Self Portrait Tuesday: almost a documentary
I've spent a great deal of time behind the lense of my new camera this past week, documenting my favorite subjects. We survived the return trip from NJ without major incident, but yesterday was a wash. Exhaustion crept over us and we napped most of the afternoon, the three of us to the bed, limbs flung out, the lines between us blurring. Next week, a real documentary.
Summer's last moments
In New Jersey this weekend the air was still warm. The mercury crept up to the low eighties; summer's last heat spreading out across the lawn. We played with the dog. Watching him zing out in crazy enthusiastic circles chasing his rubber toy. A flash of apricot and cream, I remember when we picked him out. New in our relationship--together just a year. We'd just moved into our first apartment, and Zeus was the naughty pup who uprooted the flower boxes. Now he tousles Bean with loving licks and spends his afternoons under the coffee table, his body limp with relaxation, his eyes rolled back.
The weather was warm enough this weekend to lounge in a tank top on the grass. To wear sunglasses, feet bare. To run along the canal for miles where the snapping turtles sit in spring, on narrow logs in clusters.
With Bean under the watchful eye of his grandparents, DH and I got to do things we never get to do---mountain bike for long hours on rugged trails, hopping roots, and wide logs, riding narrow planked pathways over wetland mud where in the spring, skunk cabbages bloom. Riding around in his parent's sports car, taking curves fast and giggling, listening to 80s tunes. Walking around town hand in hand, late, under lamplight eating pumpkin ice cream.
The weekend went like an exhalation. Almost unnoticed. I've always wanted to catch exactly when the seasons change. For weeks now, I've been writing about the feeling of fall in the air. And being here, a few latitude lines south of home, I'm certain these warm days will be the last this season. Almost bitter sweet, I realize my baby will be running about solidly on his own two feet next year, this time.
Isn't this how it often is? Moments full of sweetness pass before we truly glimpse them? So often we dwell on the times of sorrow, when frustration or grief poke their strange faces into our nighttime thoughts. We've grown accustomed, somehow, to the frantic diet of agitation that our national media spews forth.
Today, with the rapid-action feature on our new camera, and our dog, we tried to snare a few of these bright breathless moments, mid air, before they vanished with the evening sun.
Click on the picture for a slideshow.
OCTOBER'S LIST
Happy October! This is the month where fall actually feels real to most of us in the northeast. When leaves heap up high, and kids sink into piles, chest deep and giggling. It's the month of all things pumpkin. Of cider doughnuts, hot coffees, and the first of many mornings cold enough to see our breath. Since I'm obsessive about lists, and totally inspired by Irene's fabulous sidebar lists, are some things I'm into this month:
* Starting a bookgroup. What we're reading: classic contemporary lit we all kinda think we read but have forgotten, or maybe never read and just thought we did, or know we haven't read but should. First up: Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.
* Reading our new camera manual cover to cover so that I know how to do all sorts of nifty things like astrophotography, macro pics, and self timed shots, so I can do red currant’s awesome October SPT life documentary challenge.
* Learning to knit---I'm terrified I'll still be terrible at it like I was in fifth grade (the last time I gave it a whirl), when everyone had to make mittens in handwork class and mine had monstrous thumbs. This time, I'm going to start with something simple & straightforward: a knit-purl blanket out of super soft wool for Bean. I'm eyeing the gorgeous knitting needle rolls that Nikki Shell makes.
* Trying some yummy new recipes. I'm looking at Traveler's Lunchbox and Chocolate and Zucchini, and Delicious Days for foodie inspiration.
