Motherhood and other creative adventures
The overcast winter light makes indoor picture taking nearly impossible, but it’s also wonderful to look out the window. All the vacant lots left behind by building companies going bust are filled with bright green grass that only looks brighter up next to that pale gray sky. It makes me want to stroll amongst it and let my thoughts turn to Willoughby.
This time every year I totally lose my crafting mojo. All the rush and excitement of Christmas just wear me out and I have the hardest time letting it go. When I could bring myself to make something over the last couple of weeks, it was to finish a project I didn’t get done in time for Christmas. Nothing else sounds terribly interesting to me right now.
But of course, every time I work on something and have to go through my supplies, I always end up remembering the millions of things I wanted to make someday when I had the time. So to combat my craft fatigue, I gave my studio a thorough cleaning and organization.
Now I not only have a stack of projects pulled from the stash, but I have an empty canvas of a room waiting for me to make a creative mess. This should get rid of those crafty doldrums in no time.
I just got a great big box of craft supplies delivered to my door!
Long term readers may remember that this time every year I make the Christmas cards I’ll be sending out in December. It may be the smartest thing I ever came up with. All the supplies are on sale, I’ve got a little more time on my hands, and then it’s one less thing to do in the madness of Christmastime. I just pack them away, pull them out with the Christmas decorations, stick in a picture, and pop them in the mail.
The only trick is that I have to estimate how many cards I’ll need in December and how many new people will come into my life between now and then. Last time I estimated low, so this year I’ll be making 130 cards.
Finding that much paper in one place is a bit ridiculous, but I’ve found some great deals by going directly to the paper manufacturers website. My favorite, and the site this paper came from, is SEI. I got this paper, gorgeous flocked paper, for 75% off. And plenty of it.
Now I just have to decide how to use it. My favorite kind of dilemma.
This is Atti and his little girlfriend Laney at a going away party. All the pictures came out blurry because I was racing to keep up with the cute in poor lighting conditions, but I couldn’t miss my opportunity. Laney and her family, including my friend Natalie, moved to Reno and left us behind.
Atti still has other sweet friends, including another little girlfriend Sarah, but it’s really hard to let go of Laney. She was always the first to rush over to him with a smile and a wave of her cute chubby hand, the one to fight to be next to his stroller when the class went on a walk, the first one to include him. And Atti adored her. He’d pet her pretty little cheek and say, “Awwwww….” and smother her with slobbery kisses and hugs.
Maybe it’s better if these two take a break from each other. I don’t know if I’d want to be dealing with a love this pure when they’re both teenagers.
This time of year is so fun because the kitties turn extra fuzzy as they grow their winter coats. Jem, our little gray cat, grows little points off the side of her cheeks we call her wings.
Cheetara would grow a mane that made her look like a wee little lion.
And don’t get me started on the belly fuzz happening over here. It’s like the best thing ever got twice as good.
Atti squealing with delight when he unwraps his new little piano toy
As I was compiling my list of crafty goals and plans for the year, I was tempted to erase them all and just write down, “Have one year go the way I think it will.” Three days in and I’m already being faced with some things headed my way that could change the whole direction of things for the foreseeable future. (No, I’m not pregnant.)
My crafty goal list is largely untouched other than taking off the few things I did manage to accomplish, mainly because there is still so much good stuff on there I want to get to if things like a move and two new careers would stop getting in my way. But, I don’t want them to stop getting in my way.
I’ve been thinking about what my Word of the Year will be this time around, and I’m thinking: Dedication. I’ve signed myself up for a whole lot of work, with my fingers all in a whole lot of pies, but I can’t help it. There’s a lot that’s important to me and a lot I want to do. Now is the time to rise up and meet the opportunities that have come my way.
I never in a million years would have predicted how 2010 shaped up. We faced another big move that sucked up most of my creative time this year, but what really changed things was getting the opportunity to write for the Guardian. 2010 is the year I can say I’m a writer.
It’s also the year I became an honest to goodness activist. For women, for gays, and now for war effected people of Africa.
My word for 2010 was, “Begin.” I think I did.
I had the best of intentions. I was only going to cook a little, eat a little, and then back to work on all the projects that are stacking up around here. But then Bear bought me a puzzle.
So instead of spending the time catching up on emails and writing projects, I spent the whole weekend cocooned on the couch sorting out one shade of green from a different shade of green.
Then there was the fact that we did Thanksgiving a little differently this year which meant that planning for the massive meal ended up in the hands of people who weren’t big on the planning, which sent my anal retentive self into a tizzy, so I spent all day Wednesday making plans and all day Thursday cooking. It’s what I really wanted to be doing all along, but it did put a damper in my good intentions of productivity.
Friday night brought us our new favorite holiday traditon. The Pardcastathon. For a craft/parenting blog, I have written a whole lot about my comedy nerd status. Never Not Funny is just one of the greatest discoveries I’ve ever made, and I can’t wait for each week’s episode to show up in my itunes. Best entertainment bargain for the price, too.
