This Whole Motherhood Thing

There are times when being a Mommy is super, crazy fun. They are, I won't lie...pretty select times. Mostly its just a thing...like being a homeowner or being a wife or being a student. Not bad, not amazing...but decent. And sometimes it makes you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon but that's for another time. Sometimes...there are real, genuine moments of idyllic happiness.

From time to time I wish I felt like motherhood was almost always moving and wonderful but it isn't, at least for me. Sometimes, I wade through Mommy-guilt about that fact. I think maybe "good moms" are the ones who always rave about adoring their children. Maybe even good moms are the ones who pretend they're perma-thrilled with their role. But then, I have a real penchant for honesty. I'd rather even my children know the truth. Being a mommy is really hard, its scary, its exhausting and its heartbreaking. Its not my most favorite thing in life. Its also very personal, and delicious and peppered with some of my most exhilarating feelings of success. I had no idea teaching someone to read would feel like climbing Mount Everest or that I would actually weep over the strenuousness of potty training. I am genuinely ridiculously proud of myself and the child when I cross the finish line on some Mommy-goal like that!!!!

Although mothering has been really feeding and exciting it also feels like a business I am a little loathe to make "my life" even though I am home full-time and admittedly not really a classic career person. Its a sticky business to make the care, feeding and emergence of a tiny handful of fully sentient and self-aware humans your life-work. I want to support them and encourage them and teach them but on some level I kind of want them to wear that label themselves, not me. I try not to encourage myself to "own" them and their development and instead to do all I can to enable them and to make myself my own life-work. I think there's a lovely, deeply personal, delicate piece to being a mother, there's also a lot of room for mismanagement, obsession, and forgetting who you are as a person and your responsibility to continue growing. And that's my soapbox for the morning. Happy Thursday!

Beautiful Diversions

Nib is discovering knobs and buttons and switches. He's very interested in pulling on things and putting them in his mouth and yanking them off of whatever they're attached to. It just looks like he's working the Etch-A-Sketch here, but really, he's just trying to pry off one of the knobs. Hey...diversion, is diversion...intended by the designer or no!

Here's a stack of fabulous links for you to enjoy. This is the pile that I couldn't keep suppressed. So much good stuff out there in the interweb!

• This fabulous song is stuck in my head.
• This couch is a brilliant, brilliant use of thrift store embroidery finds. Am so tempted to copy it. Do I dare to try?
• Have you tried halvah? Its my new naughty snack craving. Think sesame instead of peanut butterfinger. Completely addictive.
• Our Indian corn will probly come down very soon and when it does, I am considering making one of these, seasonal beauties.Seems like just the thing to wear when visiting the friends and relations.
• This fabulous scene gets my very largest vote for touching video of the week. 600 opera singers dressed casually and masqueraded as crowd members and surprised all the staff and shoppers in a Philadelphia Macy's with a live rendition of The Messiah. I cried. Super moving.
• I love this list of things to do when bored. There are about 57 that I wanna run right out and try instantly. (Lots of them would make fun dates too!)
• And speaking of list-ology, this list is a genius compilation too. Words are so great.
• And isn't this a brilliant, helpful tool? You know...for when we get all spellbound by the brilliant diversion of the interweb?

So, that's my current round-up of inspiration for the time being. Got anything that you're dying to share because its so genius?

Craving Pretty

A mysterious cache of pearly marbles left amongst the foundation stones along the west wall of our house

I'm totally to the part of the move where I am so sick of sorting out boxes that I really feel like, "Does anybody mind if we just burn what's left?" But of course I would be married to the type who minds intensely. There is no throwing anything away unless there's a really good reason. *sigh* (and other small ways we balance each other out)

So, since there's no torching technique escape available I find myself daydreaming about pretty instead. I crave prettifying at the moment. I want so badly to make beauty instead of trying to find a spot for the spices and sorting through the kids clothes for what should actually go in their drawers again or flying madly through the packing paper in a million boxes trying to figure what in blazes happened to the knife rack. (which we found last night by the way! Hooray!) I want to paint and hang curtains and arrange vases of flowers, and set up displays on the built-in next to the fireplace and hang art on the walls.

