yay for long weekends! you would think this would be an extra long weekend post since we had an extra long weekend but, no. i tried to keep off my phone as much as possible and be in the moment. our weekend was packed and good and sunny and warm and all the things a good memorial day weekend should be.
thank you blessed universe.
*i hope you had a good one, too.*
what would 80 year-old me want to know about this week? what would i want to remember?
i try really hard to capture life as it happens and tell the story of our time together in this space. you see, this story that i tell myself now is how i will remember my life in my years to come. our lives are a collection of the stories we tell ourselves. once this moment passes all we have left is the story.
what do i want to tell myself?
i want to remember the way darla said “i’m the queen of the underworld mermaids” after she colored her lips with black marker. i want to remember the brightness of the poppies around the corner. i want to remind myself of how many times i gaze at that little cradle next to my bed and think about the day in the not-to-distant-future when this person will no longer be a part of me but separate and taking up space in the outside world instead of within me.
i want to remember this picture darla drew of Woody Cat during a breakfast date doodle session and then her demanding i send a picture of it to my parents. i hope to remember how engrossed darla has been with her first set of legos. i want to remember our colorful garden projects and how we really got into finding new objects to paint and add to the gardens, how a walk down the alley to find these items turned into an adventure. i want to remember how it feels to watch new things sprout from the ground and have such high hopes that they will turn bountiful by summer’s end.
i want to remember how darla talked a complete stranger into constructing a fishing pole for her from scratch. i want to look back at a moment of late afternoon life in my household and remember how normal and beautiful it looked bathed in sunlight and be reminded that sometimes there are moments of peace here. i want to remember darla’s joy and enthusiasm as she shows me how she’s taught herself to jump rope 20 times without misstep. and i want to remember how that little girl planted a tree. i want to remember how i tried to talk her out of it at first, tried to explain the years it would take for that tree to grow, and had to stop myself. i had to say “elaine, she’s a little girl who wants to plant some seeds in the hope that they will grow into a tree. just let it go.” and i did. and she did.
i want to remember how overwhelmed and exhausted i felt by midweek. i felt utterly incapable of handling any and all things in life that day. i was short on patience and rude at times. i cried. i yelled at darla and snapped at mike. old lady elaine will smile as she reads that all it took was an early bedtime for my household to then wake the next day and have the nicest of days. the difference a day makes.
and i think 80 year-old me would want to remember how much i love my life and my family and myself at this point in time. i think future me will need to know that is part of my story. that it’s hard some days and i feel lost but despite that, the majority of the time i am happy. so the other stuff doesn’t matter.
future me needs to know that i’m happy, so that’s what i want to put down here. this week was real life and real life makes me happy.
*best wishes for a sunny, memorable Memorial Day weekend to you*
before i jump in to talking about myself, let’s talk about you. how was your weekend? was it a good one? i hope so.
we experienced a nice midwestern weekend here. our time was spent soaking in things like farmer’s market visits, mother + daughter coffee dates, yard work, snuggle fests on our one morning together as a fam and rain. we soaked in lots of rain. and a visit from grandparents. isn’t it grand when ordinary life moments come together so nicely? my parents and my husband helped me catch up on rest. this bump is really wearing me out these days. i’m crossing my fingers for nicer weather this week so we can get outside and run off excess energy {for darla, not me. the only thing i have an excess of is a need for sitting down}.
and hair! i have an excess of hair. which brings me to the next development of this blog…
the next few months are going to be a celebration of voluminous hair. i’m going to enjoy this until this baby is born and my hormones shift back and all this hair falls out. i’m living in a hair dream right now and i’m gonna talk about it, dammit.
*my hair and i are sending you our best for a superb week. we hope you see some sunshine*
let’s just take a look at how the view to my week began:
yeah. yep.
and also these wonderful moments took place somewhere in there…
i’m exhausted. this could be because: weather is warm and life is full, my child is an endless pit of energy, i am growing a human, and finally, i am not an endless pit of energy. i’m more like one of those shallow rubbermaid containers of energy. you know, the kind that fit under the bed?
mmmmmm bed.
i guess it means we’re doing life right. i really do love keeping busy. i’m not always the best at turning around and taking a good look at all that we’ve accomplished with the day or the week. i tend to focus forward and get wrapped up in that never-ending to-do list, leaving myself feeling consistently overwhelmed. these friday posts help me take a look back at all that was done. and most weeks when i look back i see a much better balance of fun, work and learning than i do in the everyday. i probably should start some kind of gratitude ritual with darla at the end of the day to review all we’ve experienced. that would help. i’ll add that to my to-do list.
