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point and shoot

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Amelia

I thought I’d purge some of my phone pictures tonight and get them from the land of apps and into the land of…blogging?  I think that I think of my phone as a camera almost more than an actual phone and I love being able to snag pictures in an instant and then scroll through later to see what I caught on ‘film’ whenever I’m missing my boys.  This is an aspect of 21st century living that I adore.

So here’s what the phone’s been seeing lately:

The young sir post-bath one night, clearly full of his usual business:

Next…I went with some friends to check out CLAW (Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers) which is a highly entertaining local charity event.  Lady arm wrestlers assume their very (funny) intimidating characters and wrestle it out with brute strength, bribing of the judges, dance offs, selling of costume pieces and anything else that might get them into the winner’s seat, all in the name of benefiting various local good causes. On the night that we went we arrived in time to see Tragedy Anne (below) beat Eve of Destruction but ultimately lose to Homewrecker:

CLAW is becoming a national phenomenon, though it will always have its roots in Charlottesville, but if you have a moment, I highly suggest you check out local photographer Billy Hunt’s collection of lady arm wrestler photos…you won’t be disappointed that you did!

While there I also snagged this self-portrait in a chrome bar stool:

And moving right along, here are some of the various pastoral scenes that have caught my eye out and about in the world:

(isn’t Virginia lovely?)

And of course more Drew and Asher.  These are from a post-dinner walk on the nearby Monticello trail last week:

And…let’s see…what else?  Well this isn’t from my phone, but please welcome the newest member of the household, Dorothy:

We snagged this little Beta from the pet store, and while “Bishey” (Asher’s version of ‘fish’) was an ok name, we were reading an Elmo Goes to School book (can you guess the plot of that story?) and there is mention of Elmo’s fish Dorothy in it.  Asher pointed to our little blue beauty and declared that we will call him Dorothy.  So far Dorothy has been a sublime housemate, although he seems to be on a bit of a hunger strike so I’m hoping that he’s got all of his fins in this world and isn’t about to go to the great fishbowl in the sky.  Asher loves feeding him as a daily chore and has been very good about not knocking the bowl, and so far Mabel the fat cat hasn’t paid him any mind either.  Drew and I are both enamored with Dorothy’s lovely colors and the way that he starts swimming like crazy whenever we come into the room.  Surely he missed us?

So that’s the phone purge and the introduction of Dorothy to the internet.  We’ve got plans for a low key weekend after a couple of weeks of going full speed.  Asher is newly obsessed with trains, so we will likely walk down to the train tracks and talk endlessly about “Bahdness” (Thomas the Train) and savor the surprisingly cool August temperatures.

Have a good one!

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teach peace.

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Amelia

I recently stumbled across this post from Single Dad Laughing about fathers not breaking their children with impatience, anger, frustration, bigotry etc after he witnessed a father berating his son in a checkout line.  The post has been pretty heavily circulated around the internet, but if you haven’t read it, I think it’s a good reminder for all parents, not just fathers. Not two days after reading that post, I was walking with Asher on the downtown mall here in Charlottesville, headed to the weekly Fridays After Five music and overheard a father accusingly calling his tween son gay when the son said that we wanted to buy one of the pretty scarves that the various vendors on the mall sell.  This stopped me dead in my tracks because everything in me wanted to grab that man and shake him with all of my might and instead I listened as the father angrily told his son, “I’m serious, if you don’t put that down and stop touching that thing, I’m going to kick your a**.”  My mouth dropped open.  What fear is this?

I didn’t say anything.  I know that all of us have had that moment, we see a child getting yelled at, getting yanked, getting ignored, getting pushed, getting swatted (or worse?) and our minds and hearts scream and our mouths stay silent and we walk and fume and say we won’t ever be like that.  We tell our friends, we wonder if we should have done more, we know that the anger would be turned on us and probably not spare the child.

But still.  I was so appalled by this man’s obvious anger, his threats, his ignorant fear and the way that he was clearly alienating his child and fostering a pattern of withdrawal and resistance rather than engaging with his son and what the big picture implications of that might be.  I think that we can all agree that there are few more delicate times of life than adolescence, and the idea that a scarf implicates anything about a person’s sexual preference (especially a 13 year old’s) and is worth a butt kicking and public humiliation?  It broke my heart.

