Bliss of Life

I’ve meant to get back to this blog for awhile, but the timing hasn’t been right and we had so much going on I didn’t know how to start without just spilling it all out in a incoherent word mess.  So here it goes…

We’re in the midst of change.  Big, big change.  We sold our house in April.  Bought a new one in March and moved at the end of the month.  Two weeks later I was pregnant.  In between all that our male cat of twelve years, Meester Kitty, became mysteriously ill.  He came with us to the new house and died a week later while we did our final sweep of the old place to get our last belongings.  It was the third anniversary of Ben’s Mom’s death.  I think Meester waited for us to leave the house that day so he could die.  I’ve heard that it’s the same with people.  They feel such a strong responsibility to be there for their loved ones it’s hard for them to let go and pass into the next world if they are still around them.  He was my first cat and we had this really strange but sweet bond that disappeared after Lily was born.  I am so grateful that in the final weeks of his life I realized that our bond was still there.  We just had to put it aside to make room for the necessary growth that happens when a baby comes into the house.

Speaking of babies, I’m starting to feel human again. Since we’ve moved we’ve had a lot of death around us.  Other than Meester, three of our grown chickens died and one little chicken.  One was an assisted death because she was sick.  One died on her own, she was also sick.  One was an accidental death brought on by my error and the heat, and the chick was born with a cross beak that made it too hard for her to get enough food to maintain her growth.  We have a spot along the back fence where the grass doesn’t grow because of the recently dug graves.  For the most part, I’ve been at peace with it all, except for the death of the chicken I had a part in.  That one I still struggle with occasionally.  I keep thinking about how our move and the conception of this child was surrounded by so many deaths in our household.  I don’t know what the rest of this pregnancy has in store, but I am surrendering to it.

Life is pretty damn good over here. It may be the calm before the storm of moving all our belongings from point A to point B, which is fine.  We rode one stormy effin’ wave getting the house ready to sell, so I’ll enjoy the calm.  And I am stronger than any storm that comes our way, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have wreckage to clean up. Getting the house ready to sell put all sorts of stress on my relationship with Lily.  Selling the house coincided with sickness in the forms of colds, stomach bugs and us pulling Lily out of school because she just didn’t like it.  During that time she started studying at my face asking, “You happy, Mama?”  The first time she did it, I swear I felt my heart sink lower in my chest.   The depth of her question was not lost on me.

At this point in her life, I am almost her whole world and she just learned how to check the weather forecast by looking at my face.  I wish I could say something else, but usually she asked if I was happy at pivotal moments when she was leveraging all her two-year-old forces against whatever task I was trying to complete.  My answers weren’t always mature.  Sometimes I would just say no, which was honest.  Other times when she asked me why I wasn’t happy, I said I’m not happy because you keep  ______ and I’m trying to get ______ done. I am a smart woman, fully aware of cause and effect.  I know the long-term lesson attached to that response, but in the moment, that crappy statement was the best I could do.  Today I was in the kitchen making a kale salad when Lily ran up to me and asked, “You happy Mama?” I was actually, so I said, “Yes, but that has nothing to do with you, honey.”

At some point I’ll explain to her that happiness is a personal choice.  Sometimes it’s an easy one and other times it’s not, but it never has anything to do with anyone else but you.  That lesson may come sooner than I thought.

It is something I am coming to terms with, but the truth is, I am.  I said I wanted a modern house with ridiculously tall ceilings and a gluttonous amount of space in our price range.  Two days later I found it.  Then I said, “I want to sell our current house before it goes on the market because I know that it is possible.”  And I did.  All of this happened in a little over a month.  Now I am creating the possibility of having a pool, but not just any pool, a bionova natural pool because it is chemical free and I also get the pond I’ve always wanted.

