Colorful secrets...

My heart is full today.

All of our plans, all of the changes we knew were coming are picking up speed. No details to share just yet. All I can really say right now is that it feels so good to be here, just like I knew it would. The mounting bustle of excitement for all the good that is starting to happen and all the good we know to expect over the next year is tempered by daily business: play dates, dinners, the dentist, work-related disasters, errands and watching from the safety of my husbands embrace as the love affairs of friends sour. I am thankful to be in this place now for there is peace within all of this excitement. 

It's amazing how much more I get out of being with her when I am able to be fully present (read: I am not overwhelmed and stressed). This makes me really happy for so many reasons but wanna know a secret? I'm especially happy because someday soon she will form her first memory and I want it to be a good one. I wonder all the time about what it will be? Drawing on the mirror with crayons? Kissing one of the cats? Reading with me in the morning?
My first memory is of me standing next to the microwave by the kitchen table and asking my mom, "Is today my birthday?" Apparently I asked this a lot because her answer was exasperated and annoyed - no, that day was not my birthday and neither had been the days that preceded it! It's easier to not get exasperated when life going your way. 

Ada is talking more. Finally!! She has added balloon, broom, mano (hand), yellow, boo boo, on, off, turtle, and apple to her vocabulary over the past week or two. This is awesome except for that all colors are yellow and all fruits are apples. She'll figure it out. For now I know that when she asks for apple she really means strawberry. 

She also cleverly runs to grab her favorite blankets and flops down on the floor in front of me whenever she is ready for a nap. 

Her molars are coming in so she's a bit crabby over the past few days. Hence the lack of pictures. I'd rather not put up pictures of her crying and screaming. There has been plenty of that. On with the day...I hear my girl waking in the other room and I want to go cuddle her while she is warm and sleepy!

Aptly Put.

My friend Erika told me recently, "Kids have their own agenda. They don't give a rat's ass about your plans."

Aptly put and she has a right to say. She has three kids and is one of the most dedicated, joyful moms I know. The context of this conversation: we were discussing all the things about parenthood that we didn't expect and, once we discovered them, were not as bad as we had feared prior to having kids. A relative loss of control is one of them. Tim and I got an early lesson in relinquishing control when we thought baby peeper didn't have a brain. Longest, hardest two weeks of my life. Now we give up control over other, comparatively less important things. Like Easter weekend in Santa Barbara.

We had a great time - it was warm, different, and lovely. Tim and I embrace pretty much anything that removes us from our routine. Ada, however, does not share this sentiment. Don't get me wrong: I loved her version of the trip. It was full of wonderful surprises and delicious moments that I love reliving right now as
I sit to write this. It's just that mine might have included more sleep and less vomit.

The car trip takes about 5-6 hours down the El Camino Real. It is really beautiful in parts. I can imagine that sitting in the back of the car not being able to see or appreciate the rolling hills makes for a boring trip. As such, we planned ahead to have handy lots of games, snacks, Elmo videos and my purse. What could be more fun that sunglasses (I love how she juts out her chin to try to keep them on her tiny nose) and my favorite $20 Jane Iredale lip gloss?

I figured we were in for a magical weekend based on all these beautiful rainbows we saw rising triumphantly from the foothills.

Once we got to Santa Barbara we found some dinner and settled in for the rest of the night. We went through the bedtime routine, keeping everything as predictable as possible. Then I tried to put her in the P n' P. Oh forget it. I thought the hotel manager would be knocking down our door to ask us to leave for all the noise she was making. I hate to hear her cry like that. I mean, she's not even two years old so it's not like she's doing it on purpose to ruin my adult evening relaxation. She's in a strange place and scared! So I went to get her and she was so grateful that she threw up all over me, herself and the bed. The three of us slept together all night long. Repeat of Portland and Hawaii.

Pointing is the new favorite thing to do. Pointing to the sky, the birds, the bus, the doggy...and she can spot Elmo from miles away.

This baby and the beach are like peas and carrots. It just slays me to see her running along so happy and free.

Only hitch tot he beach is that she insists on being carried to the part where the firm, wave-packed sand is. She lets her father or I do the hard work of navigating the shifting sand. We're happy to oblige.

