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Birthdays! (and lots of other stuff)

May20

My birthday was at the beginning of this month. I uploaded some pictures and was going to just post a quick post, but then some days passed and then some more days. I added some more pictures and thought of more things to write and it has just been languishing in my drafts folder. Things keep happening and so I think I’ll add a couple more pictures before I post, blah, blah, blah. I almost deleted the whole thing since now May is practically over and my bday was weeks ago, but since I bothering uploading the pix, I’m just going to post it!

May is a busy month for us. It is my birthday and then Mother’s Day and then my mom’s birthday and my dad’s birthday and Zander’s birthday. We also have a whole group of our work party friends who have May birthdays (and playgroup friends too!). May 12th was the 18th anniversary of my first date with my husband. May 16th was the fifteenth anniversary of my college graduation. I feel like I’m getting old! And, it is weird to think about how close that college student girl feels and also how very far away she feels. My parents both turned 60—I had a surprise party/healing ritual for my mom as part of our spring women’s retreat as well as a ceremony for our 12-year-old work party friend whose birthday was the same day. On Mother’s Day, we had a family memorial ceremony for my grandma. In the middle of all these celebrations, I’ve been wrapping up the school session (including grading almost 100 papers…split up in two batches of almost 50), preparing for the summer school session, plotting with Mark about him quitting his job, trying to help motherbabies breastfeed happily, trying to stick with some kind of homeschool “schedule” for my kids (using the term extremely loosely). Oh yeah, and my tiny little sweet daughter also had major dental work under general anesthesia last Tuesday. One of my Facebook friends pointed out that no wonder I’ve been feeling taxed. Yeah, duh. I don’t know why I can’t extend myself that grace. Instead, I’ve been berating myself at various intervals about my “inability” to handle it all. I’ve also been planning our big trip to California. $2300 later and WAY too many hours thinking, checking, and strategizing, I ended up with five plane tickets and we’re going. We decided to to go ahead and make a full vacation out of it—Disneyland, tourmaline mining, Legoland, and Pismo Beach! My grandma’s committal service (which I am planning and facilitating) and her celebration of life luncheon is in Fresno in the middle of our trip.

This week as I tried to finish those last bleeping papers, I found out that I’d made a mistake with our plane tickets—having a p.m. flight from San Diego to Fresno rather than the a.m. flight I thought we had. I almost lost it. Flipped out. I’m serious. I felt like I had officially exceeded my actual ability to cope and that I may possibly break down in some way. More. Than. Humanly. Possible. To. Handle. As it was, we made the semi-bizarre choice to just buy some new tickets that restored the “rightful” a.m. flight schedule. These middle-of-the-journey tickets were only $68 each and we decided it was really a fairly trivial amount and we should just do it. We’re taking our family of five to CA with carry-on luggage only and we’re packing like a boss! Seriously, we’re rocking this thing.

Oh, and just this afternoon I also finished my twelfth class for my D.Min degree. I’ve got about 14 left, plus my dissertation. I have three in progress and signed up for two more to start during the summer session. How do I do it?!?!? Heck if I know. ;-) Maybe it is time to feel impressed at my own capacities again rather than mad at myself for not getting more done, for being “behind,” for staying up too late, for taking too long to return phone calls, for leaving some emails unanswered and books unreviewed, for being sometimes short-tempered, for screwing up a.m. and p.m., for not getting around to the blog posts I’d hoped to write, for not keeping up with requests for new sculptures, for not having a birthday surprise of some kind for my dad too, and for never feeling “finished” enough to rest.

Here is what I originally swiped from my Facebook to share about my birthday:

Uh oh. I spent the first 8 minutes of my 35th year still working on these dang bibliographies. This has been my worst/least productive grading stint yet (the CA trip planning/purchasing ate up my usual “free” day). I’m determined to have a FREE day tomorrow (okay, technically, today, but it doesn’t count until I go to bed!)–I’m going to wallow around in books and listen to guided meditations (you know, with the three kids climbing on me!) and plan rituals and celebrations and not do anything I don’t feel like doing :)

It is SO flipping hard to focus on grading these bibliographies when my brain is turning over Disneyland plans, hotel reservations, car rental, and also finding just the *right* stuff for my grandma’s memorial service. The good news is that I have some really rocking students this session and they make some of the grading easy!

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Later update:

Thirty-four years ago I was born! As my birthday present to myself, I DID manage to finish grading the last bibliographies and I’m taking the day off to hang around and wallow in books. I think I might do a tech-off day (or, at least, a class-off day!) Oh, and I bought two tiny little Japanese dolls for myself at Goodwill too. I do birthdays right!

When I wake up and hear rainfall on my birthday I always feel like the planet is wishing me a happy birthday too (there was a heavy rainstorm the day I was born). Alaina told me I should have a cake with “nonnie babies” on it. On my actual birthday, my mom took me to a tea room in a neighboring town for a birthday lunch and then I came home with three kinds of tea and the kids and I had a tea party! (in many ways an excuse to eat sugar cubes and this involves sort of obsessive negotiation over them rather than just enjoying ourselves!) I asked the boys if they would play with Alaina so I could have an easier time getting ready to go. After about ten minutes, Lann said, “whew, she’s pretty much like an energy tick.” I rolled! I love having a nine-year-old and a toddler. So much different and easier than having a toddler and a preschooler was.

Okay, so here is a gallery of the pictures I meant to post on several occasions, plus some more I just added in today:

Birth Stories by Two Year Olds…

May9

With each of my kids when they are somewhere between two and three years old, I feel inspired to ask them if they remember when they were born. They always say, “yes,” and I say, “tell me about it” and they do. Lann’s story was a succinct and accurate version of what happened. He said:

Toddlers can do birth art too! Love the placenta in a bowl and the baby attached to the mama with cord (yes, I know the two are mutually exclusive, but I love it anyway!)

