Running in Leaves

Fall is made for running in leaves.  Footsteps turning over gold, the sunlight from summer underfoot and flying around in a great wind of joy.

It's my favorite time of year; completely visual; a reckoning; a time for realizing the warmth that we've had.  

So look around, because the trees that fire-glow a final scarlet breath before the dormancy of winter tell a story of everything good that has been.   

Let this carry us through winter.   

School Bus

The bus stop is just around the corner.  

Every morning now we put on our shoes.  We pack the backpack.  Fill up the water bottle, put the homework in the folder.  We find Eloise's hat.  We turn off the porch light.  We say good morning to the tomatoes who are growing old and leggy in the garden.  We say goodbye to the kitties.  We are on our way.  

At the bus stop there are about 10 kids of all ages.   I thought for sure Violet would be the youngest, but she is not.  I thought for sure she would be petrified, but she is not.   

She is excited every morning.   The kids all wait, laughing, noisy, bouncing.  There are four dogs that come and wait too--a big old one, a small old one, a young pug, and a hyperactive puppy who is small now but will become larger than all of them within the year.  The dogs, naturally, are the entertainment until the bus comes lurching around the corner.    

We're getting to know all these neighbors who live within a 3 block radius of us. 

We are The school bus community.   We are the wave-goodbyers.  We are at home sitting at the table drinking our second cup of coffee when everyone else is driving to school, and we are looking at the clock thinking ok now she's arrived.  Now the first bell is ringing, she's hanging up her coat.  She's at her locker, unpacking her library book.  Now she is at her desk.   We have children who sometimes we wish were just slightly less brave.   

We hold them tight and let them go, and then we are eager as pie to see them at the end of the day.   

That is the story of the school bus.           

Writing Books

There is this thick floating need in our house currently to write books.  Tyler and I are both working on books-- his mostly words-- mine mostly pictures.  His in contract negotiations, mine in the early phases of dream-translated into lines and hues.  
But books is what it's all about here.  It's what we talk about over whiskey and wine.  And in the quiet moments it's what we both sit and stew about.   It's my third child, my book, and it's such an unpredictable slippery soul; I'm constantly worried about losing sight of it in the mess of a long busy day, lost in the crowd of daily life; it's running through this street fair and I can hardly keep up as I'm pulled back and stuck behind other facets of life.  

It's a struggle.  It's nearly unbearable some days.   But it's so intensely worth it to feel as though you are creating something from nothing.  A world of ideas and images contained and organized into one beautiful slot on the shelf.  It's very much a labor of love.

Anyway--  Books are big.  But I think I hadn't realized the extent of our obsession, and how much it has permeated into our family life... until yesterday.  
Yesterday morning, my 6 year old climbed into bed with us and started railing off the details of this crazy dream she had just had.   Unicorns, rainbows, magic keys, treasure chests, a sky of chocolates and cotton candy...  it went on and on.   (I then proceeded to tell her my magnificently boring dream about wandering around for hours trying to find where I had parked my car).  Some days I wish I could be 6 again....
But anyway--
She then resolutely decided to spend the entire rest of the day (so, from 8am until bedtime) writing and illustrating a 15 page book about her dream.  

I am not kidding.   I have never been so impressed by anyone ever in my entire life.  
There are so many people I know, (myself included) who spend so much of their days whining about things they want to accomplish, but for whatever reason just don't get it done.   It's incredibly inspirational to see someone, especially your own child, just sit down and dedicate an entire day to getting something done from start to finish.  
She wanted to write and illustrate a book, and so she did.
And that was that.

Sometimes we realize how much our kids our like us--  and then sometimes we realize how much we wish we could be more like our kids.   I think kids glom onto the best and worsts parts of us, and then magnify those parts.  It's scary, and also incredibly humbling, awe inspiring, all that jazz.  I love my little writer so much.  She makes me want to make my dreams come true, and in a way she's showing me how to do it.  

