Heart Art

May12

Twenty years ago today, after asking me out at Lion’s Club Park after a long day of making rope with the Boy Scouts, I went on a date with a tall, quiet, curly-haired boy. It was my first date ever and we had lunch, saw While You Were Sleeping at the theater, and walked around the park. Twenty years ago, people! While our lives have grown and evolved and changed and become broader and deeper and more connected and added four other lives to the planet (only one of which got that curly hair!), our original teenager-connection of respect, affection, friendship, security, complementary strengths, and sense of home-place in each other’s company, has never changed. I’m so glad that what started out as sort of a chance and unexpected pairing, became something so steadfast and strong.

I was thinking about what to post today and about our complementary strengths and I realized that I wanted to finally share our Heart Art assignment from the Sacred Pregnancy course I took while I was pregnant with Tanner. I didn’t end up posting about it right away because it felt private, but I did save a draft post about it to share someday. In this exercise, the couple paints a heart together and then fills in the heart with things they love about the other person.

When I told my husband about the exercise he said he didn’t want to do it. He is usually game to do anything I want to do and to support any project I care about, but this time he said, “you know how I am. If I’m at work and they do a team-building thing where everyone has to go write something nice about everyone else, that is my idea of hell. I’d rather do anything else than have to write things about someone else. Not everyone is into or likes this kind of stuff. I am not the kind of person who likes to do these kinds of things.” He then went on to say, “but if I can just tell you why I love you, I would say…” and then he listed off all my good qualities and made me cry and cry.

I decided I should honor his truth in that this is not his kind of exercise and that I would do the Heart Art activity by myself. But, then we were walking together as we do every night and he brought it up again, saying that it is writing that is not his strength, but that he really wanted to tell me all these things and it was beautiful and affirming to hear and I cried and we stood in our driveway hugging and kissing and crying together.

I’d painted the heart and added my side of the words after our first conversation and when I went back inside, I added his words to the other side. One of the best things about our relationship is how our skills/strengths complement each other and this exercise was another example of how that works.

Inspired by our heart art, I then I added these glass hearts to my Sacred Pregnancy altar where they remained until after Tanner’s birth in October.

(Unfortunately, instead of watching While You Were Sleeping, reminiscing, and having a twenty-year-date, I have to go give a final exam!)

Sixmonthababy!

May8

So…THIS BABY! Somehow, he is six months old already. Somehow, he acts more like a ten month old! One of the things that is different about being a fourth baby than a first baby, is that you accept being zoomed around on a tiny car as a normal part of your morning…

Speaking of mornings, I’d like to comment that whomever said, “the days are long, but the years are short,” was totally wrong. Both the days AND the years are short. So, so short. I mentioned before that I am definitely feeling maxed out in my caregiving powers in an average day (and, one can only reduce household tasks so far without becoming disgusting). It is unbelievable to me how many things I DON’T get to do in a day and that I have to release or let go of. At the same time it is amazing how many things I actually do, but the number of important things that slip through my fingers is feeling rough to accept lately. It feels like much of my relationship work is being sacrificed. Activism, local events, friendships, relationships in general, doing things with my other kids, going places, self-care basics—these are all getting pared away, reduced, or feel like they are suffering, untended, or neglected. As one small example, I didn’t read most of or reply to hardly any of the birthday greetings I had on Facebook last week, I can’t respond to simple midwifery activism action alerts, and so forth. What I have been having time for is time to work next to my sleeping baby, since I have to sit in a quiet room with him and actively keep him asleep for naps. This is handy for blog posts, newsletters, etsy work, class preparation, and writing projects!

Okay, enough whining, and back to this baby. He is mobile! Very mobile. He crawls—mostly army style, but also on knees and then launch forward and then knees again and launch forward (sort of inch-worm style). He pulls to standing on everything. He gets himself back to a seated position after being flat on his belly. He lets go while standing and holds on with only one hand. He does some transferring between surfaces, but not cruising yet…that is coming any day now I think. He practices getting down from bed and chair by sliding off the edge (with help) over and over again—slide down, reach to be lifted back up, slide down again. You can see the practiced concentration. He does things like get canned goods out of the cabinet while standing there holding on with one hand (that’s what I mean about feeling like I have a ten month old). He’s only six months old! By the same token I feel like he bonks his head or hurts himself more often than he should as only a six month old baby—he tries things that are just a little out of his actual capacity. (Such as holding on to the laundry basket with one hand and leaning over and swiping other hand toward the couch trying to transfer surfaces even though he isn’t quite close enough to reach.)

Loves being outside!

Blondie boy!

Nursing at Laumeier Sculpture Park

Tanner’s long-lost twin!

At the zoo…

Jilly’s Cupcake Bar for mama’s birthday!

Little sister Lily!

