He has asked so many questions that don’t have answers and I’m just so tired. I ask him to help his brother. I say, “He’s going to get hurt, can you help him?” He asks, “Why will he get hurt?” I answer through gritted teeth, “He just will! Just help him!” Then he sighs and his big blue eyes look sad and I wish I could find the strength for more patience and less surprising anger. When I walk into my room to get dressed, I pass the crumpled bed and want to get in it. I want to curl up on my side and cry. I’m not sure why, but I want to do it. I start to walk that way and then I see her, the me in my mind’s eye, on her side in the bed where I am not. She looks like she’s repeating history. She is carrying this […]
Thursday~July 30, 2009 I kept tripping out of the bathroom at the hotel last weekend. There was the tiniest raised area in the doorway, and I would catch my shoe or my bare toes on it nearly every time I tried to walk through it. My lovely BlogHer roommate Kim just plain got used to it, me flopping into the closet door mid-sentence and then laughing hysterically at myself. That’s me, people. I’m clumsy and scattered, and I have a gift for completely humiliating myself in general. Most of the time I do it with my mouth though, not my feet. I wasn’t really nervous to meet bloggers that I respect beforehand, but for some reason, I’d still get all weird when I would find myself standing in front of certain people, grinning and trying to think of something to say. Anyway, because my friend Jennifer wasn’t able to attend BlogHer as planned […]
Wednesday~July 29, 2009 I felt like a fish out of water at first. A guppy on the shore flopping around in the sand watching the sharks and dolphins rub fins, sometimes spraying water at each other over something called swag. I have fins too, they just suddenly seemed very small. Itty bitty writing fins. I had been taken from a tiny little lake and thrown into the ocean. I was hearing all of this about selling out…What is this all about? To what end? What are we trying to do here? Where is the writing? BlogHer’s ocean. Yes, that’s how I felt at first. And then I listened to the community keynotes, and I was sitting and crying as fellow bloggers read their absolutely brilliant posts, standing up there in front of all the fish. I realized something that night. Those writers submitted what they had to say and wanted to be heard […]
Tuesday~July 28, 2009 I absolutely love that when I read their words now, I’ll be able to picture them talking.And laughing. Lee from Moms Without Blogs and Deb from Dirty Socks and PizzaYes, I know. We’re HOT. These ladies (and more) made BlogHer ’09 the very best thing it could have been for me. In the strip on the right, you’ll find my roommate, Kim from Prairie Mama and her edible little morsel, Libby. I got off the plane and hit an instant comfortable rhythm with this lovely duo. Then we met up with Lee and Deb and laughed for an entire weekend. What I love most about hanging with these ladies at BlogHer is that they’re the most genuine people on the planet. They are exactly who they are, not forcing anything in an effort to impress anyone or grow a readership or any such thing. I love that. And that’s exactly […]
Monday-July 27th, 2009 I got in from BlogHer late last night, exhausted from so much fun, emotion, lack of sleep, and deafening noise. I’m so happy to have had the chance to go. I hope to share some hilarious photos and moments with you soon but for today, I can’t. Many of you know that MckMama and her family are friends of mine. We live very near each other and like to spend time in the sun together. Because Stellan is not doing well, I’m having trouble thinking or talking about much else. Last night, I cried in the clouds on a plane in the wind and I begged God to heal Stellan. Yes, now it feels like begging, and I believe that’s just fine. I don’t think it’s required of me, I just needed to do it. Selfishly, for me. It’s just that I’ve asked for a miracle so many times before […]
I find it more than humorous that while at a blogging conference, there is little to no internet service. SO, I have only a moment to highlight a few things before my connection will surely slip away. My favorite thing about the BlogHer conference, by far, is the surreal experience of seeing the faces and hearing the voices of bloggers I’ve come to know and love but had yet to meet. I’m sharing a room with Kim of Prairie Mama (I would link, but I don’t have time) and her sweet, edible ten month old Libby. Something I didn’t know about Kim before? She’s really really funny in real life. Her gestures and expressions give her humor that extra kick that you can’t see on-line. She is absolutely lovely. She also snores. For two minutes. For real. It’s like she has to get some grandpa snores out and then she’s just done. (I […]
