Ten Minutes Ago

Last Spring, a local high school put on Rodger & Hammerstein's Cinderella.  I couldn't resist taking Addie.  My three-year-old was delighted and wanted nothing more than to meet the elegantly dressed high school actresses who played Cinderella and her fairy godmother.  After that, the soundtrack was introduced into our daily repertoire.  My husband is always singing something and the girls are always putting in requests, or demands, as the case may be.  We found that toddler-approved music goes a long way to keep the peace, especially in the car.

So it happened that, as we were starting off on a road trip, a few weeks after the play, Ben and I were belting out lyrics at the top of our lungs:

"...In the arms of my love, I'm flying, 

"over mountain and meadow and glen, 

"and I like it so well, that for all I can tell, 

"I may never come down again!  

"I may never come down to earth again!"

But every time we reached those last two lines, we were interrupted by an adamant little voice, who insisted, "No, 'I may yes come down again!'"  There was no other way to pacify her and to restore harmony to the atmosphere within the car than to alter the lyrics to her liking.

I suddenly felt that Ben and I were riding a red balloon, buoyant with helium.  The hiss of the gas that had filled it - those dumb jokes that had first drawn us to one another, the pitter-pattering excitement of courtship, the silliness of those newly married, figuring-things-out days - was all fairly fresh.  We were still riding, somewhat, on the rush of new love.  And looking down from this imaginary reverie, I saw this determined little person, clinging for all she was worth to the balloon's ribbed ribbon.

She wasn't thinking about her mom and dad floating away, of course.  I'm pretty sure that her main concern was the idea of Cinderella and her prince floating permanently out of reach.  Then the show would be over and who would wear the tiara?  But to me, she was holding, white-knuckled, to that balloon's string, giving it a little yank, even.  She was making sure that her parents would not float beyond her reach, that, to the fullest of her abilities, she would be mirrored on every facet of our lives.

Being a mom, for me, has been all about re-realizing things.  Each time an idea re-enters my head through a new door or an open window, it stains the walls with greater tenacity, settles deeper into the cracks between the floorboards, or leaves a more lingering scent than it did before.  That morning in the car, revising the lyrics of "Ten Minutes Ago" to fit my three-year-old's criteria, was one of those moments for me.  Not for the first time, but more deeply than ever before, I realized that much of what was between Ben and me, and where we would take those things, was not only ours - not anymore.

We would - and will - continue to renew the helium that lifts us, little sips at a time, through stolen moments together; a thoughtful note here and a little act of kindness there; endless discussions about the things that make us tick; quiet dinner dates, though not without the occasional glance at our phones to check the time or for any news from the babysitter.  And maybe someday, years yonder, I'll realize that we were never riding a balloon at all, but a kite; that we have been riding on a breath of wind, and that those little hands on the line, those little heels digging divots into the ground have carried us higher, further, and more steadily than all the freedom of our unshackled wanderings could have done.

Just a thought.

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!

The Peace of Thy Children

I'm a chronic worrier.  What's worse, I'm a chronic worrier with an imagination.  Now, in the middle trimester of my third pregnancy, those fanciful worries creep ever more deeply into my dreams.  I find myself wakened from sleep with unsettling dreams and notions.  I sometimes drift into a doze only to be startled from it by some worry, however unlikely, and while I'm aware that nothing bad is actually happening, I'm also aware that I'm not awake enough and not capable enough to stop it from happening.  Strangely enough, the latter realization unsettles me more than the former calms me.  And of course, at the center of each of these not-quite-nightmares, are my children.

I shake myself from these half-awake-mares, usually to the early light of the morning, or sometimes to the late evening darkness and the realization that I have fallen asleep on the couch again.  I rouse myself just enough to ramble a perhaps nonsensical prayer, either from my knees or as I stumble to the kitchen to make breakfast.  What does one say when taking these sorts of things to God?  'Please don't let my toddler escape into the street at any point today'?  'Please keep my kids from falling into the river that we never go near'?  Not all of my worries are quite that irrational, but the point is that there are plenty of them, some ridiculously specific and others impossibly vague.  Usually, my entreaty ends up being something along the lines of 'protect them, please, because I know I cannot.  Not on my own.'  And with that, I push most of those worries to the back of my mind and move on with my day.  Other, more mundane worries quickly replace them, and I spend the next twelve hours mostly forgetting to be grateful that the heaviest thing on my mind is how on earth to get potty training behind us once and for all.

