Having my sister Heather here has brought our life under inspection and been found loud, regimented and quite boring. She's right, really. There is almost always someone crying or screaming. We are always within an hour of someone needing a nap, a meal or a diaper change and because it takes longer to prepare for an outing than the actual outing takes, we stay home a lot. We are often amused-- like when Finn runs back and forth on the lanai with a tin plate serving Heather and me imaginary eggs, bacon and pickled herring like a harried waiter. Or when Henry skates around the baby gym on one foot until he inadvertently rams into Jake who turns and pushes him away only to be rammed again. Or when Finn sings at breakfast and gets both the little babies laughing hysterically. But then, mostly we are boring and we are tired.
I've set out to take control of the things we eat, making more from scratch and buying less packaging. This weekend I started with pureeing vegetables for baby food, and baking teething biscuits and bread. So far, other than the wallpaper paste consistency of the sweet potatoes, it's been a great success and I really enjoy it. I wrote Mandy an e-mail to tell her about the first week of the experiment and I realized as I typed out the message that both Mandy and I feel isolated and tied to routine, and we have both been trying to find ways to interrupt the routine, make something beautiful, have a personality separate from the duties we perform and have control over a part of our world. For me, I think portioning liquid green beans into labeled jars and pulling batches of dinner rolls and loaves of bread from the oven gives me that. It's still pretty boring but it has my stamp on it. It's loving and in a basic, practical way, it's important--which in a life that often seems like a constant maintenance, feels very good to me.
The shirt is from the Children's Place but I made the jacket and the pants in a couple of hours over 3 days for about $7 total. I have yet to make the button holes (and may not because I hate button holes) but otherwise it's finished. For half a yard of fabric, no pattern and lots of interruptions, I'm a little proud 
actually
.
the really icky kind of sick with body aches and unpleasantness, which is no fun anyway but with the boys, there's no taking the day off to lay around in bed and watch HGTV so everything is a bigger drama and much less easy. Thank goodness for James and strong medications found only in the house of two doctors.
Living in someone else's house, while financially liberating, is creatively a bit stifling. The furniture is arranged, the walls are painted and being in the middle of the ocean, all things purchased or created must be packed into airplane approved luggage at the end of our time here. So I've been working on "small space" projects like photo album/baby books for the boys and sewing seat covers promised to a friend in Indianapolis and thinking about making henry a little man suit for my uncle's wedding. But I still spend a really shockingly large amount of time thinking about beautiful things that cannot currently be mine and searching for them online.
Here's a little list, I'll call it: "someday, we'll be home together"
These notebooks on etsy would almost be too beautiful to write in...but I would try just so I could turn the lovely covers and leaf through the vegetable dyed pages.
I think I have the taste of a nineteenth century old woman because if I could afford to wallpaper every room in my house with these wallpapers, I think I would.
Mornings with this stovetop cappucino maker would make me feel like a well bred european with a flat in the city, and a cottage in the country with an aga oven, a few spaniels and some wellington boots...basically a character from a rosamund pilcher novel and my dream come true.
I'm all for the modern conveniences looking like electronic fossils of bygone eras so this and this would likely find a place in my future (dream) house (where money were no option).
What joy to stir my cappuccino with this spoon!
Sort of trendy but seriously, who wouldn't want a pop art poster of an owl, typewriter and or telephone pole?
Who says these roofs are only for pole barns and outhouses? I want one on my house.
And of course, all things anthropologie but especially this towel and this table cloth
Inspired by Laura's blog about her twins and the idea that even a routine--when thinking about posterity--is interesting, and as an ego centric log of how much I do in a day, here is a sampling of our days, with today as model.
5-6am feed henry, give jake bottle #1, change first two diapers
6-7am get jake, henry and finn up, change diaper #3, feed all three breakfast.
7-8am clean up breakfast, change diapers #4 and #5, henry goes back down for morning nap
8-9am play trucks on living room floor and keep jake from mangling stereo system. finn in time out #1 for pushing jake. Gardener William arrives to finish trimming fig creeper on pool wall and clean out flower beds.
9-10am Jake in timeout #1 for screaming, Jake goes down for morning nap, change diaper #6, color with Finn on the back porch, henry wakes up, feed henry.
10-11am jake wakes up screaming, give him bottle #2, get him up, change diaper #7 and #8, retrieve four pieces of cat food from Jake's clenched jaws and clean up large puddle of cat throw-up. talk to next door neighbor about collecting her mail while she is away next week while finn pours contents of his sippy cup into pots of herbs by back door. finn in time out #2 for screaming. james off work for break, run to post office to mail lease to tenent in Indiana.
11-12am come home, cook brats on grill for lunch, finn colors on back porch, jake chews on plastic ball pit balls in playpen and henry rolls over on baby mat/gym thingey. bring everyone into kitchen for lunch, eat lunch, offer william the gardener a brat and let unknown pool guy into backyard to check saline function (?) sounds suspicious, he says andy sent him, andy not known to me.
12-1pm bring james lunch, put finn down for nap, change diaper #9, follow jake around house as he follows cat around house, feed henry.
1-2pm put jake and henry down for naps, change diapers #10 and #11. clean up lunch dishes, puddle of spit up and four more spots of cat throwup discovered in dining room. rearrange furniture on back porch and replace pillows with baby gates to block off non-baby-proofed half of porch. Watch part of episode of Jon and Kate plus 8, which makes me feel better about my life.
2-3pm sit by pool and read magazine, take short dip in pool and get dressed, talk to terminex guy who is coming to check on termite traps (did not know we had termite traps), get all three babies up, change diapers #12, 13 and 14, make bottle #3
3-4pm feed henry, hook up trailer to bike with james and take all babies on ride to library.
4-5pm jake in timeout #2 for screaming, make dinner while finn sits on counter asking for a bite of everything, jake goes down for evening nap.
5-6pm feed all babies dinner, james gives jake bath, clean up dinner dishes and play trucks on coffee table, share bowl of ice cream with finn.
6-7pm eat dinner standing up in kitchen with James, put Jake to bed with bottle #4, give finn bath, read books and put him to bed, feed henry and put him to bed.
7-8pm watch recorded episodes of the Colbert Report and Project Runway.
8-9pm take contacts out, read in bed, go to sleep.
Take away the terminex guy, the neighbor and the post office and add sick scott at home, trips to safeway for gatorade and making cups of chicken broth and you have yesterday's schedule.
"The dream and the knowledge of alternative futures is with me. I choose my life with every breath I take."
James and I have a deal. On Saturday mornings, I get up with the boys and he can sleep in as long as fancy strikes him. On Sundays, I sleep in. This is not entirely a foolproof plan for a number of reasons including the fact that I wake up with every stirring in the house be it animal, vegetable or infant and James has programed himself so thoroughly to wake up at 4:30 that he finds it difficult to sleep past 7am. But regardless, it's a really brilliant and loving set up for a number of reasons:
On Sundays, after I have woken up at 5 or 6 to feed Henry...I go back to sleep. I'm not sure you all realize the magnitude and revolutionary-ness this represents. On weekdays and Saturdays, I wake up to feed Henry, maybe put him back in his crib maybe bring him to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee and make Jake a bottle and turn on good morning america while I lay out breakfast for the three boys, and the day has begun.
On Sundays, when I wake up again, to the noise of a breakfast I am not making or the cats running hissing away from Finn's smacking feet on the pergo floors or Jake screeching to be given a bite of whatever Scott is eating, I can go back to sleep, as many times as I want.
