A letter to my daughter

It occurs to me often how fragile life is, how in a mere second everything can change. And if that second were today, or tomorrow, there are things I would want you to know. Since this blog is your portal to my personality, if something should ever happen to me,
you will always have this. So see, there are things I should say, in print, because what-if's can be terrible monsters (though truly I hope to say these things to you, in person, for many, many, many years to come).

I want you to know how intensely easy and intensely hard it is to be a mother. How you came into the world and attached yourself to my heart so fiercely that suddenly I don't know up from down. I don't recognize myself before you, before having this grand and glorious love attached to me. I have to re-create myself, and I do it with gratitude. Because once they placed you on my stomach, everything in my world changed. I don't do things without considering you anymore. I look at the world with a starry eyed fascination for what you will see, and with a protective bear like quality that would stop at nothing to protect you. I stare at you, all the time. All the time. You make me laugh! You make my heart feel as though it could burst with a million rainbows. I see your light sweet Ellie. It shines through your gorgeous, heart-melting smile. I watch you with other kids your age, and you burst with excitement at being with them, sharing with them, engaging them. These are not things I have taught you. This is your BRIGHT and ENERGETIC personality emerging into the world.

I say being a mother is intensely easy because it is. Loving you with such tenderness and wholeness is the natural course for my heart and soul to take. You make it easy, with your sweet high pitched "mama" and the way you wrap your arms around me and bury yourself in my bosom. Or the way you mimic all the things I do, or the way you engage me in your toddler games with such zeal and excitement as though what we are doing is the Best. Thing. Ever! At over 16 months you are still breastfeeding, and though I have talked about reasons for stopping, it feels very natural to continue in the way that we have. Our multiple moments through the day where I honor the ancient wisdom of a woman's body and feed my child, it is such a special time. And it is easy. And my love, my LOVE. How do I write on words that which can barely be understood in my mind? You are a joy to watch, and you make me know happiness far past the reaches to what I ever thought was possible. You do all of this in the grand, simple act of just being you. Beautiful you.

I say being a mother is intensely hard because it is. It feels stressful to keep you safe in a world that I sometimes don't feel safe in. It breaks my heart when I think of your first heartache, your first pain, your first loss. I want you to see yourself for the true beauty that I see in you, but one day you will question that. You will go out into a world and experience it, and no amount of love from me will take away the dangers of this life, will shield you from the pain involved in your own self discovery. I want to cocoon you in my love and I can not. You must discover, and experience, and have broken hearts, and understand things that you are not in order to know the things that you are. And so I believe that part of being a mother is about having your heart broken.

But know this my child;
I see the light in you. And it is radiant!
And yes, this world, this WORLD to which you belong, it is radiant too.
And you will know it, through your experience.
And I will watch, often with paused breath,
as you carve your own path and create in your own manner.
But know this, too:
I will wrap you in my love every time you are home.

You are a part of me forever now. And I love you, Ellie. More than you'll ever know.

Good in a pinch

Every year Mike and I (and now Ellie) drive just west of Boulder to Nederland, Co during September. This cute little town has the most beautiful fall colors and wonderful hikes to see them on. So today was our day and I was pleased as punch! Then, in a moment's noticed the mood changed as I remembered....

I forgot my camera.

No!!! Not on Super Pretty Fall Foliage day!

So lo! I decided to bust out my new, super fancy phone and try to figure some of these phone features out. The simple, basic photos it takes aren't bad. Here's an example:

But I thought, hey, if I have to go with the second choice, then I may as well do it up! So I busted out the retro camera app, as well as fxphoto. The idea is it uses different, "vintage" cameras to take your picture, like the Pinhole camera, the Poloroid, the Barbl, the Toy Camera. It was really fun to play with these in an atmosphere that most assuredly warranted my fancy digital slr. So I just pretended I was back in the day, when the cameras aren't as nice, the lenses get scratched easy, and you have to (gasp!) develop film!! I think the vintage thing is way cool. I'm glad I had a forced opportunity.



 

=

Lovin her daddy...

Each day Ellie and I wait outside for Mike to get home from work. It's so sweet watching her run up to him as soon as she realizes that Daddy is walking down the street. She loves him sooo much!

