The world unfolding

Jun10

When I watch my children meet the world each day, I realize new meaning in ‘discovery,’ ‘fascination,’ ‘enthusiasm.’ I hear their awe-filled murmurings, and I know there is much I do not see, touch, taste, rub up against…Can I learn to pause in my reaching ahead? Can I become an explorer of this time and place? Play is the ability to throw oneself fully and joyfully into the present moment. When we play we release memory and yearning. We find the moment at hand is sufficient to hold us, and we wallow in it like a sparkling river on a hot summer day. As I play with my children, I am reminded: I cannot choose now or tomorrow. I can only choose to see or not see this world unfolding before my eyes. –Shea Darian, Seven Times the Sun, p. 61 (emphasis mine)

I’m decluttering my bookshelves today and in so doing have been finding things I’d marked and now need to transcribe if I wish to keep/remember them after getting rid of the books I’m culling. I love this reminder above, particularly the part I italicized.

Some recent things that unfolded in our house…

Customizing selves with markers:

Playing in hose while brothers were at dentist appt:

Playing in hammock swing:

Edited to add: this is my 600 blog post here! And, I typed it all on my phone…

Z is Six Already!

May29

On Memorial Day weekend six years ago, this is what I looked like:

Polka dot bathing suit…never worn before or since… (date on picture is wrong, really taken the 28)

A couple of hours later, this is what I looked like:

Zander’s first nursing.

I can hardly believe that he is SIX already! I feel like my oldest kid should be six, not my second one! Zander is amazing. He is super funny—perhaps the funniest kid around—he is also brave and spontaneous and silly and witty and kind of wild. He is impulsive and smart, draws great pictures, and comes up with the most off-the-wall comments about life. He has a fabulous imagination that is always working overtime. He has a flair for the dramatic and a tendency towards the gruesome and macabre. He is a great brother—he is the most generous of my kids and is always looking out for his brother.

Zander’s birth story.

Couple of pictures to share of current Zander!

Drawing is one of his favorite activities!

Attitude!

Big enough to drive a go-kart himself!

I love this series of photos that sums up his feisty, imaginative spirit!

What’s this?!

Mysterious stranger in my living room…

A different look with wild hair now…

Oh! It’s really Zander! My Zander!

And birthday party fun!

Carefully constructed Star Wars cake for his birthday party–homemade orange frosting colored with natural dye, first-ever try at making layers, and ample toys to make up for many failings!

For Zander’s birthday party on Monday we dressed in our matching Creeper t-shirts (Minecraft)!

Yep, we’re a little geeky. Creeper shirts from thinkgeek.com

Changing Visions

May18

I’ve been moving in this direction for quite some time— really probably since my miscarriage-birth experience in late 2009—but I’ve decided that it is officially time for me to take a break from actively teaching birth classes. When I first started teaching in 2005, I envisioned having classes with 5-6 couples at a time. I quickly realized that the area didn’t really support that client volume–at least not with clients with similar due dates and similar interests in natural birth. I never intended to teach general/generic childbirth education, but focused on designing my classes for women planning for physiological, low-intervention (“natural” or unmedicated) births. I never apologized for that emphasis and my focus is what distinguished me from the locally available hospital-based classes that were free of charge. It became clear to me that my niche was in personalized, private, one-on-one birth education and I spent years delighting in the close relationships formed by working privately with couples rather than in a group. During these years I did teach some group classes as the opportunity and occasion arose and they were not as fulfilling or enriching for me as the one-on-one sessions. I think the pregnant women really benefit from the camaraderie of interacting with other pregnant women, but my relationship with the fathers-to-be and with the couple as a unit is nothing like it is when the couple is on their own with me.