And on Sundays, when I have finally slept as long as I possibly can, I lay in bed for a number of minutes and rub my eyes. And then I sit up in bed and look out at the yard or the sky. And then I swing my feet over the side of the bed and wait to let the blood adjust to my legs and my head and then slowly, walk to the bathroom, put my contacts in, maybe trim my bangs or cut my fingernails. And then, when I am fully awake and slightly more groomed and in a significantly better mood than when I fell asleep, I come out to the kitchen and greet the boys with a temporary surplus of patience and magnanimity.
It's a wonderful thing to sleep and wake of my own volition. Where waking is normally instantaneous and unnoted, a springing (or more likely a trudging) to action; Sundays are languid and unrushed. In my current role, the luxury of languishing is really indescribable.
I've just finished reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Nights in Rodanthe by that incorrigible Nicholas Sparks, gave up reading a tedious German novel called Stones from the River after about 300 fruitless pages and started up The Constant Gardner. This strange combination of narratives is swilling around in my head and I'm quite certain will produce some gem of a thought about gender and childrearing and the overlap of the feminine voice in various stereotypical roles.
But that epiphanic connection has not quite coalesced yet. So I thought instead I would tell you, "dear void" that tonight completely free of children, I drove my sister and brother-in-law's flashy yellow convertible to the local movie theater and saw the Dark Knight. As it would happen, a couple with my exact identical Phil&Ted's stroller wheeled their sleeping infant into the theater behind me and took the seat on the aisle beside me, the stroller wedged in the handicap spot between us. So much for getting away from the kids for the night. I shot them very dirty looks in the darkness between previews. The baby must have sensed my hostility so made not a single peep throughout the entire, rather ear splintering movie. After jumping out my own seat a couple of times, I actually started feeling bad for the kid and marvelled at his or her resilience.
The movie was very good actually but it seemed strange sitting in the theater on my own and then coming out into the parking lot in the pouring rain and driving home without talking to anyone about it. And James hasn't seen it yet so I feel a bit untranslated-the curse of the extrovert-not having processed the experience of the movie with anyone else. So have any of you seen it? And if so what do you think? Without spoiling it for any one who hasn't, I'm really interested in the Joker's theory about chaos and motive and the whole sense of balance in the movie; the hero they need, not the one they want; Batman and the Joker's mutual reliance on one another...I don't know. The whole sense of the power of fear to create chaos. It's a very thickly layered movie, if you want it to be.
"Things are looking up" or "Finding more ways to get out of the house"
3 comments Posted by Kate at 4:45 PMSince James got home and we've had a chance to really settle in to our "real" schedule, things have been going much more smoothly, or I am less of a basket-case, or the boys are behaving better, or Meg's visit dissipated the bulk of the chaos, or the stars have aligned, or whatever concoction of elements has come together to put me in a significantly better mood. Sorry for those last angry posts representing the emotional overflow of our first and last experiment with solo tri-baby-watch or as I will forever remember it, "the weeks of the screaming trio".
All is looking much brighter now, especially with the addition of two brilliant Craigslist purchases--the kiderooz bike trailer/double stroller and an old school, hang off the back of your bike kid seat (just like the one I sat in back in the eighties) making for one heck of a caravan behind Mandy's teal beach cruiser. After a trip to Wal-Mart to buy an enormous planetary-orbit-of-its-own-
The unintended comedy of this picture (I seem to be cultivating my circus acts-we just need a monkey) is that the bike cruiser has an enormous, cushion-your-big-fanny-seat and the bracket to attach finn's seat barely bolts to mine with room for his legs. So he sits so close behind me that his huge helmet bumps against my back as he turns his head to look at passing traffic. Which I think in Native American would make my name, "sunburned woman with large headed papoose pulling two dazed babies and a noodle".
I love the whole contraption though. I feel free, as strange as that is to say, and I foresee long productive rides to the grocery store or the coffee shop or the scrapbooking store where upon arrival, I lock up the bike, unhook and attach a front wheel to the trailer to convert it to a stroller, take finn by the hand and...voila! My dad would be so proud.
- every time you come back into the room where she is entertaining 1 of the 3 babies, she sighs loudly and gives you a stricken face
- throughout the day she states her waning interest in children of her own saying things like,"huh, I thought I wanted five kids. Now I don't think I want any." and "geeze, you can see why they warn you about teenage pregnancy."
- when coming back into the house after having been at the beach with oldest and most difficult child for no more than 30 minutes, both babies are crying, one with a diaper on backwards and the remnants of his previous dirty diaper still all over him, toys are strewn helter skelter and she looks at you with pained expression of trapped animal.
- when asked to feed middle child lunch (all elements of the lunch lain out before her on the table and child already in high chair), she shrugs and says"I've never done that before" and after feeding him half a jar of baby food, they are both covered in the red goo of savory beef and potatoes. She gets up to clean herself up and leaves the gooey (and still hungry) child to me.
- when food or drink are offered to her in attempt at hospitality, she says in slightly annoyed voice, "when I'm hungry, I'll go looking for it" and does not eat the entire day.
- she calls your son ambiguously derogatory terms with a gradually more aggravated tone throughout the day starting with "little monkey" going to "little monster" and sticking at "you little devil" with no playful edge to the moniker.
- She tells smallest of babies (5 month old) not to roll off the couch as she rummages in her purse to find her ipod earphones.
- She manages to look both relieved and honestly put out that you won't need her tomorrow.
sample sized blush with its similarly tiny brush is completely useless to me. There is no way that I know of, to apply the blush from compact to cheek in a natural circular motion. It always looks like a thick tipped pink highlighter was colored haphazardly on my cheeks.
the little scoop that comes in the ridiculously expensive tin of formula is like-wise annoying and while provided for measuring out the right amount of powder for designated water, the diameter of the scoop is about the same as the diameter of the bottles so when dumping the, again, very expensive formula from scoop to bottle, much is sprinkled across the charcoal granite counter tops. The contrasted residue left after each and every bottle is made makes me want to scream.
Taking a walk with three boys takes much organization and coordination. Putting all of the boys in the car is similarly difficult. Bringing lunch adds to this effort exponentially. So when I pack Finn, Jake and Henry into the car with all parts of lunch and stroller and toys and plugs to go find the Kailua Beach Park and when we get there, I have two flat tires on the stroller and it starts to rain, it is a grave disappointment and much effort wasted. We walked a little ways to a covered picnic table anyway but then the famous--and until today absent--trade winds blew our lunch all around and we had to concede defeat, go back to the car and eat the rest of our lunch at home.
Fake crying is even more frustrating than all these combined. Finn sees me react to one of the little boys' crying and realizes in his developing mind that he can get my attention by crying. So he does, in the most annoyingly manipulative way that makes me want to put him in time out for the rest of time.
James is out of town for training in Portland this week and next and Scott is hardly around while any of us are awake so I am on my own. I have known this was coming and assured all worried parties that I would be fine, that plenty of parents of three children and more do it all of the time and I would just adjust, step up and it would all be over before any permanent damage could be done to any of us. Yesterday, I was sure this was the case. I got everyone up, fed, bathed, entertained and generally ran the household effectively with very few mind blowingly awful moments.
But today was just chock-full of them. I finished the book I had been reading while Jake was feeding himself a bottle, Finn was still in bed talking to himself and Henry was squawking beside me in bed. The ending was just really, really sad in that it-could-end-no-other-way sort of ending, which just made me put the book down and cry very hard because it was sad and because I didn't want it to end.