Along with this mobility comes some struggling with our nursing relationship. He clearly feels “bored” or held down by needing to stop for “nonnies.” Some day, despite lots of offering and two minute long nursing sessions, it feels like he is only really, truly nursing at naptimes and then all night long (to make up for the busyness during the day). I pretty much have to shut myself up in the bedroom with him to nurse him very well at all. Along with this, he is eating a ton of solid food. Way more than any of my kids have ever done at the same age and he started doing so with no real fanfare or lead-in or episodes of gagging over textures and spitting things out. He grabs, he chomps, he gobbles, he has a specific “desperate” (horrible!) sound he makes when he wants a snack or something from our meals. Despite having a pile of other kids, until this month with Tanner, I have been pretty judgey towards other parents about their solid food choices with their babies. Since my other three were only passingly interested at this age and would gag and spit out almost everything, I assumed other parents who said their six month old loved to eat, were exaggerating or almost “forcing” the babies to have solids when they weren’t really ready. Apparently, no matter how many years you parent, there is always room to be humbled yet again!

He still weighs about 18 pounds (maybe 19. We get varying results.) The other thing he does that is different than my other kids is suddenly degenerate into extreme crying fits when it is time to go to sleep, usually when we’re changing his clothes/diaper and I’m brushing my teeth to get in bed. It is an abrupt shift into crying hard and he shrieks in a desperate, agitated, really over-the-top manner. He also continues with the car crying horror to the extent that we only actually leave the house once or twice a week! Oh, that said though, he as started to make some visits over to my parents’ house when the other kids go to visit during the day. The first time he left with them, I cried three times! Now, I’m seeing the advantage. Mark and I really benefit from focused time to work together instead of shouting to each other over the tops of people’s heads (not ideal for running a collaborative business). I’ve also left Tanner with Mark twice while I teach, instead of dragging them with me to sit in the hall. I’m almost to another session break and I also got it arranged to do my next two classes partially online, meaning I won’t be gone for the entire time and can get home to my baby in a timely fashion, instead of having to bring him + Mark along with me. While I do enjoy “grinding my corn” with my baby and having him close by while I teach, I do have to admit that I do a better job and feel much more satisfied when I am on my own at class and not worrying about them out in the hallway waiting for me!

He also got to visit with his great grandma last month!

Something Tanner does do that all of our co-sleeping babies have done is touch our faces in the night to ID who he’s got—since Mark has a beard, when he reaches up and feels Mark’s scratchy face, he knows to roll away and back towards me! In the night, I’ll feel a little hand patting at my cheek…checking in…right person? And, then snuggling up to nurse. He still sleeps on my arm all night long, but he rolls to face different directions while still being on my arm.

Despite the maxing and the chaos and the juggling and the paring away, I literally cannot believe I ever worried about not loving him. He is the baby I didn’t know I needed. The member of the family that was missing. He totally belongs and is so much a part of me and our lives that I can barely remember him not being here and can certainly not imagine that we might never have had him!

Happy Earth Day!

Apr22

This morning Mark was having a Unity programming class with Lann, so I made angel food cupcakes with coconut oil buttercream frosting and took the other kids outside for Earth Day fun having a picnic and building troll houses like I used to do when I was a kid. The trolls had an unfortunate run in with moths recently and are sporting refreshed dos, courtesy of my mom (aka Barbara’s House of Beauty).It took me a while to soften into just sitting in the leaves with the kids, without bringing along a book or a notebook or some project to secretly plan to work on while they played. But, once I did soften into it, I didn’t want to leave. We laid on our backs on the earth and admired the way the tree branches make patterns against the sky. We delighted in tiny flowers, found a magical patch of moss, ate our cupcakes and a few pinches of oxalis, and had a picnic.

This morning I enjoyed reading a lovely post by Jodi Sky Rogers (I also borrowed my closing quote from her e-newsletter):

…mosses are a whole unknown world, in fact, a whole Universe of wisdom. They say that ‘rolling stones don’t gather moss.’ So to drink in great worlds of wisdom we must be still just like ancient rocks and boulders who rest in peaceful presence for eons and then allow the insights that rise from the Universe and from the quiet stirring within us so grow like moss on the moist edges of our consciousness.

via Dreamland and Drifting in Between | Jodi Sky Rogers.

I also enjoyed reading about this simple and powerful Earth Day Ritual from Peg Conway:

Let us bless the source of life that brings forth bread from the earth.

Let us bless the source of life that ripens fruit on the vine.

A beautiful sunset provided a perfect closing rite.

Amen!

via Ritual for Earth Day | Sense of the Faithful.

Yesterday, we planted a buckeye tree and this afternoon we planted lavender, motherwort, white sage, calendula, and evening primrose. Life feels sweet and full of growth.

“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”

~ John Muir

Kidbits and Cousin Power!

Apr8

We just got home from a nice trip to Kansas for a Cousin Power top-off visit to see my brother, SIL, and nephew. This was the first time I’ve gone with all my kids (and Mark and my mom too!) and it was definitely a crowded car! We are also a high-impact collection of guests! We had a great time visiting, going out to a favorite Italian buffet, having an Easter egg hunt, watching movies, going for walks, and just hanging out. Mark and I both really needed some down time from our biz work and it was so nice not to have a to-do list for several days. They planned tasty and fun meals for us and it was really wonderful to hang out together with our babies (though my other kids made the hanging-out-with-babies a little more challenging and chaotic than I had envisioned!)