Ok, now totally off the subject (and in smaller font as if to be in a whisper), here is the situation: I have a Droid phone. It takes awesome videos when watched on...my phone. Now I am not exaggerating when I say that I have literally spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to get the video off my phone, rotate it 90degrees, change it to an avi format, and then MIRACULOUSLY load it on to blogger. So I'll be damned when it isn't the fuzziest video EVER appearing to come from a VHS circa 1988. Screw you android phone with your fancy bewildering techniques! Why do you make things so complicated? Arghh!!! Again, not enough hours in the day.

The Circle Game

Today Fall is officially upon us.
The sweetness of Summer is soon to fade, soon to turn into warm sweaters, piles of leaves, cold noses.

I've just gotten out of a yoga class, still in my sweats. We had a great teacher tonight, and because of her ability to pry open my tight little heart, tonight, I felt compelled to write. I felt compelled to start a dialogue with myself about what it means for Fall to be upon us. What it means for another season to end. What it means for life to constantly be changing.

The greatest moment of my entire life was the day that Ellie was born, hands down. Since then, joy has become different, a sort of spiky thing covered with worries and aging, but a deep, glowing ball of happiness for which, before child, I had not been so privy. She changed me, made life more challenging, made it more worthy of the effort. And this joy that she brings me, that she brings to my family, sometimes it changes. Sometimes it carries with it lows. Sometimes they are really big lows. It's hard to be a mom sometimes (a big fat duh from all the mothers in the crowd!), but my realizations as a mom are that lows carve out and make way for the deepness of the love I am able to give out into the world. Because since the stresses and joys of motherhood, I have had moments filled with the purest, deepest love. Love that makes you cry.

Sometimes I come home after a really challenging day where I feel there are just not enough of me and enter my house to a whiny child who just wants to be held and won't let me move about the house because she's crying and holding on to my pants. Then husband comes home with a different set of stresses and enters into whiny child and bitchy wife, and the three of us just want to whine whine whine. And we do. And it's irritating. And I wouldn't call that a super happy moment. But it's a moment. It's one of our moments. And then Ellie will do something funny and slowly are day melts off of us. We come together. We eat meals together. We give her our attention and efforts when we both know we want to sit with our feet up for just a minute. And then she winds down, gets all curled up and mushy in our laps as one of us reads her a story, her pointing at the pictures, us watching in amazement as things are really starting to click in her brain. Her little body with her big head of hair makes us laugh. And my God she makes us love. I can say that every time I have ever picked up that child I have organically planted a huge kiss on her cheek, even when I'm upset with her. It's her very being that I love so, including the whiny parts. And my husband, who puts up with my moodiness and brings me his own, at the end of the day I look at that man and I just love him. I just love him.

I look at glimpses of these days with my family and I know they will change. One day I'll be wrinkled and vaguely remembering what it was like to live in this house and all the details that are so prevalent in our lives now. I watch Ellie grow like a beanstalk, and I know one day I'll be sending her off to her first day of school, watching her drive away in her first car (oh God help me there). And the seasons change. We grow up. We grow together. We grow apart. We are always moving.

As Joni Mitchell put it "and the seasons, they go round and round. The painted ponies go up and down. We're captive on our carousel of time. We can't return we can only look behind from where we came, and go round and round and round in the Circle Game."

So back to Fall. I welcome you, you amazing little season you. But I'm sending you off with a few fond memories from this summer of 2010. We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came.

working for the Tot

Mike and I have just decided that we work for Ellie. She's the boss around here (or at least she wants to be), so we've started coining phrases like "workin for the Tot", or "stickin it to the Tot". Or "shhh, big Tot is watching".

We do occasionally talk about having another baby, and times like these makes me wish she had a little tot brother or sister to boss around. Then Mommy and Daddy could share the load with the poor unsuspecting baby. This (hypothetical!!!) baby would be born in the Totstablishment and just start "workin for the Tot"from the get-go. Ellie would be psyched for a fresh, new accomplice. A New Tot Order.

So, here is the Tot, nothing exciting here. Just an everyday Tot moment. But let me just exonerate myself here and say that there are NOT enough HOURS IN THE DAY to figure out how to turn, format and extract these stupid videos from my phone. At some point you just have to throw your hands up in the air and say SORRY WORLD! Video's gonna be sideways. Deal with it.

I'm one of you now!!!

