LOST A SOCK

Something Like January

I hope that I remember this January of 2012, and its predecessor, December 2011, as That Time We Had An Unseasonably Warm and Tolerable Winter.  Kind of like the Chicago summer a couple years ago, when temps hovered in the low seventies instead of the upper eighties, with bright blue skies nearly the entire season, and my children wept from their souls about not being able to swim.  It was like living in Tahiti.  If Tahiti had more smog.  And Italian Beef sandwiches, dipped in juice.

What I am saying is, it hasn't snowed very much, and I believe today is the first day I've noticed the thermometer dip below ten degrees.  I feel so very alive, still, this Winter.

(Okay, so today we had a homeschool class at the Shedd Aquarium, and parked our car way back at Soldier Field and walked all the way from one to the other, and back, in the nine degree wind.  I am officially sporting my Winter in the Midwest Tan, which involves bright red frostbitten cheeks and chin.  Thank you, icy wind, for avoiding my still-pale, chalkboard sized forehead.  Nothing like keeping things interesting.  Ahem.) 

But last week we spent a day at the zoo, and it was perfect.

Perfect enough to get a really good look at the Winter color palette.

This is the Winter I figured out what was going on with our girl.  Sensory Processing Disorder-- Tactile Defensiveness, specifically.  An over-responsiveness of the protective responses of the nervous system. I have now read through no fewer than four thousand web pages recommended to me by Dr. Google, and the descriptions of other children struggling with these same issues are just uncanny.  I had no idea that other families were going through the same things, and I am both relieved and completely overwhelmed with all of this new information. Furthermore, with all of this reading comes new understandings about myself in relation-- my absolute inability to tolerate crumbs, chalk dust, newsprint, the fine dust left on skin by sand, anything sticky on any surface and most especially my hands-- all the damn hand washing, and my absurd aversions to toothpaste, hand lotion, sunscreen...

Apologizes sincerely to girl child, for handing down disorder undetected.

I thought these were...oddities?  Quirks?  Regardless, I have figured out how to navigate my days in spite of whatever all of that relates to, and Marin will, too.  I am anxious to meet with her occupational therapist again, to ask eleventy million more questions.  We're going to get this thing figured out.  

This Winter also gets to go down, so far, as The One We Did School Really Well.  Above, winter insect homes, as per the monthly outdoor Science class we attend.  Who knew?  I feel like I have learned so much, right along with my kids, and there have been a variety of topics that I was a bit unsure of as we got started (I am looking at you, Light and Heat) but we jumped in with both feet anyway, and have come away with great experiences.  

The two quiet hours we spend each morning now, while Marin is at her preschool, have truly revolutionized our homeschool process.  We've got better schedule structure, less distraction, and perfect reason to tackle the big stuff first, and save the story reading and art projects for the afternoon when we are all back home together. Jack's reading gets better each day, KJ has conquered ridiculously long division, and the history of North America is behind us.  The boys are currently attending a weekly Gym & Swim program for homeschoolers through the YMCA, Jack is taking a theater class and KJ a fun Science class (he dissected cow eyeballs tonight) and basketball begins in a few weeks. We pick up our chick eggs and incubator next month, already. 

This also gets to be the Fall and Winter that I loved these guys best of all.  These Canadian Geese with their smooth black heads and their rounded brown bodies, following the leader in v-formation in search of warmth and food.  I have been watching them for months, and stopping to listen to their honks as they sit along our lake on chilly nights.  

I love them every time I see them.  They're really incredible, aren't they?

These get to be the days I play my favorite music on repeat.  The time I rediscovered Jewel.  The weekend I purchased enough fabric to make a queen-sized quilt-- my first ever so large.  And the time I discovered Pinterest, for the first time.

Let us skip the polling for who hasn't slept in a week, with all of that pinning, m'kay?

The grey clouds up above have been toying with the notion of snow, now.  For Real snow, rather than the silly little dustings and meltings that have graced us occasionally.  We might just put our new snow blower to use, yet.  

