Archive for the ‘On the Subject of Parenthood’ Category
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Saturday, January 7th, 2012
The weather today was amazing. Mid 50s! It was warm last weekend, then freezing this week, and now warm again. Perfect day for a hike and a little visual documentation. We’re halfway there, baby!
Posted in Let's Get Physical, On the Subject of Parenthood | 4 Comments »
kick-start the new year
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
2012 is officially here! We got a little present on New Year’s Day morning… our first kicks from the baby! Yeah!!!
I’ve felt her mini roller coaster flip flops and minnow fish nibbles inside of me for a few weeks now, but she decided to make her external presence known on Sunday morning. And right at the halfway point in my pregnancy, too!
Experiencing the baby kick is the coolest feeling! And I got to share it all right away with Craig. We’ve known for a while that she’s a wiggly worm—she tends to scoot away from the heartbeat doppler during my prenatal checkups with my midwife. At our 18-week ultrasound, she was dancing all over the place, moving her legs back and forth and waving her arms above her head. She’s been kicking on my right side low down for the past two days. I have another checkup this week, so I’m hoping my midwife can help me better orient her position and what parts she is poking me with.
It’s such an amazing affirmation to finally feel her on the outside! Especially since I spent the first few months of this journey in complete disbelief that I was actually pregnant. I didn’t have morning sickness, and I didn’t hear her heartbeat until 13 weeks. So I used to joke that I wasn’t actually pregnant, just ridiculously hungry all the time. I had to rely very heavily on faith that there was actually a baby growing inside of me.
Well, last night she decided to get all riled up and kick right as I was lying down to go to bed. Oh, she’s definitely in there! It would just figure that I’ve got a night owl percolating. Like mama like daughter! I don’t mind though. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
Posted in On the Subject of Parenthood | No Comments »
top 5 awesome things about 2011
Saturday, December 31st, 2011
Happy New Year to you!
I hope that you have had a relaxing holiday season and are ready to kick off a happy and healthy 2012. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the amazing things that I am very thankful for in 2011. Here are my top 5:
5. Home Improvements Galore!
2011 was the year that we finally busted through… making the leap from doing just home maintenance projects (oh that we are verrrrry good at) to doing some real honest-to-goodness home upgrades and improvements. Things got rolling back in May, and because my camera broke, I never got around to posting finished pics. So here’s a sampling.
We refinished our downstairs hard wood floors in the dining room and living room.
dining room floor before
living room floor before
entry way before
entry way after (looking into dining room)
living room after
living room after
The we installed a new ceiling fan in our living room. This required new wiring.
ceiling before
uncapping the old wiring and gas pipe. yikes.
Updating the wiring and new ceiling fan installed!
We also tackled re-painting the living room, painting the dining room, painting all the window sills in the house, and adding an accent wall color going up the stairs.
accent wall: copper mountain color sherwin williams zero voc paint
And we repainted the exterior and interior of our screened-in porch.
porch interior before
porch after with new furniture
4. Traveling and Trips!
We were extremely fortunate in 2011 to return to Europe! I loved traveling in Europe for our honeymoon in 2009, and I have been eager to go back ever since. I was lucky enough to tag along on another one of Craig’s business trips to Munich, Germany in early February. We had a blast exploring the city.
I also went on a solo travel adventure, taking the train from Germany to Italy. It was my first time traveling alone outside the U.S. and it was the most incredible experience. You can read more in depth about my trip here and here and here.
Verona, Italy - new street on top of old street
In July we made our annual trek north to Maine to spend two weeks on Mooselookmeguntic Lake.
Loons on Mooselookmeguntic Lake
We vacationed on the lake with my parents, sisters, and their kiddos, staying in a large cabin that we’ve been renting for many years. We ate well and drank well. Craig and I lounged, read books, swam, biked, kayaked, hiked, and lounged some more.
Hiking on the Appalachian Trail to the summit of Saddleback Mountain.
And in September, Craig and I took a lovely trip to the ocean, just an hour away from where we live. I had been longing to dig my toes into the sand.
3. This Year’s Garden: Cultivating from Seed and Growing Organic, Heirloom Vegetables
This year I grew the vegetables and herbs in my garden from organic seed… with the exception of my tomatoes and celery. However, I choose all organic, heirloom tomatoes this year from a local nursery. It was so much fun to try out new varieties of plants.
First came the radishes.
And then baby spinach and lettuces.
Cilantro!
This was the first year that I planted in somewhat tidy rows in my raised beds.
Cilantro, sugar snap peas, garlic scapes
Crazy heirloom tomato bed
Mortgage lifter (heh heh) heirloom tomato
Green zebra heirloom tomato
Carrots and celery
We pulled the last of the carrots on Thanksgiving morning to make a dish!