While there, Tanner used his Cousin Power boost to start sitting up for real! (just turned five months old!) And, Ronan (my nephew) used it to cut his first tooth!

Sitting up like a big boy while sporting his Eat At Mom’s onesie.

He also discovered the fun of playing with a big pot.

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I haven’t made a Kidbits post in a long time, so in this post, I’m lumping in some miscellaneous Facebook status updates from the past couple of months. 🙂

The kids dyed eggs with Mark this year for Easter. Alaina said she loves them so much she is saving them for her birthday, upon which she will have an egg hunt (b-day is in Jan…)

Conversations with Alaina:

Alaina: “why is Tanner wearing tights today?”

Mark: “they’re not tights, they’re pants with feet attached.”

Alaina: “weird! I guess we should put a fake mustache on him too.”

Alaina randomly while walking through house: “Why didn’t you name me Scorpion Lady?”

Alaina while sitting at table and asked for help: “I can’t help you until I finish cutting out more paper dynamite.”

Alaina to Mark on computer: “Look up poop!”

[Mark says no]

“Toy poop?”

[no]

“Toy Justin Bieber poop?”

Me to Alaina: “we’ll play dolls tomorrow, I promise.”

Alaina: “there’s a catch. I don’t eat raisins. I only eat sunflower seeds.”

Okaaaaay. (We don’t have or usually eat either.)

Alaina: “I want to play hide and seek with the baby. He can be hiding somewhere on your body.”

Snapshot glimpse of life

Alaina wants to bring some of her own money to the bowling alley today. She brought it out in a carved wooden box and said that was what she was bringing. We said she needed to choose some money and carry it in a wallet or a purse and not a large wooden treasure box. She came back with a huge pink flowered Easter basket and said she would carry it in that. We said that didn’t make sense and to get a purse or a wallet (she has a large variety of these). She came back with a doll car seat and said she was going to use that. We said no and she came back out with a bug catcher with her money in it. Come ON!

Conversations with Zander:

Zander: what do you think Tanner will be like when he’s Alaina’s age?

Me: probably amazing!

Zander: Mom, none of our kids are amazing when they’re Alaina’s age.

Zander: “Hey, mom. This apple only has a little bit of my blood on it. You can eat the rest.”

(*loose tooth. But, geez, kid!)

April Fool’s Day

I dreamed we gave the kids turkey bacon for breakfast and told them it was placenta for an April Fool’s joke. But, in real life we have a tradition of making a “trick” breakfast for the kids on April Fool’s day. Marshmallow and peach half “eggs,” pound cake toast, and turkey bacon this year…

Reality TV?

Mark and I have a joke about being in a reality tv show called The Joke Life of Mark and Molly. We say it when everything is crumbling around us–oven is smoking, oatmeal is spilling, we open the freezer and bread falls out on our heads, our legs get peed on, whatever. A couple of months ago we got an etsy convo from someone asking about casting us in a TV show. For real. She originally found me on my blog and then tracked us to etsy and said she was reading everything she could find about us. We cracked ourselves up imagining what a boring TV show it would be and what they could possibly be thinking?! I imagined writing back, make sure you get a slo-mo closeup as the bread hits my head! And, we laughed over how they’d have to weed through endless hours of pointless poop joke footage to get to the hilarious stuff. Also, intriguing close-ups of my fingers typing yet another blog post…and, inspiring 5:30, “what should we have for dinner?” conversations. Maybe an exciting episode of, “Molly cries because she feels like has too much to do,” or, “Mark cuts firewood at dusk in the freezing rain” or, “both parents yell about fun, enriching project while children long to play Minecraft and wish for the beeswax animal crafting to stop.”

Ooh! “Can they triumph over the laundry mountain!” And, “Watch as they race ahead of the falling tower of recycling attempting to crush them…”

Lann’s input: “Oh! We’d all have to talk fancy [begins vaguely British accent] and all stand in front of a red couch! Or something.” And then, “some people call me Lann. Others just call me The Frog Ninja.”

(I never emailed her back.)

Random word anecdote

My family uses a variety of made-up words based on old family stories. One is “banacheked” (used to mean a combo of abandoned and rejected, based on my grandma’s accidentally replacement of the word “abandoned” with the TV show Banacek). As in, “the baby is over there banacheked on the floor.” A few weeks ago, I accidentally said, “oh, my poor babychecked banny!” So, now there is a new made up version of a made up word. Up leveling.

Speaking of my baby, he gets very stressed by traveling and being out of the house. We’ve had a hard couple of days lately. This is how he really likes to be, the opposite of banacheked:

Love his little tucked-up self!

Fivemonthababy!

Mar30

Somebody is five months old already! How can this be?! I have a thing in which I’m startled by the realization periodically that this little person is somebody’s future grandpa…Silly, I know, but it is something that catches my heart and arrests my action to consider. (All grandpas were once some mother’s snuggly delightful baby treasure. WAHHHHHHH!) My friend linked to a classic poem by Mary Oliver on Facebook this morning: how will you use your one wild and precious life. The Somebody’s Grandpa thought serves as a similar touchstone for me, while also doubling as potential future band name.

