Life After Babysitting

The first week after Maya went back to being a stay-at-home kid for the summer, I went on kind of a bender and spoiled Geneva rotten. It was the strangest thing, because as happy as I was for Maya to be home with her parents, I had been dreading "losing" her as my little buddy. But there was something about having alone time with Little G after spending so much time as a trio that made me feel like I was on vacation. It only lasted a week, mind you, but I was in the holiday mindset. We baked and ate treats almost every afternoon. We went on at least one fun outing each day of the week. I took special meal requests. We started our mornings with cocoa. 

I have since gotten more lazy calmed down. Of course, we still try to get out and visit with friends or play at the park on a regular basis, and we bake the occasional treat or eat the occasional lavish breakfast. I do miss my Maya, but I'm also thankful for these last few weeks alone with Geneva. She and I have made some new friends, renegotiated nap time (hereafter to be referred to as quiet time), and generally gotten used to our routine as a twosome. It's the new normal... just in time for life to utterly change once more! C'est la vie.

So, how to categorize the pictures I want to share today? I'm afraid "miscellaneous" is the best I can do. They're taken at home, at the park, at the neighbors' house. The photos document significant events (second birthday parties, newborn baby friends) and entirely insignificant ones (Geneva and Maya were both sporting sunglasses). Truth be told, a jumble of pictures seems an apt metaphor for how life feels right now! I'm just going to go with it. Enjoy.

The girls playing in the yard on one of Maya's last days with us.

Celebrating Geneva's second birthday at Randall Park.

Cooling off with the neighbors on one of our first hot(ish) days of summer. 

Three and a Half

Considering our blog is called "The Zoglman Family Adventure Chronicles," there are precious few pictures on here of the entire family. Anyway, here we are, all three and a half of us.

This was at my beautiful cousin Mindie's wedding in Leavenworth a few weeks ago. It was a lovely day-- warm sun, cool breeze, gorgeous mountain setting, and of course a very happy and well-suited couple becoming husband and wife.

My aunt Janet commented while we were there that it seems like funerals and weddings are the only way to get the whole extended family together anymore. And even though my gratitude is not reflected in the photographs I took (they were almost exclusively of Geneva-- and I see that yahoo every day!) I was delighted to get to see so many wonderful people for the first time in way too long. Thank goodness for weddings!

Brevity is a virtue

You may remember that a couple of years ago I wrote a VERY long post detailing a rather unpleasant evening filled with useless contractions, disappointment, and general discomfort. This time around I'll keep it short.

False labor stinks.

Two Years Ago: a love letter

On June 9th, 2009, Geneva Lynn was born.

Two years ago I didn't know I could nurse while walking. Two years ago I had never had someone else's poop under my fingernails. Two years ago I'd never attempted to make pink horsey pancakes. Two years ago I did not routinely sing or narrate my actions at the grocery store. Two years ago if someone vomited I did not lunge to catch it. Two years ago I said "cocoa" and "milk" instead of "tocoa" and "milkies." Two years ago I could not have understood how much my parents love me, simply because I had never experienced it firsthand.

I get it now. I know what it is to be so fascinated with another human being that you can hardly bear to blink. I know how to love someone in such a weird, fanatical way that even her farts seem precious. I know that there is something fierce living within me now, something that would rise up and make me strong, even terrifying, if my child were ever threatened. I will forever be a better person for having been a mother, and that knowledge makes me adore her all the more.

And how could I not? Even if that primitive part of my brain weren't screaming at me to nourish and protect my offspring, I would still be head over heels for her. I love that she makes jokes by quoting Beatrix Potter at opportune moments. I love how enthusiastic she is about gardening. I love that she voluntarily runs through the sprinkler in fifty degree weather. I am proud of her every day for being such a perceptive, articulate person, and for the kindness she is already learning to show others. No daughter I could have imagined would have turned out half as good as the one I got.

Happy birthday, sweetest Geneva Lynn. Welcome to being two. I love you more than you can ever know... unless you have a daughter of your own someday.