Wednesday~July 22nd, 2009 I was leaving my friend’s house tonight, exhausted from a day of trying to make up for procrastinating, when I passed through the living room and just plain wanted to sit down on the couch. No one was in there, my friend and her daughter were upstairs, getting ready for bed. But the TV was on and America’s Home Videos was just starting. I had been running at such a fast pace all day, I just wanted to grab a pillow and curl up in a corner of the couch and then laugh at “The Silly Show,” as Miles likes to call it. I just wanted to relax, sit still, and let my brain shut down for awhile. And then I really missed Miles because I knew he would love to sit and laugh with me. Before we unplugged, he really liked that show. So I hopped in the car […]
Tuesday~July 21st, 2009 I don’t own a cocktail dress. Heck, I hardly even own any jewelry. Pretty much any earrings make my ears red with burn. I rarely wear high heels because I don’t like to have my toes pinched and I especially don’t like blisters. I magically received a perfect bra in the mail a few weeks ago, or I wouldn’t even have a good one of those. It’s not that I don’t care at all about how I look, I guess it’s just that I don’t care all that much about how I look very often. So when there comes a time, or an event such as BlogHer, I don’t even know where to start. I look in my closet and am suddenly reminded of how utterly normal I am. I stop and think about my style, re-frame it in my mind a few times, and then I stroll through shops […]
At the very last possible moment on Sunday morning, I rushed out the door and headed to the MckBrunch. Um, Heather. What’s a MckBrunch? Well, it’s a cross between fine dining and the drive-thru at McDonald’s. No, no! Actually, it was an opportunity for people to meet the lovely MckMama of My Charming Kids. (And for her to meet them, of course.) (Click on Stellan’s adorable photo in my sidebar if you aren’t already familiar with his story. You won’t be sorry.) I had no idea what to expect, but in the end, I was left giddy over what a good time it was. Don’t even get me started on the food, that was just plain fantastic. And the company? Even better! I sat with some lovely ladies and we hit it right off, chatting endlessly about blogging and motherhood. It was just plain good stuff. (Somehow they put up with me talking […]
Monday~July 20th, 2009 Summer is much the same as the everyday beautiful of motherhood-goodness wrapped in hard work. The drying of towels, the sweeping of sand, the packing and unpacking, the bucking and unbuckling, the in and out and up and down…The things that wear us out, but bring with them the very best kind of satisfaction. Yes, I do believe Summer and Motherhood are holding hands, sharing their little secrets of light, and defying common sense. In the summer we hustle here and there, we travel and we get tired. The wind blows up the dust and it dirties our legs. The sun shines bright and tires our eyes. We laugh and our bellies hurt. Our hands are sticky with the goodness of it. Asher on his second birthday. The past weeks have been so packed with goodness. I feel like we’ve been everywhere. Except to the moon. I’m almost positive we […]
Thursday~July 16th, 2009 Yesterday we made another trip to the doctor. Boy, you’ve spent a lot of the last two years in that place. This time, we were checking for a broken nose. You fall so much, child. I’m pretty sure the doctor is starting to wonder about us. So you’ll have an x-ray on Monday because it’s likely there’s a fracture in there. You poor thing. For your birthday? A broken nose? But you know what? You’re just so happy and strong, you don’t seem to mind a bit. The doctors and nurses love seeing you. They say there’s just something special about your happiness. They can’t believe how calm and peaceful you seem. They poke and prod and you quietly sit with me. They push on your shunt and feel all around your head and you kick your feet and snuggle me. You’re such a busy little guy, always climbing and […]
Tuesday~July 14, 2009 Why is everything underlined? Why won’t Blogger stop underlining everything I’m typing? Why did I somehow type YOU’RE instead of YOUR in my last post in a very obvious grammar FLUB? Sheesh, the underlining!!! All I did was upload some pictures and now the underlining won’t stop! Why are pictures a call for underlining? Everything has to be underlined???? Really Blogger? WHY? And also…Why are there so many power cords dangling around my goof off work space? … (You wanna know what blog I was reading? GOOD. It’s called It’s Your Movie and it rocks.) Oh look! The underlining stopped! That’s nice. So um…where was I? Oh yeah…Why am I not sure I should say “underlined?” Under-lined? Under lined? NO, that can’t be right. Must be underlined then. Good! I think…. (Deep breath) Everything is FINE. Except for that whole thing with somehow typing YOU’RE when it should have been […]
