My Christmas Thought

In this, the season of giving, I’ve thought a lot about the concept of selflessness.  We give our time, our means, our energy.  We give to our children, our families, our friends and neighbors, and to complete strangers.  Sometimes, we give knowing that we’ll never see the faces of, or hear the gratitude of the recipients.  Yet, the critics will say that there is no thing as true ’selflessness.’  You give, because there is always, on some level, some personal gain.

And I must admit that I agree with them.

Giving is always receiving.  Though the primary purpose of the action may not be to receive the consequent personal benefit, it always follows.  I do not, however think that this diminishes the worth of the gift or the value of the giving.

The universe is governed by natural laws.  Some of those laws are physical, and we are likely more familiar with those.  The spiritual or moral laws operate much the same way: actions is followed by reaction.  There is always a consequence.

It is only natural that an act of love or of kindness will be followed by a sense of accomplishment, of meaning, of happiness.  There have likely been times in our lives when we have failed to find this satisfaction, because we have been too busy or distracted or self-conscious to recognize it, but it has been there nonetheless.

And there is nothing wrong with seeking the joy that accompanies service.  It’s not the same thing as seeking recognition.  I would argue that selflessness, far from being the opposite of selfishness, is overrated.  No, I’ll go even further than that.  Selflessness is impossible.  The fact is that each one of us has a self.  Each of us is an individual and is aware of the world only through our own experiences and understanding.  We cannot cut ourselves out of the equation.

In fact, what more selfish thing could we do, than to withhold our service from others and to deny ourselves of happiness because we are too concerned that we are giving only for our own benefit?  Yes, I serve my daughters and my husband because I love them, but also because it makes me happy.  When I give to neighbors, friends, and strangers, it’s because I know it’s the right thing to do, but also because I enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that I did the right thing, that by my actions, the ocean is one drop more.

We best maintain ourselves by maintaining others.  I am not ashamed to be seeking my own happiness.  If wrapping presents or working at a soup kitchen gives me a rush, that effect is only enhanced by the fact that I am afterward better able to care for myself and for others.

So this is the gift that I will give myself this Christmas.  I will allow myself to be motivated to do what is right by the hope of a deep and abiding gladness.  I will seek to give and to serve, and will strive to be awake to the resulting happiness that will find me. 

Thoughts from My Rocking Chair

We were out late the other night, which almost invariably means that a tantrum will follow in the wee hours of the morning.  As I sat in the rocking chair, cuddling my girl, finally calmed, it struck me just how big she has grown.  Her feet hung over the side of my lap and through the arm of the chair.  Her head rested on my chest and her little eyes blinked slowly and quietly in the darkness.

A year ago, she was a baby.  I nursed her and rocked her to sleep many a time in that chair.  Now she is, in every sense, a toddler.  A little girl.  It made me ache to realize how swiftly and surely time is already taking my babies from my arms.  This girl who scarcely sits still, who can climb almost anything, and who repeats everything I say, is becoming every day less mine and more her own.  It's such a sweet little ache.

When silence had reigned for a several minutes, I found myself hesitating, not only because the transition from Mom's arms to bed is always a delicate one, but because my desire to hold on to that quiet moment, that peaceful embrace, rivaled the desire to return to bed at 2:30 AM.

It was just another one of those moments that convinced me all the more, that there must be more to what we are and why we are here, than the life that ends when we stop breathing.  Too many mothers have snuggled their little ones only to see them grow up and walk away, too many of these perfect moments have happened and ended - not to mention myriad worse things - to have this earth, this life be anything but a tragedy, were it not so.

This moment need never be reduced to only a memory.  This child is and will always be more than a complex structure of molecules, forming cells and tissues and organs, governed by external stimuli and external chemical reactions.  This life extends beyond the confines of time.

And it is no tragedy.

Dex

A few months ago, this eight-legged guy appeared beside my front porch.  I don't have a photo, but picture this: black, white and yellow stripes, each leg at least an inch long, angular body - majestic in a terrifying sort of way...

Despite my strong aversion to spiders, I decided to let him stay with an unspoken understanding that, so long as he kept his distance, he wouldn't see the bottom side of my tennis shoes.

I decided to call him Dex.

Yes, I even gave him a name, maybe because it made me feel like I had a little control over him or something.  Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?  Metaphorically speaking, of course.  If he had built his web in China, I would have felt much more comfortable with the situation.

About a month ago, he moved right up behind the front door.  OK, Dex, I thought, but come no closer.  You're on thin ice.  I don't think I've passed once through that doorway without glancing his way.  And shuddering.

I mentioned him in a conversation with my spider-loving friend the other day, along with the mysterious disappearance of mini-Dex.  Her response (it was over text, but I just know she was elated): "Then it's a she and she'll have babies soon :)"

Oh.

She has plumped up in the last few days, huh?

Eew.  It makes my skin crawl, and not in a good way.  I don't think that phrase has ever been used with a positive connotation, but just in case it has, I want to clarify - in a bad way.  I hate spiders.

My conscience: Are you sure?  Hate is a strong word.

Yes.  I hate spiders.  And one big one living in plain sight and close proximity is more than enough.  How did Charlotte's Web make an arachnid invasion seem so not-creepy?

Be afraid, Dex.  Be very afraid.

Dear Stay-At-Home-Moms: My Response

I stumbled across this article today and while the title gave me the feeling that I was about to be attacked, my curiosity won out.  After reading it, along with a few recent comments, I began to write a response.  When I saw that my comment was becoming unwieldy, I decided to just make a post about it, rather than attempt to be concise.  

While I agree with the message of this article - that motherhood is a privilege and should be treasured - it proved to be every bit as volatile as the title promised.  I don't think any human being has the right to speak to another in the way that this author did, much less to a large population of people - such as 'stay-at-home-moms'.  Everyone faces unique challenges.  We have no idea what the mom who complains to us in the grocery store is going through or has gone through, although we may convince ourselves that we can make an accurate guess.  