Toddlers can do birth art too! Lann drew this after Zander was born. Love the placenta in a bowl and the baby attached to the mama with cord (yes, I know the two are mutually exclusive, but I love it anyway!)

Swimming
Swimming down out of mama.
Crying!
Nursies.
Happy now.

As I’ve written before, he did start crying loudly with only his head sticking out. Almost immediately after he was born, I put him to my breast offering him what I spontaneously called “nursies” and he was, in fact, then happy.

I asked Zander on his third birthday and his version of his birth was as follows:

First you saw a little head poking out.
Then a little arm.
Then another little arm.
And another and another.
And me was little alien.

He was, in fact, born slowly like this with head emerging and then arms and then upper body and then the rest of him. I asked him what happened to his extra arms and he said:

They actually melted.

He was nursing at the time and paused, popped off and said:

and, my extra eye melted too…

That’s my little Zander for you!

I love how the baby looks like it is "floating" in this one.

I love how the baby looks like it is “floating” in this one.

Yesterday morning, I spontaneously asked Alaina if she remembered being born and like the others she said yes. I asked her what happened and she said:

My baby! My baby!

I asked, “did you hear mama saying that?”

She said yes and then said,

Now, nonnies.  Then she just gazed off into the distance like she was remembering.

I asked her if she remembered anything else and she repeated the above. Shortest of the children’s birth stories, but also distilled to its essence ;)

I’m curious to know if other people ask their children this question and what kind of responses to you get? I love each of my children’s birth stories as told by them!

Both boys made me a birth art sculpture for my birthday this year and each is about a baby being born:

May 2013 021

Zander’s sculpture: The Goddess of Birth

May 2013 022

Lann’s sculpture.

 

Talk Books: The Art of Family

May2

(Amazon affiliate link included)

Last month I finished reading The Art of Family by Gina Bria. I’ve already quoted it here a couple of times and I’d like to offer another series of quotes and insights I enjoyed from this book.

We will have doubts about our depth of relationships with our children. Questions will haunt us. (If a baby-sitter picks them up at school today, will they be irrevocably damaged?) But to a parent, doubt is a way of asking all the right questions. What we so often experience as doubt is really the process of creating ongoing relationships. It is when we stop doubting, thinking, questioning, in relationships that they die.

Gina Bria (2011-11-28). The Art of Family : Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality (p. 7). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

I really loved this. It reminded me of another reassuring mothering moment that happened for me at the La Leche League International conference in 2007. Martha Sears was speaking and she said something to the effect of, “does anyone ever wonder if they are ‘attached enough’ to their kids?” She then said that the very fact that you think about those subjects and ask yourself those questions means you are. And, that you are a good mother. She said that only good mothers worry about being good mothers. I found that tremendously reinforcing and have drawn on it repeatedly over the years! I’ve heard other parents say that they feel confident they are making the “right choices” for their families, because if they weren’t right, they wouldn’t do them, but I often lack that sense of complete certainty. I see a lot of possible “right choices” as well as piles of “good enough choices” in the world and it is helpful to remember that turning these things over, asking hard questions about them, and having doubts about your own parenting is actually part of the process of a healthy, alive relationship with your children.

And, speaking of making mistakes and having doubts, I also enjoyed this reminder that children are watching how you handle mistakes and how your repair damage:

Perhaps it will come as no surprise to nonreligious parents that teaching children to resist the status quo is a spiritual gift; but observing what’s wrong about what surrounds us is the first necessary step leading away from the brokenness of a particular culture, setting, or time. Spiritual leadership at home earns a special place in children’s formation, especially in their imagination. Refining our children’s spiritual imagination is essential; it will become their storehouse, a granary, for making choices about the way they will face loss or triumph. Their imaginations will be shaped by the world we present them. Children need to hear not only what we believe in, but also what we long for, what we hope for—not just what we think the world should look like, but what it doesn’t look like, and why. And, yes, we want them to be like ourselves, but more. We want our children to admire us on the deepest level of our own spirituality. Not just our ethics, our morality with others, but also what is our being, our nature, what choices we make, who we are in front of the vastness of everyday life, and what we do when confronted with evil. These questions are alive for children from the very beginning of their lives. We cannot wait until we, as adults, as individuals, have finally answered, to our satisfaction, our own questions and doubts about God, the world, and human nature. We are meant to do it together. We are joined spiritually to our children, it cannot be otherwise. Our children want computer software, Matchbox cars, and iPhones. But what they want most from us is who we are. To them we are Adam and Eve, the first human specimens of their universe. They keep their eyes on us; they know that no other adult will matter quite so much to them while they grow. They want us to be good. And when we are not good, they watch carefully to see how we will handle it. Here is where most of us will have a chance to be heroic—exactly when we stumble.

And, with regard to parents as everyday heroes, Bria touches on something that I’ve tried to communicate in a past poem for mothers:

You may feel uncomfortable and puzzled about this or you may be the most agnostic person you know, and yet, in loving your children, you are practicing the profoundest spirituality. In this you are heroic, and there are days when you know it. You know you’ve been stretched to the limit, faced insanity, wept in the closet, physically found an entirely new level of exhaustion. It’s called sacrifice. No one else, except maybe, maybe, your partner, will ever know what you’ve done. No one else will ever guess how hard it has been. No one will thank you for it. Even when your children have their children, they will only vaguely realize what you’ve done—they will be too frantic caring for their own kids. Yet you do it. Now, that’s heroism.

