Miles was eating breakfast at the counter while I did all kinds of things in the kitchen. He said, Grown ups are way busier than kids…especially you, you are the busiest grown up. I told him that I’m sure there are people busier than I am and he said, No. Because you have to feed Elsie… and put her to bed… and make us food and make your own food and make Asher finish his food because he doesn’t, and drive me to school and that’s 7 things OH! And what am I forgetting… You also give us stars (referring to the stars they earn for doing things) and you give Elsie a bath and you give US a bath… THAT’S TEN THINGS!!! See? You are the busiest! So. According to my six-year-old, I do ten things (maybe his counting is a little off) and all but one of them are for my […]
He comes in the door weighed down by bags. He got the wrong sandwich meat but who cares, he went grocery shopping for me. He’s a trooper of a man, always helping, especially when I just feel awful and don’t know why but can’t help it. My husband. I’m wearing Elsie in the Ergo, with big dark circles under my eyes and I tell him that I think my thyroid must be screwed up. I’m going to get it checked tomorrow. He’s the one that made sure I made the appointment. Now he’s making me lunch. I just vacuumed again so Elsie would fall asleep. What a hilarious routine. Such a cleanly one. Now I sit here and tell you these little things and wonder how our simple stories can be so interesting to each other, so intriguing. They are the glue that holds our cyberspaces together. We see where we overlap and it’s like […]
“If they come out from under our roof with only one healthy tool in the belt around their lives, let it be…” Please won’t you head on over to the Million Moms Challenge Community to read the rest? Oh and don’t forget to reply there for a chance to win an exclusive Million Moms Challenge Gift Pack, which includes an iPad2, a custom-made Million Moms Challenge pendant and a $50 donation in your name to Global Giving.
sometimes there’s something about a picture that just speaks to you and you just love it so much. I don’t care that there was too much light in the background, I think it gives it the perfect glow for the way Auntie Kay is loving Elsie… OWL BUTT! and then when the cousins are walking, there’s just something about watching them from behind, keeping up, listening, loving… Asher said, When I walk, my booty shakes!!! Elsie’s tongue-ish grin and my Dad’s hand. Enough said… I was being blinded by the sun, my eyes watering in the most perfectly warm-ish Thanksgiving day ever… Pumpkin pie and then sale ads from the paper. There are so many things in there that we don’t need for like half off. (Pssst…black friday is not my favorite thing. no offense.) They named the neighbor’s horse Dixie and then they fed her a lot of grass. It was heaven… […]
PSSSST…. it’s almost Thanksgiving and then BOOM, it’ll be time for holiday gift giving madness, so I bet you’d like to see a really great, unique and affordable gift idea… C’mon, take a look… Yes, that’s Elsie Jane on a beautiful piece of canvas wall art from Easy Canvas Prints I’m pretty much totally in love with how this turned out. I knew I wanted to do something special with this particular picture, capturing Elsie at this stage, and I’m so happy with how this turned out. The eyes. THE EYES. Oh how I love those eyes. So. Now let me tell you how you can get some great deals on canvas art for you or someone you love. But wait. Just so you know, I’m thinking of ordering a few more (our walls are nearly bare~ahem) and maybe I’ll use some non-baby photos for other artistic ideas. Like maybe one […]
I’m vacuuming while wearing Elsie in the Ergo and I’m loudly answering the boys. They are at the table, practicing rainbows with color crayons. ROY G BIV, I say. And then I realize they have no idea what I’m saying. So I just say, Start with red. What’s next? Asher asks. ORANGE. I am a multi-tasking superhero mother-woman. Or so you would think, if you didn’t know that I am only vacuuming because it makes Elsie fall asleep so I’m just vrooming that thing around everything that’s all over the floors so I’m not really getting anything clean. Everything is done just sort of these days and I’m perfectly fine with that. Most of the time. The vacuum juts out in front of us and Elsie quickly starts the deep breathing of sleep. I hold one hand to her back just to feel even closer to her and I move the vacuum around […]
I told you, you can have all of mine until I’m emptied out just a shell of me on the floor someone else will pick me up fill me up empty themselves to a puddle on the floor and so it goes 6…7? billion people on the planet what else are we to do but fill each other up off the floor He said, this morning you have such a great capacity for this kind of thing and you know what? I do. I have learned to love because of people like you and there is nothing I’d rather do. I will fight with you and for you when you can’t and I will bury my face in my life while you do the same in yours, moment by exuisitely painful and beautiful moment. I will sit with my knees bent and burning into the ground and pour out fear and turn it into […]
