Bless me, Blogger, for I have sinned.

Bless me, Blogger, for I have sinned. It has been eight years since my last post. 

Eight years of little girl giggles and messes. Eight years of wondering if I'm doing this right, while feeling sure that I'm not. Eight years of absolute certainty that whether I get it right or not, these two little beans are the best things I'll ever do.

Two weeks ago, on a day off from school, I suggested we take a girls trip to a local bakery and then the library. I can't decide which made me happier: their squeals of delight at the idea of spending time with me or their insistence that for such an important occasion only their favorite dresses would do--dresses I made them, but which my daughters treat like haute couture.

And then on Monday this week, the eldest decided it would be totally reasonable to turn eleven. Eleven, I tell you! 

So we threw her a little "cozy crafting party" with five of her best friends. I'm not sure I recommend teaching a bunch of fifth graders how to hand sew a stuffed mouse, but the stamped journals and the pressed flowers luminaries and the beaded sun catchers went off without a hitch. 

And as I discovered on her second birthday, after I toiled away at a five-layer rainbow cake that she utterly detested, Susan is still not a fan of cake. Donuts, on the other hand, are perfectly acceptable.

Nota bene: Susan is worried that the tooth fairy might be overworked. Have you ever lost a tooth and then been so worried the tooth fairy won't see it that you stage an elaborate lighting set-up for it? No? Just Susan things, then.

Grandma

My grandmother knew how to bear hardship, how to bend with the unfairness of fate and yet never break. She knew how to suffer loss and not become bitter. She knew how to sacrifice her comfort for the well-being of another and not resent it. She knew how to love generously and unflinchingly not once, but a hundred times over. Hers was a heart that expanded to fit all of us, immediately and without reservation.

My grandmother was a ballerina. A pianist. A war-time truck driver. A social butterfly who could make even the most awkward among us feel interesting, listened to, included. Perhaps that’s why my grandfather, a very smart but not very talkative man, fell head over heels for that charming girl and danced all night with her on their first date. She laughed when she told me, decades later, that the truth is, he actually didn’t like to dance at all. But he wouldn’t let anyone else cut in. My grandmother was the kind of girl you wanted to dance with, whether you liked dancing or not.

My grandmother was a stickler for polite self-expression. She taught us all to refrain from that gross, uncouth phrase: I don’t like it. No, no. We who were lucky enough to be trained by her know to say, when it must be said at all, that we do not care for it. She was opinionated, she knew her own mind and was unafraid to express dissent. She just did it politely, with the grace of a woman who had lived her life equally well among flower shops and lead mines, wide open forests and printing presses.

My grandmother lived a very long life. More than nine decades of it, in fact. She came into the world at a time when wireless radios were still a novelty, before the stock market fell, when there had only been one world war. Nearly 94 years later she leaves in her wake a world made better by her capacity to love, her ability to find light even in tragedy, and her willingness to embrace us just the way we are. And even though she had lived such a long life. And even though she was ready, at the end, to reunite with the boy she danced all night with all those years ago. We ache at the loss of a woman who loved us even more, if such is possible, than we loved her. And we do not care for it, Grandma. We do not care for it at all.

Mornings

I wish there were a way to adequately record the exact sound of my alarm every morning. The surprisingly loud thumping of tiny feet as a small whirlwind hurls herself down the hallway and bursts through my bedroom door at six am, her wild and curly hair poking out in all directions, her tiny hands shoving beloved animals and books at me, before demanding to be hauled into my bed herself to be snuggled and kissed and told that she is even more wonderful today than yesterday.

I would not wish to record the high pitches squeals of rage she makes when the laws of physics have once again disobeyed her. Or the look of complete malice in her eyes just before she flings half eaten food onto the floor in direct defiance of my stern look and uselessly pointed finger. Or her sobs of humiliation and betrayal as I once again pour water over her head in the exquisite torture of hair-washing.

I do not know if the good moments outnumber the bad, she and I do not keep score. I do know that when I wake up every morning, more exhausted now that ever, only half of me wants to hit the snooze button. Which is lucky, as she does not have one.

Working It

"I work from home."

I feel like this is the punchline to the joke that is my daily routine. It sounds so clean and easy. I get up, I put on some pants, I boot up the laptop, and I get all productive up in here. Right? Tee-hee. No.

I get up, I feed a squalling baby. I go back to bed. I get up, I feed her again, I go back to bed. My husband gets up, gets ready and goes to work. I get up, fetch the now unnaturally happy baby, and together we go downstairs to start our day.

She'll only be awake for about two hours, and it's better if she gets at least one nap at home before daycare (where she is never able to sleep for any appreciable length of time). During those two hours (7am to 9am) I pretend I'm working. What I'm really doing is begging her to stop chewing on the electical chords, trying to climb the stairs, or sucking on the heating vents while I just send this one email! Just one email, baby! One!

