Terrarium

I really can't complain about the intensity of this winter, when last year was the Chiberia polar vortex deep freeze of total doom, right? Even though it's February and I've been bundling these two kids tip to toe since November, so I want to complain. It's tiring! It doesn't matter how all in you are for magical snowy childhood memories, and I am very in - four season parenting is hard. It's all dripping mittens and falling over in slush and mud until suddenly there's a freak late March heat wave and you've sunburned your toddler because you forgot UV rays were a thing. I wouldn't trade flurries on Christmas and Matilda's annual birthday snowstorms for anything, but even the most winter-positive of us have to admit that facing down the latter half of this season in Chicago is a bitter pill. Cabin Fever 2015 and all that.

Freezing drizzle plus fatty flakes. I know, THE BEST.

I needed to get the girls out of the house a few weeks ago, and after scrapping plans for the library when I realized I had no cash or checks and owed them $37.40 in fines (always. I am completely incapable of returning books on time), we wandered instead to the Lincoln Park Conservatory. We've stopped in a few times during zoo trips over the past few years, but since we usually hang at the zoo  in nicer weather, the appeal of the greenhouse was somewhat lost on me. However! In the middle of winter, it felt like retreating to a tiny humid jungle. Which is exactly what I want to do every day until spring. Matilda threw her coat into the stroller and ran around whooping, "It's so WARM!" , and then we stayed for hours while she explored basically every single plant and tree and koi fish in the joint.

We do not usually leave the house in fleecy reindeer prints, but it was Pajama Day at preschool and once I decided we were spending the afternoon out of the house it was a done deal, no going back for appropriate-in-public options.

Matilda has been badly wanting to Joshua to see the "Terrarrium", which has been her name for the conservatory since the day after our first trip, despite the fact that we never once called it that. I'm not even sure how she linked those terms together in her mind, but anyways, we headed back this week. After all the snow over the past weekend, there was dense condensation on the glass ceiling and water was falling in huge, slow, random drops. Naturally, we needed huge banana leaf umbrellas.

Little lady was beyond thrilled to have Daddy hanging out in the ferns and cycads with her! Cycads, of course, are a fancy kind of jungle tree I now know a lot about thanks to the time I had to read the signage in the Conservatory while Matilda "looked for dinosaurs". I wish I was better at taking photos (life goal), or was one of those moms who casually slings the DSLR around and ends up with an archival quality family outing picture, but so far despite actually having a nice camera I have not yet achieved anything close to that level of awesome. What I have is this:

Thankfully we randomly color coordinated to distract from the fact that there's a terrible filter on that picture making everyone look jaundiced. But we were so warm! And it smells like jasmine and orchids and so many other delicious things in the Conservatory, which almost makes up for the fact that when we left, it had snowed quite a bit. Our drive home was very slow and blustery and then of course we got stuck in the unplowed, snow-packed alley, and Matilda refused to put her mittens on and then cried because she was freezing. Despite that rough departure, I cannot recommend the "Terrarium" enough. All the green and growing things make me remember the way summer feels. Plus, cycads!

http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks/lincoln-park-conservatory/

Four

I saved this screenshot from the day I went into labor with Matilda. Snowmaggedon, snowpocalypse, whatever you call February 1st, 2011 - she was born at the very height of the blizzard.

It has a hushed magic about it, to birth a baby in the midst of a historic storm. Matilda's birth was not any more special than Louisa's entry into the world (birth story coming soon-ish), it just had the heightened drama of doctors snowshoeing to the hospital and my midwives discussing, while I pushed, where in the building they could sleep for a few hours after she was born. 

This morning, four years later, she woke up to another winter storm and another blizzard warning. It rattles my brain to think four years have passed, that I could be sitting here, writing this, and listening to both my daughters laughing and playing with their dad together. I remember that first day in the hospital, the hours we spent staring at Matilda's long feet and wrinkled forehead, felt endless in the best possible way. But somehow here we are with a preschooler who is wearing hot pink nail polish and who originally requested a private jet for her birthday, ("I want a plane? That I can fly on just with my friends and it's a real one that goes in the sky") but instead settled for a homemade Frozen cake and a yoga mat.

Kids age you, you know? The responsibility, the sleepless nights, the constant static stress of always, always worrying about them in one way or another. But they also let you relive everything about your childhood and that is what I'm most excited for about four. Matilda's imagination is boundless, she's living in a world where she has pretend dragons and monsters and her very special five piggies who are always being a little naughty and who have terrible immune systems. "PIGGIES ARE SICK AGAIN", she will announce mournfully from bed when it's 1.5 hours past her bedtime and we think she's sound asleep. She loves family snuggles in our bed in the afternoon and she tells us that her and Louby are the bread, and Joshua and I are the pickles and tomatoes. A seriously questionable sandwich, but she is firm on the ingredients.

Dear little blizzard baby who is growing up before I can even catch my breath, you have my whole heart. I love you in all the mother ways - a love that is both the most furious and delicate thing I've ever known. 

 Happy, Happy Birthday.

Restart

I forgot my password to log on to this site, which sounds about right based on the time I've spent not writing here.

Oh hey! We had a baby.

Louisa Kate - a second daughter, a little sister. We have two girls. 