To rally my spirits, I fed everyone and put them in the car to go for a drive up the coast, to actually see the lovely coast line so famous for surfing and breathtaking views. I consulted the next door neighbor, as she came back from the beach, on the best route and then we set off. I went too far and didn't bring enough snacks or pacifiers or whatever the magic combination of soothing instruments and so half way through our hour-long outing, everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs. Including me. I pulled over a number of times to replug and redistribute toys, making the trip even longer and by the time I had turned around to go home, we got stuck in some mind boggling traffic at 11am, went through a construction zone that materialized in the time we had been gone and then followed the slowest little dodge spirit along the last 3 miles of winding road to home. I nearly back ended him to help the process along.
All three boys were fine really; I think they were crying mostly because everyone else was (this seems to be a common theme) but by the time we pulled into the driveway to my enormous relief, they were all hiccuping with subsiding sobs.
I'll do better tomorrow. Maybe.
Two weeks ago today we flew from the misty cool spring of Portland to this humid splotch of land in the Pacific to start up this lovely adventurous (read here maybe totally insane but trying to be upbeat) chapter of life. We are raising three boys age two and under who are each in their own way adjusting to transition with varying levels of patience and grace. Finn is two in all of the lovely ways that two is. He seems to be finding hawaii quite a bit confusing (this is our car? no mandy and cott's car. no maybe grandma barbara's car.) and often frustrating (no jakie the cakie not awakie, mommy color with finny!) but also really thrilling (we go a beach, no maybe go a pool or no maybe take a rest and play trucks). Henry seems to think pacific time was working just fine for his schedule so why change it now and so wakes fully ready for the day at 3:30 am. And Jake is finding this onslaught of new people both fascinating (he sits enthralled in the playpen on the back porch slowly scooting in circles to watch finn lapping around him on his tricycle) and slightly traumatizing (the first time James went in to re-plug Jake with his pacifier in the middle of his nap, Jake screamed quite loudly in surprise--probably thinking this strange bearded man looked nothing like anyone he knew).
It's been a rocky first week for me too now that Mandy has officially flown overseas and James is working. Most days are purely reactionary, changing diapers, feeding and putting children down for naps when it becomes blatantly clear that full blown melt down is approaching or already arrived. And for the most part, I'm starting to work things out and settle in. But we still have our moments of total mayhem or hilarity or beauty and mostly combinations of all three:
Tonight when giving all three boys baths at once, Finn conked his head on the faucet and started to cry making Jake cry and both cried harder to outdo the other until both of them were screaming in sobbing gulps. Henry lay between them in the tub grinning from ear to ear.
There are few things more cruel to a toddler than the small space on the porch where a tricycle might almost but does not actually pass through and which allows him to enter and get wedged but then somehow shrinks, chinese handcuffs style to keep him from getting back out again and which requires an adult to pick him up and wrangle the trike out from between the couch and the wall only for him to try again and yes, get stuck in the same place to cry and scream in complete exasperation.
Between the swallows and squirming that qualify as feeding Jake his bottle, I propped him up to pat him on the back and had the lucky reward of projectile spit-up launching from his mouth, ricocheting off the side of the leather chair in his room and drenching my entire left side from ribs to mid calf. I plopped him down on the floor, sopped up the mess with a blanket and picked him up again finding his back thickly frosted with poop that had pushed its way out of his diaper and nearly up to his hairline--this all within ten minutes of the bath mentioned in the first point.
During a salutory cocktail party given for mandy by her lovely next door neighbors, I added another person to the list of likely faces I will see when floating towards the light of heaven. Ralph, the sixties-ish math proffesor who hosted the event, found Finn a plastic sippy cup from his store of grandkids paraphernalia, filled it with juice and herded him to the backyard with a fist full of fancy whole grain crackers and once the sustenance had settled, picked Finn up, turned the sprinklers on and dashed around the yard in a previously determined path that left them both miraculously dry and noticably exhilerated.
At this same cocktail party, the huddle of women gathered on the wicker settees discussing a number of topics, had the unfortunate collective urge to discuss all manner of Hawaiin pesks leaving me for a number of nights following, laying in bed fearing the biting centipedes known to show up in people's beds, the scuttling rats along the back walls of the yard and the stinging man-of-war jellyfish that often entangle the appendages of helpless swimmers on the beach at the end of the road. As is probably supposed to be forgivable about these types of conversations, all stories were supplemented with some sort of dissmissal like, "oh, just watch for the blue bubbles in the surf that come after the trade winds have passed, 2-14 days after the full moon, and otherwise, it's perfectly safe to swim" making me feel less comforted than confused.
In a spurt of energy uncharacteristic of the last two weeks in general, I waited for the perfect moment of the morning to pluck Finn from bed just as he started to wake up, changed him, dressed him and loaded him into the front seat of the stroller, moved on to Jake's room and repeated the process, snapping him in behind Finn and then with baby bjorn cinched to my chest, scooped Henry out of his closet bedroom, fanangled his limbs through the grace-less holes of the bjorn, misted us all in a cloud of spray sunscreen and walked the mile to the Safeway down the road to buy nothing less cliched than baby food. I sort of preened to see the number of people who gawked out their window in awe of me or perhaps dismay at my circus-y looking caravan in the high heat of hawaiin 10am. The walk home was long and hot and slightly more circus-y as I balanced an iced coffee and favored a developing blister from my plastic flip flops.
The other day, when James got Finn out of bed, our son took James' face in his hands and said, "daddy, are you sad?" and James said, "no, I'm not sad buddy" and then Finn said with alarming clarity about the really densely emotional landscape that made up Mandy's week long leave ending with another trip to the airport for an unknowable time of separation, "just Mandy and Cott and Jakie sad." James said, "yeah, Finn. Mandy and Scott and Jakie are sad."
I'm sad too.
T minus two days and we are wheels up to Hawaii. As I mentioned before, our furniture is gone so pretty much all that is left in our apartment are stacks of clothes to be packed and bizarre food items from the back of the cupboard left to be consumed before we leave. The boys seem to be adjusting mightily well. Finn enjoys the expansive carpet space to park his cars and trucks in broader lots of OCD organization and Henry really couldn't care less whether he is sleeping in a fancy crib or a blanket on the floor next to our air bed. It's been an interesting week:
Finn once again ran out of diapers before we realized it so while James scanned the aisle at Target for the smallest possible bag of diapers so we don't have to carry them with us to Hawaii, Finn went "nakie". We have been slowly introducing the idea of potty training but not wanting to start something in the middle of major transition (babywise peeps would be so proud of me), we have put off actual training until we get to Hawaii. Even so, Finn yelled over the women of the View this morning, "I need to pee", we ran into the downstairs bathroom, I hoisted him up to aiming level and he peed. I realize that for many of you who read this and do not have children, this is a sort of uncomfortable and unnecessary anecdote for me to be sharing. But for those of you with access to kids, this, you realize is a momentous moment that makes your heart swell with pride on a first words, first steps sort of level.
Using up the cupboard and fridge food makes for interesting meals. Monday, James made grilled cheese with the last bit of creamy tomato basil soup and supplemented with the final contents of a can of spaghetti sauce to make it go further. We've eaten kiwi with nearly every meal because I found an entire bag of them in the back of the fridge behind boxes of leftovers. And this morning Finn and I made pancakes with the last bit of mix in the box. We have about one table spoon of butter left and no syrup so feeling very martha stewart-y, I thought to sprinkle some powdered sugar on top for taste and aesthetic appeal. I keep the powdered sugar in an old ball canning jar and when I went to sprinkle, I dumped a huge pile on top of the pancakes that resembled a science fair rendition of Mount Hood. Finn promptly plunged both hands into the sugar and then clapped. This all took place during the nakie portion of the morning so wrapped in a towel, sitting on the counter, he covered us both in fine, sticky white powdered sugar and grinned from ear to ear.
