WATCH NOBLE GROW • MONTH SIX

10.10.2015

six months old

eating • everything in sight + reach - you LOVE food and have now tasted avocado, sweet potatoes, applesauce, banana, peas, raspberries + watermelon

sleeping • terribly, but it comes with the age, I believe

wearing • six month sizes - we just took them out of storage and they're snug, so we'll be getting out nine month clothes soon

milestones • 10/01 - first trip to the county fair • 10/08 - first swing at sportsman lake park • 10/10 - first oktoberfest + taste of german chocolate cake to celebrate your half birthday • using your hands well, but you throw an absolute fit any time you can't hold onto something that interests you • speaking of things that interest you - the distracted nursing has begun • you LOVE your sister and anything she does, except when she takes a toy out of your hands - you aren't afraid to let the whole world know when you're mad • you started fighting sleep by simply yelling - not angrily, more like a constant noise to keep yourself awake

I wrote this months ago and have been carrying around a tattered piece of paper full of the scribbles that make up this letter for months now. While the difficulties I wrote about have almost passed, it was still important to me to put this here. A few nights a month, I stay up way too late for someone with two kids to look after, to work on turning this digital version of our story into a physical version. Even when I get months behind and even if no one else cares to read it, I like to sit and catch up on my stories about babies and hard times and love because someday these words will be bound in a book that my kids will pull down off of our bookshelves to reminisce and bond over. Our life has been hard and it isn't all that I dreamed about at times, but it's our story and it makes my stomach do flips when I think about being the keeper of our family's stories for years to come.

Dear Noble,

Our life has been a whirlwind since you joined us and for that, I feel an indescribable amount of guilt. The feeling of babyhood slipping through my fingers is a familiar one, but this is harder than that. Our life is so hectic each day, so tense. I carry around this heavy burden of knowing that you deserve more than this. I long for the same kind of start to life I gave your sister - days with a slow, rhythmic quality, a calm space with room for you to play, roll, crawl, a normal schedule with a celebration to top the day off (the joyous occasion of Papa coming home and a meal enjoyed together), bike rides down sun speckled streets, uninterrupted naps, hikes through the beauty of the high desert with you perched behind me in the frame pack, hearing you wake from far away and the anticipation of walking down the hallway to lift you up and reunite. Our days are full, but of what I'm not sure, nothing that feels as though it matters, nothing soul-building, nothing memory-making. When I fall into bed and the rest of the family have all found their places for the night, all I want is to wake you up and enjoy a quiet moment together. I want to rock you in our rocking chair and watch your eyes flutter and finally close as you succumb to the heaviness of sleep. There is so much that isn't possible for us right now. It's feels like we've been cheated out of our time together. I miss you without having been away from you. I worry that all this stress and tension that fills our days will form you in some irepareable way, so I pray for your resilience often. I think of our home building timeline in terms of how old you will be when we finish. It seems like a race for our bond and our sanctuary. Regardless of all of this, I am finding so much joy in being your Mama and watching you grow. You have a magical spirit.

ev at six months • noble at five months

ARE YOU GLAD TO BE HOME?

 

 

 

some of our last moments in Albuquerque 

I've always been a wildly indecisive person, dipping my toes into all sorts of hobbies, projects, places. I used to think that meant I was irresponsible. It was something I tried to stifle inside myself, especially after I became a mother. Even before my journey through motherhood began, I held onto a promise to myself that I would never make my kids feel like an inconvenience, that a day would never come when they thought that my wants were more important than their needs. The further I get into my relationship with them, the more I see this is as a delicate tiptoeing act. You see, my spirit longs to sample each and every bit of life like sips of wine. Some are swallowed with a grimace, but I'm glad to have tasted them nonetheless. Some are savored, so I choose to return to them. Some have been stored away, waiting for the right season of life to be opened and tasted. Some are tasted in good company and some are kept secret until I can indulge in them without sharing. I've been a lot of things and seen a lot of things in the past, some are still tucked away and some were just a breath, gone now. I've always thought of our journey as a linear one and pushed the idea of it being a full circle out of my mind, not wanting to end up where I started.

Where I started never felt like home. We've already done this once. It feels like something beyond deja vu and more akin to time travel, like we might be redoing our time from before, a time I was comfortable not visiting with again. Everything is exactly the same as it was before, and yet nothing about us is remotely the same at all. It's the same place with the same people and the same culture that almost buried me alive, and I was so relieved to have made my way out, and now I'm here again. Sometimes I wake up wondering if we ever really left, or were the last five years all a dream? A surge of gratitude follows as I accept that it was in fact our life and I'm thankful for all of the happy memories from all of our places we've made home.

The first thing people ask me when we reconnect here is, 'Are you glad to be home?' I never really know what to say. A lot of times I just look at Alex and let him answer, most of the time I just shrug, 'sure,' but what I really want to say is, 'Nope!' or 'Please don't say home.' or 'I don't really want to talk about it.' The older I get the more I admire blunt honesty. The truth is, this is the hardest thing I'ver ever done. Some days I wake up and make the best of it. Most days I wake up angry and contemplate hauling this camper out of here and driving as far away as I can until the damn thing falls apart on the side of the road somewhere. Leading up to the move, I just emotionally detached myself from the reality of it and buried myself into the newborn phase. For six weeks or so, I was Switzerland, neutral. Then as I stood out on our patio of our Albuquerque apartment watching Alex put the last of our things into a moving truck, the dam broke. I passed the baby off and hid in the bathroom and let it all come out. It was only a year ago today that we even left Brooklyn and then there was reacquainting ourselves with Albuquerque, saying see you in four months, being pregnant in Missouri, becoming re-reaquainted with Albuquerque, then saying goodbye to the beautiful lady all over again. You see, I hadn't even had a chance to mourn Brooklyn properly, so when I say I've been an emotional mess the past few months, I mean it. I feel like I should have a perpetual 'I would rather be in Brooklyn.' bumper sticker stuck to my forehead - because I would, and I will, always. After the mourning passed, I resigned myself to anger and that's sort of where I've been camped out now for the last few months. It's a hard anger too - it's the kind that eats you up, but you have no one to be angry at except maybe yourself and no way to fix it. Along with that comes a lot of guilt because oh my goodness - how many times have I moved my kid around now? And this was not the way I wanted to spend our first year with a new human in our family.