Yes, it feels sort of petty and superficial to say that I want these things, especially in writing, but this is Texas where it’s beyond hot 9 months out of the year.  And even if that wasn’t the case, it is well past time for me to allow myself luxuries without feeling guilty or concerned about appearing spoiled.  Since I’m letting go of appearances, I want my children to go to private school because as a child I went to public school until I was in the middle of my 7th grade year when I moved to a private school.  It took me a semester and a half to catch up to where everyone else was in private school, which I did, but everything was different.  Teachers taught.  Students studied.  And in between no one ever threatened to beat me up after school.  For those reasons, I am creating the possibility of sending my children to private school.

I have more to manifest, like the dream car I’ve wanted since I was 15, and the trip to India to stay in my Guru’s Ashram in Kashi.  But for now, I am going to create the possibility of having more money than I readily know what to do with.  I like the idea of seeking out places to give our money.  And I know that until I accept the possibility that I can have more money than I know what to do with, it will never happen.  I’ve spent most of my time on this planet really believing that there is always a trade off, not a surplus.  I am changing that belief right now because the one thing that always is, no matter what, is Love.  Love is never a trade off.  Love is a surplus.  Why can’t life be that way too?

I talk to Lily a lot about moving.  She was with us every time we visited the new house.  When I packed up boxes and Ben took them to the storage unit we explained to her that we were packing these things away so they could go with us to the new house.  Her two-year-old mind interpreted that to mean that anything that didn’t get packed wasn’t going with her.  That took some explaining.  Then were somethings that she would pull out of the half-packed boxes, like the mobile with the smiling mouse and bear that looked down on her over her changing pad from the day she was born.  I think I packed that mobile about five times, but I kept finding it in her bedroom.  When I was staging the house for showings or pictures I would say things like, “That needs to be put away because people are coming to look at the house.”  Whatever it was that I was referring to needed to be put away because it was personal or it looked cluttered.  Lily interpreted it to mean that she needed to hide her toys so that the people looking at our house wouldn’t take them.  I’ve found all sorts of toys stuffed in strange places.  This time has been one of the more stressful times in my life, not quite like having a child, but stressful all the same.  When we  finally found a house worth moving for, we weren’t able to make an offer on it until ours was under contract because it’s a foreclosure.  It took us a little over a month to get our house ready to put on the market.  We allowed two showings right before it was listed.  The second person that saw the house put in a full-priced offer.  The next day we made an offer on the new house, and so did someone else.  So we made a better offer, a full-priced offer.  Yesterday the contract for the new house was executed.  That house is officially going to be ours.  Today Lily and I were in the kitchen making almond milk when I brought up moving to new house.  She said, “Someone else will live here in this house.”

“Yes,”  I said.  “This is going to be someone else’s house.  We’re going to live in the new house.”

She looked at me with those big brown eyes of hers and said, “But I always live’ in this house.”

It just melted my heart to see my two-year old trying so hard to imagine a life outside of all her familiar surroundings.  I didn’t even realize until that moment that she knew the word “always.”  Her mouth had to work to get the “L” sound out, but I understood her.

Lily: Achoo.  Achoo Mommy.

Achoo means I love you.

Lily:  Pool? Pooool? (The last pool was accented with delight.)

Lily:  Yes. (It was the answer to her question.)

It was suggested, discussed and decided that we were going to the pool.  Unfortunately, we were not.

Lily:  Mama. Mama. Mama. Watch this. Watch this Mama.

This is a common request.  Usually, she is “jumping,” which is actually off a step with a bounce, kicking or throwing a ball, climbing on or off the bed, jumping in place.

Lily:  Moon high.  Moon high.  I touch.

She then jumps to touch it.

Before Bedtime, when we are in the process of changing her diaper and putting on her night clothes, she often crawls in the bed, pulls the sheet over her head and her tiny naked body and asks to be tickled through the sheet.  She LOVES it.  I think the sheets are cool and soft on her skin, and when they are pulled up over her head, she doesn’t know when the tickling is going to happen, which makes it even better.

And she is a fantastic dancer.  So far, she has busted into an adult ballet class, a childrens theater dance class, and she went to a belly dancing class with me.