Gina Bria (2011-11-28). The Art of Family : Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality (p. 80). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

YES! Though, I do actually feel like my children are really good about expressing thanks to me. Little Alaina has a somewhat new habit of saying “thank you” to me for almost everything. She asks me to pick her up and when I do, she throws her arms around my neck, pats my back, and says, “SANK you, mommy!” And, she almost always says, “thanks” for nursing too. She’ll talk to my “na nas,” saying, “thank you, nonnies. Love you, nonnies. Thank you, mommy. Love you, mommy.” No thanklessness there :D My boys too will often tell me I’m the “best mom in the world!” or that they would never want a different mom because I’m, “the greatest mom ever!” So, I do, in fact feel appreciated by my kids on a regular basis. However, I identify with the remarks about no one really know how hard its been and that you are heroic in continuing to meet the challenge! March 2013 057

And, as I prepare for a major trip to California later this month, I call to mind two particularly àpropos reminders about having so much to do all the time:

“Face it, now, you will never have enough time to do all the right things, the necessary, even important things you can eternally think up, but you will have enough love.”

“I want my sons, both of them to learn from me that they are free to be rooted in home and still be abroad in the world as men.’’ She also feels being a mother to her sons involves giving them pictures of her as a woman engaging her gifts. She is sharing her interests with him, preparing him to see women as partners, with many interests, giving him a model.

And, finally, a thought about making a home:

HOME IS THE FIRST PLACE we spend our love. It is the site, the space, the enclosure, where we love each other and spin ourselves into a family—mother, daughter, father, son, and over all, lovers. It is the place we disburse our energy, expend our life, and exercise our imagination. It holds all our little memory objects and, with them, the people we love—the ones we are willing to spend our lives on. The ones we most want to show and tell to. It’s never just four walls. Home can be thought of almost as a body to care for; a body that contains the spirit of the family. One can read the character of a family by the home they make. It is not the things they have, but the spirit of life that is manifest in their home, because home is the ultimate joint project families do together. It is imperative that home be made by all family members. It is not a woman’s private project, whereby she creates a space and everyone else just inhabits it. Home is a joint project—that means children must be fully engaged in “keeping’’ house in the same way the adults are. Most chores for children are assigned to build character—not really to attend the body of the home together. By giving children an explanation about why their contribution to the home is important and giving them an opportunity to contribute—a true sense of ownership—a discernible difference in the attitude takes place; it’s a community effort. Young children “play house’’ for real because they understand that you depend on them; and if they feel how vital they are to you, to this project, they respond. After all that is what children inherently want, to belong to someone, in some place, and to give their little selves too.

Gina Bria (2011-11-28). The Art of Family : Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality (pp. 126-127). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

And, one about goblets. Yes, goblets. I feel her!

What is it about goblets that gives me a lump right in the throat? To see a little fist brandishing one about, drink half-sloshing, ought to fill me with terror. Instead I get the deeply satisfying affirmation that, for the moment, we are princes of our palaces, little or big as we are. Goblets ring royalty bells for me, aristocracy, or even only mere martiniesque sophistication, but they symbolize elevation, reminiscent of a chalice. A goblet lifts you up, even as it lifts up the body of liquid you are drinking. The imagery of a child sipping from a goblet is a glimpse of a lost land, some original garden, where animals talk, flowers sing, feasting abounds, and every servant is a noble in disguise. Maybe our little diner parties for children are a silly attempt to taste this vision, but I can’t give it up, even if we do, in the end, lose some goblets, in peril of a gash. When the other mothers come to collect their children, I know they contain their askance glances: I’ve let their children play with glass. I, too, wonder sometimes if I am a demented, too-casual mother. But I am not, I am crazy for the real. I so want to put the real into children’s hands, to promise them while they are still children, still believers, that it is beautiful, exciting, and dangerous to be at a table.

Gina Bria (2011-11-28). The Art of Family : Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality (p. 138). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

Alaina with sparkling cider on New Year's Eve.

Alaina with sparkling cider on New Year’s Eve. She’s got the real in her hands! :)

 

 

Driveway Revelations (on Family Size)

Apr1

Family size has been on my mind since Alaina was born two years ago. Before we got married we talked about having four or even six kids, but as March 2013 022we got a little older we settled on “probably three.” There was a time, post-miscarriages, in which I wondered if two was “enough” and whether we should be happy with our family of two boys. Then, after Alaina was born, even though we’d said she was the last, I found myself spending many moments during her first year thinking, but maybe one more! I fantasize about having a little sister for her. I look at the tight brother-bond of my sons and I want that for her too—for her to have someone on her own little team, rather than being the little tagalong at the end of the family. I have a nagging question of whether three feels like an “unbalanced” number. Then as we moved past one year, I started to have more moments of feeling “done.” Those moments usually came from frustration—i.e. after a long, whiny day, I’d think, “yes, family size is complete. NO MORE! AHHHHHHH.” I also kept having the thought that it makes sense to end our childbearing years on this high, sweet, clear, beautiful, joyful, triumphant note following her birth—why wait until we are fully “burned out” with parenting, why not retain some sweet, delicate wistfulness about infancy and childhood, instead of maxing our personal resources to our fullest extent? (Though, logically I know it isn’t necessarily an either-or proposition, that is how it often feels to me anyway.)

