it’s only been a week since returning to pittsburgh, but i find myself searching my brain for the right words to describe, for instance, the first time we drove into monterey bay through groves of eucalyptus trees and how their clean, dry scent mixed with the salty air blown in off the bay wrapped itself around me. the words seem so paltry. it’s like it was all a dream, and i can’t scratch the surface of the whole california experience. travelling with small children is a lesson in both amnesia and memory for me. the thoughts and feelings i experienced in this new place as an adult were shoved aside after minutes, to be replaced by the mental checklists cycling through my mind in order to maintain some sort of routine to the kids’ suddenly uprooted existence.
i want to remember how the waves sounded, how they crested and broke to roll ashore, all the different kinds of plants and trees that were new to me and how they were shaped by the landscape, and how the air around me was a strange mixture from the mountains to the east and the ocean to the west. but these are just ideas now floating around unembodied. it will take me a good bit of imagination to fill them out into fully rounded memories on the page, and then they will lack a true sense of the original experience.
the memories which are all wrapped up in the kids and experiencing the ocean and the beach and the redwoods through them are what my mind clings to. what it meant to me is that they were there in it. what i remember about california are only those places where seb and oren sat and ran and fell and cried and laughed.
we stayed in scotts valley in a little best western in a single room. the kids slept well with brian and i next to them, but we ended up feeling a little bit marooned in the room not doing much of anything, and definitely not talking much about each of our days from bedtime (8 pm) on. several nights, we soon were lulled to sleep by the quiet and dark ourselves. about mid-week, we finally decided that once the the boys were asleep, we needed to sneak out of the room and picnic outside the door in chairs we snuck out of the pool area. we’d sit outside in 45 or 50 degrees shivering and talking and eating sushi from a to go plate on our laps.
during the day while brian worked up the street from our little motel, the kids and i ventured out to uncharted territories–the santa cruz boardwalk, the aquarium at monterey bay, the beach at natural bridges state park. these were good ways to spend the mornings–i can’t imagine having those places to take the kids daily at my fingertips–digging in the sand, watching the rides on the boardwalk, searching (futily) for some beautiful and unbroken sea shells, watching sea lions sun bathing on the rocks.
people have been asking me how the trip was, and i keep answering, “hard, but good.” i don’t mean for it to sound like it was a drag to be there. some of the time it was:
like when seb shrunk back from the waves crashing on the beach, holding his ears and crying because the noise scared him.
or when oren screamed and threw himself down in the sand head first because he couldn’t figure out how to walk when the ground moved around under his barely stable feet.
or when seb finally did get up the guts to walk in the ebbing and flowing water, and he lost his balance and fell, soaking everything he wore and getting sand up his nose and in his ears. it sucked to hear him say, “i never want to go to the beach again,” shivering in the backseat of the car wearing my t-shirt and his underwear because i hadn’t even thought to bring a change of clothes.
it sucked to go to sleep at 9 pm without remembering to write all these things down while they were fresh on my mind.
it sucked that brian couldn’t be with us every day on these mind blowing excursions.
but then there was watching oren walk like a little frankenstien back and forth along the length of our room the night we arrived, giggling with the joy of finally being able to master that skill.
and when seb overcame his fear of the waves a second time and joined oren and me on the hard sand by the water where oren could walk without even holding my hand, and the three of us enjoyed the beach and california and eachother.
and the last day of our trip when we took brian to natural bridges state park so he too could walk through the eucalyptus trees with their sickle-shaped, grey leaves, down to the water to see the butter-colored mudstone cliffs and how the ice plants with their pointy, green succulent leaves and yellow or purple flowers meandered through the sand. and later we also drove to redwood state park to see (with wrenched necks looking up, up, up) and stand inside some incredibly big, old trees. trees that have been damaged by fire and wind and people yet are still, for the most part, alive and well.
and shopping at the patagonia outlet…
travelling with kids is definitely hard, but isn’t it the difficult things that are, once they are said and done, the most rewarding?
Posted on May 9th, 2007
oren is walking. on thursday night, while i was gone, he took five steps to brian. on friday night, while i was gone, he took a dozen steps to brian. this morning, when i wasn’t looking, he took a lot of steps to brian in the kitchen. and then when i was looking and said “show mama how you walk, oren,” he took a step and fell down and started crying.
maybe i should just leave that one alone.
