white christmas

like last year, we traveled to denver to visit carl's family. we woke up on xmas morning to a fresh blanket of snow. it was so beautiful, and the snow kept falling for most of the day. cosmo helped carl shovel the driveway, and we did a little sledding in the street.

dominoes

cosmo kept saying "da-no" for dominoes, and we were getting confused, so i tried to teach him how to say the word. here's how it went...

mama: cosmo, say "dah"
cosmo: dah!
mama: ok, say "me"
cosmo: me!
mama: good, now say "no"
cosmo: no!
mama: great, now say "dah me no"
cosmo: mommy no!

funny how those words just roll off the tongue...

making marks

i've been giving cosmo more opportunities to express himself visually. we have a nice space in the workshop for him to paint, and in the house he works with markers, chalk and crayons. one day last week his drawing took a dramatic turn. he went from large open swirly-type gestures, to making small careful shapes and slow lines. i think it was a one-off, i haven't seen him draw quite like that since, but it was really interesting. maybe these examples demonstrate what i'm saying. the one on the left is typical of what cosmo does with markers.

musgrave love

our farmer's market is closed for the season, but they had a special scaled down version out at musgrave orchard just a few miles from town. we drove out on a frosty morning to check it out. there wasn't much produce available, (compared to the regular market) but it was nice to visit the orchard. we took home a bag of apples and i made this pie.



it was possibly the best pie i have ever tasted.

"two"

cosmo turned two on the day after thanksgiving. he was thrilled to have his beloved uncles ch. and h. visiting from houston. carl made his now-famous-pumpkin-bread in a cake pan, and we topped it with whipped cream and a few blueberries. i couldn't find the birthday candles, so we had to use some household/emergency ones i had in the cabinet. he managed to blow them out this year, i think. or, maybe i was too busy snapping photos to actually witness that for myself.

two also happens to be one of cosmo's favorite words right now. he pronounces it really well, and uses it to indicate most quantities larger than one.



two is also the number of fish oil tablets that cosmo gets to take each day. i was concerned that cosmo might not be getting enough omega 3, 6 & 9 fatty acids, which are said to be important for the developing brains of small children. so, i got him some fish oil supplements designed for kids. they are similar to a vitamin e capsule, and they burst in his mouth when he bites down on them. i tasted one, and it did not taste good. they have some lemon oil in them, but it does not mask the nasty fish oil taste and odor. surprisingly, cosmo LOVES these. he knows that he gets two, and he gets all giggly and giddy when we hand them to him, and chuckles as each one pops inside his mouth.
"how many do you get cosmo?"
"two! tee hee hee"
he refers to them as fish, asks for them every time he sees the bottle, and gets upset if we refuse (because he has already had them that day). luckily, offering a clementine instead is enough to get him to forget about them...for a little while anyway.

time for weaning

i've been wanting to write about weaning cosmo, but i also wanted to wait until i was out of the hormonal chaos that followed. i just looked back on a couple of journal entries i wrote in the midst of it, and decided that might be the best way to tell the story.

sept. 30 2007
sunday

it seems at though the time for weaning cosmo has arrived. i am having a lot of trouble letting go. i just don’t want to cross that bridge. it is so sad for me…sad in a way that i can’t quite articulate. it is not rational. i know he’s growing up, i know that the nursing relationship changed a long time ago, and i feel now that what little remains is holding him back. it is confusing and upsetting and unnecessary. the only reason we are still doing it is because of my fear of letting go. just now, when i thought of not nursing him for his nap tomorrow, i felt so sad, that today was our last nursing. i wanted to find another time to nurse him before that, so that could be our last time. i may do that, just to have one last time of looking into his eyes from that vantage point. a farewell. the end of an era. these kinds of transitions are always hard on me. i’ll get through it, but i need to honor my feelings, and spend some time reflecting.

later…

well i just spoke with christa about it. i called her. she was wonderful and perfect. i told her the story of when i stopped nursing cosmo at night. how he hugged me so tight for so long and we cried and laughed and he seemed to know what it meant. she suggested that i find some way to mark, and celebrate this moment. so, i was thinking that since i want to have one last farewell nursing, we could make it be something special and unusual. that way he won’t be confused, think we are going back to night nursing or something. maybe we could go out to lake griffy and take a walk in the woods, and i could just stop and sit down with him and nurse. i know i would love that, and i bet he would too. it would also probably be brief, since he’d be interested in other things.

