog Posting Month and I'm already slacking. It's 9:30pm and I had a killer workout before the sun was up, took the girls to the library and out to eat this morning, worked all afternoon and into the evening, and just barely took a breath 5 minutes ago. Emery is just to sleep, I've only nibbled dinner, and my brain is boycotting any and all articulation tonight.

So instead, I'm going to offer a few of my favorite parenting resources of late:

Super Healthy Kids blog. Healthy meals and food for kids. Recipes and ideas to entice your kids to eat nutritional non processed foods as is. I love to read this blog, and it's convincing enough to motivate me to cut all of Emery's sandwiches into multilayered stars and make all my granola homemade. I just haven't done it yet. Ahem. But fully intend to. Eventually.

Raising Happiness blog. Evidence based parenting advice for raising a happy family. I read it for a boost, and I like that it's mostly researched based and less opinionated than some blogs. But then, what's parenting without opinion?

Music Together. Okay, so this isn't a blog, but Music Together is one of the best parenting tools I have in my bag. We've been going to 45 minute classes once a week for a little over a year now. Not only has it taught my kids learn how to pitch match, find rhythm and appreciate music, but it is a multisensory application that helps me distract, redirect, involve and placate my kids. We have a great class we attend weekly, though we sing the songs daily and ad lib words to modify the song for whatever we are doing. I swear it makes getting dressed with a seam/cuff/sock intolerant toddler a heck of a lot easier. The real kicker is that this once a week class sets the stage for me to spend 45 quality minutes giving my kids my undivided attention, uninterrupted by cell phones or a pile of laundry or looming housework. Hands down, it's the best investment I've made on my parenting journey, thus far.

Bootcamp

2010-11-04T14:13:00.001-05:00

"You want me to do something...tell me I can't do it." Maya Angelou

If I don't exercise, I'm a train wreck. I mope around, and I'm sub par at controlling my temper and extending my patience. The fact that I haven't had a good routine for staying in shape since after Emery was born means I've been sub par for the entire duration of my motherhood career. Not good.

A few weeks ago there was a groupon for 60% off 1 month's worth of boot camp. I'm not really the bootcamp type. I'm more of the hard core, advanced yoga type alternated with 3 mile runs kinda girl. But I've been in a slump, and never get up the motivation to push my double jog stroller on a run. Plus, the yoga classes are never at a time when I can actually attend.

So I somehow decided the boot camp was my next best bet for getting back into shape, and bought the deal with marked reservation and uncertainty about my capabilities. The boot camp is at 5:30. In. the. morning. I have to leave the house by 5:15am to make it to the parking lot of a nearby high school for an hour's worth of exercise by the light of the moon and stars and a few fluorescent street lamps. I haven't been in shape since before I was pregnant with Eve--2 years ago. And I'm not exactly an early riser.

Cristian gave me a lot of flack about it when he heard what I'd done. He laughed when I told him my plans to rise at 4:55 am 3 days a week to go stand around in a dark parking lot and let some drill sargent of a trainer tell me to drop and give him 30. I'm awful at transitioning out of sleep and could push snooze 100 times every morning without ever lifting my head. And what about the weather? he asked. It's getting cold and you walk around the house with a parka in the winter. How are you going to handle an uncovered parking lot in the dark? He didn't have any faith in me. None whatsoever. I was perturbed enough to prove him wrong.

Yesterday, I spent an hour in the dark, under the spit of chilly rain, doing suicide runs, burpees and push ups until I felt like jello. 7 other women did it with me. None of us even flinched.

2 weeks down, 2 to go.

Now then, world, what else don't you think I can do?

Finding True North

2010-11-03T22:16:00.001-05:00

It's in the water...

it's in the story...

It's where you came from...

Your sons and daughters...

In all their glory...

It's gonna shape them...

And when they clash and come together...

and start rising...

Just drink the water where you came from...

Where you came from...

I tried so hard to resist my roots during my teenage years. Little did I know how well I would grow from them. I have a wish in my heart that my girls can always be true to themselves, and know that when their true north has drifted, they can always come back to their beginning. It's being written now. This is their story, and it can't help but shape them.

Lyrics from Radioactive--Kings of Leon

Weaning

2010-11-02T14:22:00.000-05:00

I had no idea it could be so difficult.

Emery weaned at 13 months without even a second look back, but Evie? She's a whole 'nother kid for sure.
She's just a few days past 15 months and though we only nurse before bed and if she wakes up unsettled in the middle of the night, I swear she'd still nurse all day if I'd let her.

I'm trying to be compassionate about our weaning process. She nurses to soothe so it wouldn't be in line with my personal parenting philosophy to just cold turkey it. She'd be heartbroken and subsequently, so would I; and that's not how I'd like to end my last and final breastfeeding bond. Still, there's hardly anything left. We are almost weaned, I'm pretty sure. She's beginning to lose interest and request water mid session. Our days are numbered, I'm fully aware.

Last night I sat in our not so fancy, rickety, squeaky old rocker and marveled at Evie's length across my body as she nursed. She stretches from my shoulder diagonally to my opposite knee. She feels solid in my arms and lap. I felt a pang of guilt for neglecting to ever take a picture of either of my girls as tiny babies nursing. How did I overlook it? I remember when I piled pillows in my lap and set them, light as a feather, atop. I rolled them on their side into me and let a tiny hand wrap around my finger as they suckled, stopping only to look up at me for reassurance, drifting in an out of sleep as they pulled all my love and offering from my breast to have as their own.

All those hours I've logged breastfeeding my babies and nothing left to remember it other than the image in my own memory. I hope time will be kind to that image, and not fade it into a blurry snippet until it blends in with all the other memories of my children as babies. I hope before we are finally weaned I will have Cristian take a picture of my big, long baby breastfeeding at the end of both of our nursing careers. Then, at least, I will have something beyond the wide-holed net of my memory.

It pains me, too, to be almost finished. I don't pass judgement on anyone else's feeding choices for her baby, but for me, breastfeeding has been one of the loveliest and most fulfilling perks of motherhood. And now, for various reasons, I'm letting it go. Or trying. Slowly. One foot in front of the other, one day at a time.

It seems Eve isn't the only one being weaned.

The Cat's Meow

2010-11-01T22:57:00.002-05:00

I feel like I complain too much.

My hair is turning gray. My abs are still split from my last baby and I'm way out of shape. I'm not getting any younger. I work way more than I ever intended to work with such young children and never see Cristian except by the light of the alarm clock. I don't have time to write anymore, and I swear it's the best therapy there ever was besides yoga.

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, though.

So I highlighted my hair, joined a 5:30am boot camp, am taking off more weekends than I'm working in November and December, and if you still don't believe me, then gosh darn it, I just signed up for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Post Month), where I made the lunatic commitment to post one post per day for an entire 30 days.

*************************************************

I worked all day yesterday. I worked hard as usual. One of my patients told me about her 4 children and how she raised them on her own with a high school education and minimum wages after her husband started running around on her. She said it was hard work. Really hard. That she could barely keep her head above water. And then she touched my arm, knowingly, in the way a mother does, and said

but those kids are my world, and raising them was the happiest time of my life, and you'll see that even as difficult as it is, this is the happiest time of yours, too. Right now. This is it.

It was a little unsettling, her confidence. The happiest time. That presumption really hit home. The most effortful, perhaps, and happy for sure, but the happiest? Ever? My whole life?

Then, damn, I have got to enjoy this more.

I came home to two delighted girls and received 4 tightly wrapped tiny arms around my legs the second I stepped onto the driveway. We trick or treated on a warm October night through streets packed with other families in their "happiest" time. I watched Emery fly from house to house, squealing with excitement and bouncing along as if her pink converse had springs.

I trailed Eve toddling at record pace behind her sister, determined to keep up with a sweaty grip on her Elmo candy bucket and a wrapped blow pop in the free hand. I admired my husband, a hell of a dad, with his camo diaper bag and radio flyer wagon bumping along behind him. No one knew that was beer in his thermos. He winked and we smiled knowingly at each other. I think we probably had a silent exchange of understanding and appreciation before one of our children tripped and rained her spilled candy along the sidewalk. She broke into a fitful bawl and the other child began dutifully picking up her sister's candy and putting it in her own bucket, causing further heartache for the fallen sister.
We kissed hands smeared with a chalky concrete layer, wiped knees, redistributed candy and recomposed as usual.

The neighborhood families passed us by, pointing out costumes, rationing candy, holding hands and parting for cars. As they snugged in around us, I wondered if they knew.
Do they know this is it?
This is the happiest time.
Perhaps ever.

Time as fleeting as swirly pink glitter paint on a 3 year old fairy.
Right now.
This is the cat's meow.

When?

2010-10-21T16:06:00.000-05:00

When did my hair start turning gray? The silver strands glistening on the crown of my head--how did those appear, 4 inches long and stark as white, without me noticing until now? When is the tipping point between growing up and growing old? Am I there already? Why is it that I still feel 27 in my heart and am always surprised when the image of the 30 something girl in the mirror says otherwise?

