Category Archives: pictures

Asher’s Birthday Present

Posted in General, Motherhood, New Baby, pictures by

First I’ll let him tell you about it:

And then I’ll show you this:

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And finally, I’ll say this:

To borrow from Paul McCartney (and for the record, one of my least favorite Beatles songs) it’s been a long and winding road to make the leap from a family of three to a family of four. On the one hand, I anticipated this happening much, much sooner and on the other, it’s overwhelming (but exciting!) to be thinking about a new person in our lives. In the way that these things go, we are getting exactly what we’ve dreamed about, but we also have no idea what that dream means. I remember feeling this way when I was pregnant with Asher, knowing that we were realizing a shared hope, but also having the sense that I was searching in the dark for a flashlight every time that I tried to imagine our new life ahead. That seems to be the way with pregnancy, we wait and wait, and then there’s a first breath, and suddenly the flashlight is in your hand and all of the answers are found in the beam of that new-life light.

I remember my sweet friend Katie visiting us when Asher was younger and as I was giving him a bath and she asked me how I learned how to bathe him. I didn’t have an answer, because as it turns out, we stitch together a heavy blanket of knowledge about our children, embellishing with shared stories, research, observation, what our children teach us about their needs, and intuition. Before having one child I had no idea if I knew how to give a baby a bath. Now I will have two, and all I can do is wait patiently to discover what else it is that I have to learn, and then laugh at myself one day when I realize that I’m doing exactly the thing I never knew I could. My clever cousin told me over Easter weekend that he’s removed the phrase, “I can’t imagine” from his speech because we can always imagine…perhaps not accurately or with great clarity, but we can always tap into that possibility, and we undermine ourselves when we assume that we can’t. I would have loved this conversation any time, but I don’t think that he could have known that he was giving my pregnant brain a little life boat by reminding me that all this daydreaming that I’m doing is just another joy of being human.

So in September, on or around September 23rd to be exact, another little light will click on in our lives and we will start down the path of siblings and nighttime feedings and deep breaths of that newborn aphrodisiac, and just like that, three will become four. Here’s to you little one, to your days ahead on the inside as you prepare for the world out here, and to the great imaginings of this life. May your journey continue to be a safe and peaceful one.

And yes, I promise that I will keep feeding you watermelon.

February

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Every year I think that I want to break up with February a little more. I feel bad being so hard on a month, but of the whole year, this is the one month that I could just skip, and with good reason. It’s the dregs of winter, the no-(wo)man’s land before the promise of spring, because even if March is in like a lion, we all know how it goes out…with buds on trees and greening grass. The little lambs of spring. I don’t have any particularly hard feelings about Valentine’s, I generally like love and chocolate and we had fun sharing it all with Asher, so my distaste for this month has everything to do with my impatience. I’m impatient to leave the door open and step outside without clinching up my body, I’m impatient to gain back our outdoor living space and lifestyle, I’m impatient to see green again, I’m impatient for the car to not need to warm up, I’m impatient for bare skin and sunhats and the charming work of warm weather.

Looked at another way, February is part of the unspoken series of lessons on patience that Life seems to be certain that I need to continue to explore. I am someone that catches a whiff of a cusp and instantly I’m pushing through to the other side. I don’t enjoy being in between, and though I regularly think about the important role of ambiguity, the truth is, I don’t feel all that comfortable with it. And no month is more ambiguous than February.

In spite of this, we’re of course having a fine time and here we are at the end of the month, just two days away from March, and I am again getting excited for the month ahead, and the months that will follow. At the end of March there will be a wedding and I will be gaining one of the sassiest girls on this good (almost) green earth as a cousin-sister. Tender sprigs are poking through the frozen ground, early morning fires still fill our kitchen with a warm charm, I’ve been making biscuits, and Asher suddenly has a keen interest in dragging me to the couch for a quick snuggle from time to time. I feel much like the Virginia landscape right now…a bit dormant, but the rumblings of the new life of a change of seasons is rattling around in my core and because I can sniff the change on the horizon, I’m itching to get to it.