I complain about grind of parenting because it's exhausting and all-consuming, and also because I'm really very good at complaining, but in all honesty, this little babe has healed up my soul. I fought tooth and nail to have these children and the journey left me fragile and bitter. When Louisa was finally born at forty weeks and four days late, after a nightmare of fertility treatments and losses, I felt like I was breathing for the first time in two years. She slipped into our family like water, filling up all the cracks and the dry patches.  Now did I recently tell Joshua that I would sell a kidney for one day completely alone in total silence? Yes, it was last Friday and both girls were being obnoxious and I meant it. But at the same time I have this deep, profound gratitude for the fact that I even get to want to be alone. These girls, they were the challenge of my life before they were even two pink lines on a pregnancy test. And now they're here and they're gorgeous and healthy and stubborn and one sleeps like a newborn even though she's eight months old and one asked me the other night why she can't hug God and how can he be real if she can't see him in her world and just, whoa. The little things are the big things, right?                                                                                                                                         

And they won't stop growing up either.

Matilda will be four years old this week. FOUR! Four feels very far removed from babyhood, even from toddlerhood. She falls asleep in the wildest, limbs akimbo positions and she is just so very long. She's lost so much of her...roundness? She is curious about things like death and how caterpillars become butterflies and if she doesn't understand something she asks, "Say that again, Mommy? Tell me again?" until she gets it, and then she tells her facts and tidbits to every single person she sees for the rest of the day. She is terrified of armadillos for reasons we cannot even fathom, having grown up in an armadillo-free zip code, and she is enamored of her preschool teachers and her school friends and sweet childhood things like being the line leader. 

Louisa is eight months old and is our string bean baby - probably because she has never stopped moving for a minute in her entire short life. It really doesn't seem right that the only person in our family to have defined abs is the baby. She achieved those after months of laying on her back and trying to sit straight up using only her core muscles, flapping her arms and legs frantically. In other words, Pilates. She's crawling now, a kind of modified crawl, crawl, slither, roll over, sit up, crawl, crawl, repeat situation. She pulls up on everything, has two teeth, a mop of fuzzy curls, and she is the founding member and president of the Matilda Fan Club. She claps and grins for everything her big sister does and looks at us like, DID YOU SEE THAT WOW SHE IS SO GREAT AT TALKING BACK TO YOU! GOOD JOB! 

They are really pure joy wrapped up in smooshy little bodies. With bows on top. So many bows.

I need to write again because it's been too long, not just on here, but this is a good place to (re)start. Now that Matilda is old to understand what Joshua and I do for our livings, it suddenly feels so important to show her that there's making money and then there's investing in the things you do well and fulfill you. If those are already the exact same thing for you, then YES! You are nailing it, and I'm jealous. We aren't one hundred percent there yet. Or even fifty percent. Parenting is so good and fulfilling, but it's also not the sum total of what I do, so here I am doing something else. Just little words on a little page, even if most of them are still about my kids and my mama life.

Work in progress.

Ironically, I will post this on Facebook.

I had a conversation with some girls at work last week about why we can't get ourselves together to make dinner for our families, or we make the same things over and over, or we forget to grocery shop and 6pm rolls around and the "meal planning" starts by logging in to GrubHub (that one was me. Sigh). We all had the same memories of our moms making dinner every single night and we were bemoaning the fact that this lost art of feeding our families well had not been passed down to us when someone jokingly said, "Well, they didn't have the internet to distract them."

I felt like all the bells and lightbulbs started ringing and blinking in my absolutely-internet-addicted brain. I've blamed a lot of my inability to pull it together with cleaning and grocery shopping and cooking over the fact that I am a working mom, and that night shift is pretty brutal on my schedule and my body. This is all true, but realistically I do have time to be organizing my life better. It's the time I spend scrolling through the Kardashians' Instagrams (I know! I know) and the time I spend mindlessly refreshing Facebook and the time I spend curating Pinterest boards as if organizing food I don't even make into savory and sweet categories is a noble pursuit. I started thinking about how Joshua and I barely watch TV without also reading the news or blogs or something on our phones, about how we frequently say we have "no time", about how in the fifteen minutes that I've been writing this, I've refreshed instagram about 3 times and clicked over to the Facebook tab in my browser at least once.

One of the girls' patients had coded earlier that night, and we spent a fairly dramatic few minutes together reviving him and then a long while settling him back down. This is a normal night in the NICU, but it made me laugh that a few hours later we were lamenting how exhausting social media is and how Facebook frequently makes us feel bad and inadequate. Because shouldn't we be writing suck it, Facebook envy! You people are graduating/engaged/married/pregnant/ on a tropical vacation/buying a new house but I just stayed up for 26 hours and brought a critically ill child back to life with my own two hands! (There are so many reasons why that is a bad idea, but intensifying your sense of self-esteem is not one of them).

I am really not writing some sort of anti-social media manifesto. I keep in touch with people through those avenues that I really never would see or hear from otherwise. I'm not quitting Instagram; that's part of how my far-away family is watching Matilda grow up. But there is certainly something to be said for how I personally need to manage it better - it is all so distracting and time-wasting and reinforces starkly that comparison is the thief of joy. And it really is an addiction.  We have made a great effort to not be buried in our phones or laptops when Matilda is around, but she still sleeps a lot (amen, so thankful, never change) and I could be doing a hundred other things during that time. I will consciously plan to do xyz and then end up doing a totally different xyz where x = fall decor on Pinterest, y = someone's travel photos on Facebook, z = fashion week photos on Instagram. I'm not more informed or better educated or better organized after that kind of an evening, and no one got any closer to eating healthy, well-balanced meals in my home.

I made almost everything in this picture. All the pillow covers, the beloved airplane blanket. I'll also take 50% of the credit for the toddler herself. I know that part of what has made my own internet/social media bingeing so much of a problem is that it's endlessly distracting, and we are in a season of life that warrants some distractions. It's easier to just not think sometimes, but I think I'm writing this to remind myself that I can distract myself with productive and beautiful things as well, and the end result is far more gratifying. I really don't have any advice as to how to put down the Pinterest and back up slowly, but I am trying, I really am.