i thought i was going to get a full and separate unschooling post done with this week but i don’t have the brain power to extricate that out from our regular life doings. plus, i feel that since we’ve been doing this for a full year now i’ve finally fit it into my brainspace that unschooling is the integration of everyday life and learning and not separate times or days i set aside. i have done a better job of not being focused on regimented, scheduled unschooling. it’s just part of our life. we wake up and if it’s beautiful out i say “we’ll find another time to do the chores. let’s get outside” and we learn outside. if it’s rainy we stay in and learn inside or from our errands around town. and if it’s a long, cold winter that breaks our souls, we learn from the powerful world of netflix…
we took an adventure day this week that resulted in a trip to a waterfall, picnic and stroll along the river. multiple visits to the nursery, and helping with our own garden provided ample learning opportunities for D. we started an art project this week for the garden that i hope will help us bring some bright color out into our growing space. i can’t seem to get enough color into my life these days. i want to paint ALL THE THINGS!
*that’s all from us for the week. sending you love and butt pinches for a wonderful weekend!*
i enlisted the help of my family for this week’s bump day post.
i’ve gazed upon the freckle constellations of this belly now for months and thought it would be fun to have darla and mike take this belly swell on as an art project. so together, darla and mike mapped out a picture from these here abdominal spots:
it was at this point that darla decided she wanted in on the belly art and asked for a “baby monarch butterfly.” She wasn’t very happy when she realized mike had given her what she asked for and what she asked for was a caterpillar. mike finished the job and she and i had a good time strutting our matching belly art for the rest of the night.
i love my growing family and i love this growing belly. this week has given me the desire to get darla in on the belly face action that was started at our baby shower for her. i’d love to let her take a crack at drawing her prediction of baby brother or baby sister on my midsection.
i wonder if her version would turn out better or worse than the collaboration of a room full of drunken adults…
{ps. her baby shower still remains one of my favorite nights of life ever. sending love to all the wonderful humans who were present that day. ♡♡♡ }
i wish i could bring these pictures into a proper narrative portraying how lovely mother’s day weekend came together for us over here. i can’t though. to put it simply; my girl came home and my parents came with her. love and appreciation abounded. group projects were finished up. i received handmade goodness from both mike and darla, along with some vinyl and other small items. i even gifted myself with a pair of earrings and a keychain that i’ve been coveting from the shop. my parents helped us finish putting in gardens. darla planted a butterfly and fairy garden complete with glitter. mike and i teamed up for mother’s day brunch. it was a string of simple accomplishments that pulled together in one nice package. i feel good about heading forward into the future as a family of four with these people at my back. my parents, mike and darla are truly an incredible support team.
and i guess if i had to put everything under one umbrella i could pull this all together with the saying “momma gets what momma wants.” i’m glad i can say that knowing that it has no negative connotation. everything from the first photo to the last speaks to me about the learning curve i’ve passed through about being an active participant in my own happiness, about celebrating myself and my motherhood, about saying yes to myself sometimes and for asking for what i want from the universe unabashedly because in the end the things i want are small but meaningful.
i wanted an ice cream sundae so i got it. i wanted that white dress for my girl so i got it. i wanted my parents to visit and help put in a garden this year because i knew i would need help and it would be meaningful to me for it to be something we all did together. so i asked for that. i wanted two small, inexpensive items to celebrate my own motherhood this year so i got them without shame. because i did that i was able to let go and appreciate my gifts from others at a deeper level. i wanted to have mother’s day celebration at our house so i asked for help with that. i wanted a nice balance of being honored for the day but also continuing to do the things i do that support my family. i wanted darla to have her own garden space so i asked for that too and then i helped her carry out her own wishes for the space that was now hers.
i’ve learned that i don’t need to hide my wants and desires from this world. i don’t want for grand things. if i did that would be ok, too. but i don’t need to be a martyr in my own life. it’s ok for me to ask for the small things. i know enough about myself to feel secure in saying that i would be happy even if these things didn’t come to pass but being an active participant in voicing my desires to the universe has made a big difference in my life. sometimes life calls for pulling up your britches and putting yourself to work for what you want. other times it calls for reaching out and asking of others. i feel that for most of my life i’ve flip-flopped from one side to the other, either relying on myself too much or relying on others. this may be the first time in my life, or at least a very long time, that i’ve felt a good balance between self-reliance and outside help. it leaves me feeling so much more whole.
and i thank my family for that gift of wholeness. it was truly a wonderful mother’s day.