I love to see her like this: wind in her hair, bare feet in the sand, and a pensive smile on her face.

Her favorite game with Daddy was to give him a rock, watch him throw it down the beach, then fetch it for him. This went on for at least 20 minutes. Apologies for the terrible lighting...

It's one thing to feel so humbled when you realize you are the tiny human on the big planet. The sight of tiny her on this expansive beach? The limitless possibility before her makes me feel so excited for her.

After the beach we saw a bunch of kids running in the same direction with their Easter baskets so we followed them. The Santa Barbara Fire Department was hosting their annual eggstravagana! I nice fireman gave Ada a little hat, which she reached up to swipe off her head about 1/2 a second after this picture was taken.

Ada and the Easter Bunny are old friends (this is the same costume as the Easter bunny she had her picture taken with).

Tim tried to teach her about grabbing all the chocolate eggs you can get your hands on but she was not interested. She watched all the other little kids instead.

                     Slide = success.                                                             Carousel = failure.

We tried to lay down with her quietly for a nap but after her bottle (yes, she still gets one) she say bolt upright and was smiling and saying, "Hi, Ada." So we put her in the car and drove all of 2 blocks before she conked out and we went to taste some regional wines.

Bedford winery in Los Altos. There was a beautiful little courtyard there. She's technically running here - both feet off the ground simultaneously.

Tim kept asking me when Ada was going to fulfill her destiny as a daddy's girl. He bought her a cupcake for a dollar from some kids fundraising on the corner. After that she kept running to him for hugs. Right there in a grassy triangle in Solvang, Daddy became the preferred parent.

Longoria winery in Los Olivos.

Tim pulled over to a vista on the drive through the mountains back to Santa Barbara. Looking out over the valleys and mountains is breathtaking always. From her perspective it was pure exhilaration.

Saturday night the three of us were knocked out by 8:00.  I'm all about co-sleeping and bed-sharing families. Go with whatever feels right for you, I love it! I just don't know how these families do it. With her in the bed you can count on it not being a great night of sleep, but it will be long.

Easter morning back at Hendry's beach. Before I took off her shoes I noticed that someone who shall remain nameless had actually put them on the wrong feet.

The joys of being the favorite parent.

Baby feet make me crazy. Those sandy chubby toes...argh!!

Full of gratitude that this is my family.

We visited with a friend Tim has known since the second grade. In their backyard we orchestrated a little Easter egg hunt for Ada. This was more her speed with little board books and wind-up chickies.

Mo's BBQ in San Luis Opisbo. She insisted to carry her own Easter basket with her new treasures.

So there it is.  Easter weekend Ada's way. Once we were home we let out a deep sigh and went to be kind of early, happy to nuzzle into our own beds. There were a handful of surprises once we got home too but more on that a little bit later. For now, we're just getting back into the groove. 

Hope everyone had a great weekend too. Thanks for the comments, by the way! I love reading them and, I'll be totally honest here, my heart races a little bit when I see a new one was left :-)

Buttoning Up

So many wonderful things are happening. Events that, only a year ago, seemed so far away that they might never get here are now just around the corner. The coming times seem to hold more power to shape the life of our family than anything else ever has... sometimes my mind is buzzing at such a high frequency it's hard to focus.

It's really here. It's really happening. We're almost done. Yesterday the invitation for Tim's graduation from residency came in the mail.

Because of the aforementioned lack of focus, there is no theme for this update. I need to button up a few thoughts before the weekend. Time lately has been wonderful but tiny incidences pop up like puzzle pieces. I'm not sure how it all fits together just yet or if it even really needs to.


Urban Recess with Kathi and Sarah. Oddly, no pictures of the girls together. Two reasons for this: one, Ada was clinging to me like a monkey baby (still at the apex of separation-anxiety) OR two, the kids were running around like lunatics. There's this long hallway with colored lights. Ada thought it was the.best.place.ever. She ran the length of it countless times.




Naked Baby:
Apparently naked baby is now also a naked sous chef. Her Daddy is quite a good cook, by the way.