* Making art with my son; doing pen and ink drawings for Everyday Matters; exploring digital collages like Dreamy via the Garden; looking for design inspiration in the world around me like Poppy, and branching out into new terrain in my art journal with some more mixed media collages like Joleen. I'm also finding arty inspiration at: paperheart, boygirl party and ryan garber
Survived: 7 hours in the car and a new camera
We're visiting the inlaws in New Jersey, and made our way by starlight this morning down along open highways to get here around noon. Seven hours, give or take, and Bean survived. So much to post about--perhaps tomorrow when we have leisure time and Bean's grandparents are doting on him. Noteworthy: we purchased a new Cannon EOS 20D. It takes amazing pictures and yesterday, walking around town trying out the exquisitly rapid shutter speed and the lovely zoom lense, I was giddy beyond belief. Click on the photo below for a slideshow sampling of the pictures we took.
Yummy
See his tongue?? He tries to stand now, all of the time. Munching on the edges of the coffee table, chairs, our knees. His little wobbly legs push him up frantically, his feet tipy-toed. He sways about like a drunk with a hula hoop.
Time to move everything another level up. The surface of the coffee table, no longer safe from little grabbing hands.
Studio Friday: Paytime
I put watercolor paints on a plate and let Bean play. This is what he made. Click on the picture for more photos of us in action.
Self Portrait Tuesday: September Body Part Challenge
His feet, new and soft as cream, just now encountering the downward pull of gravity for the first time. He curls his toes when he nurses, thrusting his feet about in delight. He puts them up high on the handle bar of his stroller, like a lazy teenager with his feet on the dashboard of some too-cool car. And last night, at 3 a.m. he was awake in his crib for awhile, playing chortling to himself softly in the darkness. Then he made a mighty grunt, and pulled himself up into a STAND. Feet quivering, toes down first, and a grin so huge, we could see even in the dark.
The effect that crawling has had on my brain
The boy, he gets into mischief ALL THE TIME. Because our house is small, single storied, and mostly free of hazards, we give Bean more or less free reign of the place, as we go about daily activities. And he loves this. Going from room to room, investigating.
He crawls FAST now. FASTER when he knows we're coming for him when he is say, elbows deep in the cat food bowl, or happily pulling CDs of the entertainment center and throwing them with glorifying crashes onto the floor.
Mostly, it's both awesome and amusing to watch him discover his world. Incredible to observe the finely tuned sequence of brain development that led him first to do exquisite "supermans," then rock back and forth, now crawl. And though he's only been crawling with agility for a week or so, he is already driven to try pulling himself up into the vertical. Kneeling, balancing, and occasionally falling.
I'm filled with wonder watching his brain absorb all the information he gathers about his environment as he explores it: push and pull, gravity, depth, cause and effect, orientation. And I am happy to be able to be here to witness it each day.
But there are times when I miss the full days of teaching other people's children. The business of accomplishing things start to finish. My days are so fragmented now. Things are left started everywhere. Half folded heaps of laundry, a half-edited section of writing for my weekly workshop, a collage partly painted.
I can't help but feel resentment sometimes then, at the way things work out. That DH job affords him six hours of "alone" time, no matter how stressful the market is. Of course we're both compressed at the end of the work day, and of course the "work" isn't done. But for me the compression often doesn't have a release. The day doesn't end until Bean goes to sleep, far longer than even my longest days teaching.
Invariably, exhaustion catches up with him RIGHT when dinner is done. And then I try to remember that being in the moment is what I'm here for. Even when the days fragments gather under my skin like so many shards of glass, as Bean's body curls up against mine, I let his whispered breathing and the sweet scent of his hair settle down around me. I try to allow this to be enough.
A time to eat
In the summer, when the heat pushes in through the screens and the crickets and the traffic and the yelling of kids playing stickball in the street fills the air with soundwaves, I don't cook. The oven makes the house too hot. And usually, I'm not hungry for more than a salad or some grilled corn or pizza anyway.
But come fall, when the skys are sharp and clear with cookie-cutter stamps of clouds--white agains a chilly blue, then it's time for soups, for scones, for bread.
Idiosyncrasies
1. I don't put caps back on things properly. I set them on the tops of jars, but skip the screwing on step. This works fine for me. I've NEVER dropped a jar because of the lid not being screwed in, but my husband and countless roommates over the years have. I also rarely shut cupboard doors. This drives my husband mad.