I am brave.  I can take it.

(Future Self punches Overconfident Present Self in the kidneys, imaginably.)

New Year, Week One

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

2011 in the rearview

Initially I thought to comment, Well that went fast, when I realized it was time to recap the year that just started five minutes ago.  But then as the past year came into better focus, I knew that the quickness of its passage was less about its days and moments, and more about the fact that the years--they are really moving.  I love growing, I love getting older, I love my grey hairs and tiny little wrinkles left from smiling, I love change.  Bring it, 2012.

But first, for the short and sweet in the record book, allow me to recap 2011.

We began the year as we always do, on a ladder with paint brush in hand.  (Myself, that is. Not my kids.)  My kids were elbow deep in homeschool, and in a bin of dry rice and beans at the time, and we were eight months into our wait for our baby to be referred to us, from Africa.

This was a path that I somehow knew I would walk, at least in the years after I became a mom, though I never could have predicted our story thus far to present as it does in this moment.  While waiting for our referral, we began learning of so much corruption surrounding the situation in that particular country, and eventually we made what felt like the only ethical choice to make, given the circumstances, and we brought our paperwork back home.  I know with certainty that even now, had we stayed the course in spite of our concerns, we still would not have had our baby home today, and if we felt waist-deep in a terrible situation at the beginning of the year, without going into detail, we would have been up to our eyeballs by now.  Even our own agency, who we once had so much faith in, has not emerged with clean hands, and it leaves me feeling just sick for the babies and children who are involuntarily growing up in the center of this cold and dirty hurricane.  In this way the world appears uglier than ever to me, having joined the scene ready to help a child or children as we could, and then having witnessed such an unfolding.  It left me feeling hopeless for the kids at the center, and so very sorry for the well-intentioned adoptive and birth families caught in the swirling periphery. 

I am sorry to say that I came away from this once-exciting time to experience a grief I hadn't known before- a miscarriage of sorts, only for which there are no pre-determined parameters for how one should expect to feel after spending the better part of two years preparing for and dreaming about this very real baby that would join our family, only to walk away with empty arms.  Adoption is not just a thing that people decide to get into, but something we get into with our whole hearts and with our kids and families and friends and finances.  We create space in our homes and excitedly count down until this little person who already feels like one of us, comes along to finally be one of us.  The process, then, of giving away the toys I had saved, the blankets and clothing I had collected and telling each and every person of our turn of events left me mournful and exhausted.  The winter went long, and it felt dark and sometimes lonely.

I journaled a lot through that time, and searched to find the silver lining day after day, because it was the best of my options.  And I opened myself up to the possibility that I could somehow come out of this experience with greater breadth, and build something from all the little pieces.

By the grace of God, I met a friend of a friend very soon after that, who somehow got me instantly, right where I was, and sat with me in the space where I chose to work through our adoption into its roots.  My sadness for everything that had ever failed was palpable, then.  I saw all of that emotion and heartache, some of which I had carried with me since I was my own little kid, and I picked it apart and allowed it to become something new when it was ready.  I had grown into a better mother for all I had learned, and a better self for what I now understood.  The process, the preparation, the loss and the disaster we witnessed was what we simply had to endure for all that could come out of it and still is yet to come.  

And just like that, Spring arrived.

We were okay. We were all okay.  We were built for these sorts of deep life lessons-- a whole Master's Degree, really, on what fear and disappointment and love are all about.  How thankful I am to have come through all of this with a heart open to possibility, though it was no picnic at the time.

It was Mother's Day before I knew it and I was the mom of three amazing little kids, and we spent the morning on a hike, and laying in green grass, absorbing the sunshine.  I will never forget that Sunday morning, because I think it was one of the most perfect, ever, in my book.  I hired our wonderful babysitter for a few hours a week, beginning last Spring, to give me the occasional break that I didn't know I could (should!) grant myself and my kids. I became more familiar with poetry and bounced along on positive, super-fun music.  We had kitchen dance parties in the afternoon and at night, just the kids and I, or the kids and I and Kevin and Sant and Leslie-- all through the house with the music blasting.   