This is what we're meant to be doing, of course - building a home, giving our kids something stable, planting ourselves in a place where they can run barefoot and wild - and I've always known it, but it's confusing. Our barefoot and wild place was supposed to be off the coast of Washington, deep in the Oregon forest, or out in the beauty of Alaska - not among the haunts of our childhood. Does this mean I failed? I left with no intention of coming back, but here I am. We fought our way to Albuquerque and it effortlessly felt like home. We fought our way through Brooklyn and there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not reminded of her from some otherworldly force out there. No matter how hard I try, I will always wake up wishing I was in Brooklyn. So, I guess I've learned that home is wherever you fight like hell to be. I've been doing an awful lot of fighting here, so maybe this will come to feel like home after all.

IRONY + THE LONG WAY HOME

When I set out to (re)name this little space, we were in the beginning stages of moving to Brooklyn. I knew the kind of 'feel' I wanted the name to have, the image I wanted it to portray, how it would sound when I said it, that it would represent our family values in some way - it would say in a subtle way, 'This is who we are!' I even knew it should be four words because I'm a symmetry freak. It took me months of pondering to arrive at The Long Way Home. I was on a wandering walk through our old neighborhood, pushing Ev along in front of me when I asked her if she wanted to take the long way home - and it stuck. I came up with several others that escape me now, but finally decided, much like naming my children, that this space couldn't be anything but The Long Way Home. Little did I know how ironic this name would come to be.

It's painfully obvious even to this day, but I loved living in Brooklyn. I loved our quiet little apartment on our quiet little street. I love that it always looked thrown together no matter where you put anything. I loved that our mattress was on the floor right next to Evie's and we used to fall asleep holding hands under my pillow. I loved the old hardwood floors that used to frustrate her to no end as she'd try to stack block upon block and they would fall no matter how careful she was. So she'd gather them all up and stake her claim on a different, hopefully flatter piece of floor with a determined and slightly concerned look on her face. I loved our insanely pricey rent that felt like a bargain compared to the rest of the city, mostly because we had a real kitchen. I loved listening to the city come alive each morning and watching our brick wall view turn a golden hue that only fellow Brooklyn-dwellers have seen. I loved using the word 'bodega.' I loved the corner cafe with $20 sandwiches and cereal bowls of coffee. I loved our tiny mailbox and our obnoxious door buzzer. I loved the bagels. Oh, how I loved the bagels. I loved being able to buy a slice of pizza for a dollar. I loved the way the guys at our favorite pizza place said mozzarella. I loved that our church was held in a school auditorium. I loved that we gathered in people's impossibly small apartments during the week. I loved the Manhattan view we'd get on our grocery shopping nights leaving Fairway. I loved and hated Fairway. I loved that everyone had a love/hate relationship with the city. I loved our watermelon picnics. I loved that the playground was never empty the entire time we lived there. There was always someone there for Ev to play with.

I loved the subway smell. I loved the R train, the consistently late R train. I admired that about her, I accepted it because I'm consistently late anywhere I go. I loved that we lived at the end of the line and knew we were home when we heard, 'This is the last stop on this train. Please leave the train. Thank you for riding with MTA New York City transit.' I even sort of loved feeling like steamed broccoli in the Summer heat. I loved our secret Staten Island beach spots with oily water and sand full of trash. I loved the handfuls of sea glass we'd walk away with. I loved walking miles to get anywhere. I loved the street sweeping day, car moving scramble that happened each week. I loved the sidewalk horses that Evie went nuts over. I loved New Yorkers and their constant use of the F word. I loved how people really lived in the Spring, Summer, and Fall because the Winters were so unbearable. I loved that you could go for a simple walk and never be bored. I loved how beauty could find you in the most unexpected places. I loved our view of the Verrazano and watching boats pass by on the Hudson. I loved how people celebrated their New York-iversary. I loved that people complained so much about living there, but refused to live anywhere else. As Anne Lamott says, '. . . [I loved] the feel of being part of a healthy mob, part of a pulse, part of a collective heartbeat. . . [I loved] what it felt like to be part of a huge struggle, where people were winning and losing and triumphing and being humiliated and for once it wasn't you.' I love how living there was kind of like childbirth - after a while you forget how hard it was. I loved it all. I would be a lifer. Sometimes I lay in bed and imagine walking along those Bay Ridge streets with my two kids. It's hard for me to comprehend that a place that is so much a part of me, will never be a part of both of my kids. I sometimes forget Noble wasn't there with us.