Finn's language skills seem to grow with surprising speed and content these days. He often latches on to a word or phrase caught from some unknown origin and repeats it in every possible scenario to try it out. This week's phrases have included "ride it like a horse" and "backing up, backing up" as well as the Happy Birthday song sung in a monotonous zombie-ish voice that makes James and me laugh a little nervously, not sure if we should be entertained or disturbed.
I read the Babywise books one and two over the last couple of days because Mandy mentioned that their philosphy on baby-raising is most closely aligned with hers and Scott's sense of how they would like to parent Jake. But having already traversed the stages they talk about with two kids, I'm having some guilt that I didn't implement these strategies with my kids for their obvious health and emotional benefits. It's like reading the directions on a super-elaborate barbecue grill after you already assembled it willy nilly and turned the propane valve on, thinking, "wow it's a good thing nothing exploded."
I also read Anne Patchett's newest book Run and really loved it. I'd heard it wasn't so good and had even thought about taking my name off the waiting list at the library but then, as is my custom, I forgot about it and got an e-mail that it was waiting for me at the holds desk. Since I'd been something like #940 on the waiting list and I was already at the library picking up the Babywise books, I thought I might as well skim it. I was really pleasantly surprised. Anne Patchett has a way of making really unlikely situations very reasonable and accessible while still successfully making her prose full of lovely descriptions and unexpected connections--sort of the best of a romance novel, a political thriller and a naturalist's walk through the woods.
More once we get to Oahu....
These last few weeks have been a flurry of changes and decisions leading up to a monumentally exciting move to Hawaii. The accompanying emotions are mixed.
We are getting the chance to live in Hawaii rent free in a five bedroom house a stone's throw from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world for six months. James has gotten the Ok to work from home on Pacific time (5-2 in Hawaii) so we will be going to bed early, exploring the island, taking naps and watching for "LOST" stars. We'll pay off some lingering debt more quickly, save up for a newer car and live a life we might not ever get the chance to live. It's really an amazing opportunity that I think anyone would fanangle their lives to allow.
But the initiating reason for us going is that my sister Mandy--whose house it is and whose son I will be caring for--is getting deployed to Afghanistan and is in fact already in the middle of Texas in the middle of the hot season getting ready to be shipped out. Via Skype, she seems in relatively good spirits, resigned to this reality as part of the deal, but maybe slightly more crabby and less impressed with all that the military has done for her. Sitting here with Henry squawking beside me, I just can't really imagine.
As a part of this move, we are packing up our apartment, paring down our belongings once again-less than a year since we moved out of our house in Indiana and did the same thing. Good friends who have recently moved to the Portland area and had no attachment to their previous furniture have given ours a new home while we are away, an easy, free storage system that benefits all involved.
So our living room is a parking lot for finny's trucks and cars and the boxes that vary in stages of fullness. I mentioned before my inability to time the weaning process of food in our fridge before a vacation. I seem to be about as good at packing up a house without putting something ridiculously necessary like a warm sweater for each of the boys in cool Portland spring or spatulas in the bottom of a box not to be found again until the next arrival.
We sold our car to a lovely girl who bought it for a song for her sister, also a lovely girl who seemed a bit down on her luck. I felt good about giving her the keys. But as she drove away and the boys and I stood in the cold rain at a Fred Meyer on the northeast side of Portland, waiting for our ride, I got very nostalgic and sad. With all of its quirks (awful handling, bizarre dash lights constantly blinking on to betray a new chronic problem, electrical malfunction making the back windows and the sun roof unusable), we brought both of the boys home from the hospital in this car. It's come a long way with us.
This all sounds very negative considering the unbeatable situation we have been handed. I am really excited about this chapter for James and me and the boys-Jake and Scott included. I think I'm just focused right now on the leaving and not as much on the arriving. I can't quite see the forest yet for the trees.
If praying is something you do, I would ask for yours especially right now. For the details of leaving; for Mandy, Scott and Jake's comfort and relative ease in transition; for a smoothing over of all the possible difficulties of living in community, for safety, and I guess also for a respectful, effective end to these wars.
As usual, this reminds me of Eliot, "not farewell but fare forward"
Fare forward, travellers! Not escaping from the past
Into indifferent lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'...
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
I picture the two of you very vividly as hippy parent inventor extraordinaires: well tanned and with lovely accents (you are Australian after all), athletically thin (you make jogging strollers) and bearing the characteristic idiosyncrasies of both the modern progressive parent and the self made business men that you are (this part I'm just conjecturing). And with this image in my mind--a sort of boyscout meets crocodile dundee meets metrosexual dad of three with a Subaru forrester and a compost pile sort of image--I write you this letter of appreciation believing that it means something to you to hear it.
I love your strollers. I mean really. I really love your strollers.
I fancy myself a progressive parent in my own right, but more of the garage sale-ing, taking mass transit, carrying a canvas tote everywhere I go kind of progressive (see here-less money than your typical granola mom) so your stroller, with its hefty price tag and slightly yuppy looking exterior would normally not appeal to me. But here's the thing, the whole design of the double stroller that converts so simply for varying children in different stages and does so with such minimal bulk is really just so very brilliant. So brilliant in fact that when I first saw one of your strollers on a clandestined day at a Borders in Beaverton, I chased the man down who was pushing it and bombarded him with questions as he hastily tried to find his wife and make his escape. I actually followed him through the store marveling at the apple green stroller with his two toddler aged sons riding comfortably double decker as their father swiveled and maneuvered between narrow bookshelves and dawdling customers. I dropped my books on a table near the door, waved my husband down and followed this man with the stroller out the front door to continue my interview.
The very next day, I went to the store of his direction and found the vary same Phil&Ted's stroller parked just inside the front door. A week later, after much rationalizing and some financial fanangling, we took our own green apple stroller home. As it would happen, we found the last stroller of a certain shipment from your lovely company that had been specially priced so that the double kit came free. It seemed like a good omen.
Ever since, I have pushed my stroller proudly to all manner of events and places, through airports and MAX stations, festivals and carnivals, on dirt and on grass and on pavement. And it has been worth every penny we paid for it and more. I live in a lovely city where it rains unforgivably often and as a newcomer, I know very few people. It would be very easy for me to stay home with my newborn and two-year-old sons and mournfully look out the drizzly windows. But with the initial motivation of making sure I got my money's worth and then for the continued joy of being outside and finding the trails and playgrounds in an ever-broadening radius from our house, we use it all the time.
I realize this sounds like hyperbole. And to some extent I know it is hyperbole. We would live quite effectively with a less lovely stroller and in fact would probably continue to breathe without a stroller at all. But my point is, your design is useful to my life. I walk more often: to buy groceries for dinner, to send a birthday present, to get coffee and then play at the park. And if walking more isn't progressive, than I don't know what is.
Thank you for the ingenious design of your double jogging stroller. I believe I am a better mom for its convenience and comfort.
Very best,
Kate Rohl
PS. While I appreciate the stroller's jogging capacity, I should disclaim that I have not yet utilized it for actual jogging.
PPS: Your company might want to think seriously about issuing me some sort of commission structure as I am easily persuaded into conversations with perfect strangers about the brilliance of your strollers and then a subsequent demonstration of its function. I have also introduced the stroller to entirely new markets visiting friends in both Indiana and Arizona where you, Phil&Ted are not nearly as well represented as you are here in cutting edge Portland.
Any of you that know my husband James might note in the first points of any description of him that he loves sports, I mean really loves sports. He would rather be watching an NBA basketball game than doing pretty much anything else in the world. And all other sports rank only slightly lower on his list of priorities. Give him a remote, he can find a sporting event. Leave him at home with the boys and our cable-less TV, he will stream the most interesting game available online. Give him a ball he will kick it. And give him an unknown person, he will find their unique sports passion so that he can talk to them about it- seriously.