A couple weeks ago, I started a day that way, with the heavy realization of our mortality, a plea for protection, and then transitioned to what to have for breakfast.  The hours passed and I mostly forgot the haunted dreams that had welcomed me to my morning.  After the girls were in bed and Ben and I were ready to settle in for the night, an alarm began to sound in our back hallway, where the girls slept.

A week earlier, I had detected a funny smell in the back bedroom after bathing and dressing my girls - like nail polish, but accompanied by a vague scent of burning.  I'd called the fire department but by the time they arrived to scan for gas and carbon monoxide, the smell had diminished and the air was free of  any worrisome particles.  "Do you have a carbon monoxide monitor?" the fireman had asked me.  I said I did, indicating the one mounted in the hallway.  "No, no," he said, "that's just a smoke detector."  So, feeling like a complete idiot, I had added one to my grocery cart the next day.

When I heard the high pitched alarm, days later, I assumed it was just Ben installing the new one.  I came out of the bedroom, to find it still in its packaging, though, untouched.  The back door was open and Ben, perplexed, reported the same smell I'd noticed the previous week.  It was stronger this time, but there wasn't any smoke and the alarm sounded differently than it did when something on the stove top or in the oven went badly awry.

With the back door open, the alarms grew farther and farther between, but we decided to call the fire department just the same.  They showed up and began to scan again.  Two to three parts per million in the hallway - noteworthy, but not quite dangerous yet.  The fireman opened the door behind which our girls were sleeping and leaned in, only to back out again a moment later.  "About fifty in there," he reported, and asked us to bring the kids out.

In our living room, two lady firefighters examined our girls with a pulse-oximeter, specially designed to pick up carbon monoxide levels in the blood.  Addie's read 12%, hanging at the low end of dangerous, and Ellie's was up to 17%.

After a trip to the local emergency room for further examination and monitoring, and the challenge of settling two now-rambunctious children into a hotel room, hours later, my buzzing mind slowed into sleepy reflection, just before drifting off altogether.  My kids had been in danger that night.  They had been threatened by something I could not see, hear, or smell.  The only sign had been an accompanying scent that I had, days before, been given reason to disregard as harmless, if not imagined.  The only alert to its presence had come from an alarm which I had been told by a professional was not designed to detect it.

And I had woken that morning with a rambling prayer that my children would not fall victim to some danger from which I was powerless to save them.

I have little doubt that God has a sense of humor.  Without the bawdiness or coarse irony that we often use to induce laughter, I felt that I could sense a bit of a heavenly chuckle in the whole event.  A patient whisper of  'Yes, calm down, silly girl.  These are my babies too, and I forget not my own.'

Since then, a verse of scripture that I used to love has reappeared in my mind and though I don't completely understand it in the context of this experience, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that the two are profoundly connected.  "And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord," it reads, "and great shall be the peace of thy children."  Yes, life is uncertain.  The world is dangerous - but it is not spinning out of control, simply because it is out of my control.

My mother-in-law asked me, a few days ago, whether I have had moments of panic since this incident.  I ran over the last couple of weeks in my mind, probably with a perplexed frown across my face, and to my surprise, answered, "No."  But it's true.  Even with all the day-to-day stresses, the mom-fail moments and endless tiredness that seems to plague all of us, I feel like I've regained a quiet peace that I had once and lost along the way - lost about that time I began to have people in my life, under my care, whom I could neither perfectly protect, nor stand to lose.

Reawakened is my sense that a Heavenly Father sent these children to me knowing that I might, from time to time, fasten the car seats improperly or cut the hot dogs into dangerously large pieces, or even, while taking an evening shower, cause the water heater to spew poison gas into their bedroom.  He sent them to me knowing that the world is bigger, cleverer, and more powerful than I am.  I am neither condemned by these human weaknesses and neither are my children abandoned to my care.  They are His still.  He watches over them still.

Burying Dreams

The grave digger carries a shovel.  In my mind, she walks with hunched shoulders against a grey sky.  In my mind, she has a heavy heart, so much so, perhaps, that her burdens have worn through its apex and fallen to the grave digger’s feet.  That grey-blue heart is perforated and ragged, with gaping holes.  I hear her heartbeats like gusts of defeat – weak, loud, empty, and really only suggesting a course to the air that wanders over graves, rather than compelling blood.  It’s a November sort of scene that I see when I visualize one who routinely buries stiffened and mottled flesh, pushing aside ghostly, withered leaves, and making a place to lay to rest long-loved dreams.