Sleeping:
Swear I feel like I can't get enough no matter how I try. This baby? Like a rock now that we have a giant fleece sleepsack and she isn't throwing the covers off herself in the middle of the night causing her to get freezing cold and wake up screaming.




Reading:
I had hoped that with some gentle guidance she would love books. She does. Emily's Balloon is her current favorite.




Loving:
Still loving being home with her that extra day. Post-nap warm, red-cheeked, snuggly baby.




Small Appliance love:
I have it again. How? How did I live without this brilliant thing? I love my new Dyson. Totally worth every penny (thank you United States Government for the tax return).




Friends:
We're lucky to have found our little group in town.




Fertility:
Sweet Jesus. It's just frustrating. Doing all I can until I get in to see the RE. My acupuncturist is brilliant though: I'm up to a 14 day LP - my longest ever. I would think this was really, really a good sign except for that I already POAS and it was negative. My Magic 8 Ball is full of shit. Keep in mind that the only thing missing from this documentary pictures is the wheat grass juice I slog back daily and the weekly acupuncture needles.

I know it's kind of weird, but I had to line up all this crap and take a picture.I want Ada to know that we tried really hard to give her a brother or sister. If we have another baby, I want it to know that it was so, so very yearned for.

Easter:
It's on the way. We're prepared. We'll be in Santa Barbara for the weekend soaking up a change of pace.

Turned her shoe over to clean off the squished Play-Doh to find this Easter message.

Wanna know who orchestrated this? The nanny. Picked the dress, bought it, had it altered, planned the day. She loves doing this stuff. I wouldn't even dream of taking Ada myself.

Last year nobody ate the Easter eggs.
I read a study once that people stay away from fake blue foods. Theory goes that you don't seen that color in nature so much as so your mind doesn't recognize it as food. It occurred to me that I didn't touch those neon Easter things for fear of them. This year, we went all natural. Took time - lots of time - but I like the result and I'm not afraid to eat them.


Off to pack for our trip to Santa Barbara. Happy Easter everyone!

One of My Top 5 "Happy Moments"

For a solid two hours on Saturday night I looked like this while Tim quietly stood behind me holding my purse and my beer. It came to fruition: We saw Duran Duran at the Filmore. The last time we tried to do this there was a lot going on: so much so that we lost track of the tickets, which never showed up in the mail. We missed the show and I've been moping about it ever since. So when I heard they were coming again, we devised a plan to secure some tickets of our own. It ain't like the good-old-days when you used to prop up your lawn chair and physically wait outside of the Ticketmaster box office. Our plan worked and we were among the 1,200 lucky people who sold the show out in 2 minutes.





My husband is a secure man with no reason to worry that I'm headed home with a rock star at the end of the night, so I'll say it publicly: John Taylor is still hot. The band still is so fun. I like the new stuff plenty fine but it's the old stuff that gets me. I was belting out "Planet Earth" and "Rio" at the very tippity-top of my lungs because I am so reminded of being a 12-year-old girl. Back then I believed in justice and I really thought that there was a direct correlation between doing good and good things happening to you. It was a beautifully hopeful, optimistic, carefree time and I loved being transported back to it for a couple of hours.


The self-portrait is oh-so-photographically wrong for oh-so-many reasons. It was taken with my phone and it's completely untouched. But it is a pure expression of happiness and for that reason, alone I will submit it for this weeks challenge over at the Paper Mama. Check out her site for some more fun:





I forgot to mention that the first time we saw Duran Duran Tim rated it in the top 5 of "Happiest He's Seen Me." The other 4 moments? Our wedding, Ada's birth, swimming with the dolphins, vet school graduation. I think graduation might have been edged out by Duran Duran concert #2.

If you dare, share your top 5 happiest moments.

Mothering vs. Parenting

Whenever Tim and I decided to have children, it was a very conscious choice. I very clearly remember getting out of the shower one day while he stood at the mirror shaving. He turned to me and said, "I think I'm ready to have kids. I think it's the next level of learning about myself."  I sort assumed that because I was in my later thirties that I knew myself and my position about raising kids pretty well. Maybe that's why I get annoyed with myself just a little bit when a brand new major parenting thought occurs to me out of the blue.  The me of 20-or-so-years-ago assumed that the me of now, the me with a kid, would have long ago thought all this through.