That’s not really such a bad feeling after all.

Maybe I don’t want to break up with you, February. Maybe I just want to see other months. You know, have some space. It’s probably not you, it’s me.

A day for heart

Posted in Asher, Holidays, Motherhood, pictures by

This year in honor of Martin Luther King Jr, I was thinking about all of the words that we whispered into Asher’s ear on the day that he was born…the world is here for the taking, little man, you can be anything. Even in the most dire of circumstances, I believe that every child hears some version of this on the day that he or she enters the world. If not from a mother or father, perhaps from a nurse, a family member, a social worker, but I think that nothing inspires hope like the face of a child taking a first breath. If even only for a moment, I do believe that we all start here.

We forget that as we age. We forget that we were all that baby once, that little vessel of possibility. We start to see color, money, differences, dogma, fear, selfishness, pride, partisanship and power. We forget that there was a moment for each of us when it was possible to become anything, love anyone, learn everything, become triumphant, all simply because we were born. Yesterday I was thinking about all of the children that Asher has brought into our lives and the way that their curiosity erases stigma, the way that their openness invites smiles, and the way that their intensity brings parents and people together because children are so thirsty for the experience of this world, not the divisions within it. We see examples every day of people taking one step and then another in a steady march toward this narrow brand of forgetfulness, but yesterday there were words all over the United States that were about hope and love and equality. Words that helped me to remember that every person is created equal. That every single person, every person, all of us, are created equal. Yesterday reminded me that I can be doing more to be working toward acceptance in my actions and with my words, that I too am forgetting our universal starting point and sometimes seek out what separates from us one another before looking for what is common between us. It reminded me that there is still work to do and that equality is not something that is to be earned, it is a birthright.

And on a lighter note, Asher is deeply absorbed in Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go. Heartwarming to look in the backseat and see that on a chilly Tuesday morning.

afterglow

And because why not…here’s my post from 2010 on the subject. Little has changed.

Turn to dust with style

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Last week was a bit of a study in contrast, which is always welcome. I traveled to New York for work and returned home in time to unpack my heels and take advantage of the warm weather to knock out some much needed and welcome yard work. I love brushing elbows with the city, with any new place really, but more and more I’m always chomping at the bit to return home to the quiet hills and my fellas.

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On Sunday it was gloriously warm (Old Man Winter must have known that we all needed a break) and Drew and I woke up reaching for our work clothes. We decided to tackle the compost bin that we’ve been wanting to build, despite the impractical nature of starting a compost pile in January. You hush. A friend had suggested that we wire pallets together for a quick (and free) bin, but Drew felt pretty strongly that since the bin will be in a pretty visible part of our yard, it needed to look a little more polished. Nothing like having something polished looking to let your banana peels turn to dirt in! So we combined the two ideas, building the majority of the body out of salvaged pallets, but Drew put his trim carpenter’s background to work to frame it out and put some ‘finished’ looking sides on it. He also built some pretty sassy doors for both bays so that we’ll be able to access the pile for turning/soil as it’s ready. This shows the pallet back (which will eventually butt up against the garden fence and won’t be visible) and the start of Drew’s frame work. It has two bays so that we can eventually have a pile going and one to grow on, quite literally. Gardening puns, anyone?

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While Drew was hammering away, I worked on cleaning out a long neglected flower bed and raked up a pretty hefty pile of leaves. As I ripped out the remnants of last summer from the flower bed I was surprised to see various bulbs making their way through the soil. Also, just to keep things real, I’ll tell you that I stayed with my family tradition of taking down Christmas for the New Year, but had left the tree on the porch because the woods seemed awfully far away the day that I was doing all of that. Compelled by the fear that it might really be Spring, I took a turn at the Highland Games and did my very best to haul it and then pitch it far into the woods. If you’re wondering if I looked graceful in this moment, the answer is a resounding no. No, I did not. But it was oddly cathartic to pitch the tree, and I did wish it well.

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Proof that it was a good day:

Rocket Man

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Despite our deep love for Halloween, Drew and I took it a little easy this year and let Asher do the majority of the heavy Halloween lifting.