We decided we’d make the final, ultimate decision after she turned two, because too much longer after that point would make more of an age gap than we’d want. I posted on Facebook asking how do people know they’re “done.” I had an expectation of having some kind of blinding epiphany and a deep knowing that our family is complete, as I’ve had so many other people describe: “I just knew, our family was complete.” I didn’t have that knowing though—I vacillated day to day. What if I never know for sure, I fretted. Perhaps this sense of wistfulness and possibility with continue forever—maybe it is simply normal. One more. No, finished. But…ONE more?! And, I have a space in my heart that knows with great confidence that four (living) children would be the ultimate maximum for us. I definitely do not want more than four…so, does that mean there still is one more “out there” for us? And, back I go. I started out postpartum getting rid of maternity clothes and outgrown baby clothes, except for some special pieces and then at some point, I started putting them in a box in the closet instead. I smell her sweet head and think that she’s so wonderful how could I possibly never do this again. I look back at my pregnancies and births and think, WAIT, was that ALL? Is it over? Are my childbearing years behind me now? But, but…they were SO REAL! There is something about keeping the door open still. Not yet saying for sure. And then…some other moments have come recently. Rather than only having exhausted moments of “doneness,” I’ve had some sweet, beautiful moments of doneness too. Two weeks ago, we were all walking in the driveway. Alaina was in the middle with a brother holding each hand and me holding Lann’s hand and Mark holding Zander’s. I looked across at our line of our a family and suddenly there it was…a moment I’d not yet experienced…the sense that our family is complete. And, I thought, it IS a “balanced” family after all, even number or not. Yes, we’ve got the pair of brothers, but we also have “two girls,” so to speak, and that feels more balanced than I expected.

Then, last weekend, we were reorganizing our computer room and I was taking some things down off the walls as well as talking about having let one of my childbirth educator certifications lapse. I looked across at my birth art wall and I had this profound sense of distance from it, like, “oh yeah, I remember that life. It was a long time ago.” It no longer felt current or possible to me, like a part of my future reality, but felt firmly located in the past, in happy memory, rather than linked to possible future. I felt a sense of having “moved on,” past that stage after all, not waiting for the cycle to begin anew.

After my little brother got married last year, I’ve also started to have feelings of readiness to “pass the baton,” so to speak. It can be someone else’s turn to have the newborn, the baby, the toddler, the little kids. When I put away baby things and cloth diapers now, it is with an eye towards being able to give them to my sister-in-law or my sister, rather than saving them for myself. One of the things that has been challenging about the child spacing of my own family of origin is the age gap between my youngest sister, my brother and me. I am almost 11 years older than my sister and 9 years older than my brother (I do have another sister who is 22 months younger than I am too). This has created a “generation gap” of sorts in our lives and sometimes it feels difficult to reach across. A benefit however, that I’ve noticed for a long time, is that it offers the opportunity for each generation to be the “cool people,” to the current little kids of the extended family. Mark and I were the cool people when March 2013 021my little brother and sister were pre-teens and early teenagers—they would come stay at our apartment and we’d take them to the mall and things like that. Then, as they grew and we had kids, they became the cool, fun people to my own kids. I can look forward into a future slightly and see how my kids will now have the opportunity to be a cool, big people to my (as yet unconceived) future nieces and nephews. They won’t have the close-in-age cousin experience, but they will have the opportunity to take their turn as the fun, exciting role models. And, if my sister or sister-in-law hurries up and has a baby, it won’t be too much younger than Alaina and so at least one of my kids still has a shot at having a close in age cousin (and hey, maybe that baby can be her “sister” and teammate like my boys are for each other?! I’m liking this plan!).

Another benefit I can see to this generation-gap style extended family spacing is that each set of grandbabies can have their turn in the sun. If we were all having babies at the same time, how would my parents equally divide up their doting grandparent powers? How would my mom zoom around the state offering her postpartum nurturing skills to multiple new baby households? How would my dad patiently carry around a pile of curious babies? Would I still get my two hours during the day, or would the grandparents be too overwhelmed by having to have 50 grandchildren come over every day? How would I get to be a good, helpful aunt if I was busy taking care of my own newborn at the same time? Now each baby will have the chance to be the center of all the baby-attention and baby-love my whole family has to offer. We’ll all see and celebrate the first crawlings and first steps and first words of each new extended family member in their own turn, rather than having them lost in a shuffle of multiple babies all at the same time. And, I’ll have a chance to be the aunt who smells a tiny newborn head, and cradles soft hair, and marvels at delicate toes, and gummy smiles instead of thinking, “same old, same old.” ;-D

On Sunday afternoon, we took another stroll down the driveway. Mark and I were holding hands and chatting about various topics and when we turned around to head back the opposite direction, this is what we saw…

March 2013 011

And, again, I felt that moment of bright, clear, certain awareness. THIS. This is our family size. These are our babies. We’re done.

(Or, are we?! :-D )

For some gorgeous thoughts on family size, do check out Leonie’s lyrical post On Choosing To Only Have One Kid.

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And, on an unrelated note, I also took two pictures of the greenhouse. One during the delightful spring day…
March 2013 013And another during a delightful sunset…

20130331-201839.jpg

Oh, and back to the original topic of family planning, don’t get me started on a conversation about birth control or how we truly plan to make that “ultimate” decision. I don’t freaking know what to do about that. All I know is that while I’m still willing to entertain the possibility of a “surprise” baby at this point in our family life, I am simply NOT willing to push the “reset” button at age 45 and accidentally have another baby then instead of menopause.