And since the NBA playoffs are upon us (really the height of the height of his favorite thing), all conversations lead to some excited description of an elaborate play at the end of the game or a player's comments to some obscure journalist or a backwoods obsessive blogger's theory about the weaknesses of the triangle offense or the LA Times' most recent editorial about Kobe or...you get the idea. He is single minded.
For those of you who do not know my husband James particularly well, he is an excellent conversationalist. He finds not only your sports loyalties but your other passions as well. He can talk about urban development, tonka trucks or literary analysis of the modern American novel with equal candor and knowledge. He will find the subject that uniquely provides an overlap of interest.
Not so during the NBA playoffs. Or maybe its just me. Maybe he just feels the need to be polite to other people and talk about other things than the most important thing of all time, the Lakers playoff run. And so he comes home and just must talk to me about the burning questions of matchups and defensive strategy. Maybe he spends all of the alloted time and energy he has for other subjects at work. But around here, we are like a one man NBA TV-all basketball, all the time. And here is where my grievance with ESPN and really all sports media comes in. There are a number of bloggers and sports writers and pundits and hosts who love sports as much as James. They live sports. They know all the stats and subtleties of players and plays, they call coaches by their first names and refer to the playoffs of '88 or the obscure off season scrimmage between D-league rookies. They make podcasts with their other fanatic fan friends to talk about all sporting subjects. And in their broadcasted sports obsession, it validates James' personal sports obsession-he has camaraderie in this shared knowledge and passion. There are others who care as much as he does.
But there is a difference between James and them, a key, important difference. They get paid to know everything there is to know about sports. James does not. And when James knows as much as the people whose whole full time job is to know these things, well, it makes me wonder. Maybe James loves sports more than they do because he doesn't have to. Maybe these sports professionals with their intern researchers and their whole weekday schedule make it tough on us middle-american housewives whose husbands must read and know all that is offered. Maybe someone would pay James to spend his whole day loving sports. Maybe it's just May and the Lakers are in the playoffs.
Yes you read that right. I always thought that growing older and bringing children into the world might make me instantaneously more dependable, as if the hormones involved with childbirth might also bring about a sort of supernatural sense of parental weight-that I am now responsible for other human beings and so should be able to remember commitments and shot records and keep fruit cups in ready supply. Not so-in all of those examples actually.
I think I have come to terms with my youngest child-I'm pretty fun to be around-but don't count on me to make the reservations or arrive on time-kind of irresponsibility. And in most cases, I have surrounded myself with people (husband, friends, sisters, coworkers) who are generally more capable and so make up for my lack. But there are moments-and this week has been full of them-where I really cringe at my own space-cadet-ism. For instance:
At various points this week, both Henry and Finn have been down to two or less diapers and because the realization of this shortage came at inconvenient times (ie other child down for nap, in the middle of the night, generally feeling lazy, etc) instead of immediately running out to the store, I improvised other means. Not like swaddling them in a towel for days or anything but Henry has certainly worn finn's diapers once or twice in his life, cinched around his armpits for optimal fit and for Finn, we have dipped into the size six diapers that Bing accidentally bought, which I believe are large enough to fit most adults. Must work on keeping track of number of diapers left in package.
We are leaving on vacation this coming week and in an attempt to be responsible, I have been carefully avoiding perishable food that can sit in our refrigerator and rot while we are gone. However, it seems that this weaning process has taken its course a bit sooner than I expected and now, three whole days before we leave, we have bare cupboards and a fridge consisting of two containers of yogurt that stains Finn's lips a sort of frightening bright blue, a dribble of milk, a jug of iced coffee (not practical for children's consumption) and various kinds of cheese. Needless to say, yesterday in total exasperation at our food situation, we walked to Fred Meyer, bought corn dogs from the deli and ate them ravenously on the way to the playground across the street.
And the real clincher to my general reflective cringing came this past Monday when after napping the full amount of time that Finn would allow, I checked my e-mail and had a message from two dear friends with whom I was supposed to meet for lunch that said something like, "um well, we've been sitting at the agreed upon cafe for almost an hour and you aren't here. so I hope all is well and you just forgot..." The more awful thing is that these friends live far away, they have a 3 1/2 year-old son who I have not met-it has been so long since I have seen them. And I really care what they think of me. They are intelligent, caring people who I owe quite a bit of academic and spiritual clarity to. And I stood them up because I forgot and I took a nap.
This all, in combination, has made me feel quite bad about myself this week. I keep picturing Finn's friends' mothers in kindergarten issuing bans on my involvement in the PTA or carpools because I have been known to leave children waiting on the sidewalk at school for a number of hours or harriedly dumping chips ahoy on a plate for the bake sale. But the one consolation I can find is that I do manage to keep my children alive-pretty successfully actually. They mostly eat well and healthily with an occasional corndog, they are usually clean unless they have recently rolled around in mulch at the playground or eaten strawberries. And they seem happy. Really. I mean you should see them. If you didn't know me, you might think I am doing quite swimmingly. And while I am actively working on being more dependable (I see an elaborate internet calendar in my future that sends reminders through every technological method available), I think this sort of spaciness comes with the package. You might not like me quite so much if my datebook and I were better friends. I might give you a dirty look when you showed up late for our coffee date. As it is, you will always beat me there, always have well portioned snacks in your bag for your antsy children, and you will probably have to spot me a ten once in a while when I realize I left my debit card in the back pocket of my other jeans. I'm working on it; I'm not there yet.
I really meant well when I said that I would post on a regular basis, chronicling the moments in my stay-at-home-mom-ing life that are worth remembering, for my sake as much as for the people that read this blog. But for as many moments in a day that are worth telling, there are usually more harried, forgettable moments that keep me from meditating on those lovely worthy ones. So the last couple of weeks has been full of both types and I have written little. Here's my attempt to make up for it.
We flew to Arizona last weekend for an extended visit with Rohl family and friends who mostly mass-emigrated from California for the affordable real estate in the Phoenix area. Because this group of people have known James since junior high or longer and because we make it to Arizona so infrequently, everyone wanted to see us. So every meal, basketball game and shopping outing involved about 30 people and what seemed like 9,000 children. Compared to my relatively solitary life in Portland with the boys where the weekly trip to the grocery store constitutes the majority of our social interaction, all these people were a bit overwhelming. Once I realized that all talents of extroversion and adaptability were going to be required for this vacation, I really had a great time. I also got to see James and the boys in a different context than I am used to. For instance:
Finn is a natural born leader and seems to be perfectly content on 5 or 6 snatched hours of sleep in car-seats, various pack and plays and leaning on Bing's chest on the airplane. He dashed around Kyle and Melissa's house with Hayley yelling "dah dah dah dah" for a number of hours, zigzagged around Mark and Kendra's back yard with their dachshund Tyson, like two ships passing in the night-in fast motion, never actually acknowledging each other but following the same figure eight pattern worn in the grass, played with trucks at church nursery, sat in the dirt with the Jackson kids at the farm on Sunday afternoon, rubbing much dirt onto his sunscreened face to make warpaint looking pattern and generally made friends with everyone he met: "pop pop chuck, Yenny, mahhk, kenna, mahl, owen" and his favorite-baby hayley.