Asher’s school had a parade for the kids on Friday before Halloween, so here is Asher walking in the parade with Miss Betsy:

And here he is a couple of days later hanging out at a Halloween party with his buddy Austin:

Don’t you just wonder what they’re chatting about there?

My adorably wonderfully dear darling little sister Julie Claire and her charming boyfriend Joe took a weekend off from college life to visit and we rang in the Fall spirit with fires and pumpkins and chili and hot cider and board games. I keep trying to convince her that it’s not lame at all to move in with your sister and her family, but I think she sees through my scheme.

Here are the perfunctory pumpkin pictures:

(Asher believes that ALL letter A’s are for him, so I couldn’t resist making an A pumpkin for him. He and Drew (Drew) carved the silly face on the left)

Joe’s pumpkin was definitely the winner for details and thought, but of course I don’t have a picture of the completed pumpkin so here’s a process shot:

We weathered Hurricane Sandy just fine in these parts, although Drew and I definitely had our eyes, fingers, and toes crossed for all of the (remaining) trees on our property. Our efforts were rewarded with only one small tree snapping and a loose shutter. We’ll take it! Asher got to come to work with me one day, and then we taught him about the very best thing about lousy winter weather: blankets, a movie, and hot chocolate. He took to it like a champ.

Lately.

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First fires:

Early mornings:

Celebrating a birthday (and the man who had it):

Traveling to Atlanta for work:

Watching the light change for Fall:

Growing (and growing!) firewood pile:

Puppy play date love to an excessive and charming degree:

Another season change:

Pumpkin muffins for the boy:

A budding book lover:

Recreating the ocean in the bathtub:

And always this smile:

And because there are no pictures of me to share, I will instead off  a little something that’s been on my mind:

I think that I go back and forth between fancying myself some kind of activist and equally some kind of peace maker. In this political season, I’ve felt the urge to wear both hats, but lately, that second one is feeling more and more correct to me. I’m not apathetic about the value of the political process, but I’m also not sure that I’m comfortable adding more negativity to what is increasingly feeling like a pool of vague buzz words that always seem to be true in one circle and false in another. My gut instinct is that this whole process is going to implode during my life time, and if and when that happens, (and I hope that it does, and I hope that this sentiment is a part of it) it is my hope that it’s done intelligently, compassionately, and not at the cost of our good sense.

I support our right to disagree and I support the foundation of democracy that we’re attempting to still stand on, but I do not support all of the rhetoric that gets tossed around at the cost of forgetting that there are humans behind those words, from both sides. My concern is that we get so attached to our perception of the issues, or to being the most clever or stinging in our rebuttal, that we forget which way is up. I am guilty of this, and that activist in me knows that there are things that I am absolutely willing to fight for, but not at the cost of behaving in a way that I would never allow my toddler to. I’m shelving any public name calling for a while and hoping to create another spot on the internet that isn’t based solely on what’s going wrong, as I still believe that there is a lot that is right. I read this quote in Oxford American’s June issue, and haven’t been able to shake the impact that it had on me: “Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged?” (Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter). It’s not that I think, ‘oh, we’re all human so everyone can do anything and be just fine as long as we sugarcoat it and just say nice things’, it’s more that I think that we’re all human, we’re designed to disagree, and that the only way to move forward is to treat each other compassionately, no matter the degree of dissent. This lofty intention is, in my mind, the end of ignorance.

I think that the majority of the folks that I know and spend my time with feel this way, but as a way of affirming this for myself, I thought I might put it out there publicly too. My mouth often gets ahead of my heart, and something that I’ve been working on is being a bit more intentional with the content that I’m generating in this world wide web. I might get proven sorely wrong one day, but for the time being, I’m continuing to hope that it’s true that we can be the change that we wish to see, and in my case, I desperately hope to see a change for the positive.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.

The big 3

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It’s hard to write these birthday posts every year (hence it taking a month to get to last year) because I want to say so much knowing that this blog is intended to serve in some capacity as our family’s time capsule, but I’m also aware that I write with all of you in mind and that perhaps more is not always more.