No matter the choices that my son makes in his life, what I want most for him is to do it in a way that is healthy, that is not fear-based, that is informed and educated and thoughtful.  And I’m not just talking life partner here, I’m talking riding in cars, prioritizing tasks, friends–all of it.  Seeing that father and his fearful anger made me wonder what my blinders are, what I’ll find myself yelling about one day in the name of just trying to raise my children “right” and it reminded me that my task as a parent is a mashup of being a role model, a cruise director, a moral compass, and importantly, a witness.  It reminded me to listen and observe first, to ask questions, to focus on being a part of my child’s life, not driving myself out of it.

And now for the soapbox. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens are 5 times more likely to commit suicide, and 40% more likely to endure severe bullying.  And guess where those bullies are learning that behavior?  You may think that homosexuality is wrong, or strange, or gross or absolutely unacceptable, but the truth is, there are people that are gay in this world and an increasing number of adolescents are identifying as such.  To think that one child takes his or her own life because society is prying into one of the most intimate aspects of who we are is horrifying.  As I’m getting older, I’m becoming increasingly hypersensitive to this because this will be part of my children’s reality and it terrifies me to think of the hurt that we might have to watch our children or their friends endure because of this righteous social ignorance.  You don’t have to like it, but in the name of saving the children in this country, do you have to publicly hate it?  This all makes me think that the civil rights movement is long from over, and if we don’t start standing up for tolerance, we’re endorsing every single one of those children’s unnecessary  and gut wrenching deaths.

They were each someone’s child.

After writing this, I’m angry with myself for not saying something to that man.  And I’m sad that I have absolutely no idea what I would have said and I’m even more sad to know that even if I had said something it would likely not make much of a difference.  What I do know is that I feel stronger than ever that I will commit my role as a parent to one that models tolerance.  I will do my damndest to say of any issue, “even if we don’t agree with someone, what’s most important is that people make safe and well-informed choices” and then talk to my children about the choices that they make.  People do things all the time that I don’t understand or that I wouldn’t do for myself or family, but if they’re not hurting anyone, and not hurting themselves?  I have no room to judge.

I hope that you will do this with me.  That you’ll catch yourself before flippantly calling a $12 hat “gay”.  That you’ll ask yourself how intolerance rears its head in your life and begin to think that every positive act or word of encouragement that you offer is actually ammunition in the fight against a world that is more likely to have a discourse about hate than one of understanding.  I’m not saying anything new here, but seeing the anger on that father’s face has left my eyes freshly open.  And if you can’t find something nice to say, perhaps we can revisit that rule of saying nothing at all.  And if you don’t like that particular rule, then let’s ask ourselves at every turn if we’re honoring the golden rule.  Let’s listen before we speak, and speak before we strike, and take accountability for the fact that our words and actions are actually exactly who we are.

And for the love of all, let’s do everything in our power to never, ever, break a single child’s spirit.

Please help me ease the burden on my conscience made by my silence by passing this along.

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Scenes from the summer

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Amelia

I’m probably partial as all getout, but having an August birthday isn’t the only reason that I love this month.  As a kid I loved the combined feeling of savoring the last couple of days of summer while anticipating the start of a whole new school year.  I loved that school started when it was still hot enough to break a good sweat at recess and wear shorts (even though I was always itching to bust out the new digs as soon as the temperature took even a slight nose dive) and that when we got home there were still plenty of hours of sunlight left for playing after school.  I loved starting to daydream about my Halloween costume (still do, actually) while eating watermelon, and jumping in the lake by our house, and soaking in the hot buzz of the lingering summer.

As an adult I obviously don’t have a school year marking these rotations, but I still feel it.  The pleasant tension between holding on to the long sweltering days sizzling with hot walks on the weekends and lightening bugs in the evenings, contrasted with the promise of crispy cool Autumn tones and mornings that are going to be here before we know it.  Quite unlike the transition to spring, this is a time of year that I love and long for both sides of the coin, where even a drenched brow is a reminder that we are outside doing and living, but also where a scarf taunts with the promise of the nostalgic burrowing to come as the sun starts to dip earlier and earlier.

This is the time of year that I start to get a little worried that we won’t do everything we want to before the darkness starts to drive us inside, and so my little notes and emails to myself are chock full of to-do lists ranging from bike rides that I want to take before it gets too cold to yard work to remembering to go to a couple of great swimming holes outside of town.  These lists are much more awesome than my winter lists which have a kind of hollow hope-this-cheers-us feel to them, and so the word for August is: savor.

This baby deer and her mama are systematically making their way through my mom's peach trees, though they are very sweet greeters as we come down the driveway.