Raising children is extremely difficult, but it's also a learning experience.  Children are very good at teaching us things like patience and perspective, both qualities that the article advocates.  We are all at different places on the path to acquiring them, moving at different rates, and facing different obstacles.  No one enters parenthood knowing fully what he or she is about to take on, but you will be hard pressed to find a mom, stay-at-home or otherwise, who is doing what she does for the wrong reasons.  We are all trying, we are all working hard, and we are all learning along the way.  

As a stay-at-home-mom, I try very hard to keep things in perspective and to express gratitude often for the experiences I have.  When I blog or use social media, I try to conclude with a statement or thought that illustrates the situation in a new, and hopefully clearer light.  I try very hard not to flat-out whine, and usually I'm not inclined to do so.  I don't claim that my life is harder than anyone else's, but I do write and talk about the hardships I face and I don't apologize for that.  

I think it's wonderful that we have blogs, social media, and other outlets that let us connect with other moms and support one another.  If you don't like somebody's posts on facebook or twitter, you don't have to follow her.  If you don't like someone's blog or website, you don't have to read it.  If you can't handle letting someone unload to you, don't answer the phone or invite her in to sit at your kitchen table.

I write the things I do because I recognize that I am in the midst of what is likely to be the most difficult and most fulfilling time of my life.  Writing is an outlet for me, a way of channeling my thoughts and troubles into something redemptive, a way of understanding.  I also realize that a lot of my friends are going through the same things that I am and it's a way for me to try to lift and relate to them.  I write for other friends whose lives are very different than mine, but who are genuinely interested in what my life is like.  If the things that appear on this blog come off as whiny, moping, or judgmental, please - and I mean this sincerely - please don't read them.  If I am dragging you down by what I post, please steer clear of it.

And I won't deny that I have my down moments.  Like most difficult things, motherhood isn't only daunting.  It's surprising.  I feel most inclined to complain when I find myself faced with an obstacle that was completely unforeseen.  I try to save my complaints for my mom, my husband, and close friends who are willing to hear me vent because they love me, respect how I've chosen to spend my life, and want to help me along.  Nevertheless, if I do happen to let slip, on a hard day, that I think my life is difficult and momentarily can't see beyond that, please consider that I am on a long journey that includes continual self-improvement.  I ask you to give me the benefit of the doubt and know that I will endeavor to do the same.

I am grateful for the opportunity that this article afforded me, not only to reflect on the blessings of motherhood, but also to step back and consider how I look at other people.  Both those who are and aren't mothers deserve my compassion if I am going to listen to them, and, if I am not able to be a nonjudgmental listener, my candor, in explaining quickly that I will not be able to provide the support that they seek.

Happy Thought - Extension

At the risk of sounding like a broken record - yes.  This post is also going to be about motherhood.  That's where my mind is these days.

As we have settled into our new routine, I can't seem to get a handle on all of the additional clutter that is appearing in every corner and on my counter tops.  Junk mail, toys, lonely socks and even vegetables from the garden (one of Addie's latest obsessions) accumulate more quickly than I can find homes for them.  I never was one for tasteful decorating, much less perfect order and cleanliness.  I can confidently say that my home is appropriately sanitary.  Beyond that, it's never been anything impressive.  Even my nesting instinct, in the last days of pregnancy, translated into massive amounts of canning rather than decorations for the nursery or deep cleaning.

I'm coming to accept that, despite my best intentions and daily efforts to get on top of my household chores, I'll always be a little bit behind.  Always, or at least, for the next decade or so.  Still, there's something special about the things I see around me lately, from the pictures on the walls to the homeless boxes that live, stacked, in corners, alphabet magnets on an around the refrigerator door.  My earliest memories are of similar things - cracked sidewalks, a screen door that I struggled to open, a blue rocking chair, a wicker laundry basket...  None of them were remarkable, but in my mind, they are accompanied by a soft, pleasant glow.

And this little house, even with my poor decorating and organizational skills, suddenly seems so much more significant as I look around it with those memories in mind.   I begin to see how the little trappings in and around our home now will remain with my children, pixels of the images that they will one day call their childhood.  

Sandcastles

Before...

I don't think I need to explain that things have been a little bit hectic around here.  We're all a little disheveled, more often than not.  But once in awhile, we're not.  Once in awhile, there are a few, lustrous hours of order - clean clothes, clean faces, de-tangled hair...

...and after. 

But of course, those hours are always numbered.  By the end of the day, we're usually a step behind our pajama'd beginning.  The now dirty clothes end up in a little heap somewhere.  The hairdo has disintegrated into chaos, and happiness is now a matter of pasting a sticker to our bare skin, using the best adhesive available: sooty rainwater.

At this point, I'm often tempted to ask myself why I ever bother in the first place.  It's not as though there is ever a day that doesn't end looking like a disaster.  But I just have to laugh instead, because this is life - mortality in a nutshell.

What do we do, if not build things to be decayed?  We wake up each morning and create each day like a sandcastle on the beach.  We build, often carefully, pouring our creativity and energy into the cast of our priorities, packing and shaping, and hope for the best result.  Nevertheless, whether by waves or wind, we will find that, by its end, the day has dilapidated considerably.

Especially as a mom, I've come face to face with this reality: that all of my efforts, all of my accomplishments will, at least seemingly, fade away.  Nothing but my (more and more sporadic) journal entries and occasional photographs will remain in years to come, to prove that today ever happened.  And yet, today matters.  The exertions with which I attempt to bring order or beauty into my life and the lives of my little ones are not insignificant.

When the evening has come and finds all that I have built or done in a limp state of disrepair, what will remain, but the patience that I have worked into my fingers?  The ability to endure, that has seeped into my reddened knuckles?  The new understanding in my tired eyes, of the redemption of every new morning?  What will remain of my creations in the sand are the memories that my daughters will someday carry away with them, that their mama loved them.

Surely, there is something that we are meant to learn by the cycle of creation and destruction.  Doubtless, there is wisdom behind the mortality and fallibility of our bodies and of all that we do here, calculated to allow us to grow.

My Happy Thought

In the few short weeks that have followed the appearance of our Ellie, I have found myself daydreaming from time to time.  I have caught myself thinking, half-consciously, now we're a real family...