The thing is…this boy. This precious sage little child that has only made our lives better and more rich and multi-faceted, this infant that turned into a toddler and then into a baby-toddler-little boy, this person that we live with, he’s just so much, and it’s hard to know how to capture even one second of it with any justice. So this post is the time capsule post, it’s for the man that I have an impressionistic vision of in my mind who I imagine reading this one day and thinking to himself, I was three once.

September, 2012

Asher,

While I have my freak out moments and my weak moments and my occasional hysterical moment, there’s also this strange moment that pops up where I look at you and just can’t make sense of your existence. I can’t believe that you are a person that was incubated in my body with all of the best bits of your father cooking in there too, and now you’re out here and talking about things that interest you, and all of your joints and bones and muscles and nerves are hard at work and your eyes are bright with a rife internal life in that mind of yours and I just…I can’t always understand it. You are always and intensely the most intimate relationship in my life and oddly, the most foreign. That juxtaposition is motherhood to me; I have an innate sense of knowing you, and yet I spend a great deal of my time figuring out ways to know you better.

November, 2011

This past year has been a big one. (Aren’t they all?) When you turned two you had only been walking for six months and in some ways I think that held you in baby-land a little longer. You were talking like a champ with a vocabulary that was growing by the second, but there was still a lot of our baby lingering on the fringes of your assent into toddler-hood. This year, at three, there’s none of that. Instead of light threads binding you to where you’ve been, I see rubber bands winding tightly ready to spring you at a moment’s notice into all that you’re approaching. Three is all about EVERYTHING. You feel so hard and laugh so hard and run so hard and think so hard and question so hard and investigate so hard and cry so hard and learn so hard and look so hard and say yes so hard and no so hard and…just everything. You are not alone in this, and seeing you with your little band of buddies all doing everything at once is charming beyond belief.

December, 2011

You are still cautious, though some of that is fading a bit, but you still check in with us about whether or not you can do the big things. You were born with a ‘look before you leap’ soul, I think, and I hope that it’s something you keep forever, but I also love the moments when you know you’re being brave and get lost in the moment. You are strong-willed, but easy to redirect and more than anything you love questions. You do not like the way that most foods look, but if we can get you (trick you) into trying something, you almost always like the flavor of it which completely surprises and thrills you. Yellow is still your favorite color.

January, 2012

While your ongoing love affair with airplanes and things that go is alive and well, you’ve also become fascinated by the ocean and all of its creatures. You sleep right now with two whales named Bop-o and Geeko (you named them) if I’m talking about them, or Bop-o and Beepo if your dad is talking about them–naming conventions aren’t really this family’s strong suit. You’ve been telling us jokes that are actually pretty funny. You’re right on track with stretching out your bedtime by feigning trips to the potty and a deep soul-stirring desperation for a sip of water or one. more. story. You still snuggle with us in the mornings, and believe it or not, when we kiss your bumped head or bruised knee, you still believe that it’s better. You’ve memorized the books that we read to you so that you can recite them along with us. Particularly ‘Otis’, ‘Goodnight Ocean’, and ‘On the Night You Were Born’.

February, 2012

You are very friendly with all people, walking up to them and asking how they are or pointing to whatever picture is on your shirt. I might call you Captain Obvious behind your back, but the truth is, I love your frank observations and deep enthusiasm for the world that’s around you. You stay close to us, still wanting to play with us more than with your toys when we’re at home. I get frustrated by this when I’m trying to get something done, but writing this, I know too well that there will be day when I long for you begging to help make breakfast at my side, so I hope that you keep asking as a way to remind me to just chill out and take the time while we have it. You recover quickly from your tears and sleep on your back with your arms over your head. You will some times fake-laugh until it seems so funny that it makes you laugh for real. ‘Fake it until you make it’ is an important life lesson, so if you are 30 and reading this, take a tip from your younger self and keep this up.