These are my ninjas. All parts to these costumes as pictured above are now strewn about the house. There were plastic swords and knives involved, that could be slid into a backpack type of ninja-wearing thing but most of them are gone. Somewhere in the yard or the playhouse or probably downstairs, buried in Legos. The masks? Maybe under a bed or something. But for one day, the boys were TOTAL ninjas and they loved every second of it. Especially the candy part. Right before trick or treating was coming to a close for us, they started actually saying trick or treat and thank you. This is progress. They don’t like talking to random people. Even random people with candy. Since that night, we’ve been battling sickness, each of us. Elsie has her first ear infection and right now as I type this, I’m trying to ignore the chills and the cough and […]
I’m putting away the laundry, opening and shutting wooden drawers, shirts on shirts, pants on pants, socks in the bottom. I notice the dust covering all the surfaces. Again. The closing of the windows to keep out the air that smacks of winter makes even more dust, stuck swirling inside. Sometimes I watch it in the sunlight, mesmerized. Other times I watch it with disgust and something screams inside me, I can never be enough! It could be more simple, like, I can’t keep up! But dust strikes something deep within. The Not Enough place. Not enough time, not enough strength, not enough wisdom, not enough me. I run my finger through the dust, making a line and then I’m flooded with all the other things, more laundry, more dishes, more noise, more discipline, more lists, more piles, more spit up, more paint on the floor, more crumbs on the counter… There […]
Elsie Jane is more magical than I could ever have imagined and it just keeps getting better. There aren’t enough words and there isn’t enough cyberspace to fit them in if I were to try to explain how much I love her. She has an ear infection that makes her mad. Oh, life. There are small things like ear infections and then really Big Things that are breaking my heart. It’s always something, huh? That’s why it’s so good that there are tiny soft socks and wrist wrinkles and wave-y little eyebrows that remind me of fuzzy caterpillars. These are the things we have to focus on. All the small things that make up grace. {I also wanted to tell you that I started as a columnist for She Posts this last week and I wrote about Steph from Adventures in Babywearing. I’m going to be writing there about people every week […]
(not me) (photo credit) I learned how to type with Mrs. B. in high school on a typewriter. Yes, I am of the age of the typewriter skilled. Fancy electronic typewriters, mind you. The kind that could back up and erase mistakes all on their own, leaving that faint imprint, evidence of error. Our school had computers but they were new and all I remember of them is from my senior year, when we started using them in our English class, for writing papers, not for using the world wide interweb. Those computers were HUGE compared to the netbooks of today. If this is the case, if I’m doing my remembering correctly, I had no knowledge of cyberspace when I graduated from high school. My first memories of the Internet are in the computer lab my junior year of college. I remember the trip, every night, down to the building that held the lab, to […]
“I do my best to not regret the way my babies entered this world. After all, they are here and I’m crazy about them. Regret only keeps me stuck in thinking of myself in a way that doesn’t serve my family at all in the now…” {Please won’t you continue reading our story over at the Million Moms Challenge hosted by ABC News and the UN Foundation}
I let them cut across the grass in front of the house next door, forgetting to worry about whether or not the neighbors will mind. That’s just which way they were going and so I followed, fast-footed and giggly. Like I’m seven. The earth under the just-starting-to-autumn-crunch grass is bumpy so I was even more awkward and clumsy than my usual. But who cares; I was catching up, carefully and not carefully, with lunging forward and ankles wobbling. Like life. We’re home fast and one boy flies through the front door and the other turns to me and does his I beat you home dance– butt shaking, fingers pointing to the sky, singing a song and laughing, I wiiiin, I wiiiin. And then I can’t stop laughing. There is always joy at the sight of them, especially after a separation, even one of only one hour. That feeling rises up, of needing them and […]
Maybe happiness is a choice just about as much as it is not. I guess having half a choice is better than nothing. I would prefer it handed over on a silver platter me with all my excuses and no work just ruminating. It doesn’t happen like that and I know it. But I forget. Sometimes it’s hard to even make the choice to try or to work at anything at all. Sometimes the sad and tired makes you think things that keep you so very stuck. That’s me anyway. Then I do this forgetting. Forgetting that I’m putting most of my energy, my choice, into imploding. I’m focusing so hard on the bad bad bad that I’m searing it’s shape right into the very core of my brain and then it wants to travel to my heart and soul. I’m so thankful that I have people in my life who cut it […]