We’re savoring this last leg of summer, this feeling of more to come, this sticky, manic time of year.

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To the woods

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Amelia

Well team, we hit the woods this past weekend as we made our annual trek to Floyd Fest.  Asher was a champ (a camp champ, one might even say?) sleeping mostly through the night, and reveling in all that there was to see and do.  His two big statements for the weekend were, “touch it?” and “try it?”.  To be clear, the first statement applied to mostly everything but most specifically to the large balloons that were tied everywhere, and much to his father’s delight, the second of the phrases was said over and over about the climbing wall that was set up.  I explained that he would be able to try to the climbing wall next time (next year) and he cried and said, “trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry eeeet!! nexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxt” and we laughed because we’re good parents like that.

One of the many balloons that captured our eye...Asher because he can't get enough of these mystical things, and me because it was like a little poem against the grey sky.

The Kuhn Family, Leigh Anne, Devin, and Joe

We camped with 5 other families with a grand total of 10 children under the age of 12 (and most under the age of 3) and it went extraordinarily well.  We got to take in the likes of Taj Mahal, Grace Potter, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Brand but I have to say that going to a music festival with little ones is a lot more about what they’re into than what we are into, which is really fine.  Floyd Fest is organized extremely well with an entire section dedicated to the children that includes a play structure, its own private stage, free balloon animals, a dress up area, a sand box, and a bunch of other kiddie goodies.  It’s actually kind of like taking your young’ns to a tiny, grassy theme park.  Except it’s a theme park where you can hear great music in the distance and have a beer.  Good stuff.

Austin rocking a yogurt mustache. He'll thank me for this when he's older, I'm sure.

Asher did this all on his own. I laugh every time I look at it. I can still hear my mother's voice as she said, "ANDREW!!!" as she attempted to take pictures of my brother and me in which no fingers were in noses etc. Let the games begin.

Asher and his little buddy Austin beat the sun up all three mornings, so out of respect to the folks that were able to sleep in a little later, we would go up to the main festival area every morning and let the boys run free, which they loved.  This is also the time of day that the various service trucks were out and about doing their thing so the boys got to point to every single truck and day dream about one day driving the “potty truck”.  I’ll let your imagination work that one out.

Sunrise by the main stage. The sun is peeking up above the edge of the world over there on the left...Floyd Fest is on a gorgeous spot at the top of the Blue Ridge Parkway

The early morning light cast gorgeous shadows, I couldn't get enough of them.

Amazing what the world looks like when you're 3 feet tall

Our little buddy Austin is such a dear soul and he often asks Asher for hugs and kisses

We love this festival because it’s a chance to completely escape from reality with no need for phones, because it’s fun to get outside and be good and dirty and be around great music for a couple of days, and because we have such a good time with the group that we’ve been going with for the last 5 years.  Although we’re now waking up with the kiddos round about the time that we would have been hitting the pillow in the old days, like so many things, we’ve found that we enjoy ourselves just as much now as we did then, and I honestly don’t know that I’ve ever seen Asher so carefree and happy. Win-win.

The boys were running (spped walking in Asher's case?) down this path and shrieking at 6am like they owned the world. Nothing makes you feel true joy quite like kids squealing with carefree happiness!

This is without a doubt the most entertaining way to get the air out of the an air mattress. All you need is about 4 enthusiastic children and one obliging father.

So that’s the goods, I’m off to compose a letter to Asher about all of the other trucks that he might aspire to drive one day and take yet another hot shower!

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mah puh-heese

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Amelia

Time for an Asher update.  I think about Asher reading this one day and just remembered that I needed to add a little more him to this month’s time capsule.

In college, my friend McGhee and I thought the line, ”we can talk…or not talk…for hours…” from Best in Show was so funny (probably a you-had-to-be-there thing, but try tossing it around next time you have a potentially awkward conversation and it will make you chuckle.) and I find myself saying that about Asher quite a bit these days.

Because honestly, we can talk or not talk for hours, and yet it feels like we’re always talking with the little man.  Asher is parroting everything which is awesome and dangerous and pretty often really funny.  It was not quite as funny when I realized the other day that I had left my wallet somewhere which caused me to exclaim Oh Sh*t kind of loudly, only to have Asher look up from his cars and say it right back to me in his perfectly sweet little voice.  Oh s#&t indeed.  He hasn’t said it since, and you can bet your squeaky clean mouths that I haven’t either.  And actually, who am I kidding, it was pretty funny, if not a little shocking.  Lesson learned.