March, 2012

It started to rain on Saturday just as we were getting ready to celebrate your birthday with a little party at home and while we were running around grabbing things from outside and feeling tempted by the urge to get irritated that the rain had come, you spontaneously looked at me at said with great confidence and reassurance, “It’s ok! We can still eat cake inside!” which immediately showed me that in a room full of adults, you were the only one with your eyes truly on the prize.  This endearing, logical, and positive outlook is you 100%.

April, 2012

In reading this over, I can see that I’m not reinventing the wheel with my motherly observations, but while there is so much that is very unique about who you are, more than ever, I’m also aware of the bliss that lies in how very much you’re just like everyone else. I don’t know that I can really explain that more deeply except to say that your father and I give thanks every day for your health and development and feel profound gratitude for your presence in our lives and the fact that we can draw comparisons to you and the typical three-year-old experience.

June, 2012

To that one-day man who I cannot wait to know, I say this: you are equipped with all that you need, even at this tender age. You have it all. If you are looking back as a way of finding answers, connect with this and know its truth: you were born happy. Your name means Happy. You are a bringer of joy, a bearer of light, a tempered and curious soul. All of the happiness that you will ever need in life is already housed inside of you. As the book says, Heaven blew every trumpet and played every horn on the wonderful, marvelous night you were born.

September, 2012

Happy third (fourth) year, sweet boy.

 

2 for Now

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Asher is still going to be 2 for less than a month. The transition from one to two was less stark and we were still counting months (why do we do that? Tricky business, that month counting) but now he’s almost to three and so much more three than two.

There are a couple of habits that we had let dwindle on out of convenience and parent-fear that we wanted to break before turning three. One of them was Asher still sleeping with a pacifier (don’t judge) and so, on the first day in our new house, we were sitting at the table with Asher eating lunch and I asked him if he would like to start sleeping in a big boy bed. He said that yes, he would, and I told him that one of the rules of the big boy bed is that he wouldn’t be able to sleep with a nu-nu (pacifier) anymore. He just looked at me and said as breezily as an almost-three-year-old can, “ok”.

Well ok then.

Ya’ll, I’ve written a lot about all that parenthood has taught us so far, and here’s what I learned from that lesson: we’re morons. Asher wasn’t hanging on to that nu-nu, we were. So now he’s turning three and he doesn’t sleep with a pacifier so we can check that off a list and go commiserate with other stupid parents about the stupid things that we do when we’re underestimating the little people in our lives. (Anyone?)

The first night that Asher slept in his ‘new’ (crib lowered without the front bar on it) bed, we were not terribly surprised to see him standing beside our bed the following morning. He climbed up into bed with us and as he was snuggling, Drew noticed that Asher didn’t have his diaper on anymore. Asher proceeded to tell us that he woke up in his bed, went to the bathroom, took his nighttime diaper off, went potty, flushed–he’s very committed to reporting on every step of the process–and then came upstairs to get us. Whose kid is this? Every morning since then, Asher goes through this little routine with a level of meticulousness most OCD patients would covet and then comes to find us or gets back and bed and starts hollering, “Mama! Can I WAKE UP NOW? MAMA! CAN I…” which is pretty funny. A weird twist is that he will occasionally put his diaper back on, but we’re working on that.

This morning he woke up and I listened to him go through all of his potty steps and then he went back to his room and got back in bed and started singing. He sang to himself for about 20 minutes flying, I think, an airplane around (if the words to the ‘song’ were any indication) and then started calling out to ask if he could wake up. So far his almost three-ness has been a lot more opinions, a lot more freak outs, and a lot more intensity, but if it also means that he’s entering into the stage of life when he can wake up, potty, and play by himself while we squeak out the last little bit of sleep that we can? Sign. Me. Up. Suddenly the child and the puppy are not seeming quite so similar.

