July 25th, 2010. 7:00 PM

Colin is proving to have an incredibly fertile imagination. It won't be surprising to my mother (she raised two daughters who preferred dress-up and putting on plays to organized sports) that 95% of Colin's independent play is narrated. Whether it be rocket ships taking off to Mars, landing, and rescuing members of the crew, becoming a pirate complete with his own version of "A Pirate's Life for Me" (vs. 2: "a'noculars, a'noculars, pie-wets life fo' me" sung whilst looking through his spyglass...I have no idea where he got that) or racing his cars across the coffee table, over my legs ("thoo da mountens!") and making a leap across the carpet ("it's LAH-BAH! WATCH OUT!") he sees these things so vividly.
Because of this he often prefers me to make up a story rather that read what is written in the book. We have REALLY been enjoying this one, because there is minimal text (although what is there is fabulous) and great pictures. I can make up the story as I go along! He has been playing on his own more and more lately, which is a blessing as I have been miserable for the last couple of months....



...which brings us to The Pipsqueak (more on the nickname later)(also at 12 weeks gestation now the size of a lime according to Babycenter.com) who has really made her presence known around these parts...and has since week 4 of her existence! I had all day, all night morning sickness unlike anything I had ever experienced with my previous pregnancies. My sense of smell was OUT. OF. CONTROL. (still is truth be told, I can't even sniff scented candles!) I could keep about 1/2 of my food down at any given time and dropped about 10 pounds in 10 weeks. All of that, I am told, is a wonderful, WONDERFUL sign. "Signals a strong pregnancy" "great hormones!" are all things my OB has said to me. Although I take that with a grain of salt, a friend of mine had twins (big ones!) and said she wasn't sick a day. So I will just embrace it as a sign that baby mine is still there and growing.
The other thing I will take as a sign is those first flutters of movement. Very, very recently I am certain I felt The Pipsqueak moving around. After housing a super active kiddo, those butterfly wings in the belly are totally unmistakable to me! It was so lovely, and so heartening.


I still miss our Little Bean. It sounds silly to say that I miss a baby who's sex wasn't even clearly defined but there it is. He was a hoped for kiddo and is our angel baby. You'll note that I have changed the name of this blog...We have not referred to this little guy as The Bean and we probably won't, that was a special nickname for our Bean not to be and so he'll keep it. It made me sad for very long, it makes me melancholy now, but I look forward to this next chapter...so very much.

Enjoy the Silence

I have been trying to take a nice picture. One that sums up all of my feelings for the last 3 months. Because for the last 3 months I have been having what seems like a very successful first trimester.
Sunday marks 12 weeks. Almost 12 full weeks of vomiting and nausea and exhaustion and very bad parenting. And hope and terror and over the moon joy. It's been a bit manic over here while I wrap my head around the fact that this whole having a second child thing might work this time.
So expect pictures soon. And more anecdotes. And a return to our regularly scheduled programing!
Fun Fact: it turns out a person can live on green apples, cinnamon candy, cucumbers and saltines for 3 months. Who knew?

Honey by Arielle Greenberg

I am three months out and six to go,
stuffing my plastic Superball body with the salt
& twang of crackers die-cut into the shapes of fish.
God forsakes me when I forsake him
but mostly he’s much kinder, as is his duty:
I am radiant, people tell me, and have no hives,
except the swarm of gold bombs biting its way
into my sticky hollow. And I don’t mean sex.
I am just a menagerie for bright orange creatures.
Even my dreams are godless (and full
of God): I dream I am guided
by an elderly couple in a dim farmhouse
to their morning radio and blackberry tea
and then given the combs which I snap
into my dry mouth where they fill and fill.
Never, upon awaking, have I been so empty
and wanted more a cracker. Never so
suffused with the weekly, with time
as another god passing through the many perfect
crypts and ambers I house beneath my skin.