I threw caution to the wind and painted on all sorts of canvases, and put hardwood floors in our house and painted a few walls more.

We saw art.  We made art.

We plastered art all over our walls, and we didn't apologize for the mess.

We hiked,

and we drove,

and we celebrated.  

I felt that I should meet my inner perfectionist, somewhere in all that, and shake her up a little bit.  The world was not perfect, and I was not perfect.  The world was ugly and messy and dissapointing, and I needed to stare into all of that to understand that it was somehow part of something beautiful.  And so with each opportunity, to this very moment, I am asking myself what I can do with the beautiful messiness, and who will still love and accept me should they walk right into it with me.

And the answer, of course, is this little, solid group of friends and family whom I have intentionally placed around myself, like a group of fluffy pillows to pad my falls.  I am blessed.  Not lucky, as I tossed out there in my last post.  I believe, actually, in neither luck, nor coincidence, nor accidents.  I am here and happy and more whole than ever because I chose to experience awe and gratitude, again and again, for all of the blessings that come my way.  I am following my intuition as best I can, always chasing truth and what is real, and facing the hard work as it shows up, so that I can continue growing into the best version of myself-- all of those failings, and all of that messiness included.  There is more work to be done.

I added to my inky collection last summer, the word that hums through the undertones of my life, and five little birds in flight, for the five of us- Kevin and the kids and I, making this journey together.

We traveled a good deal this year, down to Indianapolis to spend some days with these little buddies of ours while their Mama delivered their new baby, 

and with these buddies of ours (also speaking of new, third babies) to Wisconsin Dells for a fun vacation.

We did the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee this year with family, 

in a mountainside cabin with a view and a settling energy I will never forget,

and we found ourselves floating down a river in bright yellow innertubes.

Kevin and I took a trip to Vegas for our eleventh wedding anniversary, 

and we experienced Utah and Arizona, where we hiked through quiet and still, rocky caverns.

I collected twenty-three pages of favorite quotes this year,

and finally figured out a layout and an atmosphere that is comfortable to me, here.

We saw the Dalai Lama speak in person over the summer, and I attended a fantastic monthly Buddhist meditation class.  Each Kevin and I did something we said we would never do again, and spent the last six months settling into churches we both love, each of us supporting the other with where we need to be.  We've gotten involved with a monthly soup kitchen, and we've met more new friends who have turned out to be icing on the cake.

We've created bonds with our homeschool buddies and taken lots of day-trips.  I bought an iPhone, I conquered every version of Angry Birds, I took the kids to see lots of plays and musicals this year.   

Kevin and I saw U2, which was hands-down, the best concert ever (even if I failed to bring my real camera).

I read this year.  I read and read and read and read, 

and it was one journey inward (and backwards and forwards) after the next.

We said good-bye to friends, both very real friends and quasi-real,

and we watched quietly the sun set,

the silkworm dangle,

and the Autumn breeze blow.

We hosted the holidays again,

and counted ourselves so blessed for full tables and full bellies.

We enjoyed the glow, 

remain present,

and bring nothing but hope, bravery, possibility and love to the year ahead.

Christmasing

Recently...

Scenes from a Thanksgiving

Mission Completion

There have been projects.  

(Oh have there ever.)

And now they are finished.

This, not my living room's finest hour.  The obvious truths here are that my black cat hides from my gaggle of children and their playmates behind our living room couch.  And also, I encouraged our flooring installers to imagine what the long work days in our home could be like should they unplug that shiny silver cable television box in the back of the room.  They kissed it gently as they passed by it over those days, and offered it gifts as to Athena from the Greeks.  With love.

So as I said previously, new floors were on the long term to-do list since we bought the place three and a half years ago.  I was so glad that the time had finally come, and listened well to everyone who suggested that Laminate was to be the choice over Hardwood, for three kids, a dog and a cat.  Durability is key. We went with a darker, wider-planked laminate that reminded me of my true beautiful hardwoods from our little old house.