Foam and Twerk

Spoiler alert: I've Arrived Late to the Miley Cyrus Meltdown.

It takes me a little longer than most people to fully form my opinion on controversial topics. I'm always impressed by 5,000 word blog posts and articles that appear seemingly moments after something newsworthy happens. I could never be a journalist for this exact reason - by the time I'd finish writing, 14 more relevant things would have already happened and I'd be like, "I'm still ruminating on that one." (Side note: someone recently said to me, "I'll have to marinate on that and get back to you," and it made me physically recoil. I don't want to envision you slipping around in lemon juice and a zesty blend of spices like a pale raw chicken! Try ruminating on it instead, it's a lovely little word with no bacterial connotations).

So I woke up on Monday, and as many of us with internet access and without concerns of imminent famine or bodily harm found, social media had completely exploded in the aftermath of the VMAs. I'd actually gotten texts from a few friends the night before that said Miley Cyrus was making them sick, but I wasn't watching the VMAs and to be completely honest, I'm not a fan of hers so this didn't really strike me as newsworthy. Which it obviously was. I still haven't seen the entire performance, which seems unnecessary in light of the constant news coverage since and the fact that I read several play-by-plays of the foam and twerk extravaganza. I don't want to see that.

I think at another point in my life, I would have had a very blase attitude the whole thing. My initial reactions were along the lines of; some people will do anything for the shock value, some child stars will do anything to shake off their Disney Channel image, is it me or does Miley Cyrus have dinner rolls glued on her head?

But then I saw a gif of her mom jumping up to give that performance a standing ovation and that was the hell no moment that woke up my lazy mama self. What in the world we were expecting from a girl whose own mother is applauding her degrade herself and flaunt her lack of self-respect? Because the point is not really whether or not you believe that performances like that are exploiting or embracing sexuality, the point is not really that Miley is uncomfortably young and Robin Thicke is getting rich this summer off a song that assumes men know what women want when they aren't cognizant of it themselves. Those things are certainly upsetting, and certainly worth discussing, and most of the world did that on Monday. But to me, as I arrive late to the party, the point is that this is a girl who is saying, what I do with my body is the most important thing I want the world to know about me. The only thing that separates me from the Hannah Montana Miley is that now I live my life right out of the urbandictionary playbook. I know Molly. And all that's lewd and crude about sex? I want you to know that I'm down with that.

And there's her mother, giving her a standing ovation.

If there's anything that I want my own daughter to know, it's that her body is the very least important thing about her. Oh, it's entirely important to be healthy, to be strong, to have self-esteem, to embrace and not loathe all the scars and ripples and curves she will have. It's important for her to have a healthy sexuality and self-respect. But her mind, her intelligence, her passions and her interests are far more valuable to this world than anything about her physicality. It's painful for me to realize that someday Matilda may love a benign show like Hannah Montana, and then could end up watching whoever the 2022 version of Miley Cyrus is declare that she's all grown up now, thanks to sex and drugs. Not because she got an education, or because she has an awareness of world issues, or even because she's matured and grown as a performer and entertainer. Those are all great and respectable things, but instead we've got Miley Cyrus in a nude bra, shoving her sexuality in the face in a million young girls, saying, this is what growing up is all about.

It sure as hell is not, and it offends me, the mother of a daughter, that Miley and her mother (who has been one of her managers and who was highly unlikely to have just shown up and been as surprised as the rest of us by what followed) chose to display that narrative through her VMA performance. It's hard enough to raise girls in a world that values flesh over brains in almost every arena. It's even more complicated when it's laid out this explicitly, and the subsequent uproar is positive in that it makes us reflect on what we're seeing and negative in that it drowns out the truly important things that happened this week. How do you even begin to prioritize when you're raising a girl in a world where CNN spends equal time discussing chemical weapons unleashed on Syrians and a foam finger being used inappropriately on a washed up pop singer with a one-off summer hit? I'm glad this performance didn't go by unnoticed, because that says that we aren't all ok with it, but I'm conflicted over the fact that instead it just played on a loop for days and certainly many more young girls who didn't watch the VMAs have seen it since.

Matilda's new favorite game is to pretend - anything and everything. Pretend we are taking naps. Pretend that her stuffed kangaroo needs a bath (he really does, though). Pretend that we are making eggs and pancakes in her toy kitchen. Is it so much to ask that in a few years she pretends to go to college instead of pretends that she's a Disney star? We cancelled cable recently, for a lot of reasons, but suddenly it feels like that was a really important parenting decision (it was not at the time, I wish I could claim that but really we were just trying to live a little more simply). I'm not at all knocking little innocent shows, but the industry of transitioning child stars into adult ones is one that values sex appeal over all other personal attributes. It's all blurred lines and subtle messages that either women are for men to use, or that their power comes only from their sexuality and how they use it.

I guess what I am saying, days late and paragraphs too long, is keep that away from my girl. I'm not stupid, I know you can't peel yourself away from these messages completely. I was a teenage girl, and I know what it's like to fumble around trying to make your mark and discover yourself as an adult. It's all awkward and uncharted but I don't think it's too much to ask that Matilda never thinks her life will be improved by twerking and getting to know Molly, pleaseGodplease. (Molly is ecstasy. It's already Friday so I've just been assuming you all googled it by now if you didn't already know). And I'm positive that she's never going to get a standing ovation for anything she does along those lines. This is the message I want little girls to know - that it should not be expected that your mother stands up and applauds you doing something stupid, something demeaning to who you are and what's important about you. That you are so, so much more valuable to society when you keep your clothes on in public and fling your intelligence and your insight and your curiosity out there at the world instead of your ass.That you are making the world better for every girl when you don't allow yourself in the same room as anyone interested in crossing blurred lines, let alone dance with them. That achievement is not ripping your clothes off for the viewers at home.

