year of the baby

This morning the paper told me that the population of our country hasn't grown as slowly as it did in  2013 since the Great Depression. Tough times apparently mean fewer immigrants and fewer babies.

Which makes sense, but doesn't map onto my experience lately: babies are about to be born, being born, and growing like mad everywhere I look. This year brought us Beatrice, as well as a whole lot of babies - first babies, second babies, third babies - to many excellent people in our orbit.

Maybe it's something about being 36 years old. Or having lived in one place for over five years. In any case, as I waited in line to mail out packages that included tokens for some new and precious people this afternoon (having promised myself they would leave the kitchen table before 2014), I listened to a three month old baby wailing while his papa quickly gathered items to mail and thought about how very fertile this moment seems to be.

I also thought about how grateful I was that my baby was sleeping at home.

Holidays with babies are ... well. Hmm. I suppose they are kind of like regular life with babies, except more. More sweetness, more delight, more sleeplessness, more fussiness. More sensitivity (routine disruptions galore), more hand-clapping, more laps and arms to settle into (or not).

These past few days have been mostly delicious, as Mike and I are both on break, and we're all soaking in lots of time together. Of course routine disruptions aren't easy on bigger kids either, and there have been what I will refer to simply as moments here and there that have been, shall we say, challenging. Ah. Yes.

Sometimes my ambitions are unrealistic.

Like when, on the way to Mike's parents after Christmas, we stopped in at some outlets, having decided we both were in desperate need of wardrobe infusions. No big deal, right? A quick shopping trip! We piled into a family dressing room at Banana Republic, plunked the yelling baby (not in distress - just yelling, to yell) on the floor with her nose running profusely, and began peeling off layers to try on jeans and sports jackets. Gabriel was draped on a bench moaning when can we go to Grammy and Poppy's house??? and Frances was asking incessantly if she could keep the rhinestone button she'd found on the floor of the store. As I left the dressing room with the baby in the Ergo (still yelling) and piles of clothes draped over my arm to return, the attendant gave me a look that I can only describe as disdainful.

It said: who are you people, and why in the world did you have all these dirty noisy children?

Oh lady, I don't know. Aren't they outrageous? Excessive? I know! They are. But the surprising thing is, her disdain didn't even bother me. Despite it all, I love our fertility. I love our spilling over, our oozing out. I love our babies, sprouting always towards the sun like so many glorious weeds.

bathtime, round one, nine months

Beatrice has graduated to the big tub - with my ample feet as supports.

The first semester at St. John's has ended. Winter break has begun! I always have Mondays off, during which I tend to squeeze in some much-needed cooking and/or cleaning, but this Monday felt different. A true domestic settling in, a rooting down for the holiday season and the many open days ahead to spend with my family.

The sewing machine is out. Our old friend Thomas is helping us deal with the many half-finished house projects that have been collecting dust since the summer. I made simple lentils and brown rice, roasted brussels sprouts and multi-colored carrots (baby loves them! oh the pleasures of a pre-picky eater!!), and a big balsamicky salad for dinner. It was the sort of meal that makes me so happy, so just-like-myself. When the days are short, something about lentils and warm winter veggies satisfies completely. (Lest you think I am sort some of dietary purist, this afternoon I consumed large quantities of chocolate accompanied by espresso tempered with - I kid you not - a generous glug of eggnog. I confess, I drink two cups of the stuff every morning, and will until the season is past and I have to wait til next Thanksgiving for eggnog to reappear on the shelves. Talk about impure! It's fantastic.)

The point is I have the energy and time to notice again, to relish, to direct some creative momentum towards the nest and my dear little birdies. They do drive me insane, but just now I feel glad we have enough time together to go a little nuts.

And there is Beatrice. Bea, Bee bee, Little B, Baby Bea. After her bath, I wrapped her up, rubbed my nose in her big warm belly, put her in pajamas, nursed her, and snuggled her up in her crib. While I was doing this Mike ran the bath for Gabriel, who waited for me to wash his hair, and his beautiful long body and smile - still so unself-conscious - were meltingly sweet when I opened the bathroom door.

Frances read Lord of the Rings with Mike, and after I did Gabriel's routine she came and climbed into my lap.

Let's talk about what's on our minds, Mama. For five minutes, before I have to go to bed.