oct.7, 2007
sunday

we went out to lake griffy that afternoon. after throwing rocks into the lake for a while, we headed into the woods, on one of the trails going up. when we got to the top of the hill, carl and i scouted for a nice place to sit. i chose a big tree to lean against. i sat down and invited cosmo over to nurse. he was surprised and enthusiastic. i held him across my lap and he had one eye looking up into my face. i remembered all those days and nights in the great green chair, when we were both new to all of this, and how overwhelmed i was with love for him. like nothing i’d ever known. this beautiful baby and me-- learning to trust each other, building this bond. the stillness…

i started crying--really all out bawling. carl was next to us, he was tearing up too. cosmo looked up into my face, i smiled at him, he smiled at me and then he reached up and touched my tears with his finger. he paused from nursing for a moment, and put his finger in his mouth, tasting my tears. then he giggled a little and latched back on. i laughed too, and cried a bunch more.

we were there under the tree for a good 20 minutes or so, then i got him interested in something else, and we easily transitioned out of our final nursing time together. i was so happy that we took the time to do this. i really needed it. i continued to be weepy about it all week, but cosmo seemed to be ok. he asked a few times, still asks occasionally, and i remind him of the time we took a walk in the woods, and nursed and i cried and he tasted my tears, and there were flickering leaves in the trees overhead that we both marveled at. he remembers, and he reenacts the scene. he does the sign for crying and says mama. he makes the sign for nursing and tears and then he puts his finger in his mouth to lick off the tears. it is so unbelievably sweet i wanna cry every time i think of it. he will sometimes just tell the story, spontaneously, other times, if he asks to nurse, i just say, “no, remember? we don’t do that anymore. remember our last time, in the woods?” and he’ll finish the story.

we hug a lot more now. i like that.

this picture was taken that day at the lake.

one of the most amazing changes since weaning has been how well cosmo sleeps, and how he falls asleep. he now falls asleep all on his own, in his own room, with the lights out, and the door closed. after his bath, we read stories and then he turns out his lights. he lays down and often says "night night mama." i kiss him goodnight and leave the room. we found that closing the door helps make it dark enough that he won't be distracted (it was actually his idea). at first he would walk up to the door and call for me a couple of times, i'd reassure him through the door, then he'd go lie back down. but after a week or so of that, he now just stays in bed and falls asleep. incredible. he has also slept for 12 solid hours for the past 2 nights, but i don't expect a trend like that to last.

laurie's dream

our dear friend laurie in brooklyn sent this to me in an email yesterday:

I had a dream about you...You and me and Cosmo were on the subway and Cosmo fell down. And I chased him down the aisle, but he wasn't scared and you weren't scared either, because he transformed into this perfect little ball and rolled down to the end. I could see his blonde hair flapping as he rolled. Like a perfect little ball. then when we caught up to him he was laughing and so were you.

bling

after much research and deliberation, we took cosmo to a dentist in terre haute to have some dental work done. we traveled an hour and a half outside of bloomington because no pediatric dentists in town offer sedation for little ones. if a child this young is not sedated during dental work, then they are held down, strapped to something called a papoose board, or otherwise restrained by force. carl and i knew we couldn't handle that, and it seemed dangerous and impractical. i guess sedation can be risky too, but this dentist and his staff are trained for emergencies, and in 18 years of practice, he has yet to have one. it was not general anesthesia, but rather more like a drug- induced deep sleep.



it went really well, considering. we had to get up well before the rosey-fingered dawn and drive in the dark, and cosmo couldn't have anything to eat or drink (including water!) after midnight the night before. that was tough. i 'm not accustomed to denying cosmo water or food when he asks for it, and though we explained, he couldn't really understand. i brought my laptop, and we distracted him from his hunger pains with a little baby einstein. that worked pretty well (let's hear it for novelty!). the waiting room was all ours at such an early hour, and it has a lot of fun things to do. once he took the meds, it was a short time before he started acting woozy. we took him into a darkened conference room, and i held him and soothed him while he whined and squirmed and fought against the sudden onslaught of sleepiness. once he was out, the dentist took him back for the work. it was difficult to be separated from him, but carl pointed out that it was probably for the best.