Losing my spark

I also realized that I felt most satisfied and like I was making a genuine contribution/difference if I had clients during every month of the year. I set this intention for myself in 2007 and was able to meet my goal for the subsequent years. After I started teaching college classes, however, I found that I used up a lot of my teaching energy in the college classroom and that birth classes started to feel like more of a drain on my resources than a joy. I also realized that they were not very economically sensible and I became frustrated with having to pack up all my supplies and haul them to town with me each time I needed to teach. Having a new baby fanned the flames of my spirit for birth education again and I found that the spark that had been wavering since Noah died had re-ignited somewhat. However, the damage as it were, was done, in that teaching privately no longer made sense to me from a financial standpoint nor did it make sense from a maternal standpoint—I didn’t want to leave my baby behind to go teach class and I also found that in taking her with me, my attention was splintered and my clients didn’t necessarily get the best from me. Now that she is big enough to leave with my husband while I teach, I find myself “maxed out” with my college teaching schedule (which is only one night a week—who knows how I’d feel if it was more!) and other interests and the thought of trying to work in a series of private birth classes seems like a hurdle that I do not wish to struggle with. I coped for a while by trying to host the classes in my home (which is out-of-town), but that presents its own set of challenges. And, when I am home, I want to be home, not preparing birth class handouts or trying to shuffle the kids off to my parents’ house so that clients can come in for class. I love to be at home. I love where I live. As I wrote on Facebook recently, it is my soul place here.

Give points

As I am wont to do, I once again find myself looking around my life and schedule trying to find “give points” that allow me the life-work-passion-rest balance that best nourishes me, my family, my spirit, and my home life. This time, I find the give point is teaching face-to-face classes. It is hard to let go. I’ve worked on building this for years. I love the work. I have fear that what if someone else “takes over.” I have fear that I’ve “wasted” all of this training and effort. I have fear that I won’t be able to start again if I quit. However, as I’ve noted before, I’m very black-and-white when it comes to my responsibilities. I can either do something or STOP doing something. It doesn’t work for me to wait for things or “come back to it later” or “take a break for now.” I’m either doing it or I’m quitting. And, I always feel the need to “officially” decree this—I can’t just let things slide, or neglect them, I need to officially make the break or split from the task or responsibility. I have accepted that this is how I work and how I feel about tasks and while it is not true of everyone it IS true of me and I need to work with what I know of myself in this way. So, as of today, I am not planning to accept any new clients for the remainder of the year and I’m updating my business side of this site accordingly. I find it so interesting that the blog side of my site is where I have really developed a following and created relationships, and reach women’s lives around the world, even though I originally started it just to provide information for my few little clients here in rural Missouri. Birth writing is my other niche, the one that I feel like continuing to develop. As I’ve written before, I realized several years ago that writing this blog and my other articles is a legitimate form of “doing” childbirth education as well and perhaps actually has more impact than in-person classes (though, in-person classes are not replaceable in terms of the relational aspect).

New directions

Since 2009, I’ve also felt “called” to develop my other birth interests such as birth art facilitation, prenatal yoga, prenatal fitness, childbirth educator trainings, writing books, and pregnancy/birth retreats as well as my interest in women’s spirituality, women’s retreats, and women’s rituals in general. I feel like my interests in helping other women are deepening, maturing, and evolving from these roots in birth work. I think making this official break with my former means of birth education opens up the space in my life and my heart to develop those other areas of my interest and perhaps what I return to offer will be “bigger” and of more value to women and to my community.

When I applied to my doctoral program I had to write an extensive application letter responding to a variety of questions about my interest in the program. To me, applying to (and now participating in) this program represents an integration of something I feel with my mind, heart, and spirit. My whole being. As I wrote in my application, in women’s spirituality I glimpse the multifaceted totality of women’s lives and I long to reach out and serve the whole woman.I wish to extend my range of passion to include the full woman’s life cycle, rather than focus on the maternal aspect of the wheel of life as I have done for some time. I want to create rituals that nourish, to plan ceremonies that honor, to facilitate workshops that uncover, to write articles that inform, and to teach classes that inspire the women in my personal life, my community, and the world.