I know that that's ridiculous.  We were a real family before Ellie was born, before she was even thought of.  Ben and I were a real family even before Addie came to us.  We were a real family from the day we were married, when we committed to be a forever unit, to build one another up and to grow together for the rest of our lives and long after.

But life is a long time - not to mention eternity - and I can't help thinking about it, envisioning family photos taken someday in a studio or on a carpet of fallen leaves.  When I was a new bride, my husband was one of the only real certainties of my future.  There would be him, me...and whatever other family members might happen along.

Almost a year and a half later, Addie came into our lives, and they were, of course, changed forever.  My imaginary family portraits began to feature her little face as well.  Alongside the baby pictures that began to appear on our walls, I saw, in my mind, other pictures - the first day of kindergarten, Christmases and family reunions to come.  And yet, in addition to Addie, the pictures included a number - no one can say how many - of nameless, faceless little strangers.

Ellie is yet another piece to that puzzle.  Now that she is here, I feel that I know something more about both of my daughters than I did before.  Each one adds a new backdrop to the other's life.  Each adds a clarifying line to the vague contour of our future as I see it before us.  All of those yet-untaken photographs are one less part imagination and on more part reality.

So, in those moments of sunshiny contentment, this is what I see - lots of murky, undefined years, but each one is filled with my girls, my husband and with abundant promise.

Venturing

I thought I had this parenting thing figured out.  Surely, being able to go about my business with a rambunctious toddler in tow, and being able to keep her happy entails some sort of motherly prowess, right?

Well, this week, with my mom gone back home and my husband gone back to work, I'm getting to really get my feet wet, on my own with both girls for the first time.  As if being at home with both of them weren't sort of a trial by fire, our 2-week well-child check-up fell on the first day of mommy's lonely reign.

I spent all morning preparing, trying to get myself and both girls in a state of being fed, clean and ready to go.  We still got out the door barely on time.  As I pulled onto the interstate, anxieties began to rise.  I felt a profound weight of responsibility hanging on my shoulders.  I had forgotten something, I was sure of it.  Reaching behind me, I found Ellie's little head with my fingertips, just to reassure myself.  It wasn't enough.  I pulled off again at the first exit and found a place to pull over, just so that I could turn around completely to see that my baby was, indeed, asleep in her car seat.  Sufficiently calmed, I took courage and we continued along the freeway toward town.

Despite its inauspicious start, the outing went quite smoothly.  We got back home all in one piece, but exhausted, and I found that I suddenly had a new respect for my sisters-in-law, mother-in-law, mother and the other women in my life who raised or are raising their children cheerfully and accomplishing and learning other things besides.

If anyone would have asked a month or two ago, whether I knew what I was getting into, I would have had to answer honestly that I didn't.  While I understood conceptually that a second child would add substantially to my stress and busyness, I knew even then that I hadn't really internalized it.  Then again, I wonder if anyone is ever really ready to have a child.  I'm convinced that it is always, to some degree or another, an act of faith.

As I walked from the clinic, I was shepherding Addie along beside me and had Ellie's unwieldy car seat slung over my opposite forearm.  A passerby observed, with a smile, "You have your hands full!"  My mind went back to words from a blog I had read years before, and I almost repeated them aloud: "Yes they are - full of good things!"

I am so grateful for my life and what it has become.  It is not what I envisioned.  I am grateful for these little years and for the opportunity to choose to embrace them.

I was blessed to come across this video a couple of months ago.  The address on which it is based is one of the things that really gave me the courage to unashamedly pursue motherhood...but that's a topic for another post.

While the Dust Settles

Through calls, texts, and Facebook, most of our family and friends already know about our new arrival.  I was overwhelmed to see just how many of our friends and neighbors were eager to help us when the hour came, and so grateful for all of the support we found among our family and friends, both here and far away.  While I have so much to say and tell about the most memorable Labor Day weekend of our lives, I am currently far behind in the process of writing it down, and there is a little girl who will only sleep between the hours of 8:00 PM and 2:00 AM if nestled in my lap or arms (it's now about 10:00 PM).  Since a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, though, I thought I'd post a little visual of our new reality and let that speak for itself while I catch up on everything else.

Sisters

Goat Head Blog

*No, this post does not contain an announcement.*

That being said, I have been promising myself for months that I would get back to blogging before Baby #2 made his/her appearance.  Gradually, that has turned into a vow that I will post at least once before I'm knocked off my feet (and probably off my rocker too) by the next little tidal wave in my life.

It has been a long summer of more things than I even want to recount, but prevalent among them, a garden that my neighbor and I have prodded and urged and muscled and willed and prayed to produce.  Alongside the garden, there is the lawn that I dreamed of, that Ben and I have watered and wished out of the ground.  Of all that has happened in the last few months, those two things have been two of the best.  They have been my escape from many less pleasant aspects of the summer, especially from simply waiting.  I hope you will understand, then, why the first thing to resurface on this blog is a gardening analogy.

Our young crops and probably the source of my sanity.

One of the first things I discovered when we moved into our house here were some nasty little thorns that inhabit just about every square inch of land outside and somehow find their way inside too.  Eventually, I found out that the spiny little pests had a name: goat heads.

The beginnings of hope...

They were at the forefront of my mind when I decided that I wanted our lawn to be a foot-friendly place, free from thorns and thistles.  Despite the weeds that had grown rampant in the new grass while Ben and I were both too frantically busy to contain them, I thought I had succeeded rather well, until my grandparents, former Arizonians themselves, came one day to visit.  While touring our garden, my grandpa knelt down and pointed out a stray weed that we spreading itself over the ground beside the fence.  "Do you know what this is?" he asked me.  "This is called goat head.  If you don't get this up, you're going to have some nasty stickers out of it."

To my dismay, I began seeing that same pernicious little weed at the edges of our lawn.  School began again, and I found that after Ben would leave for work, I would spend entire mornings in the yard, yanking up weeds by the hand-full.  The goat heads in our garden were already sprouting green thorns, ready to drop them and no matter how many I disentangled from our precious grass, there were always more.  I felt outnumbered and overwhelmed, bending over my over-sized belly to get at them, while behind me Addie whined to be taken inside.