And, I realized as I set this to post on April Fool’s Day that someone might think I’m posting this as an April Fool’s joke—surprise, I’m not really “done” after all, in fact I’m pregnant again!!!! Not. ;-D

The Revolving Wheel (Gift from the Sea)

Mar25

“With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls–woman’s normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Lindbergh’s notion of mother as the axis of the household wheel really resonated with me, as did her descriptions of being pulled off center and distracted by a million aspects of the “wheel” of life. Her comment that saints were rarely married women made me smile, because it makes me think of Wayne’s Dyer’s comments that gurus rarely have eight kids, because there is nothing like the experience of parenting to shake your sense of yourself as someone who has it all together, spiritually or otherwise. And, it makes me think about how after some reading about Zen philosophy, I decided that Buddhism and Zen were not for me, because attachment is at the core of a mothering life. I got super irritated with old Buddha and his remarks about being “non-attached” and I thought, “easy for you to say, Mr. Go Sit Under a Tree and Wait for Enlightenment while your wife stays home and takes care of your kid—I guess she was too unenlightened and ‘attached’ to let go.” Being a mother has taught me a lot about relationship as the ground of being and relatedness, not non-attachment, as the core of a rich human experience. As I described in a prior post:

I have learned a lot about the fundamental truth of relatedness through my own experiences as a mother. Relationship is our first and deepest urge. The infant’s first instinct is to connect with others. Before an infant can verbalize or mobilize, she reaches out a hand to her mother. I have seen this with my own babies. Mothering is a profoundly physical experience. The mother’s body is the baby’s “habitat” in pregnancy and for many months following birth. Through the mother’s body the baby learns to interpret and to relate to the rest of the world and it is to mother’s body that she returns for safety, nurturance, and peace. Birth and breastfeeding exist on a continuum as well, with mother’s chest becoming baby’s new “home” after having lived in her womb for nine months. These thoroughly embodied experiences of the act of giving life and in creating someone else’s life and relationship to the world are profoundly meaningful.

via Breastfeeding as a Spiritual Practice | Talk Birth.

Anyway, Lindbergh says:

…to be a woman is to have interests and duties raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The pattern of our lives is essential circular. We must be open to all points of the compass; husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider’s web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes…
How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives. How much we need and how arduous of attainment is that steadiness preached in all rules for holy living…

She also acknowledges the essential, and yet often difficult to find, need for solitude to find stillness as the axis of the revolving wheel of life:

…Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensible center of the whole web of human relationships. She must find that inner stillness which Charles Morgan describes as ‘the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still…
This beautiful image is to my mind the one that women could hold before their eyes. This is an end toward which we could strive–to be the still axis within the revolving wheel of relationships, obligations and activities…
… she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself…
…It need not be an enormous project or great work. But it should be something of one’s own. Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day—like writing a poem, or saying a prayer. What matters most is that one be for a time inwardly attentive…
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh from Gift from the Sea

I recall feeling this way about my own mother—that she was the center of our family, the anchoring space, the core to return to.

Other thoughts from Lindbergh that I related to after finding them online when reading reviews of her book and stories about her life include:

“I cannot see what I have gone through until I write it down. I am blind without a pencil…I am convinced that you must write as if no one were ever going to see it. Write it all, as personally and specifically as you can, as deeply and honestly as you can. … In fact, I think it is the only true way to reach the universal, through the knot-hole of the personal. So do, do go ahead and write it as it boils up: the hot lava from the unconscious. Don’t stop to observe, criticize, or be ‘ironic.’ Just write it, like a letter, without rereading. Later, one can decide what to do.”

And that made me think about story and being a story woman and I also saved this quote (not from Lindbergh):

We constantly weave life events into narrative and interpret everything that happens through the veil of story. From our smallest, most personal challenges to global issues that affect nations and generations, we make the world fit into the story we are already carrying. This unceasing interplay between experience and narrative is a uniquely human attribute. We are the storytellers, the ones who put life into words. – Christina Baldwin, Storycatcher (via The Circle)

Here’s what’s been happening in my wheel lately and the stories I’ve been weaving (Zander featured heavily the last time I wrote a primarily personal update post. This one has more moments from Lann):

How funny that we had to wait for spring before being able to actually make a snowman this year! (*note bat posed for imminent destruction too!)

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Last week, Lann had his first test (yellow stripe) in taekwondo. He did a good job!

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Future plans involve moving on from cardboard armor, to real movie stuff…

In the car on the way home from a different class, Lann was planning his birthday party (Sept). He wants to learn how to make silicone movie masks. He said: “I’ll do the sculpting and art part, you do the reading and talking about it part, Dad can do the sitting around with his mouth open part, Zander can do the running around and squealing part, and Alaina can do the napping.” I said: “does Dad really only sit around with his mouth open?!” And Lann said, “Mom, in AWE!” He also said they’re going to go to the Drury Inn and dress up in Lord the Rings costumes, “and, we’ll have to hang up a sign that says Nerdfest.”

That same week we were briefly discussing the massive scale of the universe and the fact that the Earth is hanging around out there in space, spinning, and Lann said, “sometimes my brain hurts when thinking about a selection of topics.” ;) And, that reminded me of a long ago Lann story when he was about four. We were doing the whole, “I love you as big as the sky” type of thing, and I said, “I love you as much as the universe–and guess what, the universe has no end, it keeps getting bigger, and goes on forever!” And Lann said, “oh mom, that’s so beautiful I don’t know what to say.”

The week before, Lann hitched a ride to taekwondo with Baba and since I was on break from class, I was home with Zander and Alaina (usually they go grocery shopping with Mark while I’m in class). Zander came running in to get my iphone so he could take a movie of something and I heard him their room taking a movie and narrating to Lann as he does so, so that he can give him the movies when he gets home and catch him up on what Z’s been up to while they’re separated! Good buddies!

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Heartbreak of tooth decay sculpture from fall of last year–mama covers head, not wanting to know and yet holding both baby and the extracted teeth. At her heart is a jewel, because she acts with deep love.

