Part of This World

*To the tune of “Part of Your World” from the Little Mermaid* Pretend the meter is right on. ;)

Look at this fam,

Isn’t it sweet?

Wouldn’t you think

My collection’s complete?

Wouldn’t you think I’m the mom -

The mom who has everything?

Look at these girls,

So cute in curls -

Look at them dancing

And see how they twirl?

Lookin’ around here, you’d think:

Sure.  She’s got everything.

I’ve got Ellie who can get

Into anything.

I’ve got Addie who’s sweet

To the core.

You wanna man who does the dishes?

I’ve got one of those too - and he sings.

But who cares?

No big deal.

I want more....

I want to be

Where the nurses are.

I want to get -

Get that ep-i-dur-al.

I wanna hear ‘em saying --

What’s that word again?

Oh yeah.  ‘Push.’

When you’re in someone’s womb,

you can’t get too far.

Birth is required for jumpin’, dancin’,

Not to mention, you’ll get to --  

What’s that word again?  Eat!

Out here you can breathe,

Out here you can play,

And no one’s bladder gets in the way!

Wigglin’ free,

Don’tcha want to be

Part of this world?

What would I give

If I could break

My water?

What would I pay

To spend today

In L&D?

It seems to me,

When I’ve got three,

I’ll have less

Energy than daughters.

But right this minute,

I’m just in it

To end pregnancy.

And I’m ready to breathe

Like a normal person.

Ready for ankles

Around which nothing orbits.

Eat my dinner and not have it--

What’s the word?  Burn!

When’s it my turn?

Wouldn’t I love -

Love a few contractions to speak of?

Come out of me,

It’s time to be

Part of this world!

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

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.

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. :)

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.

Random, etc.

Part I: The Random

I don't have anything planned as far as writing today, so I'm going to subject the few poor souls who read this to a little 'free association,' and just write whatever comes to my head - and there are reasons for this.  They're mostly selfish reasons, but here goes:

1. Because on Tuesday (or was it Monday?) I didn't take the time to write, not in my journal, not a blog post, nothing.  I think I just posted something I had written already and saved the previous week.  And I noticed something.  All day, the only thing I wanted to do was call my mom and try as I might, I couldn't get in touch with her.  I was a little despondent...I was bored, I realized, despite being busy.  I guess I had too many half-finished thoughts bouncing around in my head without an outlet.  On the days when I do write something, that doesn't happen.

2. Because I'm trying very earnestly to do this blogging thing consistently.  I'm not very good at sticking with something once I've started (as evidenced by the early archives of this blog as well as the myriad books I've never finished reading).

Usually I try to think ahead of time about what I'm going to share with the world wide web, because very few people should be exposed to the wilderness inside my head.  It's a place where the wind almost always blows - kind of like here, on top of the mesa, and over the train tracks down below - and sometimes, the laws of gravity don't quite work, and once in awhile, I have very convenient ninja skills.  Nevertheless, in the spirit of Christmas, I think it's only appropriate to deal out some unprepared, unfiltered disorganization.  Because I, for one, have spent much too much energy this month trying to be organized.

Part II: The etc.

On that note - no, wait, on both of those notes, I am currently packing in preparation to make our trek far away from Far Away.  In other words, we're going home.  At last.  I can't tell you just how long this week has seemed, nor how excited we are.  What I don't know is whether or not I'll have any time for blogging, but I'll try.  If nothing else, I'll take lots of pictures and think up scads of posts that I will probably never post.  Great promise right?

I would go on to share with you more of those ricocheting words, but I am now on borrowed time.  Nap time is over and soup-making time is about to commence.  This post probably did not enrich anybody's life except for mine, but if you read it, thank you.  And I really, really hope that you're having a good day.  Really.

Love,
Me :)

The Make-Over: Tales From Far Away

Ever since my blogging identity crisis, I've felt the need, as I begin again to try blogging on a regular basis, to give the page a make-over.  Anyone who read my earliest posts when I first began writing them will have noticed that almost everything has changed: my background, blog title, self-intro blurb, and now my web address.  Some of those things will probably be subject to change on a semi-regular basis, but getting a new title and address felt like kind of an extreme, though merited change, so I decided to try to add some explanation.

