A Belated Birthday to my Sweetheart

K. does not tend to have great (emotionally) birthdays. Who knows why, but he spends the day kind of funky, and even the cookies I make him and the gifts on his plate don't cheer him up all that much.

Yesterday, he turned 29. I met him when he was 19, and wearing this same jacket:

He was working his way through school, substantially poorer than my prep-school boyfriend, subsisting at times on mango chunks and the candy at his aunt's office.

Ten years later, he's supporting our family and my ambitions. He's built a cabin and most of a building and finished a house. He's a wonderful father, the real kind, who gets up in the middle of the night and makes dinners and accompanies me to the pediatrician.

I'm just really proud of him.

And so it's ok that he had the best birthday ever yesterday, entirely without me, in which he went four-wheeling through our property in VT, made a cup of tea in our cabin, and sat watching the mountains next to a roaring fire. That's just FINE. DON'T EXPECT COOKIES NEXT YEAR.

Happy Birthday, sweetie-pie!

Alright. I admit it. I'm ready for my family to come home.

Amazing how three nights of enough sleep can un-do the hysteria of two years without, by the by.

But I talked to my babies on Skype last night. Annaliese ran around showing me her toys and her rocking horse and Caspian threw his arms up and chortled with glee and tried to climb inside the computer. I miss them.

The children seem to be having fun; Annaliese went sledding for the first time, Caspian's got a walkabout which he really loves-- but K's family is dropping like flies with the stomach bug that Annaliese, then Kagan, had for the first 24 hours. Who knows who got it first, but my bets on K, who went out to dinner with a guy in San Antonio TThursday night who couldn't make it to the business meeting on Friday because he had it. The business trip that just keeps on giving.

Anyhow, both his sisters, his mother, and now his father are ill. Isn't that just terrible? Hopefully it'll pass within 18 hours like it did for Annaliese and K, and they can salvage the last few days.

In the mean time.... I'll be resting up, because I'm pretty sure K's going to come home much in the state I did from my VA trip back in the fall: wild-eyed, a little hysterical, and in need of twelve hours of peace and quiet slumber.

Staycation, Morning #1

I slept like the dead last night. Got in bed around nine with a cup of tea, a book, and a few gingersnaps; read until I got tired; shut off the light and woke up seemingly 5 minutes later. It was light outside. In fact, it was nine o'clock.

It was fabulous.

Meanwhile, up in Vt... I wasn't worried about Annaliese on this trip at all. She's a complete Papa's girl. She was thrilled about going on an airplane. She gave me a brusque little kiss at the airport because her daddy told her to and kept her eyes fixed on the sky, looking for more airplanes.

And then she got on the plane and threw up, and has kept throwing up. Hopefully, cross your fingers, it'll be better today; K told me she's so far kept her breakfast down. And if she gets a little sleep and her tummy doesn't hurt, I know she'll have a ball, but right now... she's wearing her Papa out and making her Mama worry from long-distance.

Caspian, the one I was worried about since he's definitely a Mama's boy and also just a lot younger, has done just fine and seems thrilled by the VT crowd.

Go figure.

Wish K. better luck. He's the prince of Papas, that's for sure.

K's been gone, and it's been cold.

Annaliese loves painting. She paints polkadots, handprints, and strangely, avocados. Strangely because she hates avocado.

Paints courtesy of Grandmama, Apron courtesty of Godpapa. Lucky little kid.

Every day we go pick Annaliese up in the afternoon, and it is increasingly clear that it is Caspian's favorite part of the day. He adores his big sister. No matter how cranky he is, he cheers up as soon as we get in the car, cos he knows he's gonna see his best friend soon.

She likes him too.

Sometimes she picks his hand up and shakes it, saying "How do, baby, how do?" She puts stickers on the end of his nose, kisses him, tickles him, and occasionally pushes him onto the floor for a full-on body hug. Which he adores.

Cuteness, n'est pas?

Days Like Today

All we did of note today was go to church, take a nap, and clean house.

But it was so nice.

The kids... ah, the kids.

What humbles me and amazes me and thrills me most about being a mother is how little I have to do with my children's existence. It is as if they dropped from the sky, and finding out all the strange and marvelous things about them as they grow into people is so frickin' amazing.

Some people have children to take care of them in their old age. Some for their own immortality. Some to save a relationship.

Those reasons seem... MAJORLY flawed to me.

I don't even know why I wanted to have kids; I just did, there wasn't anything all that defined about it. It wasn't an experience I was willing to die without, and I am pretty good at taking note at those must-do calls and heeding them. K's the same way, so we had us some babies.