We’re dealing with ongoing dental issues with Alaina. Despite our heroic efforts, she’s ended up with the most severe problems of any of our children. Last week I took her to the local pediatric dentist. He was really nice and informative and Alaina did really great with him. However, she needs a LOT of work, more than I thought, and it is going to be really expensive. She needs the crowns she already has replaced because they were not fitted correctly by the first dentist and there is decay around/behind them, plus she needs four other crowns and also two regular fillings. :*(

We’re definitely going to have to go through the general anesthesia route. The local pediatric dentist only does this work in the hospital and we got the estimate from the surgery center for the hospital portion only and it was $8900. Our insurance will cover part of it (we’ll still have to cover about $4500), but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that that is absurd. What a broken system. Taking your kid to the hospital for two hours to get their teeth worked on just should NOT cost $9000, no matter who pays for it, that is patently ridiculous. So, I’m going ahead with the consultation I made for her in Springfield on Wednesday. I called in advance to double-check and they do their oral surgery work in an outpatient surgery center rather than in a hospital and their estimate for the clinic part is $2000, total. That is more like it and is worth the two-hour drive (one way). I wish I hadn’t bothered taking her locally, because now we just have to do the exact same thing on Wednesday and then still go back. She has to have a physical first, before she can have anesthesia, so I also made an appointment for her first-ever visit to the doctor. What I really, really wish is that I’d just taken her to Springfield in the first place, last year, when we first started to get her teeth taken care of. I am so angry with the dentist we took her to in St. Louis. I was happy with the same office for Lann (different dentist, 8 years ago), but I have HATED everything that happened there with Alaina and I wish I’d never taken her there. I feel like they actually caused the problems she has now by not acting to treat the teeth I first brought her in about and then doing an absolutely CRAPPY job on everything they did after that. I don’t actually feel like I really have energy to really be angry though, my primary feeling is sadness and anxiety about what is to come.

In a cuter Alaina story, I made myself a little sculpture to use as a pendant, but Alaina appropriated it. When I finally put it on her, she said…”dooool.” I said, “did you just say ‘cool’!?” And she said, yes!

She also “knits” and likes tiny dogs…

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We get a lot of use out of the Ergo still too!

And, I guess our kids should be in a band:

Alaina sings!

Zander drums!

Lann drums too!

We went to my sister’s house a couple of weeks ago and the kids immediately took to my brother-in-law’s drums. Neither had ever drummed before and Zander really rocked it! Alaina singing was a moment I captured last week when I was printing invoices and she was sitting behind me putting on a show.

In my own news, I finally renewed my ICEA childbirth educator certification after dawdling on it for a long time, but I let my CAPPA certification lapse. It was a hard decision, but made the most sense. I’ve been moving on from birth education for quite some time, and continuing to shell out money for something I’m not using often doesn’t make a lot of sense.

My new classes begin today! After the hectic disequilibrium that comes with the final week of a school session, the following week feels a lot like coming home from being out-of-town—excited to see your familiar life, yet also slightly panicky about needing to “catch up.” Plus, there is so much to be unpacked…and then, BOOM, two weeks off is SHORT. My online class is full and my two in-seat classes have 12 students each. There was a lot of prep to do get ready for them–I always forget that these “breaks” aren’t about having a vacation, they are about preparing for next session.

I’m not sure how good I do about being the “axis,” but my wheel is a pretty fulfilling one :)

Children’s Birth Art Gifts

Mar11

I’m not the only birth artist in the house! Last month, while I worked on my own sculptures, Zander worked and worked and created one of the best gifts I’ve ever received:

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This is the Goddess of Everything, he told me: “See that pink stone in her belly, mom? That is the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.” She has a lot of detail. A snake on one shoulder, a bird on the other, a moonstone, and hearts. I love her! The boys then went on to create more gifts for me over the course of a couple of days. I love them all, but the one above is something pretty special!

Happy Halloween!

Oct31

In honor of Halloween today, I briefly updated my post Fears About Birth and Losing Control. I included in it links to any past posts I could find that I’ve made about fear and birth!

Last year, on Halloween we looked like this:

The year before, we looked like this:

In 2009, I was pregnant with Noah when I dressed up like Batman for Halloween:


This year, I went with a babywearing friendly costume and was Luke Skywalker with Yoda on his back! (yes, I know Luke wore black and not the “traditional” Jedi look and yes, I know that when Yoda was on his back he wasn’t a Jedi yet! I also know that he didn’t have the green light saber, that was Qui-Gon Jinn’s, but heck, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to put a costume together!)


Lann carefully made a “molten armor” costume based on the game Terraria:

And, Zander was a horrible zombie-demon thing!

Last week we took our annual playgroup pumpkin patch trip. I made sure to get a picture of Lann with his friend who we have taken many a pumpkin patch trip with:

Blast from the past! Lann and our same friends in 2005!

It is funny how we’ve added to our crew since then:

Got a picture of all my kids on the tire horses:

Today, though it meant backing out of a previous commitment and unfortunately letting another group down, we decided to stay home for a family fun day before trick or treating tonight. I let the boys choose what we were going to do, which almost always involves food!

Homemade cheesy popcorn for breakfast (we buy Frontier Herb Organic White Cheddar Cheese powder from the food co-op. Mmmm!)

A friend called this A’s “candy corn” skirt. It really does make a perfect costume without really being a costume. If only I had a white pointy hat for her!

We did other fun things like made homemade pretzels and cheese sauce for lunch and I took more pictures to post as well, but I’m out of time to write about them and we have more fun planned for tonight! (like, starting in the next hour!)

Happy Halloween!

Previous posts:
Happy Halloween! (2011)
Happy Halloween! (2010)

(P.S. Why do I have a tradition of posting on Halloween? I don’t know. I don’t post on other holidays specifically. But, today I was all like, I’ve got to make my Halloween post! And, I do have a trend of writing about fear or about things that scare me around this time of the year.)

Nine is Divine!

Sep21

So, an interesting new feeling for me as I got ready to write a happy birthday post about my oldest boy this week…I realized I should probably ask his permission before writing things about him to share on the internet! He said it was fine. I do already ask before sharing quotes/pictures on Facebook usually, if I think they’re potentially embarrassing at all.