James is the best version of himself in this group of friends both because he has known them so long making him more comfortable and because James is enough different from the other boys in the group that he sets himself apart. He did dishes after huge meals, he picked up kid explosion of toys wherever we stayed and he held and cared for both of our boys as well as any other child who seemed to have a need. While these are normal parts of James' and my life, this kind of participation in the domestic and child-rearing scene is not expected of many of the other men we visited. It made me feel so progressive with our non genderized roles and reminded me that I am lucky to have him. He also told stories and teased his brother and generally shined bright the whole weekend.
And Henry, well he is just the nicest, best, smiliest, good natured baby ever-even with my bias taken into account. He got put in and taken out of the carseat and the stroller a zillion times, slept on a chair, in a king sized bed, on a couch, the floor and wherever else he could manage to drop to sleep amidst high volume, much action and a number of interested dogs. And never cried or noticeably fussed even when it had been an unforgivable amount of time since he ate and he had been passed to the thirtieth set of arms to be cooed at. He smiled at each oggling relative with fresh delight and even sat through an entire basketball game in the arms of his 7 year old cousin lyric, to her enormous joy.
Thank you all for your warm encouragement and your mutual distaste for the whole gosh darn grad application process, which often leads to rejection. Not just my rejection either, lots of really brilliant people have been rejected by grad programs. This makes me feel better. So thank you also for being rejectees and sharing your rejection so I can commiserate.
I have been bombarded with comments, e-mails and facebook messages to convince me of my non-dumbness and I think it may be working. I'm on the mend. I've thought very little about the scathing forward I would write in my first book citing institutions of higher learning with elitism, condescension and general demoralization. Much progress, really.
James brought the mail in yesterday afternoon and handed me a suspiciously skinny envelope with the return address of the MFA program I applied to at Seattle Pacific. I opened it quickly with a sinking sensation, like I already knew what it said, that they had a number of very talented writers apply this year and unfortunately they were not recommending me for admission to the program and that they hope I continue to pursue my writing and that I am actually an atrocious writer who they all referred to as the amateur but good luck waiting tables for the rest of your life with that English degree anyways. Ok not that last part but you get the idea.
Obviously the first overwhelming emotion I found was anger-that they could take such a subjective process and actually claim to have the authority to judge one manuscript over another, not in its actual merit but its potential, that I spent hours and many dollars at Kinkos copying versions of both personal writing and published pieces and agonizing over the order and cover page to send it off and be rejected, never seen again, that I actually spent those hours the week Henry was born making copies and doing last minute editing instead of staring at my new baby and soaking in my enormous good fortune.
But mostly I just feel dumb. Dumb that we moved to the northwest in no small part so that I could go to this program, dumb that I quit my stupid job and made James go back to work so that I could "pursue my passions", dumb that I have been cultivating a sneaking suspicion that I am a brilliant writer and will be discovered, published and heralded in the New Yorker as the "voice of our time" and just dumb that I made plans and told people and now its all not true. Now I have no plan. I am a stay at home mom in the suburbs, not an MFA student raising her children while interacting in a creative academic community, which sounds infinitely less boring. And the idea that I would take this time while going to school to figure out what I want to be when I grow up now just seems arbitrary, like I just needed some noble reason to quit my job.
After an initial freak out, we went to Applebees because advertising works inexplicably well on me and citrus teriakey boneless wings, mini bacon cheeseburgers and a margarita were just the things I wanted at that moment. Hoards of greasy food later, I'm fine really. Actually surprisingly fine. Lying in bed last night I told James that with him my base seems broader, like I'm less easily bolled over and while things still affect me, they affect me less potently. My edges are a little smoother because of him. This is a little cheesy in the manner of Jerry Maguire "you complete me" proportions, I realize. But I'm not devastated and I think I would have been before I met him.
So to sum up: I didn't get in to grad school, I was angry, I fealt dumb, I had some hot wings and I'm fine. I still feel really dumb for a lot of reasons and this week has really been awful in more ways than just this one but (and again not to sound cheesy or tie this up too neatly) I'm lucky and things are not all bad. Finn and Henry are getting over their colds, it's supposed to get into the 60's this week and not rain. And yesterday as usual when I woke Finn up from his nap, he had stripped his socks off during the time he spent in his crib. But this time he looked up at me and exclaimed in perfect imitation of me, "why are your socks off!!?" and grinned.
I think of myself as a much better parent than I actually am. When I saw frustrated mothers wrenching the arms of petulant children in the aisles of grocery stores, I shook my head disapprovingly and thought how I would do it differently, how I use words to explain why the world works the way it does and how I will instill feelings of compassion and goodwill in my children by example. But that was all before I actually had a two year old who drives his trucks forcefully over his newborn brother's head, who runs out into the street in the flash of an eye and screams to eat grapenuts cereal when I give him kix (silly me). As the author of the book I just finished said about her two year old, she must constantly"foil his attempts to kill himself"and I might add, foil my own attempts to wring his skinny little neck. Because obviously grapenuts will not kill him but the process of explaining to me that he wants one thing over another gets him and me worked up into such a lather that one of us ends up screaming and crying. And in these moments, I am irrational. I yell and snap and have even been known to wrench an arm here and there. Because thinking of a way to explain to Finn that he must not propel himself down the ravine of our backyard atop his riding truck takes too long. I must snatch him out of danger, not explain to him how to make good decisions so he keeps himself firmly planted on the cement of our back patio. No one warned me about this part of parenting. I thought that if you are a level-headed relatively laid back person in regular life, that you might be mostly that same person as a parent. Not so. I mean, I do have my good moments where Finn and I excitedly make connections between the ducks on the stream near our house and the ducks in the books that we read or that Grandpa Tom Tom does indeed have an RV like that one on TV and many others. But I am not the parent that I pictured I would be. I am the type to breathe a sigh of relief when they are both asleep because I am no longer on lifeguard duty or give in and feed Finn chocolate easter eggs because I don't want to fight him and explain the nonexistant nutritional value of the candy coating. In short, I am more impatient and lazy.
There was a great article in the most recent Wondertime magazine where the writer argues that lazy parenting might actually be good for the kids-ie they are more independant, lower maintenance and more easily adaptable. And I am just now watching the View where barbara and whoopi (we are on first name basis) are talking about their grown children coming to appreciate them and developing friendships with one another as adults. I know this reality with my own mom, realizing how much she loved me even when (or especially when) she sent me to my room to scream about the injustice of not getting LA gear sneakers. So I know I can redeem myself. And in the mean time, I'll probably let him eat grapenuts, snatch his truck away and say the thing I said I never would: "because I said so"
I don't think I am alone in thinking that my own voice--on a message machine or a video--sounds so shockingly not like the voice I hear myself speaking with that it always catches me off guard when I hear it, like 'who is that? oh, it's me...is it me?'
I know this phenomenon has to do with hearing the tone of your own voice through the reverberation of your own body or something like that and this makes sense. I have a particularly vivid memory sitting on my mom's lap at thanksgiving and listening to her talk as I leaned my ear against her sternum, hearing the muffled version of her voice and thinking this must be what her voice sounds like to her.
But as my sister Mandy visits us this week with her husband Scott and their new baby Jake, I realized something about my own voice- or maybe just cemented a thought that has floated around for some time. When I am talking with authority or with confidence-the voice I hear talking is Mandy's. And when I am telling a story and I know I am being funny, my voice sounds to me just like my childhood friend Emily's.
I'm sure this is not exactly coincidental or even genetic. I think to some extent I actually emulate these two voices when in the situation where their voice would lend some experience-like I channel them to communicate more fully. Because Mandy-the oldest of my three sisters- as a kid was the big boss of all of us by age and disposition and her voice in this mode sounds sort of cynical and annoyed, like she knows more than you do, thank you very much. We have a home video where she runs the camera, darting around our backyard in New York and barking orders-telling 4 year old me to stop limping (I think I had just gotten a shot). Now grown, this isn't her only tone. She is gentler and more diplomatic and we've leveled out in recent years, both adults, mothers and better friends. But she is a doctor in the military and a naturally electable leader so she's still got authority, even if not over me.