Some of the more PG and completely appropriate words that Asher is saying are…

Airpee for airplane of course.
day-cee-doh for Gracie Dog
Ah-bee-bur and Ah-sheen for Oliver and Austin, two buddies
Bussee for his favorite toy school bus
geh-gee-gah-gur for helicopter (he’s impressively commited to all 4 syllables of this word)
digg-ee for digger
eehs for eggs
deee!! for kitty
oh gosh for…oh gosh. That one is crazy cute
Nina and Bee-pa for my parents, Mina and Grandpa (Bepa is sticking)
mah puh-heese for more please, which is his answer whenever prompted to ask nicely
boo-gu-ree for blueberries

and it goes on and on.  We love this, of course, and as I mentioned before about Asher’s talking, we are always walking that line between adopting his adorable language ourselves, and making an effort to always say the correct word when using it ourselves.  He’s still a little slow on using multiple words at once (in a phrase/sentence) although his cuteness can melt the paint off the walls when he busts out the occasional ‘I love you’ (ah hee oooo) and despite how this all looks in writing, he’s surprisingly clear in his talking.  That sounds like something a parent would write, doesn’t it?  He’s clear to us…to the rest of the world it very well may sound like he has a gym sock lodged in his mouth.

What’s been the most surprising about Asher’s budding language is how bittersweet it is when he finally gets it right.  We’re so accustomed to hearing AIRPEE echoing throughout the house, that now when he says something that sounds much more like airplane, I find myself almost wishing to hear that little voice saying it his way a couple of more times.  This internal tug-of-war is a near constant phenomenon; this morning I watched as he climbed onto our once very tall bed all on his own and just as quickly eased himself back safely to the ground, and I felt that little internal ping, the little mama voice inside that lets out a little oh! when we glimpse the boy and not the baby.  At first I compulsively say, no! not yet! and then I chide myself with the reminder that this is what he signed up for, what we signed up for.

My stepdad always reminded me that I was ‘right on schedule’ as I argued my way through my teen years, explored wildly during my college years, and though he hasn’t said it to me in a while, I suspect that he’s thinking the same thing now watching me discover my way through the motherhood years.  When I was younger I instinctively found that phrase a little patronizing, but as I got older I started feeling very comfortable in the description because it meant that I was on track, and now as a mother, I don’t know that you can watch children and think anything else.  Asher is, optimally, right on schedule.  With his language, his boundary pushing, his growing, his peace making and sharing…thankfully in all of these things, he’s right on track.

But…oh!, you know?


ah hee oooo, my sweet little butterbean.  More than any words will ever do justice.

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Balance

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Amelia

Adaptation.  Going with the flow.  Rolling with it.  Working it out.  These are all things that I am giving thought to lately, and things that I’ve been learning to think about a lot more as a parent.  I think about wanting to be a successful parent, and for me that internal conversation inevitably turns back to being able to adjust at a moment’s notice every second of the day.  Some of these adjustments are so obvious (what? You didn’t just jump out of bed at 2am with some regularity before having children?) but the ones that take the most work are the little ones.  The change in tone of voice, in attitude, in expectations.  The minutia of living that piles up on itself to quickly represent your life.

While we were on our beach trip back in June, you might remember that I mentioned that we had a YOLO board with us that my brother-in-law Jeff borrowed from a friend.  I have been thinking about that board fairly often since our trip because it so perfectly represents two things that I have been giving a lot of thought to over the last couple of years.  The first is a simple one: the name YOLO stands for You Only Live Once.  When Jeff first said that he brought the board I more than likely thought of all of the reasons that I probably wasn’t interested…standing on a board in a bathing suit on a public beach, falling, looking weak, fear of the unknown…but when I saw that name something clicked.  Remember, life is short, and regardless of your thoughts about the human condition, I think that everyone can mostly agree that we’re only in this life for this go-round.  When I saw that little scrolling title, that little reminder that you only live once, that life is short, I knew I wanted to stand up on that thing.

To explain the board, the objective is to go from a sitting position to a standing position and then use the paddle that you’ve held on to as you stood up to cruise at will around the surface of the ocean.  Think large surf board meets Gondolier.  The first most obvious obstacle is that it’s difficult to stand on a board while bobbing around in the ocean without immediately getting pitched off.  The second less obvious, although equally challenging obstacle is to just let go.  I remember learning to roller skate, or to ski, and thinking, I know I can do this if I just allow myself to get used to the feeling of moving this way.  It sounds so simple, but the truth is, that is the hardest part of anything new…allowing yourself to abandon what you already know and discover what you’re learning, and it’s been something that I’ve mostly been bad at throughout my life.

