Wrote this a few weeks back -

I miss living in poetry and thinking in images and talking in metaphor and living in a little bit of rebellion. I miss the opportunity to be an artist, which was - of course, a very self-indulgent life - however "cosmic" my then ideals might have been.

So many of my once rebellious thoughts have matured into polite agreements. And there are moments that I feel "sold out" for that reason. But the truth is, I entertained dangerous thoughts in those young days, and I entertained them deeply and madly. I let possibility run wild, and I untied all the ends of my ideas and let them wave around in the wind. And not that this is the "end," but . . . in the "end," some of those ideas became fastened down to safe places. To places that feel right. And I take no shame in that. I am thankful to no longer be a thing that has to blow wildly in the wind. I'm thankful to have some anchorage.

But I do still miss the opportunities to be wild. Not spring-break-in-Cancun wild . . . Jack Kerouac and Laurie Andersen wild. Taking the chaos of possibility and weaving it into something that seemed endless, not neat and finite and folded-into-color-coded laundry piles . . .

Motherhood has made my soul. I find myself even enjoying changing messy diapers, for the chance to laugh and watch him laugh, loving the laundry for the chance to adore little sparkly Tessa socks and fascinate at her brilliance while still yet so small. But today I do realize every human's need to be something in themselves, to have a personal identity and maintain that and carve it out. My art nowadays is the obsessive tidiness of our home, like some assemblage I once used to make.

I wonder what art I will make at 50 when my children are no longer at home. I will probably make something reflective, grieving to regain these days . . .

Excuses.

It's funny to me to remember other New Year's days whereupon I made massive lists of resolutions. I argued then that resolutions were not corny, and with all earnesty I believed it was a noble thing to reflect and aim to be better. Then I became a Mom. And now, the time to even think about how I live and behave is a luxury so hard to find. Still, my shower-thought of the day was that even the best excuses are still just that . . . excuses. Us humans, with all our many different individual challenges - are all still capable of so very much. I know that in so many different domains of my life, I am capable of more. Which should be exciting and not discouraging.
So without committing myself to too many specific failures, this is my little toast to disavowing excuses. Happy 2012!

Kind of a perfect day.

Tessa has this thing on her nose. We're still not 100% sure what it is, even after a doctor's visit. This kid. Her hives nearly made me lose my mind. (This is not a hive) . . . but - after I returned to work - the first full day I worked, I came home and hugged her and she blew up with hives. Just all over. We've deduced that she is allergic to the roach droppings that were plaguing my room. So Judy got me some helpers, and my entire classroom closet went in the trash. The WHOLE thing. Paintings I made in Italy, sentimental art I made in college, tons of art supplies, just so much stuff. And it was kind of nice to purge, in a way, but it was sad, too. I just did not have the time to sort through it with an infant at home, and I really didn't feel safe or confident doing it. And it had to go soon. So it's gone. And I have a newly floored, painted, organized, pared-down closet, and no roaches or their poop.
SO anyway, her nose. She has this patch on it that appeared on Monday and it's just weird. I was scared it was staph. It's not. Possibly a reaction to latex, when she had her 3 year appointment on Friday. Which was  really a huge nightmare, she went NUTS with the blood draw, poor angel. So I took her to the pediatric dermatologist today. Took a half day and grabbed her for the appointment. They have a HUGE fish tank. She was convinced that our purpose of being there was to see the fishes. And all the pictures of doggies in the exam room. Just a little, sweet chatterbox about all of it the whole time.
Afterward, we went to Mimi's and grabbed her for an ice cream. Tessa was so sweet and polite, she got her favorite pink ice cream in a big cone with sprinkles. The 3 of us went to the park and ate the ice cream, sitting in the grass under a big tree. A drippy mess, a little hot, totally wonderful, still. Went back to Mimi's for a bit and then headed home.
Finn was so good - slept so LONG last night, 10 hours total - quite frankly, my boobs were like basketballs this morning. Gross basketballs. He is just always so smiley. So tonight was no exception. I used to say that I swore babies could see angels, the way they just smile and laugh at seemingly nothing visible to us. Today marked 9 years of Granny being gone. I swore she paid him a little visit today - on his 2 month birthday!
Andy cooked a great dinner tonight. While he was working on it, I went for a run. I considered it the closing ceremonies on this pregnancy, which is a big deal to me. It's been over a year, with the miscarriage last summer and all. I haven't run in seemingly forever. I've gained . . . let's see. 10lbs between college and marriage, 5 lbs between marriage and getting pregnant, 5 lbs after having Tess, and 10 lbs with this pregnancy! Something like that. So I went for this monumental run, in the 90-something heat, still - and loved it. Trees and trails. Just like I remembered them! I think you don't really live somewhere until you know the terrain by foot. I felt horrible. My legs hurt and I was running so hard I was drooling on myself. And you know that joke about Dolly Parton and the black eyes? I was afraid of that. Just not pretty. I did the first mile in 8:10. Which was not by virtue of my body, technically, I really can't run that fast. Sometimes we question where Tessa gets her incredibly strong will . . . I am really proud of my ability to mind-over-matter when the situation demands it. After that mile I gave myself a break and walked the second mile home. In the end, I'm excited to realize I can still do it. And that just sacrificing 15 minutes, I was able to cover 2 miles of ground. I like to imagine that over time, I will progress from the type of runner people passing in cars behold with pity to become instead a force-with-which-to-reckon. I have been that before, and I can surely be it again.
Taylor was supposed to come out tonight and he got stuck at work. We told this to Tessa and she got all wide-eyed and shrieked "Quick! We have to run! We have to save Taylor!" I wonder what she was envisioning? Clearly she saw him quite physically stuck in something.
At dinner (which Andy so lovingly prepared), she said a prayer. Something about baby Finn not falling off the couch (this is a regular request in prayers, we have no idea of its origins) and "please help Mommy make lots of boobie milk." I'm so thankful my toddler upholds my lactation in prayer.
She fell asleep nearly mid-sentence . . . in her high chair, a fork loaded-up with meat, in her hand. Literally, we turned our heads to see Finn after she  said something, and turned back and she was out. It was so pathetic. She missed her nap today and was so tired. So she went to bed early, Andy carried her in like a little sack of potatoes. After dinner, it started to storm and Andy brewed some decaf. We turned off all the lights and opened the kitchen windows and sat in the quiet, sipping coffee, nursing Finn, snuggling, watching the display in the sky. Listening to our favorite music, until somehow "the Wheels on the Bus" somehow snuck itself into our playlist and completely destroyed the calm vibe we had going on. Of course, making us laugh hysterically.
I just don't know if days can even get any more charming. I couldn't ask for more -
:)