he was still asleep when the procedure was finished, and slept for the whole ride home. he didn't wake up until the early afternoon, and was a bit unsteady on his feet. we had to keep a close eye on him throughout the evening, and he couldn't keep much down at first, though he was understandably ravenous. he did not seem to be in any pain, though he was not his usual cheerful self, and went to bed an hour early. by morning, he was fully recovered and all cosmo. he now has two silver caps on a couple of back molars, and some tooth-colored filling in the front. i showed him the silver in the mirror, and also pointed out my gold crown. i told him we call it "bling." he seemed pretty pleased with that.

green leaf blower?

what to do if you want lazy, but conscientious citizens to live a "greener" lifestyle:

* create a city wide, curbside recycling program that is easy to use

* create financial incentives for reducing the amount of trash each household
sends to the landfill

* educate people about composting

* designate obvious bike lanes all over town, and install lane marking barriers at
intersections to reinforce the existance of the lanes



* install large bike racks everywhere, especially on the university campus, which
happens to be the heart of the town

* support a large scale farmer's market

* foster a pedestrian friendly town plan, and encourage density downtown, vs growth
along the edges


i am as worried about mother earth as the next guy (oh wait, does that expression really work here?) and i have been since 1986 or so, when i first began to grasp the environmental crisis we are faced with. but i started to give the value of my individual actions a second glance about a decade later. i often wonder if my piddly household recycling efforts really make much difference at all when the oil refinery/chemical plant a few miles away is busy belching toxic waste into the water, earth and air for stretches of miles and miles. the whole system we live in is completely fucked and misguided. it is impossible to be consistent with anything like protecting the earth, or going vegetarian. factory farming is a travesty, whether it is chickens or soybeans. it seems to me that the reasons we do things like recycle beverage containers is simply to feel good in a situation where we feel out of control, guilty and afraid. i think child safety products play upon a similar set of emotions. we feel out of control when it comes to keeping our child safe, so we purchase products to help us feel more in control, safer. these products do not ensure safety, but they can help us feel better, and feel like we are doing what we can to protect our child. i think it is similar to how we feel about the environment. we know it is out of our hands, but we are worried and we feel the weight of responsibility. so we take these futile actions that help make us feel like we are at least doing something. i often suspect we are doing absolutely nothing.

that said, i wanted to post something for blog action day about the effect of my new location on my habits with regard to being "green." i keep putting that word in scare quotes, maybe i just shouldn't use it at all. mostly, we have noticed that we have become a lot less wasteful since we moved here, and here are some of the reasons:

when we arrived in the house we are renting, there was a magnet on the fridge (our landlord brought our mail inside) with information about our trash pick up days, and recycling days. the actual dates were listed for the whole year, and all holidays are listed as well. no guessing, is today recycle day? there was also a brochure with more detailed information about what items can be recycled (plastic, glass, metal paper and cardboard), and how they need to be packaged for pickup. i have never, as a renter, received such complete and accurate information about city recycling.
the city of bloomington charges a fee for each trash can or bag of trash that goes to the landfill. so, you can put as many bags or bins on the curb as you want, but you need to put a trash sticker on each one. the stickers cost $2 each, and can be purchased all around town at grocery stores, hardware stores, etc. trash pick up is once a week, recycling is every other week. recycling pickup is free and unlimited. all you have to do is separate paper stuff from the other stuff.




two dollars may not sound like much financial incentive, but it has worked wonders in our household. i think we have taken it on as a challenge: how little trash can we send to the landfill each month? so far, we only have our trash picked up every other week, on recycling day, and we have one small can. in order to reduce our trash, we recycle everything possible. i find that i look for products with recyclable packaging, and notice so much more what is getting thrown away. maybe most of you already do this. but i have been very lax about it, only recycling things that are easy and obvious. but the system in this town pulled me into the spirit of it, and now it is just a given, and something we both enjoy doing. part of this has to do with how simple they make it. i know in houston, i would check the city website for a list of materials picked up for curbside recycling, and the information would be wrong. i never saw a printed brochure. if i was out of town for a week, i'd lose track of what day recycling happened on, and i hardly noticed how much trash we were putting in those giant bins they provide everyone with.