Monday~July13, 2009 This one is for my Aunt Elsie, my Grandpa’s lovely sister, and my friend… We walked over hills, following a path of dirt and rocks. We wore flip flops and sandals and watched our steps closely in the minefield of cow pies. We were on a tour, sightseers of our own history. I could feel my Grandpa there, in the place where he grew up, on this beautiful land where his roots were planted. I could finally see all of the stories he used to tell me of the beauty and simplicity of this place. He would say that my Great Grandma, his mom, would call him in from the yard for dinner. She’d say, “You’ve got ball in the head!” And he did. Oh, how he loved baseball. Even as his memory left him all those years later, his vacant eyes still lit up with news of a Twins win […]
Friday~July 10, 2009 He asked (with his eyes) if he could come outside… His brother was out, and Daddy was grilling, so we said…SURE, join the fam… Then right before dinner, we looked out our door to discover this… We laughed, we grabbed the video camera, we took photos (obviously)……and then of course, he wanted back in… At least now we know what he’ll look like with hair. Beware the unattended children with hose and soil. I hope your weekend is full of sun, laughter, and very little mud. Thank you for allowing me to pop up in your inbox and for reading my words, silly or serious. I appreciate you. ~Heather
Thursday~ July 9, 2009 When Simple Shoes contacted me, offering to send a pair of their new line of toddler shoes, I didn’t even have to think for a millisecond. I sent an email back saying that I will only have something sent to me for review if I’m as certain as possible I will love the product, and then I quickly accepted the offer. (I so rarely accept these offers because this is my blog, and I intend to mean what I say when I rave about something.) Miles has had a pair of Simples in the past that we loved, and I was as certain as I could be that we’d love another pair. I was so right… Meet The Noodle: These are the pair of Simples that were sent to Miles (they come in sizes 4-10, so a 10 it was for Miles, since he isn’t quite a toddler anymore). […]
At the end of a loooong winter, I started to have a really hard time as a stay at home mom. I was struggling to keep my cool and basically losing my mind, feeling kind of suffocated and lonely. Many of you will remember that I emailed my friend Debbie (of Suburb Sanity fame) and poured my heart out all over the screen, begging for her to tell me HOW to do this. Then she gave me great advice (you can find that here). One of the main things I took away from Debbie’s advice was to get out of the house for some kind of activity every day. She talked about how it was the only thing that saved her sanity when her kids were really small and needed a lot of entertaining and direction. Of course, this is something I was aware of, but it’s easy to forget during a Minnesota […]
Tuesday~July 7th, 2009 Things have been so serious around here lately. I need to lighten up a bit. So I became a (pretend) rock star! Here’s my first (pretend) album: Look what I made! (OK, it’s not a real MUSIC album, it’s a made up one, but it’s so much fun to pretend.) I guess this has been making it’s way around facebook, but I saw it on my friend Motherboard’s blog and had to do it because I’m very easily distracted from what I should be doing so creative. It’s one of those random search things, like shuffling your ipod and having the songs answer your questions…only it’s different than that. (The directions are below, if you want to give it a try.) Because I’m sure you can’t really see it, my band name is Diaspora Minister of Israel. That just totally cracks me up. And the album is titled Scandal is […]
Monday~July 6th, 2009 (photo courtesy of flickr) I want a cottage style house built by my Dad near a lake. I want salvaged barn doors to pull to the side, heavy and creaking. I want built-in book shelves filled with colorful stacks of my favorite reads. I want a cute little breakfast nook and a center island where I can pack lunches. I want a pantry off the kitchen and plenty of space to cook. I want to hang and place all kinds of vintage things, picked up at estate sales by Ryan’s parents. I want a really big garden full of fruits, veggies, herbs and flowers. I want a cozy space for guests to stay and kids to play above the garage. I want all of that, and yet I still want the house to be small, holding us close together so there’s nowhere we can go to end up feeling like […]
