Just Writing

swish-swoosh.  the bright blue velvety swath floats down onto the floor. 

whooosh, smooth out all the creases, ease the seams into line

zzzzsnip, zzzsnip the sharp blades even up the ragged edges of the hem. 

snap out the brocade, the sparkly gold threads woven into a story of flowers and leaves, pink, purple, green and gold wandering up and down the turquoise field. Match the edges up again and draw the cutting line-- pen marks dash-dash-dash along the curving arc, the elegant sweep of a train. 





I'm making Sofi a dress. A medieval gown to wear on her field trip on Friday. As I finger the satins, the brocades and faux furs, the beading and cording and gold chain, I sense the excitement of the urge to create Beauty. To take all this treasure, swirl it around in my magic chamber and pull out a dress of such craft that when she puts it on, she will be transformed into a Lady.


 I've done this so many times before, and I never get tired of it.



My grandfather taught my mother to sew in his upholstery shop when she was a child. She worked for him in the summers sometimes. In college, she made costumes for the drama department (her drama department). When I was eight, she helped me make my first dress. It was green with little white flowers on it. I put it on and I felt pretty. And grown-up. And I also felt that first stirring of the joy of using my own hands to create something beautiful. That is a significant feeling for an eight-year-old.


My mother taught me to sew, one of the many wonderful gifts she gave me. She taught me to make dresses and slack and blouses and hats and baby clothes and towels and table cloths. But. She also taught my sisters and me to make Costumes. She taught us how to take a drawing, the beginnings of a dream of an evening of beauty and joy, and turn it into a reality. She took us to the fabric shop and we bought satins, brocades and faux furs, beading and cording and gold chain, feathers and pearls and diamonds. We took them home to our magic chamber, swirled them around and pulled out dress after dress after dress of such craft that when we put them on, we were transformed....

 

OH! It was such FUN!





 

linking up with Heather, from The Extraordinary Ordinary, for this week's Just Write.

The Real Thing

I'm sitting here trying to wrap up an emotional, moving post I started last night about how thankful I am for my beautiful children and how our years of infertility have intensified my appreciation of the small things (like Jamie and Judah wrestling on the floor in the before-breakfast mornings), but Jamie is circling my feet, whining and screeching. He wants my oatmeal; I'm blogging while I eat breakfast because multi-tasking: it's a mommy's best friend. Also, because I feel less guilty about writing when the boys want me if I'm also eating-- which, you know, is one of those necessary luxuries to which I treat myself. Occasionally.

So. Emotional post, wrapping up, Jamie screeching for oatmeal. I pick him up to my lap, desperately pecking the keyboard with one hand while I try to fend him off my oatmeal with the other. Disatisfied with my continued lack of attention to him, he pitches his binky right. into. my. coffee.

*sigh*

The emotional, moving post about how much I love my children is filed in the drafts folder to finish "Later" so I can go clean up my coffee and actually Love My Children. Right now I'm writing while locked in the bathroom (one of the few doors Jamie hasn't figured out how to open yet) and the boys are taking turns banging on the door and screeching (Jamie) and complaining about a bumped head (Judah), and my back is starting to hurt from bending over the counter at an awkward angle to type.

And so another day begins.





I'm linking up for another morning of "Just Write" with Heather at the EO.

Just Writing

Some mornings I feel like I would sell my soul for another hour of sleep. But the children always wake with boundless energy and they drag my weary soul, reluctantly, grouchily, out into the light of their wide-eyed love for life. There is no defense against the joy of two boys playing with a plastic walrus in the shower. Their bow-legged, sway-backed, pot-bellied selves make me smile through the haze of a 5:00 wake-up call. They have only one volume setting and it's Last Trumpet loud

Jamie is learning animal sounds, but right now everything growls. Lions, dogs, kitties, pigs, walruses...

"Bwaaargggrrrrrr!"

He also eats soap.

And now we've run out of hot water and so my precious few minutes to blog and think and re-group and try to catch up with my life is done. My main goal is to feed, clothe, protect and love. Anything else I get done is a bonus.