When did my 2 year old turn into such a little adult? When did she learn to make friends on the playground with conversation so compassionate and wise that I can almost see a glimmer of who she'll be as a woman, and practically burst with an intuition that she's going to be a lovely one. When did she start loving blue as much as pink? When did her she learn to dance like that? When did my bashful little cotton top become so socially confident and outgoing? When might the adorable gap between her two front teeth become something she no longer prefers? When exactly was it that my toddler turned into a bonafide kid?

When did my baby learn to talk so well? You wouldn't know it if you weren't me. She's quieter around others. Her sister says everything for her so well, what's the point? But I hear her. She has so much to say, and she listens as well as she speaks. When did she learn to do everything her sister does? When will she agree to stop scaling the couches and tables in the span of the nanosecond during which I turn my head? When will she finally stop begging me for that one remaining nursing session we haven't quite been able to wean, the one in the dark silence of her room, where it's just the two of us and there's hardly a drop left? When will I let it go of it as well? When will I mark it as the very last time?

When will we get there, I wonder? I work 4 days out of the home, my husband works the other 3 out of the home, plus nights in our home office. We share parenting, ~~I do all the~~ we share housework, we share the responsibility of bringing in income, but what we don't share is time together. Aside from all the other benefits of the lifestyle we've got going now, the lack of cohesive family time is starting to feel like a deal breaker. But how do we get the parenting we feel is right for our girls, the income we need, and the family time together without the whirlwind? It feels impossible. It feels like an enormous mountain ahead of me.

When will I quit selling out on myself, and finally do what I dream to do for a living? Will my daughter, Emery, who already asks to accompany me to work "with the doctors and the nurses," be ashamed to know that I'm selling out on my career? That I've taken the job for the money and not for the love of it? That I am going against the exact opposite principles I plan to instill in her? Is it okay to sell out temporarily as long as I don't intend to do it forever? And what if just for now turns into 10 years?

When did I quit having fun? When did everything become such a grind, such a weighted effort? When did frolicking through the fields become trudging through the mud? When did I get so far underneath this mound of housework that the weight of it is overwhelming? When did I start depriving myself of all the things I love so much in life in addition to my children: going on dates with Cristian, listening to live music, getting my hair done at (gasp) a salon, and yoga, yoga, and lots more yoga. When did I choose to deprive myself so fully of all the things that make me, me?

Last weekend I worked, as usaul, but in the evenings, we joined my parents, brother and SIL-to-be at a music festival a few miles from my house. I admired the October evening closing around me as a group of fully grown adults ran around in circles dancing and holding hands on the dusty earth as a dance floor. Watching that articulated a void I feel, and I immediately had a yearning in my heart to have that much fun. I wanted the dancing in circles while swallowing dust and laughing so hard I'm bending halfway over kind of joy. A lot. A lot more, at the least.

When does the life I want to live become the life I am living? When does resistance become acceptance? When do I unclutch my white knuckled fists and just take the opportunity to feel whatever the wind carries?

Now's as good a time as any.
Now.
How about now?

I got your back, Sista.

2010-08-28T22:19:00.001-05:00

Eve's Ice Cream Shoppe

2010-08-06T23:20:00.000-05:00

So I'm an awful blogger. Have been for a while. I'm working more. I'm running around with my head cut off. Yadda, yadda yadda, same old bustle in any mother's life, right? I keep meaning to read blogs, but time slips. I completely intend to comment, but the laundry pile is almost tall enough to ride the big kid roller coaster so I oblige and fold. I've lost my footing in this lovely blogging community and I feel like I might be dreaming, but I still hope to nudge my way back into a rhythm sometime in the near future.

So here's to nudging: I'm posting a picture from our ice cream themed party last weekend. Eve had a fantastic birthday, then I had one of my own 5 days later. Since then we've both been eating a lot of cake and ice cream, and I like to remind her that right now life is as sweet as a miniature pink roofed ice cream shoppe beneath a solar system of colorful tissue paper.

and that having a birthday in the dog days of summer means you can sprawl out on your own personalized chair with an attitude like the queen of Sheba and blame it on the heat.

Birthday Eve

2010-07-30T18:55:00.000-05:00

The heat bears down on my neck and shoulders in the humid stillness of a hill country July. The locusts crack out a vibration that creates a surrounding white noise indicative of summer in Texas. The back patio is a warm griddle to our feet and we all quick step across it to the crunchy but still surviving lawn. Our neighbors are grilling something of the animal variety, and for being one that doesn't care much for meat, I'm feeling awfully carnivorous from the smell of the sweet, wafting smoke. With the plunk of a baby sister into our air filled kiddie pool and the full turn of the water faucet we are all content with a refreshing counter to the sweat that has just begun to bead up on our faces. Emery takes hose duty, watering each inch of the pool floor as she narrates some imaginative version of something I can't follow, and I perch off the step of the patio, my feet chilled in the water, my arms available for spotting Eve slippage.

I admire my splurge on a a 2 tiered pool with a teensy slide and a rainbow for a sprinkler I scored in the clearance aisle. Maybe it isn't so obnoxious after all. The girls are refraining from their constant grunting and shoving battles and are instead happy roommates in their watery, pillowy heaven. I soak up the squealing and giggling amongst the sounds of splashing water and the squeak of chunky thighs skidding across inflated plastic.

I admire Eve's gorgeous ringlets springing tight against her head as it wets, and notice her front two teeth swelling thick underneath her upper gum as she grins. I remember where I was a year ago tomorrow: in my own inflated pool for different reasons, and just as thrilled, though not exactly giggly. I anticipate the celebration of tomorrow: the cupcakes baked into ice cream cones, the prediction of a destroyed ice cream truck I crafted out of a cardboard box, the backyard gathering of friends and family that we lure with adult beverages and sustenance as a peace offering for tolerating the July heat.

It's one of those extraordinary episodes in my rather ordinary life. It is time standing still for a few breaths, long enough to stamp it deeply into my memory files. It's recognizing how lovely life is in the insignificant everyday doings that pass me by so often. It's loving this babe, this beautiful girl that is so gutsy, so steadfast, so adventurous in palate. It's accepting that she is most likely my last baby, accepting that this is most likely the last first birthday party I will ever throw, and accepting that summer never gets any more tolerable in Texas no matter how many you've lived through.

It's nothing and it's everything all at once.

It's my sweet honeybee's first birthday. Tomorrow.

It will be just another day to her, except perhaps with incredible amounts of sugar and attention, but still, just another rise and set of the sun in her book.

I'm glad for it and ache about it in the same breath.

I have to type it out for publishing like a hard gulp of what I can barely believe:

Tomorrow.

One.

My baby.

Birthday Eve.

"Is you is or is you ain't my baby?

2010-07-12T10:56:00.000-05:00

The way you're actin' lately makes me doubt.

My baby.

Just when you're sure of her, you find she's gone and made a change.

And my first baby?

You's is still my baby-baby

Because I said so.

With sometimes fleeting flashes, other times in steady reels, I see you blooming into little girls. But make no mistake, loves, you will always be my babies true.

11 months old

2010-07-01T08:00:00.004-05:00

Dear Eve,
They say the second baby doesn't get as many pictures as the first, but I beg to differ. I will say that I have written less about you than I intended, but it isn't for lack of words or delight, but rather for absence of moments where you are not trying to bang your hot dogs for fingers on my keyboard or tug on my skirt repeating "uh oh"s in successful attempt to lure my attention away from the computer. You absolutely despise my use of it, and rightly so. Therefore, when you are awake, I don't use it much. Then there's your sister, your comrade in the effort. Between the two of you and working I never sleep. I do, however, run in a hard sprint for 14 hours each day, and that's putting it mildly.

So I don't write of you like I'd wished, and that's my one big regret. Especially since there is so much of you to enjoy, so much of you that is etched lovingly into my heart, so much of you that I breathe in deeply and cling to fiercely like any mother holds tightly to the babyness of her last baby.

Eleven months already. Your birthday is gaining on me. Your infancy feels like a wave that I failed to catch. One that's crest slips over me and curls down to crash ahead of me so I'm left in the backwards pull of the ocean wondering how it all happened so quickly and why I couldn't keep up. I can't slow the speed of time that feels to be tumbling downhill out of control. So I focus on delighting in your discovery of the world. I watch you with keen intensity. I record your nuances for safekeeping in the depths of my brimming full heart. I try to be present, to breathe you in. I try not to let your wave pass me by without feeling your magnificent momentum and memorizing your sounds and seeing you clearly, as you are each day, everyday.

I stop in the middle of loading dishes to watch the way you stand, wide legged and stout, with one hand on the couch and the other outstretched for that straggler puff snack I overlooked on the floor. I watch you stoop with a wobbly bend and pinch it precisely with your index finger and thumb. As if I were chasing you for it, you shove it into your mouth quickly, proud, and giggly for doing what I tell you so often not to do: eat off the floor. Perhaps you feel my presence as I often watch you sleep. I steal daily minutes of housework I'd rather not do to relish in the loveliness of seeing you dream. I note the rise and fall of your belly, your arms thrown overhead with your thumbs half tucked into your loosened fists, your hair curled into honey hued ringlets above your ears, your mouth rhythmically suckling on your tongue, which protrudes ever so slightly through your half parted lips.