2. I have really, really long legs compared to my short little torso. Hence, I never have pants that fit quite like I would desire. Sometimes too long, but mostly too short. It doesn't help that I can't be bothered with special dryer settings, or with, god forbid, hanging a special pair of pants over the shower rod. So everything goes on one setting, sometimes to my nicer apparel's chagrin.
3. I can get obsessed with a new favorite food for like, three or four weeks and then can't touch it. Last winter, I loved orange juice. I had it every morning, and every other time I was thirsty practically for about two weeks---even tossing in pineapple-orange, and mango-orange for variety. And then, one day, I couldn't even look at the stuff. Can I just mention how INSANE this made my husband, who kept dutifully buying orange juice for another two months before he realized that there were SIX UNOPENED CARTONS OF O.J. already in the fridge.
4. I like things SWEET. I put 4 raw sugars in a grande latte. I eat honeycomb by the spoonful, and drown my pancakes in maple syrup. That said, I don't really like candy at all, except Swedish fish on occasion, sometimes jelly beans. Chocolate on the other hand, doesn't really qualify as candy and is in my book, a food of goddesses.
5. When I sit at my desk, or in a chair anywhere really, I like to pull my knees up to my chest. My feet are always resting on the seat of the chair, and as long as the weather permits, they are bare.
I am tagging anyone who wants to play.
Illustration Friday: Escape
Fall is officially here today, on quiet feet like a cat. Flame colored leaves gathering in numbers on the trees; the sun setting earlier over the lake. During the day, intense heat still in the sun, shivers almost, in the shade. Pumpkins in the fields now are round full orange moons; the corn--higher than our heads.
I can't believe we moved here 4 months ago. A long and lazy summer of watermelon, and farmer's markets has slipped by. Bean is crawling now and I can run five miles without effort. DH mountain bikes regularly. This has been our escape--to move here. Such gratitude fills me when I contemplate the difference.
Things go BANG and BUMP and BOOM when they fall. Over and over again.Studio Friday: Tryptic
This is my studio: Along one side of the dining room in our small apartment. Red walls. My desk is nestled below a built-in china cabinet with old leaded-glass doors. I keep them open, and use packing tape to affix notes and quotes, to-do lists and receipts to the glass. Into the latch hole I have stuck two drying maple leaves---the first that I picked up this season, fallen to the sidewalk, vermilion and gold.
I use the shelves in the china hutch for books. I stack my books both ways: spines facing up, and horizontally. And in front of them, mugs and jars with brushes, pencils, pens. An orchid my husband gave me on my birthday, no longer flowering, but still with waxy oblong leaves sits on my desk.
Everywhere, heaps of papers, books, magazines, paints. They spread out in circles around me, like the rings in water after a pebble has been thrown in. I am at the epicenter.
Things I keep within reach: my laptop, my camera (A Nikon CoolPix5000, Jillian, since you once asked), a bar chocolate (this yummy raspberry kind by Lake Champlain Chocolates), my favorite volumes of poetry (The Rag And Bone Shop of the Heart, edited by Robert Bly, Inland, by Pamela Alexander, A Tree Within, by Octavio Paz, and The Complete Poems of e.e. cummings) a bouquet of dried roses from my wedding, and my address book (a Metropolitan Museum of Art item, with irises on the cover).
Things I keep in my desk drawers: Lots of stationary boxes---now filled with scraps, pencils, magnetic poetry bits, glue, staples. A small metal wind-up toy. Silver embossing powder. Thumb tacks. Quarters. Packing tape. Bank statements. Vintage postcards, sparkly ribbon, thread. An old wallet. Burt's Bees raspberry lip balm. Sharpies.
Since starting this, it has begun to rain out. Hard pebbles of rain falling against the open screens. The night air comes in cool. Tomorrow I will paint I think. Tonight I try to paint with words.