So we did. And now they are all sleeping. I still have to make lunches and fold laundry and honestly, I don't even mind. Tonight I am grateful, only grateful, for all of it.

baby grown up/grown up baby

After I put Beatrice to bed, I strung lights with the big kids. Mike had already left to teach. First I witnessed Frances belittling her brother's ability to string properly, then I watched her - not without protest - strongarming him into listening to the story she is writing* instead of listening to me read Igraine the Brave aloud (as the three of us have been doing, with pleasure, these past few nights). Ever attuned to my feelings, ever the go-between, Gabriel asked me if I would please let him listen to Didi's story tonight, and could we read our book again tomorrow?

After I put him to bed and came downstairs, I drifted into the soothing frothy comfort of Facebook for a moment. Frances stomped up to me and said, "This is our special last few minutes together! How could you play on the computer? You can do that after I go to sleep!"

Defeated, I sat down on the couch. She called it.

But wait. Hang on. It's not that simple. "Frances," I said. "I think I'm feeling pretty mad at you for the way you treated your brother, and that's why I didn't want to spend this time with you."

There it was. I was so frustrated with her, I prefered the non-company of Facebook. (Kind of fed up with ALL of them this evening, to be honest. Feeling very done-in. Up-to-here. Like my hair should be standing on end in every direction and a smear of red lipstick should be traveling west, past my lips. If I wore lipstick, that is. If I were a deranged mother about to do something rash in an Almodovar movie from 1989 - that kind of up-to-here. But I digress.)

So we talked, and it was great. She's been beset by jealousy for months, ever since Beatrice was born, and she takes it out on her adoring brother. It twists and contorts her exquisite soul. She demands my attention in ways that incline me not to give it. She wants to be a baby, or she wants to be a grown up, and I never seem to hit it right. It is, in fact, impossible. But talking with her candidly made so much of all this sticky muck break up and move downstream, clearing the way for love to flow freely again. Even if it's just for tonight, no matter. It is always a relief to reconnect with my children.

When I finally hugged her goodnight, she said, "Mama. I figured it out. I want to have as much attention as a baby gets, lots and lots of it - but I want you to treat me like a grown up."

"So - the quantity of attention is baby-style, and the quality of attention is grown up-style?"

"Exactly. Okay?"

Well. At least she knows what she wants. 

**titled Heroes of the Fire, about a group of children living in 'present-day Kansas' who battle a prairie fire that threatens their school.

balancing act

What a week.

Last Tuesday my mother- and father-in-law arrived to settle in and help take care of Beatrice, as our child care provider was unable to. Beatrice is newly in the throes of separation anxiety, unable to tolerate being in anyone else's arms when I am visible. Or audible. Or probably smell-able, too, because why wouldn't olfactory experience play into the amazing mysteries of love and attachment?

Anyway. She was also getting sick and in short it wasn't an easy babysitting gig. They persevered and managed to also pay sweet attention to the big kids as well as this author in the form of laundry folding, grocery shopping, and general moral support. 

Weirdly enough, two extra adults in the house who adore her seemed difficult for Frances in some ways. Maybe because they also adore her brother and sister. Maybe it was also because the week culminated in her papa's big lecture, delivered on Friday (more on this later), which occupied him and in some ways the rest of us quite a bit, and was followed by an extraordinary dinner given in his honor by two other adults the children love - but they weren't invited. (Whoopee!)

The long and short of it was my big girl had been very snippy, compulsively contradictory, and borderline rude for days. On Saturday, after Grammy and Poppy left, I was on the phone with my mother. She only had a few minutes to talk and we needed to do some Thanksgiving planning. Frances wanted to talk too; I told her she couldn't this time. Huffing and puffing and foot-stomping ensued. I told her to go to her room. She slammed her door.

A moment later she opened it and hollered in my direction, "You're nasty! You're horrid! I hate you!"

Gasp. Splutter. Rage raced from my heart to the very tip of every extremity in about a half a second.

Good thing I was on the phone and couldn't go tearing up the stairs immediately. As it was I hung up with my mother, went into her room, and told her she was hurting my heart with her terrible mean words. I told her I was very very angry with her, and she needed to think about why, and she could not come downstairs for a long time. 

