abundance

inside our refrigerator sits half a quart of red delicious strawberries. they've been on sale at the grocery store for the last few weeks. i love strawberries. they have been one of my top favorite foods since i was a very small child. i'm not going to eat the strawberries in the fridge tonight, though i surely want to. i have some chocolate sitting on the spice shelf that would go nicely with those juicy, slightly tart, beauties. no, i am not going to eat them. i'm not going to eat them because cosmo also loves strawberries. we have such a hard time getting him to eat enough, and he gets excited about fruit of any kind, especially berries. i just don't have the heart to eat them, when i know how happy he will be to see them in the morning.



it's part of the mythology of motherhood that we make sacrifices for our children. mom always serves herself last at the dinner table, claims to like the parts of the chicken with the least meat (so the rest of the family can have the best pieces) etc...i haven't really experienced this aspect of motherhood myself. i was completely ready to have cosmo when i did, i have no regrets, or resentments. i embrace the changes in my lifestyle that resulted from becoming a parent. it feels to me like everything got better when cosmo came along. i also haven't really noticed the extra cost of having a child, or at least not as much as i was warned i would. as i said, cosmo doesn't eat much. sure, i am more likely to by high quality, organic, hormone-free dairy and eggs, whole grain cereals and breads for cosmo, and of course, those things are more costly. he does grow out of clothes rather quickly. but between gifts, hand-me-downs, goodwill, yard sales and children's resale, we don't spend much on his clothes. i'm aware that as they get older, the costs increase, but so far, i feel like the gain far out-weighs the cost. in fact, there is no way to measure it (the gain).

in other words, i'm not a martyr-type mom. and yet, i almost never eat bananas anymore. i know i always used to. i lived alone for most of my adult life. i bought bananas every week, and they never went bad. i ate them. i like them. what's not to like? they're healthy, sweet, filling, easy to deal with. but now, i don't eat bananas. cosmo usually eats two of them before he even gets out of bed in the morning. he'll eat a few more throughout the day. carl has a banana for breakfast, as a late morning ritual. we buy 12 or more at a time, almost daily! we have been known to make trips to the store, just for bananas (and maybe half and half). i don't usually eat them, because i want to make sure there are enough for cosmo and carl. it is a strange feeling. i'm not used to it--this whole "caring for others before one's self" it's new to me. i think i like it. maybe even more than strawberries.

last week cosmo and i picked violets to put in our salad. there were plenty of those, and i ate my fill. so did cosmo.

how does YOUR garden grow?

cosmo is helping me in the garden. we were getting ready to sow some seeds in a salad box, and i was listing what we might plant. the conversation went something like this--

me: spinach...
cosmo: spinatch...
me: lettuce...
cosmo: lettut...
me: maybe some onions?
cosmo: maybe so'onons?
me: and...what else should we plant?
cosmo: coyotes...

he said it like it was part of the list, with the same intonation, as if it were just another seed to plant. i started cracking up, and couldn't imagine how he'd come up with that. he must have overheard carl and i joking around earlier about using coyote piss to scare off rabbits...

springtime song

cosmo works on a favorite rhyme.

happy easter

six word memoir

robin at the other mother tagged me with a meme. the assignment is as follows: tell your life story in 6 words. i often fantasize about writing a memoir. i keep lugging around those boxes of old journals, correspondence, date books, and other precious mementos. i call it my archive, and always justify hanging onto it by claiming, i'll need all of it for my memoirs. a couple of things keep me from doing it. one, it is a big scary project. i often take on big scary projects, but i rarely get very far with them. and now, since the recent hullabaloo about "fraudulent" memoirs, i also worry about people poking around to fact-check. some of the stories from my life are hard to believe. "verification" could be tricky.

but here i have the chance to start it, and to complete it tonight. very satisfying. it was harder that i thought it would be. below is what i settled on:

if
only
i
could
forgive
myself.



the six word memoir rules are:

1. write your own six word memoir.
2. post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
3. link to the person that tagged you in your post.
4. tag five more blogs with links.
5. leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

i tag:
michael
texta
dodaddy
kate
le binky bitch

sleep, again

the last time i wrote about cosmo and sleep, i believe i was bragging about how he falls asleep on his own, in his room, with the door shut. that lasted a few months. at some point, having us outside of his room became a focus that prevented him from just relaxing and falling asleep. he would keep calling to us, asking us to put the covers over him. so one of us would go in, put them back on, say good-night, and leave the room. he'd kick the covers off again, and call out for covers. if it wasn't covers, it was something else. he kept getting up, and then getting upset, so finally i just decided he'd get to sleep faster if i just went ahead and laid down next to him. we have been doing that for a while now. sometimes carl does it, mostly it is me. the other night it seemed to take forever for him to fall asleep, and i found myself feeling impatient, frustrated and resentful. so, we decided that meant something needed to change. our ultimate goal for bedtime goes something like this: bath, teeth-brushing, pajamas, stories, kisses and hugs, light out, carl and i leave the room and go about our business around the house, cosmo lies in bed awake for a while, talks to himself, sings (when he is older, reads), and then falls asleep on his own. i don't want him to be dependent on our presence in order to fall asleep.