As much as I loved Brooklyn, there is a bit of my soul that is nourished by New Mexico. I love the sunsets, each one different from the all the rest, but beautiful in a way you'll never forget. I love the adobe houses with turquoise trim. I love that you get to experience all four seasons, but you really only have to experience snow when you feel like driving up the mountain. I love the freakishly bipolar Spring weather. I love the Cottonwoods. I love that the days are so consistently beautiful that you wake up never thinking about what the weather will be like. I love the Christmas luminarias. I love the old man at the farmer's market that never stops shouting, 'Fresh tortillas!' in his Spanish accent. I love that you can tell what neighborhood you're in by how many Subarus are around. I love their strange exclamations like 'Eeee!' and 'Ah-la!' I love when someone calls Evie 'mija.' I love the trees outside our window that Noble strains his neck to watch from the rocking chair. I love the bike lanes and trails scattered all over the city. I love the love that the lifers have for this city and the effort they put in to keep it quirky. I love living three blocks from the zoo and that it's basically become our backyard. I love that we're surrounded by so much beauty and mountains are always in our background. We'd never make it through our 'places to see' list if we lived here for a lifetime. I love that feeling I get when we're coming home from the East and we spot the mountain silhoettes off in the distance. I love that you can wear whatever you want here and no one will look twice. I love that you can practically wear sandals year round and most people do. I love the frequent Indian Summers in the middle of Winter. I love that it's never hard to find something interesting to do here. I even kind of love the lack of a good Chinese food place. I love that the vast majority of people embrace local, organic food. I love the ridiculous amount of breweries and that you can buy craft beer almost anywhere. I love that both of my babies' birth certificates say 'Albuquerque, New Mexico,' a place where people are advocating for a mother's right to birth the way she wants. I love that that this place will always be a part of them no matter where we go - it called us back twice after all. There must be something special here for them. Even though there is so much to love about each place we've lived, we've known that they all wouldn't be forever.

32 WEEKS + A 36 WEEK LETTER

These were taken at 32 weeks. I'm 36 weeks as I write this and your Papa is packing things away for our journey home in the background. We'll be headed to Albuquerque tomorrow morning. I had planned on taking another picture of you and I today, but we didn't get around to it. I hope we'll have time to take one before you come. 

Dear Baby,
In a way, I feel like this is the beginning of your birth story. Partly because this will probably be the last letter I'm able to write to you before you're here with us and also because I'm convinced your birth and place in this family started carving itself out long before the day you'll arrive. Much like the story of the gospel and really, all of our lives as a whole, the story of your beginning is full of hard things and triumphal moments that somehow come together to make a big, beautiful story. I'm excited to tell it. I'm excited to keep telling the story of our family until you and your siblings can tell it too.

I had a feeling you were with me. A few days before I held a positive pregnancy test, I had looked down while walking home from a quick trip to the corner grocery store and there you were. My shirt draped across my belly a different way. It's hard to describe other than to say that when you've done it once before, you know what is growth and what is bloat. A thought flashed through my mind, 'I'm pregnant.' and then it was gone. I wasn't entirely sure I was pregnant, but I wasn't entirely sure I was ready to know whether I was pregnant either. A few weeks before I had almost worked myself into panic attack at the thought of having another baby, ever. So I waited, and tried not to think about the possibility of you all that hard. I wasn't sure how I would feel. I knew how I would want to feel, full of joy, but just wanting to feel a certain way wouldn't will that reaction into existence. I also knew that no matter what my brain told me I wanted and whether you were planned or not, my heart would be disappointed if the test were negative. Women are funny, fickle people sometimes.

The day your Papa and I found out about you, we were packing our things for a trip to Niagara Falls. We had talked briefly and awkwardly about the absence of my womanly visitor, but had shrugged it off until the night before. I went to bed with a plan to take a pregnancy test when we woke in the morning. My hands shook as I unwrapped the test. I tried to be calm about it. I tried not to care or prefer a certain result. I held the test in my hands and watched the results appear - and I laughed. It was all I could do after the life we'd lived the past year and the changes I knew were coming. Coming out of the bathroom after taking a pregnancy test is awkward. It's like walking out onto a stage to tell a joke you had to come up with in the last ten minutes. You haven't tested it out on anyone. You haven't rehearsed it at all. I had no idea how to tell your Papa and for once in our lives, I wasn't entirely sure what his reaction would be. I don't mean his outward reaction. He is a good enough man not to outwardly express disappointment at the news of a new baby, but I can see the truth in him even when I don't want to. I was afraid to see something there, a flicker of it across his face, but I was also looking and hoping for it as a comfort to myself. I was looking for something to tell me that the touch of despair underneath the joy that I felt was ok.


I didn't have a lot of time to formulate how to tell him. I didn't want it to be awkward. I didn't want it to be solemn. So I made the split decision to take the route of humor and opened the bathroom door. I stood in the doorway of the kitchen and realized I was smiling like an idiot. I had an internal dialogue about whether I should be smiling, 'It's ok to smile, right? This is happy news, but it's also stressful news if I'm honest.' I guess I was afraid to announce it lightheartedly only for him to launch right into the logistics and shock of it all. The morning light was streaming in through our open windows. Brooklyn sounds followed the light in. He was assembling all the food for the road trip - he put the butter knife down and turned to face me when he sensed me in the doorway. I'm terrible at hiding emotions, so I'm sure he knew as soon as he turned around and saw my face. I couldn't just stand there in silence and assume he knew, so I blurted out the quippiest thing I could think of, 'So I guess one more person is coming to Niagara Falls with us.'

WAYS TO CONNECT WITH YOUR TODDLER EACH DAY

Three is hard.