It took a little over a week and some help from my husband, but we got the little invasion under control.  I've noticed, however, that they don't seem ever to stop.  No matter how many I throw over the fence and how carefully I gather the dropped thorns to pitch them over the propane tank, there's always at least a sprout somewhere.

Well, I've decided that this blog has been and will continue to be something like the little goat head weeds.  Sometimes, posts will be rampant (and probably rather irritating too).  Sometimes, they'll pop up here and there, just often enough to prove that we're still here, still in the desert, and sometimes, they'll disappear for months at a time, only to show up uninvited and without forewarning - quite randomly.  My hope is that someday, I'll be able to write more like I'm learning to garden, in steady, sustained and predictable patterns, but for now, this blog is going to be more like the thorns that have (rather literally) punctuated my experience here.  For now, it is merely a stubborn survivor. :)

A Much-Belated Baby Post

I acknowledge that I've been pregnant now for...almost six months.  At 25 weeks and a few days, I'm only a little over three months from our due date, and I've been meaning to make more than a casual mention of it in a post for quite some time.

The tummy.  I'm pretty sure it looks bigger in person.

I started this blog during my first pregnancy, so while my posts were few and far between, most of them focused on Addie and on the eager anticipation centered around her.  That was a different time, for certain.  I was working full-time, attending school full-time, and adjusting to a new home, new friends, and still had so little time at my own disposal that I had almost no need to figure out what I was going do with any of it.

Since Addie made her appearance in our family, my life has changed drastically.  While the decision to be a stay-at-home mom was one of the best I have ever made, it has also had a lot of unanticipated effects.  My life has become an unending balancing act.  There was suddenly so much time and so many, many important things with which to fill it, but no one looking over my shoulder to supervise.  It has probably been one of the most overwhelming things about motherhood for me.

But I digress.  All excuses aside, the facts are these: we are expecting again, we are very excited, and I haven't bothered to really blog about it yet.  Usually when people ask me how I'm feeling, my response has been that "the second pregnancy is not like the first one."  I don't know if the little aches and discomforts really are more intense by themselves or if I feel differently because I simply wasn't chasing a toddler around last time.

Not the best images of our ultrasound, I admit, but the radiologist did a pretty nice job at
sharpening them up for us.  I'm thinking this one has Ben's nose and pronounced brow...
but maybe that's just me. :)

But this second pregnancy has also been sweet in its own ways.  I wasn't sure that I felt stirrings until about 18 weeks, which was the same with Addie.  Ben, however, could detect the little movements only a week after I could.  Again, I can't say whether this little one is a more enthusiastic kicker or we just knew better what we were waiting for, but it has been fun to share those things with my husband earlier on.

We've also had the new challenge of trying to prepare Addie for the coming changes that this baby will bring.  There's no way to let her know just how it will be when Mom and Dad suddenly have someone else to hold and can't pick her up whenever she wants.  We have however, begun to work on the concept that Mom has a baby in her tummy.  She learned to say "baby" weeks ago, since that's what we call the baby doll who comes just about everywhere with us.  A couple weeks back, I started pointing to my belly and saying "Mommy has a baby in her tummy."  Since then, when we ask, "Where's Mom's baby?" she pretty consistently points to my tummy.  I do wonder how well she understands even this, though, since on Sunday, when we asked her this, she pointed first to Ben's knee, then to hers.

Either way, it's going to be an adjustment to her.  If we can just get her to lavish the same little kisses and attentions on her brother or sister as she does on her baby doll, and can keep her from trying to forcefully share her cheerios the way she does with us, I'd say we're off to a good start.

As I watched Addie grow through her first year, I constantly found myself thinking that the second child couldn't be this much fun.  I was sure I would just spend the entire infancy being overanxious to see him/her reach the same landmarks as his/her big sister.  I found it hard to believe that, having experienced a toddler, I could go back to enjoying a newborn, but that, too, has changed.  Every day, I feel more and more astonished to realize that my little girl has become such a toddler, and I'm seeing my friends' babies through new eyes.  I am looking forward to this little one and to the curve balls he or she is going to throw us.

Backyard Fantasies

Since I was a teenager, green has been my favorite color and, in many situations, it still is.  At this point, I'm not overly biased.  I haven't insisted on having every room in the house or even one of them painted in some forest-y shade and after years of complaining to my mom that I was so tired of that shade of burgundy that she used all throughout the kitchen, I can see that appeal in it.  It might even make an appearance in my own home someday.  We'll see.

However, ever since we moved out here, I have been painfully aware of the absence of my long-time favorite color from most of the scenery.  In February, I realized that it probably wasn't a healthy habit to, in a moment of homesickness, spend an hour or so researching some random, scenic town a thousand miles away, down to the house I would buy, the church I would attend, and the library I would frequent, should we happen to move there.  Instead, knowing that our plans don't include leaving this town for a couple years more, I started to fantasize about how to bring the green to me.  

It started with the day we took Addie to the track and allowed her to play in the sand.  I decided that we would need a sand box to keep her company during the summer.  My mind moved to the enclosure in which the box would sit, lest she should get any ideas about running away.  The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that the yard inside the fence should be green - and not with synthetic turf either (it's been suggested).  With real, living grass.  (The original dream actually included ivy climbing the fence and a line of sunflowers, standing sentry around its perimeter.  I've since put that vision on hold.)

The new fence, as seen from out back porch

In the background, you can see the garden we've started
planting with our neighbors.  It'll be a monster if it ever
takes off.

I acknowledge that it's sort of a long shot.  No one in our neighborhood has a lawn.  I don't know it that's for lack of trying or simply because the thing is impossible.  Nevertheless, we marked out a spot behind the house.  A few weeks ago, we got a fence.  Finally, after weeks of shoveling gravel, tearing up weeds, and a few rather vain attempts to level the small area, we spent an evening spreading top soil, grass seed, and fertilizer.