so, we are always working towards that ultimate goal. last night, i let him know ahead of time that we would be trying something different at bedtime. i told him i wasn't going to lie down with him. it seemed to help, because he had no problem with it when the time came. i stayed in the room, but sat near the door. he said a few things, asked for covers, then pulled them up himself. he settled down quickly, and fell asleep in about 15 minutes. tonight went exactly the same. let us hope this trend lasts.

spring fresh

the wonderful thing about living in a place with seasons is that just as you are beginning to tire of the way things are, they change. august and september were really hot and unbearable. then, autumn winds blew in, the air turned crisp, leaves fell off the trees. snow is beautiful and fun to play in, but the cold gets old too. i'd been getting a bad case of cabin fever, and then...miraculously, signs of spring start popping up around the yard. we've had some warm days this week, spending more time outside. the park was absolutely mobbed with people yesterday afternoon. we all had the same idea: what a gorgeous day, let's go play!

i thought spring might be a good time to give my blog a new look. i've wanted to customize it since the day i started it. today, i finally took the plunge. the header image is from one of cosmo's water colors. i still hope to do some tweaking, but i am happy to have made the changes.

i also started a garden blog.
enjoy.

equation

one little yellow bouncy ball +
one rather narrow kitchen +
one two year old boy =
SO MUCH FUN!



he played this non-stop for a good 30 minutes (which is the equivalent of hours in toddler time),
and his excitement did not wane. i tried, in this video, to capture his funky leg moves as he chased the ball across the floor, but some things just don't translate.

what did you do with your extra day?

i was hoping to write something up about leap day. about how, for the last leap day, some friends and fellow activists and i attempted to organize a public-space reclamation project by making art, sharing music and food, engaging in guerrilla gardening, and gathering without a permit in a little sliver of a city park in the heart of houston's montrose district. about how it rained cats and dogs for the entire day, and still, a few dozen folks turned out and gave it their best, and how my life was forever transformed by the experience--and how i have reason to believe i wasn't the only one.

on this leap day, however, after spending a quite lovely and relaxing day with my little family, i find that i have definitely come down with the respiratory cold/flu bug that's been going around, and i'm pissed because i already had a cold this season, and now i have days of feeling run down and snotty ahead of me, and so, i just don't feel much like writing.

hope yours was good.

crank it

i have blogged about making pasta before. we haven't done it in awhile, not sure why exactly, since it is pretty easy, and very tasty. i decided to make some sunday. after i got the dough ready, and was setting up the hand-crank machine, cosmo came in and wanted to "see."



i showed him how to crank the handle, and he really got it, so we let him try it with the dough. he did great! he stood up there on that stool and cranked for 30 passes of rolling, plus 6 passes with the cutters. it was a lot of work, and he did all of it. all we did was guide the dough, and hang it up.

we don't have the elegant hanging area that we did at our old place, so we had to resort to hanging the noodles in the bathroom, which worked fine, and cosmo thought it was pretty funny.


he seemed really proud of his work, though sadly, he didn't eat much of the cooked noodles.

(BTW he's wearing pajamas in these photos because he was a little under the weather, and hadn't been out all day)

that's where

in an earlier post i mused about where a maple cutting board might hide. i stumbled upon it a couple of nights ago, in the closet where the furnace lives, which kind of doubles (triples?) as an overflow pantry and broom closet. i had put it up there, months ago, to hold a bowl of rising bread dough, because it seemed like the warmest place in the house. of course, upon removing the bowl of dough, i completely forgot that i had ever used the cutting board for this ingenious purpose, and when searching for it, i know i looked in that closet, but i guess i didn't look up.

i still have not recovered that jar of honey though...