We're doing good! it's my third week linking in with The Extraordinary Ordinary and Heather's Just Write project.

Talkin' to Gramma Sandy

(Sandy, sorry it took me so long to get this up for you!)

Apparently it's a sleepy day...

From Judah, for Violet

Hey Violet! Have you read THIS Mr Putter and Tabby book yet??? It's my FAVORITE!

Just Writing

When I first started this blog, way back when, my life seemed small and manageable. I was busy, sure, but busy with small things. Busy with one child and one infant, busy with a small house and a postage stamp yard, busy with a few good friends and family only a few hours away. Our life was quiet, orderly, predictable, malleable.

I must admit the possibility that at the time it did not feel this way, it's perhaps just the looking back that makes it seem so.

Back then I had time to write. I wrote, I read, I commented. I also crafted, baked, gardened, taught, babysat and other things.

Today, I feel like my life has gotten BIGBIG. There's a pre-teen, a child and a toddler in my house now. They are busy. They are loud. They each have a life of their own. There are five lives in my house now. My big house, my big yard, my big van. Our trees are big, too-- and now there are four trees, instead of two. And then there's a pool...

Even our city is big. Our friends are here, there, across-over-there and our family is farfar away.

I feel a bit stretched out. A bit thin.

"Like butter spread over too much bread."

Now all my time is taken up in just being. Getting from here to there. Feed, clean up. Feed, clean up. Laundry.

I miss blogging. It was my chance to make a little mark on the world. Something that would still be here, just like this, in the morning. Not used up, not dirty-again-already, not eaten. I need that back again.







Linking up with The EO for Just Write again.

Some Happy for your Saturday

Jamie (along with all the rest of us) has been sicksicksick all week. But today I think he's finally turned the corner and is getting back to his normal, happy self :)

Enjoy!

We're Calling It The Blue Room

Oh, my heart...

I saw a shadow of my young self this morning...

Long-legged, a little awkwardly confident, a little sassy. Her thick golden-brown braid thumps heavily against her shoulders, fly-away hairs trapped, for the moment, under a red headband. Tall, straight, her skirt a bit too short and snug as to waistband-- time to buy new uniforms. Again. She fills a hot pink coffee mug with ice water, slings her hot purple backpack over her shoulder, "Sign this, Mama!" And she glides off gracefully into the early morning.

Late, of course.

What else? You're mine, after all.

But I don't remember giving you permission to grow up...






Linking up with Just Write for this Tuesday. I habit I hope to continue...

Jamie, One Year Old (the Break-Your-Mama's-Heart-Edition)

Jamie got his first haircut the week after his first birthday. It's like that buzzer just shaved all the Baby off him and left a Judah Mini-Me in it's place.

I got so many adorable pics of the two of them playing in the yard the other day, I just couldn't choose which ones to post. So I just put 'em all up :)

Fall Break

When we have a nice, slow, lazy morning, we tend to fore-go breakfast till at least 8:30. Instead we opt for a quick glass of milk and lots of playing Spiderman with the big brother...

Strange things in my grocery store.

On of the local produce places I frequent here in Orlando carries some really exotic tropical fruits and veggies. I have never in my life seen such strange looking food... It makes me feel like I'm stuck in a Sci-Fi novel. Have any of y'all ever seen, or do you know how to cook any of these?

(some of them I haven't labeled, because between the time I first started this post and now, I've forgotten what they were... :P )

Tuna Fruit:

Tamarind


Tamarind in the shell:

Rambutan:

June Plums:



Dragon Fruit:



Dragon fruit, cut open:

Celery root:

Bitter Melon:





And this last one is truly the star of the show, because what you cannot see in this picture is the really terrifying nature of this "fruit". The thing is at least twice the size of your average watermelon and all those little spiky thing are SHARP! Who would eat a fruit that looks like it is only a few short steps away from mutating into a malignant life form???!!!

Jamie's Birthday Video

Well. Third child and all... The camera batteries died unexpectedly I forgot to charge the camera batteries. Here's all we got :)



That right there is a FULL POOL!!