And Em sort of dallies through a story with no real set up or show, like she's sort of complaining about something-not whiny, just matter of fact and spontaneous. But then you are listening to what she's saying and it's hilarious and so unpretentious, like she doesn't even realize herself that it's funny until you erupt in hysterics. So when I am telling something, I use this voice. Not consciously, mind you- I just realized all this this week. But I do; I sound like Em and like Mandy and probably like a number of other people if I think about it. Mostly those two though
So Em and Mandy, you are the voices in my head (for better or worse). Congratulations.
I've realized on earlier birthdays than this one that birthdays change considerably as you grow older. No more bringing cupcakes into class or birthday parties at the roller rink of course, but also no more princess-type of days, where everything is special. Yesterday I woke up at five in the morning to feed Henry, woke up again at eight to ferry both boys downstairs (Henry in my arms and Finn clinging to my shoulders and hanging down my back as I barump, barump down the stairs to his glee) made breakfast-peaches and cheerios and coffee for me and settled in to watch Sesame Street. So far nothing straying from every other weekday morning except that when James kissed me goodbye he said "Happy Birthday, I'm glad you were born". The day progressed with both regularity and a few very princess-y moments:
My one consolation on making my birthday special-when the boys were both asleep so no nutritional accountability hovered, I made myself five pieced of bacon and cinnamon rolls-the kind that pops out of the refrigerated cylinder-because that was exactly what I felt like eating
When putting my makeup on later that afternoon, I found my foundation particularly thick and cakey and realized that I still had cinnamon roll frosting on my fingers and had smeared it on my face with my makeup.
About 50 of my 87 friends on facebook wished me a happy birthday including my old friend from elementary school, Janet who reminded me that I shared a birthday with my almost first boyfriend Chad-who asked me out by the bus in fourth grade and I said no (what a heart-breaker I was).
James came home for lunch and announced that we would be going out to dinner sans children in a ridiculously extravagant way (at a restaurant with no color crayons on the table and where the cost per prawn would buy a number of McDonald's ice cream cones) while James' parents watched the boys.
While straightening my hair getting ready for said dinner, I realized that I had a line of yellow smodged down my index finger and onto the back of my hand that I could not distinguish-either baby poop or yellow paint from earlier craft project. Later at the lovely, fancy dinner, I realized that I also had yellow smeared on my wrist with a hue of black marker making me look like a domestic violence victim being taken out for an apology dinner and confirming at least that with the evidence of marker, it was in fact yellow paint and not poop.
As a birthday wish, I requested that James take care not to refer to me as mommy the entire time we were away from the boys.
I ate braised lamb with gnochie and yukon potatoes at a restaurant called Veritable Quandry, which even if the food had been yucky would have been worth eating at for its name alone. The lamb, which I don't normally eat because it reminds me of Finny's white lamby in his crib and the lamby's live counterpart, was delicious and which I justified in that it was a very special occasion.
We arrived at Cupcake Jones a little after eight and ordered four itty cupcakes: bananas foster, thin mint, pearl chocolate and something coffee-ish that I can't remember the name of to eat later when dinner had settled a bit.
And finally to finish the night, we came home and watched the two hour season finale of October Road- a guilty pleasure we share and can only stomach the cheesiness of by regularly berating the lines and the dramatic montages. This episode did not disappoint us for material-there were three lengthy montages of angst and making out. We watched ten minutes of the evening news, long enough for the weather man to comment that he had "a forecast for our travel plans" making me pause and then comment, "Travel plans? What about a Monday night in March, nowhere near a holiday weekend makes him think we have travel plans?"
I turned the TV off and gathered a handful of shoes, toy trucks and dishes to deposit in their various destinations before climbing the stairs, brushing my teeth and going to sleep-all in all a wonderfully ordinary day leading up to a lovely extraordinary night out as an adult-where I ate leisurely with no one else's food to worry about and where I wore high heeled boots and a dress and eyeliner for crying out loud.
Since finishing the Hours, I have started in on a stack of books I got from the library and a pile of magazines we got in the mail over the last week. Reading bits of one thing and then another based on my mood, the list of things I am learning and absorbing is oddly diverse and perhaps a good indicator of who I am right now: potty trainer, vapid style watcher, self-appointed political theorist, blogger and future grad student.
So here's the stack:
On becoming Potty Wise for toddlers by Gary Ezzo and Robert Buckman-I assume the same driving force that came up with baby-wise; uses lots of terms for the process of potty training I never imagined needing like: elimination, volitional development, and enuresis and breaks all potty options and development into three steps. I guess three is a magic number
the Spring Anthropologie catalogue-lots of bohemian waifs in lovely eastern-inspired photo shoot-think curry, jewel tones and crumbling architecture
Country Living-really amazingly adorable story about a upholsterer in upstate New York who covers things the way you might dress someone with one cushion different from another in vintage stripes, toille, florals and velvets. These are a few of my favorite things.
Writers talking to writers- an anthology from Believer magazine where writers interview other writers and talk about the issues predominant in their writing, techniques, motivation. Really a great book but tough to read cover to cover.
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd-one of about seven copies we have of this book, which is a good thing because it really is Finn's favorite and there needs to be a copy wherever we are. I don't actually need to look at the pages anymore because I have the entire thing memorized. A couple of weeks ago, James and I actually laid in bed reciting it aloud, racing each other to the next line to prove we knew every word.
Practically Perfect in Every way by Jennifer Niesslein- a non-fiction book about a mom's journey with self help books and recommended by Catherine Newman, my favorite blogger that I don't actually know.
Rolling Stone-February issue- Beautiful picture of Jack Johnson on the cover (really, who doesn't love Jack Johnson, especially once you have seen his face? He's just so sandy and unpretentious) and the rest of the magazine seems to be about politics-Obama and McCain both make up stories listed on the front cover. Funny that my favorite political writer, Matt Taibbi writes for a music magazine.
Anybody have good book recommendations for me when I get mostly finished with(or give up on) these?
James and I are coffee drinkers but not really coffee drinkers. We have one of those tiny 4 cup coffee makers (4 measuring cups not 4 mugs) and we often don't even drink all of the coffee in the pot. When we don't finish the pot, we usually put the leftover in a cup in the fridge to have iced later. Our fridge is particularly cold so there is often a film of ice over the cup by the time you pull it out so you just add some cream and enjoy.
This weekend I opened the fridge, picked up the mug with the coffee dregs and did one of those close the fridge door with your hip moves and must have gained some momentum before hip hit door because the fridge closed with high velocity knocking the mug out of my hand onto the floor, shattering it into too many pieces to repair. I said,"that really sucks" after it hit the floor because it was a great mug, heavy and sturdy and nicely shaped. In fact, we have a number of mugs that match our dishes and hardly ever get used but this mug gets rinsed out nearly every day--it doesn't even make it to the dishwasher because it can't be spared that long.
It's also great because I stole it from the house of some close friends back in New Jersey, the Furlers and it commemorates the 10th anniversary of the church that my family helped plant when I was in junior high. So every morning my coffee or tea or oatmeal cools in this nicely shaped mug that reminds me of these friends and this church. It's like the t-shirt you have from summer camp that's faded and thinned to a lovely consistency that makes it infinitely better than any other t-shirt you own.