I mean, there is a challenge in every stage of parenting that seems overwhelming at the time, but three has had me way more baffled than any other age so far. I know that I'm a good mother and I know that she's a fantastic kid, but lately I haven't felt like a good mother who is raising a fantastic kid. Lately my brain has been full of worry - that she has ADHD or SPD, that my correcting her so often is tearing down her confidence in herself, that by not sending her to preschool this year, I'm depriving her of something and dooming her to a life of being lonely. I'm not sure whether it's the age or the life circumstances or the pregnancy exhaustion and emotions that has things feeling out of sorts between Ev and I, but I've been struggling. My impending due date isn't helping things much - every little tantrum, every time I lose it, every bad day seems to matter more because I know how precious this time should be to me. Every tantrum is accompanied by thoughts along the lines of, 'This is going to be impossible to deal with when I have a newborn.' Every time I lose my patience I think, 'My patience will be tested more with another child to take care of.' Every bad day ends with fear that I'll fall into postpartum depression again. After having done this once, I thought I would be able to approach a second baby with more confidence - 'you've done it before, you can do it again' kind of thoughts - but I find myself with more worries this time around. Maybe it's because I'm not oblivious now. I know the hardships that are coming. I also know the joy that is coming along with it.

Anyway, in lieu of focusing on discouraging thoughts, I've been trying to really pay attention to what Ev enjoys, to what makes her feel loved and connected to me. I know that a lot of our issues have to do with the lack of things to do in a hotel room in the middle of Winter, but others have to do with me and my selfishness. By noticing these things and being intentional about our days, or at least certain parts of them, I've come to see an obvious difference in her mood and behavior. When she feels seen and heard and known in a way that all of us desire to be known, she is more joyful and more apt to listen to my requests. Here are a few things I've been doing to try to forge that connection between us and make for a more joyful day:

- When she wakes up each morning or after her nap, I put down what I'm doing. I acknowledge her and connect with her. I make sure she knows that she is accounted for and appreciated. I ask her how she slept and what she'd like to do now that she's awake. There have been times that she has wandered out of the bedroom in the morning or after nap time and I've been working away on something and haven't looked up. That usually queues tears from her or frustration from me when I find her doing something she knows she shouldn't be. I wouldn't like to wake up and go looking for my husband in the morning only to find him staring at the computer screen and not even have him acknowledge my existence. There are times of the day that it is good to teach your toddler to let you finish a job or entertain themselves, but I've found that wake up times are not it.

- No matter how frustrated I am, I should never make her doubt whether she is loved. As she has gotten older and can now understand what I say and right/wrong, discipline has gotten trickier. Sometimes I find myself berating her over every little thing for no other reason than I'm grumpy. I forget that she's a toddler and still makes messes just for fun, even if she knows she shouldn't. I try to remember to encourage her as much as I correct her. I also say, 'I love you.' at least fifty times a day - often before I start to talk her through something she did wrong.

- I try to remember it's her day too. People often talk about how selfish kids can be, but in reality we adults are often oblivious to our own selfishness. We wake up with our own to-do list on our minds and forget that this little person might have a to-do list of their own that is full of things that don't seem important to you, but to them, it is. It's their 'work.'

- I make time to join her in her play. I often find myself just searching for something to entertain her, plopping it down in front of her, and walking away so that I can get back to whatever I was doing. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer in children learning how to play by themselves and that it's good for them to be bored occasionally, but that's all different from being lonely. Since it's just her and I at home each day, I'm her friend and I'm sure I won't always have the privilege of that label. So sometimes I sit down and try to act three with her, even if that's not what I want to be doing with my time. I tell her she's my best friend. I make train noises. I yell when her block tower tumbles over.

- I let her help me. This is a hard one for me. It tests my patience more than anything on this list, but it also means more to her than anything on this list. I used to ask her to go find something to entertain herself with while I was working in the kitchen because I just wanted to get the job done, but lately I've made an effort to slow down and let her help. I at least give her a job to do while I'm making dinner like washing the mushrooms or peeling the garlic. I came to the conclusion that we're going to be here all day and we usually run out of things to do, why not take a little longer doing the things we have to do everyday anyway? It makes her feel accomplished and she learns valuable lessons from it.

- I savor bedtime rituals. No matter how tired I am or how hard the day has been, I try not to rush bedtime. This is our final connection point for the day, our last chance to end it on a good note, when the thoughts of me that she will go to bed with are formed. As much as I want to get out of there as fast as I can and enjoy my adult time, I try to read every story like it's the first time I've read it and sing every song like it might be the last time I sing it. Repetition is soothing for kids, even if it drives you bonkers. We try not to make a habit of laying down with Ev until she falls asleep, but if it's been an especially hard day for us, I'll make an exception and play with her hair until she drifts off. It's important to enforce boundaries as parents, but I think it's equally important to know when to let the rules go for the sake of connecting.

- I'm intentional about physical touch. When you have an infant, it's easy to give them a lot of hands on time and direct attention because well, they're always in your hands. It gets a little trickier when they're older and more mobile. They still need that physical touch, but they don't always slow down enough to know that they need it or communicate to you that they need it. As they begin to separate themselves from you, it's easy to forget that aspect of your relationship. Last time Alex was away for a few weeks on military duty, I noticed that Ev was a lot rougher with me than usual. At first I was annoyed and couldn't figure out why she was climbing on me and swatting at me (playfully, but we don't play like that) when she had never done that before, then I realized that Alex wrestles with her every night before bed and she wasn't getting that physical touch she was used to and needs. Since then I try to be intentional about loving on her in my own way (Mom just doesn't wrestle.) even it means forcing her to sit still when she doesn't want to.

- I pick up my camera and try to document the beauty in the chaos. It helps me just embrace it. I see a different kid through the lens of my camera. Some of the little quirks and annoyances cause me to smile. The messes don't seem so big. I can more easily find the joy in the everyday and the beauty in her childhood if I'm pausing to capture them.

If you want to read more about 'filling up your toddler's love tank,' check out this post from my friend Andrea over at Hand and the Heart.