They say the boys look alike....

...but actually, I really think he looks more like his big sister!

The real cost of Facebook

To all you people out there who keep posting snarky comments about how facebook is free, for gosh sake and we should all just quit complaining about the constantly more invasive privacy policy changes, and the ever-evolving and ever-less appealing interface, I take issue with your basic premise.

Facebook is not free.

No way, no how. Your public library is free. Attendance at your local church is free. Food at the homeless shelter is free.

Facebook is NOT free.

If Facebook were truly free, Mark Zukerberg would not be a multimillionaire. But he is one. This is because he sells your time, attention and personal information to advertisers and spammers and makes a mint off of every minute you spend on your status updates and "likes". Mr Zuckerburg is no philanthropist. He is a savvy businessman-- some might even say a genius businessman. But he is not providing you with an opportunity to connect with friends, express your opinions, and "poke" people out of the goodness of his heart and a sense of civic responsibility. He is doing it because you are PAYING him to do it.

Facebook is NOT FREE.

The price you are paying is, as I mentioned time, attention and most of all-- your personal information. This information is the new currency of an ever-desperate advertising industry that is seeing their tv and print ad revenues diminish as fewer and fewer people watch tv and read print media. It is gold, people, solid gold.

Facebook is a service I use daily. I am, I confess, addicted. And I have no problem paying for a service that I use. I joined FB years ago and paid my upfront cost with a clear eye and an open mind. BUT. As time has gone by and that "price" has monthly increased, as changes have been made to the FB interface that inconvenience and annoy me, as more and more advertising takes up my side bars, and as my personal information is mined again and again to line the pockets of Mr Zuckerburg and his associates, I have become disillusioned. My rosy-colored glasses have come off. The Facebook honeymoon is over.

Imagine if your local gym raised it's monthly fees every. single. month. By significant amounts. Eventually you'd hit a price you were no longer willing to pay, right? What if they started replacing the workout equipment with couches and ice cream stands? Wouldn't you at some point start to wonder if this was really working out for you?

But before you eventually cancelled your membership and decided that jogging is actually a fine, cheap way to stay in shape, wouldn't you at some point complain to the management? Wouldn't you stand on your rights as a paying customer to air your opinions? I mean, it's part of the American Way.... And let me assure you once again, you are a paying customer of the Facebook franchise.

FACEBOOK IS NOT FREE.

And I reserve the right to complain about what I don't like on there. It's the American Way.

Color me crazy

I am planning to paint the dining room/living room area this weekend, so today I am letting Judah draw all over the walls. ONLY with pencil and ONLY THIS ONE TIME. He had so much fun the last time he drew on the walls (without permission), that I just couldn't pass up this opportunity to indulge his artistic sensibility.

Plus, I heard this NPR piece recently about a new rising star on the artistic horizon talking about how her parents let them draw on the walls. It was her example of how cool her parents were and how much they encouraged her artistic visions. Far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to encourage artistic vision in my children and maybe one day they're famous and mention how cool I am on an NPR piece.

And also, the drawing he put on our bedroom wall is so freakin' COOL we really haven't been able to bring ourselves to wash it off or paint over it yet. The pictures didn't come out very good, but he basically drew a paneled mural depicted some sort of Epic Event, including elephants, castles under siege and some vague Superheroes from his vast mental collection of vague Superheroes. I really just wanted to see what he'd come up with given free reign and an entire room full of walls.

I'm even letting him stand on the couch so he can make "a super-deep ocean, all the way to the bottom AND up into the air!!" But only on the seat, not on the back.

There are limits, after all.

On Ninjas

me, explaining...

"Well, not all ninjas rescue people... Some ninjas are good, but some ninjas are bad."

Judah, getting it now...

"And some ninjas are polar bears!"

???

!!!!

"Ahh you mean PANDA bears... yes... yes... some ninjas are panda bears..."

Thank you, Disney.

"And... and...and some ninjas are TURTLES!!"

*sigh*

Yes. Some ninjas are turtles, too.