Self Portrait Tuesday
I am standing at the window by my desk. When I hung them, the curtains were too long, so I cut them. Because I didn't hem them, the bottom edges are frayed. Bean has just discoverd them and is enthusiastically tugging on them while trying to climb my leg. I hold the camera out and snap a picture. This is it. Then I scoop Bean up, and tickle his tummy until he lets out a delighted peel of laughter, then set him down beside my desk. I download the picture, and am surprised by it. Rebel? Maybe. More likely: sincere, serious, intense, determined, pensive, thoughtful.
Bath dinosaur still life
Artifacts of ourselves
On Friday, the minute after I posted, Bean woke up, still fussy, still with huge brontosaurus tears, inconsolable, needy. It was a long weekend. We're adjusting to a possibly teething, much more active little guy, and it's been a bit of a crash course. The house is finally quite tonight. The first time all weekend I've had down time--away from Bean, DH or friends, who often stop by now that we live in a neighborhood of people who share, among other things, our passion for outdoor sports and good food.
I went for a run this evening with Bean, and felt myself gradually shifting back towards my center. Bean napped for my entire five mile run, despite the fact he'd cried hysterically when we tried to put him down to nap beforehand. And as I ran, feet thrumming against the uneven, slightly damp pavement, I got to thinking about how having a child makes you examine your own archeology, as it were.
I see myself in my son. He's starting to be so purposeful in the ways in which he interacts with the world. He's cognizant now of cause and effect, and has discovered that HE can affect the outcome of something. He is active, curious, and ready to laugh. Yet he is also stubborn and determined. Like me as a girl, when he gets wound up, crying hysterically, water sooths him. I wonder now, as he's becoming an active participant in the world around him, what lessons I'm inadvertently teaching him, simply by being myself.
What do I affirm, or negate with my daily actions? My choice of words, the way DH and I interact, the places we go, taking Bean with us in the Bjorn or running stroller, how do these things all affect him? The tracks we make with our daily living, grow apparent in his big eyes, in his laughter, in his tears.
I once read an article by a mother who had wisely observed that her elementary aged daughter mimicked her patterns of speech and tone of voice. At the time I remember thinking how as a teacher I noticed this as well---my entire class of third graders would pick up certain mannerisms or idioms I frequently used. Like chameleons, children take on the color of their world.
I realize that my son watches me intently and often. He beams up at me when he sees me looking back, and then contentedly turns back to his toys. But he often stops to watch me adjust my hair, or sigh. He notices when I grow tense, and his body tenses too.
All this to say, after a long weekend of too much tenseness. Of fussiness and aggravation and short words, I realized something small, yet huge. I need to take space for myself regularly and often. I need moments of quiet, where I can paint Bean's bath dinosaurs, or sip a glass of wine, eat some dark chocolate and finish my book.
It feels selfish and obtuse to insist on this time. Yet without it, I find my inner landscape feels shaken like a snow globe. I scatter myself carelessly, pounce easily. And Bean absorbs this, his whole being noticing these
Gathering up the pieces
The morning was unassuming enough. Out of routine, because of the rain and the fact that Bean woke up nearly an hour earlier than he usually does. No morning walk, but cinnamon toast instead. The newspaper. Coffee. The essentials were all there. And Bean took a nap, like he normally does, but woke from it suddenly, fussy. And then the day went careening off kilter. Bean gradually fell apart. As did I. One of those days where darkness seems to fall early because of the weather; when the house feels hot and tight. My body pent up and sluggish from having missed my runs for three days in a row.
Refusing to sleep, Bean skipped his second (typically long) nap and then screamed hysterically when either of us tried to lie down with him; to cuddle, to offer a boob, a pacifier, a warm body to curl up against. Of course, he seemed to know how thin my patience was.
DH and I kept shooting each other looks. DH trying to remain on the periphery as though it were MY duty to deal with Bean.
"You could ask me for help," he said.
My skin prickled with angry heat. "You could ask to help," I replied.