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See what I mean?! Snaggly teeth and big nose is my default, self-esteem-blow, embarrassment self-concept. Though, actually this picture was taken when I was 11, so perhaps really 9-11 are the awkward years!

I’ve been a mother for nine years now! As I said in my post from this morning, I feel weird about this because I remember being nine. I remember other ages too, of course, but nine is when I first start journaling and so I have more concrete memories and records of that time. I guess it is the age that marks the beginning of my own conscious awareness of myself and the world in a way that still feels familiar today—it was beginning, the dawn, of my adult thought processes. I also remember starting to feel self-conscious for the first time at nine, like my teeth were too big, my knees were too knobby, etc. And, personal remarks made by others about my appearance stuck for life at that age (i.e. the knees thing—a friend of my grandma’s commented to me, “when my daughter was your age, her knees looked just like yours and I too her to the doctor because I thought something was wrong with her.” Gee, thanks.) I also have this thing that I’ve had for a long time in which when I get embarrassed about something or something goes wrong, I say, “I feel like I’m nine again!” Nine was an awkward age for me. Feels weird that it could be Lann’s future self’s embarrassing archetype too!

His birthday always feels like my birth-day too. It is my birth-of-a-mother day, though as I shared last year I felt forged rather than born as a mother. Today, I made sure to put on the necklace I bought for myself as a first-birth-day-present in 2004 (it was my first goddess pendant too–who knew how that collection would evolve!)

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PMC pendant made by a Canadian artist and carefully selected by me as a birth-day gift to myself 8 years ago!

Anyway, so back to my actual kid instead of me, me, me! This year has brought good changes for Lann. As I’ve alluded to previously, our work party relationships have enriched all of our lives. I’ve watched Lann develop tons more self-confidence and create friend relationships that do not have to be encouraged/guided/forced by me. Something that hasn’t changed is that this boy is an artist! He’s recently been thoroughly engaged by needle felting and created lots of awesome monster heads and action figures:
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Both the boys also started taking taekwondo lessons as well as gymnastics and they love them both. Again with the self-confidence—two years ago, Lann would have been too scared to go to something like that without me. Now, I drop them off and he loves it. It is a good reminder to me about waiting until people are ready rather than pushing them. It happens eventually!

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Look at this big kid!

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Birthday cake request was for a chocolate/vanilla swirl. We bought a mix and discovered to our dismay that it had both red and yellow food coloring in it! (We cut food colors our of the boys’ diets early this year and it has been a very good thing.)

So, as I stood there in my pajamas, I had to make a quick re-adjustment in plans and I made a swirl cake from scratch instead even though I’ve never ever made a vanilla cake from scratch before (I used my usual chocolate cake recipe and left out the cocoa. I’m smart like that.)

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Pretty nice, Molly, pretty nice! ;-D

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Blowing out the candles! I almost didn’t find nine of them!

Lann remains very devoted to Minecraft and Baba surprised him with a homemade Enderman toy! (Zander and Alaina both got one too)

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Aren’t they lucky to have such a talented and crafty Baba?!

In addition to TKD and gymnastics, the boys also signed up for homeschool co-op again this year after having taken two years off. They’re taking a mythology/dragons class and also animation. I neglected to take a “first day of school” picture of the boys, but I did take a cute one of Alaina:
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For Lann’s birthday, Mark took the day off and set up a laser tag arena in the field in front of our house. He bought special colored lights and set up obstacles and things to hide behind, etc. We also have five, count ‘em five, laser tag guns and a visiting friend brought three more. So, we had spirited nighttime battles with a group of eight at a time—I played too, at first while nursing Alaina (and running in the dark. I rock!). It was super fun. Originally intended as a “money saving” option rather than paying $65 to go to the laser tag arena in town, after we bought the extra guns, and light bulbs, and tarps, and fence posts, I think we “saved” approximately -$50 ;)

So, having a nine year old is awesome. He’s funny and smart. Pretty responsible (I’m feeling apprehensive about the iPod touch many family members chipped in to buy him this year–sudden he doesn’t seem quite big enough and is kind of slinging it around. He did send his very first email this morning though, with coaching!). He is a good big brother and super helpful with Alaina. He makes movies, he does art. He draws comics. He is more packed with ideas for businesses, products, and money-making plans than any kid I’ve ever known. He is creative and amazing!

Some more pix!

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Make up for movie a little more uncomfortable than bargained for!

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Nice big brother!

Flashback: Playing with Tom! (grandpa)

I found out I was pregnant with Zander right around Lann’s second birthday!

The baby who made us parents and us a family! Look at what a small little family we were! (though, it felt plenty full then. Sometimes I’m amazed that I’ve been able to expand to add more people to it!)

Happy ninth birthday, first baby boy!

Related posts:

Eight is Great!

Lann’s Birth Story–Baba Style!

My First Birth

Recipe: Four Minute, Four Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies (or: super easy, super tasty flourless peanut butter chocolate chip cookies of pinnable awesomeness)

Sep5

It will probably take you longer to read this post than it will take to stir up these cookies. I’m not sure if they really take four minutes to assemble, I didn’t time it, but they are super quick! The boys and I invented these for Pinterest Day and they said, “Now, YOU have something to put on Pinterest!” So, I’m posting here and will pin away!

I continue to boggle that no flour is required to make these tasty morsels. Here is the recipe:

First, you have two options:

2/3 c. peanut butter

1/3 c. Nutella

OR: 1 c. peanut butter (any kind)

1 c. sugar

2 eggs

dash of vanilla

optional: chocolate chips

Stir all ingredients together, plop on cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about ten minutes.

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These cookies are chewy and delicious and you won’t believe they are flourless and so simple!