one of the other ways we have reduced our trash is by composting. i've always loved the idea of a compost, but it's been impractical in most places i've lived. here, we knew we could do it, and everyone in our neighborhood has a compost bin. the city encourages it, and educates the public about it. one of the first projects we completed for our new home was the building of a small, simple, cylindrical compost bin made of metal stakes and wire fencing/chicken wire. it was very cheap and easy to make, and seems to be working out just fine. we hope to get a chance to use some of it on a garden in the spring.

in addition to waste reduction, we have also cut down a lot on car use. we both have bikes now, mine with a baby seat, and we love riding around town because there are well marked bike lanes and an overall respect for cyclists. the city puts out a great bicycle map, and some of the bike lanes are distinguished by planters placed in the roadway, so drivers don't forget. bike racks are everywhere.i also do a lot more walking. we can walk to downtown or the campus in 12-15 minutes, from our neighborhood, and it's a pleasant walk. the town is small, and the central area is pedestrian friendly by design.

the farmer's market here is supported by the city. it is enormous, in a prime downtown location, and serves as a community gathering place from spring through early winter. there are always several different forms of live entertainment, and some prepared foods in addition to the fresh produce stands. i've purchased local wool for felting and we buy almost all of our produce for the week from the market. we go every week.






it makes sense to me to eat seasonally, and buy locally...the farmer's market facilitates that.










there is also a gigantic, well run children's resale store in town. i will always look there before buying anything new for cosmo. they also pay cash on the spot for stuff you bring in. another kind of recycling center.


so basically, bloomington makes it so easy to do my part. i do it in spite of my continued cynicism about any difference i can hope make in this mess.

i'm telling you stories (trust me)*

i’m pretty sure i’ve found the right coffee house for me in my new town. the wall in front of me is papered in old copies of maps from around the world. there’s a bird migration in the americas map, and a beautiful topo of the heart of the grand canyon (a place i’ve never been to, believe it or not). this is the quiet room in the back with domestic lighting and a few tattered lounge chairs thrown into the mix of tables. lucky for me, my airport card is disabled, so i’m not distracted by the possibility of internet connection. for weeks now, i’ve tried to sit down and write this post in our office room in our new place. there are still some boxes in there that need unpacking, and audio cassette tape shelves to be built. there’s email to be answered, and i haven’t had lunch. i wanted to upload those pictures, cosmo will be up from his nap any minute, and before i know it, the time for blog posting is gone. today i got serious and stuffed my laptop in my back pack, jumped on my bike and headed downtown. carl’s reading in the great green chair at home. he’ll be there when cosmo wakes up, so i can leisurely drink my latte and finally write this entry.

two days ago carl said to me cosmo seems older today. i had to agree. it happens that way sometimes. they just suddenly grow up. he’s entered that wonderful age of pretend play and story telling. though his vocabulary expands exponentially every day, he doesn’t talk in sentences yet, but he somehow manages to tell stories from his day.

last night, before bed, he couldn’t stop reenacting an encounter he’d had that morning with another boy his size, at a children’s concert at the library. instead of sitting quietly in his seat in the small auditorium, cosmo had been going up and down the side aisle steps trying to coax other toddlers into to chasing him across the rows. half way through the show, he finally got a taker, and they were having a grand ol’ time running back and forth, giggling and stumbling. by this point, lots of kids were out of their seats, and dancing was encouraged. we had stopped hovering over him, and cosmo was up a few rows from where we were seated. i looked up just in time to see two small heads collide and fall. both boys were bawling by the time the two mothers reached them. i picked up cosmo, sure that his were sympathy tears. but he got louder, and really seemed to be in pain. i held him, soothed him, and rather quickly distracted him with an unplugged sound board in the back. he laughed when he saw it, recovered from his boo-boo and went back to running around and dancing. the other kid seemed to be ok too. later that day, he pointed to his head and said boo-boo so, we talked about it, and i decided to give him a chance to really work through it. i told him to go to his room and get a couple of his little people. he came back with one of the mechanics from the garage, and a power puff girl action figure. i made like they were chasing each other, then i had them bump heads, fall over and say oww! he loved it! we did it a bunch of times, he did it on his own, and eventually we moved on to marbles or went outside to play. that night at bedtime, as we often do, carl and i reviewed a few of the days events with him, including the collision in the theatre. cosmo and i read some stories and were about to lie down to sleep, when cosmo started doing something with his hands, and then smacking them together. i couldn’t quite figure it out at first. he wasn’t saying oww or boo-boo but it didn’t look like any other sign he’d ever done (and he has some pretty elaborate ones these days). i called carl in to confirm, and he too thought it was about the head butting incident. i asked him, and did it with him using his bear, and a plush toy dog, adding an oww at the end. he started doing it with the a oww too, and did it over and over and over again. finally, i assured him that i knew what had happened, that it was great that he could tell the story, but he was ok now, and it was time to go to sleep. he grabbed his sippylcup, laid down on his tummy and soon fell fast asleep.