So sit down, Miley's mom. Put your clothes back on, Miley. Write an apology note to the foam finger company. Go to college. At this point, nothing would be more shocking than that.

the dog days are (almost) over

 Joshua and I have always had a sort of an obsession with light. Natural, artificial, too much or too little, we are very conscious of the role light plays in our life. And since we've been together now for over ten years and we've watched the seasons fade into each other approximately forty-twoish times, you might think we would stop mentioning the changing light each year. But we never do. I can't think of a summer where I haven't said a dozen times that this is my absolute favorite time of day. This happens most frequently around 8pm on clear days in July, when we're passing by fields or even an empty overgrown lot that's lit up in the evening sun, and I am all, "look at those amber of waves of grain! I love it here in America!" because the light makes me feel this strange mix of childhood nostalgia and patriotism (other things that make me feel this way: dogs playing fetch in the backyard, every version of Don't Stop Believin' ever made, anything involving football).

Tonight Helo and I wandered through the neighborhood, well before 8pm, and the light had already settled into a just-before-sunset bronze. It's this time of day at this time of year that makes me run right home and tell Joshua that fall is right around the corner, I can SENSE IT! As can anyone else who calls planet earth their home, or owns a calendar, but it feels like a personal and bittersweet epiphany each and every year. 

Despite all that I love about summer; the evening light, the smell of sunscreen slicked into Matilda's curls, the way that it takes thirty seconds to throw her in a dress and sandals and run out the door, I'm practically clapping for every brittle and fallen leaf I see these days. A change will do you good, and all that. I'm not usually the one who takes Helo out in the evenings, and it felt serendipitous that I decided to spend this fading part of tonight outside. It's going to be scorching all week, but it's not really the heat that makes it summer for me. It's the light.

I could not love this adorably threatening sidewalk chalk barricade any more. I was a little worried that tiny children were going to jump out at me as I went ahead and strode into their sacred space, but I think they had been hauled off to homework and bedtimes so....Do Not Pas this Lin, summer! We are moving on to crisper and brisker things.

This Has To Be A Record for Posts In One Week Written By Me

Joshua is home from the summer of productivity/doom and he is ready to party!

yeah...

That was approximately two hours after he arrived home and exactly 34 minutes into an episode of the West Wing, which I will no doubt recap for him when we start the next one and he has no idea what's going on. His exhaustion was completely legitimate, but now that I'm thinking about it, Joshua stays awake for approximately 75% of anything we are watching. He's lucky that I haven't exploited this entertainment narcolepsy. (Such a bummer how Dwight brutally killed Michael in a fit of rage as part of Steve Carrell's exit from The Office, right? I'm going to try this one.)

The house was pristine when Joshua arrived last night, because I'm really good at shoving things in closets and drawers and lighting candles and creating the illusion that our home life is nothing if not a well-curated Pinterest board. I do not just survive my solo parenting weekends, I thrive!

However, this morning I was reminded that toddlers are little vortexes of destruction, hell bent on ruining your dreams of catalog living. If the work of childhood is play, the work of parenthood is not punching yourself in the face after picking up the same blocks and beads and crayons a zillion and one times a day. And we weren't particularly neat or fastidious people to begin with, so you can imagine that when our powers combine, the outcome is that on mornings like this one we are one dead cat away from a hoarders episode. 

In the picture above, Matilda was explaining in no uncertain terms to Joshua that her beads needed to come out of the whale tub (which is still kicking it in her closet as a toy) and he was politely but firmly declining her request on the basis that we had reached our limit of Items Underfoot.

We decided the best thing to do when faced with a major clean up project would be to leave.

And now for a quick and not very cohesive report on life outside our chaos-littered condo...

We are on the cusp of fall, people. See above! For every luscious heirloom tomato someone picked today in the community garden, ten chlorophyll-depleted leaves hit the ground. 

Matilda apparently loves hats and was especially fond of this jaunty herringbone number. Also, to my great shame, I'm wearing sunglasses inside in that picture and I apologize for falling victim to one of my own pet peeves. It was just so bright that I forgot to take them off. Joshua was literally turning into a sunbeam at the exact moment I snapped that shot, so...I promise it's not a thing I do regularly.

Chicago is so gorgeous in every season, and we couldn't possibly see enough of it these days. We are so grateful that this is our city. I'm thankful that we can walk outside and feel a sense of relief that we are 1) not as likely to slip on a pile of crayons and break something as we are indoors and 2) that we are most certainly living our lives in the place we are meant to be right now. Days that we are all together exploring and wandering and being a "really nice family!" (Matilda's words, and the sweetest ones since the last phrase I deemed the sweetest) are just so precious.

She is gentle! She is wild!

She's a riddle! She's a child!

She's a headache! She's an angel!

She's a girl!

now with a picture AND a video

Joshua travels for at least one big work event every summer, sometimes more. This year he had two, plus the frequent weekend trips he took for his new business and it made this summer long and often lonely and not exactly filled with the same kind of golden memories as summers past. He knows I am extremely proud of his hard work, so with great affection and support for his endeavors I say: thank God this summer is over. Joshua's arrival home from California tomorrow marks the official end to the traveling circus and there are no more trips planned other than ones we are taking together. There is some kind of intense emotion that I feel about this, a mixture of joy and relief and despite my best efforts, a lingering sadness over how stressful it was. Kind of like the way a dog feels right after a bath, I imagine. I am the wet dog, and this summer was my bath.