what i don't say

i've been thinking about the way i write on this blog, what i write about, and, more specifically, what i don't write about. i don't mention the fact that both of us will be unemployed come june, and that we don't have a solid plan. i don't write about how complicated it is to deal with cosmo's biological father, and how conflicted i feel every time cosmo and i leave carl to go visit him and his family. i rarely write about my political convictions, how disturbed i am (on a daily basis) by the war in iraq, and the many crimes of the bush administration. i haven't mentioned who i plan to vote for in our primary in may. the blog is focussed on cosmo, and on being a mom, but i don't share my thoughts on the really heavy parts of motherhood, either.

in general, i hesitate to get too personal. i guess i am still getting used to the public nature of blogging. i actually don't mind much what strangers reading this might think of me, but i do care about what my friends think, and i have a hard time being open and vulnerable, in the same way, with anyone who knows me, who might be reading this blog. i don't know if i want everyone to know how insecure i feel about the thought of pursuing a career (finally) in architecture, and what a struggle it is for me to begin to put together a portfolio of my work. it is hard to admit that i still haven't lost the extra "baby weight," and how jealous i am of my friends who have. i don't like to expose how judgmental i can be about others (especially other parents) or my issues with comparative self-esteem.



i've kept a journal since i was 13 years old. for 27 years, writing has kept me sane, and helped me work through many difficult emotions and circumstances. but journal writing is private. and i still haven't worked out what it means to share my journal with the world. in fact, i can't do that. i still keep a journal, but it rarely makes it to the blog.

what's funny is that i find that the blogs i enjoy reading the most are the ones that dare to get personal. i want to hear the rants and complaints and self-effacing humor. it can make for really interesting reading. of course, it can also be tedious and self-indulgent. maybe that is what i fear?

i'd love to hear from others on this topic (whether you blog or not).

from the mouths of babes'

all three of us went through the cold cycle in recent weeks, which means there was a lot of coughing and sneezing. since we habitually "bless" cosmo any time he sneezes, he learned to say "bless you" to us too. however, when cosmo says "bless you" it comes out "bock you" which is hilarious, but doesn't sound quite like a blessing.

bock you too, cosmo.

my bragging post

let's start with me.
i discovered that i can patch wool sweaters with felt! it is so easy, and looks pretty good. i don't knit, so i've never been able to repair knitted clothing before. now, using the simple needle-felting technique, i've patched my favorite wool sweater, a friend's wool gloves and carl's "ol' greeny." it is not a perfect patch, but it looks better than a hole. it feels great to give these treasured items another life. here's a before and after:



next, there's carl.
carl gave a public talk at IU last week, as a visiting professor in the history and philosophy of science department. our neighbor babysat so i could go the the colloquium. carl was great. i was able to follow along through details of 6th century christian philosophy, and he made it interesting and compelling to listen to. he's really good at what he does. i can see why his students get so psyched about aristotle, or the history of skepticism. it was fun to see him up there being carl, talking like carl does, about things we don't normally talk about.

finally, cosmo.
besides being incredibly sweet-spirited almost all of the time, he has also learned his whole alphabet! he doesn't really sing the ABC song yet, but he has known all 26 letters since some time before xmas. the motivation came from him. he's been very interested in letters for a long time (maybe it was our fridge magnets, or sesame street?), and now he can identify and name each one consistently. his current favorite letter is W. he finds letters everywhere, and when we are reading, he'll point out all the letters in a word, and then say the word, but only if he already knows what it is, like YELLOW, or BLUE in a book about colors. still, i like to call it pre-reading. he's known his basic shapes and colors for a long time now. he really likes triangles, and will make the shape with his fingers. in my last post, i said that blue was cosmo's favorite color, but lately he seems really into gray (must be an architect's child). he can count to thirteen, though he often tries to skip over 5. he wants to count everything. i'm very impressed with all this, because it is not something i expected. when he showed an interest, of course we nurtured it, but it just seems to be something he is into. he also enjoys jigsaw puzzles, and anything involving searching and matching.

ok. i'll stop bragging now.

some/thing blue

this is the last in the some/thing blog party series, and mine has focused on toys.



i got the idea to make a bean bag game for sylvan for his birthday, and i let cosmo try it out first. he enjoyed it so much, i made one for him. i painted the box all blue, because it is cosmo's favorite color. he likes it, but gets frustrated if he can't get the bean bag in the hole every single time.

carl and i have much more patience. we have had several tournaments of our own in the evenings after cosmo has gone to bed. first one to get 21 wins, but you have to win by 2. it is challenging, and surprisingly fun for us. something about the bean bag, it just feels good in the hand. cosmo always asks us to "opent it" because he loves to play with dried beans.

i have really enjoyed participating in this series. it has pushed me to post daily, and i've checked out a lot of the other participating blogs. hats off to robin at the other mother, for such a great idea.