The Mans, as Marin affectionately called them, worked amazingly fast.  I thanked my lucky stars that we didn't tempt divorce try this ourselves, and that my climb onto the kitchen counter to retrieve lunch for the children, from a fridge that could open a mere three inches, was my most strenuous task in these days.

Putting the rooms back together was therapeutic.  I had made a trip to Ikea for a few fun little items (lantern with latching door has served as home for Little People and Zhu Zhu Pets eight twelve forty-six times already,)

and I possibly spent one evening shelving our favorite books by color.  

(Happiest Project Ever.)

The kitchen finished something like this, plus, you know, all of the furniture and a good dust mopping later on.

and the living room like this.  Little girl kicking back on the couch, included.  

We decided to reintroduce a coffee table for the first time in eight years, now that we have no crawling babies, though I am still at a loss for what to put in the middle of it, save the Legos, sippy cups and half eaten apples that the children have been decorating it with.  We'll get there.

Also during this time I re-worked our downstairs family room fireplace mantel with a few favorite photographs, a favorite poem and a little tree I painted late one night, on a canvas I had purchased and tossed in the closet should I ever be trapped in the family room with three wild children and two extra rooms' worth of furniture, shelving and decor, and have the sudden urge to re-work the mantel.

I also rearranged furniture in my boys' room.  And painted their walls.

And after long conversations with my girlfriend Bree about baby's bedroom wall art I decided it was high time I take Jack's nursery wall art down give Marin something new to look at.  

Being trapped downstairs offered me the time to whip up a neat string of bunting flags, and I framed the words "Everything is Beautiful" for her, because indeed, my sweet girl excitedly refers to so many things as BEEE-UTEEE-FUL! So I celebrate this sweet time in her life, on a wall.

Then I got all carried away and gave all of my children haircuts.  All of them. Including my daughter, her first haircut, wherein I aged her a solid four or six years.  And have been weeping ever since.  The end.

**

Of course, that isn't the end.  The end of this Extreme Home Makeover will come in the next two days, when the Lowe's truck shows up in my driveway just one more time to install a new dishwasher.  After mentioning to my flooring guys how our beaten-down dishwasher has this tendency to pour water all over the floor during every cycle, they suggested we might want to do something about that because things would get ugly fast if water began making its way beneath our new flooring planks.  Not that our dishwasher has been actually getting the dishes clean in the last few months anyway...(oh you've been here for dinner?  Sorry, pal.)  Nothing like stretching the old tax check just as far as it could go, yes?  

I feel like we are living in a whole new house this week.  I didn't really plan everything this way, but it has been great fun to bring it all together.

(Dance) Floor

The installers finished putting down our floors yesterday.  I love them.  

I did not love having an entire living room and kitchen's worth of furniture in my downstairs family room and office.  The family room was also the place where the children and I were trapped for half the week while the floors were being installed.  We made it, though, and have now halted creative meals on bedsheets on the floor.  The furniture has been returned to rightful places.

Not before Marin Pie, being released into the empty, newly-floored living room for the first time, shrieked, "Let's play wedding!" and ran for her flower girl dress and Fancy Nancy heels.

Luckily she had a brother willing to comply.

Thirteen to Love

1. Climbing trees

2. Long Sunday Drives

3. Being the guy who the butterfly lands on

4. A day shopping home decor with the girls

5. Breaking the big news to the five little buddies...we're going on vacation together!

6. Vanilla Milk

7. Watching the tall, bare, beautiful trees reach for the blue Spring skies

8. Wearing my favorite necklace: From little seeds grow mighty trees

9. Signs Applicable

10.  Thirteen point five years later, he not only runs to the grocery store but he stops to buy me flowers on the way home

11. When I was a little girl I used to pretend these long lines of concrete at our zoo were my little sidewalks.  I used to imagine that I could live at this (my favorite place) and I was just walking through my beautiful neighborhood.  All grown up now, I bring my kids here regularly and watch them run on the concrete.  Full circle is wonderful, especially when it involves favorites.

