Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The Wonder of Words

   Over the span of just a few short days we went from a handful of words, 4, maybe 5, to a new word every few hours it seemed. And even though things have slowed down a tad since those days I still feel like I'm caught in a tailspin. The wake left behind Bastian's vocabulary boat is considerable and sometimes it is all I can do to keep my head above the water... because, crazy or not, every time a new word escapes his little baby lips I forget to paddle for a second. I can't help it. I can't do anything but stare in wide-eyed bewilderment. I turn into Bambi, who I'm pretty sure didn't spend much time in the ocean. All the things I expected to feel when he rolled over on his own for the first time or made his first cooing noise? They seemed to have just stored up in my gut until this moment in time. All to be expended over words. Glorious words. Each and every emotion. All at once.


   My baby is talking. Not in full sentences... or even the stringing together of two words. But there are so many individual words, and for each word understanding. Acknowledgement. Recognition. Even compassion... the way he says "Momma" now vs. the way he said it two weeks ago? Umph...

...My baby isn't a baby anymore.

   My baby is a little boy. A toddler, yes. But he has been "toddling" around for what feels like forever now. In my mind he skipped toddler altogether and is now all of a sudden a little boy. Not completely. And, yes, the emotions are clouding my perception, I am acutely aware of that... but, still. A. Little. BOY. A tiny person. Not just a tiny human. A person. A person who apparently really likes the colors purple and yellow. A person who says "nigh-nigh" to inform us that he has become tired. A person who stubbornly repeats "boo-" over and over and over again until you read him that darn book. A person who knows what you are asking for when you say "can I have a kiss" and obliges... sometimes. A person who has a strange fascination with tacos seeing as he has never consumed one. I still can't quite figure out what he is trying to say there. But he sure is saying it. Loudly.

   ...And I? I am a wreck. A happy, weepy, sappy, emotional wreck.



Sunday, February 26, 2012

An Explanation... Of Sorts

   My blog posts this month have been few and far between. A new season of life has made itself welcome in our home, already with it's shoes off and feet propped up on the couch before we even realized that the doorbell had rung. There are plenty of things to write about, but even more to do and experience. More being present in the moment. More mother/son moments. More husband/wife moments. More me moments. Less time to reflect on them in written form. I would apologize, but I have a feeling that my lack of online presence now will pay off in terms of quality blog content in the coming months. Besides, I was running out of things to share and now I have more ideas than time to even begin sorting through them. That is the beauty of personal blogging... it's personal. It's for the love of writing, and sharing. That lends itself, in my opinion, to more interesting and diverse content. Because the existence of content is based solely on the writer's (my) desire to write on the topic at hand vs. obligation. Though, it would be a lie to say that I never force out content out of self imposed obligation... like this explanation I am typing up right now, about how I write for the love of it... Ah, the melancholy side of being a blogger.

   All that being said, expect the unexpected. Or, scratch that, don't. Just keep checking in periodically and be happily surprised by the good things to come!

Monday, February 20, 2012

Sick Days are for Forts

   My son loves to read... or more accurately to be read to, since he is only just shy of 18 months old, and as such can't really read for himself yet. I love that he loves to read. Seriously, LOVE IT! I would never want to do anything the discourage that, especially knowing how important reading is to pretty much every aspect of life... but... Mommies throat is on fire. She can barely speak. Seriously. OUCH!

   So, this Momma decided to build a fort in the living room for distraction purposes... and you know what? Apparently not even a fort can distract this child from his love of reading!! How could anyone turn down a love like that?



   They can't, is the answer. And so today we are reading. In a fort. Until I either pass out, lose my voice entirely, or both. Unless of course I hack up a lung before either of those things come to fruition. Truth be told, I'm loving it. Every single scratchy, stinging moment of it.

   In the spirit of full disclosure I do feel it pertinent to throw it out there that I am typing this during nap time. I may also be slightly feverish/delusional at this point... but, yes. Love. Love this life. This day. And of course, LOVE my little bookworm.



Thursday, February 16, 2012

Better With Age

   I believe it was our first Valentines Day together that my husband first debuted his now famous trick, that I wish I could say I no longer fall for, but almost always do. The thing is that I am extremely gullible. Extremely. I also happen to really like surprises, but have a tendency to figure them out in advance only to spend the entire time leading up to said surprise second guessing myself. This particular occasion was a tad more dramatic than some since then, but the method remains pretty much the same, and still I fall for it.... over, and over and over again.

   He informed me that he had a gift for me but it would be quite a bit late (which has become somewhat of a Valentines tradition for us since then). It wasn't long before I had surmised that it was an event, a show of some sort... and despite my efforts to refrain from snooping around for clues I began to suspect that he would be taking me to see Wicked; a play I had been dying to see for quite some time. From the moment that thought traipsed through my consciousness I put forth a considerable mental effort attempting to not get attached to the idea... just in case I turned out to be wrong. Something I still do quite often, knowing my own lack of control when it comes to facial expressions. Even once we were in the car all dressed up in our fancy gear, passing billboards and advertisements for the performance, parking the car in a garage right down the street from the theatre.... walking up to the theatre.... I kept pushing the urge to jump up and down yelling "I knew it!" back down to my belly from it's persistent rise to the tip of my tongue.