 
 

August

Our home in August-- 

is two sun-kissed girls.  Running, chasing, tumbling bare-footed around the living room and kitchen, the dining room a mess with potato-head parts and markers.  The baby won't keep her clothes on; snaps and zippers, snaps and zippers.    Endless Casper Baby Pants, Beatles songs, Paul Simon, Eva Cassidy-- Violet desperate for the sophistication of Nutcracker season to begin.   

The cats are holding forth in the dry grass, the birds flit about the feeder getting brown and fat; everyone is too lazy to catch or be caught.   We eat popsicles and watch the sun go up and down behind the plum trees.      

The routine of August--

is part frantic activities, part languid dreaming--  Every day we go out into the world after breakfast; skid down the hill into the lake for a swim; return library books; buy milk.  My heart has a daily fret about work that needs to be done, projects that are put on hold, as I give in to the temptation
of simply lying on the floor while the baby climbs over me again and again laughing and drinking from a milk cup.   

And yet... 

My work in August--

has hit a steady rhythm, and I am hopeful that momentum is building.     

It helps that I finally finished unpacking my workroom after a year and a half of bumping into boxes; it's getting so civilized down there with jars of pencils, a stapler, sketches for clients finally organized in a binder, drawers of paint and paper, a space for my computer.   

In spite of everything, I am managing to find nearly two hours every day to work.   It's like yoga for my mind; or maybe a little like mineral water; or maybe like wine.  It's like sleep and mountain air all wrapped up into one incredibly rejuvenating potion.    This mama needs to work... especially in August when the days are long and the games of Uno endless.   

We're looking toward September, and eager for the apples to arrive.  In the meantime, we are enjoying our home like we never have before, trying not to get too restless during the heat of the day, with cool evenings in the garden, purple dahlias, snail friends, thunderstorms-- all set to the tune of the neighbor kid's trombone playing squashy scales that float around the street in the pink night air.    

  

Work Rituals

I've been trying really hard lately to develop a work ritual.   When you a) work from home, and b) have little ones running all over the place, it's really easy to feel as though you are doing twenty things at once, and doing all of them kind of half-assed.
Especially because my work is of the creative sort, I've been really feeling the stress  and consequence lately of not being in a good head space when I actually do sit down to work.  I think (maybe) a lot of my fellow artists can relate-- it's really hard to just sit down cold turkey and pick up a project and expect your brain to immediately produce your best work.   At least for me, it's as though my brain needs to stretch for a while; it needs a little time to exit the world of cream cheese toast and tiny socks, before it can start focusing in on lines, color, textures--

But here lies the problem: I don't have much time to waste in between these two worlds.  I usually have to grab my moments for work as they come, and cram in as much as I can while the baby snoozes...  Needless to say, there is not a lot of extra time for sipping tea and journaling for an hour to get the creative juices flowing...

SO, in short, I've been working on a ritual to speed up the process--  kind of a hamstring stretch for the mind, if you will.

Here's how it goes (bear with me, it's a little strange, as are most effective rituals):
The moment Eloise goes to sleep and my work clock begins I do the following:

1) Make sure I'm wearing the right colored shirt.  I know, this sounds strange.  But seriously, it's such a little-big thing.  If I'm wearing the right color, (and that color changes every day), it can make my brain jump faster into where it needs to be in order to start working.  If I'm wearing magenta, and I need to be wearing green... it's kind of a big deal for my brain.  Nothing good will come out of a magenta shirt that should be green.  It's not just that though, something about the simple act of opening the drawer and staring at shirt colors for 20 seconds takes me to a place that is between real life and this other-dimensional world where color reigns highest.   I can't explain it more than that-- but somehow it works.

2) Fill up my essential oil bubbler with lemon and peppermint.   Changing the air to something sweet and peppy really seems to bring me almost immediately into the space I need to be in.   Think what you want about essential oils; This sh*t is real.