I'm not sure how to recover from that analogy (I'm clean now? this is going badly), so I will move on to the fact that these summer trips have gotten so much easier now that Matilda is older. The stressful part of the trips is the part where I work 56 hours in 6 days in order to be off the entire time Joshua is gone -not the part where we are home together sans Daddy. I really look forward to having time just with her - especially now that we can just chatter away to each other and paint our toenails and go on long walks where she demands to sip my coffee every few blocks and I let her because hello, antioxidants.

I loved Matilda's babyhood because she was so happy and content and squishy but this age is far and beyond my favorite (I did not love 18-24ish months. There was a lot of climbing furniture and falling off furniture and rageful head banging and rigor mortis tantrums and not a lot of talking. We are verbose people, Joshua and I. We needed this child to speak and voila! She also sings). She has strong opinions on what she wants to wear and where she wants to go and what she wants to eat and do and play with and it is incredibly hilarious and more seriously, incredibly satisfying for the part of my soul that wanted to be a mother above anything else in the world. Today I took Matilda to get custard and as I was buckling her into her carseat for the ride home, she said, "thank you for the treat, Mama." (Naturally, I cried right there on Belmont outside Scooters). She also says the things we've always told her about herself, "I am really smart! I am really strong!" and I feel like if I literally did not accomplish one more thing in my lifetime other than for her to keep saying that into adulthood, that would be more than enough.

(She also says, "I am really cute!" and I'm going to check it off in the positive self-esteem column as opposed to in the reinforcing shallow stereotypes for girls column. For now).

Of course, this morning a sweet older woman was passing us as I navigated the sidewalk of our busy street with the dog and Matilda, who insists on walking "by myself. No help, Mama", and the woman made the mistake of saying hello to Matilda in the middle of one of her declarations of stroller independence. My really smart and really strong daughter told her, "STOP IT! I'm not talking to you", and then I died on the inside/passed out from embarrassment/disciplined her promptly/choose your own adventure, mine was shame. Parenting is humbling, in a literal scrape yourself off the sidewalk way. 

And then we have this video, taken moments before the sweetest thank you she's ever given me - I apologize in advance for how loudly Eleanor Rigby was playing and for the fact that I laugh like someone who has recently hit the sidewalk.




There are no pictures

Whenever I return from my regularly scheduled three to sixth month blogging absence, I usually feel like I need to make excuses for my absence (because the three of you reading this missed my self-deprecating quarterly family updates so much? I don't know).

But I am not going to do that because the year two thousand and thirteen has left me in a space where I really don't need to make any excuses. I wasn't here blogging because I was out in the real world dealing with all sorts of (insert four letter word here. and here. and here. and I'm only describing the things that happened between February and May. Are there five letter words I could use for June and July? I'm the mother of a toddler. I'm rusty).

Just to sum up, things about this year that were awesome:

....
....
....
....I've thought of a few.

Joshua started a media production company. I could not be more proud of him, and also a little jealous because now I want to start something and be flooded with work from day one and suddenly have Fedex dropping off business cards and promotional sunglasses. Matilda continues to be the reason we all get up in the morning - first because she's screaming, "I NEED TO GET OUT NOWWWWWWW", and secondly because she is the walking, talking, breathing embodiment of all those well-worn parenting cliches. Light of our life. Center of our world. Hope for the future. The sun we revolve around. The lamest thing about those phrases is that they don't even come close to expressing the bittersweet joy of watching a child grow up, but since this has been a Four Letter Word Year, I'm going to allow it for now.

When Joshua started a company but still kept the day job that he very much enjoys and is also fairly important to our mortgage company, he started working on the weekends. And since I was already saving lives on the nights and weekends (I have to make it sound as dramatic as possible, now that he gets promotional sunglasses), that meant everyone suddenly became very, very, very tired all the time. I think we stopped making our bed in April, right around the time that someone was sleeping in it alone approximately twenty two hours a day. We have been extremely blessed by Matilda's amazing grandparents helping us through this - in fact, Joshua's dad retired just in time for us to start shipping her off to them for weekends at a time. In order of Amount of Fun Achieved, we use these breaks to 1) work, 2) sleep, and 3) drink to excess (please don't tell the grandparents, they're such wholesome people). Also, 4) watch the West Wing, which is our summer Netflix obsession.

Side note: unfortunately, we just got to season five. We recently discovered after googling "why are all the characters acting ridiculous in West Wing season five", that it is the first season where Aaron Sorkin stepped away from the show. Dear Aaron Sorkin circa 2003, 10 years from now an overtired and tipsy Chicago couple will be really bitter with your decision. THEY FIXED SOCIAL SECURITY IN 43 MINUTES AND DECIDED NOT TO TAKE ANY CREDIT FOR IT?? I know all the four letter words, and I'm saying them to your 10-year-younger-self.

Can you tell that the year two thousand and thirteen has derailed us a little? It's true. And if you know me in real life, I also know that you are all, "she needs to shut up about the West Wing," and believe me, I should listen to you. It's just that this year has created a deep need for escapism and we decided to wrap that up into staggeringly idealistic televised politics. But don't worry, this former political science major has also rediscovered the fervency of my interest in actual politics, and that has led to deep soul searching regarding my career choices. And the less lofty pursuit of draining away the time that I do have reading Politico, which is where idealism goes to die in the face of realities like the New York City mayoral race.

How did I end up here? I think the downward spiral occurred because the entire time I've been writing this, my sweet, spirited daughter has been screaming that she needs to GET OUT (see above). Unfortunately, it's nap time and I am the boss of her, but still...the high pitched demands wear on a person.