This year’s guests were nearly all different from last year’s and included Sarah Silverman, Jen Kirkman, Paul F. Tompkins, a really remarkable interview with comedy legend Tom Dreeson, and the musical stylings of Aimee Mann.
It’s still a little exhausting to think about, but from 6 pm to 6 am we sat in theater seats and laughed until we couldn’t laugh any more, and in the process the guys from NNF earned over $25,000 for Smiletrain, a charity that fixes cleft lips and palates in the developing world. What a win. The best possible comedy, an intimate setting, and so much good going out because of it.
Thanksgiving might just be my very favorite day of the year. Even with how bonkers I get for Christmas, if you were going to boil it down to one best day, I’d have to go with a day that required lists and planning and then a cooking extravaganza followed by a feast and a week of leftovers. All my favorite things.
Today I brought out the canner and made up a batch of my famous Sweet and Savory Cranberry Sauce. Now I’ll be able to enjoy one of the best parts of this best day, all year long.
Warning: Blurry, unflattering pictures ahead
The guys behind Yo Gabba Gabba are old family friends of ours, but it was still quite a surprise when an email showed up in my box telling us that there were tickets for the Yo Gabba Gabba live show waiting for us at the box office. The only catch was that the show was the very next day. I made a couple of phone calls, dropped everything I had on my schedule, and planned for a day that would blow my kid’s mind.
I’ve had a couple of hassling concert going experiences, so I carefully checked the venue’s website to see what we’d be allowed to bring in – no cameras, no food – and their disability access – really good, easy as pie – and set off. I was a little nervous about taking my little mobility impaired guy to his first concert and wanted to make it as easy as possible. Turned out that I needn’t have worried. We didn’t have any bags checked at all, and every parent around us had their big fancy cameras out. I was totally kicking myself. So instead I just have phone pictures that may just be some of the most unflattering pictures I’ve ever taken.
We got there about 15 minutes late thanks to a major tire blow out on the freeway. My friend Stacey and I woman’ed up and got almost all of the way through the tire change before a dreamy engineer in flannel and work boots pulled over to finish the job for us. That’s one awesome thing about living here, I knew some kind-hearted cowboy would come along eventually.
Then after a bit of ridiculousness involving some ushers who didn’t know how to find any seats and kept trying to stick us in other people’s, we sat down in time to sing along to nearly all our favorite songs from the show. Atti spent most of the show standing on my lap, his mouth and eyes both wide open with amazement, fists in the air and dancing by waving his body back and forth.
After the song about balloons, a bunch of balloons fell from the ceiling and the kids went absolutely bonkers. I used it as an opportunity to demonstrate the obvious gifts of Atti’s hair.
Atti sacked out hard last night, really early. He rocked hard and wore himself right out. I woke up this morning feeling like I had a non-alcoholic hangover. Feeling that worn out after a kid’s concert. I think that’s a sign that I am officially old.
Oh how I wish it was OK for me to bring the camera with me to Atti’s therapy and take pictures of the other kids. Oh how I wish I could introduce you all to this little cohort of boys Atti gets to hang out with as they all get stretched and pulled and taught how to use their little bodies.
When we go to MOVE class on Wednesday’s (which is basically like an adaptive PE class where special ed teachers play with the kids to teach them how to move) there are often other kids coming in and out. Lately there have been three other boys and a little girl, all right around the same age, all with different abilities and disabilities, who get to hang out together. These kids are so dang cute, so curious about each other, and it does my heart so much good to see Atti have peers.
When he goes to church on Sunday, his nursery leaders and the other kids have just been beautiful in how they include him. The little girls especially look after him and the kids fight to be the one to include Atti by sitting next to him or bringing him toys. I really couldn’t have asked for more then what he’s been given.
But, there’s still a difference. He needs those typical kids to show him what he could be doing and to give him the motivation to try, but until lately, he hasn’t seen any other kids that were like him. And I needed to see the kids that were like him to see how typical he really is, just by a different measure.
We’ve started a new technique called Therapeutic Brushing and it’s a little bit magic, I think. It’s complicated and technical, but boiled way way down for us laypeople, I basically give Atti a brushing every few hours as if he were a horse. There’s special brushes to use, and a specific technique, but essentially, he gets a good hard horse brushing every few hours.
There are a bunch of different reasons this works or times when you’d use it, but in Atti’s case it’s about giving his body input. Since the messages can’t get from his brain to his legs, the messages have to go from the legs to the brain, and the brushing stimulates all the nerves that send those messages.
It’s amazing to watch. After a brushing he sits up so much straighter, he doesn’t do some of the defensive behaviors that make our jobs harder, he’s much more active. And the whole time I brush him he giggles over the tickling.