June 9th, 2009

June 9th, 2010

June 9th, 2011

What's the opposite of debunking?

...Bunking, of course! And that's what we did to Geneva's room: we bunked it.

When I was two I helped my daddy put together a bed. I stabbed him in the eye with a screwdriver. Geneva refrained from inflicting injury, and was in fact a very good helper. I, on the other hand, was basically useless during the assembly of this bed. I took pictures of Geneva scattering key pieces of hardware around the room, and I don't think Avery was much amused. I'm glad he's forgiving-- and quite the handyman!


Once the mattresses had been delivered, Monkey Child spent about ninety seconds in the bottom bunk before deciding that the top was, as they say, where it's at. At nights we still require her to sleep on the bottom, but I did take a nap up on top with her once and I can see the appeal. I always wished I had a sister with whom to share a room, and bunk beds figured heavily into that fantasy. I kind of imagined it would be like a non-stop sleepover, or maybe summer camp. Geneva and Lavender will have to report back to me about the reality of room-sharing, but my guess is that like all social endeavors, sharing a small space with another person will come with its ups and downs. My advice to the girls will be this: 1) focus on the ups rather than dwelling on the downs, and 2) sorry Lavender, but Geneva technically has "dibs" on the top.

And so we've successfully transitioned our girl from crib to toddler bed to bunk. I want to say a BIG thank you to Robert and Melba, who provided the bunk frames, and to Geneva for Avery's two functioning eyeballs.

Bathtub Time Lapse Photography

 Geneva and Maya, March 6, 2010....

...and June 1, 2011.

Over the course of fifteen months their rolls became sparser, their hair grew in thicker, their baby bodies started looking like those of toddlers, or-- dare I say it-- little kids. Still, some things remain unchanged: same eyes, same smiles, same love for each other. And of course, the same fondness for bathtime.

Hear Me Roar

As a woman planning a homebirth during a season when most people's windows are open, and in a very quiet neighborhood, I'm wondering how much apology/explanation will be necessary when labor rolls around for realsies. Should I buy everyone on the block a nice Starbuck's giftcard to make up for awakening them, possibly in the wee hours of the morning, with the banshee cry that can only be brought on by a crowning baby? Should I hire a landscaper to come and cut the grass when the contractions really start to hurt, thereby muffling the sounds of labor and diverting everyone's ire from me to "that damn lawnmower"? Should I just have the baby and trust that everyone will be cool with this rare and miraculous event, loud though it may be?

Even on a street populated (mostly) with exceptionally cool people, it somehow seems too much to ask.



And yes, I am a writhing blob of hormone-fueled neuroses right now, thank you for asking!

That's What It's All About!

You put your foot in,

You put your foot out,

You put your foot in,

And you shake it all about.

You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around,

That's what it's all about!

Fin.

Today, Geneva and Goya decided to stage a performance of The Hokey Pokey on the patio of our chicken coop. Remarkably, the performance lasted for several minutes without anyone falling off of the small platform. Even more remarkable was the fact that the girls sang the words and executed the dance moves all by themselves. I almost cried. Seriously. Was it the toddler choreography? I think it was probably the fact that these girls were sharing something entirely theirs, and we as parents were simply being allowed a glimpse. I was having flash-forwards of homemade costumes, handwritten scripts and of course the inevitable disputes regarding casting decisions. You know, the things I did when I was a kid.

In the meantime, The Hokey Pokey is perfect. And after all, what is a friend if not someone to whom you can say "Ah, so we're going to be silly? And in this specific way? Excellent! Count me in." My lucky, lucky daughter has just such a friend already.

And that's what it's all about!

Big

It's official: I'm Big. A startling number of my maternity clothes are now too small (honestly, who were they designed to fit?) and I find myself not only unwilling but physically unable to do some of the bendier, twistier tasks that motherhood asks of me. I've started favoring slip-on shoes. I can no longer classify my main nighttime activity as sleeping, but rather as trying to get comfortable.

