Snapshot (snapshot not included)

Tonight J went for a long bike ride. It's beautiful here, mid seventies and the air feels luscious. I noticed it because it's spring, but soon I'll be taking the lusciousness for granted.

So off he pedaled with my blessing.

And what did I decide, with the day drawing to a close and the boys appropriately groggy from a day well-played? What else, but that it was time to cut Toby's hippie shag hair.

I had it all worked out in my mind, but what it became was not so tidy. At the height of the makeover, Toby's golden mane was flecked with blood from my overzealous index finger and he was steadfastly picking hair off his icee while Cars blared from the TV. Isaac was fully involved in one of his best cries yet- and that's saying something- while strapped into the inexorable baby swing. I realized as he lost it that a swing is nothing but a brightly colored automaton. I hate automatons. Gah.

So upstairs we all went, in two trips, to wash off the hair and blood and high fructose corn syrup. Toby enjoyed his bath at least as much as any other and is growing impervious to his brother's protests. I bounced the one with my foot while pajama-ing the other, prayed through increasing fussing and went through our blanket ritual despite full-tilt cryage from the newby.

I thought if someone could see nothing but my silhouette in those moments, I would look like a clown spinning a hoop on my foot while creating a whole balloon zoo with my hands. There would even be what looked like acrobatics thrown in from time to time as I reach for whatever is constantly not there- the wipes, the desitin, my martini.

So that was my evening. J returned glorious and sweaty just as the laundry began its hairy spin and the vacuum finished gagging on the remains of the Farrah Faucet tribute that Toby once maintained.

And he made me a real martini. It's right here, just inches from my hand, and everyone under 3 is asleep.

Time for some wild hot....zzzzz.

My love language is sleep.

The new guy insists on getting up every two hours at night. He sleeps better during the day, mostly. When he's not waking up, he's grunting or snoring or passing gas so loud you'd think a very large man with medical problems has come for a visit. I am not a heavy sleeper.

I thought I'd be posting more than mushy fauning over my husband type of stuff now, I even had a few thoughts flit through my brain yesterday while I was driving. By the time I got home all that was left of them was the impression that there was something I meant get done on the computer.

We have our fabulous family coming to town this weekend, and rehearsals for Aida start Saturday. Both are things I'm looking forward to. The thing about sleep deprivation is that it could just cause me to jot down things my inlaws tell me in my music and bring the conductor a beer and an extra pillow. Though maybe neither would mind the switch so much, who knows?

JXY

My man he is manly. I have several examples to support this conclusion: I can show the world it's not my bias talking.

ONE
Witness this morning's match pitting him against the massive pile of twisty phone line that is the Community Center Sign Up Day. I dialed for two pleasantly mind-numbing hours, from just before 8 am. I can recite the exact tone and inflection with which the woman kept answering, "All circuits are busy now...".

But my man, he dialed the land line and his cell phone like a pro. If our lives are ever made into a movie, his dialing will be slo-mo and will include percussive explosion sounds for emphasis as his fingers depress the buttons with such testosterone and focus. So of course he got through. And we got all of our classes- take that, other moms desperate for a slot in Teacher Laurie's Friday class.

TWO
Last night I played a concert. Isaac won't be the magical age of bottle-suckage (four weekies) until Sunday night. So he cried and cried for the last little bit of waiting, maybe from hunger, maybe because he enjoys a good wail now and then. My man slowly lost his manly mind BUT he was nice to the banshee. When I offered to go buy him some beer, he even paused a second before subtly enquiring if the wee noodie would be accompanying me. That kind of casual restraint, it is rare and precious.

THREE
After his rough night, one which would bring any mortal man's shoulders up around his ear-holes in wound-up tension, HE rubbed MY feet.

As I type, he is rocking the Iz's bouncer to keep him pacified.

Masculine. With a million Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmms.

After an absence from blogging, it seems a post of some depth would be required. Too bad!

We are honestly having a great time with Isaac. He is so beautiful, I can and do stare at him literally for hours.

Toby has been very casual about the whole thing. At the hospital he was enamored of J's banana muffin and could have cared less that a new wee sheriff was in the room. For the first two days after we came home, he ran around like his pants were on fire in a spot-on imitation of tired-hungry-hyper Toby. After that he's been his two year-old self. He actually offered Isaac his blanket once or twice. This is the Toby equivalent of the shirt off his back, so we were impressed.