Lastly, I apologize for the vagueness with which I am approaching What Has Happened Since I Last Blogged. It is a combination of little annoyances and vast griefs that run the gamut from unspeakably boring to just unspeakable, and I'm sure everyone has suffered through months or years of trials that feel similar to ours. Maybe someday, this year will be something I put into written words, but for now you get diatribes on decades old TV and absolutely no pictures of us whatsoever. Matilda has ringlets and does somersaults and I'm depriving my vast readership of photographic evidence of this, but if we are all lucky, I will blog again before she goes off to preschool.

(Social security in 43 minutes, I mean really...) 

West Coast

Even though I keep writing 2012 on everything that requires a date, they tell me it really is 2013. And its not even the giddy, fresh resolutions days of the year anymore. It's that slogging, post-Christmas pre-spring stretch that everyone who lives in a four season climate knows so well. Which is why I'm thrilled to say that I'm writing this from San Diego, where Matilda and I strolled along the beach without jackets today. And we ate fish tacos outside in the sunshine and managed to stop at not one, but two playgrounds, mostly because we just left a midwestern deep freeze that makes going to the grocery store feel like an expedition worthy of the Discovery Channel. Joshua and I said to each other (like we always say when we are traveling), why don't we live somewhere a little bit warmer and a lot more beautiful?

Don't worry, Chicago, we still love you (and our stable jobs and wonderful friends and family) and you are looking really pretty on facebook and instagram right now with your glittery new snow. But oh you are so cold and so FLAT and getting away at this time of year is a very, very good idea. And also, no, I don't think this slide was designed for the toddler crowd, but it was the highlight of the park experience for both her and Joshua.

We're here because Joshua is on a business trip, and the majority of that business happens in the evening. I'm tied to a toddler schedule, which means paaartayyyyyy in the hotel room starting at 7pm. And by party, I mean I'm sitting here writing this blog post while Matilda sleeps across the room. I have big plans for my solo evenings, including but not limited to, painting my nails, trolling the internet, intermittent napping, and not feeling the slightest bit guilty about my total lack of productivity. Our flight home from our after-Christmas visit to my family in Massachusetts landed exactly 32 days before our flight to California took off, and in that time we pretty much ran flat out, physically and emotionally. To be honest, 2013 started off on the wrong foot with us Havi - more hurdles to jump than harbors to rest in, so to speak. There have been Capital C Challenges, and it is only the first week of February! I'm unimpressed, which is possibly why I keep reverting back to 2012 in my addled brain.

It hasn't been all bad since New Years Day. Matilda turned two this week, and after a trip to the childrens museum, a tiny celebration with her beloved Cal, and passing out in a cupcake coma, we crept into her room at exactly 11:30, the time she was finally born. Joshua and I looked at her sprawled out, taking up so much of the crib these days, and we agreed that even after two years dedicated to her surviving and thriving, the element of oh! she is really ours! still lingers. 

She is constantly in motion, constantly saying something brand new or surprising us with knowing something today that eluded her yesterday. Today, after google maps failed me as we were meandering around the southern Cali highways (meandering = I was driving 70mph in a 65mph zone looking for an exit and everyone around me going 80mph didn't approve), Matilda shouted, "You are kidding me!" I'm just so thankful that she chose to repeat that phrase over a few others that may have slipped out as I got on and off I-5 repeatedly. 

After we visit Joshua's aunts in northern California later this week, we have another busy few weeks at home, Matilda's birthday party (which had to be scheduled later due to this trip), and then March and April and May are just wide open blanks in both my mind and my planner. I doubt they will stay that blank, but I'm planning to keep it that way as much as possible because we all need rest and calm and spring. A new start to the already old new year. A harbor to rest in. Perhaps not one that includes seals, but we are flexible.

all is bright

We celebrated Christmas early with Joshua's parents this past weekend, a tradition we started when they moved back to the area and we were all balancing family commitments and work over the actual holiday (hint: I was the only one with a work conflict). There was a time when I thought maybe we wouldn't be able to spend the weekend anymore after having kids, but as Matilda gets older I couldn't be more thankful for the memories we are making here and for the way she adores this place. Joshua's parents house is comfortable to the point of mild sedation - a grownup's lazy wonderland of freshly ground coffee, thick napping blankets, homemade treats, and other people who are making sure Matilda doesn't slam her fingers in doors or gleefully lunge for the stairs. And Matilda is currently just smitten with her grandparents (she stopped saying Gamma and Boppa a few days ago in favor of the oh so logical "Boppa" and "Other Boppa").

This weekend, being away from home and celebrating Christmas with our family also felt like an incredible privilege in light of the tragedy of yet another gun massacre last Friday. I have not stopped thinking about the families of the children and teachers who are now gone. The despair that I feel just imagining Matilda's life ending in a senseless, horrific way is so deep that I cannot comprehend the grief these parents and families are experiencing. I am so thankful that she is far too young to understand what kind of violent world we live in. Her biggest problems are parental blockades to both snacks on demand and unlimited access to Sesame Street, and I will fight to keep her life that way as long as possible.

This gem is the closest thing we got to a family picture this weekend, at least on our camera. And it's a few days later and I feel both grateful and selfish over my relief that the three of us are still here and living and breathing. I'm thankful for this fleeting, precious time on earth in ways that I wish I felt everyday, and not just in light of horrific news. For the big things like our faith and this season of Advent and for the little things like after-bathtime toddler curls and gifts wrapped up in glittery teal paper. We are praying desperately for all of those whose families are no longer complete and who are suffering instead of celebrating this week. 