It’s getting harder to pinpoint the big changes as they occur because it’s all so rapid-fire. Where this time last year we were able to notice new words popping out and seeing new levels of physical confidence emerge, all of that is starting to happen so seamlessly and quickly that it will just sneak up on us all at once. What is pretty amazing is that Asher is beginning to really be able to express what kind of person he is, and what kind of sense of humor he has and all of the little nuanced things that make us who we are. While we don’t have first steps to marvel over anymore, we do have the changing lilt in his belly laughter, the way his eyebrow moves when he’s speaking frankly, and his insatiable curiosity about why things are the way they are. I think Drew and I both love this stage because we’re starting to see more and more of the person that we’re spending our lives with.

Cooling Off

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WOAH it’s hot up in here! Ya’ll, it’s so, so, so, SO hot in Virginia right now. I would have given anything for my college grades to reflect the temperatures of late…perfect 100s (and a couple of extra credit days) across the board. Virginia has a 4.0 in Boiling Your Brains In Your Head 101. Bully for you, Virginia. Bully for you.

There’s nothing better to do in this situation than find water, so here are a couple of shots of Asher braving the local splash park (with 283458499 of his closest friends. Heat brings the people together.)

I feel better already.

 

Moving.

Posted in General, House, pictures by

First a note from Management:

I have never ever ever ever been pulled in as many directions or as busy in my adult life as I have been in the last two months. There’s not another way to say it. It’s been fine, just hectic, and there were a couple of days in there where I was having some trouble breathing, but by and large it’s just been a laundry list of this, and then that, uh oh! that too, oh! and also this…and if I’m being totally honest, I go to bed by about 10 every night (you know, just after I drink my prune juice and watch Matlock) so there’s that too. The blog got the busy shaft, and some day I’m going to be reading back and saying, ahhhhh yes. May and June of 2012…holy wow that was total insanity. Some things just don’t really need to be preserved.

One of the things that we’ve been doing involved a lot of faxing and phone calls and signing and drumming of fingernails and holding of breath because we bought a house. Wait, sorry, gimme a second shot on that. We bought a house!! After a 3 day closing we finally signed the dotted line and let our breaths out.

We bought this house and I can’t wrap my mind around it. It’s walls and a place to be but it’s also…

Roots.

And not just roots in the sense that we’re rooted per se, who knows what the future holds, but it’s roots in the sense that there’s a place to finally soak up everything that pours out of this family, and now we are in a space where we might be able to actually wring it all back out too. In the 5 days that this house has been ours, it has absorbed so much already. Most notably a lot of paint, but beyond that, it’s absorbed hugs from friends and gallons of our parent’s sweat, and the sound of Asher laughing maniacally as he runs across the yard. In just 120 hours, this house has ballooned out with ambition and ideas and what ifs and oh yes! and maybe this can go there? and bad radio that helps the paint brushes keep time, and let’s knock down that wall and look! raspberry bushes! It’s only taken 7200 minutes for this house to become a Walton.

In this way, it’s kind of like we’ve both developed a really big crush on the same person and now we’re all in the glow of young love all over again. Bear with me, but this has absolutely nothing to do with light fixtures and square footage and closet space, and everything to do with the feeling of making one more knot in the rope that binds our life together. Much like when Drew and I looked and Asher and then looked at each other and felt that little click of knowing that we were permanently bound to one another, we are now standing and staring at oak trees and thinking, click.

Boxes are getting packed, our ridiculously amazing parents are spending hours helping us turn a house into our home, windows are wide open, and in all of it, I just look around in awe at how much is pouring out and getting soaked up. The usual suspects of blood, sweat, and tears are there, but also…profound gratitude, relief, giddiness, anticipation, gratitude, excitement, gratitude–those are there too.

Maybe it’s that I’m finally cresting the wave and easing down its other side, but right now, I can breathe again. I am freaking out about watching new light wash over new leaves. When we stand in the yard we don’t hear other people and car radios and firetrucks, we just hear birds and wind. There’s a bear that wants our garbage and squeaky floor boards under the stairs. Asher begs Drew to lift him up so that he can put a basketball through the basketball net, and there isn’t a stick of furniture in the house, but the fridge is full. We are full. We are breathing.

I’m so thankful that I haven’t written about the last two months so that this entry might just be what I remember. There was a storm, and then the clouds broke, and then we could see all that was before us.