We have so much help it's almost embarrassing. Mom and Dad are Toby's playmate slaves of choice and they also do a mean job pampering us with beer & sherbert-stocked fridges and same-day laundry service. I think we'll have a bunch more kids just to score the sweet set-up. But J can be the pregnant one this time.

I'm too lazy to get my USB chord and camera to post any more pictures... but wait! My phone is by my foot, and I think I might have something cute in there somewhere... yep:

Piles of Isaac

Look how little! And he can already blow kisses.










Rad hair, baaaaaad attitude.










Imitating mama in labor.










Heart-shaped nostrils, special ordered.











Mwah.

Isaac Thomas

March 24, 3:35am
8 lbs 10 oz
21.5 inches

We're all happily lazing in our hospital suite, letting them do the laundry and cooking for a couple of nights. Plus I like the bendy bed. Everything went perfectly and I am so pleased to meet him.

Thank God!

Same, you?

Sorry, I got nothin.

I hope we'll have news and pictures and gushing of all sorts soon.

You must be at least 76% as sick of hearing that as I am of saying it.

POV

{Should you be so curious, you'll have to click the pics to enlarge and see the pirate ship in the first one and the relevant text in the second.}




Pirate stories, especially the Shanghai-ed variety, are fun because people are often whisked away from the daily grind and forced into a complete otherness of perspective. When I was a kid I daydreamed about being kidnapped by the circus or transported back to Mozart's time (where I would be the best player EVER and would also understand that rats carry the plague) or I would be taken on some kind of adventure in which my family would unknowingly be saved by my incredible horsemanship and Wonder Woman costume. I was (was?) a daydreamy kid. Mom often had to remind me to "stop dawdling" and put on my other sock as I sat on my bed in a reverie on school days.

The hijacking of my life by my family feels a bit like one of these imaginary sagas. Daring situations come up, new characters are introduced, the path just gets randomer. Today it occurred to me that I like it that way. Call it a new flood of hormones on an already swollen sea, but the next year is looking more like a beacon and less like a burden by the day.

I recently posted a 35 x 35 list of things I wanted to do before turning 35 in May. That pipe dream has been revised as I have been busy doing much more important things like building a human being in my middle and eating several tankards of refined sugar daily. So, as owner-operator of this whole shebang, I have revised my list and expanded the deadline such that these things are now to be completed throughout my 35th year.

Just to avoid boring you to death, I'll refrain from including my list here, but maybe it will show up somewhere later if I find it motivating. My mom's not so likely to remind me to keep going with this, so maybe I'll be off on other trails and May 2009 will come and go without a whimper. I think I'll stay tuned to find out. You can see the old version here. For the record, I've completed 4.267 out of 35. That's 12.19 percent.

Heart wide open, fully invested life is all a matter of your POV.

Week 38 Round-up

I've caught that dreaded third-trimester bug, you know, the one where the preggo cannot stop watching Discovery Health shows involving rare disorders and high-risk deliveries. I have a few hours to myself right now and I spent part of it wallowing in frightening medical possibilities, with Toby at the Aumsville toddler ranch while I take care of some high powered (cough) viola career-related jockeying and teach a student in Portland. Mostly I had my bible study come over and also had tea with my pianist while we talked about what we wanna play this year.

As to my balance of ambition/parenting dilemnas, I think I have found a partial solution for at least the next few years. My focus will turn to my duo, building the viola studio at the college, and to opportunities I can arrange for myself. Those are the things I enjoy most artistically anyway. Those are also the most easily self-driven aspects of classical freelancing and they afford me the most control. I would rather put my energy there than in drumming up gigs and networking, though there are a few ensembles I will always agree to play when they call.

A brilliant friend reminded me about grace this week- and especially that it can include the ability to be okay with a different circumstance than one has planned. This relinquishment of control and trust in grace applies both in sacrifice and in receipt of energies and abilities.

A phrase from a song lyric has been rattling around my head: heart wide open. I want that in these preschool, busy, boring, frenetic, rapid adaptation years. In the three most important years of my life (marriage, Toby's birth, and now Isaac's arrival) I've always longed for the ability to be present, to slow down, to remember and absorb my own days.