This thought process is partially why I hold Tanner 22 hours a day. The other reason is because he doesn’t want to be put down. He also weighs 18 pounds now, which explains why I’m often heard to whine about my arms being tired and that I feel worn down and “old” lately. Parenting an infant feels considerably more physically wearing for me at 35 than it was at 24! He is also the most held baby in our entire family because when I do put him down, it is into someone else’s arms. There are four other willing family members usually around to hold him, plus grandparents and sometimes an aunt or uncle waiting too. I feel annoyed with myself that we wasted money on a little swing and bouncy seat (gift, so it actually wasted someone else’s money!) this time. I already know that we just aren’t a swing and bouncy seat kind of family, but I didn’t realize just how very not so we would end up this time around. With past babies, for whom Mark wasn’t home during the day, the bouncy seat was how I managed to shower and sometimes get some other two-handed tasks done.

So far, Tanner hasn’t seem particularly fond of baby-wearing either, leading me to wonder if I’d just gotten out of the habit (the aforementioned putting-him-down-in-someone-else’s arms thing) or if he isn’t the kind of baby that is into babywearing. My aunt bought us a wonderful new Boba that is so cute and fresh, but unless sleeping already, Tanner most often wiggles to get out of it. It also feels a little stiff to me overall, though it worked better on my back than Ergos ever have. However, on a hunch the other day when I was lamenting not being able to put him down for a good nap so I could make some new sculpture prototypes, I got out my older Ergo from Alaina. Putting it on felt like putting on a nice, broken-in shoe or comfy sweater. And, lo and behold, Tanner likes it too and has spent hours in it over the course of the last two weeks. I feel like I’m rediscovering babywearing! (And, also feeling bad about wasting someone else’s dollars on a new purchase!)

T-bot is our worst sleeper really. He either naps being held on my chest in the rocking chair, in the Ergo, or lying pressed by my leg in the bed while I work on my laptop (post currently being composed in a combo of the two–he is sleeping on my chest with my laptop held on the knees of my stretched-out legs, his head jostling a little with the movement of my fully extended arms trying to type. Why am I trying to type and hold a baby at the same time anyway?! Somebody’s Grandpa, remember?!) Luckily, I really love holding him while he sleeps, I know it doesn’t last long, and I have plenty of work I can do digitally while he types. This works because I can shut myself up in the bedroom (like a veritable nap retreat!) while Mark has an eye on the other kids and brings me lunch in bed.

Participating in online Spring Equinox event, while in our favorite spot.

Tanner is also my first baby to have picked up some kind of virus as this young of a baby. Last week he had a fever and diarrhea. The fever only lasted one day, but the diarrhea for a whole string of unpleasant days with a plaintive, unhappy, whiny baby and stressed parents (particularly since I went back to class on Tuesday night). He has seemed somewhat fretful continuing into this weekend, but we finally realized that he wasn’t getting enough sleep (back to the bedroom nap retreat plan rather than the standing-Ergo-sculpting plan) and also that he seems to be going through a growth spurt and needs to nurse more often than I was realizing. He doesn’t dive in towards the breast yes or show other nursing cues really, so if I already nursed him recently, I thought he was just cranky and didn’t realize he was actually hungry! You’d think I hadn’t already been a breastfeeding mother for 11 years! As I’ve mentioned before, despite the many other willing baby-holders, he seems to need me more than any other baby and has even developed a wearing habit of screaming for me and stretching his arms out and rolling to the side reaching for me, when Mark is trying to change him before bed and I’m trying to brush my teeth. He does love going outside though and will happily ride away with Mark to check on the greenhouse and the chickens.

All this working while baby-holding prompted a new version of my “grind my corn” sculpture:

Despite all of the holding, he is also interestingly capable of moving himself along the ground. He is after everything and is the first to seem like he’s going to crawl any second. I’ve had a bunch of chubby late crawlers, so that’s what I expected again this time, but I think we’re going to follow a new pattern. He is also thisclose to sitting up unaided. He attempts to reach items constantly with a sort of tortured, deprived grabbing style, rather than an interested, exploratory style (more common to first babies, I think. This one is certain he is constantly missing out and that siblings are getting all the good stuff all the time, while he is forgotten and overlooked with no good stuff in his hands!). Due to frenzied grab-attacks and ability to launch self along floor and out of arms, he has now gnawed two pizza crusts (homemade, organic), one cauliflower floret, one bite of banana (gagged), and two pieces of paper (fished from roof of mouth). No fanfare or induction into the “first solid food” milestone. Just grabbed and chomped.

He is getting quite a bit more hair and remains a blondy blonderson!

Happy Fivemonthababy! I can hardly believe you are somebody’s grandpa!

Fourmonthababy

Mar6

THIS BABY.

Sometimes that is all I can say. I hold him up and stare at him and show him to Mark: this baby. THIS BABY! He may be the most babiest of babies we’ve ever enjoyed.

It is hard to turn four months old for a baby who is born on Oct. 30th, because February only has 28 days. He managed though. Because, this baby!

I did a fourthmonthababy comparapic:

A month or so ago, I saw a picture of him that looked familiar and so I dug out one of my own baby pictures instead of the baby pictures of my other kids and did a side by side of both of us at two months old:

Yes, familiar!