Her face looked absolutely pale, as if her words had shocked her more than they had me. 

Later, when she was granted permission to come downstairs, she came to me in the kitchen to apologize. "Mama, I don't hate you," she said. "I'm just so jealous all the time."

I sank down with her on the stained orange ottoman in the corner. 

"I'm jealous when you hold Beatrice. And when you feed her with your fingers, and when you change her poopy diapers, and when you nurse her, and when you carry her around because she's fussy and won't play on the floor anymore, and when you kiss her neck, and when you sing her songs. I'm jealous when you give her baths, and when you say, Come here baby, it's okay. I want you to do all those things for me."

I think her list had about seven more specific descriptions of caregiving, and each one felt like another little stab in my heart as she spoke them aloud, because I felt the pain in her voice and recognized the reality of life with a baby. Beatrice requires near constant attention. And instead of finding it irritating, everyone absolutely adores her. I cried, a little. It wasn't just that Frances feels so sad and left out of the mama-baby blissful dyad, it was that she had hit some kind of bottom and recongized the depth of the problem along with her sense of confusion about how to handle it. 

What to do? Sit and hug and talk. 

There's more to it all, especially involving discipline and consequences for the mean words (which have a way of escaping despite her best intentions) and I am still uncertain about how best to support and contain and guide this passionate girl of ours. But it's interesting that the past two nights before bed, she and I have foregone our customary reading and snuggled up with things like nail buffers or special foot cream. We talk a little while I take care of her body, eight year old style. It doesn't fix the problem, but it feels good. 

And one more thing. Mike's lecture was a brilliant success. He did it. I was sort of floating at first, watching him in action, then finally settled into the pleasure of seeing my husband alone on the stage, speaking with honesty, rigor, eloquence, and heart. There was my Mike, for all the world to see.   

What a week, what a week! And now onto Thanksgiving. May yours be beautiful and delicious, gratitude-drenched, and filled with the mysterious movements of love and attachment.

november song

The clear light and saturated colors this November have been breathtaking. They leave me speechless - except when they don't, and I drive my family members crazy by interrupting them midsentence to beg them to admire a tree or a streak of perfect white clouds in the sky.

So instead of talk talk talking, I humbly offer a few pictures (no brilliant hues here - just images from a lovely fall afternoon, including Bea in her autumn sweater).

enchanted evening

After work today, I made it to the bus stop just in time. I pulled up to the corner, jumped out and half-walked/half-ran in my noisy heeled boots towards the baby, who was hanging out in an Ergo worn by our wonderful sitter Danielle, mother to Eligh, who would soon tromp down the steps of the bus with Gabriel.

When I am reunited with the baby I am terribly rude; I only have eyes for her and can't manage to say hello or notice anyone else until she is in my arms. Happily Danielle seems to get this and just hands me the baby when I approach. With Beatrice climbing up my front and jamming her chubby fingers into my mouth, the big kids arrive and we all decamp for Danielle's, where I need to pick up the car seat. Once there, Danielle feeds us pear bread (so good!) and after some negotiations, I leave Gabriel playing with Eligh on the skate ramp his dad built in their backyard while I go looking for Frances.

I drive the minivan home, and find Frances making rainbow loom bracelets at our next-door neighbor's house. Frances gets a ride home from school with our neighbor most afternoons. We walk in, Frances tells me about her Native American project at school, and the baby cannot wait another second to nurse, so I sit with her while Frances talk talk talks and part of my mind wonders what I can possibly rustle up for dinner. Then I put some big white beans on the stove to simmer, slip on my old clogs, and announce that we have to go get Gabriel immediately because though it is only 4:45 it will soon be dark!

Miraculously this is met with no complaints and Frances, Beatrice and I soon rush out the door and down the street. We find Gabriel and Eligh running around like wild beasts, which is their wont when together, and after I apologize to Danielle for taking so long to get back, my three children and I head home.

And much as the point of lots of strenuous yoga is the deep restorative rest of savasana, the point of all this back and forth and regular life logistics was our quiet walk home. We needed the buzz and rush to come before in order to more perfectly absorb the peaceful neighborhood and evening sky, which was exquisite. The sun setting at the end of the street lit up the clouds in so many shades of warm. It looked, according to Gabriel, like a box of pink Puffins (the cereal) had spilled across the sky.

