One Deep

We are deep in the ones at Fleckhaus. That is Willa is one and half with a vengeance. The Ones challenge me more than any other age.

Willa started walking at 8 months and climbing ladders at 15 months. She can spring to the top of the dining room table in the time it takes me to empty the dustpan in the trash. She can get her baby doll stroller stuck on the stairs in a compromised position in the time it takes me to chop an onion. I place the toothpaste higher on a shelf and she finds it anyway. The time comes to leave the house and her shoes are no where to be found. Shoes, after toothpaste (pa paste) are her favorite object. We spend most of the day putting them on and taking them off.

Willa is also a hider. What's that quiet sound in the house? Oh, it's Willa hiding with an object she shouldn't have, say Lip Gloss she smuggled from Sylvia's room. What's she doing with it? Oh, eating it. When I do find her in the closet, behind the sink or stuck behind the bed she gives me a devilish grin.

"Stuck" by the way is one of her top five most frequently used words. Hopefully these moments aren't portending a life of hiding from the law and getting "Stuck" in jail.

Why does this age challenge me so? I have a naturally short attention span and I like a fair amount of peace and quiet. I simply do not have the paranoid, vigilient nature needed to follow a one year old around all day. If my children survive being one with me they can survive anything. Likewise, if I can finish the year with all my marbles it will be a very good game even if poorly played. If I can accomplish a little bit in the next year, imagine what I can accomplish once Willa passes into the twos.

Also, after a day of intermittent crying my ears start to tune it out. My ears can only absorb so much crying. Again the crying results from Willa getting "stuck" with some object and she can't find her way out or through with it. Willa can wail. She has the mighty Fleck voice, one that can pierce through a raucous gathering of near deaf relations, such is the case with my family.

A friend of mine with a three month old baby just posted on facebook, "When will I get my momentum back." I replied, "I'm hoping in three years when Willa starts kindergarten."

The dishes are still undone, the floor needs to be vacuumed, this is my first blog post in months, and my career is on cruise control. On the other hand, she says "hello and Bye bye with the sweetest voice. She loves to put things away and help with the chores. Willa can grin the drooliest, goofiest, babyest grin that was ever grinned. Everynight after I lay her down in her crib, I say how thankful I am to share my life with this vibrant little soul. Thanks dear friends for joining me in some Mom angst.

Keys

I have a long history of misplacing keys. I think its a genetic trait I inherited from my father. It could also be due to the fact that I didn't grow up with keys. We lived in a small town where no one locked their doors. In fact, we didn't even own a key to our front door. If we went away on a long vacation we locked the door and kept a butter knife hidden above the molding of the door to jimmy open the lock.

I've told my kids there a few occasions when swearing is allowed. Searching for your keys is one of them. Fifteen minutes of peering under cushions, sandboxes, and so on would bring any soul into a fit of "Goddammits (Which by the way, is my favorite Swear word, it just some up a feeling so well)" I know better than to give them to Willa and yet I do it anyway to pacify the screeching. Sylvia is savvy enough to try to thwart my absent minded hand-offs. "Mom, don't give those to Willa!!!" Sylvia at age four can already see where that ill fated move would be headed.

Last weekend I found a key finder at the Bryn Mawr garage sale. It was only 50 cents and worth a try. It is supposed to work like this: When you can't find your keys you simply whistle and the a beeper will sound and you locate them. I gave it a try. I whistled and whistled and the thing wouldn't respond. However, it will respond to Willa's high pitched screeching.

Picture it, we are sitting around at breakfast eating our cheerios. Willa screeches for the bottle of water and the beeper goes off. At this point, we all know where the keys are.

I guess I recommend the key finder for those of you that have wee screeching toddlers about and don't mind the sound of screaming and beeping at the same time. Please, if you find my keys don't hesitate to call. If my pocket starts beeping, you know what that sound is.

White Priviledge

White privilege
never knowing that the opportunity couldn't have existed.
My "not enough" is more than most will have

No one will ever take off of my porch the twelve hefty bags filled with clothes I didn't have money to wash or closets to store because the city and the neighbors thought they were trash.