My brother-in-law Jeff paddling to shore

So on the first calm day we went out and started trying it out, first going from straddling it to sitting on knees and paddling, and then to pushing up to standing, and then to trying not to crack our heads open as we lost our balance and went under.  We were laughing, it was a lot of fun, and the learning curve was pretty short.  By the second day that we were using it (accounting for a couple of choppy days in between that kept me anchored on shore) I took it out by myself and carefully tucked my knees under myself preparing to stand up.  I stayed on my hands and knees for a moment just getting used to the feeling of moving with the ocean rather than on it.  I took a few deep breaths and told myself, if you want to do this, you have to roll with it.  You have to adapt.  You will fall if you work against this.

Slowly I stood up, spreading my toes and bending my knees with my weight in my heels and just let the ocean rock me for a little bit.  Swells came and I learned to shift my weight further back as I crested over them so that the weight of my upper body wouldn’t send me off the front end as the board crested and sloped down the back side of the swell.  I gave myself up to the sensation.  I celebrated life being short, and importantly life being rife.  Once I was ready I started using the paddle to head out away from the shore, out into the ocean, away from my comfort zone with the biggest goofiest most life-loving grin on my face.  I paddled around for a while marveling that it was working, that I had let go, that I felt like I could stay there all day because I was learning the sensation and not over-thinking the action.

During that ride and since, I’ve thought a lot about how important that lesson was for me.  How important it is for me.  I tend to plan, to over-think, to day dream about and wonder about and mull over and…all of those things that take away from just learning something new while I’m in the act of learning it.  I first started learning this lesson as I worked on finding a centered place of balance in Bikram yoga because once again I just knew that I needed to relax into the sensation of being off-balance in order to be able to stand on one leg.  The lesson was driven home with absolute clarity as I labored to bring Asher from the inside out and realized that I was going to need to be at peace with the sensation of labor if I was going to be able to deliver a child without any kind of intervention.  And now I see this lesson crop up not just when I’m attempting to balance on a floating plank in the ocean, but when I’m taking a deep breath as Asher flips out because he doesn’t want a napkin on his tray or that car in the bathtub or the beans that he loved yesterday that have become inedible today.  I feel the mental weight shift backwards so that I can find my place again and not get pitched head first into the dark waters of uncertainty and frustration.

Some days I’m finding this and other days I completely suck at it.  Actually it’s more like, some seconds I am finding this and other seconds I completely suck at it.  But I remember.  I remember the exact feeling of my body finding its balance on that board and recognizing that I was overcoming a mental challenge, not a physical one.  I remember stopping to take the breath that enabled me to let go and find myself standing, and I think about it a lot.  Tonight Asher was that screaming baby in the grocery store (because we were those parents that took their kid to the grocery at 5pm on a Monday) and rather than ditching the basket and heading for the door we took a beat, adapted, (gave him food) and finished in peace.  It worked, we rode over the back of the swell with our feet still firmly planted and rolled with whatever was coming behind it.  It’s those little modifications, the tiny shifts, the unstoried daily aspects of raising children, the things that we all just kind of do in the moment as the moment strikes that are creating the broad strokes, the ability to stay standing, the possibility for finding ease even if we’re maintaining some amount of necessary tension, and it’s in that place that I’m seeking my balance as a parent and a woman.

The last thing that I’ve been thinking about it how important it is as a parent and partner to push out of my comfort zone with some regularity.  Watching a toddler move through his or her day is a classic study in this as they are always being asked to do things differently and try something new and then try it again and it goes on and on.  It occurred to me standing on the shore of the beach last month that I’m not going to have a leg to stand on (ha!) when it comes to asking my children to try something new if I don’t show them that I am also continuing to try new things.  If I want Asher to be able to quickly adapt and use a different tone, I sure as heck better be able to do that too.  If we want to raise balanced children, we have to have balance of our own, we have to trust our legs, our intentions, our ability to roll with it, and then we have to go there.  We have to not only be able to make those split second decisions, but we have to want to make them, and optimally we have to enjoy that process.

I looked on child-rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring it.

-Rose Kennedy

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Catching up

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Amelia

Did you know that one of the rules of blogging is not to start a post with things like, I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long or sorry I’ve gotten so behind or some other somesuch?  So let’s pretend that I’m not saying, hey team, I’ve been swamped with living life and haven’t turned on a computer for recreational purposes for about 2 weeks now.  And let’s definitely pretend that I’m not going to tell you that I have 3 weeks worth of pictures safely sitting on my camera’s memory card, and please by all means, keep pretending that I’m not opening with an apology about all of that.