3) Water my three hanging plants on the back porch.  I cannot, --absolutely cannot-- be sitting there trying to create something if these three plants behind me are begging for water.  It becomes all I can think about.  And watering them takes me into an earthy warm world; I take a moment and listen to the robins chortling in the plum trees, pull a few dead leaves from the fuchsias, find the space in my lungs to breathe in the day..... and then I can return to my work, and begin.    

And, that's it.   Other things don't really seem to matter.  There can be piles of dishes, toys exploded across the living rug, music on/off--  that really doesn't seem to matter.   But the three steps listed above have become this essential ritual, and if I follow them every day, I seem to be able to sit down and immediately begin my work in a good head space usually within 10 minutes of putting the baby down
.

So, What are Your work rituals?  Do you have any?   I'm curious to know if there are others who have to jump through a few hoops to get their brains going  :)
     

Finding time

Something I've learned upon having two children: 24 hours is not enough time for everything that needs to be done in a day.  
There's a reason why I haven't written in a while-- with two children there is only so much time every day that one gets to spend on things other than the tasks of daily life--  and lately I've been spending my extra few moments on other things that recharge my soul, mostly larger goals and projects-- also gardening and activities that clear my head.  

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of budgeting in relation to hours of the day.  As an artist, it is always my goal to have at least two hours a day to devote to my work.  Two hours out of 24 doesn't seem like it should be that hard to capture, but with two children it's often hard to find.  Still, it's not impossible if you focus on little things.  For example:  
--Cooking in batches instead of singular meals every day slashes a little time  (we've been slacking on this lately; definitely need to get back to it again)
--Joining a new gym, despite the heartbreak, gives me back an hour and a half of time normally just spent driving.
--Experimenting with illustration markers instead of paint allows me to chisel time off set up and clean up
--etc.....

Also, (and I'm absolutely serious when I say this) I've been putting my insomnia to good use lately.   Usually there is at least an hour or two every night after I've been up with the baby when I'm just awake in bed, my head racing around the world a million miles a minute.  I've been trying to focus that energy lately, and use it to think hard about projects and goals that I want to make happen.   Insomnia is a funny thing--  someone once told me that insomnia stems from your brain forcing you to think about stuff that it isn't allowed the time to think about during the day.  I think a lot of great ideas can come out of a little insomnia, especially if you just give your brain a slight push in the direction you want it to race in....

Anyway--  in summery, it's been a while since I've written in this bloggy blog because my time is just so limited and is being used in other ways.  I love writing about my children, but lately I just need my extra minutes to use in ways that give my mind a bit of a break from mommy hood.

I'd be curious to know how other mom and dads do it:  How do you chisel out those moments of the day for yourself?   What are your strategies for finding time for yourself?  

Swim Lessons

You bring this beautiful tiny child into the world,
you love her, and feed her, and clothe her.
You wipe her little scratches with cotton,
and you save some of the curls from her first haircut.
You teach her to read, sound out letters, add blocks and bottle caps,
teach her numbers,
buy her ice cream when it's hot.
You take good good care of her, and turn into a beast mother when she gets pushed down on the playground.  You hold her at night, tell her stories, sing songs, work the glue stick, wash hands, trim nails--

You do everything right and good.

Then, one day, you make the decision to put this most precious thing on earth into Swim Lessons.

Now, my kid is usually up for trying most things, and sticking it out, and being brave.  I can usually convince her to like almost anything---
But...
I think I have discovered my child's personal hell: Swim Lessons at the community center.

It's a freezing cold soup of noisy, splashing thrashing kids (ages 6-16), and husky-voiced teachers who refers to my child as "buddy", or "What'sYourNameAgain in the bird swimsuit".

I'm sitting there watching from this plastic chair remembering exactly what it felt like--  (this is often the cruel torture of having a child who is your personal duplicate)--  I want so badly to put her in swim lessons and watch her take off and have fun, but I realize very quickly that these big group lessons are taking my girl back to a place of fear and dread--  definitely not the feelings I want her to associate with swimming.