All either of us wanted was some solitude and down time. This is what makes parenting so hard. The fact that you can't just take space when you need it. I tried. DH, readily apologetic, made me tea, while Bean crawled in forlorn circles around the coffee table, alternately bursting into tears or grins depending on whether the cat walked by or not.
I wolfed down chocolate chip cookies, sipped tea and tried to read a chapter in my book while the two of them sat on the couch opposite me: Bean pushing all of Dh's buttons by repeatedly dropping his teething cracker under the couch.
When DH and I get sucked into self pity, we're both fools and we know it. The situation is beyond us. Neither of our faults. We know this. Yet we can't seem to help ourselves from lashing out. Acting morose. Bean was exhausted, over stimulated, inconsolable. Teething perhaps, or simply off.
Finally I drew a bath, and we all spent the next 45 minutes in the bathroom trying to regain our humor. Bean and I in the tub, chasing his wooden spoon. DH sitting on the tile with a dolphin washcloth tickling Bean and making him giggle. And everything was better.
Bean nursed for a long time then, and fell asleep making little whistling whimpering noises with his breath the way he did when he was a newborn. It's likely he'll be out for the night. There is still time for a swim, for making pizza with potatoes and Italian sausage, for drinking the bottle of wine we picked up at the store earlier. For laughing on the couch, finally watching the indie flick our neighbor recommended.
But oh the agony of getting to this. Like broken pottery. Shards everywhere. The mosaic can happen. But seeing the bigger picture is sometimes so hard.
Illustration Friday: Depth
Too often, we pull ourselves apart, seeing in our reflections a mosaic of discontent. We compare ourselves, compete, yet the starting and the ending point for each is vastly different. More than skin deep, beauty is a thing of wonder, of words, of intellect. The grace we bring to our work, the courage, the mess of gratitude, of sorrow, of moments, fills each of us differently. Why do we learn then, to make these shallow comparisons? Media pressing up against us from all sides, blurs our own internal voice, making us loose track of real depth, where it's found. In each of us, differently, wholly as we are.
7 Month Update
My Dear Little Bean, It is amazing to me that the weeks fly by this fast. Having you in our lives makes the days blur together the landscape does out the window of a moving car. It's a wonderful, giddy feeling, watching time dissolve like this: watching you grow. But also bittersweet, because you're officially more than half way through your babyhood.
You are seven months old and there are so many moments I spend with you when I want to scoop you up and devour you with kisses. You're so yummy right now, with your milky breath, your big sparkling eyes, and your butterball thighs. You've become all mischief and adventure this month, my little one, because YOU HAVE LEARNED HOW TO CRAWL.
Since then, you've gotten into everything of course. Which for the most part works out okay for dada and I since we’re not extraordinarily sophisticated with our interior decorating and don't have anything you can really destroy (except of course dada's lovely CDs which you relish tossing onto the floor!) Our concern is less about what you can damage, and more about what you can get into.
Speaking of which, you ARE still breastfeeding dude. This is your primary mode of sustenance, and it is highly advisable that you STOP TRYING TO BITE ME. Got that? We give you oodles of yummy things to bite, and eat even--and you do (you especially like bananas, apple sauce and avocados)---but never with the fervor and glee that you reserve for the occasional illicit chomp on my boob. I am not okay with this, by the way.
Last month you were a disaster in the sleep department because of all that "milestone wake-up" business, so we implemented a bedtime routine that involves taking a warm shower with Daddy and then snuggling into bed with mama for nursing and lullabies. I never thought I'd be this kind of mom. The kind that crawls into bed with her baby to put him to sleep. But I am. And for the most part I enjoy those quiet, sleepy, dark-room moments where we're pressed up against each other, and you're all nestled into the crook of my arm. And when you're next to me you don't try to roll over to crawl, which works out just fine, since you GET SO MAD when you do that, but you can't seem to stop yourself---or couldn't, all last month.
Love, Mama