Because I will always have bootstraps to pull up when times are tough
and therapy if I am sad
a massage if I am sore
a doctor if I am ill
vitamins and fish oil if the organic food I buy isn't enough

Even if my income isn't much there will always be
someone else to surprise me with a free ticket to the opera
or couch out of a Kenwood Mansion
or a recommendation for a job I will turn down
because "it just doesn't feel right."
a scholarship or grant money
steaks, goat cheese and pomegranate seeds

Will I continue to pick the garbage up
in our lawn
blown in from from next door.
Will I keep going and pick theirs up too or,
Will I call the city and ask them to take it away
Even if it turns out to be the family's clothes
Will I keep trying to learn the names and stories
behind the midnight fights in the street? Or,
Will I just close the windows and turn the central air on
Dial 911 from the comfort of my bedroom and fall back
to sleep while someone else sorts it out.

Can we share our sandbox
with our neighbors even if it means
it will sometimes get trashed and battered
our toys strewn far and wide down the block
sand dumped in rocks
rocks dumped in sand
Because my daughters need someone to play with
and I need community
and I want to be proven wrong.

Happy Birthday Willa

Nothing is cuter than a one year old on a Rocking Moose going "weeeee weeee weeeee" in a squeaky baby voice.

Sylvia was such a proud big sister at Willa's birthday party. She took so much ownership of the event. She helped decorate the house, make the cake and open presents. She even attempted to serve the Red Devil cake laced with beets. I think after two pieces fell on the floor, I had to step in and take over.

As it should be, cake and frosting smeared all over baby's face. Willa has been a good eater since day one, and the cake proved no exception.

Thank you to everyone that has helped me to get through this first year. I really didn't know how we would make it, but we did. It takes a whole lot of love and support to raise children. I am grateful for the friendship, financial support, and babysitting that has been offered up to us this year.

Willa is finally sleeping through the night(well, most of the time) and depending on me less and less to provide her nourishment in the form of milk. I feel like I'm getting my personal life back a little bit and can see myself in roles other than that of Mom. Recently, I've made time to go on dates with John, hang out with girlfriends, started a sewing project, started this blog, and looked into the next steps of my career. I love being a Mom, but having things that feed my soul outside of my children really helps energize me. The more I do some things for my self the more devoted I feel toward my children and domestic life.

The more we love, the more energy we have to love some more.

Formula to Survive Motherhood

8:00am two cups of strong black tea loaded with milk and sugar

2:00pm one strong cup of coffee loaded with milk and sugar.

6:00pm Gin and Tonic. Heavy on the lime.

Memories Re-Framed

I finally bought a frame for an 8 by 10 photo of my family. This photo was taken last fall at the Renaissance Festival. We used this photo for our Christmas card and I have it on my facebook front page. In the picture all four of us are smiling, happy and looking at the camera with our eyes open. These pictures are one in a million. I found the frame on an end cap in Target. It was a metallic dark Burgundy. It kind of looked like shiny wood. In my imagination it matched the wood trim that is so abundant in our house.

When we got home I put the photo in the frame the first chance that I had. The photo looked decent in it. Then, I started noticing; the photo didn't match any other frame in the house. In fact, not a single frame matched another frame in the house. All the eyes from all of the pictures gazed at me and said, "None of us are in matching frames."

This is how it works. Photos are taken at different times in our lives. In the time between those photo shoots trends and home fashions change. For example, sitting on the top of a corner shelf containing about eight or so framed family pictures, is my senior photograph. This photograph is complete with the big round glasses that were so prevalent in the late 90' The photo rests in a faux gold marble gilded frame. I'm sure I bought it off of the end cap at Target and that was in style at the time. Below it is a formal picture of Sylvia taken at age 2. This photo rests in a dark blue frame with wide border. Next to it is am 4 x 6 picture of my sisters, the kids, John and me. It is another one of those great pictures where everyone is smiling. This one rests in a metallic stamped frame. And on and on.