in addition to the reliving of past events, he has also started playing with figures in a way that suggests he’s got some invented stories going on, and he’s acting them out with the toys. they may not be very complex scenarios yet, but hell, how would i know? i’m not privy to them yet. it’s something he just does on his own. it makes me so happy for him, (and envious) to see him embark on what i hope will be a rich and exciting journey into his own imagination.

another sign of cosmo’s sudden maturity is that he is learning how to make friends. sure, everyone’s a little awkward at first, but he’s really trying. here’s his technique: find someone close to your size, approach them, stand directly in front of them and look them in the face. if they look back, point in some direction you want them to run, or simply turn and run off, and look back to see if they are coming. since chase is his favorite game, this is what he usually invites his prospective friends to engage in with him. it takes the kids a while to figure it out, but eventually someone starts chasing him, and in the case of one slightly older, rougher boy, he may end up getting tagged, tackled and even de-pantsed. it’s all fun and games, ‘til somebody gets hurt (see story above). it is so wonderful though, to see him reaching out. he’ll go wondering out into the mix of kids, turn, come back to us (home base) for a hug, then head back out and try again. last night at a pizza parlor, he set his sights on a younger red-headed girl. she seemed interested, and would face off with him, but never figured out the chasing part.

in other news, we are getting settled in our new place. i miss the familiarity of houston, knowing how to get around, recognizing faces. i can’t find my hair color anywhere in this town, so instead of fire red, my hair is now auburn. it’s very disappointing, however, i have found, for the first time in years, stay-free-ultra-thin-maxi without wings (thank you jesus). bloomington is a small town, and i have a bike now, with a baby seat, so we use the car less and less. we have great neighbors, and spend a lot of time outside. i feel like our quality of life here is quite high.

i’ve been reflecting on the notion of permanence. i know our move here is temporary, that we’ll be doing this again next year. i found myself telling chuck the other day on the phone, that even though i never picture returning to houston to live, i feel like my separation from him is not permanent. it doesn’t make any sense, i know. i guess it is a coping mechanism. i don’t want to know what this move really means.

p.s. it took me a week after writing it to get this post online. last week, cosmo reenacted the collision story using a jesus action figure and a small buddha statue.




*a line from the passion by jeanette winterson

bloomtown

we made it to bloomington. eventually, so did our stuff. we're still unpacking and getting settled in. i'd love to post more, but for now, take a look at my flickr page. it has recent stuff, plus old photos from my yahoo photo account.

what's new in cosmo's world?

so much.

cosmo has turned into a pretty good traveler this summer. he and i drove to san antonio to visit with his relatives a few weeks ago and he did great in the car, with no one to entertain him. after he napped for a couple of hours, we pulled into a rest stop and had a little picnic. he adjusted well to hotel living, and especially loved using the elevator several times a day. we stuck as closely as possible to his schedule for naps and meals and bedtime, and that seemed to really help him feel secure. he's not used so sleeping on a high bed (his futon is on the floor at home) and he flops around a lot in his sleep. after one fall of the bed, i ended up improvising the bedding arrangement in the hotel room. the beds themselves wouldn't move, but the top mattresses did, so i bridged the gap between the beds by pushing one over the edge of the box spring a little, and then dragging the other mattress over to make one giant bed. i had to be careful not to get on the part that was bridging, it would have sank under my weight, but it worked great for cosmo, and he did not fall out of bed again.