12. Living close enough to visit.

13. A surprise eighty degree Sunday in April, and having Daddy home to give swing pushes.

Overhaul

It started back at our massive adoption decision and my winter blues a couple months ago.  And then a decision to be okay.  New books, new music, a larger commitment to meditation, new motivation, new diet.  I have succeeded at losing fourteen pounds now, still holding strong with Weight Watchers and my big goals for 2011.  I've torn apart every closet and cabinet in the house and piled donations atop donations into the middle of our garage.  Then I cleaned out our garage.  And called the giant Salvation Army truck for a pick-up.  And then Amvets for round two.

This, of course, symptomatic for the organizing that is taking place within.  I love feeling motivated.  I love that I am a ridiculously driven person and then the moments I get to pick up and run with the whole deal.  

We're running!

I went for a haircut and a highlight, which happens about every fourteenth new moon, because it felt appropriate.  Easy on the color, I remember telling my girl, and then she crept up behind me Tom and Jerry Style and clobbered me in the head with something large, knocking me out cold.  I woke up to a bumpin' headache and the hair color of a thousand caramel ice cream sundaes.  You know, if caramel sundaes had hair, which they don't because that would be gross.  Anyway, she got color happy, and it's a good thing I am up for all things new.  My hair continues to work at lifetime longness, now halfway down my back, and colorful.  

(Wherein picture of brushed bronze closet hardware stands in for segue.)

In keeping with the theme that we are slowly changing things in this house, like floors and faucets and fixtures (oh my!) and that most of our home renovation ideas had been placed on the back burner in order to save for our adoption, which is now again many years off, I had been looking at two enormous eye sores for three and a half years now: closet knobs and kitchen/living room flooring.

So last week I decided we could finally rid ourselves of the nasty, cheap golden knobs on closet doors throughout the house, and sixty dollars later I was both contentedly smiling and scratching my head wondering why I had waited three and a half years to spend sixty measly bucks.  Next to go will be our awful green mailbox with the broken red arm, which is actually leaning into the road on an angle now thanks to winter snow plows.  Another sixty, or maybe quick one hundred dollar fix. Three point five years later.

On the not so inexpensive but large in my mind list, flooring.  We traded beat up, faded linoleum in our bathrooms last winter for beautiful tile that I still love, and from the moment we first toured this house I knew that the kitchen and living room floors would need some serious attention.  Thankfully, this year after losing our souls our asses Oprah's life savings enormous amounts of money on the old house we are seeing a pretty good tax refund.  (About one tenth of our losses, so let me go ahead now, as your personal financial planner, and recommend that you avoid the whole home selling disaster altogether. You're welcome.)

So now I am learning terms like, floating, locking, nail-down and the difference between laminates, vinyls and true hardwood.  Who knew this was so complicated?

Also complicating matters are the light colored baseboards in our house, of which I have truthfully never been a fan (and have often fantasized about painting white, including window frames, closet doors and baseboards throughout, you know, all nine freaking rooms of the house).  So the sheen, the texture and the color has to at least kind of match what we have.  I am loving the wide planks and the darker brown the better, but alas the matchy thing again...  So I find myself texting sample pictures to my like-minded home decor girlfriend and she sends me running through my house with samples to hold up to kitchen cabinets and couches as I cradle the phone on my shoulder.

I will save you the suspense and share that sample number three, above, is looking like the winner now forty twenty-six three minutes before the kids and I are slated to meet Kevin at the flooring store, to put our money where our mouth is.

Now if I could only get us out the door...

iPaint

January just feels like project time.  I seem to paint some part of the house post-New Year every year.

This time I took on the kitchen.

Ever since I painted the living areas of the old house in a light shade of grey, I have been loving the color.  I like the idea of painting a room an understated color and then finding ways to bring in pops of color.  Finally, I think I am mostly breaking up with the khaki palette.