For the moment, I'm trying to make myself unpack at least one box a day and satisfying my artists itch with little bits of pretty. And its working...slowly the boxes are disappearing (none left in the dining room!) and little spots of beauty are showing up too. Here's a tour of the latest little pretty bits.

Isn't this little end table/ magazine bin/ lamp combo cute? I love it. Totally found it on clearance for 25 bucks.

Stained glass sun-catcher in the playroom window.

Ficus tree in the office.

A china cabinet! All set up with pretty things! I look at it about 38 times a day for reassurance.

And then....ya'll....my aunt sent me a totally spectacular care package and included hoards of pretty things. I'll share a few of them. (I have really great aunts)

Look. The most stunning salt and pepper shakers ever...who came with a little china trough for their feed, or your butter....whichever you wanna supply.

A handmade sign...to remind me which way to go for a swim. Its a replica of the one at the family cabin on the shores of Lake Michigan.

And these amazing hand-blown glass napkin rings. The little starburst is a hollow tube for water so that each napkin can be encircled by a little vase with little flowers tucked into each one. Is that incredible? I sense a dinner party in my future.

So great. I feel more pretty in the wind. 

(for instance, wait until you see me hand the lace curtains that were in the same box!)

Bits of Lovely

Everything is okay again....because I found mushrooms. Heh. I do like foraging a lot and boy do I instantly feel like all is well with the world after running into a giant cluster of wild food accidentally. This particular mushroom is most often called Chicken-of-the-Woods but when I was growing up I was taught to call them Sulphur Mushrooms because of the particular shade of yellow on the underside of the caps.

And our farmer's market opened....well it opened last week but I was just days from delivering and not quite up to attending so, we went for the first time this week and caught the strawberries debuting. Mmm....am so happy to be back at the market. It was very fun to have some of the farmer's recognize us and be excited about the baby....one of my favorite vendors gave me two peonies to take home as a baby gift! People are so nice. (And you all know how I feel about peonies!)

We had a two week check-up with the babe and he's even bigger....up to 9 lbs and 12 oz. now from his birth weight of 8lbs 14oz. I feel like a very good mommy. 

And then...our incredible neighbor came over and brought a picnic lunch for children, a grown-up mommy lunch just for me and dinner and then took my boys out to the yard for playing with a giant kick-ball, bubble blowing with huge wands, fed them and her own daughter with the picnic she brought and then read them all a storybook as a wind down so I could take them right in and tuck them in for naps. Why am I not friends with this neighbor? I must get to know her. Seriously folks, people are so nice sometimes that it hurts.

*grin* My giant iris bloomed for the first time! Isn't it pretty? I've always wanted to grow one of these and this is my first blossom. Am very proud.

This is what happens when your mommy is a blogger. Your splash sessions in the bath with your kid brother get all paparazzi'd. Heh.

And here was the crowning bit of lovely. This afternoon Ru comes up to me....

"Mommy. I have an idea. Lets write a book. We are such good helpers to you that we should make a book about it and call it "We Help Mommy" and then we can send it to all our friends and aunts and uncles and we can be in it and we can make words inside."

Awesome. We're authors! Just like that.

"What do you say Mommy?"

I think we may have a book project in our future. Heh. Stay tuned. I am envisioning a really fun rainy day project.

House Option #3!

So, intially...way back in spring of '09 there was this house. Remember that anyone? I still drive by from time to time, watching how the new owners are slowly sprucing up the place. I'm a creepy house-stalker person. I can't help it. I got all attached...and I'm living vicariously.

And then there was a long break, a lot more looking and eventually...a few minutes ago....this house. We put in a knowingly low offer and the seller's agent scoffed in our general direction and we waved goodbye.

Take three and my current dream.

 We toured this house on Saturday and have been mulling it over, looking through our pictures and piling up comps to examine since then. The neighbors are incredibly kind and friendly, the sidewalks broad, the street green and leafy, there's an apple tree in the yard and the doorknobs are glass...it sounds good.

Whaddya think? We're hoping to put in an offer this week. I can see myself canning in this house.