But she'll have none of it. If I'm super lucky, she'll play happily for about an hour while I intermitently pull her off the stairs and away from electical outlets. After that hour, though, she's done. She knows what she wants and what she wants is me. Now. Right now. It doesn't matter that I'm RIGHT HERE on the other side of the play gate. It doesn't matter that I'm happily singing her songs while I desperately try to finish a work project. It doesn't matter that every thirty seconds I turn around and play peekaboo with her. No. This is not what she wants. She wants me. Not just the leftovers. Not just what I can spare while I get my work done. She wants the best of me, my full attention, all of me. And as long as I'm sitting right there next to her she'll happily play for another hour until naptime. Just so long as I'm there with her. No necessarily holding her, but available for a good snuggle whenever the mood strikes her.

I guess I'll take it.

Into the woods

As much as I do miss the proximity to almost any ethnic food which we had in our little apartments, there are some upsides to living out here. One of those upsides is the fact that winding around our neighborhood are these gorgeous wooded paths that twist and turn and can easily get you lost even when they aren't covered in beautiful fall leaves.

(Believe it or not there is an asphalt path in this picture)

Not only are these miles and miles of paths ideal for an evening walk, they also lead to little hidden swings and playgrounds, right here in the woods. You never see them coming. You're just walking along, pushing a stroller with a cranky 8 month old down a leafy trail and BOOM, swing-set.

Susan was equal parts excited and terrified about this. I feel her, though. Swings are weird like that.

A Space for a Tiny Nerd

Listen, eventually I'll tell you the rest of the birth story. Maybe. I mean, it's not outside the realm of possibilities. All you really need to know is that she was born, she's fine, I'm fine, we're all fine and dandy.

We spend three months after her birth in our adorable but small one bedroom condo in the oh-so-dreamy historic neighborhood we loved so very much. It was pretty great, honestly. The house was small enough that I could keep it clean pretty easily. The neighborhood was ideal for taking the stroller out for a walk. The bedroom was plenty big enough for her bassinet and a bookshelf full of her stuff. We made it work, and for those three months it worked perfectly.

You can see her little bassinet in the lower right corner here. At night we put it next to my side of the bed.

But we knew it couldn't last. Eventually she would outgrow that bassinet. Someday we would want an actual changing table, rather than just putting the changing pad on the bed as needed. One day we might even want her in a different room so we could...um...play scrabble. So, we bought a house.

Hah. Hah, hah, hah. Oh that makes it sound so much easier than it really was. Picture me sitting at the computer laying out a new publication for my office, with a two-month old trying to nurse in my lap and the telephone to my ear as I talk to the lending agent on one line and my realtor on the other. This is not an exaggeration. I started working from home, handled all the financial mumbo-jumbo, did all the legal paperwork and closed on a house with an infant alternately crying at me, pooping on me, and sucking me dry. I am woman, hear me roar.

And now we live in the woods. The house is much newer, much bigger than our little rental, and it has an actual backyard (and front yard, for that matter). We even have a garage. The first big project we tackled once we got ourselves moved in was the nursery.

You know all those campaigns to get girls more excited about science careers? You know, the ones that insist there aren't enough girls interested in STEM, and that we need to tackle that problem early on in a girl's life? Well, consider this our contribution to the cause. I present to you, a very nerdy nursery for a very girly nerd:

The mobile spells out her name in periodic elements. Ten points if you know where Adamantium comes from without googling it.

The solar system mural is made of fabric, which I ironed to the wall using double-sided Pellon. It's to scale, including the sun, but I went back and doubled the size of the planets inside the asteroid belt because they seemed too dinky otherwise. And yes, Pluto is there. You just can't see him because in a compromise with my husband (who agrees with NDT on the "not a planet" thing) I hid it behind the door.

The curtain is made of fabric I designed myself and had printed at Spoonflower.com. Picking out the equations to include was the fun part. Painstakingly getting them right, character by character in Illustrator was the hard part. But I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Would you like to know where I got everything? A detailed list of stores where you can get that lamp, the dresser and nightstand, that adorable crib? Okay.

Ikea.

The rug and little laundry basket are from Homegoods, but everything else is of quality some-assembly-requried Swedish design. Tack, Ikea!

So far, the little bug loves it. The letters on the mobile have glitter in them, and the contrast between the black letters and bright colors is fascinating to her. When we first hung it up, she stared at it for like fifteen minutes straight, waving her little hands at it and smiling. It was pretty great. The mural is an even bigger hit, though. She loves to be held up close to it while we recite the names of each of the planets in turn. We've worked it into our nightly pre-bedtime routine with her, and it's safe to say that's her favorite part of the whole routine now.

I adore this space. The walls are pained a nice neutral grey (it's actually called "quietude") and the trim is all "polar bear" white. That calming pallet with the little pops of bright colors and plenty of baby pink makes the whole place so peaceful and whimsical. I could hang out in there all day. Instead I should probably get cracking on the master suite, so I can enjoy spending time in my own room as much as my daughter's.