My favorite thing about being Annaliese and Caspian's Mommy (as I am increasingly known) is not the Eskimo kisses and how Annaliese asks me to sing her songs every night in the rocking chair, little arms wrapped around my neck and hair against my cheek. It's not the body-shaking smile that breaks across Caspian's face every time I walk in a room or he wakes from a nap.

It's the mere fact of them. That Annaliese and Caspian are HERE. I am so very glad my children are in the world. And it is increasingly satisfying to watch them grow up. I never, ever would have thought that an eight-month-old and a toddler could be entire entities in themselves, souls and all, but they are.

Motherhood has taught me two things simultaneously: one, that no one can do it for me (this became very apparent during labor, actually; a transition that I've found key, and a major reason I'm glad I went drugs/operation-free); and two, that it's not all about me. Motherhood has made me more confident in my decisions and more comfortable balancing the needs of others along with my own.

But that's not why I'm the most glad. (Neither is watching K. as a father, though he is an absolutely brilliant one and the amount that my heart cracks open watching him with our children is often actually painful.)

It's that they are here. Two little people the world never knew it needed.

The Children Who Would Not Nap, In Pictures

After an hour... I said fine and turned on Finding Nemo. Crackers were provided. And all was well for over an hour, well past Nemo's escape from the aquarium.

Then things began to unravel. There was crying. Finger-sucking. Blanket-clutching. Frantic pleas to be picked up and NOT to go to bed.

I didn't listen. Put them in bed, turned on the music box, and closed the door to them both wailing.

By the time the music stopped....

their eyes were closed.

We didn't take a single pic of the kids this week, just of this ginormous egg that came out of the chickens. HUGE. I went to break it open for dinner a few nights ago and inside was one completely normal yolk and...ANOTHER EGG.

Nature is weird yo.

Right now, it is Saturday afternoon and the children are long ago supposed to be napping. Instead I can hear Annaliese running around squealing, no doubt climbing on the crib, making faces at her brother, who instigated all this by steadfastly refusing to fall asleep and yodeling instead.

Next Saturday, I am taking my family to Memphis and putting them ALL ON A PLANE. Then I am going to drive home and spend five days completely by myself before my sister comes for a girls' weekend.

People's reaction to this plan varies. "You'll miss them," I hear a lot. "You won't be able to stand it."

That's the nicest one... ANOTHER, who shall go NAMELESS, said, "what will people think?" and "mothers shouldn't abandon their children."

(Um..?!?!?!?)

In the last 25 months, I have spent 2 nights in Birmingham, 2 nights in Columbus on a business trip, and 2 nights with my husband in a hotel (a year apart, but adding up to 2). That's 6 nights out of well over 800 nights total, except you have to subtract the Columbus 2 because I was breastfeeding and got woken up by my boobs to pump.

So yeah, I'm going to miss them. And then I will shrug it off, because you know what? Seven days to myself sounds like sheer bliss and I am not going to spend them pining for what I have, enjoy, and love 99.9% of the time.

What IS it with people and their expectations of mothers anyhow? We put more *shit* on women in this country, about every facet of our life-- from relationships to weddings (God, the weddings) to pregnancy to birth choices to breastfeeding to parenting to... everything.

I am completely thrilled about my children leaving for a week. They'll be with K-- a parent to them in every sense of the word. They'll spend some serious time with their VT family. And they'll learn how many people love them, besides me, in this world.

As for the fact that K. will be gone on Valentine's Day? Well, no box of chocolates could say I love you like taking two kids on two planes for a whole week.

I definitely owe him big for this one.

(Squealing continues. I'm not going in until the door opens, though.)

Night Night Mommy.

Annaliese is talking. She tells bonafide stories, lately often about a classmate named Reece who seems to bump his head an awful lot. The verb conjugations tend to be shaky ("daddy go sleeping", "no like oranges/dinner/water/Mommy") and we've yet to hear an "a" or "the". Anger renders her a little incoherent ("No!!!!!! No, Dido, no eat BOWL!").

But she TALKS. Today we found out she'd outgrown her sneakers when she said her feet hurt and "no like shoes, Mommy."

It's super fun. I watch in complete wonder as my little stranger methodically moves the trashcan next to the sink, climbs on top of it, turns the light on, turns the cold water tap on, pushes up her sleeves, washes her hands, turn the cold water tap off, turns the light off, and climbs carefully back down.

She's officially a Big Girl, at barely two. There's another little girl in our church who is two days older than Annaliese and sits on her mother's lap during the entire service, sleeping and looking around and sucking on her pacifier. I know I'm a proud competitive mama, but Annaliese seems so much older.


