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.

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.

Carpe Diem

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

Little Red Poncho Hood. :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.  

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.

Indoor Gardening

It all started at the grocery store, as most stories do.  It was early October and I was browsing through the produce section when I came upon the squash bin.  Unlike most grocery stores, in which I only ever notice butternut squash, spaghetti squash, and acorn squash, this one held varieties I had never seen before.  Enthusiastically, I dug through and found, to my delight, one that looked quite familiar.

Last year, thanks to the generosity of our neighbor, Ben and I feasted all winter on squat little green Japanese pumpkins known as kabocha, and we loved the sweet, almost melon-y flavor of them.  Sitting before me, in the squash bin, appeared to be one of these beauties.  I scooped it into my cart without a second thought.  At home, after examining it more carefully (a.k.a. reading the sticker), I found that it was a buttercup squash, a cousin to kabocha.  We found that it had a pleasant taste, not as sweet or as moist of the kabocha's, but definitely worth going back for more.  By that time, however, the only squash left at the store was old and mooshy and smelled its age.

Then, I had a brilliant idea, remembering my eighth grade science class, in which we spent weeks experimenting with radish seeds.  Again and again, we got them to sprout, just be placing them on damp paper towels.  Lacking the patience to wait till the temperatures outside were rising, rather than falling, I folded a paper towel into the bottom of a plastic container, and drizzled it with warm water to make a bed for the buttercup seeds.  There they sat, unchanged for weeks, until finally - a sprout!  They grew quickly, from then on, rising to push the plastic wrap covering out of their way, until we went out of town for a couple days.  We let the house get cold, and I accidentally left the precious seeds on the cold, cold windowsill.  When we came back, our would-be squash plants were withered and dry.

I guess they were probably doomed from the start, since we had no pot nor soil in which to house them.  Still, it was a sad moment.  But I haven't given up!  Here's my latest crop:

How to Use a Baby Swing

Ever since she became mobile, this girl has been teaching us to look at, and approach things in a whole new way.

More than once, I've turned around with my hands buried in dishwater to see her attempting yet another daring feat of acrobatics, centered around her swing.

The most amazing thing is that she has yet to lose her balance and find herself on the kitchen floor with a large goose egg.

It's becoming clear that we have a girl of many talents, not the least of which is keeping her parents entertained. :)

Lovely Nonsense

Someone decided to help me blog today, so I decided to let her.                        

/g jK VGBNHTYJU7
GH1   hJNVVVRF





'1

Usually she only wants to push keys like 'alt,' 'ins,' 'F11,' or the keys that will change the language on my computer to Hebrew, so this is kind of a special treat, just so you know. :)

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 Great Outdoors and Something Green!

Many things green, actually.

Since we spent all summer worrying about getting a job and a place to live, we neglected all of our camping gear in the dusty, spider-y cellar.  Now that we no longer have a dusty, spider-y cellar and do have a place to live, we decided to take the camp gear out of the closet in the laundry room and went off in search of something green.

I have to tell you that we picked the coldest day in October to do it.  It was raining for the first time all month as we were gathering the stuff and preparing to leave.  Oh, and the power was out.  I kept asking/telling Ben that we must be crazy.  I'm beginning to think that that's the point of being young and  married, though.  At least, in my case, it's been a time for doing all of those crazy, borderline irresponsible (but only borderline.  There is a child involved here, you know) things that I didn't do in college.

But where was I?  Oh yes - October.  The coldest day in October.  So far.  (I know some of you are rolling your eyes, thinking 'well of course it was the coldest day, Caitlin.  That's what happens in the Fall.  The days get colder.'  Yeah, well, it warmed up again afterward.  This was a special dip in temperature, just for our camping  trip.)  Just to add to the drama of this story, I might add that it was not raining, but snowing as we headed out.  When it stopped, however, and the sun came out, it seemed like everything was going to be honky dory, just like the National Weather Service promised.

Would it be going too far to say that I was completely enamored by our campsite?  OK, not by the site itself.  There was a barbed wire fence just behind it and it was five minutes from a Walmart, which drove Ben just a little crazy.  But there were trees!  Big, tall ones with needles and pine cones.  It was green, I tell you - beautiful, beautiful green!  I raved on and on about it while we started to set up camp.

I tried to help Ben with the tent and such.  I laid a blanket on the ground for Thunder and she seemed content with that, but when I turned around to look at her, she had made her way to the edge of the blanket and had a little hand at her mouth.  I found not one, but three little marble-sized rocks in there.  What the fascination with little rocks is, I don't know, but from everywhere I thought of to put her, she found her way to those little rocks.  So in the end, I took pictures and kept her out of trouble while Ben did all of the work setting up.

We had a marvelous evening together.  It was our first time camping by ourselves since Thunder was born.  Wrapped in two pairs of pajamas, a blanket, and her Peruvian chullo (hat), she seemed pretty comfortable.

  

We did pretty well through the night, with her between us, but we woke up to an icy, frosty world.  We made the mistake of leaving our water out on the picnic table, where it froze solid in the bottle.  The water in the spigot by the bathrooms was also frozen in the pipes.

Since we couldn't very well make breakfast without water, we decided to take a look at the lake.  The all-knowing internet had promised us that there would be a plethora of beautiful hiking trails, but when we had arrived the night before, the ranger informed us that there were none.  At best, he told us, we could walk around the lake, so that's what we did.  In some ways, I think that that was the best part of the whole adventure.

I couldn't get enough of watching that mist rise off the still water as the sun was coming up.

Ben says that this picture looks like an album cover.  I thought it was kind of a neat, dramatic shot.

After we froze our way through breakfast, we decided that one night was enough.  I have decided that October is my favorite month out of the year, but as far as camping goes, I think I prefer June, July and August.