It all started with moving bookcases.  Late one night I caught the itch to move a few pieces of furniture in three different rooms to accommodate our growing book collections, which had previously been stashed in bedrooms.  That's sad, right?  We're readers!  

So first the book shelves, and then after spending an afternoon admiring my girlfriend's calendar of photographs, I came home and created one of my own for the kitchen pantry door.  I even got to include my favorite quotes!  The creative juices were flowing then, and out came the paint swatches.

It should be noted that my kitchen hasn't been painted in three years.  Which, is twenty-one years by dog age, and that is exactly how long it felt to me.  If adding the word "Mississippi" between each second of each minute of each of the twenty-one years.

So, grey, with a hint of cool blue to it,

and a limey green, which is another of my favorites.

It is possible that I loaded the kids into the car and drove a four hour round trip in the snow to attain this fabric, for new curtains.

More green.

More happy.

Finished curtains.  

Whipping up these four panels (and a window valence) seemed like a breeze after making sixteen panels for Sant & Leslie's kitchen last fall.  I wasn't sure I would ever want to see a sewing machine again, after that.  But I seriously loved this fabric.

I was sure it was oranges.  

Until Kevin called them olives.

I polled Sant & Leslie and they said olives, too, but sometimes they agree with Kevin just to help me grow stronger in the face of opposition.  That's love.

We also finally shelled out the cash for a new kitchen faucet, replacing the cheap, nasty one that came with the house.  We promised ourselves that we would make slow changes while living here, and I am happy to report we are doing well with that concept.  It's a little easier to go slow with the home improvement budget when you took an absolute bath on your last house.

Plus, what would Kevin do with his free time if not haul bookcases all over the house and crawl into the cabinets beneath the kitchen sink?

I love my new blue wall.  

I am trying to let the too light grey with too much blue in it grow on me.

My next post just might be titled, iPaintMore.  Stay tuned.

Five necessary minutes

Sometimes I tell my kids to Just give me five minutes, so that I can get quiet and pull my head together.  More often, I tell it to myself.  Today I had to tell it to myself.  I have become pretty worked up, by now, about the right direction for our family.  What I want to do and what I can logistically do by myself, I am afraid, may be two different things.  I am working to find the balance.  What I also should have said in my last entry, more than any word I spoke about criticisms we have received, is that I have never felt so much love and support on any decision we have ever made.  Thank you for being so kind, no matter which way everything pans out.  I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have so many wonderful people holding my hands.

I decided for today to stop all the thinking and just pull myself together.

2010 in review. This time with words!

In the eleventh hour I am borrowing this Q & A format from Amanda, for reflecting on the year past.  I have read so many of these question and answer posts this week, and have always wanted to try one out.

1. What did you do that you have never done before?  Assembled a dossier to adopt a child from the other side of the planet.  Sold a house.  Owned my writing and my photography, by slapping my name across the top of my blog.  It only took me five years.  Also, I embraced the unknown.

2. Did you keep your 2010 New Year's Resolutions?  Is weight loss always going to show up on them?  Other than that, mostly.  Yes.  Will you make more?  Does the pope wear a funny hat?

3. Did anyone near you give birth?  Kevin's brother's wife had their first baby just a couple days ago.

4. Did anyone close to you die?  Papa Tipping, Granny Ray and my old friend Tina, who I was once very close to.  

5. What countries did you visit?  No countries, but we've made it up to thirty-seven states now!

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you didn't have in 2010?  Feet that move quicker than my mouth.  Better endurance.

7. What dates in 2010 will remain in your memory?  September 24th, as Sant & Leslie's beautiful wedding.

8. What was your biggest achievement in 2010?  I cannot figure out any other way to convey this, without sounding like a total lame-ass, but my biggest achievement in 2010 was without a doubt the peace I've found through so much meditation.