   I finally begin to let it sink in that "YES! We ARE going to see Wicked!! OMG I'm so EXCITED!!!" as we are literally walking up to the entrance of the building when... he keeps going. I had already begun to slow my stride in anticipation of the turn to the beautiful doors and the distance between our shoulders grew quickly, considering that A) we were holding hands and B) I have very short arms. I tried to catch up, and at the same time cover the look that was already on my face. I am uncharacteristically BAD at multitasking for a woman, and as such, I did not succeed. I could tell he knew from my pout that I was disappointed, but little did I know he was pretty darn excited about it... because it was part of the plan. The brief letdown teaser to make the main event even more exciting.

   I still don't quite know if the element of surprise or excitement is at all increased by this little game, but we always share a knowing laugh over how huffy I get. A little inside joke of sorts, that now, isn't really "inside" at all.

   This year he didn't attempt a full on bait an switch but the dynamic was there... along with the whole celebrating late thing, even though it was only by a day. At this rate of improvement we'll be celebrating Valentines Day in November of the year beforehand not too many years from now. That being said the theater and restaurant were both pretty empty considering we were only one day behind. A bonus for sure. We laughed together as we watched Beauty and the Beast in 3D and picked up on all these little things that neither of us did as children. To my pleasant surprise the romance of the movie was not dulled any with age, in fact it was even more magical than it was back when I used to wake up to my sister playing it in the living room, every. single. morning. when we were kids. Dinner was also fantastic, but the best part of the evening was the conversation. It was so, so nice to have real, genuine conversation with my husband without have to schedule it, or dive into random subjects without letting them take their natural course to make sure we cover everything before we have to get to bed, or leave for some appointment, or take care of a cranky baby who (still) wakes up in the middle of the night. It was nice to date again.

Friday, February 10, 2012

A Weekend Away

Sometimes I wish I had gone to college. For the experience alone. Something about being away, on your own, yet not alone at all. Living on a campus of other people all going through this part of life together. Something about being in close quarters with people so alike yet so different. People not from your past. Possibly your future... but right now? New.

I never lived on my own. Or with a roommate for that matter. I have always been with family. First the family I was born into, and then the family I created together with my husband. Both wonderful families. Absolutely essential to who I am... but there is something about getting that taste of "alone" now and then. It is crucial for those hybrid introvert / free-spirits like myself.

These weekends away feed something in my soul. The long drive. The unfamiliar streets of a town I don't frequent enough to know. Feeling lost, and at the very same time found.

It's not school itself I feel that I missed out on... it's the environment. Something unique to college that I feel I sit on the outskirts of... dipping my toes in the water but never jumping in. Something that I experience as an observer. The idea of it likely far more romantic than the actuality of it.



...Still. I feel the pull.

This place. It has magic in it's walls. In it's classrooms and dorms and networks of sidewalks and hallways through which the experiences are facilitated. In the air. It fills my lungs anew.



Sunday, February 5, 2012

Demolishing Obstaclés

This morning while playing with my son, I broke Obstaclés.



   Obstaclés is a bobble-head figure based off of a character created by Chris Brady, who represents exactly what his name implies. For more of a back story on the character check him out here.

   Since purchasing this guy several years ago he has sat on my desk at work, back when I had a job. Then our desk at home after I retired... and recently, up until today, he could be found in varying areas throughout our living room, dining room and office. Sometimes even Bastian's toy trunk! You see, I have never felt any need to be gentle with him, or protect him from any inevitable wear and tear. In fact I kind of enjoyed discovering new cracks and breaks in his surface. I liked having him as a reminder that obstacles in life are meant to be overcome, but at the same time I had no attachment to him sticking around for any length of time. He was made to be destroyed.

   I never felt compelled to destroy him outright and intentionally. I always thought I would let life toss him around as it so chose, the same as it does me, and watch how fragile he was too, despite his claims to the contrary. This morning I was not intending to decapitate him. I was simply assuming he was stronger than he really is. I tossed him causally into the other room and off popped his head! As I picked up the separate pieces I laughed to myself at first, but then as my joy grew I exclaimed to my husband sitting in the other room what had happened... with a huge grin on my face.

   You see the timing was nothing short of perfect. Yesterday we had a heart to heart and identified some problems that had been silently holding us back in our life together. And though those conversations are never easy they are almost always abundantly rewarding. When Obstaclés broke this morning I knew it was a good sign. A sign that a door had been opened. A wall brought to the ground. A pathway cleared. No where to go but forward. And the future is looking good my friends.



Friday, February 3, 2012

In a Name

Words. They hover in my throat and in my wrists. Waiting to be spoken. Written. to make their way to my tongue and fingers respectively, and then to jump from there, out into the world. Outside of me. But there they sit. Rotting fruit. Different ones pass by them without so much as a passing glance. These ones, for example. But the words that need to leave me so badly can't. Because they don't know their own names. How can a word be known to the world if it is not known by it's owner? How can a feeling be expressed if it's owner does not first allow it to be felt?

Writing is the process by which I have always come to know my feelings... when the feelings were first allowed to exist, and merely needed to be understood. Or at times even named. Right now, I have too many feelings going on at once to let any one run it's course long enough to be whole. Just as it seems one emotion is about to come to fruition it is rudely cut off by another, too impatient to wait it's turn.

One thing alone makes sense.
I am not numb.
Dull and dizzy, but not numb.
Mute, maybe, but not numb.
Thanks be to God, I am not numb.
not.
numb.

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