Turning 7

7 is everything.

7 is still wanting to play with dolls and stuffies.  7 is a little scared still at the movies sometimes.  And 7 is snuggly early in the morning and at the end of a long day.  

But 7 is also so big. 

7 is reading chapter books by the boxful.  7 is helping with everything around the house.  7 is climbing so high in trees, running so fast on the soccer field, and inching up taller, taller, taller, to just below my shoulders.  7 is best friends, monkey bars, bike riding, piano playing, chess winning, skirt twirling, orange peeling, bus riding, dreaming big big BIG.
No teeth.  Adult teeth.  A freckle here and there.  Sunshine in your eyes and smile, shaggy bangs, tangles, braids.  Stocking feet and sneakers.
  

7 is a ladybug; sweet and mighty, the brightest little bug you've ever seen.  

7 is everything.  

Winter Outings with my Toddler

It's hard to complain about winter in Seattle.  There isn't really any snow.  It's relatively not that cold. But still, there is something about it-- the darkness mostly, but also the rain-- that kind of makes me just want to stay home and hibernate.   

But with a toddler, one must go out and DO (as my mother always said). 

There are actually quite a few kid-friendly places in the city where you can go when it's cold and rainy.   The Children's Museum is great, but pricey... as is the zoo, Gymboree Play and Music, and the aquarium.   But, there are quite a few cheap and easy places to go too!   

Here are some of my favorites: 

1) Library Story Time.   

Practically every day of the week one or two of the libraries around Seattle hosts a story time.  Songs, stories, egg-shakers, scarves....   toddler heaven.   

Price: free!  

2) 3rd Place Books 

Ok, this is one of my favorites.   You can sit and enjoy a coffee, (or just sit and enjoy sitting), while your kids tool around in what we like to call "the kid pit".  Basically it's just an area filled with toys that is blocked off by counters.   Me: coffee.  Toddler: trains.   Perfect!  Also, Mockingbird Books  if you are around the Green Lake area offers trains, coffee, and story time, and the Mosaic Cafe  in Wallingford, has a back room full of semi-functional toys and play equipment, with pay-as-you-can coffee at the front. 

Price: free, plus whatever coffee you purchase.      

3) Community Centers: Toddler Rooms 

These are dotted around Seattle.  Some are really awesome (the one in Laurelhurst is naturally in this gorgeous studio room with windows overlooking evergreens and Lake Washington) others feel like the places where old gymnastics mats, and broken pop pushers go to die a slow and painfully dirty death.   Pick and choose wisely; and try not to come home with Hand Foot Mouth disease. 

Price: usually $3 

  

4) QFC  at University Village  

Ok, here's the thing about this store: Double-Wide Taxi Shopping Carts.   My girls love them.   Even my almost-seven year old squeezes herself into them because being pushed around a fancy grocery store  while pretending to drive a taxi is apparently the best thing ever.   Do we need eggs?  This calls for a taxi trip!  Will we need more toothpaste eventually?   Taxi time.   Also, there is a childcare facility there which we haven't tried.... I think the kiddos have to be 2 years old to play.  Something to look forward to!   

Price: free!  (plus groceries)  

5) Petco Pet Store 

So, with my first daughter we went to the zoo on a weekly basis.   But now that we're farther away, and our lives have gotten a bit more complicated, I am sorry to say that poor little Eloise has not been to the zoo even once.   

The good news is that we live fairly close to the pet store!  And at the pet store there are mice, fish, birds.... even some kittens on occasion.   What can I say, for a toddler it's a pretty exciting trip! 

Price: free!  (plus the amount of the can of cat food that your toddler refuses to let go of).    

6) Oh screw it, we're going outdoors.  

Sometimes you just have to go out anyway.  Even though the wind is freezing.  And the rain is freezing.  And the slides are wet and freezing.  We go to Magnuson Park a lot.  Hats, boots, coats.   We throw rocks for 20 minutes, run around the trees, then pile back into the car and drive home where the bathtub is waiting for us.   

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.