That is, I work! During the day! And I sleep! At NIGHT! Good Lord if I ever start writing about how it makes "sense" to work on the night shift then please drive over to my house, ring my doorbell, and then slap me across the face when I answer. I will NEVER do that again. I was a mess, guys. No really, I lived in a nonstop state of grogginess and I feel a large part of my zest for life was buried deep in the cold pillows that never warmed up my tired head. It makes me kind of sick when I think of my phone going off in the middle of a deep sleep sending me to some far reaches of the "city" (or Kansas) in the pitch black trying to blink away the tiredness as I stared at the long, lonely roads. Or how I clutched onto my little keychain mace everytime I got gas in the middle of some sketchy neighborhood. I'm done with that shit. And can I just say THANK YOU for those that continue to do it. It's not an easy life.

But please just let me say this: I have spent the most amazing quality time with the most amazing little girl and I will always have that. It was special. Her and I, every day together. We got tight. I can speak her little toddler language. I know what's up. And oh thank you stars for that. Thank you thank you thank you. She is one loved little chica, and I really want her to always, always know that. She does. I feel confident.

But okay! Now that Ellie is comfy with her nannie (and NOT crying when I leave!) (usually), now I can brush my hands together and say go GET IT! And by getting going to GET IT I mean that I have joined the working ranks, I've got my own batch of hospice patients to whom I am "their girl". I've been zipping all over Denver in my little Subaru Forester, aka traveling clinic, meeting my new patients, their families, and feeling rested and GOOD! And with all this new found goodness comes its own stresses indeed. Being someone's "nurse" means you are case managing all over the place: dealing with families, stubbed toes, falls in the middle of the night, congestion, pain, you name it, they'll call me for it. And that's okay, because remember, I feel GOOD. But the point is, THIS is why I have not written on my blog in *gasp* a whole week!!!!! And this, (husband), is why the dining room table has been COVERED in papers. Getting organized is one lost art.

But I'm back. Thanks for bearing with me during that bitch of a time.

my little Charlie's Angel

 Ellie's got this whole Farrah Fawcett feathered hairdo thing going on right now. It's at its prime first thing in the morning when it's all fluffy and big on her head. Her hair totally cracks me up, because along with it she is just such a ham. She gets up and runs all through the house, climbing on furniture, squealing, having actual conversations with us in toddlerese as animated as you ever saw, all with this big ol Farrah Fawcett hair do. She's awesome.

I tried to take some pictures first thing yesterday when she was eating, so first of all, please mind the food all over her face. To go along with her Farrah Fawcett hair she knows just what to do in front of the camera. Smile! And for her, camera smiling is her squinching her face up. I don't know that Farrah ever had that technique in her bag of tricks, but for Ellie, it works! She is so funny right now!

Charlie, eat your heart out!

Cheese!

SLEEP! Go to sleep damnit!

This is how I'm berating myself right now, nearly midnight. I'm working tonight which means I have to squeeze in every last kernal of sleep while things are slow because I only have 3 hours to sleep tomorrow when I'm "not working".

Trying to sleep while feeling stressed about needing to sleep Does. Not. Work.

I used to be really good at sleeping, like narcolepsy-good. When I was doing my nursing school clinicals I would sneak out to my truck during breaks and set my cell phone alarm for 20 minutes later and get REM sleep during that time I swear. I could fall asleep sitting up. I fell asleep, on more than one occasion, while in the middle of writing something.

But now I don't sleep well at all. These nights on call have shot my nerves from being awoken from a dead sleep to the PTSD driving sound of my cell phone calling me out to a patient visit in the middle of the night. (I HATE the sound of my work phone. Actual physical response hate.) When I'm not working I hear the random stirrings and nightwakings in the baby monitor. When all is quiet and I have the opportunity to sleep well I almost feel too stressed to seize the occasion and will literally lay there for hours. I'll count backwards from 100. I'll plan out my day. I'll do a full body scan and notice how much physical stress I actually keep in my body. I'll subtly stick my toes into the sweet waters of sleep only to wake myself at the most minute of sounds.

Tomorrow is my last night shift. It feels like the last day of work before a major vacation.

I remember writing this post. Childless student didn't know how easy life was.

It doesn't take much.

We put so much into this weekend, really, it was all such a whirlwind. From Tour de Fat in Fort Collins (post of its own) to seeing Bret Michaels at Taste of Colorado (giving some love to my inner hair band groupie), to visits with friends, to hiking, to going out to eat, WHEW! We certainly ended summer with a bang. But for all of the craziness it was really in the more subtle moments that I found the best joys. It was the strolls through the park. Watching a caterpillar. Picking peaches. Socializing on the front porch. Bike rides. Putting our feet in a cold river.