Please share with me the ways that you parent intentionally each day and forge connections with your toddler/kid!

24 WEEKS + THOUGHTS ON BECOMING FOUR IN 2015

 

As is customary around this time of year, I've been spending a lot of time reflecting on 2014. It was a whirlwind kind of year, to say the least. We moved four times to four different states and spent over half of the year staying in other people's homes, accepting the generosity and hospitality of others, but never being able to give any in return. It was adventurous and it was unforgettable and it was hard. It was trying. It was draining. It was taxing on our family, finances, and hearts. Brooklyn was completely worth it, but I'm relieved to be on the other side, looking back at all of it and forward to a fresh start. After all of the change we've been through, heels dug in the ground and my hands over my eyes for most of it, I just don't have the energy to join in the new year hullabaloo with a list of goals and such. Realistically, I'll be spending the majority of my energy and thoughts on birthing a baby and falling in love with said baby and helping my people get our life sorted out, and that's ok with me - or at least I'm trying to make that ok with me. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't lay down goals and walk away from them lightly. Before I birth said baby, I'm trying my hardest to enjoy being three. I'm thrilled at the idea of meeting this new life, but I'm equally terrified at the thought of staying at home with two, the possibility of battling depression again, having a challenging time breastfeeding again. It was all so unbelievably hard the first time around and though I'm entering into this new phase of motherhood with more experience and perspective, the fear is there and makes me wonder whether its always a companion for mothers when adding another to their home, whether its their 2nd or 6th?

Along with the fear comes a touch of sadness at it no longer being just the three of us, or just Ev and I the majority of the time. I find myself grasping for the time to cherish her, but facing disappointment instead. The life we're headed back to in March is not the life I want for her, and this is not how I wanted to spend our last months together. The defiance that comes with being almost three has been a regular companion most days and my desire to cherish it all before we're a family of four makes for a horrible match against parenting and discipline. I swing from high to low each day, from overreacting and being overwhelmed to checking out completely and doing nothing out of defeat. I make lists to try to make sense of our lives when there's no sense or solution to be found. I know that no matter how many lists I make, it won't all get done in the two weeks we'll have to prepare, it all can't be afforded, and my experience will probably be nothing like what I'm imagining and hoping for. It will be good; nonetheless, because there's always good to be found in a new life, but I'm afraid it will be filled with more disappointment. I have no idea how I will manage two kids in all the circumstances that await us when we head back to Albuquerque. I have no idea how I will love another kid the way that I love Evie, how I will have enough good in myself to give to each of them.

If there's one thing I've learned through five years of marriage and (almost) two pregnancies, it's that life is uncontrollable. There's nothing like the change of seasons or the arrival of a new year to remind us of impermanence. I used to live under the assumption that it was in our control to bring a baby into the world at just the right time, when it would be the most convenient for us and our plans. Being (unexpectedly) pregnant through the holiday season has been a special time for me. It's given me a unique view through Mary's perspective - through all the wanderers' of the Bible. I'm sure giving birth in a manger wasn't what she had in mind. I wonder if she had thoughts along the lines of, 'Really? Right now? This can't wait until we're home? Or at least until we find a place to stay for the night?' When groups of the Bible were led this way and that, did the mothers long for home? Were they all just desperate for a place to rest and nurse their babies, for a normal life? Sometimes I'm thankful for the sporadic life we've lived, but oftentimes it has felt a lot like laying things down at each place we leave - my plans, dreams of home, financial goals, hopes of security, jobs, memories of my child. It feels a lot like closing the door on all of that and oh, how that begins to hurt after you do it repeatedly and how obvious it becomes that I'm holding tightly to things that I don't want to relinquish control of - things I think are important, but are just specks of dust in our lives.

I imagine there's a special kind of freedom that comes from giving it all up, from unclenching your fists, laying it down, and walking away - the perfectly decorated house or even a home of our own, the baby brought home to a space that is ready for them, the defiant toddler who is battling her own wills and desires, the job you've been hoping for. When all of that is stripped away, I imagine you can really begin to live because you aren't wasting a single second planning and worrying about matters that are uncontrollable. I've learned many lessons in patience and perseverance and letting things go over the last year and that's been a hard road to walk for a perfectionist.

When I was pregnant with Ev, I couldn't imagine us as a family of three. I had no idea how two kids who like to sleep in and go on sporadic adventures were going to figure out life with a baby. While it didn't feel like our normal at all in the beginning, we came to be comfortable together, effortlessly in love. How I long for that learning curve, that awkward fumbling stage, to be shorter than the last. These three years with Ev have changed me beyond recognition and I will always cherish our memories together. She will probably never remember a time without her sibling, but I will. In 2014, I learned that big changes often bring hard times with them, but there is always beauty to be found. While I don't look forward to the difficulty that might await us, I do look forward to the inevitable beauty and joy that will be found in this new season of life. I know that the fumbling feeling of a new person joining us will wear off and will all settle in to our effortless love once again.

So here's to 2015 and letting it all go and falling in love with a brand new person.

GOODBYE, BROOKLYN.