Posted on March 3rd, 2007
we are such whimps! i was just reading the little blurb brian included below the picture of seb shoveling the snow with his pay loader: “Sebastien enjoying what is hopefully the last of the snow.” i would just like to say, “BUT, IT’S THE ONLY SNOW WE’VE HAD ALL YEAR!” so yeah, like, total snowfall this winter so far, maybe 6 inches. i could understand if we lived in new york or something, and the only snowfall we got was 100 million inches or whatever, but come on.
i had a typically contradictory discussion with seb in the car about snow and winter the other day when it was in the 30s and we thought it was summertime:
seb: is it not winter anymore, mama (sounds like, maw-maw)?
mama: yes it’s still winter, it’s just a little warmer today.
seb: why is it warmer today, mama?
mama: because it is.
seb: when will it be summer?
mama: when it gets even warmer. later.
seb: i love it when it’s warm. i hope it doesn’t snow anymore.
mama: me either.
seb: but i don’t want all the snow to be gone!
so we’re a little torn here about what we want to happen. for seb’s sake (oh, ok, and mine too) i’m sad to see the snowiness go–the two weeks we did have snow on the ground, seb spent more time outdoors than he did in all of october and november last year when it was in the 50s and 60s. he’d go outside all bundled up in layers and layers of clothes… well, you saw him. we even got him his own snow shovel. then after an hour of so of heavy labor, he’d come inside all ruddy-cheeked and hopping around cause he had to pee. he slept really well those nights. but the past couple of days have been on the warm side, in the 40s, and i have to admit that for myself i want it to be warm! i want green back! i want to see if my clematis will bloom! i want to plant flowers and ferns and trees and bushes and vegetables! i want spring and summer! i want to go climbing, camping, anything outside of this dismal city! a whole entire month of winter is enough, i say!
oh, and i forgot about this until now. i got stuck in 3-4 inches of slush after class last week. it was terribly embarassing and humbling and geeky. i’m SUCH a girl sometimes, and had to get the only guy in our class to help me by pushing the car while i floored the gas and spun all over the place, spinning up slushy goodness all over this guy, i’m sure. just awful. and all because i don’t carry a shovel or kitty litter or salt in my trunk and i do stupid things like park on the extremely steep street in the muck instead of the flat, dry parking lot (please, don’t ask).
so yeah, we’re big whimps. it’s time for winter to be over.
Posted on March 2nd, 2007
oren is not a book worm so much as a book tosser. each morning, first thing–the sun hasn’t even winked any light into our house yet though it is after 7–he makes a bee-line for the toy-box in the corner of our dining room. he stops, extends an arm and places one pudgy hand against edge near the gaping opening that is already spitting a mouthful of toys out onto the floor. one leg raises and haphazardly slaps the sole of a foot down as an anchor. the other hand goes up, the other leg and foot until he is half-standing, tuckus jutting out a bit. then he starts his work. reaching up into the middle shelf where lay the board books: Miss Spider’s ABC, Dr. Suess’ I’ve Got A Wocket in my Pocket, The Owl and the Pussycat, Brown Bear, The Very Hungry Catepillar, Etc. first one is deliberately tossed on the floor. he has an agenda: no, no, Dr. Suess’ ABC must not hit the floor before Guess How Much I Love You. are you out of your mind. sometimes he can’t reach one book, so oren places a knee on the edge of the box to boost himself up. mama pictures him, big head heavy, pitching into the opening and becoming one with the toys, so says, “no climbing, oren. no, no.” oren slowly turns his head toward mama, and gives her a glare: whatever, mama, and puts his knee there again. but back to the book tossing already. the big truck board book that really is a big book, 6 inches square, usually poses a problem. as oren pulls it off the shelf, it takes on a life of its own, sweeping several other books off with it, hitting oren in the face or the chest or the arm, or all of them. oren doesn’t really like that. screaming and crying and one arm flailing ensues as if to swipe these crazy, out of control books into submission: take that! and that! and that! ahh, the life of a book tosser.
