Summer has arrived…

In all it’s beauty. I was standing at the window in the upstairs bedroom, putting the baby to sleep in the Ergo and the breeze waftng in was quintessential up north summer. That warm, piney forest smell that only can be up north. The smell that reminds me of my grandparents house at Higgins Lake. It’s 85 degrees now – totally not forecast. I did pack a tank top and shorts, at least. But it’s flat out beautiful – the waves lapping on the shore. It’s windy – a very strong westerly breeze (otherwise it would have been 60 degrees with the windchill).

It has me really thinking I need to finish up my summer SWAP! Besides not having any pants and few shorts to wear. My mom’s old shorts are mine now (they look great on me, actually).

So summer has arrived, it’s a beautiful thing!

I have a busy week but I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about summer sewing, about spending glorious long days with my baby. Today, we took her down to the shoreline and let her play in the sand and waves. Her diaper got soggy – I hadn’t brought a swim diaper because of the forecast. So I took it off, and she was bare bottomed, modestly mostly covered in a pink tee shirt. It was so darn cute watching her slap the water, play in the sand and say “ooooh” her new word for anything really cool (like cell phones, mama’s glasses and computer cords.)

There’s a giant dragonfly hovering, like a tiny helicopter. They’re so cool. That gives rise to thinking about the dragonfly pin and the two jackets that I need to think about sewing. So many projects! So much fun to dream about them.

I rarely censor

But I did. I just didn’t feel comfortable blowing a small incident out of proportion – either in my own mind or on paper, as it were. I won’t remember the incident years from now so there’s no sense in lamenting about it now.

It’s the friday before Memorial day – a cool, but sunny weekend at the beach is coming up. Not sunbathing weather – at least not in a swim suit. But good beach-walking weather. Need to get the baby some sand toys this year. Or maybe grandma has a plethora and we’re fine to use hers (likely story).

We’re headed up north. It should be a nice weekend. I’ve mostly packed both of us, will finish momentarily. I dont’ think I can put the babe in her bed without waking her so I’ll just hang on to her and do things on my computer or packing-wise.

Getting back to my roots

So I have a front-yard garden. Like all my Italian ancestors before me, I finally have a front yard garden. It’s mostly herbs, a few flowers, and some wildflowers. Mostly herbs. Dad and G. helped me dig it out, I planted, then did the newspaper/mulch trick for the weed control. Now, if you visited, say, the eastside of Detroit in the mid to late 1970s (don’t go there now, you’ll be shot), or some parts of Southfield in the 1980s you know what I mean. Rows of cute little Detroit bungalows with gardens galore. Zaftig aunts (yes, yes, i know, zaftig is a german word…) pinching cute baby cheeks, cannoli, and the requisite front-yard garden. G. says if it’s a ghetto garden (full of weeds) it has to go. So I’m hoping to keep it up this summer. The mulch trick is new, but my biz partner suggested it – herbs look just like green plants. I have basil – a ton of basil – cilantro, rosemary, sage, lemongrass, chamomile, parsley, and some texas bluebells for color. It’s gonna be a great summer!

And, I visited my 92 year old Nona, who is going just as strong! And she loved seeing my baby E. It was really great. She’s as sharp as a tack – a bit hard of hearing, but sharp. Baby E. loved Nonna’s food. (fwiw, Nona is what we call her, but nonna is the actual word for grandmother in Italian.)

We also saw my new niece (cute chubby breastfed baby, yay!), my nephew as well. And today, my other side of the family cousin’s at a bridal shower. It was a family event!

We went to the art fair too, and I got E. a wooden lobster that she can pull. The claws ‘clap, clap, clap’ as she drags it along. Cute.

So it was a weekend of getting back to my roots in more than one way.

