Christmas at home

Christmas at our house.  

Like a story, or a song.  Like a memory that you feel like you have, but you don't really know where it came from.  

And then you realize that it is a memory.  But in your memory you are the child with the glowing Christmas tree that seems twenty feet tall.  And the warm current buns in the morning, with the sausages that you never eat any other time of year.   The heater runs, gift wrap strewn about the living room.  Mom and dad are smiling and drinking coffee in a sleepy smiling sort of way.   

Legos.  Dolls.  A new set of pencils.   A walk in the cold Christmas air after all the fuss has died down.   Many new books to read.   

I remember so much love, and many sweaters.      

In this way, Christmas at our house-- in our very own house, under our very own roof for the first time ever-- was very much like returning to something from my childhood.  But now I am the mother, and I am watching my girls, ages 1.5 and 6.5 point out endlessly which ornament is the most magnificent.  
We are celebrating our home, and everything that it means to be the-four-of-us-together in our home. A space where daily ordinary life takes place, but can turn into a sort of magical holiday hut when we simply focus on each other, and make cookies.  
It was wonderful.  It was perfect.
And now we are into January, and Christmas is over and cleaned up.   And I am already looking forward to next year.  

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?