i think he enjoyed sea world (not my idea) and had some fun chasing pigeons in downtown san antonio.






less than a week later, the three of us flew to bloomington. carl has been hired to teach at IU in the history and philosophy of science department, so we are moving there in about a week (!) we went to find a place to live. we love the town and think we'll have a lot of fun there. we look forward to cleaner air to breathe and four seasons of distinct weather to enjoy. it is a small crunchy college town surrounded by state parks, national forest and nature preserves. cosmo was a real trooper throughout all the running around getting in and out of the car, looking at crappy student housing, and gorgeous historic homes we ended up not renting for one reason or another. we ended up with a very practical (if not terribly charming) house with a big yard on a quiet street close to the university, but more importantly, 3 blocks from the best park in town. there is even a heated/insulated workshop/studio in the back for all my projects, and a great place for cosmo to get messy. the best thing about the house (besides the washer and dryer in the kitchen) is that the floor plan includes an open loop of doors through the rooms, facilitating endless games of chase indoors. we had a chance to drive out to a nature preserve about 5 minutes from town with a lake and hiking trails in the woods. cosmo had a great time throwing stones in the water, picking wild blackberries and running along the wooded paths.



i hope his recent travel experiences prepared him for our three day road trip. we decided on a u-pack moving system, where we pack the trailer and someone else drives the truck to our destination. that way we'll all be in the same car for the drive. as excited as i am about moving to a new place, it breaks my heart to leave our beautiful community of loved ones...there's going to be plenty of tears.



ok. in other news, cosmo had his first haircut, which looks pretty smart, if i do say so myself. he's mastered the summersault, and has a scary-good throwing arm. carl and i worry that we won't be able to keep up with his athleticism. that's what coaches are for, right? he can't quite jump yet, but he tries so hard every day, he's bound to get it soon.

he's had a verbal explosion lately, and seems ready to try almost any new word we ask him to. at night, when he's trying to fall asleep, he practices all the sounds he can make. i guess it's babble, but it seems to me more like a singer doing scales. he still signs a lot, learns new signs instantly, and he even made up a sign for fiddle, which he makes when he hears fiddle music. we got some ASL books so that we can continue to teach him sign language, even when he no longer needs it. i figure it is one way for him to become somewhat bilingual, since he's not regularly hearing a foreign language in our house.

one of the things that most amazes me about cosmo at this age is the amount of empathy he expresses. if he hears another baby crying, he will stop what he's doing, make the sign for hurt, with a worried expression on his face, and kind of moan. he got so upset one night when he saw some injured pets being cared for on TV that carl had to turn it off. he reacts to the picture in our mother goose book, of jack (of jack and jill) falling down and hurting his head. he is terribly worried about humpty dumpty and even seems to be concerned about a spot of flaking paint on a doorway in our house. he is convinced it is a boo-boo, and that the wood is somehow suffering and needs to be acknowledged. of course, he fusses over his own minor scrapes, and bug bites, and ours too. he has only recently become aware of mosquitoes as they bite him, and wants to scratch them afterwards. good timing for moving to a place where mosquitoes are few and far between.

he still shares pretty well and is generally gentle with other kids. i am sure that possessive stage is coming soon enough, but for now i appreciate his kindness. he throws minor fits now and then, if he's tired, or when he's taken away from something he likes (such as the full drum kit we saw at the salvation army the other day) but they are not outrageous (yet) and are very short lived. i treasure this rare and precious time, savor every moment.

petroleum products are cozy

this picture will probably make my friends at green parenting cringe. cosmo has recently learned to fall asleep on his own...meaning he no longer requires nursing or motion in order to drift off into dreamland. however, he now requires cuddling up to a sippy-cup (or two, or three). he doesn't always drink from them, he just needs to have one near, and protests if i try to take it away. he has also taken an interest in michael's reiki bear, the firsts plush toy he has ever bonded with. sometimes he will toss the bear, but the water bottle is always in hand. his favorite bedtime reading at the moment is a book of classic mother goose nursery rhymes. i've been enjoying trying to uncover some of the history behind them. song of sixpence apparently has something to do with pirates. who knew? cosmo just likes the part where the blackbird "snaps off her nose."