The original blog title and web address were the products of boredom.  I was in a new home, relatively far from my family and friends, had applied for work and been hired, but had to wait for weeks for the background check to come through, and had no means of transportation to explore my new home town.  On top of that, I was still in the beginning of my pregnancy and was still feeling somewhat...shall we say newly pregnant?  Once, during a phone conversation to my mom, as I moaned and groaned about my lot in life, she said, "Why don't you start a blog?  That'll keep you busy."

So I did and I used the first name and web address that came into my head, unwittingly turning my last name into what sounded like a religion or philosophy.  When we were contemplating moving here, I settled on the name 'Tales from Far Away.'  In a way, that seems silly, since one of my best friends from high school is now living over a thousand miles further from home than I am.  Another is living across the Atlantic, and one of my best friends from college has been travelling across Europe on business.  What right have I, a measly 500 miles from every place I have ever lived, to claim the description 'far away?'

First, there is the fact that, among both my family and Ben's, we are the outlier, not counting his sister who is serving a mission in Taiwan, of course.  We communicate with the family via email, phone calls, and internet video chatting, but when it comes to family gatherings, ours are the faces that will almost always be absent.  We're out here having our own little adventures and doing our best not to focus on the ones we know we'd enjoy if Ben's job had kept us closer to home.

Then, there's the feeling I've had almost since we were married, and which has certainly grown stronger since then, that when we got married, in a lot of ways, we got up and left the world behind.  Most of our former associations with friends and acquaintances of single life faded away or disappeared altogether.

What's more, we've changed.

I used to imagine that, as a single girl, I was always standing at a crossroads.  I could go in any one of several directions, or in other words, I could develop and encourage any one of several inclinations, and each of them might be equally good.  In marrying Ben, however, I chose on of those roads to follow.  He did the same.  Where our inclinations matched, where our desires and tendencies harmonized, there we walked.  Had we married different people, we might each be different, to some extent.

I am, all the time, pleasantly surprised as I realize where our marriage, and now our family, has taken us.  I keep seeing things in Ben, in the way he treats me, or just in the way he thinks and acts, that I never thought to look for in a prospective spouse when I was dating.  They are things I didn't even realize I wanted.  It's funny how two distinct and separate people can also be, in so many ways, a single entity.

So I guess that's the truest reason I can think of for the blog's name.  Ben and I are far away in the same way that every marriage takes partners far away.  I'm hoping to give the people I love a few glimpses into our little world.

Our Little Cricket

We love the bed-head.

This girl has grown up so quickly.  All the time, we are noticing more and more little landmarks that are suddenly behind us.  For example, this last week, we came in to get the girl up from a nap to find her not laying, sitting or kneeling, but standing in her crib.  On the same day, she got stuck under our bed.  OK, I know that's not exactly a landmark, but it was a first, and I admit that I called her daddy into the room to see before rescuing her.

Teeth already?!

Now, she is pulling herself up on everything.  As of late, these are a few of her favorite things:

• her shadow, 
• kissy lips (especially when accompanied by a crinkled nose and squinty eyes),
  
   
• putting forbidden objects into her mouth, 
• power outlets, 
• anything grown-ups are eating,
  
  and 
• her daddy.  

I can't help wondering whether or she would smile like that for me if I were the one who was gone all day and came home a couple hours before bedtime?  But I keep remembering how lucky I am that I will probably never know.  I get to spend my days at home with this girl and teach her and love her and let her know that she is my life's work.

As I explained in the previous post, my camera has been lost for awhile and I am currently working on standing up to my fears regarding our nicest camera, so most all of these pictures were taken from my phone, which probably explains the lack of quality.  Our girl also has the incredible talent of turning her head or crawling away just as I'm taking the picture.  Still, we've managed to capture a few good ones, I think.

With Uncle Christian, recently returned from Peru

As we rapidly approach her first birthday, I am realizing that we are passing through a lot of 'firsts.'  In fact, we are getting to experience a first just about everything with her.  It's interesting how parenthood both ages you and makes you young again.

The Middle of Somewhere

Wow, and it has been awhile.  Coming back to this blog feels like walking into a big, empty warehouse with a layer of dust on the floor, where everything you do and say echoes.  Like this:

Hello!