 Donations to support the Newtown community can be directed here, through the United Way of Western CT, or here, through a fund set up by the community itself. Lastly, a group of artists on Etsy are donating a portion of their proceeds to that United Way fund - you purchase from them here.

Oh Hello

Time for a quarterly update on all the Havi happenings? Sure. Matilda felt my old choking and dying netbook needed to face just one more challenge and ripped the spacebar off a few months ago, but now I have a shiny new Mac and no excuses about how typing is so hard (you rip off your spacebar and try it).

Fall was rather lovely here in Chicago. It was warm, the foliage was as good as this New Englander could ask for from the Midwest, we managed to apple pick and pumpkin carve and dress our daughter up as Elmo for the Lincoln Square Halloween festivities. She was a little thrown off by all the other kids screaming "ELMO!" in her face, and we were a little thrown off by the adults who shoved their kids in her face while avoiding eye contact with us and saying in an odd whisper/yell,"looook! ellllmmooo!" It was neat. 

My incredibly inspiring friend Amy ran the marathon in October, and we CTA-hopped all over the city to see her at mile 10ish, 20ish, and the finish line. Matilda was awesome and only once did she actually try to run away into the street and join the marathon (true story). She helped hold up signs for Auntie Amy, did not complain when her lunch consisted of an applesauce and crab rangoons on the street in Chinatown, and appropriately fell asleep right as we saw Amy turn the corner and head up to the finish line.  

Also, I don't know if you've you ever carried a stroller with a 29 pound toddler in it up and down dozens and dozens of stairs to and from the L tracks, but 1) it was sort of the crowning achievement of our almost two years of urban parenting, and 2) Joshua and I hobbled around for a day or two like we had run the marathon instead of leisurely puttering from spectator location to spectator location.

We hosted Thanksgiving for the first time and after much late night obsessive googling and seeking constant support from friends and Alton Brown, we brined and roasted our first turkey and oh, we owned it. My facebook profile picture is still Joshua and I standing over that turkey. We celebrated on Wednesday night with Joshua's family, his sister's boyfriend, and super marathoner Amy who is all the family I'm ever going to get here in the heartland (sob!) but if I had to pick someone to spend every holiday with, it would obviously be her anyways. It was really a wonderful night. Of course we barely picked up the big camera, but we did instagram that dinner to death.

Before everyone arrived, we managed to catch some shots of Matilda eating cranberry sauce for lunch. She looks like such a grown up girl in that picture on the right, but after searching through last years Thanksgiving pics I'm happy to say that, beneath those long curls and despite those pearly chompers, she still has the same rosy baby cheeks and sweet smile as last year. Keep changing slowly, firstborn child of mine.

Joshua's parents and sister left Thursday morning to visit his brother's family in Texas, and we lazed around watching the parade and football until I left to give thanks at work with the NICU babes. I have to say that waking up on the holiday with leftovers all ready to go is actually an amazing way to celebrate the holiday. Wednesday Thanksgivings forever!

My favorite part of the year is really the weekend after Thanksgiving when you are still full and making turkey sandwiches slathered in cranberry sauce for every meal and still feeling very blessed, but you also know that you can now celebrate Christmas without feeling like you are shortchanging Thanksgiving. We don't do Black Friday, so it's the weekend when Christmas still feels sort of far away and you think you have all the time you need for wrapping and baking and creating holiday cheer (you don't). In that spirit, we have all these magical plans to go tromping through snowy fields someday and cut down our own tree, but this year in the time we had allotted (Sunday evening after I had worked three overnights in a row) and the attention span of our child (short, prone to violence with containment), we were only able to pull off the magical run-into-home-depot-and-pick-which-tree-looks-like-it-would-be-most-beautiful-without-this-netting-on-it experience. 

This festive activity culminated in a certain child being carried out of Home Depot kicking and screaming, and required Joshua to saw off the lower branches because we did not have the time or apparently, the parenting skills, to hold our family together and wait in line for that at the store. But lo! our tree is actually beautiful sans net, and there are no huge holes or birds nests or anything else terrifying and nature-ish. A Christmas miracle! 

We are still enjoying the Christmas season and thank God for jeggings and scrubs because the delicious spoils from multiple cookie exchanges keep piling up on our counter. Luckily stress is counteracting the saturated fat because this week Matilda learned how to lock herself in her room (a day that shall live in infamy because 1) it was literally Pearl Harbor Day and 2) the comedy of errors that occurred was actually unbelievable) and she also learned how to throw herself out of her crib. This made for a rough parenting weekend. Then last night she insisted on extra hugs and kisses before bed and said "Nigh nigh, I slweepy, Mama" and pulled her blanket over herself to emphasize the point so my little heart grew three sizes that day.

Back

In honor of Emmy night, I'll just step forward and accept the award for Most Inconsistent Writer in the category of Mommy Bloggers. I can't promise that this isn't the only time I'll post here before Christmas. Yes, the double negative hurts my long-buried writer's brain but I'm out of practice.

Yesterday I updated my phone to iOS6 (new emojis! pretty maps! i can finally keep matilda in her extremely educational toddler apps using guided access! there i go, pushing my phone to the very limits of its capabilities...) and when my phone restarted all my photos were gone. I had not backed up my photos because my Apple expert in residence had already updated his phone without any photo issues. 

To say that I freaked out would be an understatement.

We don't use our big fancy camera that often and the vast majority of our pictures are on my phone, which hadn't been backed up since the beginning of the summer (i know...) so naturally I lost my mind thinking that I had failed the Number One Rule of Parenting Your First Child: Overdocumentation of Their Every Move.