A perfect moment

One of the articles in a local publication talks about finding your perfect moments. For me, this afternoon, I had some. First, I unlocked the office bike and rode – in my fancy new embroidered wedge espadrilles and chic mama bag – down to lunch in Old Town. Along the way I waved to a colleague at a competing design firm. Then, had lunch with a friend. Rode bike back down to a local boutique, where I got a sleek little laptop sleeve/case, very chic (for not a lot of money either.) As I hung their pretty bag on my bike handlebars (a basket would have made the moment perfect) and rode back to the office, I thought, THIS is one of my perfect moment kinds of things.

I like the city livin’ I guess!

So, here I am, new laptop case, looking forward to spending a nice weekend with family and baby, doing a wee bit of sewing perhaps later tonight, and enjoying my perfect moments. That’s really what it’s all about. It’s been that kind of day at work too – purposeful, not too deadline hungry, with a dash of marketing thrown in for spice.

beautiful moments

Last night my dad was walking with my tiny peanut on the beach. Her tiny hand in his, walking slowly on the sand. It was a beautiful moment. She is snoozing on the couch – hopefully for at least an hour (she slept for 45 min. this morning). I have had so many of these moments, where my heart just leaps with joy, and my eyes brim over with tears. It’s such a miracle, THIS is what I wished for, back in December of 2006, when they strapped my arms to a table and sewed my cervix shut, trying to keep my baby alive until she could be born. What a miracle – we came so close to losing her then – and here she is today.

Well, there she is today, anyway, 30 feet away, on the couch, sleeping on her tummy. I came down with a strange case of eczema

The right side must be chocolate

Or I’m lazy about rolling over. Because this am’s pumping, there’s hardly anything from rightie. The babe was up, awake at 5:30, crabby and then, finally, asleep. Hubs gets mad – he has trouble going back to sleep. Dude, I’m the one who’s being suckled on all night! I offer the breast out of desperation – I know it works – even for a few minutes – so I offer. Even though she has a terrible latch while teething and on her side, and half asleep.

But I was frustrated – every night for the last 14 months I’ve rolled over and offered her a breast two, three, four times a night. And he’s never been disturbed for the vast majority (I’ll give him 30%) of them. I ask him to comfort her after she decides even chocolate milk isn’t working.

I’ve been reading a book about nursing a toddler, because I find myself in somewhat uncharted territory. Four years ago (or more) I sat at the birth center, nearly appalled that a mother was nursing her toddler. And here I am – way beyond my 12 months, or maybe it was 18, or now 24 and maybe beyond that too. Trying to figure out what I’m gonna do. I think that I’ll let her wean, but it may come down to wanting to have another child.

Speaking of THAT, I didn’t get my BC in the right spot. Darn rubber ring/spring. I couldn’t even find my cervix. So it was uncomfortable and I removed it after two hours (it says six). I think I’m not fertile, but who knows? I do know when I thought about the accidental pregnancy that might result, it terrified me – and not in a good way. So I clearly need more instruction and some help in both locating my cervix and getting that darn thing in the right spot. I have absolutely zero clue if I’m in a fertile phase or not – I think not, but they say that after 6 mos. LAM doesn’t work any more. But I’m sorta fertilty-challenged so who knows?

Besides how would I know I was pg if I didn’t get my next cycle when I don’t have one now?

Supermama

We tend to focus on our to do list’s lack of crossed off items. I know I do. So at the end of the week, what have we accomplished? Not enough, according to that list. But I have a better list this week. Accomplished:

Went to work every day this week – helped at least a dozen clients expand or promote their businesses

Tiled my kitchen counters. Ripped up the old tile, chiseled then sanded (oops) then cleaned the entire house top to bottom after silica dust was everywhere. Plan to finish grout and seal grout next week. Then clean the kitchen from the ceiling down.

Took care of a fussy, molar-teething baby

Went to a LLL breastfeeding support group. Got help on toddler nursing, gave advice to new pregnant mom

Learned more about toddler nursing via a new book I checked out (including whether/how much I should keep pumping)

Planned my weekend sewing projects (finish the SWAP tube top, hem a skirt, alter three pairs of pants, sew a shower curtain for the guest bath from Provençale fabric.) I decided to bite the bullet and alter the pants rather than buying new ones. So it’s a bigger job – taking out the waistband, making a new seam in the back of the waistband and then taking it in.