I look closer at the frames in my house. The lovely photo of John and me at a wedding sits in Metallic Silver frame(also off of the end cap at Target) I go into our bathroom and notice a post card that is framed. It's silver. However, instead of white matting there's stippled clear glass to provide a couple inches of space between the border of the photo and the border of the frame. Even two silver frames can be stylistically completely different.

This might seem like a trivial topic. But isn't it interesting how over time these frames are as eclectic as the memories contained in them. To further complicate things. When John and I married he brought with him pre-framed photos and I brought with me pre-framed photos. So there on the top shelf next to the faux gilded 5 X 7 senior picture is a wallet size carved wood frame with a picture of himself at one years old.

To dig even deeper. I have this habit of updating photos in a frame to reflect our current lives. For example we have a couple of very sturdy glass border less frames that sit up rite on a shelf. Every couple of years I replace the photos as new things happen in our lives. The picture of Sylvia's first birthday cake replaces me on a point in Grand Marais during our honeymoon. A picture of our wedding replaces a snapshot of us during our first camping date. The memory lives on, just a few layers in.

These frames show the passing of time and the shuffling of memories. Now that I have noticed this hodgepodge I have a choice: Do I embrace the variety of these frames, grabbing the newest thing off of the end cap at Target or, do I in an uncharacteristic moment of consumerism buy all new frames in matching finish?

Dear readers, now that I have raised the topic, I ask you to look around your living space and notice; What kind of frames are in your house?

Pictureless

For a while longer I will have to use words to describe what is going on in my life. I haven't quite got the hang of downloading things off of my phone. Our camera is returning with John from Germany as we speak.

I'm not very good at taking pictures. What I mean to say is the actual getting around to taking pictures. I'm often so caught up in the moment of what is happening I forget to capture it in pictures. On some practical level I figure if the experience wasn't that memorable I will just forget it anyway. On the other hand, if it was a vivid experience I will be able to summon up the images in my imagination. True, currently, we don't have a device that will download images from our brains to put in picture frames for other people to see.

On the other hand, when I find old photos I am always sent into a dizzy wave of nostalgia. I quickly become thoughtful and remember the time when..... Of course, it's at these moments I think, "Why didn't I take more pictures?" The funny thing is, I can be pretty good at taking pictures.

I learned to do photography on a SLR manual that my dad gave me for a birthday in high school. I actually had access to a dark room of my own, which, at the time was very cool. My dad, who didn't spring for a whole lot of things, never flinched when I used up half a bottle of some very expensive chemical containing silver. My dad taught me how to use that camera and then employed me to work for him at the small newspaper that my family owned. It was the Solon Economist and the North Liberty Leader. These papers, by the way, are still in operation. I payed my way through High School by photographing everything from basketball games to band concerts to little kids doing something cute.

Every Sunday, it was my job to go down to the dark room and develop all of the film and print the pictures for the paper. My senior year of high school my father bought brand new technology, the digital camera. I still developed the film, however we had a device that scanned the film to create digital images on the computer. Even thought I was in on this technology from the beginning I left it when I left for college. Only fifteen years later did I acquire a Digi of my own.

When I wasn't shooting pictures for the paper I did a fair bit of dramatic photography. This involved dressing my sister's friends up in spooky clothing and shooting them from weird angles with whatever kind of lighting I could create. They and their friends were good sports until the very end. Once, someone paid me $50.00 to shoot their cousins wedding. In the dead of winter I convinced my friend Sara to let me shoot her Senior pictures. This involved dressing her up in 70's gown and making her pose on a very cold lake at sunset. The cold really made her cheeks Rosy.

Now we as a culture have digital photography, Blogs, Snapfish and every sort of device to disseminate visual images from our lives to everyone else. Unlike having access to a darkroom there is nothing very extraordinary about owning a digital camera. I suppose, in a way, I am lamenting a lost art. If it isn't art, what's the point?