Posted on January 19th, 2007
well, i said i would be updating here more often, so i need to make good–especially on this the last day of the year, new year’s eve 2006. and what a year it has been.
about this time a year ago, oren decided that he wanted to cry most of the time. up until then he had been a placid baby. so when he started crying, seb cried, and i cried too. there were lots of days that crying-management was the only thing accomplished. we tried to figure out the problem: was it reflux? we gave him zantac and i eliminated all foods that i truly enjoy out of my diet. that helped a bit. was it something worse? was it sleep? we finally got him on a strict regimen of naps which, for a few weeks, he cried through. but one day, he slept for his naptimes. and the next day he did it again. and the next. and the next. and from that point on, oren has been an excellently happy baby–teething aside (you can’t have it good all the time). sleep enabled him to become more social and gave him more time to work on developmental stuff that did not involve his tear ducts. he learned to sit, to crawl, to stand up, to walk around the house holding onto things. he learned to play with his big brother seb who has taught him how to yell and laugh and roll a ball and scream when he’s being sat upon. he can bark like a dog, meow like a cat and roar like lions, tigers and bears. i noticed just the other day how relieved i am that oren has grown up a bit when oren did something at the table that made seb laugh. and that made oren do it again, like making seb laugh was the most important thing in the world that he could do.
the past year for seb has admittedly not been our favorite year. the terrible twos were awesome! we loved them! we want them back! this year of the trying-to-kill-my-parents threes have been challenging. seb’s been challenging us on every single level known to man, and brian and i have been challenged not to stoop to our own three year old mentality in dealing with it. it’s hard not to throw ourselves down on the floor and scream and kick and pound. it really really is. but we have been getting through it. thank goodness the bad, out of control times come in waves, pounding us on the one hand, but then receding into a moment of peacefulness and sunshine. it gives us hope that yes, he will grow out of it. there is a lot going on for him though. this year, seb has become a big brother (and a pretty good one so far), been potty trained, learned how to ride a bike, tackle oren, draw an actual picture, hop on one foot, laugh really, really, REALLY LOUDLY, and drive his parents absolutely batty.
brian and i continue to love being parents. no really, i’m serious. we do. we really, really do. but i think we have learned that we also need to keep some of our other interests alive and well to contribute to our sanity. brian bikes and works, and bikes to work, and keeps his ear to the current political/theological/whatever-else discussions. really, what did we ever do without the internet? he even has had some of his own comments/arguments published online and in print. which makes me green with jealousy. graduate school has not yet gotten me published, but i’m learning how to take rejection well. hopefully soon i will be deciding what my thesis will be. climbing is an ever-constant in my life. the addiction remains. this is the first year, however that we haven’t been climbing outside at least a half a dozen times. “next year, next year,” i murmured to myself when we’re still in the city on all the beautiful days we had this fall.
other than that, we’re just livin’. keepin’ it real, man. it’s been a busy year with lots of changes and upheaval. maybe 2007 will be a little bit more mellow.
so that’s my version of a holiday form letter. if you want, you can print it out, but don’t count on me sending a hard copy.
Posted on December 31st, 2006
it’s 8:30 in the am and it’s about 60 degrees out. today is the last day of our “indian summer” although i don’t know if temps have really been summer-like. they have been in the 50s and 60s pretty consistently for the past week or two though, and it has been wonderful. we haven’t been stuck inside yet. i don’t know what this will mean for the rest of the winter, but i hope the rumors of a harsh and snowy winter won’t be true. personally, i could handle temps in the 50s all winter long, but i know that won’t happen either.
my class this semester is over for me, so i’m starting my new “schedule” today which will hopefully result in me writing here much more often as well as just acting like a writer in general and doing it regularly. this is one resolution i came up with after my 33rd birthday . . . so those of you who are worried about me because of the last post, please cease and desist.
christmas is on the way, and we have begun, just yesterday actually, to listen to some christmas music. last year we discovered sufjan stevens (scroll down on the webpage and you can actually listen to the collections), who does a mix of traditional tunes as well as some of his own crazy stuff. it sounds like he did all the recordings in his living room with his kids screaming in the background, but that’s why i love it. the tunes also remind me of this time last year when i was getting ready to and eventually did pop oren out (i think we even had it on in the car on the way to the birthing center the day he was born), so they will always hold a special place in my heart.