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Time to Pin it! The boys will be so excited! :)

Productive!

Aug13

“Being bored is an insult to oneself.” –Jules Renard

This afternoon I made such a long status update on Facebook that I joked it should really be a blog post. So, I decided to convert it into one! (albeit not particularly fascinating or relevant to my blog’s theme. Perhaps I need to remember that Busy is Boring!) I think the abrupt shift in local weather from horrendously hot to near-fall-like crispness has rejuvenated me and we just had a great day today. This morning I went for a walk in the woods with the boys to scout locations for “real life Minecraft.” We also investigated the yard barn shed in our field for rehabilitation possibilities into a cool clubhouse. Then, we had a mini Pinterest Day making baked mozzarella bites and healthy chocolate chip muffins. I gave the kids applesauce with cinnamon for a snack which was met with genuine exclamations of, “this is the best day ever!” (hmm. If that’s all it takes, should break out the applesauce more often!). Also, the doctor finally called back and Zander’s arm is NOT broken (more about this in a minute). We’re finally on a roll with school and Z did 18 worksheets this morning, plus Lann is clicking with things too. On the less productive side, at 2:00 when I made said status update I was still in my pajamas (yes, even on the woods walk and clubhouse scout) and hadn’t taken a shower, let alone finished prepping for Friday’s class. I did get checked in with my online students this morning while still in bed using the miracles of iPad goodness. And, as it turned out, later in the afternoon when the kids went to visit my parents I did finish my prep for Friday’s class after all. What was just delightful about today is that we spent most of the day having fun and enjoying each others’ company—something that sometimes seems not to go hand in hand with productivity! ;-D

Okay, now for the mini-Pinterest Day verdict…

The mozzarella bites were just cut up string cheese dipped in milk and then in bread crumbs which I doctored up with Italian seasoning, pepper, onion and garlic powder. (They were originally inspired by this blog post.)

They were fun to make with kids, tasted great (I recommended my doctored bread crumbs version), and were easy.

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Zander cut up the cheese and helped me dip the pieces into the crumbs. Alaina helped too.

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While they flattened some during baking, they had remarkable integrity and did not turn into melted cheese puddles.

Our next Pinterest Day project was to make some delightfully healthy double chocolate muffins…

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I thought this little threesome all working together so cooperatively was adorable.

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What a cutie waiting for cupcakes!

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Alaina enjoyed some batter.

I changed the recipe somewhat from the original and this is what I ended up with:

Double Chocolate Muffins (flourless!)

Ingredients:

1 3/4 c. oats
3 eggs
3/4 c. unsweetened cocoa
1/2 c. applesauce
dash vanilla extract
1/2 c. plain Greek yogurt
1-1/2 TB vinegar
1-1/2 ts baking powder
1-1/2 ts baking soda
1/4 ts salt
1 c. hot water
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2, 12-cup muffin pans. In a food processor, mix all of the ingredients except for the chocolate chips. Blend until oats are ground and mixture is smooth. Gently stir in the chocolate chips (or, if you forget like I did, sprinkle them generously over the top–they kind of sink in and make a gooey center). Spoon mixture into prepared muffin pans. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

My kids said these muffins were too “intense” after the first one…they’re pretty gooey/rich seeming and they actually thought they were too sweet. I think I’ll cut back the sugar next time–I think 2/3 c. would have been more than enough.

I totally loved them though! They taste like nice squishy brownies! (The kids shaped up later in the day and ate more of them, no longer complaining about being too intense.) As of right now, there are two of the 24 we made left in the house…

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Finished muffin/cupcake! Look at the nice texture and tasty squishiness.

Okay, and remember the non-broken arm? Last Thursday we spent a lovely playgroup at the river…

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The boys enjoy playing in this goopy, nasty moss/algae stuff.

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Zander, “Moss-Man”

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Having some hummus by the river side and close to Mama’s skirt as is the preferred location (if not in arms)

As we were leaving the river, the boys wanted to stop and play on the playground by the parking lot. Lann tried to swing across on the monkey bars type thing (with a slidey handle deal) and fell off and hurt his tailbone. Rather than learn from this experience, Zander instead decided to see if HE could slide across with only one arm. When he fell off, he fell with arm under him. I saw him go down and my first thought was, he broke his arm! But, after some tears and snuggles, he seemed okay—the arm had full range of motion, etc. However, that night he woke up crying three times in the night because his arm hurt too bad to sleep. We did arnica and healing salve and then tylenol. In the morning, he was cheerful and playing like usual, but I noticed he wasn’t using his arm at all and I started to get worried. He held it up close to his body at a weird angle and was often holding it with his other hand. Then, he mentioned to me that it hurt too bad to push down the soap dispenser in the bathroom. So, I became 99% sure that it was fractured somewhere (somewhere, like on the underside, that didn’t impact his range of motion). The bottom of his forearm also felt really hot to the touch, almost feverish. So, we packed up and went to the urgent care clinic sort of place in town:

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Feeling kind of cool about being up on the exam table.

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Alaina wants to get in on the “fun”!

After an x-ray, they put a splint and sling on it “just in case,” saying they did not see a fracture in the x-ray, but that they would send it to radiology for a million dollars (j/k) and they might be able to see a very fine one there.

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Feeling all doctored up with sling (plus, favored homemade Creeper “snuggly” made by Baba)

It then took until today to get the radiology report which was “negative.” So, sling is now off, arm seems normal, I expect to receive an unpleasantly hefty bill (we have sucky, “catastrophic only” insurance–when Mark cut his leg with the chainsaw earlier this year it cost us about $2000 out-of-pocket), and yet I do still feel like I made the right call in taking him in.

And, there you have it. Facebook status turned blog post. See why I’m just not cut out for Twitter?!