Kitchen Chemistry

One of Colin's favorite things is to help me cook. His father made him a set of lightweight steps that he can drag around to different countertops and step up to help stir, dump, and smell whatever it is that I am making that day.
He is not crazy about kneading bread, he loves dumping pre-measured ingredients, adores shaking spices into a pot, is meh about naming ingredients when I show them to him but loves to smell them.
He will suggest dishes to make, although his requests usually run to the sweet side. And lights up when I tell him to get his stairs and come into the kitchen to help me.
My parents cooked with us in the kitchen, so did my grandparents. When I talk about my love of all things culinary I refer to myself as a "family taught" chef. I don't have any fancy knife skills and my idea of measuring is shaking out some spices into my palm and tasting a lot. Many of my childhood memories center around the kitchen, my father leaning against the sink with a glass of wine in his hand, my aunt slapping a thinly rolled circle of dough onto the comal to make a tortilla, my mother slicing up fresh fruit for us every single morning, Tamale Day every December when the house was filled with the sharp, heady, sour spicy scent of red chile.
Food is not just fuel to me, it is a process, a blessing, a story told in cinnamon and garlic, in roast chicken and bread and butter. The movement of making dinner, breakfast, lunch, is, to me, an intricate part of what makes me who I am.
When I bring my son into the kitchen with me I am passing on this cultural memory, this kitchen dance. I don't always make the same foods I grew up with (I don't think I have ever left pinto beans on the stove all day to simmer in a rich bacon-y, bay leaf studded broth) and I am not always particularly graceful in the kitchen. But I hope to pass onto my son the love of the process of making a meal. The love of bringing people together to enjoy food that you have made with your own hands, to find a sense of self in the food that you create.
It gets a little deep up in here sometimes.
;)

June 18th, 2010

Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month;
to-night they are throwing you kisses.

An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a
cherry tree in his back yard.

The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking
white thoughts you rain down.

Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.

Back Yard by Carl Sandburg



photo taken July 2009, Colin Jacob

Summertime and the livin' is easy...

So first click this link and play the song that you will find there...it will give you a little summertime feeling.

Back?
100 degrees has descended upon us. I don't mind the heat, I quite enjoy a little baking actually, being a native and all, and I am trying to pass on this love of the sun to my son (not without first slathering him in sunscreen of course!).
We spend lazy afternoons eating popsicles while running through the sprinkler.
We lay on the bed, with it's white expanse of comforter, in the dark bedroom and tell stories to each other.
We don't venture out of the house unless we are absolutely losing our minds with boredom.
We have found the coolest spots on the floor and gently shove Kira out of the way to enjoy the smooth cool tile.
We have all figured out how to float on our backs in the pool at the YMCA, thick with chlorine and heated to our body temperature. We gleefully anticipate getting out, dripping and exhausted, so we can shiver a little bit in the hot breeze.
We spend very little time in the kitchen, fresh baked bread is a distant memory.
We are forever concocting new experiments with ice cream and milk and ice and strawberries and cinnamon and honey and mangos and anything else sweet and cool we can get our hands on.
We will park a few more yards away if it means getting a spot in the shade.

We relish the thought of slowly melting into little puddles of family and dog, popsicle and chlorine and ice water. We look forward to fall...in a few months.

wordless...and yet

It seems as though all I see of late are ripening women, round bellies, proud smiles, tiny baby hands...while I remain thin and melancholy. Thinner now than i have been in quite some time, it turns out that heartbreak is QUITE the dietary aid.
I cannot put it to words, this silly jealousy. This petty comparing that I do. I feel ridiculous lamenting the loss of our wee Bean because as my very blunt ob/gyn put it: "Most women wouldn't have even known they were pregnant", I feel like I don't get to feel sad...still. As though I should pick myself up and let it go. I get quite defensive when asked about it, heaven forfend anyone think of me as ridiculous. I purse my lips and grit my teeth and say all the sweet things and try not to blanch when I find out that an acquaintance has decided to name their bundle the name I had in my heart for mine...that was a hell of a night. I cried some more, I wrote a whole mess of Facebook messages.
In my head, I am shouting: "REALLY? Seriously? Why does SHE get two? or three or four...Why not me too?" I eye my body with suspicion, she has not proven herself again yet, who knows what other tricks she has up her sleeve...random blindness? Perhaps a digit will just aimlessly wander off my hand. I weep at odd intervals, find myself irritable and exhausted. I would say it looks like the first trimester but I know it's just my old friend depression. What a bitch she is.
As it turns out the only pregnant woman I truly take unbridled joy in is my friend Heather. She is due a week after I was supposed to be and is so generous with her blooming body. Perhaps this is because her son is only 6 months old and my fierce love and protection of her belly offers a little respite from the chaos that could be. I hold her first baby and talk to her second. I get emotional now just thinking of it, what a selfless woman to let her crazy friend rub her belly (just starting to show!) and weep over what was, what won't be.
All this to say, I face this month, once again back where I started: not pregnant, sad and irritable that I am not pregnant, and my baby boy getting bigger, talking more, getting further and further away in age from his hoped for sibling.
I hope that, at some juncture, I can look at this- The period of this blog that I will forever refer to as "The Intermission" -and not feel that sharp strange ache of heartbreak. That at some point the sight of a rounded belly will make me think only of blessings and not of losing. I refuse to think of this day, this coming day, as bittersweet because I will not mourn the loss of my sorrow, I will rejoice in the return of my joy. Because SHE, my joy, is an awesome ally.