Why am I here?

I don't really have time to be here right now, but I just wanted to whine about going back to work tomorrow. I have a stack of paperwork to sort through. Which probably sounds like I'm a disaster. The fact is, I'm really NOT a disaster at home. My home is kind of like scary impeccable most of the time, because I'm nuts about it. Don't get me wrong, it GETS messy, but I am perpetually tidying. I'm more of a tidy-er than a clean-er. I do like things sterile, too. You know I'm a germophobe! Lol! Anyone who knows me at all surely knows that bit about me. I just don't like disorganization. And it's hard to be organized in the small spaces we live in, on a small budget . . .
Anyway. I go back to work tomorrow. And I'm sad for all the things I didn't get to do in the summer and on my leave. You think it's SO much time to do things, but it's so busy. I thought I would do so much more. Besides that, I'm just grieved to be away from my babies. If anyone in the world was made to be a stay at home mom, it's me. Some girls get bored at home. I thrive. It's the greatest.
So anyway. Back to it. I Love LOVE teaching, I love the little kiddos, I love being in an art room, it's fantastic. But I'd rather be home.
So I'm sad.
:(
What a blessed problem though, to have two gorgeous children with whom I'm so desperately in love - to miss and miss and miss while I'm away at a great job.
I can't really complain.
But I still do!

In these days.

I'm not really faithful about blogging for several reasons. It seems that a blog should have a thesis (or maybe I'm too fresh out of graduate school!) But really, which corner of my life should I devote to writing about? Without picking some area, I'm certain this will always be incoherent rambling that would truly interest nobody in ever reading, and less - myself(!) in crafting a log of scatterbrained ramblings. But I just can't decide which little nugget of my life will be compelling enough to reflect on every day. Motherhood? Cooking! Teaching. Bits of philosophy and spirit. GLITTERRRRRR!!!! You gather my dilemma. I'm just right of schizophrenia enough to be able to laugh about it! So if I have grabbed a reader's eye, just know - the surprises here may likely be mundane, aaaand the topic of focus is quite likely to be inconsistent, at very least!