In Second-child news, Caspian is still the sweetest boy around who does nothing but fall on his head while the other babies crawl laps around him. Sigh. If he wasn't so unhappy with staying still, I wouldn't mind, but his urge to propel with no idea what to do when he's moving is getting old real quick. As is his new habit of waking the household at 5:30am.


The store progresses. Let's hope it flies, my friends, let's hope it flies. In any case, the job of figuring out sources for all the stuff I want to sell is beyond fun. K's down there now, starting my counter, which doesn't entirely make sense to me, but he assures me that on April 1st, I'll be able to take possession and spend a month getting everything how I need it to be before opening.

He's been incredibly supportive. We get ourselves in hot water a bit, what with the "go for it!" attitude, but there are no words for what it's like to be married to someone who not only gets YOU, but gets what you see.

We have a *lunch date* tomorrow. As there was a board meeting Monday and tonight he works and tomorrow night he's going to a movie with a grieving friend, it's very exciting that we'll get to sit down and see each other over a meal no one has to clean up.

But anyhow, have officially reached the rambling phase. Off to eat a little dinner, read a little Louise Penny, and then tackle the dishes.

A long way until May.

It's freezing and we've all taken turns with a stomach bug and we wanna go back to the zoo but it's too cold.



so instead we're smearing the house with saltines and taking napping shifts.




Putting our babies in weird positions.




Keeping warm.



And beautiful, if out of focus. Hard to keep still what with all the stir-craziness.

(K. not pictured because... no one has taken a picture of the poor man! Trust me, he's cute.)

officially, I'm pretty sure.

So.

I am pretty sure I'm opening a grocery store in the first floor of our building. On May 1st.

It's something I have not been able to get out of my head in a year, we have a great space for it we're already paying for, and I'm not having a baby anytime soon, so I think I am going for it.

I've kind of been resisting the idea. Hey, we might move to New Zealand! Hey, a novel could sell! Hey, I could lose buckets of money!

But market demand and business plans aside (and oh yes, I have those), there's been a whole lot of things adding up, one by one, to push me in this direction, and I'll tell you that it is a frickin' RUSH to give in and go with it.

I read somewhere that the definition of an artist is someone who sees the world in a certain way, can't find their vision IN the world, and so they create it.

I see the B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery as a big, airy, rough-around-the-edges store that sells local-when-I-can produce, fresh bread (not the fancy kind, but just plain bread and rolls, handmade fried pies, country eggs, Billy Ray's milk in the glass half-bottles, yogurt by the quart container, bulk spices, flour, sugar, maple syrup, local honey, craft/more esoteric beers, funky soda pop, seriously good chocolate, bulk candy, pasta, and rice by the bag. I see it as a place where kids hang out happily in a kids' area while parents shop and there's a few booths for anyone who wants to eat their fried pie or wedge of cheddar right away. I see it as a place where we do deliveries and special orders and don't charge you an arm and a leg just because we've got the best stuff in town. I see it as a place that seriously loves food and hustles to get the hard-to-find stuff: bison salami from Missouri, locally grown strawberries from the Amish.

Wish me luck. There's a lot of hurdles between now and May 1st.

Blech, urg, Monday.

K's away on business in Florida. For three nights.

Caspian's good-as-gold sleeping habits are threatening to unravel. He is not sick or teething; I think it has to do with the learning-to-crawl thing, which he is desperately working on. This involves getting up on his knees with no idea to do once he's there, falling over, and thumping his head.

Annaliese misses her Daddy and keeps asking me where he is. She is also talking up a storm, and told me a story tonight about a boy named Reece in her nursery school, who apparently caused her to bump her head, and Miss Margaret (her teacher) was somehow involved. By far her most long-winded anecdote to date!

I am fine and getting ready to crawl into bed with some carrots, broccoli, Green Goddess dressing, a cup of herbal tea, and a book about Carravaggio, or that Italian painter guy. Because that's how I rock it when my sweetie's out of town.

An addendum

Easy way to entertain a baby while you get some planting done: sprinkle stale cereal around the baby and let the chickens out.

Brother and Sister

Caspian's in the crib. Annaliese is in the big-girl bed. I wake up every morning to hear them giggling.













We went to the zoo yesterday and the whole way home, Annaliese leaned across the back seat to tickle Caspian, who giggled, chortled, snorted.

Serious fun.

(Zoo pics to come from my slacker husband! Yay!)

So it's warm, and the kids are sleeping well, and I find myself with nothing to whine about.