In the process, Addie rediscovered her inner mud-monkey (which had mysteriously gone missing for the majority of the yard-clearing process.  Now, the yard is wet, muddy, and speckled with oh-so vulnerable little seeds.  I have found myself going to the window or the porch every few hours or so, just to check for sprouts.

Lately, it's been Addie's thing to get a bottle and flop down somewhere on the kitchen floor to drink it.  When she ran out of steam for playing in the dirt, she finally settled down right in the muddy doorway, taking a front-row seat to watch the sprinklers work their magic.

I'm ready to acknowledge that we might never see a nice, thick lawn  covering our little strip of yard, but I'm also ready to fight all summer long to make it happen.  As much as I would (will) love to have a nice, cultivated yard, a retreat from the surrounding dust, the very act of putting my heart and hands into the project has been a healing balm.  Therefore, so help me, I will dig and plant and water and repeat until I have a lawn to show for it or until the effort puts me into labor. And in the meantime, I will learn to love this land.

Have You Seen This Day?

Missing: Wednesday.

Last seen following Tuesday.

Sunny, cloudy, windy, rainy and snowy with sightings of hail.

Full of opportunities for:

-laundry doing

-kitchen experimenting

-cleaning

-crafting

-studying

-writing

-things other than complaining to one's mother

-etc., etc., etc.

If found, please return to Caitlin via social media or comments area below.

However - if you have no idea where my Wednesday has gone, but are pretty certain that yours has disappeared to the same place, please join me for hot cocoa and commiserating at your earliest convenience. :)

Sweet Dreams

Happiness is...

a dream that doesn't dim with waking,

that takes shape in my prayers,

before my eyes

and beneath my hands.

A dream that did not begin with

and will not end with me –

a heritage.

A Cloud-Road

On Saturday, a Spring storm rolled in.  I watched from my place beside the nurses' desk as the wind tossed tree branches from side to side.  I know that the winds here don't compare to those that rake the midwest, but to me, it was an impressively ominous sight.  Just before my shift ended, rain appeared, which quickly turned to snow.  Though I was a little nervous to drive him in a blizzard, the storm served only to lift my spirits.

As it happened, I had only to fight my way through the spray of white for ten minutes or so, after getting on the freeway.  As quickly as it had appeared, the snow was gone and rather than driving under an overcast sky, I found myself  in direct, unimpeded sunlight.  In fact, it was so bright and insistent, that the roads began to steam.  It was one of those moments in which I wished very much for a camera, two free hands, and the expertise necessary to capture the scene.

At first, they were just ghostly wisps, drifting across the ground, but the vapor began to rise rapidly off of the asphalt, twisting with the moving air.  It became so thick that, at times, I couldn't see any more than a hundred feet into the fog.  If I looked from side to side, though, I could see perfectly the houses and mesas in either direction for miles.  Only the blacktop interstates were misty white.  It was like driving along a cloud, a tunnel of sun-warmed storm.

Doorknobs and Grown-ups

The adventures never seem to cease, out here.  And they come at us when we're least expecting them.

If you're wondering whether that is what you think it is, you're probably right.  It's an apple, mounted where our doorknob should be.

Or, more appropriately, two apples where our doorknob should be.  What would you do if you fell asleep working on your computer, woke up at about 1:00 AM, decided to check on your baby before officially going to bed and found that your door had fallen shut and the doorknob jammed, locking you in your own bedroom?

You'd knock the screen out of our window and clamber out and around to the front porch, obviously, glad to have forgotten to lock the front door for once.  Or, more appropriately, if you were four months pregnant, hopefully your husband would be around to do that last part for you.

Once you had gotten the bedroom door open - a curiously easy feat from the kitchen side of it - you would remove the doorknob, naturally.  The only remaining dilemma would be how to block light and sound from coming in through the round hole in your door.  The easy solution, a wad of grocery bags, just wouldn't do.  It would look tacky.

So what do you do?  Decorate with fruit,. of course.  Two apples and a skewer - or sturdy plastic straw, or whatever - and voila!  Problem solved and door decorated.  For a few days at least, until the apples begin to get soft and brown on the inside...but that's another story altogether.

I said that adventures keep finding us out here, but for once I don't think I mean in 'Somewhere.'  This time, I mean the wild ride that is adulthood.  When you're a kid, adventures are something that someone reads to you from a book, or something that you paint with watercolors, or something that you dream up with your running feet and whooping yells.  Sometimes, it's like that for grown-ups too, where you're inventing an adventure or fueling it with hard work and imagination; but sometimes - often - it's more like finding out that you're out in the open water now.  Adventure finds you and you roll with it and learn to laugh.

Looking Up by Looking Down

Good morning!  In case any of our friends to the north are wondering, Spring has fully descended upon us here in Somewhere, complete with occasional rain, windy afternoons, and lots and lots of warm, buttery sunshine.  Little bits of - yes, green! are beginning to appear here and there, and I'm finally acquiring an eye capable of seeing them from day to day.  The past couple of weeks have been full of walks.  Addie loves to be outside - where else can you find so much dirt to taste and little sticks that can be used to poke just about anything? - and almost has sufficient stamina and focus to get from our house to the school track, where we usually meet her dad for an afternoon stroll.

I took a moment, the other day, to flip through the pictures on my camera, and realized that the little girl in those pictures taken back in October was a very different one from the girl walking beside me on these walks.  The baby in my kitchen cabinet, gleefully sorting through cooling racks, cutting boards, and casserole pans is already fading to a shadowy memory beside the vibrant toddler she has become.

The girl who is now napping in our second bedroom is as mischievous as she can be, always looking for a way to get mom or dad to say in a scary voice, "Hey!  Where do you think you're going?" before chasing her across the house, ready to tickle.  She's full of new words and signs - some that we've taught her, and a few of her own making - and she's learning how to get what she wants, even when her parents think they've laid down the law.  She blows kisses pretty liberally, and when in the right mood, she gives the sweetest hugs, complete with little "ahhh" sighs to mimic mom's and dad's.

Someone's got to help dad eat his breakfast.

At a year old (plus a few months), Addie is all about sharing...especially when someone tries to give her food she's not interested in eating.  She has acquired a taste for pickles, though, and a love for grapefruit that comes and goes.  