Finn is here. I wrote out a long, long, LONG story of him, in summary - from the verrrry beginning, from before he "began," through the pregnancy, to these precious, sweet early days of coming to love him so dearly. From wanting him in our world, and musing about him, to finding out we were pregnant on the day we set up for Christmas, with lights and piles of garland, in tears to realize ourselves as a family of four, through the long, nauseated pregnancy to our excitement at the hospital. And by "excitement," I'm referring to being turned away at the door for induction (no rooms ready), needing an adrenaline shot during labor, and experiencing my son's blood pressure dipping due to a cord around his neck, followed by vacuum suction to deliver him into the hands of NICU staff. All for the positively transcendent moment of beholding his scrunched-up, purple and white, grouchy looking little face for the very first time, so tearfully and so instantly in love. For his rough start, Finn has grown in just these four short weeks to show himself as remarkably mellow, incredibly tender and beautifully calm. Just as he was in the womb. We have had an indescribably sweet four weeks as a new family, with Tessa utterly smitten with her new "little guy," constantly commenting on how cute he is, always kissing and cuddling and loving on him so gently. He is a great eater, growing fast, sleeps beautifully - life is almost easier in these days than it was before he came. Tessa has matured exponentially - going from an almost unhealthy attachment with me whereupon she seemed to always have to have her finger on me, to a wonderful independence and a surprising surrender of my attention in this beautiful awareness of allowing his needs to be met. We are truly an overjoyed, happy family. Not without our ugly moments at 3am and grouchiness and spilled milk and over tiredness and piles of diapers and unkept laundry, but deeply, soulfully satisfied and all so mutually in love. This is such a magical time, and truly - if I was given the choice, I would without question jump at the opportunity to re-live the labor and delivery experiences of both my children, for how exquisitely transcendent and deep those moments were, to meet these little people at once, so overwhelmed by love and gratitude.

So Finn is 4 weeks old. We are in our new home, which is more or less all-settled, decorated, cozy. These things I was never sure would ever be part of my vocabulary - my husband, daughter, son, and even, my home . . . I savor the opportunity to even speak their names.

Work begins again for me in two weeks. I love my job. I dream of never having to return, to living in this almost imaginary world of diapering chaos and sweet, soft cheeks on my lips and homemade yeast bread in the oven midday. I try to not be bitterly jealous of the women out there for whom my temporary fantasy is a daily reality. When I return to work, I  did before and will again - love my job and thrill for the challenge of it and make it the best place to be from sheer belief that it's just silly to let yourself be in one place wishing to be elsewhere. So while I am here, I will likewise think little on other places and absorb deeply, every soft little kiss and sleeping breath and colored marker cuticle and peanut-butter smile. These days are so dear to me, I'm so happy they are truly here.

House.

Just this time last year, I graduated. One of my final courses was a studio art class where I made this giant dollhouse. 9 feet tall, in the confines of our little apartment garage. Borrowed tools from my Dad. A lot of kind friends and family members helping it get finished. Making this thing, sourcing the materials and ideas, it was a meditation on my fear, really - that we might never own a home. Financial challenges made me afraid that we would forever be renters. That renting, even - might be too hard as economic times continued with difficulty. So I made this house as a fulfilled dream, on whatever scale I could accomplish it. And then I graduated.

One year later, we find ourselves at the end of months of house-hunting with a realtor. Our first meetings with him left me feeling like a bad actor. That these terms and questions and scenarios couldn't possibly be for my maturity level. It still seemed like things for an older generation. And today I'm 33. The unfamiliarity of it all left me feeling like a little kid - someone more fitted to a dollhouse than a mortgage. But gradually, as these mysteries became understandings, the fear turned to hope and then to confidence that this was our correct timing, and soon we would probably escape the vicious cycle of financial loss that is renting. Renting has served us well when we needed it, and we have been blessed to live in places safe and lovely. But we are also so ready to move on. To have a place that is in fact our own. To build up, to destroy in parts, to generate for our children that protected feeling I remember having in a house, that the walls seemed to embrace and love me as they watched my youth unfold.

We have had quite an adventure in hunting. Our search has spanned several zip codes and we have compared and contrasted homes 1400 to over 3000 square feet in size. Tidy small places. Giant, crumbling foreclosures, and everything inbetween. The most memorable property was one that had tall trees filling the whole front yard. I can barely begin to explain it. It was like all these skinny trees were stuck in the yard like big straws, with bizarre water features and Christmas lights left hanging. Then, inside there were mirrored walls and strange textured walls with small squares having one silver thumbtack hammered into the center of each spot. By the hundreds. I just imagined some person, hour after hour, hammering tacks into these squares all up and down the walls. Then we went outside. A huge wall of bamboo was actually very beautiful outside the pool, but with a strange mesh fence that didn't seem to make sense. This odd, hollow area was over what should have been the only patch of grass in the yard . . . and from what we gathered, "grass" was likely the exact thing underneath. Strange water features flowed between different areas and we gradually pieced together that somebody MUST have been growing something verrrrry special on this land. Our realtor suggested we take my Dad out there as a joke and try to convince him that this was "the ONE!" Haha! These were our adventures over the last months.

We had narrowed it down to three properties. All of these homes sit along a fantastic web of jogging trails, surrounded by thick woods and trees that remind me of my childhood in Connecticut, not the blazing heat of Texas. We've walked the trails in various places and utterly fallen in love with the area. Bit by bit, our simple dreams of shared family memories are seeming to come true. We finally decided to place an offer on this one, very small but incredibly charming little home on a street called "Hanover." Andy has long dreamed of gardening and landscaping as I have dreamed about painting murals in nurseries. The backyard is beautiful and we can see ourselves entertaining and just "hanging out" at night, doing the silly, simple things we like to do as a family, just with that much more lovely a space. So we offered, they countered, we offered again and we waited. 