speaking of oren, who is almost one whole entire year old (dec 12 is the special day), he’s crawling! and standing! and cruising! one day about two weeks ago, he just decided that he crawls. so he crawls, here and there and everywhere, with his little round, diapered bum swaying behind him and a look on his face like he’s just figured out the best thing since sliced bread, drooling. and so in only two weeks he’s also figured out how to pull himself up to standing, and tackled the stairs. i’m scared. yesterday, he decided that he should be allowed to go upstairs whenever he wants, unattended. so when i wasn’t looking (not a rarity, unfortunately) he crawled over to the steps and was halfway up before i realized he wasn’t sitting in the living room anymore. i did catch him before he would have fallen down (uh, this time). thankfully.
“be anxious for nothing, but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” philippians 4.6
Posted on November 29th, 2006
today i am 33 years old. i’m not saying this to beg for happy birthday wishes. no really, i’m not. no, stop already. JUST STOP SAYING IT ALREADY! i’m also not trying to say that i’m old and decrepit (i realize how ridiculous this sounds after hearing last night women in my current class who are still a couple of years away from 30 talk about how old they are–whatever). i’m just trying to say, i’m 33 years old today, and i still don’t know what i want to be when i grow up. i don’t think i’ll ever know.
i’m 33 years old today and most of my female friends have a career, have some sort of thing that they do or have done up until they started to have babies. even some of those women who have babies still have a career or some sort of thing that they do. i’m 33 years old today, and all i can say is that i worked in a temporary administrative assistant job for almost 7 whole years in order to pay back school loans and then about 4 years ago quit that job to have kids. so i’m 33 years old today and i have 2 boys–that is one good thing in this lament. but this day and age, when being a mom just isn’t enough and most people ship their kids off to day care and continue on with their career or whatever it is that they do, only being a mom doesn’t seem like enough to me either.
so i’m 33 years old today, and i’m a stay at home mom by day and a graduate student by night. i’m in the process of getting a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing at Chatham College. when i say that (or type it, in this case) it gives me a sense of pleasure. when my friends say to me, “wow, i don’t know how you do it all” a sense of pride begins to swell in my breast. feeling the danger of that, i am usually quick to say, “no, no, i only take one class at a time. it’s really not like that.” because really, it isn’t like that. when it was just sebastien and i, it fit perfectly in. i could concentrate on seb whenever he needed me to, and when he was asleep, i could read and write to my heart’s content. but now i have two boys, and it’s not so easy to fit the school work into my day without encroaching upon my time with them. i thought getting a master’s degree is where it’s at for me, but now it feels too hard, too much like i’m trying too hard.
so i’m 33 years old today and on the verge of being a grad school drop out. two semesters of content courses have kept me too busy to write anything besides things for those classes so i’m feeling less then a writer than usual which means, i feel like i’m totally wasting time and money on this useless degree. (don’t argue, you have to admit that it would be pretty useless for a non-writer to have an mfa in writing!)
i’m 33 years old today. and i’m thinking that this would be a great long essay to send to some magazine devoted to women who are mothers and who wonder what else they are supposed to be doing with their lives. so that makes me think maybe i am a writer after all, because if i am not a writer, i wouldn’t have thought about it. but then, why would women want to read something about someone who is exactly like them? so then, i think, even if i am a writer, i’m not out there breaking boundaries. i’m not pushing the envelope. i’m not broadening horizons. i am a cliche.
i’m 33 years old today.
Posted on November 15th, 2006
i truly expected things to be much different with kid number two… this is before i actually gave birth to kid number two. now that i have said kid, i’m surprised by the number of things that are the same. not that there are no differences, mind you, there are, but let me explain. several things that i was hyper–or maybe i should say ‘concerned’–about with seb were as follows: sitting, crawling, walking, talking. when he was around 6 months old, i was in a little gym class with him, and most of the other babies his age in that class were crawling all over the place. that’s what started it. it was really hard not to compare and wonder all the time, ‘is my kid stupid, or what?’ and it goes on from there.