It has only just occurred to me that mothering and parenting aren't the same thing. 

"Parenting" makes me think of the nuts n' bolts of the process. This is the stuff I keep books around for, kind of like consulting the instruction manual from time-to-time. Things like teaching life skills, providing boundaries, appropriate nourishment, and keeping them from killing themselves in the kamikaze toddler phase (this does end at some point, right?). It's important stuff even if it is quite technical and repetitive. Sometimes it stinks. Ada doesn't always seem to hear me when I gently say "no" so on occasion I have to yell it. This only happens when she is about to stick her finger in a electrical outlet or attempt to suck down a tube of super glue. So, maybe she hears me just fine and it's really my sheer panic talking.

Oh my goodness, these shoes. Her sparkly dorothy shoes. A nanny special and she loves them! Today even though she already was wearing shoes she sought these out and brought them to me to put on her. 

"Mothering" is something altogether different. Nurturing, comforting, actively loving - that is mothering.  Now, I have always thought of myself as an equal-opportunity mother-er. From college roommates to small animals (might explain my career choice) I will take nearly anyone or anything,  tuck them/it under my wing, and care for them/it with great tenderness. Really, I think my younger self just thought she knew what was best for everyone and then tried to impose it on them (so sorry Starr). Then Ada came along and a whole new definition of this word has started to take form. With Ada, "mothering" is the expression of that visceral, primal love I feel for her. The desire to be good at mothering her is the thing that propels me to provide a steady stream of love for her regardless of circumstances (sleep-deprivation, bad news, etc).

This cat toy reminds me of a dreidel. Her favorite thing to do is hand it to me, watch it spin for about a second, and then stop it with her face, hands or feet before handing it to me to repeat the cycle. Hysterical, this game is.

Good thing too. That baby pressed all my buttons today. Holy cow, do I ever love her but every great once in a while ... I am biting my teeth together and ujjayi breathing in an extreme effort to not lose my cool. It normally is fine, but when that "every great once in a while" rolls into town, I find that the constant need of me gets to feel unpredictably oppressive. She is going through a phase of separation anxiety. Even when we are at home she doesn't want me to leave from her sight.  That and the fact that she want to explore EVERYTHING and she is tall. Everything dangerous in our house is moving higher and higher. Today I went to the bathroom and came back to find her poking herself in the eye with a yellow highlighter. Pure exasperation on my part. That felt like parenting.

These curls make me crazy. I love it how when we walk together her little head is just tall enough that it is no stretch at all for my hand to reach her head. I play with her curls all the time. 

On the other hand, I ran the hell out of the 13 minutes and 22 seconds I had on the treadmill before the lady from the gym day care came for me because Ada was so upset. I saw her yellow polo shirt and immediately swiped my left hand across the red emergency magnet to stop the treadmill. "Not OK? OK, I'm coming right now." Taking the stairs two at a time to reach the second floor I found my baby red-faced with tear tracks covering her sweet cheeks. I snuggled her tight and sat in the chair to rock her until she calmed down enough and I caught my breath enough to leave. Thing is, I didn't get to run and I really, really wanted to. But I wasn't upset. Like, not even a tiny bit. I do hope this phase doesn't last all that long but, really? I mean, my kid wants me. There are worse things in the world. That felt like mothering.

She experimented with different faces in the mirror today. It was too funny. So glad I had my camera handy to capture this. 

In these times of frustration, I am thankful also for my own awareness. This awareness lets me say to myself "you are just frustrated that things aren't going like you planned. What is really required of you in this moment?" and then I can regroup before moving on. I think too of what other mothers do in these situations. I have few real-life examples and the ones I know virtually don't tend to talk about this stuff very much. Still, I glean what I can. We'll find our way, me together with my girl.





Tonight, I am relaxing. I am writing to sort through my day. I am catching up on other blogs too. I am looking forward to tomorrow when I once again get to decide from one moment to the next exactly what kind of parent and exactly what kind of mother I will be. Tomorrow night I have a dinner date followed by a very, very special show. Until then, Salut!