I also responded to this question:

Who/what inspires you?

“I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women.” –Ruth Benedict

“I believe that these circles of women around us weave invisible nets of love that carry us when we’re weak and sing with us when we’re strong.” –SARK, Succulent Wild Woman

I am most inspired by the everyday women surrounding me in this world. Brave, strong, vibrant, wild, intelligent, complicated women. Women who are also sometimes frightened, depressed, discouraged, hurt, angry, petty, or jealous. Real, multifaceted, dynamic women. Women who keep putting one foot in the front of the other and continue picking themselves back up again when the need arises.

I am also inspired by women from the past who worked for social justice and women’s rights—women who lived consciously and deliberately and with devoted intention to making the world a better place. Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton. Women who have studied and written about feminist spirituality—such as Carol Christ, Hallie Ingleheart, Patricia Mongahan, and Barbara Ardinger–are also a source of inspiration. As a mother, I find additional inspiration in the self-care encouraging writings of Jennifer Louden and Renée Trudeau.

My children have provided a powerful source of inspiration and motivation. I wish to model for them a life lived as a complete, fully developed human being. After birthing three sons, I gave birth to a daughter in January, 2011. I always envisioned having daughters and felt well-prepared to raise a “kick-ass” girl. Having sons first presented me with a different type of inspiration (and, to me, a deeper challenge)—to raise healthy men. Men who treat women well and who are balanced, confident, loving, compassionate people. I came to think of myself as a mother of sons exclusively and was very surprised to actually have a girl as my last child. When I found out she was a girl, my sense of “like carries like/like creates like” was very potent and my current need to participate in the creation of a world in which she can bloom to her fullest is very strong.

My own inner fire inspires me—my drive to make a difference and to live well and wisely my one wild and precious life. Good conversations, time alone with my journal, time alone outdoors sitting on a big rock, and simple time in the shower provides additional fuel for this inner fire.

I have both a scholar’s heart and a heart for service. I wish to live so that my life becomes a living, embodied prayer for social change and to do work that is both spiritually based and woman affirming.

It is time for me to move forward with this expanded vision for what I’d like to offer to the world…

Happy Mother’s Day!

May13

Blessed be all mothers.
Blessed be all the mothers of mothers.
Blessed be all the daughters of mothers.
Blessed be all the children of mothers.
Now, and forever.
Amen.
–WATER (Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual)

Happy Mother’s Day!

I keep feeling like making some big, philosophical, insightful post today and I also keep wanting to share some of the great articles I’ve read lately (my file of things to blog about has reached epic proportions). I also have stacks of draft posts partially written and waiting to be polished and posted. And, then, I realized that this feeling–at least in the moment–was primarily rooted in “should” and that what I really want to do today is to take a break, to rest, to read and to wallow in my stacks of books, and to maybe make some art. So, just a quick update post sharing some pictures from today and from our homeschool field trip to the Botanical Garden in St. Louis (we also had another appointment at the pediatric dentist for Alaina since the filling that I was so happy about last week fell out the following day. This trip was pretty traumatic–she was restrained in the baby wrap thing and it was awful for us both–but it’s over now and so I’m not going to spend any more time thinking about it).

So, Mother’s Day. Mark made me this beautiful new pendant with birthstones included for all the kids:

We went to the flower communion at my little UU church and the boys surprised me with new lilies to plant. They also made me great cards–Lann’s has a cool drawing of the Goddess of Willendorf and Zander’s has a sweet note saying, “I love MOOM” ;-D Mark picked up sushi for lunch and we took it home to eat.

I made a new three generations polymer clay goddess sculpture for my mom to replace the one I’d made for her after Alaina’s birth that got accidentally broken. I actually like this one better than the original. It is only the second three generations sculptures I’ve ever made–she’s special!

The delightful reasons I’m a mother! (picture taken by my aunt during her visit last month–I just love it!)