So, I went ahead and did a four months one too!

Unfortunately, one thing this baby isn’t known for is sleeping without being held or in being put down in general, which makes it hard to write effusive blog posts about him (or any other blog posts at all). I jotted down the following notes in my notes app though…

He has more hair. Still blond. Sticks up. Twists heart. I’m trying not to miss anything. At same time, feel like I am missing things with my other kids—there are only so many hours in a day and I feel like I spend them on Tanner and my work mainly (poor Mark hardly rates on my “pay attention” scale at all!).

I use this meditation bracelet as I sit in my nursing chair feeling like I’m not getting “enough” done.

Alaina is still having a hard time with the adjustment/displacement, perhaps the hardest I’ve experienced with a kid. She can be relentless and exhausting and needy and also very intentionally push parental guilt buttons. She went with my mom to KS for four days recently to visit and I think the time and more focused attention was good for her. Speaking of heart-twisting though, watching her walk away in her little purple pants with her little skinny legs, I realized that I will never, personally spend four days alone with my four-year-old-daughter in my life. Feels sad.

My mom also crocheted her a mermaid tail!
Back to Tan-baby.

Has large levels of what we call: Intent to grab. This involves serious, devoted staring at an item, with spasmodic hand twitches towards it and a full-weight leaning body. ITG progressed over the last two weeks into actually grabbing and moderate reaching for things being handed to him, including skills in swiping/knocking things from counters, trying to chew laptop cords, and screeching with outrage when thwarted.

After having his neck and chest develop a horribly red, chapped, and chafed looking areas, I finally caved and started putting bibs on him to protect him from copious drool. I always feel kind of sad for babies wearing bibs for drool, like it is embarrassing somehow! He also super-freakishly chews own lips/tongue in a weird mouth movement that can only be seen to be believed (and he stops doing it as soon as you say anything or try to take a picture or video and instead smiles hugely).

Sleeps on me for naps and on my arm all night.

Rolls over both ways on 2/20. Plays Boo for first time on March 2—prior to this day, “boo’ing” was unamusing. March 2 produced laughter and kicks to keep playing the game.

We’ve been snowed in off and on for weeks. All hours filled with kids. Has been surprisingly “vacationish” feeling for a large part, with a sprinkle of oversaturation.

Seeing if UPS would deliver them to Baba and Tom’s house

I’ve made myself feel sad in advance to see the easy intimacy and connection of my kids now at their wide age ranges because in my own experience with my much younger siblings, it totally ended (as do all life stages). Seems like this is how it will be “forever.”

He definitely tries to be one of kids—watches the “show” (but wants to be on or with me while watching).

My babies have all gotten propped up in pillow nests so this prompted another comparapic:

Boogerectomies are an ongoing issue. This baby has the most terrible booger problem of any baby I have ever known. We had to buy a special device on Amazon to extract them and it is miserable torture for us all, but his nasal passages actually get so occluded at times that he cannot breathe well enough to sleep or to nurse and then a traumatic boogerectomy is required.

He intentionally gives kisses by responding the word “kiiiiissssses!” with an open-mouthed dive at your cheek. Weighs 16 pounds according to step-on-step-off-step-on scale method. He also seems to be getting ready to sit up and will actually stay balanced in a sitting up position for a few seconds instead of immediately flopping over. He likes to hear Daddy play the guitar. And, he still seems to say “hi.” It is funny and startling, because you will look at him and say “hi” and he looks right at you and says “hi” back.

I feel like in the last month particularly we’ve really been watching him develop…how he is grabbing, reaching, noticing stuff. It feels like we are watching it as it actually happens for the first time. Mark and I both stood there looking at each other and at Tanner as we watched him purposefully reach out for something for the first time in his whole baby life. And, the entire family gathered around just a few days ago and watched him grab his feet for the first time when he was getting his diaper changed. I’m kind of surprised that we have time to watch him so intensely and pay so much attention to these changes. Is it because there are more witnesses than ever in the house? Is it because it feels like a treat to get to watch someone new’s development unfold one more time? I’m not sure, but I do know that he has more attention paid to each developmental milestone he reaches than any baby who has lived in our house before!

Sporting an outfit he got for a Christmas present. The hat was amusingly out of proportion and cracked us all up!

Getting in on the sibling LARPing as a Ninjababy.

Tanner is now almost twice as old as he was when the three of us ventured off to class for the first time since his birth. Now, 8 weeks have passed and we successfully made it all the way through the session! The last week has been pretty stressful for me as I struggled to grade all the papers for both my classes as well as the final exams for the seated class, but I did it. Mainly like this:

We joke that he experiencing the world through eyebrows (in addition to mouthing things)…

What a most fabulous four-month old Tan Tan we have in our house!

Threemonthababy!

Feb2

Yesterday we had a celebration day for Brigid’s Day (our biz-aversary) and Tanner’s three-month birthday ceremony in which we touched his little feet to the Earth for the first time. We wrapped him in his silk painted “welcome” banner that we made this summer as part of my Sacred Pregnancy class and took him down to my special place in the woods (the very place that told me I was pregnant with him in the first place!). It was chilly and his poor little feet turned a little bluish-red during the feet touching! We touched his feet to rock, leaf-covered earth, and tree and I offered him a blessing of welcome and love. And, we sang two songs and drummed a little before fleeing through the sleety air back to the warmth of the house!