I notice all of your delicous details. I mark moment after moment of you in the pages of my memory like dog eared chapters I'd revisit if it were possible; chapters that are so beautifully written I'm torn between wanting to jump a head to see what wonderfulness comes next or re reading it altogether. But I have no choice. The world keeps turning, your pile of outgrown clothes and baby toys is spilling out of the storage tub I've set aside for giving away ( heart clench). You grow, and I dog ear another day.

Eleven months, so soon? It's a difficult reality to grasp. In 30 days we will have a party in
our backyard. I'll counter the dog heat of summer with ice cream and sprinkler water and a bounce house for distraction. I'll celebrate the day wholeheartedly and simultaneously mourn the way time seemingly sped my baby into an infant no more. In 30 days an entire year will have passed since you took your first breath in my arms as I held you above the warm waters of a labor pool. A year since the earth around us gulped in respite from a summer of drought as I drank in the glory of my newborn babe. A year since I listened to the long awaited rain dropping hard against our wide bay windows as you snuggled onto my bare chest and our eyes met for the very first time.

I promise I'll remember all the tiny details. I promise I'll allow you to grow into a child yet still hold fast to your memories of now. I promise that even when I'm not clicking away on the keyboard, lovingly writing of the way you bounce to music and clap or how you love to shake your head "no" at everything, I will write about you in my heart, and breathe out my grateful words into back rubs and kisses and everyday doings. I promise your book will be full of love letters from me, that it will contain page after page of actions and everyday choices that are my tribute to you. I promise you'll have a novel of love from me before it's all said and done. Pinky swear.

Happy 11 months, baby girl. You aren't quite a year into the world, sweet Evie, but I swear I've loved you my whole life through.

Love, Mama

7 year anniversary

2010-06-14T12:24:00.000-05:00

Cristian,

You get me like no one else can. You tolerate me in ways no one else ever will, and hands down, marrying you is the best thing I've ever done. For the 7 years behind us, for today, for always, I do, I do, I do, a million times over.

Love forever,

your baby mama.

Still. Forever. Always.

2010-06-04T16:35:00.002-05:00

I'm still here. Still writing post after post in my head and never actually in blogger. Still meaning to comment on your blog. Yes, yours! Still intending to write that 9 month old post for Evie despite the fact that she just turned 10 months a few days ago. Still trying to figure out how to have two children close in age, a part time career, a strong marriage and hair without roots all at the same time. Still tired. Still wearing clothes from 2001. Still challenged by Emery's spirited temperment and still occassionally having to leave the room to avoid blowing my top. Still making effort to resist wanting more and find contentment with less. Still have 5 more pounds to lose. Still tired, did I mention that already? Still sharing my body. Still can't get over the fact that I am not 30 anymore. Still trying to get up the momentum and the guts to merge my therapist skills with my yoga teacher certification and cut my own path as a yoga therapist. Still tired. Still wondering if my mousy, board straight hair gene is either recessive or has been holding out on me all these years because for the love of Pantene, would you get a load of my children's blonde and strawberry hair? With natural curl?

Sidenote: Lord knows how much money I've spent over the course of my life to have what the powers that be gave them for free. God love my husband because that has got to be all him.

Still completely goofy lovestruck over my children. Still can gab 15 minutes pillow talk each night with Cristian over things they did or said. Still can go on and on to my parents about how incredible their grandchildren are. Still can't get over the fact that they are all ours.

And despite the effective contraception, unhesitant agreement with my husband that two is indeed a blessing enough, dwindling finances and obvious complaint that I'm freaking tired, there is still this quiet yet persistent nag deep down in the pit of my belly that begs for more babies. Sheesh! Still!! But then that's because when I look at them, I teeter on that fine line between knowing they are all I will ever need and wanting more of what brings me such joy. Can you blame me for wanting more of such love?

Still the pearls in my oyster. Still the light on my dark corner. Still the melody to the song that I hum in my everyday's work.

Still. Forever. Always.

First Baby

2010-05-27T22:52:00.001-05:00

I have a best friend named Sarah. She and I go back. Way back.

my 13th birthday

As in we were MOH in each other's wedding, college roomates, did things our parents disapproved of together, learned how to drive a stick together, passed notes in class to each other, memorized all the lyrics to Prince together, went on family vacations together, survived the emotional torment of middle school together, and best of all she was friends with me before and during the time I sported braces with green and pink rubber bands (I know!). Like I said, way back. I'm lucky that way.

circa 1997, college

She came to the hospital to see me with my first baby, Emery, and listened and supported me as I was thrust bewildered into motherhood with an early, jaundiced baby girl that just couldn't latch. She had my back as I charged somewhat ignorantly into motherhood: delighted to finally be there, forging a path full steam; yet completely unaware of the hold motherhood would have on my heart, the sheer effort of loving and doing right by my child, and the total disassembly and rebuilding of my identity as I knew it.

But Sarah just compassionately stood by and offered an ear, even when hearing about mundane details of child rearing must have been the last thing on her agenda. And even though we could no longer have uninterrupted converstations or go eat sushi on a moment's notice, she came to visit me often and won over my first born with her valuable life lessons on how to do...wait for it... "spirit fingers!" All the cool toddlers do it, apparently.

Here's another one of my lifelong friend, holding a newborn Evie:

She's gorgeous, isn't she? You might even say "glowing," right?

I'd say glowing for sure. Glowing because it was that very weekend when this picture was taken and she loved on my new little Eve that she discovered she was due to be a mother herself.

Then it was this past March that I, like any bossy good friend, pointed her to the store with an overbearing list of must haves for infant care. Then our other best friend and I threw her a storybook themed baby shower.

She's an adorable preggo, isn't she? If she wasn't my best friend, I might be totally annoyed by how gorgeously she does pregnant.

It was just this past weekend that she called me, a week beyond her due date, patient and steadfast, rattling off a long list of tell tale early labor symptoms. I listened to my friend on the other end of the line, this friend that when we were 16 survived a tornado, hail storm and flash flood with me while squatting on the floor of a gas station bathroom and feeding me laughter via Forest Gump quotes amidst the deafening storm. This friend that refrained from calling me out as tacky when I bought her a "torso" cake for her bachelorette party, but instead complimented it's culinary quality. This friend that loved me even when I was in that awful infertility rut and was surely the grumpiest rottenest ingrate she'd ever had for a best friend. I listened to her calm voice on the phone and suspected like lifelong friends do that she was on the brink of something incredible-her greatest moment yet. Turns out, she was.

And so just this Monday morning, after an all night labor peppered with some validated screaming and a rather hard won success at natural childbirth, she held a healthy, precious baby girl in her arms. A 7lb, 8 oz breathtaking Merrill Elizabeth, with hair like Rupunzel's must have looked at birth. Forty five minutes after Merrill was born, I hastily called to leave a celebratory message on her cell phone, but wouldn't you know, despite the hubub and exhaustion and brand new baby in her arms and all, my old friend picked up. "Hi," she answered, through a hoarse voice that did nothing to conceal her delight. As she gushed about the tiny babe in her arms, and the way she'd endured an entire night of contractions and oh, Lordy I was right about it being rough, but hey she did it and here's this teeny little love of her life in her arms and... I listened with pride in my friend's feat and a hard lump began building in my throat. Tears began brimming in my eyes, well knowing the powerful threshold she was just crossing. I remember my first moments with my first baby: so incredible, so surreal, so exhilerating, so conflicted by my exhaustion in a war with my adrenaline. And now? Those moments are all hers.

There may be other children, and no doubt she will love them all with equivalent enthusiasm and compassion; but this baby, this first little girl, will always be the one that took off the blinders, the one that opened her heart in ways she'd never known, the one that set her afoot on this journey, and the one, the very first one that made her a mother.

Welcome to the world, beautiful Merrill, and welcome to the motherhood, my dearest Sarah.