Now some pictures from our homeschool field trip to the Missouri Botanical Garden:

Serious watchage of koi…

With friends in a model canoe!

With friends in a model covered wagon!

Laina’s big enough to climb all the way up the stairs in the watchtower by the shrubbery maze!

Koi feeding was a major hit with all.

Different day–trying to show some cute corduroy pants I bought at a yard sale when I was pregnant with Zander. I later gave them to my friend when she had a girl saying that I was probably never going to end up using them since I probably wouldn’t end up ever having a girl. Last week when I visited my friend on my birthday, she gave the pants back to me! How special! So, I had to put them on Alaina even though it is really too hot for them right now.

In other news, it’s a good month for publications! My peer-reviewed journal article about prenatal yoga was published in the International Journal of Childbirth Education this month and my review of The Five Ways We Grieve appeared in the same issue. And, my articles for the journal Restoration Earth about breastfeeding as a feminist issue and parenting as a spiritual practice should be out next week! I’m really proud of both of those articles, because they represent something of a departure from my typical audience as well as a somewhat different twist on some of my usual topics. That said, a lot of the content of both articles have roots in posts I wrote for this blog, so perhaps it isn’t much of a departure after all. In fact, when I posted about these publications on Facebook earlier in the week, I had this realization:

In case anyone is wondering, “how did she have time for articles while grading those 50 papers,” I didn’t. I revised the ICEA articles in December (from an article originally written in 2007 and a review written for my blog in 2010) and I wrote the two for Restoration Earth in March on my break from class (again pieced together from blog posts written over several years). Not that I need to explain myself, but this writing/publishing thing is not a quick process and I think sometimes people think I just magically write articles and have them appear in print that same month. And, these publications prove to me again that my blog is not a waste of time at all–all kinds of article seeds are found there! 🙂 Go, bloggers! You’re producing a genuine body of work!

Since writing the above, I also thought about how many seeds for my dissertation can probably also be found here. Though the bulk of my writing for it is probably still a couple of years away, I’m constantly finding articles and quotes and having thoughts and ideas related to my dissertation subject and I will continue to collect and store them in this way as the ideas deepen, grow, and expand.
—
*blessing modified slightly from the original.

Book Review: This Mother’s Life

May13

This Mother’s Life
by Nina Mohadjer
Paperback, 178 pages, $12.95
Infinity Publishing, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0741467102
http://www.ninamohadjer.com/This-Mother-s-Life.html

Reviewed by Molly Remer, Talk Birth

This Mother’s Life is a novel in diary format about a woman, the mother of two teenage girls, who is going through a separation from her husband as well as through job changes. We follow her experiences with dating some other men and seeking a new job as well as her musings about motherhood, marriage, women’s rights, and life caught between two cultures (she and her husband are originally from Iran).

There is a higher than average number of minor errors in word choice and writing mechanics in the book and I stumbled over things such as a continued use of the word “loosing” instead of “losing.” The overall tone of the book is lightweight, casual, and surface, while at the same time feeling somewhat depressing. The narrator’s voice is often extremely plaintive.

This Mother’s Life is also bitingly funny in places–a favorite section, with regard to her mother-in-law’s questions: “Amir’s mom asks me constantly whether I take care of her son! I mean, hello, I should be responsible for my girls and not for wrapping your son’s penis in blue silk, right? Did I get a lifetime companion or a forty-year-old baby?”

Women looking for a quick read that touches lightly on some of the challenges of modern motherhood, will probably recognize something of themselves and their own struggles in This Mother’s Life.

