For Ruth

READ FIRST
The Pearl in the Oyster: From two, to one...
I've had one experience with grief and loss. April 16th, 2007. That experience was exceptional in that I was grieving along with thousands of others in our town and university, even across the world. It was terrifying, it was huge, it made headlines. For months afterwards, wearing a VT shirt outside of our little corner of the state would prompt inquiries and condolences from strangers. Most people experiencing a loss do not have it this way. They will walk into a restaurant, sit down, and be greeted in the same casual manner as every other diner. The waiter will bring crayons for their child, never knowing that there should be two children. Healthy grief can be stored for later - it does not typically involve public breakdowns. When your baby never really got to come home from the hospital, I'd imagine it would be hard to figure out where your grief belongs. My friend Ruth lost her 3 month old baby yesterday after a long struggle with a congenital heart defect. The way she has handled it, especially in the immediate aftermath, is absolutely amazing to me. I doubt that I would have that much presence of mind. I am also so grateful to her for sharing these moments, which are justifiably private and personal, with all of us "internet friends" who have followed with interest, concern and prayers through Corbin's short life. My heart has been aching for their family, and every time I cry my precious little boy comes up and kisses me, pats my leg, and says "mommy not sad, mommy happy?" My precious, healthy little boy. Thank you, God.

Momentous

So I've (perhaps rashly) decided to join this flats and handwashing challenge. Justin thinks I'm nuts for sending him to Lowe's for a bucket and plunger when we have a perfectly good (subject to interpretation) washing machine. I tell him he's nuts for changing the transmission in one of the Mustangs from automatic to 5 speed. Same difference, even though I do love 5 speeds.



Since I started this post this morning, saved it, and returned, I've been thinking about this cake for 120 people I'm making before next Sunday. It's Justin's grandfather's 80th birthday, and, with two entire cakes under my belt (I'm talking experience, not calories, but there could be a basis to that claim, as well...) I volunteered to make this monstrosity. It's gonna be part yellow, part chocolate, frosted in buttercream, and I'm going to attempt to do a plaid pattern out of blue marshmallow fondant. Little does Justin know that "n

Expensive candles anything seems justifiable when named
 in French, although perhaps not to my husband

ecessary expenses" for this baby included a fondant mat, a frosting spreader, and new 12"x18" baking pan, as well as the possibility of $20 in candles I am watching on Ebay. I am assuming they're new, as I'd rather not have the ones someone else pulled out of their cake and licked off. Come on, I know you do it too.

...It's going to be so mega-enormous that I've drafted Justin into cutting a piece of plywood to transport it on.

It shall be my pièce de résistance (see, isn't that better in French? With italics? It's like, doubly pretentious).

In the spirit of being prepared, and also at my sweet tooth's urging, I decided to make a preemptive cake to practice the decorations on. When Grady wanted to be involved, I mustered all the Montessori-ness my spirit could handle and invited him to the table. Of course, he's pretty much naked, but that Contessa chick is barefoot, isn't she?

Therefore my third child was conceived and birthed - the "Naked Baby" Tutorials. This is going to kick ass. Page over to "Naked Baby Presents" for the first installation.

Overflow

I'm still way too busy with school (for T minus one month, YAY!) to really sit down and write like I've been desperate to, but last night and tonight I've been bursting with subject matter, so I'm going to cough it up on here so I can come back and remember what I wanted to discuss when I finally have time to discuss it.


My wonder and awe at God's creation. I've been astounded lately, and I think it's for three reasons: I'm getting older, hitting the developmental stage where you realize the world is so, so much bigger than you; I've got two amazing works of God that my body carried, built and nourished, and they're growing, developing, just like billions of other babies have, and it's amazing that that can just...happen (also, what I think about when it doesn't just happen); and the things about the human body and mind I've been learning the last two semesters - I feel like my worldview is coming together. I could write a book, but it couldn't be one with pages. This would have to be some kind of three-dimensional (maybe four) book, with arms and fingers and webs and tangents.


My views today vs. a few years ago re: childrearing, life, music, cooking... I love my mom, and I want to say "I'm sorry for everything I ever said." I think this is a developmental stage, as well.


I want goats and chickens. Did I mention we cloth diaper? Haha.

Baby Machine

All this reading for OB/Maternal nursing is stirring a deep, physical desire in me to be pregnant again. And over and over. Everyone wonders what Michelle Duggar is thinking, but she's just in nursing school!

Really, though, as I memorize Leopold's Maneuvers for assessing fetal position, I want that fetus in the pastel textbook graphic to be MY fetus, turned head downwards and curled up in MY abdomen, ready to be birthed by MY body and kissed by MY mouth. As I type this I am feeling tiny movements in my stomach, which I'm sure is just intestinal rumbling, but my heart imagines it to be another little baby.