Now, there are always two options as a parent-- one is to tell your kid to just deal with it; do it; get over it. (Admittedly, this is often the right option for many things...)
But the other option is to regroup-- sit down with them, listen to their fears, and possibly find a better option that will work for them (and for you).

Learning to swim is important, and for a child who thrives on order, this Lord of the Flies type environment is probably not going to do it for us.
So, now it's back to the one-on-one lessons at Safe 'n' Sound under the Chinese food restaurant on Lake Union.   They are good (pricey), but good.  We took her there a while back-- and she learned more in just a few weekly 15 minute lessons than I think she would probably learn in an entire year of every-child-for-herself group lessons.  

But I'd be interested to hear other parents' thoughts about swim lessons.  When I was a kid, and rejected the freezing cold chaotic horror of group swim lessons, my mom started sending me to swim with my awesome Mary Poppins type older cousin every week who gave me a fun mini private lesson at the pool near her house--  I now realize that this was fairly similar to Safe 'n' Sound.  Once I learned to swim with a bit more confidence, I loved it and even eventually joined the swim team.
Kids learn in different ways, and I personally feel like swimming is one of those things where you really need to respect your kid's learning style.  
So, moms and dads out there-- what you do think?  How did your kid learn to swim??

Sleep.

Sleep.

To sleep or not to sleep.  

Just let me sleep.  

Why don't you sleep on it.  

Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.  Ever so quiet and not a peep.  

I swear to everything up and down that sleep is the hardest part about having a baby.  Just when you think it's good and golden, and everyone has gotten used to their pillows and the silent stars in the sky twinkle and smile-- just when you feel like you've made it--  

--it's all crashed to pieces again.  There's a tooth or a tummy ache.  There's too much napping during the day, or not enough. Or there's just some sort of separation despair that comes and goes--- 

Her little brain is growing.  I can tell that she understands almost every word I say.  And she's walking-running everywhere.  

Here little body and mind is buzzing like crazy with all of this growth, and with all of these little electric wave-lazers shooting this way and that, it's no wonder really that she can't settle down for a solid nights rest.  

But man oh man.  Sleep.  I pray every night for a stretch that's longer than two hours.  

When I'm finally sleeping I dream of having even more sleep.  

Then it's morning, and I tell myself that it's only 13 more hours until the kids are in bed again (bless their tiny beautiful little hearts)-- and then I can get into my pajamas and bathrobe and try once more to have an easy sleepy night.  

Someday sleep will return to this household and someday I will stop accidentally putting the cream cheese away in the cupboard.   

   

1 Year

You are in the kitchen playing with a toy car
You are the house filled with flowers
You are all things bright, strawberry blonde eyelashes, and yellow balloons
--headstands; falling down;  tripping over belly laughs
--tiny tantrums in the grocery store-- chewing a hole in the bandaid box before we buy it
But you are my happy place, my daydream in the dentist's chair.
You are my midnight voyager; polka dotted pjs at 2am; a sigh and snuggle, and back to sleep.  A year of 3 hour increments.  
You are the morning sun, and every day a little bigger, smarter, doing more--
--pointing with a finger, trying to say bird.
 Bringing me a book; today my slippers.

When you were born I loved you instantly.  You slid right into our life and you found your slot; an easy milky-sweet baby.  In a house of three semi-solemn people, you have made us laugh and smile every day.  Over this past year you have transformed our family into something completely new and different.  You have a voice that is all your own, and it has left me speechless and completely in love.

So happy birthday, Eloise.  Today you are 1 year old, and you are magnificent.

One, two, there....

four, five, six...

seven, eight, nine...

ten, eleven...

and twelve.  

Monday meditation

With two kids I often find myself feeling as though I am trying to do at least twenty things at once and consequently am getting nothing done.  This is the constant struggle -- it is as simple and as complicated as finding some sort of balance.  