—

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

New Pictures! (and life musings)

Apr23

During my aunt’s visit from California two weeks ago, we had a last-minute photo shoot for some Mother’s Day pictures (it wasn’t last minute for my aunt who planned in advance to hire the fabulous Karenfor a photo session, but the addition of me and my crew was last-minute). I’m currently at the end of the another school session with the accompanying 50 papers and finals to grade, so I haven’t had many opportunities to write posts in the last two weeks. I have ideas piling up like crazy though! For now, some of the pictures and thoughts from our recent photo shoot:

I absolutely love this picture! The cheeks, the eyelashes, the puffy hair, the powerful shoulders…

: I absolutely love this picture! The cheeks, the eyelashes, the puffy hair, the powerful shoulders…

After getting these pictures taken I came across two items on Facebook that made me think about why I want pictures and why I write blog posts. The first was this: A daughter grows from 0 to 12 — in 2 minutes and 45 seconds. The dad videotaped his daughter every week from birth to age 12 and then put a little snippet of footage from each week together into a fast-moving montage of her life. It was a cool project and also so poignant. As I watched it, I thought about my own fast-growing kids and also about a moment I had last month when I was watching Alaina walking away from me on the porch—suddenly I felt fast-forwarded and like I was watching her adult self walk away, like my future self was seeing her and looking back at the porch moment thinking, but she was JUST MY BABY!

So, along those lines, I also enjoyed reading a thoughtful blog post by Stephanie Soderblom about her son’s seventeenth birthday:

When ‘they’ kept saying, “it goes by too fast!”….what ‘they’ mean is that memories don’t fade. My childhood is foggy, a distant memory of playing outside and brief snapshot memories of friends or school. But raising our children – that memory doesn’t get foggy. I remember this almost-17 year-old man’s first week as clearly as I remember this past Christmas. I remember the clothes I dressed him in….I remember the chair I would sit in and rock him. I remember the smell of his silky hair, the feeling of him cuddled up in a little ball between my breasts as I rubbed his back. I remember rejoicing in the tiniest of accomplishments – learning to coo, smiling, rolling to his side – as well as the big ones.

I also remember the insecurity that came with being his mother…

from Left to cry….alone

I really connected to the mention of the children’s memories fading or becoming indistinct, but the parents memories feeling like “just yesterday.” This makes a lot of sense to me and feels true from my own childhood and now with my own kids—being a mother to small people is so sharp and so defining and so all-encompassing that it seems impossible that this phase of life will end. There is an element of initiation to it, of almost a spiritual journey, a defining, core life experience, that I wonder how it will feel to have only teenage children and then young adult children. Will I still identify closely with mothers of toddlers, or will I “move on” and just remember “what it was like” from afar. Since my oldest is only 8, I have a ways to go before I figure that out, but my experiences as a breastfeeding support group leader is that the memory of caring for a small nursling is as sharp and potent as ever (of course, right now it is, since I’ve still got a nursling of my own, but I’m talking about the time during which I was a leader and had no active nurslings).

And, speaking of memories and how childhood memories can be blurry or indistinct or amorphous, I was a little depressed by this observation in a current article in Parents magazine:

For years, I’ve been asking audiences of parents a deceptively simple question: “What was the sweetest moment of your childhood?” I wait so they can come up with a memory, and then I say, “Please raise your hand if your parents were present when that sweetest memory took place.” I have done this with thousands of people and the result never varies much: Around 20 percent say their parents were part of their sweetest memory and 80 percent say their parents weren’t. When audience members turn in their chairs to see the result, they laugh self-consciously. As parents, we hope that we’re laying a foundation of happy memories for our children. When we’re confronted with the fact that our own best memories of childhood took place away from our parents, we’re a bit confused. That’s a slap in the face to dedicated moms and dads. Or is it?…

via Thrive in 2025: How to Raise an Independent Kid.

Bummer! All of this time, energy, and constant life investment isn’t producing any sweetest memories for my kids, only for me?! :::sob::: My own dominant memories of my childhood are actually mostly about my sister. Watching my boys play and appreciating their tightly interwoven lives, I predict they will have the same experience in adulthood. I also have more specific, event-based memories of my dad than I do of my mom and I think that was because he was gone at work during the day—my mom was everpresent and thus it is harder to pick specific memories for her. I think that is one of the good things though—since she was always there, I could rest in that security of presence and affection, rather only focusing on “special occasions” or special days/moments. She was (is) my life’s constant.