But another figure carries a shovel, too.  Another person, less weary, but with just as much reason to be, also  carries a dry and shriveled promise to be placed in the cold ground.  She prepares a place as the grave digger has done, presses and coaxes the earth to yield a resting place for it.  The placement is quick and the burial site marked, too, but she afterward looks up.  The sun is an April thing and leaves at her feet have been so long dead that they’ve forgotten to look forlorn.  Like the other earth-mover, she turns away and leaves the receptacle of her hopes in the cold and the dark of the ground, but she will return.  She will guard this place.  She will wait.  She will not forget, because she is a gardener.

I’m learning this about adulthood: the dreams that I cherished through my childhood, the vibrant ones to which I clung, and the visions to which I promised my heart, have, of necessity, began to gather dust.  As I change diapers, scrape dinners out of messy pantry shelves, and hurry between activities and obligations, those hopes have begun to wither.  Last October, I stole away a time or two, seizing a sunny hour at nap-time to harvest the beans that we had left out to dry for this year’s seed.  The pods crackled delicately and the beans had become white and hard.  My hands feel that way now, when I take up a pencil to sketch or open a blank word document to write.  My imagination and creativity stiffen with disuse and sometimes it makes me feel a little disillusioned, deadened. 

I wonder, but speculate that I would feel much the same way, even if these two precious girls hadn’t yet come into my life.  This disillusionment, this period of wandering is, I think, something most of us go through as we shed our childhoods.  If I wasn’t a mother, I might be realizing that the career I had chosen was not as fulfilling as I had hoped, that neither friends nor spouse nor busyness could completely stave off loneliness all of the time – that time could not be stretched or compressed enough to cradle my needs.  It’s a period when we all begin, probably never to cease, to realize that choosing the best things often means choosing the hard things and sacrificing other desires along the way.  And we do it.

When people ask me how I’m liking life, I usually answer wholeheartedly that I love it, that I’m working my dream job.  It’s true.  I am probably one of the luckiest people I know, to have all of every day to devote to two beautiful, healthy children who have more than enough energy to drain me of mine.  But there are moments, now and then, when I feel the weight of where I am and of those unanswered devotions to my teenaged ambitions.  There are times when, in spite of the work I do and the happiness it generates, I feel like a shell, and I miss the pleasures that I knowingly traded in for this hard-earned and mercifully granted joy.  I miss the exercise – the physical, mental, social stimuli and sculpting that I once thought comprised the path to becoming who I’m meant to be.  Sometimes, I feel lonely.  Sometimes I feel empty.  

The despondency rested a little heavily over me this week.  That’s a part of life, I know, so I pressed myself to move proactively through my routine.  It’s planting season and my neighbor and I have spent hours every morning in our garden plot, furiously digging trenches, tilling in fertilizer, and laying down drip lines.  Kneeling beside the row we’d designated for corn, I pressed holes into the soil with my middle finger, dropped two gnarled kernels into each, and pinched the loose dirt back over them.  Burying dreams, I thought. 

It wasn’t exactly an epiphany for me, really.  I’ve long thought of my extra-parental aspirations as gathering dust.  Atrophied, maybe, dormant, but not dead.  Still, as I thought about those buried corns, in the damp, cold darkness, it added a new color to my hope.  Yes, I will take up those dreams again someday.  I will have another chance to develop the God-given talents in my hands and body and mind, and when I pick them up again, they will be slightly wasted and wan, but perhaps they too will be changed from the last time I held them.  Maybe something will have sprouted, developed, that was not there before.  Something will be waiting to spring out of them that could not have come from my inexperienced, youthful vigor.

Right now, motherhood, and the effort to do things right and responsibly, has all but consumed me, like a hole in the earth; but I am not a shell.  I am a seed.  The life and light inside of me and the dark dampness around me, together, will do what pure sunshine and unbroken ease could not have done.  Even now, I am germinating. 

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

:)

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.

Two-Sock Life

Folding laundry the other day, I came across an all-too-familiar problem.  I think we've all encountered matchless socks in our baskets.  When I was growing up in a house full of siblings, they covered the bottom of the basket, several inches deep.  To sort through them was at once mundane and daunting.  Even though there are only three of us at my house and the single socks are only a handful after the folding has been done, it's always a vague source of frustration in the back of my mind.  If there are so few of us and it's so clear whose socks are whose and we all wear two socks every day, how do we come up short?

Perhaps the most maddening thing about it is that, as I put the unpaired few on my dryer, planning to keep a keen eye out for their matches, I know that their opposites are very likely somewhere else - in a drawer, on a shelf, or under a bed, likewise, waiting.  Disorganized as I am, I will probably never be able to round up all of those single, waiting socks, to fold them neatly together and say that my life is in order.