Hello!

Hello!

Hello!

Hello...

Anyway, enough of that.  I guess I owe you an update.  I guess friends and family all pretty much know that we have moved (finally) and are adjusting to a very unique new home.  We are now living near an Indian Reservation and for the first time in our lives, are learning what it feels like to be in the minority.  Our neighbors and pretty much everyone out here are/is (?) exceedingly friendly, and while we live almost an hour from a grocery store, I've been surprised at how little we feel isolated here.

When we found out that we would be coming here, one of my friends looked the place up on the internet and said something to the effect of 'Wow, now you're really living in the middle of nowhere!'  I half-jokingly called our last home the middle of nowhere and now I feel like such a city kid for even thinking that.  It was a city with a population of ten-thousand and Walmart was within fifteen minutes of our home.  I guess I was noticing the cows practically in our backyard and the miles and miles of farmland all around us.

Now, we are in ranch country.  We have a gas station, a convenience store, and not very much else, but as we were driving up the little mesa that we would soon call home, the words that passed through my mind were 'the middle of somewhere.'  This is a tiny, spread out community, but we have a library, a school district and a church - three churches, actually, and counting.  These crazy dirt roads that wind every which way through miles of sagebrush and creosote lead to homes with people in them.  I know - what a groundbreaking revelation I've stumbled upon, but I'm understanding, finally, what it means, both to be lost in a big city and to be lost in a small town.

Maybe the fact of the matter is that I am just now learning to appreciate the immense value of individuals, while at the same time, I am all the time more amazed by the sheer immensity of the human race.  How can there be so many?  And how can each one be an individual, a child of God with thoughts, feelings, a past, present and future?  I feel like I'm constantly thinking back on Alan Paton's words - "Why fear the one thing in a great city where there are thousands and thousands of people?"

I wish I could say that I have taken pictures, to show you a little bit of where we are and what it's like.  I haven't.  As a matter of fact, my husband found my camera only yesterday.  I thought it had been lost in the move.  We have a nice camcorder that takes beautiful pictures, but I have now admitted to myself that I am, in some deep part of my soul, a little tiny bit afraid of the camcorder.  I'm working on it.  For now, though, I'll just share with you what few pictures I have taken and try to give a little bit of description of the rest:

The view from our front porch.

Most of our windows are east-facing, so we get a nice, sunny kitchen, living room, and master bedroom (yes!  We have a master bedroom!) in the mornings.  The only part of the house that remains cold is the nursery, so we've had to be a little bit innovative there.  I noticed when we first got here, in the beginning of August, that shortly after the light hit our window shades, they turned pink.  My mom, who grew up not far from here, says that the vibrant sunrises and sunsets have to do with the dust in the air.

Another thing that we have learned is that there are lots and lots of thorns.  It's almost impossible to keep them out of the house.  We quickly found that we could mitigate the problem by taking our shoes off at the door, but they still pop up quite often.  I have pulled several from our little Thunder's mouth already.  The thing that I miss most about home so far is, well, the color green.  There is green here.  It's actually been much greener than we expected, thanks to the late summer monsoons which come up this way from Mexico.  There's nothing like a good thunder storm and we've had dozens of those already.  Still, I grew up in the mountains, minutes from beautiful hiking trails and the beauty of this place is something to which I need to adjust.

I mentioned before that we live up on a mesa.  That's a treat all by itself.  I always thought that you had to be rich or at least well established to live in a house on a hill.  I guess not!  There are plenty of hills and the red, orange and yellow rock formations for which the southwest is known around here.  We have a view of the interstate, the railroad, and quite an expanse of land below us during the day, and during the night, we have an amazing view overhead.  Despite the streetlamps throughout our little neighborhood, the lack of surrounding city lights allows us to see the stars more clearly than in either of our previous homes.  Ben and I slept out on our porch a couple of weeks ago to look for constellations and planets.  It was then that I learned that the constellation which I have always thought to be the little dipper is, in fact, not.  As it turns out, north does not really mean 'up.'  Who knew?