Motherhood

2010-05-09T08:00:00.002-05:00

I awake
soft skin against mine
patting my face
cooing delight
in the dark before dawn.
Another tiny voice joins
singing a chorus of "Mama"s
and it's inevitable.
I cling to sleep,
but they drag me out.
and I let go of sleep, which I no longer know
except in momentary lapses or
fortunate short stints.
And as I roll over and up
my back reminds me
I'm not 20 anymore.
Children clinging to my sides,
diapers,
potty,
breakfast,
nurse.
Needy,
repeating,
arms outstretched.
Wanting,
crying,
pulling,
asking,
over and over again.
I summon compassion,
patience,
calm.
I silently count
before I tell her no.
Again.
Such life,
energy,
zeal.
It astounds me.
Such raw emotion,
on their shirtsleeves.
I try to guide it
I sometimes fail.
Twirling,
imagining,
dancing with
teacups on her head
I laugh
wholeheartedly.
So many toys,
but not enough.
Please share,
take turns,
hug instead,
talk quietly
be gentle, please.
Rubbing eyes,
fussy cries,
Assurance,
soothing,
bouncing,
shushing.
Singing her lullaby
as she goes limp on
my chest.
And then the other.
So long in her bed,
blond hair sprawled,
a hand on her belly button,
minutes pass, then...
silence.
A moment.
Just a moment.
Long enough only
to take a breath.
Then cleaning and fixing
and folding and
stacking and sorting.
Make one phone call
quickly! before they awake.
Then they are up
as if they knew,
and I dive back in.
Planning and packing,
leaving and coming,
Preparing,
so hungry!
I shove in a cold bite.
and grab another
to chew as I go.
I turn my head,
she's across the room,
crawling now,
pulling up again,
into everything.
What's in her mouth?
How did she get so big
so fast?
The other sings,
knows all the words,
but I make more up
to coax her,
transition her,
engage her.
Then dinner.
Two crying at once,
the barking dog,
my pounding head
a deep breath
and I push through.
One on my leg,
One on my hip,
How does anyone
do this?
Finally, he's home!
They squeal.
I exhale.
And fly through
the kitchen on
a grant from their distraction.
Food.
Not like it used to be,
so much effort
for a mediocre meal.
Hands pressed,
she recites her prayer.
He smiles at me across the table.
Sit on your bottom, please
it's time to eat right now
don't feed your sister,
three more bites, please.
Wiggling,
poking,
alternating my spoon with hers.
We leave it all there.
Warm water running,
splashing,
playing,
sliding around in
their little pool.
Drying,
dressing,
wait! Potty!
Rocking, singing,
stroking fine tendrils
of strawberry hair,
eyes closed,
breath slow,
peace at last.
I start over with the other.
The routine:
the game,
the books,
the blankets just so,
the promise for tomorrow.
She relents.
I rise.
So tired.
So much to do.
Before I do it
all over again.
I creep to their bedsides
and peer at such velocity
holding still.
All my love
wrapped up in
such beauty and life.
I watch them sleep
wondering if their dreams
might someday be this.
This motherhood.
This becoming soft where I
was once so hard,
and firming what once was
wavering.
This constant sprint,
this exhausting drain,
this giving,
this bowing,
this surrender.
It's not so easy.
And it will never be undone.
Still, I love it-
the effort,
the adventure,
the forging of a new path
the discovery of the best of me,
the best of him,
within them.
I do it all with high hopes
that for them
it will be all the better.
I love it so.
All of it.
This beautiful chaos
they call
Motherhood.

To all of us in the chaos, Happy Mother's Day.

Wordless Wednesday: Bottom of the Totem Pole

2010-05-05T20:37:00.001-05:00

To clarify, I mean the dog not the baby! Poor dog. Doesn't even make the center of the frame for the cute baby in the fuzzy background...

What IF?

2010-04-30T21:28:00.000-05:00

I was 24 when we married. I knew I wanted babies. He did too. Good thing. I couldn't have imagined a life without them.  I was chomping at the bit, but we decided the sensible thing to do would be to become more financially stable and enjoy some time as a married couple before starting a family. We waited a year and a half, but I couldn't hold back from my eagerness for a child for one more second so I ditched my pack of pills that I hated anyway and waited for a reason to take a pregnancy test. And waited. And waited. Nothing.

We had treatment, saw doctors, I had surgery and more treatment. We waited some more. Our fresh, young marriage rocked by infertility, my heart broken, and our meager savings depleted by a year's worth of Assistive Reproductive Technology left us going down the list of options, and we settled on IVF.   Two and a half years of trying for a baby had passed. Two and a half of the longest years of my life. I was just waiting for my cycle to begin so I could start my medication for IVF, but my period was late. Somehow, despite all the previously failed efforts and the fact that I had this diagnosis and he had that, I was pregnant. 8 and a quarter months later Emery made me a mother, and then 20 months following, Eve made me one all over again.

That's my story. I had it easy. I know it's nothing compared to the struggles of most couples and individuals affected by infertility.  Considering my current life of diapers, tiny clothing and sleepless nights, it all seems like a lifetime ago. I don't dwell on it or think of it often except for weeks like this week: National Infertility Awareness Week.

I will tell you that I left out a lot of details in my story. Like how I was in a fog for months. How I crumpled and cried uncontrollably for hours on the hardwood floor one evening after my 6th IUI (intrauterine insemination) failed. How I felt alienated from my fertile friends and family. How Cristian despised the treatment and I couldn't walk away from it so our marriage had to find a way to common ground. How finances affected everything.  How we couldn't really afford treatment. How I was pressed to redefine my relationship with God. My reaction to infertility may seem melodramatic to someone else, perhaps self absorbed even, and I get that.   But I ached to the bones for a baby, deep, wrenching, searing longing for a baby. It's hard to explain it if you haven't felt it, but that kind of need is tragedy when it's not met. It was a hard 2 and a half years. Years of much kicking and resistance. Years of gravity and low valleys. Years of asking "what if?" Even so, I wouldn't change it.  I wouldn't go back and do it differently.  Perhaps I can say that now with such confidence because I say it from the other side. Still, that dark cloud was only a passing one, but it's silver lining is here to stay.

Speaking of silver linings, there's more to my story.  While I was at rock bottom in my IF struggles, an online fertility forum led me to, Courtney, my now dear friend, who lives in my city and was going to my clinic. My local RESOLVE group connected me with another now good friend, Ms. Hope, that lives just a few miles from me and was also doing IVF.  The three of us met at coffee shops to talk cycles and medication doses, and supported each other in ways that the fertile world couldn't. Before we knew it, we were all fast friends. Lucky for us, we all became pregnant within months of each other. Even luckier for us, we all ended up with three healthy baby girls and a weekly playgroup. Now we support each other as mothers and marvel at how far we've come, and try not to look back at all the what if's that might have been, had our daughters not come to us.

Just last week, Courtney gave birth to her second child, a healthy, adorable little boy. My Eve is teetering on 9 months old now. Ms. Hope has been to to the moon and back for her second baby, a sibling for her daughter. I stand beside her as she waits to complete her family, somewhat knowing and not knowing how it is. I wonder, what if her hope comes to be? Or what if it doesn't? What if I don't support her in the way she should be supported? What if enough people become aware of the difficulties of infertility so that she no longer has to hear well intentioned but still insensitive or stinging remarks? What if insurance covered her treatment? What if the social stigmas of infertility were removed? What if you just took a moment of time and clicked over to my friend's blog and gave her whatever support you have to give?

What if?

I don't know the answers, but I know what I'd like for them to be.

Finding peace where we are, moving forward together, and looking back only to smile and know that despite the heartache and the difficulty, all is how it should be.

Written for Project IF put on by RESOLVE and Mel and in recognition of National Infertility Awareness Week.

All Tuckered Out

2010-04-14T22:12:00.003-05:00

Like a chubby, sweet baby snuggled by her big sister. Or a toddler with her shirt hiked up and wiped clear out after a weekend at Mimi's and Poppy's.

That's me. All tuckered.

I've just made a return to 2 day a week work in healthcare. It's been a week of overwhelm, cramming procedural details into my mush of a mom brain, trying to refresh on treatment contraindications for various diagnoses and recall which nerves innervate which muscles, learning protocol for two days status post this surgery and that, leaving my baby for a full 8 hours for the first time, pumping in the car on a 25 minute lunch break, being incredibly proud and ashamedly disappointed that my husband made it through two days of staying at home with the girls without so much as a blip without me, losing our weekend time together as a family of four, finding a new way to be the cohesive family we strive to be, and going to my first day back at work on about 3.5 total hours of sleep due to my other job for which I'm always on call.

But I remember when I worked full time. I remember the feeling that for all my thrashing and fighting and valiant efforts, I could barely keep my head above water. I remember the counter pull of working two jobs at once: one for love and one for money. I remember the heartache of leaving my infant in a place too loud for her to nap and giving her nipples too silicone for her to latch. I rememeber her heartbroken wails when I left her there, even if she only did it until I was out of sight.

I can't be the mother I want to be and have a full time professional identity at the same time. I know others can, but I've tried it and it's not in my capacity. I promised if I ever got lucky enough to have another baby I'd find a different way to climb the mountain next go round.

So I'm holding up my end of the deal.

Back to work? For the most part.

Totally good with it? Pretty much.

Continuing to hold up my SAHM facade by doing the weekday thing with my girls? Affirmative.

Sacked out like two sisters after a weekend of cane sugar and grandparents?

You got it.

"Two hold yous, Mama?"

2010-04-08T14:22:00.000-05:00

"Two hold yous."

That's Emery's most frequent request. It translates to holding both girls at the same time. I call it resistance training with live weight.

When Eve was first born, Emery began asking for it as a compromise to being held alone. Initially, though it seemed the bane of my existence, I didn't appreciate it so much. There's a spot in my back that screamed after holding them both, and it always snagged more energy than I was willing to give--correction: had. Still, it helped with a barely toddler Emery tansition into the big sister role so I relented often. Back then, I managed it by holding Eve cradled in the sling and Emery perched on whichever hip had the most room, but Eve has long since outgrown my beloved sling.

Sometimes these days, I go for the sandwich likeness as Eve papooses belly to belly on my front side in the carrier while Emery clings on piggy back style, giddyuping me for a gallop. Most of the time, though, it's a straight up one in each arm kinda deal. My biceps reap the benefits.

As effortful as you could imagine it to be to lug around 50 pounds of giggly, wiggly girls, I honestly kind of adore it, and I can be seen doing two hold yous more often than you might expect. Mostly, because Emery is rounding her second year. As she teeters somewhat precariously on my hitched up hip, her length stretches further and further down my thigh each month so that her feet are creeping closer to my knees. I wonder how much longer "two hold yous" will even last, and what exactly will take it's place. I wonder how weightless my empty arm will feel when Emery prefers her feet on the ground to dangling at my side. I wonder if Eve will prematurely want to hop down to the ground, too, like her sister, and if I'll be left with only hands to hold before I'm quite ready.