comic junky

carl gave me persepolis 2 for my birthday (i turned 40 on tuesday). whenever i get my hands on a comic i haven't read before, whether it's a gift, borrowed or bought, i devour it from cover to cover, can't stand to put it down until i'm done, and i tend to tune out everything else around me. then i want more. it doesn't matter how good the book is, or how long, comics always leave me longing. it's like a good drug. an addictive drug. i almost cringe when i am handed one...because i know what's about to happen. i don't want to taste the chocolate truffle because i know i am going to want an entire box of them, and there's only one. my appetite for good, quality comics is insatiable. so, in a sense, as pleasurable as reading comics is for me, it comes at a price.

it makes me wonder if there isn't something about the medium itself which produces this lingering hunger. i guess that doesn't make much sense really. i'm sure some people feel this way about a great record, or book of poems. it just so happens that for me, it's comics.

lucky for me, chuck and hank gave me a gift certificate to domy. i can go get one more fix before i head into withdrawals again. thank you thank you my dear friends. thank you.

in the round

cosmo's fascination with flowers has given way to an obsession with circles, balls, all things round. on walks in the stroller, he spots every single manhole cover, or water meter access point, and he wants us to push the stroller over the circle. he laughs and groans with delight. when he is walking himself, he steps on every circle he can find, and the plastic rectangle ones in the grass too. at home he has two favorite new toys, a bag of marbles and a tin full of buttons. he wants to play with them ALWAYS and cries when we put them away. "ball" is his favorite word to say, and he will point out any object in any landscape that resembles a ball.

i often catch myself trying to recreate the better parts of my own childhood. when i was a kid, my mom had a little old-fashioned marshmellow tin filled with buttons of all kinds. i used to love to spread them all out on the floor and organize them into categories, or make various kinds of arrangements. i remember really enjoying them, and i wanted cosmo to have some too. i only had a half dozen or so myself, so melanie and kate suggested that i ask friends to contribute to cosmo's button collection. i like that idea a lot, but in kentucky i found a jar of assorted buttons at a junk store, so it seems strange to ask for more since we are now button rich. however, i like the idea of buttons coming from people he loves. in any case, i was thrilled to find that he loves the buttons as much as i did (and still do) and i imagine his enjoyment of them will change over time. right now he likes to pull individual ones out of the tin, marvel and coo over them, and he also likes them in quantity...he will pour them out, and run his hands through them.

he recently discovered a grate circling a tree outside of a restaurant, and proceeded to run around it, over and over, round and round, laughing and making himself so dizzy he'd stumble. he really loves a circle, that one.

what cosmo learned on vacation

we had a relaxing time out in the country. it was such a relief to just let cosmo run around without fear of traffic, mosquitoes or fire ants. we spent most of our time outside and cosmo had a blast. he learned how to climb a ladder, swing on a big kid's swing and run down a tiny hill. he also got to see a catfish being caught and released, ate some violets in his salad and saw fire flies for the first time. i've heard other parents report that travel often brings leaps in development, and that seems to be the case with cosmo. here are a few pictures and a video.

belated father's day post

Dearest Carl,

On this father’s day, I wanted to try to express to you how much it means to me to have you in our lives, sharing this incredible parenting experience. Your ever growing love for Cosmo is such a joy to witness. I love listening from the other room as you bathe Cosmo each night after our walk--- to hear your patient and proud voice as you ask him to trust you when it comes time to lean back into the water to rinse his hair, or ask him if he can wash his toes with the sponge…then his knees. You are a wonderful teacher a perfect playmate and a careful guardian. I love you, and I love you being Cosmo’s dad.

Happy father’s day.

travelcraft

we are going on a little trip to kentucky. we will be visiting carl's brother out in the country. we love to travel together and i'm looking forward to it. i won't have a chance to blog about some things i have been planning to, but i wanted to share some photos of a couple of bags i felted. one is a gift for dominica, who just turned one. cosmo liked hers, so i decided to make one for him too. he enjoys putting things inside, peering into it, taking them out, and he likes to grab the handle and whip the bag around wildly. hopefully the photos will give you a sense of what i am talking about. happy summer!