Homeleaving

I think the process of moving, if you were to plot it on a graph, would be as spiky up and down as the heart monitor of a tachycardia patient. You have the task of looking for a new home, which is full of peaks and valleys as you search for the right place for your family, find it, fall in love with it, and then find out it's off the market or has been whisked away for some reason or another. There's a big spike up when you finally find the right place and get it. Then you ride that wave for a couple of days, a week, as you plan out all the fabulous summer barbecues, the birthday parties, the cozy winter nights by the fire. (Your "Pin it" button gets a lot of use in these times.)

But then you start the process of packing, of actually dismantling your life in the place you're leaving, and slide down into a kind of valley. Not only because packing in itself sucks major ass, brings about the desultory realization that you have accumulated SO MUCH CRAP you don't need, but because you start to realize that despite the crappy neighbor, the lack of yard, the lack of space...you are going to miss this place, the place you have lived, the place you live now.

I will never forget the day, four years ago, that James and I visited our condo for the first time with our realtor. It was a sunny day, light streaming into the windows, and I walked around the living area, imaging our furniture in it.  I closed my eyes, and placed the couch along the long wall in the back, really seeing it. It was a perfect fit. I thought, someday I'll bring my newborn baby home from the hospital and sit with her on that couch, right here in this room. 

And it happened just like I thought it would. 

There are so many memories I will have of our first home together. Soaking in the bathtub with my Federal Courts casebook propped on the edge, turning the pages with wrinkled fingertips. So many poker nights with friends, the slap and zip of cards being shuffled, laughter filling the air. Under one of the tiles on the kitchen floor, Baby Lulu's name is written in Sharpie, along with the names (and cartoon faces) of each of the cats; we wrote her name there the day we found out she was a girl and finally decided it for certain, which just happened to coincide with a frenzied, nesting-based kitchen remodel.

And then there's the first night we brought Lu home from the NICU, when J. and I lay in the bed with her, too amped and afraid to drift off to sleep. Her first Christmas, with the tree wedged in the corner. Her first birthday party, with zig-zag banners and overflow guests sitting cross-legged on our sisal rug. And all the little quiet moments in between.

My parents moved from my first home to the house I grew up in when I was four, and I remember it, vaguely, my old house, my birth house. Laying in a slant of light in the sunroom, sitting against the olive-green refrigerator in the kitchen. Lulu's too young to remember her first place. And that makes me sad. Because for all of its paint-peelingness, too-smalledness, outgrownedness...it was a good place for us. It deserves to be remembered. There's been a lot of happiness here.


We'll have to be sure to tell her all about it. So that we don't forget, ourselves.

Spring!

Checking out the two dozen robins AND female woodpecker that appeared within the course of five minutes in our backyard this morning (seriously - I said, "Carl, I saw the first robin!" and by the time he made it to the window, our yard was carpeted with them).

We are all SO ready for spring.

(Side note: I made Gracie's dress for her; it's a little big (new pattern, measurements are a bit wonky, but now that I know what to expect I can adjust accordingly), but she refused to take it off after I tried it on her this morning. I am washing fabric now to make one for Joy. Easiest pattern I've ever used - so happy, because I love being able to make clothes for my littles!)

I hear birdsong outside, and it's sweeter than any music. Spring means adventures and outdoors and sunshine and our first-ever garden (in containers, but we're very excited). And probably mosquitos, given how bad they were last summer and fall, but we're going to include lemon verbena in our container gardens, so hopefully that will help ward them off.

Are you excited for spring?

My momma told me

[photo credit]

The last time my mom visited, we put on makeup together in the bathroom, and I told her about a trick that she had showed me when I was younger: only put mascara on your top lashes. She didn't remember telling me. "That's common knowledge," she said. "You probably read it in a beauty magazine."

"Nope," I said. "You said it." She wanted to know how I could be sure she had. "Because what you say sticks with me," I said.

Recently I came across a list of quotations by famous writers, musicians, athletes, et cetera, talking about things their mothers had told them, and I thought it was interesting how deeply some of these quotes stuck with them, and shaped there future lives.

Here are some of my favorites from that list:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” -(Mr.) Fred Rogers

"You don't have to prove anything," my mother said. "Just be ready for what God sends." -William Stafford, poet and pacifist.

"My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors." -Maya Angelou

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” -John Lennon

"My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent. " - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that." -Etta James

"I hope they're still making women like my momma. She always told me to do the right thing. She always told me to have pride in myself; she said a good name is better than money."
- Joe Louis

What's something your mother told you that's stuck with you?

Little Miss Sunshine

I've suspected it for a while, but after last night, there is no denying it.

My baby has a downright sunny disposition.

People are saying it to me all the time: She's so happy! She's so delighted all the time! She never cries (a notion I could disabuse them of. Lulu does cry--copiously, at times). But she'll go to strangers with little to no prompting, no tears. She has a smile for everybody she meets. Even when I am firm with her--when she bites me while nursing, and I respond with a loud, meant-to-shock-her NO--Lulu smiles. And laughs.

(It's actually kind of annoying. Not to mention PAINFUL.)

Last night, we bundled our croupy baby up and ran her to the ER to get an attack of croup checked out. The triage area was full of babies wailing miserably, of little kids with tear-stained faces. But Lulu was laughing and waving, even while barking out those awful-sounding coughs.

The doctors and nurses commented on it, as she allowed them to examine her without a peep, as she showed off her six pearly teeth in face-splitting smiles. Did you give her anything? What, like Xanax? Um, no. Is she always like this? Well...yes. We sat and watched Lu play contentedly with the cords of her oxygen monitor, while the neighboring cubicles resounded with sounds of PURE WOE.

Totally unconcerned with the fact that somebody just stuck a q-tip down her throat.

I have a happy baby. I sort of didn't believe it could happen. James is a pleasant-enough guy, but he can be cynical and fatalistic to a fault when he feels like it. And with my struggles with depression...I thought we would pass along our worst traits to our little one.

But Lulu is happy. Even when things are bad. And she is teaching me--something else I didn't think would happen, at least not for a long while--to do the same.

They say that a mother can only be as happy as her saddest child. But that goes the other way, too: when the child is happy, that happiness is infectious.

In my unhappy moments, my sunny baby cheers me up and gives me confidence that I must be doing something right. And for that, I am so grateful.

my whirlwind girl

If I had my way, no unhappiness would ever touch her life. But if (when) it does, I will remember the happiness she brings me now, and pay it back as hard as I can.

Signature scent

My grandmother had a signature scent. It was Giorgio, by Giorgio Beverly Hills. Every Christmas, she would receive a new yellow-and-white striped box of it. Every time I'm missing her really bad, I go to the Macy's perfume counter and get a sample and I'm right back in her arms.

For that reason, I love the idea of a signature scent. I'm a perfume girl--for the past few years, my go-to has been Vanillary by Lush. But normal perfumes are too harsh for poor little Lulu's sensitive skin, and so I had to stop wearing perfume after everything I tried made her break out into a rash.

But I think I might have found a compromise.

L'Occitane's Mom & Baby Water has a gentle almond smell with a light floral note, sort of like if clean laundry and vanilla sugar cookies had a baby. It's so mild that it won't cling to baby's hair and skin and stink her up, but it's got staying power to last through the day. It's alcohol free, and enriched with glycerin, which means that it won't harm sensitive skin.

I love the memories that smells evoke and I love the fact that this scent (along with Burts Bees Baby Bee!) will always evoke for me the first months of motherhood.

What's your signature scent? Are there any kid-friendly perfumes that you just adore?

(Dried spit-up doesn't count. Because nobody adores that.)