Last night, we had a date night long-planned, to go see Arcade Fire (a really fantastic band, if you don't know them) play a concert in Dallas. We never go out. It was our latest date night yet since Tessa's birth. We have so few recent memories of traipsing around together, holding hands, being a couple, without something urgent or pressing to do. It was a much needed night out as grown-ups. All through the evening, we talked about our plan for a counter-offer, and what we were willing and not willing to propose. Opening acts played, we walked around, and then returned with a few minutes before the main show hit the stage. Sitting there in the dark, Andy's phone lit up and I immediately saw the words "offer accepted!" . . . we were stunned that they accepted our counter, truly never expecting it, since they had only budged by a small amount the first time. We hardly ever kiss in public. And right then, we put on quite the show, me with my big pregnant belly, surrounded mostly by teenagers, given new energy to enjoy this wonderful show! The band came out within moments and the album they were promoting was called "The Suburbs." As they started to play, vintage-looking film footage of kids on bicycles in old Texas neighborhoods flashed on the screen. A big sign lit up in red "THE SUBURBS." Houses and kids punching eachother on front lawns, the lead-singer then telling stories of his childhood in Houston, with some parts "depressing," and nostalgia for the warm Texas rain. It was almost frightening how everything seemed to go together to make this complicated but beautiful story that wasn't all fantasy, but many parts hard reality and some parts hidden, sometimes exquisite beauties of family and life and home, for whatever that ends up meaning to all of us. And here we were, setting one foot into making a real home for ourselves, doing that sort of "settling down" that you hear people talk about all the time - with all its relief and hope and all the fears that seem to make sense.

They want to close 20 days before our lease is up (we'll see how it ends up. Our plan is to request more time!) We have moving expenses. We need a fridge and a lawnmower and paint. Our apartments have usually charged us upwards of $700 at move-out, for carpets and wall paint and all the things they will replace, regardless of condition (love that!) We are so excited to be burdened with this new responsibility, and so grateful that we might ever have the chance to consider these things! And our son will be here July 29! Such adventures. Such joy!

Satisfied with loose ends

I've had some blogs in the past. Always reflective of what was on the menu of my life at the time . . . "runningtostandstill" . . . kind of a log when I was super crazy into running, some other ones about all things artsy (during school), some spiritual meanderings as I came to one turning point - and one while I was pregnant. I guess, in a nutshell, those items sum me up. Running has all but completely fallen by the wayside, and boy do I miss it - if for nothing else than the clarity it gave me, in my head. Ok and the toned arms and legs. It was nice in those different times to feel like my life had some sort of "thesis" . . . that there was some central focus to what I was "working on." Now I'm becoming a Mom of two (yikes!) and of course, things are incredibly scattered! I treasure my scattered little life with all my heart. And I'll take this little place to jot as an opportunity to remember what it is that I come home to in my person when I'm not orbiting about, buzzing like a bee . . . and occasionally . . . prego-napping!

I'm one of those artsy people with that need to express myself. Not always having something actual to say . .  . just knowing that I have to say something. That's kind of how it always was for me with painting and whatnot. I made things because I had to make things. Not because I had some big political message or something. I was always jealous of the artists in school who seemed so clear and logical about what they wanted to deliver. I was never that girl. Expression is like a biological function for me. The day to day "small talk" in my life isn't enough. I have to smear colors on the world, and I have to have somebody notice them. It's half about elation and fascination, sometimes about woe, it's worry and occasionally heartache and thankfully often enough a celebration.There are so many different tones I could choose in this moment - where to wander next. How about some pregnancy TMI? Or should I open up a conversation about my partially unreconciled spiritual questions?  Or art teacher content!? Do I bore you with my grinding upset about getting fatter over the years and all in all, lacking the strategy to truly change it? Do I drag you into my panic about the environment? Thrill for cooking? Day to day laughter (and tears) of parenting? Who knows. I don't have a thesis. Maybe this blog will be a little bit of everything, reminding me that a little bit of everything is not in fact nothing, as it sometimes feels to be. As a mother, you accomplish all these small things in a given day, and truly - none of them are individually heroic or incredible, but somehow . . . you go to bed both satisfied and having so many loose ends. Like my "to do" lists of so many items, some that get re-written week and week again.

We're having a son come July. I came to realize how terrifying the boy's toy aisle is to me in Target. I'm terrified to have these ugly toys in my home, and what they might do to a child. It's been so nice having a girl - things are so familiar and charming to behold . . . what will I ever do if he wants to have these ugly WWF figurines and black swords and creepy monsters? I'm strategizing already how to get my son excited about wooden toys and handmade spacemen . . . Ok. I'm going to call that my "thought for the day."

The. End.