Walking down the middle of the street, with my baby nestled against my chest, my son on one side of me and my daughter on the other, I felt complete. Grateful. Everything as it should be, even the early darkness.

Eventually Frances and Gabriel started bickering. I told them to cut it out because they were ruining my beautiful moment. They laughed. No, seriously, I said. The sky is too perfect. You cannot fight with each other right now.

Well. Ahem. They started back at it about a minute later. But it was okay. We were still bathed in that fading light, which clung to us when we went inside.

Fall, I think, is the best season. And maybe - just maybe - November is the best month.  

october

It's been a pretty good month.

When my children were younger and I was mostly staying at home, I was always on the lookout for things to do. Storytime at the library, preschool field trips, children's museums, new projects at home. Now I am working, with two-thirds of the brood in school full days, and instead I scan the calendar for things we can decide not to do. Birthday parties to skip, volunteer opportunities to decline, worthy after school activities to pass by. 

It's not easy for me to say no. I'm draped in a light blanket of guilt most of the time for not backbending far enough to find ways to volunteer in the kids' classrooms and somehow be more present in our various communities. But slowly, I'm making peace with my limitations, little by little realizing that saying no is the only way this thing can possibly work. 

And so despite the fullness of this new season, there was time in October for a wee bit of seasonal crafting (outside of costume-making, of course), revisiting all things pumpkin (most especially with oatmeal, baked or slow-cooked), digging in closets for sweaters, and best of all, a visit with a tried and true friend and her sweet baby.

And now ... sigh! ... it's over.  

Here's to staying in in November. Here's to saying yes to the things that matter most.

the baby slept all night

 

...which surely explains my ingenious use of a breast pump accessory this morning to transfer applesauce from slow cooker to mason jar, with nary a drip on the counter. (I realize the funnel has already been invented; I just don't have one). 

Look what I can accomplish after a good night's sleep! 

The reportage of sleep-deprived parents is so, so boring. (Unless you yourself are a sleep-deprived parent, in which case it can be comforting to hear about someone else's doings at 2 am). So I have been trying to recognize that all kinds of interesting things are happening in the big world out there, and keeping details about the baby's sleep habits to a minimum - except with people that I know will love me even if I am boring, namely my mother - but I digress - digressions are the hallmark of a sleep-deprived, addled brain - 

Where was I? Oh yeah. The baby slept all night. 

That's all you'll hear about it from me. I hope. Just know there was one mama out there who woke up contented and rested this morning, ready for anything. Or rather, ready to tackle a laundry deficit and a teething baby and five clients in a row and a grumpy kindergartener who hates beans and rice for dinner. And it really was all more or less tackle-able, even shot through with shining moments. 

Surely this subtle shift in my sense of my own effectiveness ripples outward, and the sum total of positive energy in the world has increased a fraction. 

I actually think someone may be smiling in China right now. 

All thanks to Beatrice's excellent night of sleep, which I will now cease discussing. 

Whoopee! The baby slept all night!

apples

In the early weeks of Homemade Time, we went apple picking with some friends. I remember feeling very accomplished and impressed with myself posting those photos, having coordinated with new friends, wrangled two little ones on a chilly day, and brought home half a fridge-full of apples.

Almost every year since, we've made the trip. (Has it really been four years? Is it really 2013? I had to think twice, then three times, to be sure). With apples overflowing the kitchen counter from today's haul, I just peeked at that old post.  How we have grown! (Grown haggard, in my case - I decided to skip sharing the shadow-eyed selfie with Bea in the Ergo. Hopefully that will improve post sleep-training...)

But really. The long limbs! The rainbow loom bracelets! The pounding sprint, the rather irritating and unbelievably loud rendition of '99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall' (thanks to Ramona, who planted the idea, and me - why?? - who shared the tune), the arguing over who gets to pull 30 pounds of apples in the little wagon, the talk of whether or not it is embarrassing to drive past middle schoolers with Pete Seeger blasting out of your minivan's windows.