I suppose I've rambled on long enough.  For those of you who read this (I think there's actually only one person), the blog is still enduring its identity crisis, as evidenced by its makeover, name change, etc., so if the posts are somewhat all over the place, that's why.  Nevertheless, I've decided to give the whole blogging thing a second try.  I suppose that's all for tonight.  Over and out.

Sweet Baby

So almost a month after the fact,  I thought that I should finally post something about the biggest change I've ever experienced in my life.
Just a few days before we celebrated our second Christmas together, my husband and I were thrown headlong into parenthood and welcomed this precious little girl into our family.  Yes, a girl!  We both realized afterward that, deep down, we had both spent most of the pregnancy expecting a boy, despite our insistence on switching from 'he' to 'she' every day.  This just made the surprise that much more wonderful.
I'm borrowing an idea from my sister-in-law and giving her a screen name, rather than putting her real name online.  Since I don't have a lot to go on as far as personality is concerned, I'm going to humor my brother, whose first reaction to the news that we were expecting was "I've got the perfect name - Thunder Horse."  Very well, Thunder it is.
I was a little ashamed of myself for getting the epidural as early on as I did, but whereas before I thought our anesthetists were nice guys, now I can see the angelic glow that follows them around.
I guess there's not too much to tell besides that.  Any of you who are parents probably know how fun and exhausting the past few weeks have been.  On my spare time (ha ha ha, 'spare time' - I crack myself up) I mostly take pictures of our little girl and send them to her Grandmas, so I may as well share a few of those with you too.

Hello, World.

I really don't have much to write about today, though I could ramble for hours if I let myself.  The longer I have this blog, I more I realize how little I know what I'm doing, but I wanted to check in with the world anyway because it's been awhile and because it's October and I love October above all other months, I think.  The baby must love it too because he (today is a boy day) has been wiggling constantly all week and especially today.  I just found a hand or foot pressed up against my ribs and another pushing out my side.  He stopped pushing once I pushed back to feel but it was sort of a startling moment for me to realize all over again that there's a person in there!  He makes us happy.

And do you know what?  I have to admit that I like being pregnant.  No, I love it.  True, I've probably had the easiest pregnancy in the history of pregnancies.  I spent the first trimester feeling sick, but never threw up and since then, Ben puts up with occasional spells of moodiness and a couple of times heartburn has kept me up at night.  Meanwhile, I get to feel pretty and cute no matter how big of a dinner I just ate, because my bloated stomach is hiding behind my uterus.  The best part of all is the kicks and wiggles.  I just can't get enough.  I'm sure that my coworkers have noticed me stop what I'm doing from time to time to put my hands on my belly or to just stare at it, to see it bulge out where my baby is pushing.  It's like on Winnie the Pooh, when Pooh swallows a mouthful of honey, bees and all, and then the bees begin buzzing and you can see them bouncing around in his tummy.  I love it.  I still have moments when I realize what is about to happen to our lives and I think 'what am I doing?  I don't know how to do this.  What have I done?'  But for the most part, it's an mix of giddy anticipation and quiet satisfaction that I find in the little mystery inside me.

Our chain counting the days until Christmas - yes, we are now some of those people.

Ben has been working hard all day on putting in grades and planning lessons.  He'll never tell you that he's the one who does all the work around here, but I can't help but believe it's true.  We spent the morning cleaning and for every task I finished, it seemed like he had finished two or three.  I guess that if it doesn't bother him, I won't let it bother me.  I'll become more efficient by and by, I think.  I've decided that we gain strength to do what is required of us and little more.  I discovered it during school last year, noticing classmates who were working full time, instead of part, as well as attending nursing school and maybe raising a couple of kids as well.  Now I'm working full time and taking a full semester concurrently and surviving, but you know what?  I couldn't have done it a year ago.  I didn't have the capacity because I didn't have to have it.  It's like pregnancy, in a way (because pregnancy and babies are on my mind lately, I hope you'll forgive the analogy. Everything is somehow like or unlike pregnancy these days - already my world is beginning to exist in relation to my baby).  Your abilities stretch and grow to accommodate whatever burdens you find yourself obliged to carry, and it is a stretch, make no mistake.  You'll bounce back as soon and as much as circumstance allows, but you'll never be the same again.