It's rather like my daily struggle to juggle my time just right - to read the best books, to continually learn  new skills, to keep my house clean, to provide healthy meals, to play with my daughter when she wants my attention, to actively participate in my community and in church functions, to plan and execute fun family activities, and to do a hundred other things that really ought to happen daily.  It's like the pieces of my life, which I can never quite get to fall into place the way I think the should.  It's like the woman I know I should be by now, rather than the one I meet in the mirror.  I often feel like I'll never get it together - my socks, myself, or my family.

But do you know what the funny thing is?  No matter how scattered I feel, I wake up every morning to a home that, if not tidy, is pleasant and sanitary.  Regardless of the time I never mean to waste doing mediocre activities, we always eat well.  In spite of my struggles to plan creative and memorable activities, my family rarely wants for quality time to spend together and we laugh often.  And although my laundry always comes up short of a sock or two, all of us have matching (or pretty nearly matching) socks to wear every day.

I was never good at juggling.  Others have tried to teach me and I have tried to teach myself, but even with the light, airy scarves, that take their time coming down, I could never keep all three in the air for long.  Through those misfit, lonely socks, I have found another little bit of inspiration to keep on trying.  Life is a longitudinal effort, an exercise in endurance.  I can hardly expect to wake up tomorrow as the with-it, together woman I often want to be, and to keep on being her every day and every moment, as long as I live.  I can hope and try to progress, just a little bit farther today, though, knowing that the more I strive for balance, the more the scales will be tipped in my favor.  And meanwhile, partially through my own efforts and partially through the heavenly help that I will always have and never deserve, I can trust that I and mine will always have two warm socks to wear. 

How to Hold Your Ukulele

Since we were out of town for almost two weeks and took scads of pictures during that time (OK, not scads, but...), and since I've turned out to be pretty negligent when it comes to posting pics, I feel like a picture post is about due.  Most of these are actually from just after we got back home, but they'll give you a little glimpse of what our life is like with an impish one-year-old.

This isn't exactly how Dad holds this thing, but she's pretty sure
it's the correct way.

 We pulled out the ukulele for family night, and she was all too willing to help us figure out what to do with it.  Every time she picked it up, it went over her shoulder like this.  It was too funny.

...I'm going to Alabama with my ukulele on my knee...

 Of course, when she realized she was being photographed, she was willing to try all sorts of new  poses for us.

Recently, she's discovered her baby rocker and it has become the new center for her acrobatics.  When Mom turned on the vibrate, she didn't know what to think, but for a rare moment, she sat still, trying to figure it out.

Story time!

And finally, this is how we celebrated the new year.  The party going on downstairs woke her up, and in an attempt to calm her down, we all sort of passed out.  I woke up just after 1:00 and had to document it.  Hopefully this won't be a precedent for the rest of our year.

I think those pajamas make her look like a little elf. :)
Please forgive the poor lighting.  I had to be stealthy.

And there you have it.  Our little even-more-important-than-pecans.  Our life's work in the making.  There really aren't words to sum up what she means to us, but my mom often coos to her, "are you what life's all about?"  And we all know the answer.

Yes.  Yes, she is.

Joys of Warm Bread

I know you're all wondering and yes!  It was a very, very good idea to put pecans in the bread dough yesterday.  But even better than the nutty taste of the bread itself was my companion in tasting it.  As soon as she heard the electric blade, cutting the first slice, Addie abandoned her toys and scurried over to me as quickly as she could manage.

I picked her up so that she was on my right hip and the steaming slice in my left hand.  Knowing that she has little patience when it comes to food, I pinched off a little piece for her before she could dive across my body for it.  She glanced at the bit I offered her, then at the rest of the slice in my other hand, then look at me like, "Really, Mom?"

Because I'm a floor-sitting type of gal, we settled down on the living room linoleum, next to a heater vent, of course, to enjoy our snack.  It was a happy-sad moment as I realized that even this is something I won't always get to enjoy.  This girl will not always come running to sit on my lap for something as simple as warm bread.  She won't always propel herself across the floor on shiny plastic toys or crawl lopsidedly from one place to another while toting her own baby doll under one arm.