And of course, of course, the baby. Our baby. She was barely a twinkle four years ago. She was a twinkle I kept private because most everyone I knew would have told me I was crazy for even thinking about a third then. But I did! More often than I care to admit. And now she's here, and I am so grateful.

slip slide

Whenever Beatrice is hanging out in a diaper and not much else, the big kids find her expanses of rosy soft skin irresistible. I pick her up to plunk her in the bath. Mama, wait! they beg. Let me touch her belly one more time. Gabriel buries his nose in her back. Frances squishes her outrageous thighs. The effect is intoxicating. It is simply impossible to keep their hands and faces away from her.

I feel the same. Every night in the midst of after-dinner noise and chaos, the baby has a bath on the kitchen counter, gets toweled off and then clad in pajamas. After quick goodnights, she and I move from the bright lights and sounds of the hallway into her quiet room. I flick on her white noise machine with my toe, turn off the light, and close the door. The change in environment is drastic, and I have to be ready to catch her head with the crook of my arm because she dives into a nursing position before the door clicks shut.

When we nurse and rock in the dark, her top arm initially flies around wildly, fingers reaching, grasping and kneading, unwilling to give up a day full of handling and manipulating everything within reach,  even while her eyes droop and the rest of her body begins to relax. The feel of Beatrice's soft, persistent fingers grazing over my belly, pinching my arm and searching for my face is dependably one of the best parts of my day. I cannot even begin to describe it. Sliding my fingers along the soft pad of her hand while it explores and tugs on my clothes ... oh, what is it like? Nothing else. The feeling it evokes in me - deep-down in my muscles and bones, outside of language - reminds me of being in a department store with my mother when I was little. I would run my fingers along the clothes, looking for the softest fabrics on one of those circular racks - silky nightgowns, maybe - then close my eyes and walk slowly around the rack, letting the softness slide over my face.

That felt really, really good. But holding my nursing baby at bedtime is even better! It's an exquisite sensory experience that pulls at my heart. Body, mind, spirit. Being a mother is amazing.

love

I was looking at this series of pictures tonight, and I thought of a passage in a Zadie Smith novel that has always stayed with me. 

It's from On Beauty.

“People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel -- before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been. Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.” 

off the charts

A day or two before I started my new job, a tiny plastic envelope filled with powdery white grains arrived in our mailbox. I had ordered kefir grains the week before. When one is on the cusp of major life transitions, everyone knows that a jar of fermenting dairy resting on the kitchen counter is a must.

Well, maybe. I think it says a lot about me that I decided to take on a mildly smelly and delicate fermenting process just before the baby started with a child care provider, the boy started kindergarten, and I started working four days a week. Dear World, could I please control one little slippery thing? One little thing that will make terrific after-school smoothies and promises to fill our bellies with microscopic, smelly (did I already mention smelly?) health-promoting bugs? Because back in August when the grains arrived and all of these changes were fast-approaching - and the baby was cutting four teeth at once and began waking every two hours at night - my body forgot how to fall asleep.

That is exactly how it seemed to me. With few exceptions, I had been doing something every night for thirty-six years in a row without having reason to notice or think about how exactly I accomplished it. I just did it. And then I forgot. I was underslept and overwhelmed, and sleep eluded me.

The worst of the insomnia really only lasted for a few nights; once we all began our new endeavors it subsided. But dudes, it totally freaked me out. It was a powerful sign that taking care of myself (as I join with students during the day to, ahem, help them learn positive ways to take care of themselves) will be essential this year.

So what do I do to promote peace within? Make kefir. Revisit cookbooks. Think about new twists on breakfast. There is something so reassuring to me about the mere possibility of making a terrific meal and sharing it with the people I love. Just thinking about cooking lately brings me back to earth, back to my body, back to the comforts of nourishing myself and others. Feeding and eating. Breastfeeding too! The pleasures of this overflowing life.

It's why I sent a favorite cookbook to a friend expecting a baby this fall. Transitions, you say? Read this! Cook something new! Feed yourself and your growing babe and surely all will be well. It's why I take extra pleasure in offering Beatrice new foods. The pears this morning? Not so much. But she went wild for pureed quinoa, and it made my heart sing watching her grab for the spoon. At her six month check up this week, I learned she is off the charts for length. She is growing like a weed in sunny September! And every Monday I get to be home, all by myself, with this sweet dandelion. This past Monday I made granola, did a little laundry, did a little yoga, and spent a lot of time rubbing my nose into her soft belly and making her laugh. Talk about off the charts.