I wrote down some notes of things I want to remember about this threemonthababy. He weighs 14 pounds now and as I mentioned in a post a few days ago, he chews on his hands in a v. adorable fashion. Observe…

I planned to do our feet-touching ceremony on January 30th, but by the time we got home that day it was dark. I thought about dragging everyone out to do it anyway, but instead just gifted us all with waiting until Sunday for our little celebration.

Instead, that night I shared this picture taken McDonalds parking lot in Salem (a far cry from gentle feet touching Earth ceremonies!). When I handed Tanner back to Lann to put in the car seat, I noticed he was sporting one “smokey eye” make up treatment…

(Actually, hot fudge!)

I posted the following day that Tanner’s new three-month nickname might have to be No Nap Tanner. Whew. He has a tendency to get extremely stressed out in the car and it seems to then lead to feeling insecure the following day involving only sleeping in twenty-minute scraps and being fretful. As I’ve written before, happiness as a mother is in direct proportion to length of nap taken by baby and we had a really negative, cranky Saturday overall. Lucky, Sunday was lovely and repaired all our nerves.

Like most of the people in my house, Tanner is a homebody sort. He does pretty well out and about, but then he reaches a point where he is very stressed and I can just tell he is saying, “go home and sit in our chair!” to me (I’m saying it in my own head too.) This is especially when we are in a loud, chaotic setting such a homeschool co-op or when we are doing lots of in and out of the car (both things were involved on Friday). The second week of class, he got stressed too when Mark tried to go to Wal-Mart to spend some of the waiting time for me doing something “productive.” It was a little too much back and forthing in the car (and Wal-Mart overstim) and Tanner was noticeably jangled, cranky, and unsettled the following day. He missed me too and that night after nursing, instead of going to sleep, he stopped nursing, tipped his head back and just stared and stared and stared into my eyes with a little smile on his face until he fell asleep (like, “I got her back!”). That said, I’ve also reflected several times recently, usually while nursing him in the night or snuggling him, is that he is such a lucky baby! He is snuggled just about 24 hours a day. He has nice warm nonnies on tap whenever he wants. He has two parents at home to love him. He has three siblings who want to take care of him and play with him constantly. He has a grandma who visits him almost every day and longs for more and a grandpa who also likes to see him. And, he has Cousin Power with a three months older cousin. Just the other day Zander said mournfully, “Mom is sooooo lucky. She gets to snug Tanner all night long and no one else gets a chance.” We feel lucky to have him 🙂

Another thing I wanted to mention is about elimination communication. This little guy continues to rock it. My EC skills were a little rusty, but I’m picking it back up again. One of the most noticeable cues is when those little chubby legs start kicking in the night. He’ll still be asleep, but the legs start wiggling and…sure enough, this is a pee cue. This doesn’t usually happen until 6:00 in the morning and then again at 8:00. Pees each time and goes right back to sleep, snuggin’ down with no more random kicking. Also, pulling on and off and on and off nursing behavior is often about pee, not about milk and not about nursing. And, those random potty thoughts. Totally spot on every time. The flaw comes with naptime–if he doesn’t pee before going down for a nap, needing to go wakes him up in 30 minutes or less, so I have to be very strategic and pay good attention. (Not much has changed, except the baby, since I wrote this older blog post so I’m not making a new one: The Real EC | Talk Birth.)

I also wanted to share that I finished the final two assignments in my final class at OSC yesterday. I am now ABD (all but dissertation). I can hardly believe it! I’ve been working on this degree for a long time and I actually expected it to take me several more months from now to finish my final classes. Finishing my dissertation project is one of my biggest goals for the year (I have several others too). Today, I was reminded in multiple ways that I did just have a baby three months ago. It is okay to pace myself and to take my time. So close though! So close.

I have all the time I need.

(Right? I made this one of my mottoes for the year in my Shining Year workbook…)

“Fire and ice” trifle for Brigid’s Day. I am inordinately proud of these and we’re having another one tonight with the leftover supplies!

A Rainbow Girl Turns Four!

Jan19

Beginning at 4:00 this morning, Alaina started randomly exclaiming, “it’s my birthday!” and then conking back out. She didn’t actually get up until about 9:30 and we had an epic birthday day.

I don’t have time for a long birthday post and I almost decided not to make one at all, but I figured a couple of pictures can’t hurt (my weekly grades can wait just a little longer. It is still Monday, after all)!