But...it turns out that when you have two thousand, six hundred and forty something (2,64something) photos on your poor iPhone 4, it takes awhile to restore them. In the time that it took for the pictures to reload appropriately, Matilda watched me quietly and then started doing this thing where she covered her mouth with both her hands, and laughed maniacally until her entire upper body was shaking. Watching how quickly she launched into this dead-on impression of me (other than confusing my anguish for hilarity, which was in itself hilarious) shocked me into pulling myself together.

Besides resolving to maybe not cry like a hyena in front of my toddler again, I also decided I would (re)start writing. I take a lot of phone photos and I have an index card on our fridge where I write down Matilda's new words but I think I could stand to throw some stories on here once or twice a month. My emotions about the documentation of our family life apparently boil closer to the surface than I realized.

I would have been devastated to lose all the pictures that I clearly need to keep around for Matilda's preschool applications. All caught up on current events? Check. Back on our game.

Easter

I am such a great blogger, right? Apparently I just pop in to cover the major holidays (sorry, St. Valentine and St. Patrick...also, happy new(ish) year?). We had a very busy March packed with a beach vacation, an excessively long roadtrip home from the beach (Florida's not...close), basement renovations, and the typical working parent daily routine. I'm sure many of those things should have been better documented, especially our gorgeous week at the ocean, but when it comes to blogging I sort of feel like, I could be posting amusing life anecdotes on here or I could be pinning recipes that I have no intention of making. Mini butterfinger cheesecakes? Yes please, now here's one picture from Florida.

March actually dragged a bit. Maybe because it was 80 degrees in Florida in the beginning of the month, and 80 degrees in Chicago in the middle of the month. Maybe because spring arrived with so much force that it seemed like May and the calendar wasn't budging. Maybe it was because Matilda's new favorite way of expressing her displeasure is throwing herself on the ground and bashing her forehead to the earth? I don't know, that sure makes the days seem long.

So to find ourselves suddenly on the eve of Easter was a surprise. Easter was the first major holiday that we celebrated for the second time with Matilda (I've discovered in writing this post that I really have no love for St. Patrick and St. Valentine?) and the way that our sleepy almost-three month old has grown into  a chattering, independent fourteen month old is amazing.

I just love how the transformation in our wardrobe is almost as dramatic as the change in Matilda's appearance...obviously, having a child who sleeps 12 hours a night is how you get yourself to church early dressed like you are a walking Gap ad.

And here she is this year, spilling candy on the grass, infinitely more excited to snap the eggs open and closed than even look at what was inside them. She has absolutely no idea what candy is and her hierarchy of eggs was based entirely on what made the best noise when used as a maraca. (It's jelly beans!) 

It surprises me to see the changes in pictures and yet in someways I am grateful that this is how I thought it would be, that watching a child grow up entwines the most normal and the most miraculous moments I've ever experienced.

Matilda is still too young to understand the significance of Easter as a holy holiday but we are excited for her to discover more than just the plastic eggs full of candy and baskets full of silly, sweet gifts. We sang In Christ Alone during the twenty minutes of the service that we actually attended (the rest was spent chasing Matilda around the lobby with the rest of the restless children), and I'm so thankful we did because those lyrics are lovely and clear about the hope of Christ. It made my Easter complete, even without the sermon that I missed while passing out Cheerios and distracting Matilda from tripping on all the tulle I forced her into and falling down the stairs.

We are so thankful for wonderful family and friends who celebrated Easter with us, a great church community, and the Easter promise of new life.

...there in the ground, His body lay

light of the world by darkness slain.

then bursting forth in glorious day,

out of the grave he rose again...

Happy Birthday Sweet Tils

Our baby girl - our toddler girl - certainly has a thing for dramatic birthdays. One year ago today, at this exact time, I was on my third (endless) hour of pushing and my 24th hour of labor during the great Snowpocalypse of February 1, 2011. It has been oddly warm this year and our blizzard baby hasn't even played in the snow yet, but we woke up on her birthday morning to find that our washing machine had broken in the night and we were in the middle of the great Flood of February 1, 2012.

There are eight million reasons why this kind of home owner nightmare was particularly awful on this particular day. Matilda's first birthday was not so much a special day of going out for birthday lunch with mom and dad (the plan), it was more of a play in the living room while Servicemaster rips the damaged floor and drywall out of the brand new playroom mom and dad just finished for you! And it's one of the busiest weeks of your dad's entire work year! And your grandparents fly into town tonight! And your birthday party is in three days!

But the joy of little ones is that they don't know, or care, and Matilda was no less happy walking behind her new push toy, trying to open child-locked cabinets, and banging tupperware around than she is every other day. She is happy, and healthy, and we are abundantly, overwhelmingly blessed. In the end it's just stuff, and Matilda is a beaming reflection of God's grace to us. (Please don't think I waltzed upstairs from my sopping basement thrilled to have experienced such a neat object lesson. Because I am sort of reminding myself of these things as I write them).

Someone had chocolate for the first time tonight, thanks to Jessica who showed up with a tray of Frostys like a sweet fast food angel sent straight from crisis-aversion heaven.

It was, obviously, a hit. I mean, your first slurp of frozen chocolate deliciousness after a lifetime of organic peas is going to be pretty exciting. And I hope she enjoyed it, because the Chocolate Baby Crack isn't going to be back anytime soon and her menu reverts back to greek yogurt and blueberries in the morning.

She wasn't happy when it was over. I never am either.

Oh, my sweet, sweet girl. It's 10:53pm which means that last year I still had 47 minutes of pushing left and those jerks kept saying you were almost out. You've been independent and willful and delightful from the minute you born and I just couldn't love you any more.

But next year I'll pass on blizzards and floods, thank you very much sweet Tilda Boo!