birthday (and blogging) season concludes

Well, this year's round of birthdays concludes. Today, on my birthday! Now I am thirty-six. Beatrice was born in March, Gabriel in April, Mike in May, Frances in June, and here we are in July, and Mama's birthday places the period on this long rambling sentence of celebration...until next spring.

Just before we went to the beach last week, we watched that spider assiduously, impressively constructing her web in an unfortunate spot. She used the frame of our sliding glass door to anchor it, which made for great viewing from the dining room - but heading outside was nearly impossible without dragging her tight spiral apart. We eventually destroyed it. The next morning she was at it again. Sisyphus the spider! Each day her miraculous creation was doomed before it ever reached completion.

I empathized with that spider. Admiring her handiwork before gently opening the door in the morning was the best I could do to honor her efforts. Though my homemaking is sloppier, I felt we were kindred spirits. This summer I am home with my three children, and there has been far more baking, crafting, mess-making, swimming, biking, and stroller-pushing in my life over these past months than I've experienced in years. Well, I've never had a summer quite like this. My mind is filled with nap schedules, the anticipation of kindergarten, and appropriate boundaries for an eight year old cyclist who would like to ride on her own to unknown distant locales. Each day I launder, wash dishes, clean counters, insist on good manners...and wake up the next day, to do it all over again. I wish I had the patience and fortitude of the spider. Some days I do, others (especially after sleepless nights) I do not.

The last shred of creative mental energies that remain after a day spent with my little (and not so little) ones channels towards thinking about my new job. Next month I'll start working at St. John's College, in the student counseling service. The job is dreamy, in all kinds of ways. I was doing psychotherapeutic work before Bea was born, alongside my role at Seeds 4 Success, but this will be more intensive, allowing more hours and more in-depth work with clients. More learning, more growing, more opportunities to partner with people and facilitate healing. A new community to find my role within, and ... sigh! ... a new child care arrangement. Here is where my stomach sinks and my limbs grow heavy. Even though Bea will be taken care of by someone I trust and respect and like - who lives down the street, no less - I'm scared.

With a new baby and a new job fast approaching, you may have noticed I've been a rather negligent blogger. I find my life is stripped to essentials, and self-care is typically what moves into the spare moments when I might have been writing a few short months ago. Exercise, reading, being with friends, time with my husband - these are things I need. Sometimes I compose posts in my mind, while nursing especially, but when to put these thoughts to screen? The time eludes me.

It might return. Homemade Time isn't over - but maybe this particular season of blogging is. I've been quieter here. It's a much quieter place, generally! I still need and want to work out the dilemmas of parenting, reflect on those transcendentally beautiful moments with children, and wonder about the ethical implications of our choices as a family in this micro-community, this place of connection that has been a source of so much unexpected goodness in my life! But. But this beautiful baby sure gets in the way. And soon my job will, too.

I'll still post. I love writing, and I love this record of our family growing up. But I warn you, it may tend away from lengthy stories and wonderings and be more of an occasional look-how-cute-my-kids-are kind of thing in the months ahead.

Thank you, all of you, for the excellent conversations, support, kindness, solidarity, ideas, and sharing over the past years. What a blessing Homemade Time and its readers have been!

eight years old

Today is the day!!

And soon we'll go to the beach for a week with Mike's family, where we'll celebrate the birthday in sandy salty style.

Despite my best efforts to completely ignore the garden this spring, I couldn't resist planting some seeds with Gabriel when Bea was teeny tiny. And low and behold, despite weeds and general neglect we've enjoyed many salads and snap peas as a result. Now everything is bolting in the heat. But that brings it's own pleasures, like spicy leaves and beautiful delicate flowers. Is it crazy that I will miss them?

(from top: radish, arugula, tatsoi)

firsts

When asked what he would like to do on Father's Day at church this morning, Mike said: Eat a hoagie. In bed. 

Lordy, does that ever sound good. Instead he got a nap on the couch, and a bird mobile that Frances, Gabriel and I made. (Inspiration found here, via the Crafty Crow, a crafting treasure trove that I like to peek at every once in awhile).