James was standing in the doorway of the kitchen as the mug broke and immediately started picking up pieces, pulling the trash can out and sopping up the spilled coffee with an old towel so that I wouldn't track through it with my bare feet. And he said, "I'm sorry honey" because he knew it was more than a mug.
I moped around the kitchen making Finny a plate of food to tide him over until dinner and James walked over to pick up my cell phone from the coffee table. Halfway through his first sentence, I realized he was talking to Al Furler, claiming that he broke my mug and wondering if they could send us another. Al, not being sentimental in the least, passed the phone off to Sue, also not very sentimental because she said half jokingly, "tell Katie, it's only a thing; get over it" but told James she would see what she could do about the mug.
I stood dumbstruck looking through the kitchen to the dining room where James paced, talking on the phone and when he hung up, I walked around the counter, put my arms around his neck and said, "I think that is quite possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me." And I think it was. Not that James isn't a thoughtful person normally or that people haven't done kind things for me but our life, James' and mine, made this act beautiful and loving because he knew the context of the mug both in nostalgic and daily meaning without me actually referring to either. And he knew that it sucked that the mug was broken. We have this ever growing pool of shared information that usually just goes unacknowledged but this Saturday, he saw something simple that made me sad and knew exactly why it made me sad and saw a way to make it better. And I love him for it. And I love the way his life and mine and now our boys' life all overlap and inform the others, like venn diagrams, making it a more delicate and a more poignant process to love each other-knowing what we know.
Today seems to be a retaliation day. Yesterday seemed so hopeful and lovely and today seems to have come out to smack yesterday in the face. For instance: Finn is screaming his head off in his crib because he is so tired that he actually is past the point of thinking it is a good idea to take a nap and henry has been continually fussy for inexplicable reasons all day and is just gearing up to join his brother in chorus from his crib in our room. I'm taking the let em' cry approach both because it seems to have the support of some child psychologists and because I am having a moment myself right now-the overcoming the urge to strangle one of them kind of moment. Not really strangle...nobody worry...it just seems a long way away-those beautiful intelligent and thoughtful children I had yesterday.
Here were the highlights (the vivid moments) of today:
Finn sat on the counter watching me make James' lunch munching on cereal but then insisting on having "a bahht" (bite) of whatever the current ingredient was that I was handling. I humored him with slices of onion and pepper, which he crumpled his face at in disgust after barely touching them to his lips and then proceeded to eat almost the entire package of provolone cheese I had saved for this particular meal. I salvaged two pieces from his grasp to melt on top of the sandwich but got howls and shrieks of protest in return.
Henry, sitting in his car seat and a fresh diaper nearly propelled himself under the table with the force of his pooping while James and I tried to take the smallest of naps on the couch nearby. He seemed to scare himself enough to start crying and hence end the nap before it started.
I finished the Hours, which made me sort of sad-both because it isn't the happiest of endings but also because I don't have it to read anymore. It should also be mentioned that I almost finished it this morning (three pages to go) while Finn cried in his crib wanting to get out of bed and with Henry lying next to me in bed, waiting to be changed out of his full diaper and milk soaked clothes...mother of the year, huh?
I realized with a pang of acute frustration that the kitchen, which I just scrubbed down with bleach yesterday (was it yesterday? it must have been wednesday when finn was with grandma. he would never have let me get something like that done) is already covered in onion peels, cereal crumbs dried into fruit cup syrup, a sink full of already stinking dishes and a garbage can full of dirty diapers and coffee grounds (our garbage can an indicator of life). Then I realized with an even more tragic clarity that everything I do is a process of redoing. I feed Henry and he is hungry again, I wipe Finn's face to have it covered in chocolate frosting again, I vacuum to find the rug so crumb covered you can't make out the design, the dishes, the laundry, the diapers, the showers and baths are all a maintenance. This sounds awfully depressing and fatalistic and again I say don't worry about me too much. I'm not sinking into the hopelessness of it yet. It's just all so damn unfinished and my house is always a mess. And unlike yesterday when I was struck by all of the beauty, today I am struck by all of the grime, the diaper rash cream and bacon grease under my fingernails so to speak. I know it gets better or there are better times.I hope I am grateful when they come.
In fact, during the time it has taken me to type this post, finn is quiet in his room and henry seems to have slipped to sleep in his crib beside me, both clean and silent for the moment. And I think I will go downstairs and do the dishes before I start new ones for dinner, take the trash out, put finny's toys back in the toybox and maybe take a nap myself--all a redoing but a bringing back too, back to peace, to tidiness and to my own conviction that this is a good decision-this move, this having kids and staying home, this recipe for dinner.
So I'm reading the Hours by Michael Cunningham, a book that has sat on my nightstand in that stack that gets started and left for other easier reads or for books that have due dates at the library (this stack also includes a Japanese book in translation, Places left unfinished at the time of creation and a number of anthologies that are easy to read a chapter and put down for months at a time). I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to read the Hours as it is beuatiful and flowing and I've seen the movie so I can sort of picture what the whole thing looks like, which is nice in that picture plus a thousand words way. Unfortunately, the book itself has the movie poster as a cover and I am fundamentally opposed to books that have been made into movies sporting the stars who made it-especially in this case because the character Clarissa who is played by Meryl Streep in the movie really loves Meryl Streep the actress in the book, which is just too strange and unfair to deal with when you are trying to absorb a character's personality.
Regardless, there is this really beautiful line where the Meryl Streep character talks about wanting to pour out her life to this old acquaintance but not in some sit around for hours and catch up-sort of way. She wants to pour out in one motion all the vivid pointless moments that don't make good stories. I don't have the book in front of me right now, I am busy watching sesame street, pulling the whells off and then "fitching" (fixing) them again, typing this post and pulling the blanket away from henry's mouth and nose so I'm not sure the quote is quite exact, but you get the idea. I told James that these vivid, pointless moments are just what I am struck with daily and tell him about and try to connect them in some way by saying "the other thing is" or "oh and also" which he always laughs at because he can never figure out what the first thing was.
But this line is so true about life. The moments like when Bing and his brother went walking along the train tracks with a kid they weren't supposed to hang out with and the kid shot a woman in the shoulder with his shotgun thinking she was a scarecrow (she lived and was out in her garden the next week) make really good stories but it's the other moments that fill in your life. I was thinking of these sorts of moments and compiling a list. My life as a stay at home mom right now does not have that many good stories but it is certainly full of the vivid, sometimes pointless moments that don't make good stories. And just thinking of them got me excited to write them down. James said that Larry King's column is like this (I haven't read it) where he lists things like "I really like green beans" or something like that. I'm going to try to jot down some vivid moments on a semi-regular basis, here on this blog to make this or that live in time and be remembered.
Here are a couple I am thinking of today:
Henry breathes really loudly when he is sleeping, which is really great because I don't have to get up and lay my hand on his chest to make sure he is still alive. This seems a little morbid I know, but any of you who have or have had a newborn know the feeling-like the life you made is so fragile and could stop and go away so easily.
Finn has started pretending to talk on the phone, imitating me, by leaning the phone on his shoulder and jabbering into it with his hands free to do other things. Just now he is holding the phone in this way between his ear and raised shoulder and then holding his toy school bus up to eye level and blabbering like he is reading the VIN number off to his insurance agent.
He also saw a commercial for Jeeps this morning and said outloud, with total joy, Jeep! like he had discovered that word and what it meant for the first time. I told him that Aunt Bum has a Jeep and he has been muttering "Jeep! Aunt Bum!" and smiling at me in this knowing way all morning. if I don't respond right away, he repeats it until I confirm and then raises his eyebrows and nods like, yeah I'm a pretty smart kid, huh?