On the Friday before last we stood in our empty little Brooklyn apartment and said our goodbyes - to the quirky front door that made entirely too much noise when you shut it, to the kitchen where our meals and practically all of our memories were made, to the bedroom we spent many nights in, holding hands across mattresses and listening to the city below, and to the holes in the ceiling that we managed to laugh about for months. Leaving seemed a little sudden, even to us, but it was something we had known was coming. I love writing our story down here, but this has been something that I felt I needed to process in my own time, my own way, and I'm still not quite ready to give the world an explanation. What I am ready to share here is how good it feels to be back in a place that feels like home. As soon as we saw those mountains silhouetted by a Southwest sunset, our bodies all just breathed a sigh of relief. Brooklyn was a really good time for our family and it will always have been worth it, but it was also one of the hardest times. Since leaving, we've been spontaneously assembling a list of things we learned while living there - No distance is ever too far to walk. New Yorkers have a unique skill for using the F word - I've never heard that word used in so many ways, so many times in one sentence in all my life. Soda water is underrated. Grocery shopping is the single most challenging thing you can do in the city, besides moving. Brokers are people of the most horrible kind. The largest city in the country doesn't feel so big once you live there.

I'll never forget our last night there spent walking through our neighborhood, eating a late dinner at the pizza place it took us a few trial runs to find, and falling asleep together on the air mattress with views of the Freedom Tower beams shooting through the sky out our window. We have so many good memories to hold onto of our time spent in the city, but it still feels really good to be back in New Mexico. There's no doubt that Brooklyn will always be a part of us. Even children we haven't had yet will hear the tales of Brooklyn from us and will feel a connection to this place that other people don't have. There will always be a little part of me wandering the streets of the city, pushing that stroller along, on our next city adventure. Since coming back to Albuquerque, we've spent the majority of our time visiting with old friends, soaking up the Southwest sun during the day, and admiring the stars at night. We're staying with some beautiful friends of ours while we sort out the finer details of our lives, so we're still in limbo a bit, but we're finding peace in already feeling fairly settled in our lives here. It took mere minutes for us to look at each other with big smiles on our faces and say, 'It feels right.' We've been talking of our plans and all we really want to do is plant some roots, make a home, and raise some babies. So here's to that, the end of a memorable chapter, and the beginning of a new and hopeful one.

FIVE YEARS + COURAGE

 

2008 senior prom • freshmen in college • mission trip to peru • 2009 the day we said 'i do'

2011 our first year in new mexico • balloon fiesta • 2012 bringing our Evangeline home

though we've known each other over a decade and have taken pictures together over that time,

film makes it hard to share pictures from all of those years (even our wedding pictures haven't made it to the computer),

but we have them packed away in shoe boxes, tucked into the back of closets and they are cherished

We're celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary (eleven years together) with a little spontaneous weekend trip. While we're away, I thought I'd leave our story here for you all to read. It's been told here before, I'm sure, but I can't pinpoint the time or the holiday and I guess it will continue being told because it's our story after all, and much like this blog, it's always evolving. So if you're new here and you've never heard it before, welcome - have a cup of coffee in my honor, pretend we're clunking our chunky mugs together for good cheer (don't you just love chunky coffee mugs?) and enjoy - you'll probably be here awhile.

The first time I met him, I was eleven years old. When you're eleven years old you're not thinking a lot about meeting your future husband, so I didn't notice him much, but he says he noticed me. No matter how long I stayed somewhere, I always carried around the 'new kid' stigma - painfully shy and self-conscious, quiet and reserved, always with a book in hand. I walked into my new sixth grade classroom wearing a bright yellow Adidas backpack, pony tail bouncing, and was persuaded to introduce myself. I shared my name and probably not much else in a barely audible tone and sat down in the front row, center aisle. We went to a tiny little school made of rock on a back road of a small Southern town, so it isn't surprising that we came to share the same friends. I 'dated' Alex's best friend and I use 'date' because we were twelve and I was terrified to even hold his hand or have a conversation with him, much less go on a date. Alex was different though - different from any other boy, but also different because we were just friends like kids should be, so talking with him came easier.

When we were thirteen, that little school let us out for Summer break and shut down for good shortly after. We went our separate ways, off to where we would both spend our high school years, but not before exchanging addresses and agreeing to write. So we wrote each other letters all Summer long, him from his treehouse he and his brother built themselves in the woods behind his house, me by  flashlight under a blanket on the top bunk while at camp in Arizona. I have no idea what thirteen year olds even write about that is so urgent you break the lights out rule to get it down on paper, but I still have the letters tucked away in a box somewhere, so I guess we'll always have the chance to be reminded. That was one of the ways I knew he was the one in college - so many notes and movie tickets and concert bracelets hadn't been kept, but those notes had made it. I had to have hung onto them for a good reason is the way I saw it and that good reason was that I was meant to marry him.

SIMPLE THINGS + NOT SO SIMPLE THOUGHTS

I find myself unintentionally picking up my camera in more ordinary moments lately. It's probably my quiet revolt against a society that is trying to make everyone believe that they need to be somewhere beautiful, doing something epic, eating something delicious, having life-changing conversations with people that matter, while validating it all by sharing it 40 different places online. 'It doesn't count if no one sees me do it.' is what is ringing in our heads. We all think we're missing something if we aren't connected and the truth is that we are - we're missing real life as it passes by us, blurred glimpses seen from the edges of our screens are what people settle for. I often wonder if ten years from now children will be saying, "I wish I had been able to look up and see my mother's face more, rather than the lens of her camera/seeing her face turned down at her phone." I find myself standing in an ordinary moment, seeing extraordinary beauty so I dash out of the room to find my camera and I try to sneak back into the moment without anyone noticing that I left. Most of the time I'll get a few seconds of the genuine moment, then I'll see their eyes shift, noticing I'm there, followed shortly by a crooked smile and 'What are you doing?'