We originally planned to have a tea party for her, but then I got out my American Girl Tiny Treasures book to give away a duplicate to a friend’s daughter and I fell in love with the tiny, tiny pies made in bottle caps (for dolls, not edible). So, I decided we’d make tiny foods and have a tea party. Then, we were at Wal-Mart getting groceries and I saw tiny pepperoni in the meat department. That was it. I suddenly became obsessed with also getting real tiny foods to eat at her party. I had to rein myself in when I was picking up fingerling potatoes to make tiny baked potatoes. We had (frozen) tiny waffles and pancakes for breakfast and we made tiny pizzas using english muffins and the tiny pepperoni for lunch. We also had tiny chicken noodle soup (lipton instant pack with those little noodles) in tiny bowls. I got petite baby carrots and tiny oranges (cuties) and mini candy bars and Ritz bits peanut butter crackers. Then, at the tea party we had mini cupcake strawberry shortcakes and ice cream cups and my mom made tiny whoopie pies with delicious nutella cream filling. It was really overplanning to try to make pretend tiny foods too, but we did it anyway and I still love the tiny pies. I want to start a new Facebook page called The Tiny Piemaker. 😉

Here’s the pictures I did get:

Tiny food prototypes

Real tiny cakes and whoopie pies waiting for tea party

Talented party guest made these!

Zander’s tiny cake

More cakes by Zander.

Tiny salad and cookies by Lann

After guests left, we had tacos for dinner and watched Frozen. When her aunts called to tell her Happy Birthday she yelled, “it is still my birthday and we’re having birthday tacos!”

This four-year old girl is funny and smart-alecky, and tough and trying, and smart, and brave, and cute, and sometimes bratty, and sunshiney. She likes My Little Pony and princesses and Spiderman and super heroes and felt food and Ben 10 and playmobil. She drinks cow milk like it is going out of style and balks at eating almost everything else. She loves her brothers and sometimes torments them, especially Zander. She is very, very, exhaustingly particular about her clothes. She still snuggles to sleep on my arm (or as close to it as she can get) every night. She loves having books read to her and playing babies with her friends. Her goals for the new year were to play with Tom (my dad) and to have cotton candy.

Happy birthday to my wonderful treasure of a rainbow girl! Here’s the link to her birth story:

“She was pink and warm and slippery and crying instantly—quite a lot of crying, actually. I said, “you’re alive, you’re alive! I did it! There’s nothing wrong with me!” and I kissed her and cried and laughed and was amazed. I felt an intense feeling of relief. Of survival. I didn’t realize until some moments later than both Mark and Mom missed the actual moment of her birth. Mark because he was coming around from behind me to the front of me when I moved up to kneeling. My mom because she went to stop the phone from ringing. I had felt like the pushing went on for a “long” time, but Mark said that from hands and knees to kneeling with baby in my hands was about 12 seconds. I don’t know. Inner experience is different than outer observation. What I do know is that the moment of catching my own daughter in my hands and bringing her warm, fresh body up into my arms was the most powerful and potent moment of my life…”

Alaina’s Complete Birth Story | Talk Birth.

Edited to add: of our tiny goods, Lann just exclaimed, “We love these! We’re going to keep them for a long time and our own kids can lose them later!” 😉 And, Alaina, “this is my first birthday in a year, so I’m so happy!”

Earlier in the day, I shared this bday anecdote on Facebook: Alaina and Zander clash kind of a lot lately. Just now after fighting over Alaina’s b-day playmobil castle: “Daddy! Come here. You need to blame Zander for something!”

Embrace Possibility…

Jan7

Usually when I create a new design for a pendant or figurine, I know who I’m making when I begin. Last spring, I created a new design who emerged as a mystery. When she was finished, I loved her. But, I didn’t know her name or what she represented. I asked on my facebook page for input and I got some suggestions…

Druid priestess. Seraphine. High Priestess. Tri-Goddess. Mother. Celtic goddess.

I took her to the woods and held her in my hand and spoke in a little sing-song of emergence…

She who unites body, mind and spirit. She who calls upon earth, sky, and river. She who speaks to oaks and mountains. She who sings with the ocean. She who opens arms to the sky and feels raindrops bless her brow. She who circles in the moonlight. She who gathers with her sisters. She who hears the drumbeat of the earth. She who tunes her heartbeat to this call. She who steps in time with the wind.

Of this earth, for this earth, on this earth.

She holds the vision. She holds the space. She holds an ancient wisdom.

Encoded in her cells, written on her bones…

The mantle settles around her shoulders.

Sinking into belly, bones, and blood,
until she knows,
without a doubt,
that this is who,
she really is.

The next afternoon, a friend who had a prototype version of the new pendant sent me a message suggesting a title: Embrace Possibility. I thought about what I’d written in the woods. I thought about how different women saw different names for her and I knew that THIS was it. Embrace Possibility. What message does she hold for you?

This experience returns to me as we greet a new year with all its potential. After the reflective mood of fall and the celebratory spirit of the holiday, I find that January has entered my life with a frosty attitude. When I was preparing to give birth to my new baby in October, I’d mentally prepared to be “off” until January, which felt far away at the time. Now that it actually is January, I recognize a tautness in my chest and mind at the return to “real life.” My body feels tight and constricted and I am increasingly irritable and frustrated, like an animal emerging from hibernation. At the same time, I have a lot of plans, visions, and ideas for the new year. I feel a brightness and aliveness and a deep excitement about the birth of a new year, but I notice myself struggling with a sensation of needing or wanting all of these things to be done right now, at this very moment. Hurry up! I suspect this is because at another level, I still actually want to hibernate in my rocking chair with my baby. The call of the hermit self remains strong, the call of the outside world is clamoring with increasing intensity for my attention, and the buzzing sparks of energy and vision in my mind say, set us free. Let us ignite! Can I allow myself to continue to sit for just a while longer, embracing possibility?

