Winter? Your line is….

I finally gave up waiting for winter about a month ago. Having been spoiled by the past two snowy winters and thus forgotten the true meaning of a southern winter, I almost overlooked it. That’s how winters are here: ignorable. Like a school girl with stage fright, she barely makes it out of the shadows to rush through her lines before running off stage left. But looking through my pictures, I see her there, in the background.

We tugged the sleeves of our sweaters down and pulled our hoods up.
Only the husks of flowers remained.
We cuddled steaming mugs close to our hearts.
Blooming citrus trees made the greenhouse air thick and sweet as syrup.
Christmas cookies were made and eaten.
Frost left her red lip prints on the arugula field.
Scarves dangled from our necks.
Bare branches laced across the sky.
Lost mittens grew soggy in the cold rain.
A recipe that used the oven was an advantage, not a liability.
Pots were stacked empty against the greenhouse.
Blankets littered every comfy surface.

So perhaps it is not so much that winter forgot her lines as I forgot to listen to them.

Milestones: First Wind Blown Hair

Gerund Pudding

::ambling through the rain to meet friends for Sunday brunch
::napping with the windows open
::adding another table to accommodate all the friends who came to Friday farm lunch
::watching my baby grow into his skin and just a few of his darling baby rolls melt away
::savoring paper and pen letters from friends
::attempting make a peanut butter and white sugar free no-bake cookie
::turning the failed experiment into no-bake cookie ice cream
::sipping a well crafted cappuccino with foam as thick as icing
::baby-proofing everything from the kitchen shelves to my hair
::wondering if Babytidian is indeed saying “mama” or if it’s just my imagination
::stretching out in the new king size bed without a sleeping baby curled in my armpit
::debating whether or not to plop Babytidian in the pond sized puddle that formed during a recent rain storm just because it would be a good picture
::deciding that wouldn’t be such a good idea due to all the wind
::finding out later there was a tornado warning in effect
::growing my own kombucha scoby
::leaving the top off the toy box accidentally
::pretending it was intentional when it turned out to be the best idea of the week
::bundling up through the last spotty days of winter
::learning how to live within a 9 month old’s sense of time, urgency, and joy

My mother warned me it would happen

“So have you fixed your bathroom door yet?” I remember my mom asking a few weeks ago. The old fashioned knob keeps falling off and the best  easiest solution we’ve come up with is taking the knob off and storing it on the window sill.  (Be ye warned: if you use the bathroom at our house, don’t shut the door too tightly or you will be stuck. And the bathroom is probably the most boring room in the house to be stuck in.)

“Nah. Not yet.”I blithely replied.

“You know you really should or someday Theodore is going to make his way in there and start unrolling the toilet paper.”

Quite so.

Several times a day, Babytidian goes to visit his friend, the bath tub. So whenever I see him tub bound, I usually try to give him a few minutes to exchange pleasantries with said tub before scooping him up to a more supervised area of the house.  Yesterday afternoon, I realized that not only had it been a bit more than a few minutes since I’d seen his tushie wriggling down the hallway, but there was a lack of the usual genial tub chatter.

In typical mama fashion, I feared the worst. It’s how every made-for-tv movie begins, right? A normal day slips and bleeds into tragedy. So, ironically, I was quite relieved when I bounded into the bathroom and found this sight:

I’ve never been so glad to see half a roll of toilet paper in my life. That includes the emergency situation on a bus in the Philippines when I’d been caught without my personal stash of it.

A Good Morning

:: awakening amid languid snuggles rather than angry cries
:: savoring the smell of a home soaked in fresh air from windows left open overnight
:: walking past a still dark window just as all the birds in the neighborhood woke up singing
:: taking advantage of the lovely weather by getting three loads of laundry on the line before noon
:: noticing our first daffodil finally blooming, with the promise of more to come
:: inhabiting a new sense of calm thanks to magnesium supplements (thanks Deirdre!)
:: finishing my coffee before Baby-tidian wanted in on the fun

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual from SouleMama. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

. . . . . . . .

Milestones: Learning he can take off his own diaper

This is one of the skills I wish he would not learn until he understood consequences.

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual from SouleMama. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

. . . . . . . .

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual from SouleMama. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

. . . . . . . .

Discoveries

Sometimes I don’t know why I even bother bringing the blanket at all on our backyard excursions. It’s been months since Baby-tidian has stayed on it. Even when I sit him (yes! sitting!) in the dead center like a little bull’s eye, within moments he is at the edge. Then it’s all splashing in leaves and sprinkling dirt like cinnamon.

I love observing these earliest connections he is making with nature. Like so many other discoveries at this age, it’s setting the stage from which he will play for  a long time. In these moments I’m never quite sure what my role is. Do I crunch some leaves myself? Or do I try to fade into them? Perhaps nurture my own attachment to the leaves and dirt? Today as I tried fading into his background, I was summoned back by his excited calls of “ahoo” and vigorous tongue thrusting, which could only mean one thing: a discovery. The daffodil bulbs we planted in the fall have started pushing their way through the earth.

 We always return together to the quilt, dirty knees and all. Sometimes after such adventures he is content to lay back with me and watch the leaves move. Not often though. Today we brought out a stack of stories, some to read and others to taste. Oh yes, we love our books. I only hope that he continues to show such fondness for them, even after all his teeth are in.

What’s strange is that this whole escapade took less than 45 minutes from gathering the quilt and books to changing into clean kneed clothes. I’ve had to adjust my expectations of long idyllic afternoons spent quilt-side. Even more, I’ve had to learn to acknowledge the worth of these outings. Just because the time is measured in minutes rather than afternoons doesn’t mean the time is hollow. Even just moments outside can be enough to infuse much needed grounding and balance into my day. A quick nibble of fresh air nourishes just as much as an afternoon’s feast.

So while Baby-tidian discovers the sweet smell of dirt and the glorious crinkle of dry leaves, I am discovering that length of time has little bearing on the sweetness of these moments. The leaves crinkle just as well.