now, with poor oren, part of the reason he isn’t crawling yet is due to neglect. brian and i have sort of forgotten to pay attention to things like crawling until recently after looking back at what sebastien was doing at this age. so we’re trying to make up for lost time, and whenever we get the chance, we put oren through special baby callisthenics. no, not really. but we try to encourage him more to get toys he wants instead of just tossing them to him. in the past week or two, oren has begun to spin in circles as he sits on the floor. it is getting him to use his little arms to negotiate his weight, but he is still hesitant–or stubborn–to get onto his knees. and yesterday was the first day he cruised around a low table at my parents doing his ‘baby shuffle’–his feet taking tiny, spasmodic side-steps. oren seems to think that since he can do that, he can just let go and continue walking across the room. it only took one fall to make him realize that he needs to keep holding on. so maybe he’ll walk without really spending much time crawling. i’m not sure how i feel about that–crawling i’m ready for, walking not so much. because after walking comes running, climbing, getting into things he probably shouldn’t…
at 10 mos, oren is already going on 20 lbs… time for a new car seat, time for a new view of the world by his first birthday, less than two months away.
Posted on October 16th, 2006
well, we’re home. we survived. we had fun! the pictures up on the main page now are a little deceptive. yes, we were in the denver area for almost a week, and yes, we did make it to flagstaff outside of boulder, but the amount of climbing we got in was about five minutes each. our trip did not in the least center around climbing this time. most of our time in denver was spent with my sister and her family at their home in broomfield. in fact, the two most beautiful days of the week, tuesday and wednesday, we spent just hanging around the house, alternatively walking with the kids to different neighborhood parks, and especially, not being in the car. seb spent his every waking moment with evan (10), matthew (8), and sophie (6), riding bikes or playing in the basement or being chased in circles through the house. he has never been so perfectly occupied in all his short life. we are definitely missing it this week.
thursday was our excursion into estes park and rocky mtn national park, and while it was a successful romp (once again, see my sister’s blog for more pictures) and a grand time “hiking” on several short trails, we had to deal with rain in the midst of it all.
friday and saturday we had planned to climb with a friend who now lives in boulder–it was going to be a wonderful trip out to shelf road near canon city, coloradao for two days–but we didn’t have the heart to get back in the car to travel a couple hours to do it, and locally we were rained out. we tend to bring the northeast weather along with us, and it camped over us for the end of our trip. friday, saturday and sunday we saw nothing of the mountains. very sad.
there isn’t much to say about the time spent in the car. we did what we could to survive, and sometimes that included driving very fast. in some parts of iowa, i was wishing that the speed limit was above the posted 75 mph. that just wasn’t fast enough! life here in pittsburgh seems to be moving in slow motion now. the return “home” for me has triggered feelings of wanderlust. i guess they’ll fade away eventually though. they always do. and here in cloudy pittsburgh our little family will stay.
Posted on September 16th, 2006
last week sometime, i was accused of–well, i suppose ‘accused’ is a strong word to use–not writing as much about oren as i do about seb. it’s true, and that doesn’t say much in my favor since i don’t write a whole lot about seb lately either. in my defense, the things that seb does and says blows my mind, and there is a conflict between his three-year-old misbehavior and sweetness that is much more interesting to me to write about. as a second child, oren may always be on the sidelines of what seb is doing, just because seb is doing everything first. what oren is up to is old news, so to speak.
that said, with seb as the template, i’m realising how much fun it is to have a baby at oren’s stage. oren is going on nine months old, and he’s just cute. his wide blue-moon eyes soak up everything around him, watching and learning as the world goes by. aside from the teething angst, oren mostly smiles and laughs. he’s too young to fight with me yet, thank goodness. i get enough of that with seb. two weeks ago, oren figured out sitting up all by himself, so now he’ll play seated on the floor: lumpy legs sticking straight out in front of him, back staunch and straight, his arms flailing around at his sides, his toes clenched on feet rotating around and around and around in his excitement to be seeing the world from a new perspective. yesterday he played with me for a while. we had some blocks out, circles, triangles, squares. he picked up one in each hand and cracked them together while screeching in glee. one of the blocks inevitably ended up in his mouth. as he was sucking on it, his eyes found mine, and suddenly, he took the block out of his mouth and offered it to me. i obligingly took the offered block, making funny gnawing sounds on it with my mouth. oren laughed and laughed. back and forth we went with oren laughing in between. good stuff.
Posted on August 29th, 2006