While I was home for the holidays, I glanced at my teenage siblings and told my mom that my child was more fun than hers.  Nothing against my brothers and sisters.  They're wonderful people and really incredibly pleasant teenagers.  As a disclaimer here, I should add that I think teenagers really don't deserve the bad reputation they are usually given, collectively speaking.  Nevertheless, I always find myself glancing at my own little girl and thinking, I don't want her to change.  This, while at the same time, happily anticipating her first words and first steps.

I guess that's why we only grow one day at a time.  Maybe that's why progression must be so slow and so final.  When she's sixteen, I might miss the tiny girl who babbled and sang to the blank television and did her best to disappear into the heater vents - but I'll be able to say, 'Look what she understands!' and I'll rejoice, not only in the baby she was, but in the girl she is and in the woman she's becoming.  And I will always treasure the memories I'll have of the moments when we shared an apple, a popsicle, or a slice of freshly baked bread.

A Little Taste of the Meaning of Life

When my mom was about twelve, her family moved to a lovely piece of property in the southwest.  Behind the house, there was a small pecan orchard.  Every December, as I understand it, my grandpa would hire someone to have the trees shaken so that he and his family could harvest the nuts.  My grandparents lived in that house until I was about ten years old and I spent many a Christmas wandering that backyard and finding many a nut on the ground.  Along with a fondness for my grandparents' small town home, I came to love pecans.

For Thanksgiving, Ben and I trekked back down that town, where many of my Dad's family still reside.  As we sat at the crowded table, and I raised my fork to dig into a slice of pecan pie, I turned to Ben, gestured to the pie, and said (tongue in cheek, of course), "This right here is the meaning of life."

"What?  Pecan pie?"

I shrugged.  "Or just pecans," I replied.  Since then, Ben has wondered aloud whether pecans were the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden.  It's unlikely, but the thought makes me smile.

Anyhow - the following month, as Christmas approached and I tried to answer the questions my husband and family posed about what I wanted to find under the tree, I found myself at a loss.  Finally, I told my mom, "All I want this year are some pecans.  And maybe some honey."  I guess that means that I'm either a very content person (in spite of my constant whining from beginning to end of the Christmas season...hmm, that doesn't add up) or that I'm lacking in creativity.  If I'm going to be completely honest, I'll have to admit that it was probably the latter.

However - after arriving home with the not one, but two bags of pecans I received for Christmas, I decided, this morning, to knead a handful into one of my loaves of bread.  While doing so I popped a couple in my mouth and do you know what?  I don't regret my request one bit.  They taste just like the meaning of life.

Coming Back to Me

Hello?  Anybody there?

Whether or not I meant to be, I've been more or less unplugged for the past couple of weeks, ever since we came home for the holidays.     Not only have I taken a vacation from my kitchen, my usually-messy house, the sights and sounds and wind of home, my habits and daily routine - I have inadvertently taken a vacation from myself.  I find that, at my parents' house, a strange and rather undesirable thing happens to me.  I tend to regress into the person I was when I lived here.  If, in any posts in the near future, I seem to be channeling an up-tight teenager, you'll know why.  By the way, I'm also apologizing now for any spelling errors or incoherent wording in this post.  I'm not completely in my right mind at the moment. :)

Every time I make the trip to my parents' home, full of anticipation and idealistic expectations, I am convinced that I've finally left my past self behind.  That teenage girl won't haunt me this time.  Yet, every time, it takes only a matter of time, and then the adolescent angst, irritation, and the all-around sensation of being lost inside my own head set in.

It's given me something to think about, in those mature moments right around going to bed and waking up.  I believe very strongly in a person's ability to change - and not just externally, but really an sincerely, through and through; yet after years of approaching and re-approaching this rut, after cumulative hours of meditation and prolonged, determined efforts to leave it behind, I find myself here once again.

The answer, or the best one I can come up with at the moment is that change is simply difficult - and that is a profound understatement.  I wonder if that's why so many people doubt that character can actually change?  Willpower is a difficult power to harness because it's so closely linked to desire.  And finally, there's the fact that no amount of willpower can bring about all the changes that are necessary, even for one person, to be really and ultimately happy.  To be truly Christian is to believe resolutely in the possibility of change, to hope for it unfailingly, but also to acknowledge that we need help.  It is to give one hundred percent, or as near as we can muster, but in the end to trust in a Savior who can do what none of us can.  It is to believe in a God of second chances.

I haven't set my New Year's resolutions yet, partially because I'm notoriously bad at keeping them, and partially because I'm waiting until I know that I'm in my right mind.  While I wait, though, I'm learning, probably for the millionth time, how to get back up, dust myself off, and move forward to a goal no less glorious for my having fallen in its pursuit.