Mom's attempts to tame her hair, which is finally long enough to tangle, have also caught her interest.  She's more and more willing to sit patiently while I comb and spray and fix rubber bands into it and once in awhile, laughs delightedly upon seeing the result in the mirror.  Pretty trinkets - usually bracelets - are also becoming popular items.  

As we set off on one of our walks last week, I found that my gaze was turned downward almost throughout.  While I was surrounded by the arid landscape that I am still slowly learning to appreciate, my view consisted mostly of a little head, almost as high as my hip, with two little ponytails, jutting out at slightly odd angles from either side; it was of two little feet, shod in bright little shoes, that move with ever-increasing certainty along the roadside; a little hand that, with a little insistence on my part, holds on to mine.

During the first couple months of the year, after having returned from a long Christmas vacation with our families, I found myself constantly nauseated, exhausted, and chilled, despite the mildness of the winter.  My feelings about our home here (as well as my attitude about mostly everything in my life) plummeted and hung low for weeks.  Yet, now that I am re-energized, free from the cold that kept Addie and me indoors, and awakening to the changing seasons, it's as though a shadow has passed from my life.  We've crested the lip of a deep, and, walking alongside my daughter, I see all of the aesthetic I need for the moment.  

Despite my dreams of greenery and mountains, I'm realizing that this is a time in my life that I will look back on with fondness.  Not just this time, either, but this place.  This safe, sturdy home, these brush-clad mesas, dusty highways, and thorn-studded paths are and will have been the context in which I watched my baby grow into a little girl.  They have provided the backdrop for her first steps, first words, and for the hundreds of little discoveries and developments that come with each month of her life.

I've been reminded often, of the importance of optimism and the need 'to look up,' and for so many weeks, I could only respond to those encouragements with the cold counter, "Why?  I won't like what I'll see."  A few days ago, I finally began to understand that sometimes, looking up means looking down.  The opening of Springtime has been like waking up from a long and tedious dream, and blinking, bleary-eyed, and looking down to see the little girl who has all along been walking at my side.  It's been like waking up to realize that I am passing through one of the simplest and best times of my life.

Update

Well, obviously consistency isn't really my thing.  The past seven weeks have been non-stop running, and our lives have been taken up with some very fun things, such as visiting our family, being visited by some of our favorite cousins, and a trip to the big city, an ultrasound (pictures to come...someday...), as well as lots of reading for me (ahh, books. *happy sigh*).

And then there have been some not-so-fun things, like job training (which by itself isn't so bad, but considering that every shift ends with a forty-five minute drive home in the middle of the night...well, it has its up-sides and down-sides), and an almost-two hour drive into the New Mexico desert to get my not-second, not-third, but fourth set of fingerprints done in order to obtain and keep the aforementioned job.

All in all, we have had a wild couple of months, and admittedly, since things have finally stabilized, I've been pushing all thoughts of blogging from my head with a guilty sort of feeling.  Now that I've come to it, I do feel like the sheepish prodigal, returning slowly to the all-embracing internet.  Yep.

So, to maybe make this worth your while, I will share some things that I have learned in recent weeks:

1. Those razors that you buy for traveling?  You know, the really cheap ones that are typically quite dull?  Well, sometimes they aren't.

2. Babies Toddlers and long car rides can work.  With a little faith, a lot of graham crackers, and an old cell phone.  Preferably one that still plays snazzy ringtones.

3. I now understand the small-town girl in a big city thing a little.  When you're the one driving and navigating through a town like Phoenix, it's a whole different experience than when your parents are doing it for you.

4. If you are going to work in a long-term care facility with patients who don't all necessarily speak English, it would be a good idea to learn a few words in their language.

5. Small children are rapidly evolving creatures.  Just because you could close the toilet seat to keep her out of the water before, doesn't mean that that will work now.

6. Crayons are magical.

7. So is chocolate.
...OK, maybe I already knew that...

8.There is nothing wrong with having a hot dog for lunch.  It doesn't matter how old you are.

9. I will probably never grow out of loving fairy tales.

10. You can travel the world by going to the zoo, even if the lions, tigers, and bears are sleeping.  If you don't have a zoo, you can travel the world be watching Planet Earth.  You don't even have to buy a plane ticket. :)

Carpe Diem

I have to capture today, while it's still fresh in my mind - a perfect little piece of our clear, sunny February.

Little Red Poncho Hood. :)

I've suspected for awhile that Addie is an outdoorsy sort of baby.  When she was four or five months old, I could take her out into the yard with me while I hung laundry and I found her surprisingly content to pick at (and taste) the blades of grass and fallen leaves.

When we got here, the thorns were one of our first discoveries.  Naturally, I was hesitant to let our barely-crawling girl venture out of doors into the minefield of prickly things that was our new back yard.  Today was pleasant, though, far too much so to stay inside.  I had a two-year-old neighbor visiting, my own wiggly daughter, and a box of big, round sidewalk chalk, as well as an empty driveway.

At first, Addie showed an interest in coloring the concrete, but soon found her true passion alongside the pavement: dirt, and little rocks.  I let her venture, often warning her to "spit it out," when she grew too interested in tasting the new-found wonderland.  For the most part, though, she behaved herself, screaming now and then to hear her voice echo off the mesa.

A couple hours later, Ben and I took her for a walk around the school track.  We stopped often to allow her to explore the football field and the track perimeter.

It's all fun and games...until Mom won't let you play
with the camera.

  Eventually, she found just what she had been looking for: a sandy shoulder, smoothed by the wind and just waiting for her.  We placed her on the ground and watched her scoot-crawl a few feet onto the sand.  She plopped herself down on her bottom, found some sticks for poking, and didn't move or pay us any attention for the rest of the outing.

Ben and I watched and did our best to document the event, finding that not even the ever-coveted camera could tear her interest from the dirt.  I was surprised and delighted, and I'm pretty sure Ben was too.  By the time we took her home, her left knee was, of course, tanned with dust from the crawling.  Bits of grass stuck out of her socks and she was less than happy to be leaving the fun behind.