Buuuuuut.....

I am grateful! My baby is wiggly-- shockingly, even painfully wiggly-- and I never find myself worrying if she's still healthy and safe, since I know she'll bludgeon me in the ribs again in five minutes to let me know all is well. I don't know if I'll ever get to carry another little one, and that knowledge is helping me to keep all of the discomfort in perspective and just enjoy my "alone time" with the fetus, relishing each hiccup and knowing that right now I know her better than anyone else possibly could. And finally, finally, I feel like I no longer have to apologize to the world for my exhaustion and generally scatterbrained demeanor. My body speaks for itself. It used to be that I couldn't enter the grocery store without some bossy old lady (me in forty years?) coming up and telling me that either Maya or Geneva needed a nose wipe or had dropped a goldfish cracker or something. Nowadays, however, people just leave me the hell alone. No more questioning looks when I go strangely blank in the eyes, seeming not to notice that Geneva is shaking milk from her sippy cup into her shoe. I think everyone who sees me now knows exactly what is going on: I am trying, in that blank-eyed moment, not to pee my pants as a Braxton-Hicks contraction smashes the baby's head forcefully into my bladder. At least, anyone who has ever been pregnant knows. Honestly, it's a huge relief.

The Count

Or would that be The Countess?

Anyway, those of you on facebook may have seen this already, but it's a video of Geneva counting at the dinner table, as captured by Avery's cell phone. Sorry, we can't figure out how to get it to play right side up. You'll just have to lean.

Cameraless

About a month ago my camera battery decided it had had enough. We had been charging it with a knock-off brand charger-- gasp!-- ever since leaving the original Nikon charger in our honeymoon suite. Apparently five years of sub-optimal charging made our battery bitter, because it decided to give us the finger by expiring the day before our family left for a week-long trip to Tacoma followed by a photography class. And while I have really fantastic notes from that photography lecture, I have no photographs from our trip. In fact, I have no photographs for the month of April. To give you some perspective, my monthly photo folders usually contain between two hundred and three hundred files. Last July we happened to go on two camping trips and attended a birthday party, and that folder contains nine hundred files. It's wonderful and it's a pain, because while I end up with some really great pictures of some really special moments, I do tend to spend a lot of time with a camera jammed in front of my face. Then I creep down to the basement and sit hunched over the computer for hours, sorting and editing and usually getting so tired that I never actually post the fruits of my labor here, for the world to see. So for the last month I've been, in a sense, free. I have experienced every moment without the filter of a lens, and I haven't had to worry about adding to the immense backlog of pictures yet to be edited. I've been reminded again and again that if I want to capture a moment then I'd better just try really hard not to forget it. I wouldn't say it's been nice, but it's been... healthy.

Here are some things I've committed to memory rather than film, and a few things that would have been impossible to photograph anyway:

* During our trip to Tacoma, Geneva and I visited the Point Defiance Zoo and happened to stumble across six different animal feedings! It was amazing, and cemented both the shark and the walrus firmly in Geneva's top ten favorite animals. Even now, based solely on that trip, Geneva can (and often does) quickly name four different animals that eat fish. After all, she's seen it firsthand!

* One afternoon Geneva awoke from her nap asking for Maya, who was also just waking up. I took Geneva in to peek at Maya and they both beamed sleepily at each other. They then spent the next ten minutes rolling around on the bed, petting and cuddling one another with such fondness that I wonder if Geneva will think of the baby as being a different sort of relative than Maya, or if in her mind she already has a sister.

* My next door neighbor Cristina is within a week of her due date, and it has been such a blessing to have someone with whom to celebrate and commiserate the ups and downs of pregnancy. With both of my babies I have had at least one good friend who was pregnant at the same time as me, and I just wouldn't want to do it any other way (not that it's my choice). Seeing Cristina preparing for the birth of her new little girl is getting me even more excited to meet mine, and there's something about sharing that weird, alienesque third trimester experience with another person that makes it easier to laugh about. It has been wonderful... and all I'm missing is a picture of the two of us together in our gestational glory!