2. We Welcomed Lily to Our Family!
We finally got a cat in August! Lily has completely transformed our household, keeping us in stitches every day. She’s cuddly, funny, silly, fairly chatty, occasionally likes to playfully bite, and refuses to take a good picture. Aside from a particularly hard-to-get-rid-of bout of worms (she was found in the wild before she came home with us) and one icky urinary tract infection, life with Lily has been wonder-filled. You can read more about Lily’s story here.
Lily just has a way of always looking pissy in pictures.
She’s actually really quite charming and loves adults and kids.
She likes to cause mischief... messing up our tree skirt.
Or attacking my aloe plants.
Lily loves hanging out on the screened-in porch.
Yeah, Lily is one striking, very cool cat. We dig her immensely.
And… now…
1.) Top Most Awesome Thing About 2011…
We are expecting!!!
I’ve been pretty busy since the end of summer… working on a very special, very important project. Our daughter is due in May, and we are so delighted! And a bit daunted at times, but mostly holy-crap-over-the-moon excited.
Here’s to a new year, new adventures, and adding more goodness and abundance to the plenty!
Posted in On the Subject of Parenthood, The Daily Balance, The Growing Season | 4 Comments »
practice makes perfect sense
Sunday, June 27th, 2010
From relishing not being pregnant yet to spending the weekend babysitting our 9-month old nephew—what a delightful contrast the last few days have been for me and Craig. I can’t think of a better way for us to make peace with our poor struggling minds. And by that I mean taking care of my nephew gave us a lot of reassurance that we are far more ready mentally than we give ourselves credit for.
Craig and I had so much fun taking him starting Saturday morning. We had him overnight Saturday and my older sister came to pick him up around 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. So he was a pretty big part of our weekend. And he was like pure therapeutic joy for us.
I think that somewhere in us being so overwhelmed with the thought of being pregnant and WHAT ARE WE DOING and that panic of NOT READY! NOT READY, we forgot that having a kid is fun. We forgot that you figure things out as you go along, on the fly, through trial and error. Having a kid makes you an instant team. You get to belly laugh when he’s making lip-smacking noises while negotiating sticky, slimy banana pieces for breakfast.
You also learn that cutting up the banana pieces too small makes for an instant mess as a 9-month old can’t pick up the pieces fast enough to get them into his mouth.
Having some down time with a 9-month old is snuggly.
Morning breakfast! Craig does such an incredible job of being on from the moment he wakes up. He does such a wonderful job feeding, playing, stroller pushing, interpreting my horrific verbal directions when there's a tired baby in waiting—quick! grab the cloth thingy off the thingy from the dining room!—Craig’s calming presence and sense of humor makes all the difference.
It is exciting watching my nephew discover every mirror in the house and want to kiss the baby he sees. It’s gratifying when he takes a bottle like a champ, squeals when you kiss his belly while changing his diaper, goes down for a nap like clockwork, and lights up with a smile when you come into the room to get him up from his crib.
I had never had that post-nap intimacy with a baby before. Last time we babysat him, he came out of his naps still pretty cranky, and not sure if he wanted to see me. But this time was just awesome. He got so excited when I came into the room, smacking his hands together and cooing and banging his feet up and down on the crib bed. His eyes were wide and bright with a smile that tugged at all those parts of me that need to be nurtured and reminded that I can do this!
And then when you ask him if he’s ready to get up and he reaches his arms out so you can pick him up… ah… what an indescribable feeling. I needed that this weekend.
I needed to spend this time with both my nephew and with Craig. I needed to be forced to slow down. When you are with a baby, you become very aware of time, chunks of time, being productive in little snippets of time. And as a result, you really live in the moment. The present becomes extraordinary. Instead of feeling like my weekend was gobbled up because I was “on duty”, I really feel like I got to relax and just BE this weekend.
Practicing the crawl. So cool to see him on the verge. Any day now!
Craig and I laughed a ton. We were silly. We swayed back and forth to the music of The Rainbow Connection during play time. We took the stroller out and were reminded how much we love our neighborhood. We napped when the baby was napping. We still got laundry done and dishes washed. We even got to visit with Craig’s parents. Life didn’t end.
We really lucked out. My older sister kept thanking us for babysitting. But I should be the one thanking her.
Coming off a stressful wondering sort of week and wrestling with so many life questions, we were reminded this weekend that we have a lot to look forward to. And it is perfectly okay to slow it down and get to where we want to go at our own pace.
Tags: gratitude, laughter therapy, pregnancy
Posted in On the Subject of Parenthood | 2 Comments »
go with the flow
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
It’s been a week. A long one. But a good one. And I am feeling tired and grateful.
