Walk the Walk

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

This lovely creation perches right on top of our back window. When we moved in she was the size of my hand, perhaps larger. One of her sweet legs was about the size of my middle finger. We can see her from both sides--which is a rare treat with spiders, particularly ones this large. She's golden on the bottom, but as you can see here more yellow, blue, and brown on top.

I've watched her with chilled interest. Mostly for Levi's sake. Still every time he moans in his sleep I have to remind myself that the sound would be much different had she snuggled up next to him, or had he stuck a scorpian in his mouth, (or had our six foot "garden snake" slithered through his window...things really are bigger in Texas). Regardless, she has a definite grace and beauty about her. We decided not to spray her and let her catch some of our critters herself.

Then she started to shrink. I despaired over this, actually. Her grand presence slowly diminishing in her three and a half foot web. She cocooned a batch of her darlings and now withers. She won't see them grow up (and neither will we, for although we appreciated her one existence, her millions of posterity can scatter elsewhere...). She's made me think about motherhood and what it means to be a parent. Reproduction is a way to begin the ritual of dying. It is casting a hope for the future, but it's also acknowledging that we can't last, and they can't last, and at last the last can't last. She sacrificed herself completely and now we glance in awe at her hollow image.

I don't mean to say that motherhood is depressing or draining; it's beautiful, but parenting requires that we give of ourselves thread by thread for the love and sake of those we create.

Amazing boundless creation.

Levi Tells Me He Hates Moving

I tell him I'm sorry. I say more but I packed any way--which is confusing and frustrating and makes eating and sleeping more difficult. He hasn't let go of his binky or his special car blanket for over a week. Poor kid.

Suddenly, Levi has an increased interest in everything--including cloves. He clung to the little container until his knuckles were white. Finally I had to put it back in the box, and he screamed until his dad came home.

But--now we're in Kansas. After driving through Wyoming with its oil wells, wind turbans, beautiful plateaus and wind. After driving through Nebraska with its green fields of corn and the zillions of moving trucks and semis passing on the freeway. After driving until one in the morning because staying at a hotel when Levi won't sleep there is just not efficient when he'll fall asleep in the car.

So here we are! Enjoying family and looking forward to discovering our new place on Tuesday. Who knows what it will be like--but we're just glad we have somewhere to go!

Additionally,

Levi is excited to be a big brother. We're due mid-January and like to hope that 14 weeks along is safe to share our news. We'll call her Venice Christine (a real, not just an embryo, name) until proven otherwise.

12 week photo shoot: you can see her little appendages! 

You (I) Know You're (I'm) Pregnant When...

1. Well, the first clue is obvious: plus, when you're already waiting to miss your period and watching it intently, you figure it out pretty fast.
2. It's not the first pregnancy. What they say is true. At two weeks the pants already felt constricting. Wear them anyway.
3. You start spilling on yourself, on your child, on anyone that is around at least once a day. Don't count the times that aren't too obvious--it's reassuring.
4. Vomiting becomes a humorous family activity. Your toddler pats you on the back as he laughs. Your neighbors start wondering if you're bulimic.
5. Please don't talk, or think, or plan anything to do with food. Even now, nothing sounds good. Water. Water is good. Why do waffles suddenly smell like cookies?
6. Except for those few weeks when all you wanted was pizza.
7. It takes you all day to plan dinner (see 5). It took a week to plan an elaborate barbecue chicken dinner, and it takes all day to put it together with your last pieces of chicken, last bit of barbecue sauce, and last rice. Forget to turn on the oven. Of course, you don't notice for 4 hours when the chicken has probably gone bad. Your husband hugs you and tells you the budget can expand for a dinner out.
8. Constant bloody nose.
9. You mimic your one-year-old's schedule, with more naps.
10. You cry just thinking about Finding Nemo. The dad. The little fish with a hurt fin. The mom. The thousands of dead babies.
11. You dream of miscarriage at least twice a week, nightmare otherwise, and wait, hoping not to lose this lemon sized baby.
12. You open the dryer to find wet towels from three days earlier. Oops.
13. You still differentiate between the dream world and the real world--but now it's worse. It demands bodily action. When the wind blows through your window at 5:30 a.m., somehow you're convinced that deathly harm has befallen your son. You leap ("fly" in your husband's words) up, but crash into the door frame rather than gliding through the door, and collapse on the floor. This is probably a good thing, since you would have passed out from moving that fast otherwise. Once you figured out that your face took the hit and not the rest of you, and that your son continued to sleep on peacefully--the swollen lips were just laughable.
14. You start to enjoy your 3 a.m. bathroom break because you are oh so happy happy happy for this little child.

Another Family Party

Is that a peacock?  

 Dads and the boys

 Sisters

Levi wants to be a fish. So much that his cousins wouldn't swim with him. 

This is fun

Here's a review of a journal my work was in. I'm mostly tickled about their praise of Catherine Curtis. Her work is definitely worth following--poignant, hilarious, wonderful. 

http://lunaparkreview.com/sometimes-dark-always-honest/