* Little G continues to be a fountain of words. I gave up many months ago on keeping a list of her vocabulary, and at any rate it changes so quickly that I would hardly know how to document what she's doing and saying these days. Some of her cute kid phrases are already obsolete (for instance, when someone sneezes she now says "bless you" instead of "mushrooms") and others are just appearing (when it's warm out she now asks for a "pocketsicle"). My favorite Geneva phrases are her (overly?) candid observations about the world. She once summarized the benefits of wipes over toilet paper as "moist butt." She declares, after tasting ANY food, whether that bite was sweet, sour, or nice. She started calling the neighbor cat's bottom his "button," and then announced one day "Sunny's button is warm." Shudder. She's very specific about body parts in general, making sure to tell us that she intends to play with a toy with her hands or eat a snack with her mouth. When she feels like joshing around with someone she'll say "oh, __________, go take a bath!" (sort of like "go fly a kite" I suppose). And the girl loves a good pun; she enjoys faking us out by saying the first part of a word, pausing dramatically, and then laying the rest of the word on us, as in "Mommy, I like pepper...... oni!" And yet, for all this linguistic prowess, I'm still the only one that can understand her half of the time. I chalk it up to language immersion, as my brain is constantly awash in her little voice. It does make me think of all the kids her age who are in day-care situations, where no one person is around all of the time to learn that "elpey" means "elephant." I wonder if those kids are saying a lot more actual words than anyone knows. I don't think those kids are necessarily suffering because people understand less of what they say, but I do feel grateful yet again that I can be home with Geneva and learn to speak her language as she learns to speak mine.

* Twice in the last few months we've been out to Harrah to visit Auntie Jen and the boys, and twice it has been knock-your-socks-off gorgeous outside. I'm thinking the next time I need some sun I'll just ask if Jen doesn't mind having us over and see if our luck holds! Regardless of the weather, those visits were fabulous and reminded me of how important it is, every so often, to just sit all day and do nothing in the company of a good friend. It has been a real treat to see how kind and patient Owen-- and the other older cousins, too-- are with Geneva. I think they're teaching her something very important about what it means to be in a position of responsibility, and if she learns anything from their examples she's going to be a really fantastic big sister.

* This year, for the first time, Geneva and Maya were able to grasp the concept of Easter egg hunting. Seeing them totter around Nana's yard and watching them light up and change trajectory every time they spied a new egg just about made me cry happy tears. I think it's because they're old enough now to participate in traditions, and Easter egg hunting just happened to be the first one that they "got." I love the idea of Geneva being involved in something that is community-wide and generations-deep; that's what it means to be a part of a culture, after all. Yesterday we hung May Day baskets on the doorknobs of our neighbors. I can only imagine how amazing this Christmas will be.



Okay world, I've learned my lesson. I'd like my camera back now please. In the meantime, here's a look back at March....

Geneva and Thomas

The moms and the kids on our way to the zoo!

"Owl Truck," as it came to be known. This vehicle is famous at our house.

Thomas, Avery and Geneva viewing the otters.

That afternoon we found Charlie Kitty stuffed in the back of the car. He had been missing for some time. It was a joyful reunion!

Geneva and Maya turn a large stomach into art.

Rocking out to Jesus Christ Superstar over lunch.

...still rocking out...

Okay, that's too much rocking out!

Play dough-- or, as Geneva calls it, roll it and pat it and mark it with a B and throw it in the oven for baby and me.

The sculptors.

Maya chose this accessory herself.

My little artist.

Sharing Cap'n Crunch at Franklin Park.

Peeking in.

They like each other.

Maya, in a thoughtful moment.

This was the day we discovered that the play structure had been torn down. Geneva improvised a slide using a hill, some leaves, and a lot of wiggling.

Maya Rose

Enjoying the textures.

Sharing with Mommy.