Friday~July 3, 2009 1. I totally forgot to announce my favorite title(s) for the picture story on Wednesday. Whoops. So. Remember this picture? There were so many great responses, but I especially appreciated “Tales of a Former Superhero: All Washed Up” by Minnesota Mom, and “H2 oh!” by K from Range of Notion Thanks for playing along! 2. We’re heading to my hometown for the 4th. This was a last-minute decision so we have no plans, really. (That’s a hint to those of you who live there. Wanna hang out? Email me or facebook me or call me. I’d love to see you. Yes. You.) 3. Speaking of my hometown. Remember how I said we’ve decided (finally) to move there? Well, we still really want to go, but meeting with a realtor was pretty disappointing. We found out we’d most likely lose a good chunk of money on our house. I realize that’s […]
Thursday~July 2, 2009 Sometimes there’s just no better word than gross. I feel it. The gross. I’m acting like a pouty teen around my husband, flustered around my children, and overwhelmed by every little duty around me. I was totally distracted by some new writing opportunities yesterday, and shot off to bury my nose in the screen, pounding fingertips on the keyboard. This is what I do a lot when Ryan comes home. I plant myself in this place and something in me tells me I’m simply claiming my time, a little piece of me that is just for me rather than more giving and giving and giving. But I know that sometimes I spend far too much time here. Ugh, the fight for balance. Gross. Then Asher stood on the bench of the small table in our backyard and from his cry I knew how bad the fall was. Ryan was calling […]
Wednesday~July 1st, 2009 Asher is especially fond of a toy trumpet we found at a garage sale. (Yes, I bought a second-hand toy a child puts his or her mouth on and then blows saliva into. Sure, it probably has many foreign germs embedded inside of it, but I bought it anyway, just because Asher liked it so much. Ahem.) Anyway, my favorite parts of the video are when he plays the trumpet through his nose (brilliant), and then studies where to put his fingers very closely (brilliant), and then lastly, how he blows and blows and blows and then answers, “Uh huh!” when asked if he’s dizzy. (which is hard to hear, but it’s at the very end-the part where he looks a little drunk from all that light-headed tootin‘ of the horn.) I can’t even really describe what it’s like for me to watch Asher enjoy life, his little personality blossoming […]
Wednesday~July 1st, 2009 Asher is especially fond of a toy trumpet we found at a garage sale. (Yes, I bought a second-hand toy a child puts his or her mouth on and then blows saliva into. Sure, it probably has many foreign germs embedded inside of it, but I bought it anyway, just because Asher liked it so much. Ahem.) Anyway, my favorite parts of the video are when he plays the trumpet through his nose (brilliant), and then studies where to put his fingers very closely (brilliant), and then lastly, how he blows and blows and blows and then answers, “Uh huh!” when asked if he’s dizzy. (which is hard to hear, but it’s at the very end-the part where he looks a little drunk from all that light-headed tootin‘ of the horn.) I can’t even really describe what it’s like for me to watch Asher enjoy life, his little personality blossoming […]
Wednesday~July 1st, 2009 Asher is especially fond of a toy trumpet we found at a garage sale. (Yes, I bought a second-hand toy a child puts his or her mouth on and then blows saliva into. Sure, it probably has many foreign germs embedded inside of it, but I bought it anyway, just because Asher liked it so much. Ahem.) Anyway, my favorite parts of the video are when he plays the trumpet through his nose (brilliant), and then studies where to put his fingers very closely (brilliant), and then lastly, how he blows and blows and blows and then answers, “Uh huh!” when asked if he’s dizzy. (which is hard to hear, but it’s at the very end-the part where he looks a little drunk from all that light-headed tootin‘ of the horn.) I can’t even really describe what it’s like for me to watch Asher enjoy life, his little personality blossoming […]
Wednesday~July 1st, 2009 Asher is especially fond of a toy trumpet we found at a garage sale. (Yes, I bought a second-hand toy a child puts his or her mouth on and then blows saliva into. Sure, it probably has many foreign germs embedded inside of it, but I bought it anyway, just because Asher liked it so much. Ahem.) Anyway, my favorite parts of the video are when he plays the trumpet through his nose (brilliant), and then studies where to put his fingers very closely (brilliant), and then lastly, how he blows and blows and blows and then answers, “Uh huh!” when asked if he’s dizzy. (which is hard to hear, but it’s at the very end-the part where he looks a little drunk from all that light-headed tootin‘ of the horn.) I can’t even really describe what it’s like for me to watch Asher enjoy life, his little personality blossoming […]