When I put Lily to bed tonight I talked about all the events of the day, right up to the last and final meltdown.  We spent the late afternoon at our friends Sam and Mia’s house.  We played, ate manicotti, peas, and pears, and then Lily watched/helped Sam take his night time bath.  Then it was time for him to go to bed, so we went downstairs and meltdown ensued.  She wanted to go upstairs again and I wouldn’t let her.  While we were in bed, talking about the day, I explained why she couldn’t go back upstairs.  Sam needed to go to sleep and he was going to nom with Mia.  He needed it to be quiet, so we needed to play downstairs.  I assigned words to her feelings.  I told her that she felt angry and mad because I wouldn’t let her go upstairs, and she showed me how angry and mad she was by crying and yelling really loud.  I knew she was listening carefully, but I wasn’t sure how much she understood until she reenacted her meltdown in a silly exaggerated way that made us both laugh.

Meltdowns are part of our everyday landscape now.  Some are worse than others.  I used to be able to squat down on my knees, open my arms to her and when she was ready, she would come to me, crying and upset, and let me hold her while she worked through it.  Now, it’s not so easy.  She hits and kicks and it’s often best for me to leave the room and take a minute for myself.  Engaging in a power struggle with a toddler is like fighting a land war in Asia.  Futile.  I thanked her for telling me how angry she felt.  I told her to keep telling  me how she feels because I love her and I want to know.  Then she crawled on me, put her face close to mine, touched my eyes and said, “Eyes.”  (She does this a lot right now–this identifying of body parts.) She touched my nose and said, “What’s this?”
“Nose,” I said.
Then she put her hands on my cheeks, pinched her lips together in a funny little slit (she is still trying out different puckering techniques) put her sweet baby mouth on my mine, touched my chin and said, “What’s this?”

Sometimes a door clicks.  The world falls open.  And my heart fills the space.

Life is a blurr.  Followed by whiplash.

I haven’t begun to do anything for Christmas.  No tree.  No wrapped packages.  No wreathes or garland.  And I heard once that poinsettias are poisonous, so none of those either.  Thank God Lily is only 19 months old.  I’ll have to get my act together before she turns four, which will be sometime next month if she keeps growing up so fast.  I just spent the past half hour looking at old blog posts.  I can’t believe how much she has changed in just six months.  My heart aches and leaps at the same time.  She just keeps becoming.  And I get to see more of who she is.

Here she is doing Baddha Konasana.  She sat herself down on the floor and did it.  I’ve never shown her this posture before.  Apparently, she already knows it.  I am looking forwards to finding out what else she already knows.

In the past two months, Ben has been out of town more days than he’s been home.  Work has kept him on the road, or in this case, on the plane.  Life feels hectic.  I’m never caught up on laundry, dishes, groceries or sleep.  And our Lily is busy doing all sorts of things like, cutting molars, catching the flu, sharing it with Mama, and not sleeping through the night.

It’s been tough.

But there are bright spots, like listening to Lily talk.  She says lots of words these days.  Some of her favorites are…  dog (she drags out the word like a soccer commentator yelling GOAL!!!), ouch (which is always paired with repeated open handed hitting so that you fully grasp the meaning of the word, hot (said with her hands spread above the suspected object as if feeling heat coming from it), hat (not to be confused with hot, like we did for weeks), hi (spoken with a quick wave), Godiva, Sasha, Papa, Mama, nom (our word for nursing) and her favorite word so far, NO.

Last night Ben watched Lily take several toys out of her toy boxes and sort them in three different piles according to how much she liked them.  I’m not sure that I would have been able to figure out her sorting criteria, but he could.  The two toys that made up the group of toys she likes most were among the first two toys that Ben bought for her right after she was born.  She actually hugged one of them.