It makes things a bit quiet around here because honestly, I'm a little intimidated by the many people out there who have a skill for capturing real life in a much more beautiful way than I feel like I can. I enjoy capturing these moments, but I enjoy it for me and I'm honestly terrified of the thought of creating a business or obligation out of a hobby I've come to rely on for therapy. So I usually shy away from sharing some of the more personal pictures I take here because for a long while, in a world focused on sharing without savoring, I thought of it as cheapening. I know they're nothing special in terms of skill, but I cherish them. These moments are fleeting. They are the simple moments people miss after time has passed - your two year old discovering morning light, watching your husband shave, stuffed animals at the table.

I feel that so much of people's lives that are shared online are posed. This world demands perfection - look your best, act your best, share your best, be the best, and it's disheartening because I feel like I am the least put together woman out there for one, but I also wonder how that can be satisfying. That first statement is probably what explains the absence of pictures of myself here. It's something I realize is an issue inside of me that needs to be dealt with, my lack of taking care of myself at all for one, but also my reluctance to keep pictures of myself in which I'm not satisfied with my appearance. It's a curious thing too because I'm not necessarily self-conscious of what I look like nor do I care what other people think about me much. It's more about how I don't look the way I feel, a disconnect between the life I'm living in my head and what my appearance says about that. There are so many other things that are a bigger priority for me that I rarely think about how I'm dressed or when I ate or exercising at all, until I look at a picture of myself and it's all completely apparent to me, my lack of loving myself.

There have been a plethora of articles out there lately about 'over parenting' and being 'too busy.' My thoughts: you wouldn't have to over parent and busy yourself into exhaustion if you had someone else, a village, but we don't. We're all trying to find our solace in the internet through false connections - likes and comments and glimpses into the good parts of another woman's life that feel like relationship-building, but it's not. You may be making friends on the internet, but you still sit in your house alone every day and the saddest part is there are women around you doing the same thing, but no one wants to make the effort to build that village. If they do, we spend our hours together checking our phones. One up side I've found to all of this is that I hold onto the relationships that I am able to build more intentionally, but when you move away from each other it isn't quite the same. You still long for a community. You still feel lonely trying to do it all yourself.

Simple things Sunday is about slowing down and capturing life’s everyday details. Taking joy in the simple things is the focus and Sunday is the day we gather together to reflect on our experiences from the week and share our photos with each other.

PHOTOS FROM THE JUNK DRAWER + THOUGHTS ON HOME

I sat down to write this about six weeks ago - it just happened to fall through the cracks and didn't make it here until now. A lot has happened in the last few weeks in terms of our thoughts and feelings for this place and our definition of home. It's all still a muddled mess, but we're learning. We've learned about financial struggles and how they can make life seem like a prison, like there is no way out of your current situation and no where to turn. I've come to have a lot more sympathy for the homeless when I see them on the street because I know how temporal financial security is and how easy it is for anyone to lose everything. I know how easy it is to fall behind and feel like you'll never be able to catch up. We've learned about the love and the provision of Christ through the church more here than anywhere else. We learn more about what a church community looks like each week. Our definitions of 'home' and 'family' have been redefined. We've become stronger as a family, more dedicated to each other than we thought we ever could be, and we've learned that simple things are the best things. You don't need an extravagant house and you don't even need to live in an extravagant place like New York City to call it home. This has been the hardest year of our lives, but it hasn't been for nothing.

There are still boxes hidden away in our hallway closet, half of my clothes still aren't on hangers because we ran out, and all of my craft boxes are still piled under an unfinished table in our living room. None of this is bothering me in particular, but it's all collectively contributing to the unsettled feeling that we still have. I wrote about making this place ours before and how little moments seem to be adding up to make this city feel like home, but we still can't shake the feeling that we're on vacation, like we'll be headed back to New Mexico any day now. We get out for walks along the bay often and the smell of the ocean still surprises me. We hit the top step before they descend to the promenade and I still stop and inhale and can't help but let a smile slide across my face. The struggle that we thought would be over when we finally made it here has continued due to circumstances out of our control and it's taken a toll on all of us, but every time we stand on that top step we can't help but turn our conversation towards our knowing we're supposed to be here. Some days I fear that this will never feel final, that this big dream that we managed to accomplish will always feel clumsy and not just right. This is the clearest life decision we've ever made, but it just feels weird. We've never experienced this before - each time we've moved, we've anticipated it for so long that when the time comes we're rejoicing! This move was fast and furious and we were torn away from home like you would tear off a band-aid. A sting has followed.

I find myself missing our life back in New Mexico a lot - our routine, our friends we made, our grocery stores. You'd be surprised at how one little thing, like not being able to find or buy the same food, can throw you off. I've been going through pictures, trying to get them all in order, and plenty of them just feel like a punch to the gut. I find it hard to wrap my mind around the idea of another family living in that house, the house we loved to hate, our dream come true in a city full of crumbling stuccos. I can remember peeking over the fence into a backyard of green and running back to the truck with excitement - 'There's grass! And big trees! It's amazing!' I said, trying not to smile any wider than I had already allowed. It was a miracle that anyone would let the two of us buy a house, two people who still felt like kids. Sometimes I like to pretend we're still there, Air Force Alex and new Mama me and that Evie that used to army crawl across the hardwood floors and all her pants had the knee stains to prove it. We're not those same people anymore and we're here in Brooklyn, but sometimes I like to imagine parts of us are there too. I like to think as I'm sitting on the mattress on the floor reading books to Ev that year ago me is laying year ago Ev down in her crib and shutting that wooden door to make my way down the hall and into the kitchen, bare feet across cold tile floors.