It's a short stint, this two hold you's bit, this pressing weight of little bodies, this wrangling of long legs and rubber band rolls into the snug of my chest as we tread football huddle style 20 feet across the house. I love to carry them both, the gravity of such love anchoring and strengthening me with each step. I love to see Eve grasp for stability as we move along, her hand patting for something, landing on Emery's as she wraps her plump fingers around her sister's. Emery usually repositions their hands to a true hand hold and they free load around like that, like two inseperable peas on their pod until I need to put them down. I love shifting them, bouncing them up to reposition them better, turning clear around mid stride to hear them giggle at the spin of it, filling my arms and hands with little torsos and diapered behinds. I love the sheer effort of it, the perfect metaphor for motherhood--this walk of carrying as much as you can, this laborious devotion to such a task without batting an eye, without wishing for anything other than such a heavy chore as this.

"Two hold yous, Mama? Two hold you's, please?" she begs.

As long as I can, my love. As long as you'll let me.

Wordless Wednesday: Love is plump, My eight month old dough child

2010-03-31T09:59:00.000-05:00

Good News

2010-03-22T09:23:00.000-05:00

I got a job.
The one I wanted.
All the cards fell into place.
I'll work weekends at a hospital.
Cristian will stay home with the girls.
No daycare. No craziness of rush rush against traffic and baby/toddler schedules.
We'll have to make greater effort to have family time, but our family time at present is only available in tiny windows between wide walls of naps and mealtimes anyway, so it doesn't seem like a big change in the grand scheme.
I'm lucky I work in healthcare and it's easy to find a job there these days.
I'm lucky I have a husband that without hesitation volunteers to consistently parent his kids flying solo.
I'm lucky Emery slept in her bed last night (for a few hours).
I'm lucky the sun is shining and it will be in the 70s today.
I think I found my upswing.

Transitions

2010-03-17T22:07:00.001-05:00

It all began with a few consecutive days of Emery escaping her crib by way of hurling all 36 inches of spunk over the side and onto the floor with a thud. Dreadfully, I knew what was next and all that would come with it. I didn't have to experience what I've experienced these past few nights to know how she would react. I'm her mother, afterall. I knew from the get go.

She's my spirited one, that Emery. Strong willed and persistent. Sensitive and perceptive. Always walking her hands along the circumference of my boundaries, feeling for a weak spot, even in the slightest.

So we've transitioned to the toddler bed and it hasn't gone well. I've been consistent. The first night I silently walked her back to her bed 49 times over the course of an hour and a half. (49 times, Supernanny! How about a bedtime technique for spirited kids, eh?) After about the 5th time, I got curious and started a tally. The 50th time I sent Cristian in and he possessed some kind of magic touch because she finally stayed put. For a few hours.

Her sleep has been remarkably broken for 3 nights straight. I'm pretty sure the days of mid afternoon naps are over, despite the fact she consistenly napped two hours a day just this past weekend.

Eve isn't sleeping either. Her naps are topping out at 45 minutes. She's waking up every 3 hours to eat at night. I took her to the doctor yesterday to rule out an asymptomatic ear infection. I had actually almost hoped my sweet little love had an ear infection. Guess what? No ear infection. Doc suggested teething. I nodded in hopeless acceptance and defeatedly lugged my sleep deprived self and children home with my tail between my legs.
***************************************************************
Today's weather was remedy for my tired eyes and weary perk. The sunshine spruces my spirit as well as anything could. So we packed it up for the old stand by picnic at the park. Emery and I built bucket shaped sand castles out of the damp sand from yesterday's rain while Eve raked up all the leaves and sticks in our sand pile for a taste test. And that's all it took to reconstruct my floundering patience after 3 nights of no sleep and cranky children: clumps of sand in my palms, sunshine, and wee sisters in sunhats.

       ****************************************************************
Turns out, Emery isn't the only darling that has a difficult time with transitions. Financially things have rather abruptly changed for us, and I need to return to work. I'd be lying if I told you I'm fine with it. I could focus on the fact that I had 8 attentive months at home with my infant, plus an extra month with my toddler before the infant arrived. I could. My mantra could be that I was so lucky to spend this time with my daughters undistracted by the nagging pull of a career. It could. I could go on and on about how grateful I am that Cristian has busted his rear for us this past year.  I suppose I'm an ingrate, though because I don't. Honestly, all I can think about is how I have just now become completely comfortable being submerged up to my ears in mothering, with only my nose protruding into the outside world, and how I love it so.  On the forefront of my mind is the possibility of missing mornings like today's in the park, and letting someone else do the every day ordinary, which has somehow become my every day delight. And then I'm conflicted with how to interview for jobs that I desperately need but vehemently don't want.

I don't yet know how much I'll work. I can tell you it will be only as much as I have to. I know it won't be a career anymore, but rather just a job, a means to an end--that end being provisions for my daughters and family.
       *****************************************************************
Emery is asleep now. I ached to go to her when she called for me through the door that she didn't dare open because her father was standing  barricade on the other side My heart pained when I listened to her tear through a book and recite it with unseperated angry sobs in the darkness of her room. My frustration peaked each and every time she opened the door with a reverberating thud of the latch and asked so sincerely and pleadingly for an apple, some juice, a carrot. We once had to hold back laughter when she escaped her room in a scurrying waddle with her arms by her side and wrists flexed saying "I'm bein' a penguin! I'm bein' a penguin!" in diversion. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to hold her until she slept (this doesn't work with Emery anyhow). I wanted to be able to will her to sleep.    But I could only respond with wordless, straightfaced guidance and firmness and repetition 50 times over.  Then, eventually...silence.
       ****************************************************************
For Emery, transitions are difficult, this one especially.  Her anxiety spikes. She didn't want to do what she absolutely had to do.   She had to make peace with what she wanted to fight with all her heart. She had to trust that this is what what she needed most, even if it didn't feel that way to her. And somehow she did.

It seems I could learn something from my energy drunk, emotionally unstable, yet still simply brilliant toddler.
Fancy that.

Park Weather

2010-03-03T21:33:00.000-06:00

Sunshine. Finally.

We made a break for it.

Weather with a drawing warmth broke the spell of dismal winter days, and since one of my dearest friends has just seen one of the harshest of dreary days in anyone's book, I think she was due a little sunshine, even if only in the literal sense.

I cannot put into words how deeply to the bones I have ached for park weather once again. Let's just say that a toddler, an infant, a barky dog and I don't bode well holed up in the house for winter chill and rain. Not well at all, I tell you.

But today? Well, today was gorgeous.

The grass was dry for the picking and ~~eating~~ examining.

The world was warm and glowing enough to discover it again.

There were people to watch, smiles to return, and snacks to intermittently nibble on picnic blankets.

It was a lovely day all around, and the entire neighborhood seemed to agree with a hefty show of cabin fevered little bodies.

I felt like we were climbing out of our dark, tired hollow

To feel the glory of the sun on our shoulders once again.

Hitting my Stride

2010-02-19T22:52:00.001-06:00

If you are anything like me, you'll wake up in the morning to your 6 month old pawing at your face, grinning a gaped mouth smile, cooing and soiling her diapers. Then you'll hear your 2 year old yell "Mama, I'm awake!" and you'll hit the ground running.

Somehow, (mostly because you rock) you'll manage to get both girls up, changed, dressed, fed, hair brushed and fixed, socks on, shoes on, wash the oatmeal off the two year old's face, give the 6 month old her medicine, get your self dressed without really looking at what you are wearing, apply minimal make-up while 2 year old sits with you on the sink and 6 month old plays at your feet with a set up of toys. You'll run the tooth brush over your teeth once, maybe twice, pull your hair back into a sloppy pony tail, and pour a lukewarm cup of tea while simultaneously packing the diaper bag and taking occasional bites of a banana.

You do a little fist pump to congratulate yourself because no one else will.

Then for the usual:

If you tell your 2 year old it's time to go get in the car (following 5 minutes of telling her ahead of time) as you sling your purse over your shoulder, she'll suddenly recall her own "blue purse" (which is in fact a toy dog carrier) and insist she can't leave the house without it.

If you agree to go retrieve said "blue purse," and get lucky enough to find it in the second location you look, you'll then be informed that she needs a "fruit bar and a doggy" to go inside of it.

If you succumb to the fruit bar request, but somehow manage to convince her that the stuffed doggy needs to stay home, then she'll want to give the doggy a teapot full of water to drink while we are out.

If you point out that her doggy can share our real live dogs' water while we are out, she'll immediately remember that speaking of drinks, she needs a drink of milk herself.

And as you go fill a cup for her, she'll voice her preference of "the red cup, not the yellow one please," which you will fish out of the dishwasher in effort to encourage her recently floundering pleases.

As you carry a paci sucking infant on your hip and lead a milk gulping toddler out the door to the car to get where you were going 6 distractions ago, mentioned toddler will inopportunely decide that this is the moment (after all those previous unsuccessful moments of the past 4 months) to become passionate about potty training. And she will insist she has to sit on the potty. Now.