Below is a picture from Halloween.  She was a little princess.  It took her a while to get the hang of what we were doing.  At first she tried to give candy back to the people handing it to her.  Later, when she understood more of what was going on, she wanted nothing to do with the candy people were giving out.  Instead she signed the word for drink.  We had forgotten her sippy cup and she was thirsty.

Since my last post?

Really?

Well, I’ve been busy.  Lily is movin’ an shakin’ these days, which means I am too.  She is in a Mama-hold-me-all-the-time phase. It makes it kind of difficult to do things like eat, brush my teeth, use the bathroom, and blog.  Carrying a child around half the day is hard on the body.  I have knots and kinks all through my back, and my left hip feels like it’s permanently hitched to my 12th rib.  I can’t imagine how I’d feel, if she were a big baby.  Speaking of not having a big baby…

She had her 15 month check-up a couple weeks ago.

Height: 29.5 inches

Weight: 17.10 lbs

Head circumference: I don’t remember, but it’s in the 40th percentile.

She is little, not even on the percentile chart for weight, but she is healthy.  That’s not to say that I didn’t spend the last two weeks living in fear that I am somehow starving my child. Darn those pediatric check-ups!

And while I’m here (because heaven knows when I’ll get around to blogging again) take a good long look at this sweet little face.

This is the face of a story time bully.

She picks on kids two to three times her size.  She pushes them and chases them around wagging her finger saying, “Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na,” if they are being too disruptive by doing things like, dancing or sitting and eating a snack.  She steals toys from smaller children.  And the bigger ones too.  Now that I think about it, she steals snacks (apparently everyone else has better snacks) and feeds them to smaller babies whose mothers are terrified of the flu virus and her unknown germs.  She repays those mothers who have patiently dispensed their limited supply of snacks to her by giving them the stolen toys.  She is the Robinhood of toddler story time.

Except for the pushing.

We went to story time today at Family Connections.  As usual, we got there too late.  Today we couldn’t get into the actual story time room.  Instead we explored the play center/library with a handful of moms and toddlers who were also too tardy to enter.  But we were among friends, literally.  Lanell, my doula, and her little guy, Hugh, were there too.  They tried to sneak in late and were asked to leave.  Apparently, the room was too full.  It is a safety issue not a punishment, which is what it feels like, but we made do.  And when story time ended the play center filled with dozens and dozens of squirmy little people coming and going in all directions.

Lily walked up to our friends Josephine and Jen and said hello in her own Lily way.  And Josephine said hello right back in her own Josephine way.  Then I saw Stephanie, a mama in the new moms group that Lanell hosted last July.  I hadn’t seen her since Lily was about four months old.  We got to talking and Lily zigged and zagged from the play kitchen, to the dining room, to the library, to the interactive flower art, to the bead table, weaving her way through mamas and toddlers and babies.  She stole toys, got pushed for trying to steel toys, had a melt down, shook it off, climbed on a rocking chair, climbed on a stool and pulled books from the library stacks.  She stayed in my peripheral vision, moving, moving, moving, until she wasn’t there.  I looked in the area she was playing and made a joke to Stephanie about losing my child, but she wasn’t there.  She wasn’t by the door or the kitchen, not in the library stacks closest to me or near the story time room.  My mind locked onto useful information:  pink dress, creme bow, pink dress, creme bow.  My eyes darted from the doorway, to the adults, to the colors of the kids outfits.  I couldn’t think beyond finding her, and I couldn’t think of not finding her.

Shit.

Shit!

Then Stephanie said, “She’s over there.”

And she was.

I’ve never felt so relieved at the sight of a little pink dress with a creme bow on the collar.  She was behind a little nook on the other side of the kitchen.  When she saw me she walked over chatting about something, oblivious to the fact that she takes my heart with her everywhere she goes and all I can do is let her.  I gave it to her.  It’s hers.  I don’t want it back.

But this was my first I-can’t-find-my-child experience.  Scary as it was, it was my experience, not hers.  She wasn’t scared; she was chatty.  So I bent down and hugged her.

And you know what?

She hugged me back.