1.24.12

we got eachother’s way all day.  he wanted snow in the middle of a january thaw.  i realized there just wasn’t enough mother to go around.  its hard to just be ok with that.

1.23.12

he wanted scissors and a hole punch for his note to nana.  i was a little concerned there wouldn’t be anything left by the end of it.  he was very proud.

1.21.12

he wanted to know what a horizon was.  i told him it was the place where the earth and sky meet and  we went out  in the freezing night to look at the mountain.  i think we both felt overwhelmed and a little bit awed.

…two years later.

Almost two years exactly.  Holy smokes, what happened?

So much goodness and growing.  I find myself yearning to hang on to it, savor it, remember it all…and to come back here to write it down so it doesn’t all get lost in the day-to-day craziness of toddler negotiations and baby wrangling and work and renovations and simply trying to keep my family appropriately clothed, fed and rested.

I want to come back here.

I will find the time.  I will.

Rhumphiusness

Awww yeah.

It’s lupine season.  I’m back in Maine.  We’ve got a field full of them.  I’m in heaven.  Lupines make my heart skip beats.  Seriously.

And then, as if things couldn’t get any better one little poppy plant decided to volunteer itself right in the middle of the field.  I practically turn a cartwheel every time I go outside.  That field makes me so happy its just silly.  I almost can’t stand it.

A Bit of Everything

Today is rainy, so we’re staying indoors all day and Grammie is enroute at this very moment…meaning that I am assured lots of time in the next 24 hours for just hanging around and doing absolutely positively nothing while she smothers Luca with Grammie goodness. Whenever she leaves Luca goes through a phase we call ‘Grammie Detox’ in which he readjusts to being a member of the family as opposed to the member of the family. The comedown can be hard, lemme tell ya.

Mother Nature seems to have totally catapulted herself out of late winter and early spring and brought our lives right along with her. Here are some random updates.  I have no brain power at the moment to tie these events together in a way that is coherent, let alone fluid, witty and insightful

We’ve been at the beach a bunch. Luca loves the beach and believe me, all of that sand really loves him. Kreg is thrilled that there is a “real” beach close by. He learned through a series of disappointments that Mainers use the term “beach” rather loosely…meaning a stretch of flat coastline of any size with rocks smaller that softballs.

We’ve put in a good bit of mileage lately and are out hiking every weekend. Luca has been majorly chillaxin’ in his mei tai (seen here on Kreg’s back). I caught him languidly sucking his pacifier just after he’d emerged from a nap. If his cheeks weren’t so pink and healthy, I’d think he’d just woken up under the Santa Monica pier after a three day bender at someone’s Malibu beach house.

After much cursing and three frogs, I finished the Gooseberry Hat. It is riddled with mistakes and ladders and twisted stitches, but it is sweet and homemade looking in a good way and made of hemp, so naturally its a keeper.  Luca isn’t wearing it much as we’re having a hard time keeping anything on his head these days.  He’s become a little hat puller.

And there’s been lots of time spent lolling around in the backyard and staring at the field of lupines.  We’ve got lots and lots to sit with these days, and what better way to sit than with a bit of wine and cheese and crudité, staring at a field full of your most favorite flowers in the whole wide world?  Last week was one of those that you just want to call off early because each day is filled with more heartache and you’re afraid of what could possibly be next.  It found me saying little prayers everytime the phone rang and lying awake at night on the futon in Luca’s room just to hear the sound of his sleepy breathing.

A Papa and a Bub

I keep coming back to this photo of Kreg and Luca, taken a few weeks ago at a certain wedding at Wooden Boat Publications in Brooklin.  I left the wedding tent and walked across a field to find this sweet scene…

…one of those moments that just makes your heart come fairly close to completely bursting.

Flower Spies

The high desert landscape where we lived outside of Albuquerque was rather careful with its use of flowers. I guess with the intense sun and the lack of moisture the plants have other things to worry about besides putting out huge showy blooms. The desert did have its gems though and I remember walking on our mountain this time of year and enjoying the verbena, yucca, chokecherry, primrose, prickly pear and some gorgeous irises that had escaped from someone’s garden long ago, found their way into the National Forest and taken up residence in a few of the arroyos. In the desert, the effort each flower represents is cause for celebration.

In Maine it is a different story. Spring is an obscenity, with flowers popping up wherever they please in enormous sprays and giant clumps anywhere they can find room. I almost forgot how beautiful spring is in climates of the wetter variety. Here, flowers are a celebration of a long, hard winter finally come to an end.  Um, amen.

In the Sandias of New Mexico I would take long walks in the spring for the sole purpose of seeking out flowers.  Here, we needn’t go much farther than our own yard, but I think Luca enjoyed his first flower spying mission anyway.  Here are the results.

P.S. I know its been a bit quiet around here.  It’s difficult to sit indoors and type when I have an amazing porch outside the door, the ocean down the street and the whole of Acadia National Park a few short miles away.  Writing has become a rainy day affair.  As an update, Kreg and I are still involved in the rather maddening task of purchasing our first home, Luca has produced two teeth (they aren’t actually whole teeth yet, but little toothlets poking through his gums) and is almost beginning to enjoy carrots and avocados and I am still desperately awaiting the arrival of my acupuncture license and trying to knit Luca a little hat on #4 dpns, which requires almost as much dexterity as wielding those little needles I love.

Into Her Hands

We were honored to attend the absolutely beautiful wedding of our midwife this weekend on the Blue Hill Peninsula. There is something about these women who bring babies into the world that is so completely special…and celebrating with the one who brought your sweet bean safely onto the planet is a blessing indeed.

There were quite a few of H.’s “babies” in attendance and we were able to get them (almost) all together and snap a photo really fast before any of them had a meltdown, got their hair pulled (Luca has become absolutely obsessed with hair and especially likes to yank on it) or scooted off to get back to the business of running about.

I like to believe that these children all have some kind of special connection, that when they meet each other through the years they will somehow be able to recognize and understand one another because they each were born at home into the hands of the same woman. I have no idea if this is true, but I like to think so…

The Wind Cries Mary, Amen.

You know that spring has officially arrived when find yourself piecing together a sun hat on a Sunday morning and the doors to the house are wide open and your husband is whipping up some breakfast burritos and very innocently blasting Jimi Hendrix directly into the church services taking place across the street…and the whole scene just feels too good and too fresh and too spring-like to turn down the music or shut the doors.

Forgive us churchgoers that your prayers went up to the big guy with a soundtrack of Foxy Lady, but we just couldn’t help ourselves….its been a long, long winter.

Anyway, this is the first sun hat I’d ever made and the first one Luca has ever worn.  I found instructions on this very terrific site.  There were some minor problems along the way.  I (as usual) tried to cut some corners and ended up ripping out some seams.  I have no idea at what point in my life I will learn to measure and use pins instead of just sewing things together and hoping for the best, but so be it.  Luca, despite his best efforts to be brave, is completely terrified of the sewing machine, so I ended up sewing for 15 seconds and then singing him a silly song to calm him down and sewing and singing and sewing and singing….

…and by noon we had a lovely hat.  Happy spring!