Truthfully, I’m not feeling all that apologetic, I’m actually kind of feeling smiley and rife from how much fun summer is, even if it comes at the cost of getting the useful stuff done.  In the last two weeks I’ve had a weekend of fun with one of my best friends in the whole entire universe, we’ve ridden our bikes, we’ve had a visit from my stepmom and adorable little sister (who is more woman than little sister these days, but remember, we’re already playing make believe here, so let’s add that to the list) and we’ve splashed and floated and blended and dyed (the couch covers…more to come on that) and just generally ramped up the pace to 10,000 miles/hour.  Presently my mother-in-law is visiting which is such a treat, and this morning Asher stared into my eyes and touched my cheek and said mama with such familiar tender conviction that I thought the world might end on that little note of perfection and leave me tingling forever.

So, that’s what we’ve been doing.

Here’s a little peek…

Asher is still obsessed with airplanes:

Drew and Asher reading (airplane books) together is still one of my favorite visions of home:

And Charlotte (our friend that came to visit) is still beeeeeeeeeeeeutiful:

Charlotte (Coco to us, Auntie Coco to Asher) is a 6ish foot tall beauty who is taking on urban food systems with gusto and style and she is a whirlwind of good times and quiet times all at once.  In the two and a half days that she was with us we managed to squeeze in a little dash of everything from serious conversation over cocktails to causing a top 40 dance party in a bar to swounging (that’s swim/lounging) in a lake to cackling as we told each other really inappropriate secrets until 4 in the morning over a mountain of watermelon.  She inspires me…good friends should do that.  I love that we’re still making memories and still finding things to laugh about and getting better, it seems, with age.  I love this woman.

What else?

Well, I made my blueberry pie for the 4th:

And then took a rather unflattering picture of the final product:

And I also whipped up an airplane blanket for Asher which I briefly considered doing a tutorial on, but I’m afraid that it would read more to the tune of “If-You-Make-This-Don’t-Do-What-I-Just-Did” which isn’t overly helpful to anyone.  It’s janky stitching probably isn’t going to win any crafty competitions, but it sure does make Asher happy to go to bed every night blanketed in airplanes and so far he hasn’t noticed or seemed to care that a close look will reveal that this blanket was most likely sewn by a boozy 5 year old with a lead foot.

Although this is an incredibly easy and straightforward project I ran into a little trouble because the bias tape that I used wasn’t a standard width (it was more narrow) and I just kind of sucked at making the corners…no excuses there.  However, if you are a newbie that’s interested in doing this, I did find this tutorial about attaching bias tape by Amy Karol to be really helpful and oddly amusing.

Oh right.  Dyeing the couch.  So Drew and I bought a slip covered white couch and quickly discovered that white was not going to fly in our house.  No worries, we’ll just dye it right?  My confidence was boosted by this post on Young House Love, and by my friend Lindley’s success with dyeing her slipcovers but…well…we’re on our second round of dyeing (the first was a blotchy Ecru bust) and gearing up for a third.  I am going to do a whole post about this adventure, but I wanted to let all of you know that not only am I eating about 1/2 a watermelon a day these days, but we’re also currently sitting on one:

(That’s my sis holding down our pink couch)  In my attempts to dye the cover Crimson–you know, DARK RED–I wound up with pleasantly pepto.  More dye getting ordered, red couch to come.  I have to say that the Key West vibe in the living room is very summery and festive, but I’m pretty sure that Drew mentioned something about not having pink furniture right before the whole ’till death do you part’ bit, so I’m hoping to remedy this.

In reading back over this, it seems that I’m a little hit-or-miss with my domestic crafty bliss here, but I guess all I can say is that I’m having fun trying and learning as I go, and that if you check back in about 6 years or so, I might actually be able to share something in an educational capacity.  And remember how funny it was that one time that I tried to dye the couch red and it turned out pink?  Remember that?  Yeah, me too.  Good times.

In closing, I am going on a little solo adventure this weekend to a friend’s wedding, Drew is going to keep the home fires air conditioner burning blowing with his mom and Asher for company and I’m going to be really excited about being out and about in the world and I’m probably also going to choke up when I talk to Asher on the phone because that is one of the weird paradoxes of motherhood.  It’s going to be a lot of fun though and if I start to miss my fellas too badly, I’ll just turn to one of the 8 girls I’m sharing a hotel room with and ask for a hug, so that’s pretty awesome. More to come and…

This pink couch is for you!