p.s. So, um, did any of you notice how this was really a look-how-cute-my-kid is kind of thing, disguised as a proper post? I warned you...

p.p.s. If anyone has experience making kefir, let's talk. Really. Why does it separate so quickly into curds and whey? Why do I keep missing that thickened, yogurty sweet spot?

now is now

I just finished reading Little House in the Big Woods to Gabriel. That makes three times reading the book aloud as a parent, and at least once or twice silently as a child. And every time the last chapter takes me and holds me completely in its quiet grasp, so hushed and reverent is its tone. Pa tells the girls why there is no fresh meat today: he had been unable to shoot the animals he went out to hunt the night before. They were too wild and free and beautiful in the moonlight to kill. Then he puts the girls to bed and takes out his fiddle. He sings Auld Lang Syne, and explains to sleepy Laura that the days of auld lang syne are the days of long ago.

Frances just loaded pictures from the hand-me-down camera she's been using over the past months into the computer. I love to see the images my kids capture. A hundred pictures of Grandma's dog. Mama in the kitchen. Intimate shots of stuffed animals and beloved pieces of jewelry. Gabriel loves to take close-ups of eyes on my phone. He does fabulous portraits of adult mid-sections.

Frances took a video, unbeknownst to me, of the mother of one of Gabriel's friends telling me about a family trip, while I nursed Beatrice and nodded and made sympathetic noises. It was so strange to see the exchange through her eyes. What are the nows - the experiences, the images, the feelings - that will lodge inside my children and live always there? My soft middle in a hug? The feel of each others' legs flopped over one another in summertime? The heat and smell of Beatrice's milky breath?

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, "This is now."

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

sabbath musings

As in years past, with the school year about to begin, we've decided to try observing some version of a sabbath. (I just read that old post about keeping the sabbath, written in 2011. It made me: miss my friends, miss the creative space and time I had for lengthy exploratory blog posts, and wonder at all the changes that have moved through our family since then).

What shape might it take now, with a third grader, kindergartener, and almost 6 month old baby (who tried beets for the first time tonight) in the mix? With a new job for me, a new school for Gabriel, and more commitments outside school and work than ever before? I suspect protecting Sundays for church-going, walking, swimming, reading, cooking, biking, crafting, and having dinner with friends (Taco Sunday remains a hallowed institution) will mean saying no to more things. In order to have a Sunday like that, you have to get a lot done on Saturday. And in order to get a lot done on Saturday, you can't go to a soccer game, two birthday parties, Target and the liquor store, all before friends come over for dinner.

So I think observing a sabbath at this time in our life will probably be defined by making hard choices, even sacrifices. There are so many worthwhile and pleasurable things to do. But when we do too many of them we are scattered and flighty and forget how to be present to one another.

At least I am, I do! My head and heart have been so full with all the transitions that we are in the midst of just now. I have a desperate urge to slow down. Stop, even. Being a student counselor at St. John's is going to be absolutely excellent. Two weeks in and I have a very good feeling. But this kind of work can be emotionally and spiritually intense - as is raising children. Also replete with serious responsibilities - as is raising children - and I fear the low level of anxiety buzzing around me, threatening to creep up my spine and take up residence just beneath my sternum. I think I need a sabbath. In fact I need mini-sabbaths every day and I have been fantasizing about how to create them (turn on the breastpump in my office so no one comes in and meditate for 15 minutes? Sneak a walk in during lunch? Take baths at night?)

Gabriel rode his bike for the first time this weekend. Once he figured out how to get started he flew like the wind. We had dinner with some lovely new friends last night, and Beatrice - who continues to dislike bottles and consequently ate way too much solid food last week while I was at work - marked the end of her pathetic bout of baby constipation with what I will euphemistically call an Event. All over the nice blue towel she was sitting on. We are excellent guests and did not hesitate to rinse her off in their kitchen sink.

Third grade begins tomorrow. Kindergarten begins Wednesday. Life just keeps happening all around me, whether I am calm or fretful, but I like it so much better when a shred of peacefulness is available.

How do you do this? Where do you find stillness, what are your anchors in all this bracing, rushing water? What are the boundaries you create around your family - around yourself - to ensure that you can drag a finger through, dip your feet in, and feel the wonderful wetness of it all?