I Wish I Had a Day

I wish I had a day to just blog.  To catch up on the mounting piles of photos growing on my hard drive.  Not because anyone needs to see them, but because I just feel the need.  But why is that?  To slow time, perhaps.  I feel like our family of five is throttling forward at warp speed in a way that I'm not used to.  After having a baby every other August since 2007, you may have noticed that we did not have a baby this past August.  And as crazy as that may sound to you, it feels very different to me.  The baby reset button was not pushed.  We did not spin the spinner and land on the chute that instantly takes you back to square one.  And I know that is a good thing in many ways, and it feels like "progress" in many ways - there are activities we can do together, gear we don't have to bring, and poopy diapers that aren't being washed.  But it also feels very different.  I've been noticing this foreign feeling since approximately December of 2012, when I first had the thought, "Oh.  So this is what it feels like to have a 16 month old and not be pregnant.  Cool."  Not pressing that baby reset button somehow makes me more acutely aware of everyone, including myself, aging.  Growing up.  It is beautiful to witness but sometimes painfully so.  Bittersweet for sure.             

The thing is, I also know that if I had a full day to myself, I wouldn't really want to spend it blogging.  (I'd want to clean the basement and go for a run or get a massage and go out to lunch with a friend; sometimes these options are equally appealing.  That's normal, right?)  There's this paradox going on.  Being a stay at home mom is making me take even more pictures than I used to, and making me have more stories to tell, simply because I'm there for more family moments and my former law firm yielded exactly zero cute or endearing tales.  (Part of me is itching to go back to work, in some kind of utopian part time arrangement, by the way, but that's a topic for a different post.)  Being a stay at home mom is also sapping my energy to do anything with those pictures or stories at the end of the day.  So much togetherness leaves me wanting a mental break from children in the evenings, and I think that's good and healthy for everyone.    

Yet... Yet there is still this part of me that truly desires to blog.  It's cathartic.  It is our scrapbook.  It lets me write whatever I want.  It is my personal choice over Facebook for most photos (though Instagram may one day edge it out).  It is also a form of backup for that day when one of us inevitably manages to destroy the computer.  (Yes, I use other forms of backup, but I'm bad about all of them, so I guess you could call my system loose belt and half broken suspenders.)

So, I'm embarking on a stretch of more frequent, but probably less thoughtful, blogging.  Photo dumping to play catch up.  Posts that aren't in perfect chronological order.  Nothing here will earn me a Pulitzer, but hopefully it will give me some pleasure.

If you're not related to me and these posts give you any pleasure, then be sure to throw me a bone in the comments now and then, because I could use the encouragement to keep going on my catch up project.  It's not as fun when no one has a word to say because my content is so outdated.  It's hard to wish someone a happy birthday a year and a half late, though, I get it. 

I wish I had a day, but better to eat this elephant one bite at a time and spend that glorious day doing something other than sitting in front of a computer.   

Breathe Slowly Into This Paper Bag

I've seen this floating around the Internet in a few places. I'd credit the source if I knew it. I'm not sure if hanging it on the fridge would bring me comfort or make me hyperventilate. Depends on the day. Or the hour.



Some days, when I'm wishing everything would just speed up, this poster would remind me to slow down, focus, be truly present, and appreciate things more. I should look at this poster between 4-6 p.m. on most days.

Other days, when I'm wishing that the kids would just stay little a little longer, I think this poster might make me cry. Upcoming birthdays have me in that mode right now. I can't believe Georgia is going to be six. Six feels old in a lot of ways. She's still my baby. Super immature and way too grown up all at the same time. Of course I always wish I could just freeze June in time, bottle up her lightness and joy and save it for a rainy day. And Waylon? Well, it's weird to look at him and know that the baby of the family is not an actual baby but a little boy. Let's not forget that this is the first time anyone in our family will be celebrating a second birthday without us bringing home a newborn virtually simultaneously. We're entering new territory here.

"The days are long, but the years are short." - Gretchen Rubin (somehow I doubt this sentence originated with her, but she seems to have spread the sentiment far and wide)

"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." - Robert Brault 

The End of the Sympathetic Stare

Amidst my existential crisis about moving to the suburbs, along with all the storing and packing and painting and wiping and hiding and giving away of our stuff, time is actually flying.  These babies of mine are growing up fast.

I've noticed lately that I no longer get the "sympathetic stare" when I am in stores with the children.  Last year I got this attention all the time - pretty much every time we dared darken automatic doors.  The knowing smile of mothers and grandmothers who have gone before me.  The spontaneous conversations initiated by strangers in the aisles of Target with a simple, "Wow, you must really have your hands full."  4, 2, and 0 really brought that Midwestern friendliness out in people, or perhaps I  simply looked like a basket case, but we will ignore that possibility.

Suddenly, at ages 5, 3, and 1, I'm just another lady with kids.  Nothing special to see here folks, move along.  Which is fine, of course.  Procreating doesn't deserve an award, and it's not as if I expect a slow clap and a cut to the front of the express checkout just for buying paper towels with my children in tow.  I will admit, though, that I miss the public acknowledgement that what I'm doing here isn't easy.  Georgia, June, and Waylon aren't exactly forgiving on the performance reviews.  Actually, with the exception of complaining about the food (or violently throwing it, as the case may be for Waylon), it's not so much that they express that I'm doing a bad job as it is the fact that they seem to have no awareness that what I'm doing around here requires any effort at all.

In preparation for selling our condo, we took down the baby gate this week.  Waylon, having been practically raised by wolves being that he is a third child, doesn't need a baby gate anymore.  He became proficient on the stairs much earlier than his sisters did, due to lapses in adult supervision I'm sure.  The gate's absence jarred me more than I would've expected.  Visually, first of all, because it's been there since the days of the nanny share with Harry, so it was installed well before Georgia was even mobile.  It struck me emotionally, too, though, when it occurred to me that in this day and age, at least in America, people who do not have baby gates at the top of their stairs do not have babies.  Waylon is 19 months old now, and as the "baby" of our family I often continue to think of him as one.  By contrast, with each of the girls, I was about 20 weeks pregnant by the time they reached 20 months old, which in each case made it easy to think of the bump in my belly as "the baby" and my growing toddlers as big girls.

If you're waiting for a big conclusion here there isn't one.  I mean, I know he's still only 1, not to mention that all three of these kids will always be my babies no matter their age.  I'd also like to point out the irony here that shopping with all three children is typically tougher now than it was a year ago (sorry, Crystal, newly crowned mother of three!).  At least then, one was immobile, whereas now I have to deal with Waylon trying to stand up or climb out of the cart.  (Have I mentioned that one of his nicknames of late is "the mountain goat"?) 

The sympathetic stare may have ended, but I still get some giggles and "Awwww!"'s when June and Waylon bust out the simultaneous finger sucking in public.  I'm sure the day will come, if it hasn't already, when those glances become less friendly and more judgmental, but knowing what I do about their proclivity for self soothing in this way, I won't let it bother me.


(This was even better when they were 2 and 0.  June is at least old enough now that if we've been out and about touching hundreds of dirty surfaces I can usually successfully remind her not to suck fingers until we've had a chance to go home and wash hands, but with Waylon, I don't even try.  Is that bad?)         

When Did My Daughter Turn 15?

Harry and Georgia, spontaneously holding hands, Lincoln Square, summer 2009.


Harry and Georgia, spontaneously holding hands, Lincoln Square, summer 2011.


Joe is running home to polish his shotgun now.