As you crouch on the bathroom tile, shoving some bath toys in the direction of your infant propped on towels, stabilizing your grinning toddler over the porcelain bowl, waiting for the action that doesn't come, she will then decide that she needs to put her socks, shoes, and pants back on. By herself.

Oh, and a piece of toilet paper for the nothing that came out. And flushing! Don't forget the flushing of the perfectly clean toilet water that holds no toddler excrement and a piece of clean toilet paper! Very important.

Back to the putting on of toddler clothes. More waiting. More looking at your watch. More drumming of fingers and verbal reminders that the tag goes at the back of her pants and only 1 foot goes in each pant leg.

And though she will eventually manage her pants and socks, she will decide the current pair of shoes just won't do and go searching for her brown patent ones. She will ignore your futile protests that brown patent dress shoes with a heel do not go with jeans and a t-shirt that says "Peace", and she will insist on putting them on herself. Over socks. On the wrong feet. Thankyouverymuch.

Then, somehow, you will make your way out the door to the car and strap in your 6 month old only to stand patiently aside as your two year old climbs up into the car seat "by myself!". S-l-o-w-l-y.

You take this moment to drink from the now almost cold cup of tea and make dumb faces at your 6 month old to entertain her during this dragging intermission.

You will ask aforementioned toddler if there's anything else she might possibly need before you snap her in. A bowl of mac n' cheese perhaps? A pedicure, my lady? A Golden Ticket by chance?

But she will just smile and say "let's go!"

You will glance at your watch, notice that after all that you've got a teensy bit of time to kill. You are slightly smug you wisely allowed yourself 15 extra minutes to walk the 5 feet from house to car.

But no sooner than you click the last buckle of her car seat belt, will you glance over at your infant daughter in the adjoining seat and watch her eyebrows furrow. You will hear the grunty exhale, and say "of course" under your breath as she fills her pants. For the third time that morning. You won't even be surprised when you unbuckle your grinning, cooing adorable-even-when-covered-in-poop 6 month old to see pureed carrots in the form of baby excrement has found it's way out of the diaper and up to her mid back.

And this, my friends, is a scenario I call "Mother's Law."

But because I'm a mom and I rock (see above), I shrugged, calculated the delay, tossed the two year old (now suddenly dying of hunger. again.) a bag of dried fruit snacks I keep in the console, did a quickie diaper/wardrobe change in the back of the SUV with my giant bag of anything I need to be prepared as a mother of two young children, used a burp cloth as a temporary buffer between the dirty seat and my baby, stuck a paci in her mouth as she chilled Maggie Simpson-esque, and buckled her in with prowess agility. A snap and 2 clicks later, I was in the front seat, putting the car into reverse.

And I still made it to my destination on time with clean, content children.

How's that for finding my rhythm, eh?

Quintessential Lindsey

Eve's 6 month Video

2010-02-02T08:00:00.001-06:00

"Best of all, I've got my baby...and nothing's gonna bring me down" Yes, yes, best of all indeed. Not a day goes by that I don't look at both my girls and sigh with relief and appreciation that they are here. After all, not so long ago I couldn't quite imagine myself to be so lucky. And here we are, 6 months into the life of my second born daughter. It's a stroll on the sunny side of the street to say the least.

Six Months Old

2010-01-31T22:02:00.001-06:00

In the blink of an eye, 6 months.
She is perhaps the most patient, even keeled, doughy 6 month old my DNA could possibly create.

I hope I can always remember how she is on days like today. Days when we napped together, her head nuzzeled into my chest for easy access, her feet pedaling against my thighs as she soothed herself into dreams. The squeals she belts to match her sister's booming decibles, the huge flower hat she wears so proudly to elicit double digit numbers of strangers to come compliment her adorableness, the way she splashes in the tub, grinning a gummy smile, reaching for all the floaty toys with determined independence. Please, oh please, don't let me forget how her skin feels like creamed butter and how the rhythym of her breath while she sleeps lulls me like the ocean waves. Surely I won't forget the weight of her on my front as she hangs in the carrier, her head at the opportune height for me to brush kisses across her forehead as I go about my daily tasks. And I won't forget her nudging me and wimpering me out of my deep sleep to have at my leche bar twice a night, gulping in my milk with mighty swallows, silking her ears and kneading my chest as she slips back into a comforted sleep. I imagine it impossible to forget her great big smiles and coos and oogly eyes that make it easy for me to ignore the fact that she is waking me up before the sun rises. And let me never forget the way she lies on her back and in one quick swoop, hoists her feet up to her ears, gripping her toes, rolling side to side in some kind of baby ecstacy of happiness and pride at such a trick.

I can forget the diapers. I can forget the fatigue and the sheer physical effort of carrying her around day in and day out. I can forget the pureed sweet potatoes in the crevaces of everything. I can forget the trips to the doctor for shots. I can forget feeling so frumpy and unstylish, and going to the bathroom with a baby in my lap.

But I can't forget the loveliness of this six month old whose personality is sprouting from the seams.

And of all things, please oh, please don't let me lose the visceral feel and heavenly image of her cheeks, her smile, her eyes, those lovely blueberry eyes...

happy half trip around the sun, sweet Eve.

Evie goes to the "Doctor"

2010-01-27T23:25:00.000-06:00

No telling how many times each member of our family has been assessed by Dr. Emery. I could recite Berenstein Bears Go to the Doctor by heart. Sometimes it makes me feel too rigid tell my nicely requesting 2 year old that no, I won't lie down mid task to have my stomach pummeled and my ears prodded; which is why I occassionally find myself sprawled on the carpet as Emery instructs me "breed deep" and presses her toy stethescope to my lungs. Unfortunately, she is just as afraid of the doctor as she is obsessed with pretending to be one. I really hope this turns around before her long awaited cardiologist appointment mid February. Something tells me that for Emery, an echocardiogram can't be prefaced with The Berenstein Bears. We'll see. In the meantime, Evie continues to humor Emery's frequent exams, halleleuia, and I try my best to hold up my end of the deal and "breed deep."

Wordless Wednesday: Milk Megaphones

2010-01-20T21:11:00.000-06:00

Okay, so not exactly the do as I do image I was aiming for, but I suppose it's a start...

Full Arms, Heavy Heart

2010-01-17T22:32:00.000-06:00

Haiti. My God, Haiti. Her children. Her people. What, if anything, could I do for them?

I can barely do more than glance at the media coverage of the Hatians caught in her tangle. Though it draws me in, I'd rather not see it at all; but I feel the obligation to keep up with it so I've cautiously allowed myself to read occasional news reports through my phone.

A picture of an orphaned baby weighs on my heart. Though I've never been keen on the thought before, I glimpsed what our family might look like if we were allowed one of those beautiful children as our own. And I liked it.

The story of an elder woman who has overcome hardship after hardship only to be drowned in the wake of this one, and in her weakening state is leaving it "up to baby Jesus" makes my stomach reel. I think of my own grandmother in her hip senior community apartment reading devotionals and playing scrabble with her neighbors. Suddenly, I am grateful that despite her chronic pain from sciatica and daily slew of prescriptions that consume her fixed income each month, she has a warm bed, steady ground and a 4th story view of a courtyard, albeit bare.

I'm so glad that my 2 year old is oblivious of such devastation, that her biggest heartache is that I wouldn't let her watch Elmo while we ate dinner this evening, which she unsuccessfully whined halfheartedly about for a minute or two then dismissed with a rendition of some made up song about guitars. I sing praises that Eve had her first bite of cereal today (her very, very first!), her chubby cheeks squeezing her eyes into rainbows as she smiled about the discovery of it. It was organic. With probiotics. Probably the most expensive one at the store, the money for which could buy that elder woman in Haiti a case of bottled water and rice for a week.

What could I possibly know of what weighs heavy on Haiti now? Nothing. And I am a bit guilty to be grateful for that--to be grateful it's not my grandmother on the dirt, that it's not my children that are crying unheard tears into no one's arms, orphaned, victims to their country's unfortunate circumstance.

I put my girls to bed tonight with a prayer for "protection" in my heart--that they may never be in the midst of such despair, that they may never be the ones beneath the rubble, that they may always at the very least, have each other.

If I were rich, I would send the orphanages there a fortune. If I were 20 something and still the idealistic, adventurous woman of my youth, I would go there, or somewhere where I could do more than just type words on a blog and send money via text message. If I had appropriate medical skills and no family, I would go there and clean their wounds. If someone could fly 30 orphaned children to my house, I would just be here for them and hold them and cook for them and tell them that the ground doesn't shake here, that the water is clean, that their mothers' love will find them through me. I would do that all day and night. For as long as it takes. I would. But I'm none of the above. No one will fly those children to my house, though I hope that somehow someone really will fly them out of that forsaken place to loving arms.

It's bittersweet that while my children are playing on the rug tomorrow or adorably begging me for a ride in the double seated wagon, someone else's will be lying on the hard, unforgiving earth, heartbreakingly begging for water, hoping the ground that supports them doesn't rumble again, this time to swallow them whole.