If it were still light outside, I might take a picture to show you how the trees in our backyard are changing color or how the walkway to our kitchen is littered with leaves.  If it were possible, I'd post the smell too, because there's nothing like that smell and I have never found a decent imitation of it.  Our clothes have been hanging outside on the drying lines all day and when we bring them in they will be dry, but will feel wet, just because they are so thoroughly chilled from the October-ness of this evening.    When you get right down to it, there is no way to capture Autumn.  One just has to experience it and then remember as best they can until it comes again.  What I can give you is this, a picture of some of my favorite people in the world in my own kitchen.

Three of my four beautiful nieces who came to pay us a visit last month.

Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't get much better than this.

Love,
Caitlin

Happy birthday, Mom!

So last week, I asked my mom what she would like for her birthday.  She kind of smiled at me and said, "you know what I want from you."  Therefore, without further delay (I apologize that it's been a few days already), here it is:

Ben took a picture of the screen in the office.  It turned out being much more difficult to get a picture of the print-out they gave us.

A little face...!

This was taken at our 20-week mark, on Tuesday.  I teased Ben that she already looks like him.  Note: I say 'she' because both today and the day we got the ultrasound have been 'she' days.  Way back when we were deciding whether or not to find out the sex, we made a compromise.  I didn't want to find out, but Ben didn't want to refer to our unborn child as 'it,' so we alternate every other day.  Tomorrow, the baby will be 'he.'

Everyone has been asking us about names.  The truth is that we have narrowed our list down to a few names that we really like and will probably use, but we're not ready to reveal them yet.  Since we are due on Christmas day, we're all about surprises - name, sex, and all.  In the meantime, our families have given us some wonderful alternatives to call the baby in the meantime.

My brother came up with Thunder Rawlings Horse (girl) or Salsita Hussein III (boy).  My sister-in-law and I discovered that Experience is a family name on both sides.  We're not really sure whether it was used as a boy or a girl name, so we can use Experience on either day.  Some of our favorites came from my 5-year-old cousin.  For a girl, he came up with Little Miss Daydreamer, and for a boy he came up with Little Miss Giggles and (when his dad pointed out that he didn't know any boys that were called little-miss-anything) John Deere.

According to my nursing textbooks, she is now about 10 inches long from crown to heel and the ultrasound tech told us that she weighs about 12 ounces.  And, for anyone who cares to know, I'm getting pretty big myself and I'm glad to finally be looking pregnant as opposed to just looking like I've gained weight.

I don't think either of us has ever thought so much about Christmastime so early in the year.  Ben has already  said several times that it seems like December will never come and sometimes I feel that way too, but I think I have it a little easier.  I can feel her moving every day now.

And so this is our shout-out to you, Mom.  Happy birthday, from all three of us.

Two arms

Grease Monkeyin' Around

So after weeks (months?) of listening of a terrible, groaning, metallic-stomach-rumbling sound, Ben and I decided that it was time to roll up our sleeves and go to work on our car.  It turned out that our break pads had worn down to smithereens.  This was really no surprise to us because this happened once before when I still drove Dory and the sound is very memorable, so no matter what my husband says, it's really my fault for not doing anything sooner.

Our old break pads from one wheel.  Yeah, I know.  Sad.

Nevertheless, after changing just one wheel (don't worry, we didn't stop there - this is a four-wheel job), it sounded so much better!  Ben kept saying, "Do you hear that?  You don't because there's nothing to hear!"

My studly husband, complete with axle-grease soul patch.  *sigh*

You can't really tell from the picture, but his fingers are just about as black as the tire.  I wanted to get a picture of mine to prove you that I helped too, but by the time I got around to taking pictures, I had already cleaned my hands to make us some lunch, which I fed to Ben while he was playing with the jack.  We also had Disney music playing in the background so I've sort of connected the experience with "Won't say I'm in love" from Hercules.

"Two nuts are better than one."

I was pretty proud of myself here because I balanced the camera on the picket fence (like the one you can see on the other side of the car), hence the tilt.  About this time, we were fitting the tire back on and I heard Ben say "well, two nuts are better than one."  I think he was talking about the tire, but I chose to interpret it a little differently.

We hope you're all doing well and enjoying cars as quiet and smooth-sounding as ours.

Much love, from two nuts.