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Beach Baby.

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Amelia

We’ve returned from our annual Walton/Beck family beach retreat and it was…as much as you can fit into the word “wonderful”, it was all that and a bag of chips.  (Actually about 10 bags of Zapps chips, and my bathroom scale is groaning under the proof.)

Here’s a brief schedule of events on any given day of our trip:

Wake up
Go to beach
Nap
Go to beach
Family Dinner
Crawl into bed with visions of sand fairies dancing in your head

Awesome, right?  We are not burdened with distractions, shopping, anything…it’s all about lounging, digging, splashing, snacking, laughing, and just being together.  You know how you mostly always need a vacation after a vacation?  Not so in this case; I don’t think that it would be possible to come home from a trip any more relaxed or refreshed, and with a suitcase of clean laundry to boot.

Much like our Easter trip to the farm, Asher blossomed in the presence of his cousins, starting the week as a fearful baby who was concerned about the sand, about his parents holding other children, about being somewhere new, and ending the week helping Drew dig his annual Big Hole in the sand, laughing as waves crashed on him, and rolling on the floor and laughing with the cousins.  It’s enough to make (these two sappy, dorky) parents choke up a little.  There’s a little boy in there.

This week is really special for us every year because it’s hard to be a flight away from family that we love so much, so being able to be with Drew’s mom and brother and sister and her family is not only really fun, but it’s an opportunity to reconnect and feel close despite the miles between us.  We mostly keep it light, but those moments of serious conversation, of laughing so hard, of watching our children play together and knowing that they’re going to be old together one day…well, it’s just good for the soul, you know?  It’s a good reminder of the sweetness of family and the joy of being able to love and be loved.  It’s just so good.

So, pictures!  You know I’ve got about 300 (literally) but here are a few…
The view from our balcony:

Sunset:

Baby pool on the beach in the shade=good times all around.

Jeff brought a YOLO board which we all had a good time learning to paddle on.  Standing up and paddling in the ocean is no joke, but it was a lot of fun once we got it.  My time on the YOLO board came to a close when I was asked if I saw the 3-4′ shark that was swimming next to me as I was paddling on it.  No, I did not.  Excuse me while I go barf.  


How gorgeous is that water?  As a girl who grew up on Atlantic Coast beaches, I still can’t get over the Gulf’s clear beauty.

Our friend Chuck came by with his twin boys Jackson and Aiden and we even managed to get all of the kids to sit still (for exactly 6 seconds) for a picture:

(L-R: Caroline, Charlotte, Asher, Aiden, Jackson)

Drew’s Big Hole.  Why does Drew dig the Big Hole every year?  Hard to say, except that it brings him (eh, the children! It’s for the kids!) great satisfaction.  When asked about using this hole digging talent to create something other than a Big Hole, Drew counters with, “nah, that doesn’t sound very fun”.  Big Hole it is.

The Beck ladies:

Cousins:

All in all, it was a wonderful week.  I loved watching Asher especially, which I know is probably incredibly shocking to all of you, but it wasn’t just because I could watch him staring at paint drying and enjoy myself, this time it was because he was such an inspiration.  Toddlers can’t ever seem to satiate their inherent curiosity, and so even though Asher didn’t like the feeling of the sand when he first stepped on it, he couldn’t keep himself from stepping on it a second, third, fourth…time until he found that it was actually pretty fun stuff.  I shy away from so much if I think that I might not like it, but watching Asher forge ahead into all that life has to offer, well it’s a good reminder that I need to keep trying things and pushing myself a little more because there’s a whole lot of fun to be had out there.  Seeing him confidently walking around at the end of the week like he owned his little slice of the world was a great reminder that we are much more able than we often give ourselves credit for, and that it’s possible to change immeasurably over the course of a week if we allow ourselves to.  Well, all of that and he’s crazy cute in swim trunks, but mostly the inspiration bit.  I love that boy.

Hello Summer!