I don't know such despair on a level even close to theirs. I've been afforded the birthright of a middle class American that leaves me unable to really even fathom it. I don't know rich, but I don't truly know poor either. Still, even though I can't pretend to know what it is like to be Hatian right now, I have a heavy heart for them all, and steady prayer of "protection" in my heart--for the rescue workers, the missionaries, the citizens of Haiti, the children, the babies, the little girls with bright eyes behind the sorrowful face--protect them, be with them, help them find peace.

Spirited

2010-01-12T22:23:00.001-06:00

I had an inkling when I first felt her move within me at just 17 weeks gestation and feisty as all get out. For the rest of my pregnancy, she never. stopped. moving. Seriously.

I raised my eyebrows when she came into this world with wide eyes, screaming and flailing with such zest that her 2nd Apgar was a 10/10. She spent the entire time under the warmer voicing the inconvenience of being squeezed like a lemon and taken from her toasty trampo-ute only to be scrubbed and lathered in the hospital nursery, but I couldn't blame her for that. It seemed a reasonable complaint.

She cried and cried and cried for months on end as many babies do except perhaps a bit more. Okay, a lot more. I remember one night when she was around 6 weeks old, she required a particular stride with a bounce for soothing. In effort to avoid her wails and accomplish a well soothed baby, I walked her around the house for 5 hours straight, 5 insanely exhausting hours, my biceps bulging, my aching socked feet treading a trail into our floors, my only respite being going to the bathroom with a baby in my lap who threatened to wail if I didn't get up and start walking again.

She wouldn't latch on to me to feed for weeks on end. 9, in fact. Ironically, the moment she latched on, she suddenly wouldn't have a bottle. I swear I bought every single bottle on the market. Every suggestion you could ever throw at me, I did it. She'd have none of it. I had to speed off during my practically non existent lunch break to breast feed her at daycare. During the morning and afternoon feedings the daycare providers would use a nipple I found that flowed so quickly Emery didn't even have to latch. The milk just dripped into her mouth and she'd swallow out of necessity. They told me it was just a phase—that she'd accept it eventually, that if she got hungry enough she'd eat, but they didn't know Emery. She carried on like that for an entire year until it was time to ditch the bottle all together. That should have been the clincher that enlightened me to the kind of spirited kid I had on my hands, but I was still too new of a mother to know for sure.

Don't buy your bottles before you have your baby!

I'd tell my pregnant friends.

You don't choose the bottle, your baby does!

I would say to them. And then I would watch dumbfounded as their babies slurped down whatever their mothers offered them without so much as the slightest protest on the 3rd or 4th bottle brand at most.

Wow! You got lucky!

I'd say,

but don't expect to go out to eat at all the first 18 months and don't think that your baby will be happy in her Daddy's arms for the entire first year!

I'd knowingly warn them. Then I'd furrow my brow, confused, as other Daddies bottle fed and held their content babies, and other families actually succeeded at taking their babies out to eat. IN PUBLIC!

Oh how she has such magnificent spirit, my Emery, the light of my life, the one who made me a mother and fills me to the top. But Lord help me, at times, she can be more child than I ever would have guessed she'd be. Truth be told, she was tricky from the start: tricky to conceive, tricky to push out, tricky to feed, tricky to soothe, tricky to put to sleep, tricky to dress. Maybe it was me? Maybe I wasn't patient enough, or I'd spoiled her with all my doting. Maybe I didn't know how to parent as effectively as I'd like to think or maybe, even as an occupational therapist who knows a little something about sensory processing issues and the infamous spectrum, I didn't know jack about how to use my career knowledge in mothering my own child.

Mothering a spirited child is no big deal (or not as big of a deal) as long as you know your child is spirited, can understand where they are coming from, anticipate triggers and react accordingly when you don't; but being a brand new mother and not yet comprehending the strength and vastness of your child's spirit can be incredibly frustrating and exhausting. Or at least it was for me.

In the first year and a half (and sometimes still), she fussed and fussed and fussed. She didn't fuss without reason; of course, there were happenings that were real concerns for her. Things that seemed insignificant to me, things I couldn't always predict, like a crooked sock seam or receiving the yellow cup when she was, unbeknownst to me, expecting a purple one. To her they were instances that turned her world upside down with show stopping drama. She's thrown flailing, sobbing, floor wallowing tantrums for 35 plus minutes in a room by herself just because I opened the curtains and she preferred them closed. Without warning she's crumpled her entire body to the ground in a limp noodle flash if someone (usually me) opposes her on even the teensiest issue (i.e. No, Emery, you cannot play with the pizza cutter). She has frequently repeated a question over and over with such perseverance and hardly a pause between repetitions that even if I don't have the answer, I just make one right up. She crashed her body into walls and floors and people to fulfill whatever strong sensory input her developing nervous system was seeking. At one slightly embarrassing stage in her life, she was a head banger (so glad that's over!). She jumps, squeals, and says "no" just as any toddler does, except perhaps more.

These days, she thinks with her entire body and will push a chair across the house to climb up onto a dresser and obtain the toy she saw from a distance instead of just asking me for it. She's curious, imaginative, and into absolutely everything. She has engaging pretend conversation with "people" in the sky, makes birthday cake from bath water, and digs in drawers for that one thing she saw 3 months ago and still remembers it's location. She can somersault across and entire room, and spin until she can't stand up anymore.

To speak to her when she's riling up, I need touch her gently at her level and make eye contact or her persistence will deafen her. I had to teach her to "blow out the candles," count to 12 (or any random number) or jump in place 10 times when she is buzzing too strongly from overwhelm and excitement. Our latest success at winding back down is for her to "take a break" from whatever situation overwhelms her by walking to her room (or quiet space if we're somewhere else) to read books and then "come back when you're ready." She self regulates her break, and it's my guess that she does it so eagerly for the production of the return. She most loves to come back, announcing loudly, "I'm baaaaaaaack! I came back, Mama!" I unfailingly greet her as if she's been gone for days. She's a sucker for a good reaction, that girl of mine. She knows the rules well, but breaks them often. Often as in all the time. She tests my boundaries repeatedly, even though I am just as persistent as she. And just as she was as a fetus in my womb, she never stops moving, even her restless sleep resembles a flopping fish out of water.

It wasn't until just before Eve was born, that I finally conceded that Emery's nature was stronger than my nurture, and to be honest, it wasn't until very recently, that I finally embraced her gusto without fighting it. Unfortunately, it took me until just after Eve's arrival (and recognition of Eve's stark contrast in temperament to her sister) that I confirmed all those Emery moments weren't for a lack of patience on my part or poor behavior on hers, but rather a result of her enthusiasm for life, her intense emotions and intuitive radar of sensitivity, incredible perception, and revving energy that in my opinion is much more extreme than the average toddler's but still short of crossing over into the special needs realm of sensory processing disorders.

Though she is sensitive and persistent and intense and energetic in a combination of ways that could make this mother insane did I not have a good understanding of her, I think someday it will be these traits precisely that allow her, if she so chooses, to take this world by storm.

Having a spirited child means that I have moments (lots in fact) where she could be perceived as a handful or I could be assumed as a mother who doesn't give her child boundaries (but I do--sometimes with generous barricades). I could be that mother you saw in the grocery store with the screaming, ill behaved child that just won't sit down in the grocery cart. I could be the mom you sat next to at story time with the kid that wouldn't stay put or quiet during the story and distracted your kid from having a perfectly lovely story time. I could be the mother of the girl that pushed your kid down the slide when she didn't want to be pushed or barreled over your poor child to get to the swings. I could be the mom with the oily hair and no makeup aside from smeared mascara because her daughter was too into everything at home for me to have time to get ready myself. I could be because I am.

But, I'm also the mom of the 2 year old girl that has this conversation with her 5 month old sister:

Emery: Oh, Evie! Hello my sweetheart! You are sooooo cute, Evie!
Eve: (smiling at her big sister) Coooo!!!
Emery: Awwww, I see you smiling! Good job, Evie! Good job sweet pea!
Eve: (still smiling and now squeaking): Squeee!!!
Emery: I hear you, Eve! Emery here! I looooooove you, Evie! I looooooove you!!!!!

(I know, I know, be still my beating heart, right?).

I'm also the mom of the girl that bellows a booming "Hiiiii!" to practically everyone in public and then goes on to introduce me as “Mama" and her sister as "My Evie" and subsequently wins over even the most sheepish or hurried of strangers with her loud chatter and sugary smiles. I'm the mom of the kid that is above average (if I dare say so myself) at her parent led gymnastics class because she is so obsessed with flipping and spinning, jumping and balancing on things high off the ground. I'm the mother of the girl that can make her sister laugh harder than anyone else can with her wild antics. I'm the mother of the girl whose ability to notice every single detail (like who painted what picture at a party 4 mos ago, and can label whose mother or father belongs to which child as they file in to pick them up at her mother's day out program) seems to be a gift of sorts. I'm the mother of a girl that can memorize songs lickity split and entertain me endlessly with belting renditions of them. I am, indeed, the mother of a spirited child.

And in fact, I wouldn't trade the extra spirited tantrums and iron clad will for a temperment that didn't have them because I'm pretty darn sure that absolutely everything I most adore about Emery is because of the bounty of her spirit, handful that it is.

Carry on, spirited little cotton top of mine. You are perfect, incredibly, fantastically, beautifully perfect just as you are.