In the quiet moments, I work.  I am grateful that my work is meditative and soul-refreshing.  My mind gets fidgety with project ideas.  But I tell myself to be patient.  Take it bird by bird; we do what we can with the hours of the day, and these days with the kids flip by so fast.  Eloise, already, is walking away from me.  So cherish this moment to sit on the floor, and hold her hand, and teach her the difference between red and yellow.  

These little moments are important.  They grow into larger moments, and then one evening you are sitting on the couch after dinner watching your older child create a symphony out of her books and animals.  She is the conductor.  She is dreaming big these days, and it's incredible to watch.

Meditation now--  

Give yourself this time to watch the rain

It is spring, and dreams are growing 

Be patient, be present.
Beautiful big things are happening in the quiet moments.

11 Months

11 Months today, my baby
I refuse to call you a toddler yet--
--even though you started toddling this month, and we are having to teach you the heartbreak of "No" when you throw your food or chew the windowsill--
you are still my baby for one more month.
Sweet silly Eloise, on the go, discovering books and birds.   We love you.

PS: These chair photos are getting more and more difficult to take of you, you wiggly thing.  It's a good thing we only have one month left!

Garden, Early Spring

Eloise and I spent some time outside today looking at all of the early springlings.  Daffodils, camellias,  magnolias, quince --Everyone is waking up early; the crocus must be surprised to see them all.  

Our garden is mysterious and magical to me.  I don't quite understand how things grow, why they bloom or don't bloom, why or when or how to prune things...

All I know is that I am grateful every day to have a garden.  Our very own garden.  I am excited for the summer when it will transform my girls into jungle explorers and fairies.    The days have their ups and downs, but the garden out the window is constant in its change; a refreshing reminder that life moves along and circles around.  

We've been in our house a year, and in that year we've seen our garden through its entire cycle.  We're getting to know the older resident shrubs and trees of our yard, and I am over the moon excited that the sacks of bulbs I planted last fall didn't get eaten by squirrels.  

We have paths of oyster shells, and a stump piled with stones.  We have dandelions to blow and parsley that survived the winter.   We are a lucky bunch, and I am grateful every day for the things that grow outside our front door.  

10 Months

Daffodils always look so funny to me.   Their stems are so straight and singular, it looks like someone just stuck sticks in the ground-- Like a child planted them, or Amelia Bedelia.  
They stand up straight and get blown from side to to side to side, and then one day-- pop-- yellow trumpet snoots smiling wide in bloom.

We've been on and off sick for a month.  That's how January tends to go.... so we've spent a lot of time sitting on the living room floor staring out the window watching our garden transform from winter to spring.  And as we've watched the bulb flowers gradually make their way out of the earth, our tiniest tot has been taking notes I think.







Eloise, 10 months old today, has been working hard this past month.  I think she's in a race with the daffodils, standing as they stand, getting ready to spring out and forward into the world.  She stands tall, flaps her arms, pauses.... and then falls.  Any second now she'll take her first step, and as everything goes with Eloise, I'm sure it will be with blooms and butterflies.

My happy girl at 10 months.  She eats pancakes and can point out your nose.
Big happy springtime-yellow-trumpet-daffodil-smiles all around; I am learning that with Eloise it's always early spring.

9 Months Old

9 months is varsity level babyhood. 

She's now been out as long as she was in; which is mind blowing-astonishing.  

Sometimes I want to tell her to slow down.  Stay in that lovely sweet existence of slumber, milk, and stars. 

The "real" world is a bit broken, and she's absolutely racing as fast as she can to stand/walk/jump around in it.  

Oh Eloise--  a tiny tumble of optimism and energy.  You stand and fall a trillion times a day.  Most people would give up, but there you are chortling along, even in the darkest moments of the night.  

This dismal world must need you, and you must know it to be true because you wave and smile at every person we pass on the street.  

I love you, sunshine.