Let’s talk garden and life, shall we?
So I tried planting a bunch of flowers from seed this year behind my lettuces. And well, it isn’t working out so much.
Can you spot the actual flowers?
Yeah, so I planted all these flower seeds in an attempt to grow sunflowers, zinnias, asters, and more. But all I’m seeing grow is weeds. And interspersed in all these weeds are gigantic chipmunk holes. And then earlier this week I saw this crazy clump of weeds? growing in my back raised garden bed. And what do you know… I could see the remnants of sunflower seed shells in the soil and on the ends of the leaves. And then the very next day, something had come along and chomped off all the leaves.
So... I'm thinking a chipmunk dug up my sunflower seeds and either deposited
them in the back garden bed or pooped them out there. And then proceeded
to eat the remnants.
Seriously? Yeah. I’m not pleased. Next year I think I will just buy annual flower starts. All I wanted was a flower cutting garden! Instead I’ve got weeds and ridiculously happy chipmunks.
In the midst of all of this, Craig and I were very much in the middle of wondering if we could maybe be expecting. Because my cycle was really off this month. No fun. And that was all it took to throw us into a little bit of disarray. The odds of us actually being pregnant were not very high, but when things don’t go quite like clockwork, your mind starts to blow things out of proportion and wreak havoc on your body.
And it’s not like we haven’t been so seriously contemplating parenthood over these last several weeks, right? I think the stress and wonder of it all threw my body off even more. But we are not expecting. And dare I say we are relieved. Is that wrong?
We are just not quite ready yet. Even if we are READY. But being ready theoretically and being ready ACTUALLY have proven to be quite a juxtaposition for us. Even if it were to be. We would embrace the possibility full-on. But we didn’t want to be there yet. We have learned a lot about ourselves this week. I got to confront my anxieties head on, and it wasn’t pretty. I realized how incredible and scary it is to not know what your own body is up to. Imagine the first 14 weeks! Yikes.
I also realized that mental preparation for a child is so critical. The whole visualization thing. The whole whatever happens I will be okay thing. The whole I can do this! thing. And that maybe it’s not in my best mental-health interests to leave things to chance until I am 100% prepared to accept the outcome, whatever it may be. I mean, we’ve come this far and obviously “planned” as best as we can. So if we are going to go at it, then we have to reallllly go at it. Like with purpose. And be committed to not just the, um, act(s), but the aftermath. Because getting pregnant and having a child is a game-changer. No doubt.
I learned that my mental self is still working stuff out. And my physical self wants at least a few more months of running, putting nourishing whole foods into my body, and seeking a normal sleep routine. I will get there. I will. I feel strangely blessed that I am in tune with my shortcomings and anxieties. Even if they irk me. And that now I have some time to work through them. I think Craig feels the same way. I think he was pretty okay with learning that we aren’t in it to win it just yet.
Our minds can conjure up a million different what-ifs though. Man. I am very happy to say that I am taking a break from myself right now. I need it. Must dissociate. Phew.
On a lighter note, I find myself being way more mindful in a positive way. I have been intensely taking in the little things. Especially the weather. The warm breezes. The presence of summer. The taste of organic strawberries on my tongue. The comforting coo noises my niece made tonight when I held her after work. The rhythm of simple chores like loading and unloading the dishwasher. The amazing feeling of fresh, clean towels. The softness of a pillow when I lie my head upon it. The smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning.
I feel alert and alive. And I need this.
I got home tonight around 7:30 after visiting my sister and my twin nieces after work. I was excited that I got to see them. And I was psyched to roam the yard afterward. Craig wasn’t at home because he’d gone for an after-work bike ride. So I savored my alone time, pausing to watch the sun sink lower in the sky as crazy cumulous cloud formations hovered overhead. It never ended up thundering or raining, but I was content to walk through the yard and then hang out on the screened porch.
The bean plants are ready to trellis. And I think the watermelon plants are having a growth spurt. Pay no attention to the munched-on bean leaf on the right.
Our black cherry trees are starting to form fruit. Every year I say I'm going to do something with the cherries. I want to try a jam I think.
After wandering about and pondering life, I sat on the porch for a long while.
I called my older sister and chatted with her about my day. And then when I came inside, I realized it was still light out in the western sky at 9:20 p.m.
It has been—and still is—my intention to take in this summer to its fullest. Because summer is here, it is always short, and I am up for the task. I suppose my mind and body are along for the ride.
Tags: alone time, gardening, gratitude, pregnancy, summer
Posted in On the Subject of Parenthood, The Daily Balance, The Growing Season | 1 Comment »