There was just time for a quick (and much-needed) bath before nap time.  Part of me was discouraged with my Saturday and the amount of work I planned to and did not do, but at least the time felt well spent.  In the midst of my bad attitude about the lack of cold or snow, I remember just a little what it was like to be a child at the onset of Spring.  I certainly wouldn't mind having more days like this one, even if my house is still messy.

As I write this, thoughts of the coming summer, and of the energetic girl who will need exercise and entertainment, are also floating about in my head.  I think it's decided - we need a sandbox.

My Resolution

Should I even bother apologizing for the appalling amount of time that has past since last I posted?  Because, yes.  It's been a ridiculously long time.  In my defense, the last few weeks have kind of swept me off my feet, and I've hardly had a moment to sit down, much less stare at a computer screen.

Well, last month I put off the task of coming up with resolutions for the new year, but admittedly, there was one that popped into my head rather easily.  My goal for 2014 is (phase 1) to gain 35 pounds (give or take) and then (phase 2) to have lost a few of those again by the end of the year.  Phase 2 will begin sometime around the beginning of September.

:)

Daily Danger

I'm coming to a realization about myself: I am in constant peril.

Each day, I watch my daughter, ever more adept, navigate her way about the house.  Constantly, I am steering her away from power outlets, thorns on the rug, heavy things that could fall on her, glass things that could cut her, and a dozen other dangers.  She is never truly aware of any of them, never realizes how often and in how many ways she might have hurt herself.  In an eternal sense, I think I'm very much the same way.

I believe in a straight and narrow path which we are meant to follow.  I believe that I have unfathomable potential, which I, by myself, cannot hope to harness.  I believe that my Heavenly Father has a plan for my life.  It is attainable only via that straight and narrow path, and is the only way to access and enjoy the divine potential that is within me.  But when it comes to following that path, I'm something of a spiritual infant.  Maybe a toddler, on my better days.  I wander often into danger.

Sometimes, I only recognize my detour when my feet are safely back on the right road.  More often, I realize that I'm not headed in quite the right direction while I'm turned away, and somehow, I always end up back where I should be, even if for so short a time that I've really only crossed over the path again.  But I seldom seem to recognize my little errors for what they are - seeds of danger, potent and ever ready to germinate.

During this past month, which was a difficult one for me, I recognized rather apathetically that my course had deviated by a degree or two, and that I was beginning to shoot off at a tangent from where I knew I should be.  It was a deeper rut than I tend to find myself in on a regular basis.  I don't want to be overly personal, and I don't want this post to sound like a confession.  It isn't.  It is, in a sense, what has been going on in my life for the past few weeks, and it's a new angle at a reality I've long known.  Furthermore, I don't doubt that, in some degree or another, it's something that we all experience - the stumbling, re-righting, and stumbling rhythm of life.

I've turned from some deviations, in the past, by seeing an example and gaining strength from someone I admire.  Other times, I've seen or recalled people whom I don't wish to emulate, and recognized that I may be following the same crooked course.  I've been teased, goaded, enticed and loved out of danger.  But this time?  This time, I was called back by a sense of duty.  Some days (or weeks or months) are difficult, but this, I realized, is only the beginning of the decades-long, even lifelong adventure that is motherhood.  Addie and the siblings that follow her, will be watching me.  I cannot be less than my best self for them.

Furthermore, there is the path itself, the potential and happiness it promises, the God who calls me back to it, and the Savior who facilitates my return, through terrain that I cannot navigate.  I have a purpose to fulfill.  I have made promises that I will not break.  I have so very, very much to gain, and I have been fighting for it since before the beginning of the world.

So once again, I feel like I'm headed gradually away from danger, and once again, I'm only just beginning to sense how far from happiness I might have landed, if left long on that course.  But the relief has been quick in coming and the words are back.  The words that I tried and failed, so many times in the past weeks to write, are so much more ready in my mind this afternoon.  The words, which, when formed under my fingers, cast a glow of contentment over my day, are once again making this house a home, in my eyes.  The words are a gift from God.

Happier Post

So much for the happier post I promised yesterday, but to make up for it, today will be the happy-post-day.  With pictures.  And I'm eating a pickle, so everything is pretty much OK in the world. :)

This girl is a year old and already I can hardly keep up with her.  That is in spite of her stubborn belief that it is way better to be carried than to try to do that whole walking thing on her own.  One of her favorite things to do is riding in her 'wagon,' to help mom tidy up.

Standing is no big deal, though.

She talks all the time and enjoys it when her dad and I talk back, although most of the words don't come out in English.  We've tried to teach her sign language, mostly hoping that she could tell us when her diaper needs changing, but the only sign she's really picked up is 'more,' which, to her, means 'food.'  That is a sign we have been seeing plenty of, especially in these last few weeks.

I can only assume that we're on the cusp of a growth spurt.  Every time I sat down to eat breakfast this morning, she was there, signing 'more' and waiting to be fed.  Thank goodness she won't touch pickles. :)

As always, Daddy's glasses are the thing to have, and the newest thing to do with them?  Get Mom to put them on or to put them on Addie.

She's out to prove that ballerinas, though cute, are not as innocent as they may appear.  Just after I took this picture, I found her against the opposite wall, muscling her way through the barrier of suitcases we had put up to barricade to computer desk.

And, at long last, she has almost enough hair for me to play with, though the cooperation is usually still lacking, at best.  

Tale of Woe

Once upon a Saturday, we set off on an adventure.  I had recently discovered a library in a town an hour away (everything is an hour away from here.  It's weird, like we've got a one-hour radius in every direction and then - *poof!* - civilization!) that serves everyone on the reservation.  Yes, that includes me!  In exchange for a short application, proof of ID, and proof of residence, I could have access to a library at least three or four or five times the size of the one that sits just below to mesa here.  I guess that's still relatively small, but can you see how excited I was?  And with good reason, too.