Cooked a weeks’ worth of meals for a pregnant friend who needs to stay off her feet (I’ll go clean her house this weekend.)

I’d say that’s a pretty accomplished week! I feel like supermama!

Next week I’m being interviewed for a newspaper article on working mothers. I’d say I rank in the very top level of mothers who get things done. And when I look at my child, who, unlike the other toddlers, doesn’t just play quietly in the circle of moms – but is up, moving and in to everything – I have to take a look right here, and see that she’s a chip off the old block. My father says I was this way – fussy to sleep, always moving. So it’s no surprise my child is exactly the same way.

And right now, pumping. Yeah. We just have to pat ourselves on the back when we manage to get up, put on a nice outfit (showered or not) and make it out the door. And look at not what was left undone, but what we accomplished in our 168 hours this week!

A fresh start

There are three things bugging me right now; all have the same theme. Press. Kitchens and Summer sewing. First, press. One of my competitors is featured in a local newsletter of ‘good stories’. And I’m feeling envy! Envy! Envy is merely the universe saying “it’s time for you to get off your butt, Ann, and get more press.” Cultivate the distinctive. Announce the new stuff – no matter how mundane YOU think it is – it gets you noticed.

Okay, now that rant is off my chest. The other two. Kitchens. Specifically mine, in a state of construction. The counter tile is off, we’re scraping, grinding and sweating our way through the mortar removal. It will be fabulous – a fresh new kitchen. We’re relocating the microwave, cleaning the place from top to bottom and thinking long and hard about where things go in our kitchen. So, it’ll be very nice – a fresh start in there.

That brings me to summer sewing. HotPatterns released a newsy today featuring a bunch of ideas for summer sewing. Bright colors, neutrals, crisp fabric suggestions. It’s really a way for me to infuse some FRESH into my life, to sew. And I am (just not this week with all the demolition/reconstruction/cleanup).

The babe is at day care all day, my pumping is almost over. So did I get it all off my chest? Not quite, I need to stew over the press thing (but hey, we were on the studio tour…and probably in the LSJ this week too, so there you go…) And I do need to bust some ass in the kitchen – work some of those frustrations out, as we refresh and renew. And next week, when all is clean and put away, do more sewing!

You never wrote me a letter

Maybe you didn’t expect to die. I think maybe you thought you’d live on, and only when it became too late and too hard to write it, did you think about it. Or maybe you did, and my father has them tucked away and forgotten – like he forgot so many other things until our recent experiences reminded him (like the baptism.)

I was reading about thelastlecture, and the book (though I’ve not had a chance to watch it or read it yet), but thinking about how it must be for a parent to leave their child. I absolutely cannot imagine how it was for you to know you were leaving us. And I’m sure there were many times when you probably stamped your feet and called to God to change our lives. But our lives unfolded much as they were supposed to (and will continue to do so). I never used to be a ‘fate’ person, but I think that it’s just as valid as ‘fortune’ as a theory of how life unfolds.

In some ways, this recent scuffle with my brother has me wondering about the value of family – especially as we sit nearing the cusp of my returning fertility, and all the questions it brings.

And even more so, I wonder how you feel about all of this? Would you feel that our lives would be closer, more friendly, had we had you as our mother? Maybe none of this would have ever happened – I try to remind myself that there are people here who would not have existed (N. for one) had you not died. Maybe even my own child!  So I can’t go around – and I don’t any longer – wishing you were still here. But I do wish I knew what you thought of us, what you thought of your impending death, and what you wished for us. That much, at least, I wish I had. I wish I knew what you were like. Because I think I’d see myself – or maybe not?

So, you never wrote me a letter. I can only make up the story myself.