Here is the album of Annaliese's birthday party. Doesn't quite capture the awesomeness of the event: Annaliese racing around with her buddies, having a ball, and thanking them for their presents and for coming to her party. Frickin' adorable.

Cross your fingers, Annaliese has been sleeping quite well in her big-girl bed. K. made a rail which seems to deter the getting-out-of-bed-over-and-over madness. I haven't put Caspian in the crib yet because I want her to bond to the new bed and lose any vestiges of attachment to the old one but a few more nights and we'll try that.

Last night he slept fro 6:30 pm to 5am without waking for the 10pm feeding. I didn't notice cos I was asleep myself. Awesome! Best night in over seven months! Annaliese didn't require anything all night either!

Of course, K and the kids are getting very snotty again so this may not last. But keep your fingers crossed.

Two feature articles due to two different publications Monday, some interviews tomorrow, a truck load of mature nandinas and azaleas that our neighbor gave me for free (he's a contractor and someone is re-landscaping around their new porch), and so I am busy, busy, busy.

But happy. And warm. Turns out a switch was frozen and after I semi-hysterically took the kids to K's office Fri afternoon and then made him take us out for pizza (he stopped thinking I was over-reacting when we came home to a 52 degree house), he called the heating guy who came over promptly and cheerfully and finally discovered the real problem. Yay!

This is MISSISSIPPI

I like to tell people that we get seasons in Mississippi. And we do: leaves fall, jackets are donned, there is a light frost or two, and once every winter (in the three years we've lived here), we wake to a very light dusting of snow that shuts down the schools and melts by midday.

It is 13 degrees but the weather man tells us it "feels like" -1 right now. The light dusting of snow is in its second day of existence, because it's not getting above freezing even at noon.

And we've made a discovery... our newly insulated house with the brand-spanking new electric heat system performs quite well until it dips below 20. Then it struggles. We've woken up to a 53 degree house for the past few mornings.

Sigh. The electric man has been out, and fixed something, which made no difference. K. spent a day putting up siding below our perched-on-pillars house, which SURELY does make a difference but not temperature-wise.

Maybe by next winter we'll get the trim finished and spend a week with a bunch of caulk, cos here's no doubt that this place is drafty around all the edges.

In the mean time, I'm typing in fingerless gloves, sitting on a heating pad, and Caspian's napping with the electric heater pulled close and under a mound of blankets with a hat on.

The cold spell's supposed to move on by Sunday, and then we'll be back to 45 during the day, 25 at night. Which, after all, is how it is supposed to be in Mississippi.

Annaliese, age 2!

Today is January 6th, the last day of Christmas, Epiphany, and the birthday of my firstborn.

Her (first!) birthday party is on Sunday, so we're holding the cupcakes and presents until then.

But she got some grandparent something somethings today, a balloon at school, and a whole lot of "Happy Birthdays!"

(Which she loves, and likes to sing to those around her. As in, we give her a Happy Birthday, and she gives us one back.)

Happy Birthday, big girl!

The adreniline is dying down

Holidays are over, my baby is 7 months old, the new novel is about 1/3rd of the way done.... sigh. Now is the keep-plugging time, and what I'd really like to do is press Pause and take a long, long nap, wake up, stare at the sky, and then go on a tropical vacation with my sweetie.

We've been talking a lot about how crazy we are about our kids and how very tiring they are. I sure hope that when we actually get to the solo summer-camp/grandparents' house/sleepovers time of life in a few years, we still want to spend time together.

Went to see It's Complicated (by myself!!!) on Saturday and it is really superb. Since my parents pretty much are Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin (sorry, Mom), I can vouch for the movie's emotional authenticity. I highly recommend it, especially for anyone who is married.

The message I took away from it is Don't. Fuck.Up. because some mistakes cannot be unmade.

So unless you want to end up in a FABULOUS house dating STEVE MARTIN.... keep it steady with your sweetie so you can grow old together :)

Ah, Hollywood.

The Garden (Beds)

Viewed from the porch. It is freezing, and we are stir-crazy. Luckily for us spring starts coming in February. So right now we're all chilling in the living room with a fire, Caspian in his Exersaucer, Annaliese everywhere, and the Big Bang theory playing (thanks John!)

Anyhow.

Behold:

The idea is to walk down the hill from the porch, past the orchard, and step through the gate into...








the beautiful, beautiful garden, with a center aisle and paths between the funnily-shaped beds (what can I say, we have a funnily-shaped lot).