Funny how the most uncomplicated moments are the ones that feed you the most.

Click. And smile

Ok I totally found this scouring someone else's blog, and it really is a great blog so I should give Moose In the Kitchen some props. But REALLLLY, this is just the most delightful little video ever. Delightful is the absolute best way to describe it. Please watch and enjoy!

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

It takes a village but I ain't got one.

Well for all my bitching about being a tired and sleep deprived mom, I'm finally doing something about it.

I'm switching to the day shift!

You know somedays I am out seeing patients at 4am and I see the normal (NOT nocturnal) world start to rise. I see people out jogging. I see Starbucks turn on their lights. And it makes me envious of that world. That well-slept daytime hours world. Because for me, the long and short of it is that I am tired most of the time, EVEN on days I don't work. I rarely wake up feeling chippy. I rarely even wake up before my daughter. In fact, my work schedule has made me such an insomniac that I usually don't even lift an eyelid until I hear Ellie's first cries. Then I literally force myself out of bed still half sleeping and go in and fetch my daughter. And let me tell you, a cup of coffee and some downtime before a day with a toddler is OH SO NICE.

So I am excited. REALLY excited. However, with this new arrangment (which hasn't started yet) comes the need for more CHILDCARE. God I hate dealing with this! Don't I wish I lived in a little village where all my relatives were around me and Ellie was cared for by loving relatives 100% of the time. HEAVEN! (That really does sound good). Because I will say that one does not fully grasp the stress of childcare until one actually has to do it.

I remember me and Mike were on a walk last year and we "popped in" on this preschool that was just blocks away. I will never forget the HAGGARD woman balancing 2 kids who answered the door in a stressed out huff and how I peeked in and there were babies crying and this line of cribs straight out of a romanian orphanage documentary. I told Mike, I think in these exact words, "Let's get the hell out of here". Since then we have hired a nanny, two thus far, and they've been great. But still, I know how hard it is to have a baby all day long, and she's MY BABY and I have a built in DEEP INGRAINED love. So you worry. And then you realize you have to let go and trust. And then I meet a woman who tells me that her baby was with her neighbor friend while she worked during the day and her baby fell and got some cerebral hemmorhage and almost died and my nerves get all tied up in a bunch! And then I say to myself trust trust trust and let go and really that's all I can do.

But man if there is not a lot of stressors out there!

But we are moving forward! For the record, these past 7 months working full time at night and being a stay at home mom HAVE been pretty special. Minus a couple of emotional meltdowns, my munchkin and I have gotten really close, and MAN I love her so! I'm thankful for the opportunity I have had. Not everyone gets the option to be home.

But I think it will be good for us to have days apart during the week. And it will feel good to sleep. At night. (Amen!)

Ah, the perfect family photo.

I'm thinking Christmas card....

Moms can be dirty too!

Let me just tell you that I was pleased as freaking PUNCH the other day when I got a surprise gift in the mail from my college friend, Deanna. Such a girl I tell you! The stories I could tell! Well Deanna has started a pretty great little business called "Dirty Girl Creations". She takes 100% Swarovski crystals and embeds them into sexy clothing. Let's just say she helps put a little extra sparkle to your hoo ha and your girls.

As a sleep deprived mom let me tell you that my hoo ha and girls could use some sparkling. And so imagine my delight when I got this in the mail.

Now let me just add that this is a somewhat vulnerable type of picture to take as I am clearly pointing to my boobs, but really, I am pointing to my SPARKLES. My QUEENBLOGGY SPARKLES!!!!

There was a lower portion, but this is a family friendly blog.

I don't know what it is about sparkles, or form fitting sexy underwear WITH sparkles, or even sparkly jewelry (which she also makes) but it makes you feel MUCH more sexy. And these days I need a little sexy. Believe me. Not that Mike isn't loving the old Hanes Her Ways, but let's just say, I think he appreciated the change of pace.

(So big thanks and wink wink to you Deanna).

For all you other ladies I highly suggest moseying over to Dirty Girl Creations and create your own hoo ha hootenany. (You know what I mean.....)

http://www.dirtygirlcreations.com/