Well, we packed ourselves into the car and rode off.  Ben read to me as I drove and all the while, I daydreamed of all those books, packed neatly onto row after row of shelves.  Fiction, non-fiction, picture books, children's literature, and of course the Native American Collection.  I felt that I was about to be admitted into a new and yet familiar world that was not confined to my little neighborhood on the mesa, to a big, blue sky speckled with crows, or to my daily routine of home-post office-library-home.  Oh, can you imagine how lovely that thought was?  Lovely.  Very.

As we drove into town, turned right and then left, parked, and approached the door, beyond which waited the museum and library, I was all anticipation.  With Ben along to watch Addie, I would be free to browse contentedly, without worrying about the little hands that are always so eager to remove books by the handful.  The door was unlocked.  We had done our best to find out the library hours.  They weren't posted anywhere obvious online, but Ben had found a slightly aged page on the website that reasonably reassured us that we would find the place open.

To the left, the museum had little traffic.  We headed to the right, to the glass doors that stood between us and the books.  They were closed.  The space beyond them was dark.  The hours were posted on the door - open Monday through Friday.  Closed Saturdays.

I know I'm being a little melodramatic here, but...closed Saturdays?  What else are Saturdays for, but to go to the library?  To sit on the floor among the shelves and browse among the books?  To take in the delicious scent of delicious words?  (Yes, I've always had a thing for smelling books.  Something about the inky, papery smell of the pages and the binding...  Anyway, so now you know.)

And there you have my tale of woe, and a little bit of what's been going on in my life.  Don't worry, though.  It's not all bad.  I'll try to post something more positive tomorrow.

I Am a Child of God

Just a little good cheer, since I'm not doing so well at writing it lately.  This says it better than I can. :)

M.I.A.

Dear Blog,

I'm still here.  I still love you.  Just hang in there...

Love,
Caitlin

Afternoon Nap

Usually, she won't fall back to sleep for me.  Most often, I'll pick her up, out of her bed, and she'll look about tearfully until the sleepiness wears off.  Naps are shorter and shorter, these days.

But today, when I come to rescue her, she rests her sleepy head on my shoulder, and no sooner have I lowered us into the rocking chair than her whimpers subside.  Had I known, had I expected this, I might have grabbed a book or a magazine on the way in, but she's a paper-thin sleeper in the daytime, and I don't dare disturb this moment by standing up.

In front of me, the blinds are closed, and I can only see through an oblong, rectangular hole, from which she has bent and broken the flimsy slats in nap-times past.  I see bare branches and a blue sky, little else.  From behind me, the west-facing window is beginning to leak sunlight, marking our passage from afternoon to evening.

I've read that small children don't sleep as deeply when rocking or riding in a car, and I try to sit still, but the effort causes my muscles to tense. Beneath her head, my bicep twitches.  Her steady breathing quickens, ever so slightly, so I begin to rock again.  Her little hands - not so little as they once were, I'm all too aware - stir slightly, resting across her chest.

I begin to string words together in my mind, unravel them, and begin again.  I call up other fond memories.  I am deliberately building this moment into the continuum of peace that stitches my life to unbending, unchanging reason.  Part of me still wishes for something to read, but I am willing that this nap should last as long as it may.  There are already so few like it left to me, in her lifetime.

Eventually, she stirs.  Her eyelids flicker, sleepily, blinking, drooping, and blinking.  She sighs a time or two.  Instead of her typical, tearful awakening, the little strawberry lips begin to form sweet, nonsense words, and I talk back.

Now, she is seizing a toy and scrambling, as best she can, across the floor, with a mischievous laugh, ready to be chased down and tickled.  Our moment of stillness is over, and once again, she's growing up.

Quirks

For years, I've held conversations in my head.  Mostly, I talk with people I don't know too well, though friends sometimes show up in my mental dialogues.  It's almost never my husband or my mom, to whom I talk daily or almost daily.  Usually, the things I say are much bolder, more articulate, and sometimes much more offensive than those that make it to my mouth.  I guess that might be true of everyone, or of a lot of people.  Of course, I win the all of the arguments - well, most of them.  Some people are very convincing, even when I'm the one ultimately deciding what they'll say.  Is it cause for concern when someone in your head can stump you?

Only recently, did I decide to wonder how accurate my internal conversations were.  I'm concluding that they are not, by and large, because they 1. not everyone has the same brain that I do, 2. unfortunately, I think that I have an insufficient imagination to perfectly imitate another person's brain, 3. the real world isn't much like Hollywood makes it out to be; people don't usually react in certain ways just for dramatic effect, and 4. I'm never bold enough (thank goodness!) to actually voice the things that I often imagine myself saying - so they can't ignite the response I imagine.  I promise I'm not a cruel or terribly caustic person in my head.  I'm just extremely frank, outspoken, and, of course, very sure that I''m always right.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this post.  This isn't the only time I've written about my own little oddities.  Maybe something in the back of my head it whispering, "tell the world how weird you sometimes are.  One of two things will happen - they'll put you in a mental facility...or you'll find out that everyone else is just as crazy."  I'm guessing the latter.

Running from Goals

In the hectic transitions, from Christmas season craziness to vacationing at home with our families, to jumping back into real day-to-day life here, I've hardly had time to recognize that I'm letting yet another annual tradition slide.  Ever since realizing that I haven't taken time to set my resolutions for 2014, I've been avoiding it, guiltily discarding that thought whenever it comes to me, like those reminder cards I get from the dentist.  I don't like having that gritty, over-sweetened polish in my mouth and as for my goals...well, I don't want to set them until I'm ready.

No worries, though.  I will set some worthy resolutions, just like I will go to the dentist.  I'm just not ready to do the former yet.  The problem is that, in all the busyness of the past month and a half, I haven't taken the time that I know I owe myself, to examine where I am, how I am doing, and where I would like to be.  For many years, I've known that I'm a poor goal-doer, particularly when it comes to my January resolutions.  Something about seeing them written down in front of me, even when broken down into daily, weekly, and monthly tasks, is intimidating.

I want this year to be different, though, which is why I've been putting the whole process off.  So, for now, my goal is...to set goals.  Lame?  Maybe, but on the other hand, I've got the entire world wide web to hold me accountable for it now.