I am planning to plant a small tree and strawberries in the hexagon one in the back. Tomatoes and melons and squashes and beans and sweet potatoes, with nasturtiums and sunflowers mixed in, in the others.

However, K's done his job in an afternoon... the double-digging and manure-hauling is all me, baby, and it is going to take a long, long, long time. Sigh. The tomatoes still feel very far away.

A wee bit of bragging

One of the nice things about being a grown-up and owning a house is that I'm finding I very much like my own taste. That sounds silly but it's a big treat to get to do things my way and then get to see it my way every day!

We found these wall decal things that look like stencils but aren't (whatisblik.com) and behold:







I totally love it! Coupled with K's new chairs hanging handily on hallway hooks, it makes me feel like we live in some cracked-out Shaker house.

I'm also trying to force some bulbs...



finally using a blown-glass wedding present bowl I've never found a use for.

But the big thing today was...



Our super-cool potager-style raised bed garden that K started laying out! Actually, he finished entirely... this pic was taken when Caspian had woken up from his nap but Annaliese was still down. He did the whole thing in an afternoon using what was left of our old scrap beams and it looks fantastic...more pics later.

We have plans to build a bamboo fence (cool-looking and we can get bamboo for free around here) and I'll be digging double-bed method and planting, planting, planting well into the spring.

I love projects like this. Lucky I have such a fab partner who both appreciates my style and executes so very well.

Because Caspian is taking a very long nap, I had time to write a very long post.

K. and I have had a lot of moments lately where we look at each other and say-- this is really hard. We have a new mattress, for instance, that would be really fab to take a nap together on, and on a rainy Sunday afternoon, it's rather infuriating when the kids wake up after 45 minutes.

But. They've had colds and ear infections ALL MONTH and Caspian has busted out something like FIVE teeth in the last four weeks. He literally chews on his pacifier and scrapes it across his gums so that it squeaks. I have tried teething rings, Oragel, homeopathic drops, teething tablets, and cold things to chew on, but the only thing that really helps when he's sitting there crying is Motrin. Which he can't stay on for more than 10 days, a fact that his teeth are not respecting.

It's been kind of rough. But the last two nights have been half-way decent: one wake-up per night for each-- so let's hope that the worst is behind us and I will no longer have to hold my children down to squirt saline spray up their noses.


For New Year's Eve, K. and I are having our regular sitter, a very kind and competent lady who also teaches at Annaliese's nursery school, arrive at 5:30pm and stay until 10am. We are going to spend the night in Oxford-- see a film, grab some food, SLEEP, eat a leisurely breakfast, and then come home.

Her fee for this is $75. Which I regard as ridiculously cheap, and she seems to feel is a fortune; it makes me a little sad that a woman our parents' age, who has grown children of her own, is thrilled to babysit for us at the drop of a hat because we pay $10 an hour for evenings and this new rate for overnight. This woman spends literally ten hours a day, five days a week with 4-7 toddlers and she never loses her cool. She SHOULD get paid a king's ransom.

Anyhow. I'm excited for us; this will literally be night #2 sans children since Annaliese's birth.


We discussed about what to do for the first day of 2010, and decided we'll start laying out the vegetable garden-- building beds and such, weather permitting.

This is thrilling. I want to move to France, and New Zealand, and find our forever house, but the thought of just staying here and NOT having a baby or moving or renovating a primary residence is just so... heartwarmingly peaceful. So here's to a year of being here!


Yesterday I took the truck and put both kids at school (they let Caspian drop in for the occasional day) and drove out to Yocona where I met up with Billy Ray, my favorite dairy farmer, to load up on some sweet manure. We shoveled and talked about kids and pigs and other totally engrossing subjects and then I drove into Oxford, got my truck inspected, showed proof of inspection to the judicial court (had gotten a ticket), and then took myself out to lunch, very much enjoying the fact that I had poop in the back of the truck and on my nice green wellies. I hate feeling so CITY all the time, it's good to get dirty and be out under the sky without a kid on my hip. Got my fruit trees manured before I picked them up, which made me feel like a million dollars.


By the by, the new formula-- milk, cream, water, three powders, and four oils, is going down a treat. Caspian loves it. And despite the fact that it's got cod liver oil in it, I don't blame him; took a sip and it's pretty good, what with all the milk sugar and coconut oil. I feel 100% better about it since I know the milk is as unadulterated as it gets (grass-fed, slow pasteurized, unhomogenized, no antibiotics or steroids or hormones), and so we're both happy campers.

So cross your fingers, we are all well, and making peace with our new lives as a family of four. Nuts! K, weren't you just the tall guy who made my heart beat fast?