*happy mother’s day. i hope your day is filled with creepy babies and handmade goodness*
y’all, i’m going to talk about alone time.
these last couple weeks i’ve been craving alone time. i think it correlates to my nesting and urge to get things accomplished. it’s left me wondering if other women experience this deep need for alone time in their last trimester as well? is it a part of birth preparation? or is this constant desire for a bit of solitude in my day part of my personality?
well, i got what i asked for. D spent the week with my parents and mike started a new job. he’ll probably put double the hours in at this first week at his new job than what he’s been working for the past two years. so in a short span of time i went from having people all up in my grill to being quite alone, quite a lot.
i was busy. i was productive. and i wasn’t always alone thanks to the many appointments, meetings and friendly dates i crammed into this week. but this week did leave me feeling lonely and above all else, BORED.
the week made me take it down a notch in my desire to be alone with my to-do list. because while it was nice to get things accomplished…accomplishments are boring. i look back through my snapshots of the week and see a lack of life. it’s nice to have the moments when i can sit down and eat a snack on the couch because no one is looking, or to get my new green babies potted, to take walks and to get the bathroom painted, but without my family these things mean a lot less. maybe this week was about learning that squeezing these check lists in to all the chaos of family life is a pretty fantastic blessing. i’m glad to have a chance to come back around on that before life gets a whole lot more hectic. i know i’ll be singing a different tune in a few months so i need to put these thoughts and feelings down here now so i can pull it up when i’m at my limits.
and look at that rad little bit of life in that first photo!!! it was nice to remind myself i was never truly alone. and it was so lovely to see my littlest love for the first time. that was by far the most important thing that happened this week. part of me was sad that darla wasn’t there for it and that mike was at work but part of it felt right. i got to call darla up and tell her the baby has her nose. a nose that i’ll be able to give lots of kisses in a few short months. until then i’m happy to have these pics to gaze upon. even if the last one is pretty creepy because the babe has one eye open. must be a metallica fan. i know an uncle that is going to be happy about that…
*thanks for reading this week. i hope you had a good one. sending you my best for a lovely mother’s day weekend. please read on for a little favor that i need to ask you. because you are one of my favorite readers ;-) *
all the frustration from last weekend over arrested productivity melted away this weekend. it’s hard not to feel enthused about a weekend that begins with donuts. and it’s hard not to feel productive during a weekend that you’re hosting such helpful visitors. my parents are such a support and a help to my growing family. i was very thankful and happy to have them visit us this weekend. months ago, when we had just moved into a new house and i subsequently found out i was growing a person, i felt a little at loss at how i was going to pull everything together.
and to be truthful, it’s not all together but it’s getting there. i can see the light at the end of the tunnel. and i’m feeling like we MIGHT just have a good deal of life progress completed before we settle down to meet this new human. i’m not quite ready but i’m feeling confident that i will be soon. which is more than i can say for when i was expecting darla.
i remember mike and i having a conversation on the way to the hospital for my birthing time with d and discussing how we hoped it was a false alarm. we were not ready. there are days that i’m still not ready for the force that is Darla in my life but this moment in time feels…bear with me for this analogy… like the effects of a shot of warm liquor*. it spreads through you reaching to the tips of your toes and fingers slowly until you’re warm all over and you have this calmness that says “this is right and this is good.” that’s what the conclusion of this weekend feels like. i’m feeling right and i’m feeling good.
and i wouldn’t be in this mentality if it weren’t for all the helpers and support i have in my life. my parents, my husbeau, neighbors and friends and even my little helper that helped {somewhat, sometimes} getting projects accomplished this weekend. my weekend even consisted of helpers i’d never met before since i attended the birth without fear meet-up on saturday. it was an inspiring day and it helped me put a finger on some of the things i’m working through with this pregnancy.
oh gawd. you know you’re in your 3os when you are looking back at your weekend and are excited about the gardening and painting instead of the parties and the concerts.
but it was fulfilling and it was progress and i am thankful. and i am in my 30s. so this is right and this is good.
low lighting gave our pictures this week that fuzzy look, which is ok because that’s how our week felt. anyone else have a fuzzy week?
normal life rolls on out and the magic is in the small stuff: washing up and organizing saved baby items, visiting the market with my girl for a waffle reward as a stimulus after i’d been out late at a birth, watching darla take on the pottery wheel. you can see that girl means business. i think my favorite little life detail is in that second photo up there. the ever so slight arch in darla’s eyebrow as she takes in the enormity of her donut. i wasn’t going to include this last photo of myself {that darla took} until i noticed that i, too, have that slight arch of my eyebrow present in that image.
that might be the most important thing that happened in my week. even though much grander life events took place this week, transitions and births and responsibilities, that small shared trait trumps them all. there’s little in life so poetic as the slight arching of a woman’s brow. those few centimeters can mean the difference between living and existing.
*i’m sending out my gratitude for the living that took place this week
…and for the existing.
i hope you had a good one. all my best for your weekend.*
momjeanz 