(Side note: I’ve found that as my kids grow, I find more to enjoy in Parents magazine. It isn’t a helpful resource for pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, infancy, or medical care, but many of the articles about older kids have nuggets of interest for me to glean.)

You’ll miss this?

These musings also reminded me of my post from last year: You’ll miss this. I think the intent of my post has been mispercieved by some readers as thinking I’m saying not to savor or appreciate time with my little kids or that I’m somehow thinking that I won’t “miss this”—I most definitely will miss many things, I already miss them with a sharp pang of nostalgia as I in the moment see them passing by, which raises a whole other issue because I want to make sure I’m parenting the child right in front of me, rather than the memory of their baby self or the vision of their future adulthood. I also stand by my personal assessment that it would hurt my feelings quite a lot to know my mom was spending tons of time thinking wistfully about me as a baby when I’m right here now! Why would I expect to spend the second half of my parenting journey any differently? The current people who my kids are and will hopefully continue to be are so rich and vibrant, that there isn’t much space for “missing this”—they’re right here and I like who they are right now. (I also note that perhaps not everyone picks up on the shaming undercurrent that I perceive—particularly online—in the “you’ll miss this” comment and how it is used by other mothers against each other and against themselves.)

What I know is that there has not been a single day of Alaina’s life that I haven’t savored and appreciated her. Almost every day I experience a moment in which I feel like my heart is breaking open at the sight of her and how she is growing and just how magical and she is. My boys are so very much integrated into my life—I can’t imagine life without them and so my pangs about them are a little less sharp. They also aren’t babies and so the changes they experience aren’t so obvious and striking, they’re more subtle. Lann is getting taller and taller and I can see into the not-too-distant future that he is going to be taller than me. He has grown two inches since last year. My husband was six feet tall by the end of middle school. Lann is going to be nine in September, so doesn’t that mean that I may only have three more years with him as a boy instead of an almost-man?! Ack! Zander continues to surprise me with how bold and confident he is. In my own family, the older sister (me) was the “leader” and the one who was more confident. In our family, while Lann does boss Zander around quite a bit, Zander is the “brave one”—the one who will go talk to people, or turn on the lights in the dark room, or ask questions, or step up and speak up. They are tightly connected and their senses of self are obviously entwined with each other. This is my brother. It is one the deepest and most profound bonds they will ever experience. I feel both lucky that they have this connection, that the genetic dice rolled so compatibly, and also mildly smug, because I think one of the reasons this relationship is possible is because we homeschool. If they were going to separate classrooms all day, I can’t imagine that they’d be quite as close—their “spheres” would be different and Zander would probably be treated like the pesky little brother and Lann would be the bossy big brother, instead of the rock-solid team of best friends that they are.

300 Things

Mar23

Step out onto the Planet

Draw a circle a hundred feet round

Inside the circle are

300 things nobody understands, and, maybe

nobody’s ever really seen.

How many can you find?

–Lew Welch

I’ve almost finished reading the book Earth Prayers and the above is one of my favorites from the book. It was actually the first one I randomly opened to when I first got the book last year and then it jumped out at me again this week (when I finally got to it in sequential order).

I’ve had some exhausting days with Alaina lately. She’s getting four molars and is super whiny as well as just generally a “baby on wheels,” constantly wanting to move and grab and get and explore. I feel worn out—body, brain, and spirit. However, earlier this week, I went outside with her to play in the rain and I think I found some of those 300 things:

Noah's tree bloomed again!

Alaina specifically picked a spot on the deck where the rain was dripping through the gutter and stood under the drips experimenting with the feeling of getting dripped on.

Look at those great arm segments, as well as the little hands thinking about catching raindrops.