Twomonthababy!

Dec30

Babies. I highly recommend them.

My little Tan Tan is two months old today. As I snuggle him, two quotes often flit through my mind. The first when I nuzzle his head: “…his softly furred scalp.” The second when I experience those moments of amazement and delight in him and the desire to carefully preserve exactly what this sweetness is like in this very moment: “…the last baby trails his sweet scent like a soft flag of surrender.”

Today, I looked them up so I could use them in this post and behold they both come from the same author and the exact same passage of The Poisonwood Bible.

“A mother’s body remembers her babies–the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It’s the last one, though, that overtakes you. I can’t dare say I loved the others less, but my first three were all babies at once, and motherhood dismayed me entirely. . . . That’s how it is with the firstborn, no matter what kind of mother you are–rich, poor, frazzled half to death or sweetly content. A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after–oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.”

― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

I know I already used them in a past post about Alaina (don’t judge!).

I guess another bonus of a bonus baby is that you get to have the sweetness of a “last baby” twice! I remember writing after I had Alaina that I finally felt about her the way I always imagined feeling about motherhood. It isn’t that I didn’t feel the deep love and attachment with my older boys, I definitely did. And, I had lots of moments of delight and cherishment with them as well, but I just don’t remember consciously enjoying their babyness so very much. I really very much enjoy the babyness of this new last baby.

We haven’t weighed him since seven weeks and he was a little over 12lbs then. Is certifiably adorbs. Is first baby to have smiled at me while nursing and awake at this young. Seems extra smiley in general for a baby this age, actually. And, has been successfully peeing in potty when I remember to take him. I haven’t exactly been taking off with EC this time around, but suddenly decided it was time to try. Here is a video of his heart-melting goos.

Showing off my Dragonfire trifle on Hobbit Day!

He seems even more mama-focused than my other babies. I pretty much still hold him 22 hours a day. He likes to smile at and look at other people and can sometimes be held by them while sleeping, but his limit on being carried around by most others is about five minutes. Sometimes with my mom he lasts longer than that if she can get him out of the kid-chaos-zone and into a quiet room and lay him down to talk with him one-on-one. I keep exclaiming about this to Mark, as in—“couldn’t you hold our other kids longer than five minutes at a time?”—when I remember that Tanner is the only baby for whom Mark has been home. I guess I didn’t notice how mama-fied the other babies was, because I was the only adult home with them during the days of their babyhoods. I did envision that with two parents home all the time, baby-care would be distributed more between us than with prior babies, but so far it isn’t working out that way. Its okay though, because…softly furred scalp.

Also, and perhaps this plays a part in the delight in the babyness of the baby, when you have multiple kids, sitting down and snuggling the baby feels like a break. It feels like delicious respite. It feels like vacation. When you have one baby and you hold it all the time and are on so constantly, sitting down with the baby feels like that is “all” you do. I remember wishing to be free to be a complete human again. Now, with three other complete-human kids needing things, sitting down with the baby does not feel like the ongoing work that it once may have felt.

He does like to sit on a knee and pump his legs with enthusiasm!

Some things also haven’t changed. As I posted to Facebook recently, this week I was on the elliptical while Tanner slept. I started talking about how I was looking forward to my oatmeal for breakfast and how I was fantasizing about eating it. Then I started laughing and telling the kids about how when Lann was a baby I used to wait all morning to eat my oatmeal, until he went down for his morning nap. I would walk around getting weaker and headachy and sort of depressed and imagining my bowl and how good it would be. “How sad is that?!”

Then, the realization: Oops! I guess nothing has really changed in 11 years!

(Except my oatmeal has lots more chocolate chips now…)

Here is a picture of Tanner “opening” his first gift on the Winter Solstice:

And, here is a picture of how I got my paper grading work done this session:

I knocked them out too! I really wanted to be drinking Nutella cocoa, making Christmas decorations, and brainstorming awesome biz plans for 2015 and not doing any grading at all, but I also tried to hold appreciation and gratitude for this work that I can do from my kitchen table with my baby listening to my heartbeat at the very same time.

(You might not be able to tell in the pic, but I also had an earbud in one ear because I was listening to Red Tent facilitator training recordings at the same time too! That’s how I roll. Later, I listened to audiobooks at 1.5 speed while grading. There may be nothing better than being able to read a book AND do something else at the same time. Dream come true!)

I also asked Mark to take a picture of some of my favorite accomplishments of 2014. Baby, M.Div degree, and finishing the facilitation of a year-long Rise Up curriculum with my women’s circle:

And, here are a couple of more pix from Christmas, including my cute new doll (Alaina got one too) in her crocheted boho vest made by my talented mom as well as lovely new handmade wine goblets. Also, the boys in their made-by-my-mom beard hats and Alaina in her princess hat and my brother in his Cthulu hat (which was too awesome not to include!):