I've never made a move and then felt so conspicuous for so long. Everywhere I go I feel this tense sense of awkwardness following me - I order a bagel and the man behind the counter yells for me to speak up. I walk to the park and am met with stares from the women on the benches because they don't recognize me and my kid is met with bullies. I walk along the street, pushing the stroller along with one hand, holding my phone in the other to glance at the map. Hell, we didn't get mail for two months because I had no idea that the post office won't deliver your mail here unless your name is on the outside of the box! It's obvious every day that this isn't home yet, but I've found you don't feel quite as self conscious if you just own it, if you just force your face and your body to say 'I'm here and I'm loving it and I'm making it home.' You don't let the awkward moments phase you, you smile at the women staring and have courage enough to tell someone's kid they aren't being kind, you shamelessly turn around two or three times in a five minute timespan and keep walking like you know exactly where you're going, you don't stop at the top of the subway stairs and wonder how you're going to get your two year old, stroller, groceries, and diaper bag down the stairs and through the turnstiles - you just push on and you do it to the sounds of 'I am woman - hear me roar!' in your head.

Our home is just a muddled mess these days and I'm trying to just breathe, let it go, and tell myself it won't be like this forever, but I know our home has stayed this way in other places the entire time that we lived there. We bought a three bedroom house in Albuquerque and couldn't manage to fill any of it up in the two years that we lived there. We didn't hang a single picture on the wall or paint or even buy a new piece of furniture - that's just us, but when we moved here we promised it wouldn't be us anymore because the gypsies have tired of not having a home, of living inside a box. If I could have chosen a single place in the country to live for the rest of my life before we made this move, it would be here, but we still find ourselves talking about our forever home. Maybe all New Yorkers do this? In a place like this that feeling of being on vacation is bound to reoccur whether you've lived here two months or twelve years. There are a million things to do here every day, a million choices to make, a million memories to be made. It all feels like a completely absurd dream. We've found that we have to force ourselves to slow down and remind ourselves that this is home for now - there's no need to run from one thing to the next, devouring it all without ever savoring a bite. We have years to explore.

MOTHERHOOD RIGHT NOW. . .

Anyone that knows me, knows that I document moments obsessively. Most of the time it's a good thing. On this day, I thought I would take Evie to the library to see the 'Why Children's Books Matter' exhibit at the New York Public Library before it closes in August. I have this habit of not sharing photos of a moment or day if the day went awry afterwards, so I hesitated to even share these pictures because we really didn't have a great time. I don't know why I do that. I'm not ashamed to say we had a bad day, but maybe I just don't really want to remember them the same way I would like to remember the good ones. I also feel like I'm making things appear more awesome than they actually were, so omitting them altogether is easiest. Trekking into the city is never easy, but it was exceptionally difficult on this day, so we were both frazzled by the time we arrived. Oftentimes I blame it on the two year old - she's being whiny, uncooperative, ungrateful. All of these really mean-spirited words come into my mind and it affects my attitude, then patience and gentleness and kindness all go out the window for awhile. We boarded the train home and I listened to a little girl scream and thrash and in the middle of all of that, I came to a realization and I wasn't angry at her any more. I was more disappointed in myself. After I held her through her fit, she wrapped her legs and arms around me and almost fell asleep and it dawned on me that I hadn't even let her play.

She was so excited about the entire exhibit. She wanted to run and touch and talk excitedly (loudly) and ask questions and climb and read books, and I just wanted her to walk quietly through and look at things because that's what society asks people to do in exhibits, but where's the fun in that? Her natural wonder and curiosity registered in my mind as defiance and disobedience and I thought I needed to correct her. Afterwards, I realized I was the one that needed correcting. If only you had someone to follow you around through your mothering moments and say, 'Hey, you're the one that's being a turd right now.' Alex does that for me sometimes and it's never an easy thing to accept, but I'm grateful he does it. I probably do that for him too often. I realized I had taken her all the way into the city and trekked through this library to this exhibit only to request a picture that resulted in a fit and to give up and leave. It wasn't that the day was about taking that picture. My intentions were good. I wanted to get her out of the house, surprise her with something she would enjoy, but then things started going South and all I could think was, 'We're trying to make memories and I'm going to document it so we can leave.' I didn't even try to repair the day. I guess I put all of this here for her to read one day because I know I'm imperfect and this probably won't be the last time we have a bad day because of me. I just want her to see that I knew I wasn't always right, that the bad days weren't always because of her behavior or attitude, but oftentimes because of mine.

. . . is filled with daily requests for 'peppahs and cheese and trackers' for a 'ffnaack.'

. . . is a little finger held up in protest accompanied by raised eyebrows and a 'Hold on set-unt! I got a twestion.' A real question never follows, of course. She's only trying to get out of doing something unpleasant like going to bed.

. . . is peeking through the crack of the bedroom door to find her flashlight on and books scattered around when she's supposed to be sleeping. That's the one thing I'll let slide past bedtime and I think she knows that so she milks it.

. . . is hearing her exclaiming, 'This is fun, Mama! I having fun!' She's all about telling me when she likes something these days.

. . . is walking by the grocery store and hearing, 'Are we go the grocery stowe t'day?' every time.

. . . is an outstretched hand and a 'Mama, you tome wif me.' anywhere we go. In her eyes, I'm as much of a child as she. In her eyes, my size doesn't matter - even if I'm adult size, I can still be her best friend. I can still play on the playground with her.

. . . is shouts of 'You so funny!' or 'That's vewy funny!' Along with telling me what is fun, she likes to tell me when something is funny.

. . . is conversations interjected by 'Hey, you stop talking.' and 'What you talking 'bout?' She wants to be a part of everything we do, even our conversations.

. . . is letting my mama bear come out when kids become bullies on the playground. She wants so badly to play with anyone, even if they're hurtful. It's a gift and a curse I feel.

. . . is not having the heart to correct her when she calls her belly button a 'buddy bellon.'