It was really fun to make with the kids, who both love birds and found punching heavy tin foil with a push pin over and over immensely satisfying.

We are five distinct moving parts now, but I am ever more aware of how we operate as a system. One part goes awry, and the effects inevitably ripple outward, eventually moving through every last toenail in one way or another. In the past two days, so many firsts have visited us: first real laugh and first roll over for Beatrice (the roll was reported by Gabriel, who has become a less reliable reporter of late, but I believe him). First real bike ride for me and Frances. (Almost two years after having originally learned, she has realized that biking is not an awful scary life-threatening activity after all. She's been biking nonstop. It was downright joyful to ride together, just before bedtime.) The next day Frances and Gabriel (on the Trail-a-bike) and I rode to the library together and proudly told the librarian all about it. Gabriel lost a tooth today at a birthday party. It was his second tooth, but it's still a major event for me.

All fantastic developments, to be sure. But Beatrice's new sociability and mobility seem tied to a sudden increase in night wakings. Every time I respond and go into her room I find her crammed up in a corner, her swaddling blanket tangled around her waist, frantic to nurse. As a result I'm more tired and vulnerable, admittedly discouraged, and probably less available to those other moving parts I mentioned. Frances's newfound passion for bike-riding has both inspired and frustrated Gabriel. He tries to keep up, and can't. It's all flowing, all the time: knots being untied, new knots tangling in the process. Summertime has allowed me the space to sit back and marvel at how deeply and intimately we are connected, how mysteriously a family operates. We grow in response to one another.

It's marvelous. And exhausting. Hoagies in bed, anyone?

glossy face

Frances keeps on surprising me lately. She can be tough, sassy, grubby - then turn around and gush about what a great mom I am. I came up the stairs from the playroom after doing some yoga before dinner tonight and she rushed up to me and said: Mama, you look dazzling!

Well, anyone who calls me dazzling is in my favorites book. As if she wasn't already...! In any case, it sure took the edge off the most recent round of back talking.

She has been writing letters to a boy in her class. When a card from him came in the mail, I asked why he had sent it to her. Because I wrote him first, said the girl with a sly smile on her face as she ascended the stairs and shut her bedroom door behind her. You did?? I hollered after her. When? How? Without my knowledge??

She still hasn't let me see the letter he sent. I introduced myself to his mother today; she tells me he's working on a rough draft of his next letter. Of course he has been consulting with her about their correspondence all along. She couldn't believe Frances sent that first letter unbeknownst to us.

Tonight at bedtime she stroked my cheeks and grinned, gushing about how soft they are. She got silly and giggly, running her fingers along my inner arm and neck, laughing at herself, getting more and more superlative in her praise of my apparently outrageously soft skin. I told her to go to sleep already.

But Mama. Seriously.

Yes. What.

Seriously. You know how photos can be either glossy or matte? I think your skin is glossy, like a slick smooth glossy photo. Mine is matte, soft like a matte photograph.

She just knocks me off my feet sometimes. She really does.

And this one! The sensitivity remains, but we are finding a summer rhythm. As the baby gets more predictable and takes better naps, I find myself slipping back into a more creative and functional stay at home mode - baking bread, hanging laundry, long afternoons at the pool, crafting up a storm. I haven't been in this open space with kids for a long time.

We made all kinds of strawberry-laced delicacies after bringing home 10 pounds of berries from a farm last week. (I highly recommend this cake. ) The final couple of pounds went into a strawberry rhubarb compote, which Gabriel loved making (slicing rhubarb with the sharp knife was thrilling - he is five now, after all) and didn't love eating. Too tart, I think. But I loved it on yogurt and oatmeal and in smoothies too. Equal parts berries and rhubarb, about half an orange worth of juice, and all the honey we had left in the bear, which wasn't much.

And finally, you must see how my baby has transformed over the past weeks.

Good enough to eat.

Now. How is June treating you?