9. What was your biggest failure?  My inability to better structure our days at home, for the sake of the kids and I and school.  I am far too lax in sticking to any sort of regimented schedule, even though I know we would all be better for it.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?  Ha!  I broke my foot just as we started painting the old house!  I still can't believe that.

11. What was the best thing you bought?  My laptop.  Welcome to the millenium, right?

12. Who's behavior merited celebration?  Elizabeth Edwards, who lived and died a beacon of strength and repose.

13. Who's behavior made you appalled?  Those who rejected us after we shared the news of our adoption.  Not for the sake of us, but for the sake of orphaned children in need of love and family, all over the world.

14. Where did most of your money go?  Dare I say that we dumped more money into that house than we did into our notoriously expensive international adoption?  Yes, the house.  Then the new baby.  

15. What did you get really, really excited about?  Our baby.  Girls' weekend in Michigan.  Seeing our East Coast trip become a reality.  Seeing the East Coast.  Closing on the old house.  Making a new friend.  The Christmas donation that was made in our name to the school and orphanage in Ethiopia, run by our adoption agency.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?  Awake My Soul by Mumford and Sons

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

Happier or Sadder?  Happier.

Thinner or Larger?  Larger, baby.

Richer or Poorer?  Richer, on so many levels.

18. What do you wish you had done more of?  Exercise.  Sleep.  Play board games with my kids.

19. What do you wish you had done less of?  Speaking to fill space.

20. How did you spend Christmas?  Surrounded by family, at our house.  Fantastic.

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?  Wow.  Yes I did.

22. What was your favorite TV program?  Listing Oprah as my favorite tv show is like listing "swimming" as a hobby for fish.  So let's go one beyond and say Modern Family.  Love it!

23.  Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate last year?  I do not hate a single soul.  I am so blessed for that.

24. What was the best book you read?  There is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene

25. What was your best musical discovery?  Mumford and Sons.  I have a bit of an obsession.  Also, Ryan Adams.

26. What did you want and get?  Our completed dossier to Ethiopia.  When I re-read my goals for 2010, written at this time last year, I was at that time on pins and needles about our adoption.  We didn't have an agency, a homestudy, a support group, enough money...  I wasn't sure how fast we would take it or if we could even dive in one hundred percent.  And here we are awaiting our referral, one hundred fifty percent.  Smiling.

27. What did you want and not get?  A profit upon selling the old house. Though not to say I am not most grateful for the sale, because that is what I wanted more than anything.  I had to answer the question, though.  

28. What was your favorite film of this year?  I thought for sure it would be Eat Pray Love since I adored the book, and the experience of going to see it with some of my best girlfriends was certainly wonderful, but the film itself left much to be desired.  My favorite movie this year, I think, was the HBO Miniseries John Adams.  (What?  It's on DVD.)

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?  I was thirty-two, and Kevin and I and the kids spent the day at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

30. What one thing would have made the year immeasurably more satisfying?  A babysitter.  I mean that.  The kids and I never, ever get a break from each other and I think we all suffer because of it, in our own ways.  I think I could be a better mom if I could find a babysitter for just an hour or two or three.  

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?  How would you describe solid color t-shirts, jeans and Converse gym shoes?  Sorry, toss in a few of my hand-made bracelets and a spritz on the neck of Ralph Lauren Romance.  Trade up the jeans for black yoga capris, if I am home. That's my style, whatever it is.

32. What kept you sane?  Meditation.  An empathetic husband.  Going on dates with my girlfriends.

33. Which public figure/celebrity did you fancy the most?  Oprah Winfrey wins this one, hands down.  I also love George Clooney for his work in Darfur, Sudan.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?  Gay Marriage.  I felt it to my core this year.

35. Who do you miss?  My closest friends when I cannot be with them. Especially those who live farthest away.  I have found an entirely new adoration this year for the amazing women in my life.  

36. Who was the best new person you met?  Does seeing someone in an entirely new light count?

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.  Follow your heart, as fearlessly as you can muster, in love.  If following your heart pisses people off, the world will not end.  