Perspective

2010-01-06T20:58:00.000-06:00

To be completely honest, I often feel rather out of place having my own blog with a custom header and $10 URL.   I'm not famous, nor wealthy, nor do I have some spectacular occupation or interesting talent. I've never reviewed anything here or given anything away. I swipe recipes from other blogs and am only a mediocre cook anyhow so I figure there's no need to compete with all the good cooking blogs out there. I am writing my story as if I actually have a story to tell. Except I don't. Heck, even if I did, I'm not a writer. Never aspired to be one. Never even took a writing course in my life beyond high school English (probably by fluke, I managed to weasel out of college English comp). So I sometimes reconsider having this blog. I mean, what exactly entitles me to do such a thing?

The sassy answer is: because I can. The sad answer is: because I don't have time or money to have a real hobby and this one is free, and makes me feel like I have a smidgen of a social life even if I hardly ever leave the house.

But a blog about motherhood? And my girls? (I'm speculating the pictures of whom are the only real reasons anyone ever visits here) And my completely ordinary life?

Yawn.

There must be thousands of mommy blogs that do the same but with much more eloquence and creativity. I realize there is nothing extraordinary to be found here. But apparently, I just can't quit telling you things you can read anywhere else and probably already know for yourself.

I started writing 3 Januarys ago. 3 entire years I've logged on the internet now. I realize this is really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but for me, well, there are only so many things I have done (without pay) at regular intervals for three consecutive years. Eat, sleep, and do yoga about sums it up. I was in such a dark corner in my bloggy beginning, but soon into it, my world brightened.  No matter if I was drowning in sorrow or wallowing in delight, the words to describe it surprisingly flowed and flowed. I didn't know where I was going with all those words and usually did not neatly package them up before hanging them out there for anyone to see like half washed laundry on a front lawn clothesline. Still, here and there, every 20th post or so, I'd surprise myself with a sliver, perhaps just a single lovely strand of something that was maybe possibly kind of spot on Lindsey. So I keep at it, all for the love of those fleeting occurrences of finding and airing the true, raw me amidst usually meaningless text and amateur photographs of my children.

When this new year came, for the first time in the past 6 I didn't need to hope this year would be one in which I would get pregnant or have a baby.  Suddenly, I feel extraordinarily quiet, like there's nothing to say that hasn't been hammered out before (and certainly better) by another blogger. I feel like I am much like every other mother there ever was. Yes, different of course, but still so very much the same. Also, I realize I am lucky, fortunate and content in a way that makes for rather boring blog writing.

I'm lucky because I have two children. Two beauties! And they didn't come easy. Except they did.

I'm fortunate because I get to stay home with them. Only it's not fortune, but rather trimming the fat, reprioritizing, a supportive husband, and lots of breathing out and silently counting to 10 that allows me to be a stay at home mother.

And I'm content because after comparatively minor infertility struggles, I've somehow unwrapped the box that contains my jackpot.

I am, like so many others, a woman who had a career, then made her family one. I'm a sister, a daughter, a wife, a health nut that eats chocolate, and a still-haven't-lost-all-my-pregnancy-weight mom who has pictures of my children on my facebook page and cell phone wallpaper.

I'm all around status quo, pretty plain in appearance and my first name is really Jane. Honest.

Though I mostly post about the good stuff, I don't mean to pretend that my life is better or happier than anyone else's (how would I know?). I have my own personal tragedies, however insignificant. I have my own struggles and failures, guilt and shortcomings, same as anyone. My life is and I am far, far, far from perfect.

But as distant as it is from perfect, it is still rather ordinary.

In fact, it seems I am the substance of ordinary. And this could be considered just another monochromatic, toddler stories and baby's firsts, blah blah blah cliché mommy blog.

I read bloggers who write about hoping for a full family in good health: a woman who deserves and aches to know her own children, a dedicated wife and mother who just wants her injured husband to recover and know their infant son, an amazing father of a girl close to Emery's age who both grieves and rises up from the loss of his wife to name just a few. And as they walk their path, I read and wish along with them. I follow their journeys with hope as I read the strength and purpose in their incredible stories.

Truthfully, my picture post about how we got over 3 inches of snow on Christmas in Texas seems so shallow, so trivial, so insignificant next to the incredible writing and character and often struggles of so many bloggers on my blogroll.  Sometimes, I don't even want to post what's on my mind because of it.  Still, even though my own story is in comparison hardly an interesting one at all, it is to me, even if only to me, a story worth telling.  Interesting or not (mostly not), this is my path to walk and I appreciate it.  Despite the fact this is just another regular-as-they-come tale of motherhood, lovehandles, 30something laments, sleepless nights, perpetually unfinished laundry, relentless vacuuming up of animal hair, and taking 30 minutes just to get myself and two children into the car, it happens to be, oddly enough, the stuff my dreams are made of.

So to anyone that lands here, thanks for reading my regular ol' story of everything aside from something profound, be it for 3 boring years or for this post alone, and don't worry, I'm not holding out on you. Now, for the real reason you came:

Peace, my friends.

Wordless Wednesday: A (surprise) white Texas Christmas, Santa's (scary) visit and holiday miscellany

2009-12-30T09:35:00.000-06:00

Sitting Pretty Christmas

2009-12-20T20:48:00.001-06:00

My 4 and a half month old daughter gave me my Christmas present this weekend. I'm not counting the 2 sleepless (and when I say sleepless, I mean 45 consecutive minutes of sleep max!) nights of holding my uncharacteristically inconsolable child upright so she didn't choke on post nasal drip as a gift. I do however, count what she did during a happy moment between those two nights as a hard to follow, what I always wanted from my 4.5 month old daughter kind of Christmas present.

Wanna see?

Eve

sitting

UP!

For real! Like really, truly, not resting her belly dough on thigh dough but seriously sitting pretty all by her 4.5 month old self!

Well, for a minute at least. Good thing I put that cushion there.

There, see? Sitting up again. Like she's been doing it her whole life.

Did I mention she's only 4 and a half months old?

So despite the sleep deprivation and wrecked house, I'm feeling like a lucky dog of a proud mama as we cross the threshold over to crazy busy holiday week.

Even though my eyeballs sting from lack of sleep, my back is shooting pain from carrying Eve all night, my heart still aches from watching my usually completely content baby be painfully sick and not being able to make her understand she'll be better soon, I'm glad. Even though I have baby snot all over my shirt and I can locate a blue baby suction bulb faster than I can find my phone, even though I have so much to do I'll be up all night again, I am good.

Better than good.

And I can only hope this kind of good is with you, too. If it is, then I hope it stays with you for the long haul. If it isn't, well, I hope with all my heart it finds you soon.

Have a Merry Everything, my friends!

How to Make Mischief in 30 Seconds or Less

2009-12-17T20:04:00.000-06:00

At the moment, Emery is incredibly curious, imaginative and straight up mischievous with her tendencies to get into everything at incredible speed. In the time it takes me to go to the bathroom (about 30 seconds, I timed it) she has done the following on different recent occassions:

took 12 spice bottles from the pantry and lined them along my bedroom window sill, then garlic salted them all, a good half bottle's worth
Applied an entire container of yogurt to her arms, legs, face and neck as "lotion"
Pushed a chair across the room to the counter, climbed up, retrieved a pen then colored her feet and legs with black ink streaks enough so that bath time took 3 times as long that night.
Dug in my husband's night stand for a writing utensil, which she found, and colored the entirety of our master bed sheet with "drawings and Elmo"
Found a pitcher in the kitchen, ran to the bath to fill it up, then drug it across the floor, leaving a trail of spilled water until she came upon one of our unsuspecting dogs and gave him a "bath"
Hunted then emptied a whole bag of chocolate chips I'd set out on the counter for baking into a skillet she retrieved from the cabinet. Then brought it to her toddler table for a sit down meal and consumed a mouthful before I discovered her

30 seconds, people! How does she come up with these harebrained schemes so quickly? She's hardly two for pete's sake! Shall I expect her to be freezing my bras and drawing mustaches on our faces while I'm asleep by the age of 3 or 4?

I've taken to bringing her into the bathroom with me and locking the door to keep her captive.

Please, please tell me I'm not the only one.

Uncles

2009-12-16T14:35:00.000-06:00

Nothing softens unmarried, man's man uncles better than a niece in their arms.

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday: He likes to think of it as 24 with 8 years experience

2009-12-09T22:21:00.001-06:00

3 decades ago.

I'm well aware that Emery is the spitting image of her father, even to the detail of always having a dog by her side (but I'm claiming her eyes).

Two decades ago. We knew each other even back then. I wish I could find me that "check yes or no" note he wrote me when he was this age...

One decade ago. I'd just fallen in love with him. Hard.

Here and now. Still in love with him. Way.

His card says:

"Cheer up, 10 years from now you'll never believe you were this young."

With not much left unrealized on his wish list, I imagine this birthday candle wish involved aspirations for red meat, football on surround sound uninterrupted by a toddler requests to play baby dolls, and relinquishment of the upstairs playroom for transformation into a hideous man room of sorts.

Just a guess.

Happy 32nd birthday, Cristian! No worries about the climbing digits, love. In my heart, you'll always be a solid 28.