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Wordy Wednesday

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Amelia

The Asher Bean came down with a double earache this past weekend (nowhere near as amazing as a double rainbow, I assure you) and our wonderful pediatrician was on a quick vacation (the nerve!) so I was home Monday and Tuesday nursing the little man along until the doctor could see him and get some meds in him.  Now Asher’s back on top, and we’re getting back to normal.  I love that children want to feel normal and happy more than anything else.  Asher kept doing things that normally bring him a lot of joy and then coming over to lay his head on my shoulder, limply holding the truck that would usually make him happy and looking at me like, “this thing makes me smile. Why am I feeling lousy still?” and then he would attempt to play again because playing is a lot more fun than laying around.  So we cycled like that all day, little pops of fun followed by long hugs and longer naps.

During one of those naps I attacked our laundry room.  And now I will confess the following things to you: I’m only an ok house keeper.  Really, I’m kind of like a professional tidyer.  I keep things tidy, but often all that straightening up is really more like a “keeping up with the Jones’” housekeeping style, because you can bet your unmatched socks that all of that quickly grabbed stuff during a tidy just lands somewhere else until I come in with the scrub brush (trash bags) raised and just go to town.

This method has been taking place in our laundry room for quite some time for two three main reasons.  The first is that the laundry is in our dark creepy unfinished basement and there’s just nothing charming or inviting or organized feeling about the space. (Quick parenthetical aside since I’m confessing things? I have to suck my breath in every time I go down the stairs because I have a deep-rooted paranoid feeling about seeing someone–generally a man–just standing in our basement.  I’m never really worried about this fictional person doing anything, but I live in regular fear of being startled by someone just standing there.  That is weird.) The second problem with the laundry room is that it is the world’s best out-of-sight-out-of-mind catch-all, and the third and most obvious problem with the laundry room is that I loathe doing laundry.

So while Asher napped yesterday, I cleaned the snot out of the laundry area and organized and generally set out on a mission to wash every single thing in our house that needs to be washed.  I did 5 loads of laundry yesterday and intend to do about 4 more tonight.  The first 5 loads are dried, folded and stored.  The next 4 are giving me heartburn.  How did it come to this?  For a family that has the washing machine running almost every single day of the week, how is it possible that I have nearly 10 loads of laundry laying around needing to be dealt with?

Well.  No more.  I am turning a laundry corner.  Publicly.  I am making a personal (and now oddly public) pledge to knock it off, or more specifically knock it out and we will now be working smart and not so hard with this whole sudsy business.  Drew deeply believes that things that don’t go together outside of the washing machine shouldn’t go together inside the washing machine and thus he does his own laundry about 3-4 times a week.  I think this is almost as strange as my paranoia about seeing someone calmly standing in our basement.  He really doesn’t like to mix work-out clothes with work clothes with weekend clothes etc etc.  So I am going to talk to Drew about combining our clothes (I know! Gym socks! Jeans! All that co-mingling of unmentionables!) so it will all be done and I will start to feel like June Cleaver again.  You’ll note that I have not reduced the number of loads per week with this incredible domestic deduction, but I have now successfully incorporated my own laundry into the epic cycle and theoretically reduced the number of times that I laugh about Drew’s socks talking dirty to his t-shirts.  Smart not hard, team.

If you’re someone who’s reading this while sipping grown up cocktails and actually thinking about the horrible situation in Libya, shocked that I am blathering on about laundry when there’s so much that really matters in the world, well…what can I say?  Some days you think about saving the world, other days you think about selfish personal betterment to the tune of mastering a domestic skill that has been previously elusive.  The whole time that I was folding and scrubbing and throwing away yesterday, all I could think about was my on-going mantra that life is short! And if I can tighten up on this stupid laundry situation, I can get back to something a little more meaningful in my down time, because life is short, and as long as I live, I would like to never ever be in a situation of needing to do 10 loads of laundry in a 24 hour period ever again.  We can spin that in a heart-strings-make-Oprah-proud light, or we can just call a spade a spade and acknowledge that it’s time to tighten up.

How about you?  Care to share what you’re working on mastering?

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The sound of silence

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Amelia

I’ve been quiet, in part because I have been busy and in part because mother’s day seemed like something that I wanted to write about, but then I couldn’t figure out what to say (I’m sure that post will pop up in July) because there’s so much to say as a daughter, and obviously I never stop blathering about being a mother myself and so…

When in doubt, pull an ostrich, right?

But I’m back today posting this little list that I stumbled on here for Asher.  Hey Asher, if it’s somewhere in the distant future and you happen to be reading this and the world hasn’t switched over to wearing lampshades all the time to get our information or whatever it is that we have to look forward to, I want you to know this: it’s all out there for the taking, and I hope that you’re harvesting like crazy.

(click to enlarge)

If you fill this list out and publish it, I would love to see your answers!

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