This is one of her faces that I most love--she does this fabulous little head-cocked-to-one-side-question-look that is ADORABLE!

Baby on wheels running in the rain! See that face? Those little feet?

Literally a baby on wheels now. I love watching her climb onto her little bike. It is a lot of work for short legs, but she does it.

Another one of her best faces--little squinchy, "eee" face!

A better look at that cute little squinched up "being bratty" face!

Hey! Mama has a face too!

Check out the baby curls. And, check out the "challenge" stand and also Z's defensive face...she is fond of wrecking just about everything they do lately.

Mama collapsed in toddler induced exhaustion on the floor. Then, I got jumped on. Her expression is that grating, "eeehhhh" sound that she is making that drills through my skull.

There are women who make things better…
simply by showing up.
There are women who make things happen.
There are women who make their way.
There are women who make a difference.
And women who make us smile.
There are women of wit and wisdom who –
through strength and courage –
make it through.
There are women who change the world everyday…
Women like you.

~ Lisa Young

Then, today, after feeling again like I was being drained in body, mind, and spirit and feeling frustrated, annoyed, and headachy (I swear the tone of voice she uses drills straight into my brain and saps my life force!), I went outside and took a 300 things walk with her. It was wonderful.

My favorite dogwood tree bloomed. I love how this one is shaped like a tree that should be in front of a Japanese temple.

After admiring this tree, I lamented how we don’t have any pretty redbud trees in our woods. Then, my 300 things eyes snapped like a magnet into the woods beyond this dogwood and lo and behold there WAS a redbud there. We walked down to it and I took a close up picture of one branch:

The profile! Look at the glee of being outside.

Earlier in the week I also mentioned how I didn’t have any violets and should dig some up to transplant from my mom’s house. Well, look what happens when you go on a 300 things walk? It turns out there are plenty of violets right next to our front porch.

This is one of my favorite pictures that I took on our walk.

Friendly hound. Earlier was licking butter off my skirt (Alaina is fond of eating straight butter)

Clouds!

Approaching priestess rocks in wood--I love this overlook.

Looking like most precious ragamuffin ever to be found standing on the rocks in the woods!

Love that I accidentally caught both the reaching, straining arm and the pointing, desirous finger!

Looking a little stormy. Have I mentioned how I love these woods?

I sat on the rocks and noticed a blue jay flying in the woods. I thought about how many things live their lives in these woods without anyone even noticing. I thought about how there was only one redbud on the whole hillside. Then, looked to my right and suddenly there was another redbud I had overlooked before. And, another blue jay flew above it…

How many can you find?

Saturday Savoring…

Mar10

I was surprised to unearth a wonderful little reminder in the March issue of Parents magazine. Parents is usually pretty mainstream, party line, and conventional for my taste, though I do really enjoy some of the recipes and party ideas as well as the $1 subscription renewal price I got this year. Anyway, in an article titled “Savor the Moments” by Harley Rotbart, he explains:

Alaina and my dad---*blink*--this moment, this "Saturday" is months old now already! (he looks like he's paying attention though 🙂

There are only 940 Saturdays between a child’s birth and her leaving for college. That may sound like a lot, but how many have you already used up? If your child is 5 years old, 260 Saturdays are gone. Poof!

Oh. My Goodness. FREAKS me out! That is nothing. A blur. A zoom. A blink. An amazingly swift transition. Somehow putting it in terms of Saturdays makes it feel very stark and swift.

Also included in the article is an oft-repeated remark in some form or another in parenting circles: “Each day with young kids feels like a week, each week like a month. Yet as every birthday passes, the years seem to be streaking by at warp speed.”

I don’t actually quite agree with this one. Even with my first baby, I felt astounded at how fast the time flew by. Even with overwhelming early days, I was more amazed by how fast the day would pass without “getting anything done” and “without time” for a shower, rather than feel like the time was dragging or lasting a year. The speed of time as only increased with each baby and with each developmental milestone.