This is dangerous. I fear I'm addicted to the "Mama Thing." No one tell Justin.

Things I Love

I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time being jealous. Coveting. Telling myself how awesome things will be when I'm out of school and have a real job and we can have health insurance and perhaps a new car. And I can go to Target and get what I want. And we can have a bed with a headboard, and different couches (the cushions kind of slide out when they're sat on and it drives me more insane than it should). 

But last night on Baby Center, someone posted a thread simply asking 'what do we love?' Genius. She transformed my day of stressing over money into a great night of remembering the little (and not so little) things. I started listing and kept listing.

I love...

Our beautiful old Blue Ridge Mountains, the New River, kayaking, sleeping in hay lofts, the smell of grass, beer, making bread, making cookies, making pies, listening to crickets, kittens, the color green, going on walks, seeing snow fall, having money in savings, giving birth, breastfeeding, cuddling my babies, having conversations with my two year old, kissing my husband, baby cheeks (they're so soft!), vacuuming carpets (I'm weird), reading a good book, hot baths, camping in the summer, getting a good haircut, weddings, board games, ironing (I never do it anymore because we basically own nothing that needs ironed, but my mom used to pay me $0.50 per dress shirt of my dad's and I LOVED IT), Reader's Digest. Jeopardy. Singing classical music and sounding good, worship music too, shows on ABC, baseball caps, football season!, health food stores where you can buy flour, grains, spices, etc. by weight and put them in the little bags, natural remedies, chicken wings, nursing school even though it's tough, cutting my kids' fingernails (but not my own, I bite them), Netflix, taking pictures, coffee. 

I'm sure there's much more, but the reading would be ridiculous. BTW could you tell I can't wait for warmer weather?

The Only Words I've Heard Today Are My Own.

Even though about half the time they're my own words repeated back to me by an almost-two-year-old with a distinctly Mexican flavored accent. Seriously. Kid is blond and blue, never been out of Virginia, and he speaks like his middle name is Jorge. "I did it" turns into "I deed eet" and "it's broken" is "ees brokeen." Anyone who knows my mother knows she's Senora Ribbe, Spanish teacher at GHS. Grady might need to spend more time with his other grandparents...

But I keed, I keed.

Poop

Yes, that's right. There is just so much of it. If it's not one, it's the other. And as I'm sitting here and Grady's pushing his red truck back and forth across the room I'm getting whiffs that can mean only one thing...

And while he'll come up to us (typically in the middle of dinner when he's already pushed his food away saying "all done plate, all done fork" and gotten down from the table, which is happening more and more lately since he EATS NOTHING BESIDES PRETZELS, but that's another story), anyway he comes up to us in the middle of dinner patting his bottom and saying "is poopin diaper?" I insist that he immediately sits on his potty, but since I'm usually incapacitated by a nursing baby (and need my meat cut up for me...I feel like I'm back in the nursing home from last semester), Justin gets the pleasure. Of course Grady has yet to successfully eliminate in an approved receptacle, so by the third time last night that he informed us of his need to "poop in potty" Justin flat out refused. Kid's only manipulating us for marshmallows, which is what I give him when he tries on the potty, because otherwise he just wants to use it as a little chair to sit in and read magazines. ONE TIME he peed 3 drops in it, but that was over a month ago. Sigh. I'm really trying not to rush him, since I know kids need to be ready before any effort on my part will produce a result.

Moving along to a more savory subject, the boys' room is almost finished! Gwen, JB and Topher came over on Monday, sacrificing a snow day to help paint. One wall is dark brown and the other three are a sky blue, like a September day blue. Justin is kind of unsure about the contrast, and honestly so am I, but I think once I get the car and truck decals up and the furniture moved where I want it (and where is that? It's like a Sudoku, I have an idea of the goal but my mind just can't put the pieces together) it will look much better. MUCH better than the "sand" color it was before, thanks to Gavin. Our house is quite...colorful...if you've never been here. The kitchen and dining room are a pale cream yellow, but the cabinets are RED. The bathroom is ORANGE (seriously, it was called Harvest Spice and it looked great on the card when Meaghan and I picked it out). The living rooms are a nice, light Ralph Lauren brown, our bedroom is green (Tea Leaf or something) and the boys' room, well, you know. It's got personality! Speaking of which, Grady just stumbled up to me wearing Justin's sweatshirt backwards, like with the hood covering his face, crying for me to take "Daddy's shirt off." Time to go.