38.  Quote a song lyric that sums up 2010.

So tie me to a post and block my ears

I can see widows and orphans through my tears

I know my call despite my faults

And despite my growing fears.

But I will hold on hope

And I won't let you choke

On the noose around your neck.

And I'll find strength in pain

And I will change my ways

I'll know my name as it's called again...

(Mumford and Sons, The Cave)

39. Quote a line from a book that sums up 2010.  Be responsible for the energy you bring to people.  --Jill Bolte Taylor, A Stroke of Insight

40. Favorite shot of the year?

I was so humbled to be here. 

***

Happy New Year, friends.

2010 in review, photo style

Christmas Recap

To be honest I am a bit lacking for words today, but I know with what speed this week between Christmas and New Year's passes for my family, and I want to document the fact that this Christmas was so good.  

We spent Christmas Eve with Kevin's family, as we do every year, and now a little addition who missed the celebrating by just a few days (though not the presents!) is on his way.  My sister-in-law, Kevin's brother's wife, is in labor with their first baby as I type this-- a baby boy.

Christmas morning came early, as these things tend to do with young children, and all I can say is that I am so glad to have such a mess, such a flurry of excitement, such noise and fun on this day every year.  I was built for this stuff.

For Kevin I photographed his beloved twelve string guitar and had a giant print framed for him.

I was the happy recipient of this simple and awesome ring, on which a quote by Helen Keller is engraved: All that we love deeply becomes a part of us. Fantastic, husband.  I've not taken it off since.  He also got me a pocket-sized camera with video, that we can take with us to Africa this year!  

Baby videos!  Baby videos!

I don't think I've ever mentioned what we've given or received as gifts before, but these somehow seemed worth mentioning.  Ten years of marriage has us on target with ourselves and each other, and I love that.

With my mom still finishing up her recovery weeks after her surgery, I had the opportunity to host both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, which were so much fun to do.  (I hope she lets me keep them.)  I have loved festively decorating tables and making enormous meals for the family we love.

A fridge full of leftovers ain't so bad, either.

I also can't get over Leslie's ability to create fancy napkin displays atop piles of plates.  I think I photographed them at Thanksgiving, too.  

Also inadvertently photographed, the chunk of Christmas tree lights that went out on Christmas Eve.  Of course they did.  Not photographed, the giant upstairs tree whose lower half has been smashed and disassembled more times than I can count, by a toddler who shall remain nameless.

(Meet Nameless.)

Said toddler received such an wonderful set of gifts this year from her collective grandparents-- the wooden cradle for herself her baby dolls hand made by my dad, complete with a pillow, mattress, blanket and afghan that my mom made for her.  

To top it off my mother-in-law whipped up a gorgeous baby doll sized quilt, all of which I hope last forever for her.  She is far too young to really appreciate such gifts, but I am not.

She is also far too young to care for an infant, as evidenced here in her pretend play.

I will work with her, before her baby brother or sister comes home.  Really, really work with her.

She's so proud of herself, you see, with the way she's got that blanket so flat and perfect over that baby.  Can't see an inch of the baby, can you?  Nope, not an inch.  Warm little baby, that one.

She's so cute.  I'll correct her ill parenting tomorrow...

In the interest of full disclosure I will tell you that our living room is completely trashed.  My poem yesterday was no lie.  My kids have been overstimulated, underslept and terribly sugared for days.  We've had overnight guests, presents unwrapped and played with far and wide, legos assembled and smashed, and the destruction is massive.  But also, it's been a good time.  I read a quote by Andy Rooney recently, which I tried to hang onto over these days:  One of the most glorious messes in the world is created in the living room on Christmas Day. Don't clean it up too quickly.

Well, I left it alone yesterday and then did clean it up today.  And then it came right back out.  I tried.

+++

And while I wrote this entry Kevin sent me text messages from the hospital: our little nephew, Michael Keith, was born about 10:30.  5 pounds, 14 ounces, 18 inches long.  Big congrats to Brian and Jamie!