I tease and complain about pregnancy, but I hope I don't forget what it's like to actually contain all this life, otherness, potential.

And I hope he comes soon.

Zoot!

Toby's old enough now to actually notice and enjoy the animals. In the last pic he's demonstrating his look of deep concentration. Wonder how he'll look at his brother for the first time... and when- WHEN?! WHENNNNN???!!!

Recent Viewings

We've seen a lot of movies lately. Each time my parents volunteer to have us stay, we like to swing over to a theater after Toby's gone to bed. Or sometimes Dad will go with us and Mom and Toby have play-time on the ranch. She's particular about movies, and we take all comers, so it works out nicely.

The Departed: C+. Is it just me, or does Scorsese pull a wiggle of his enormous eyebrows and at the very end make fun of the audience for taking this movie seriously? There are good performances, of course (Leonardo, Marky despite his hideous hair), but generally I think if I was a writer for this film I'd be ticked. I don't mind shoot-em-ups, but Reservoir Dogs this ain't. It felt like an ad for the Scorcesian style, the movie itself be damned.

Be Kind, Rewind: B+. I really like wonky movies centered on characters rather than tidy plots. And it's well-known I have a thing for Jack Black's style. My personal jury is out on director Gondry (LOVED Eternal Sunshine, and all those Bjork videos, but not so sure about Science of Sleep) and there are certainly some cliches of his own style in this. He has this one habit of setting up little scenes and then walking the camera along them horizontally, like a child would move from room to room of a doll-house or diorama. He seems also to like things that wiggle: fingers, children, streamers. If you want your movie to make a moral statement and to have an easily discernible plot structure/form, you probably won't like this. His pacing is all his own here, so you won't have the constant gags of standard Jack Black vehicles. I think he got a bit lost in his exploration of the middle act, but otherwise I liked it just fine.

No Country for Old Men: A. I have a huge crush on the mind of Cormac McCarthy. My dad put me onto his writing way back when, before any of the books were movies. I remember All the Pretty Horses made me cry actual tears from my hard-hearted cold-blooded ducts. It's the kind of writing you feel older for having read. No Country is one I haven't read, but it felt like McCarthy. They didn't glam it up, they didn't make it about anything less than the foundations of the human condition. In his writing there seems always to be a few distilled conversations between austere characters that define the kernel of the work, and these were not absent in the movie. Again, there is no hollywood tidiness here but you won't mind for the richness of the tale. Also, Tommy Lee Jones is yet another lawman, but like none other he's played, and his lack of an Oscar should embarrass the little naked bronze man.

WFMW: Backwards Edition: Graceful Transitions

Today's Works for Me Wednesday is a backwards edition, meaning I ask for advice & solicite your ideas rather than coming up with my own.

So, here's what I'd like to know.

How do you gracefully handle fundamental change? We are about to go from one great kid (2 y-o boy) to two. I am about to go from miserably pregnant to ALL THE HECK DONE (whoooopp!). My career as a musician/teacher is sort of in adjustment, per the general SAHM-ness of my life for the next few years. I don't take the ability to be home with my kids for granted- it is exactly what I want- but I won't pretend my personal ambitions are in some parental deep-freeze.

I would love anything from practical advice on balancing being a mom and caring for my own drives (ambitions, goals, professional stimulation) to tips on how to breastfeed while potty training.

Thanks and check out all the other folks looking for advice (and the neat ideas they'll get in their comments) here.

Dude, where's our car?

Sorry for our absence.

I've been working on a couple posts, but we were delayed in Salem by the guy who hit our parked car, putting it out of commission for at least a week. I gotta say, as much as having somebody hit your nice innocent car stinks, the best scenario for this to happen is while you are inside a movie theater watching the Movie of the Year and it is parked outside. No arguing about fault, no one hurt. Even the tree he creamed after glancing off our car and pushing it into the street had only a few scratches in the trunk. Poor guy had low blood sugar, or so we heard.

Now we're careening around in a ginormous Durango thingy, which we have dubbed the Black Jeep of the family because Toby has a thing for Jeeps. It has room for the entire World in the dashboard alone, so if you come by we'd be happy to put you up in the 800 thread-count cupholder cozies.

Yay for insurance. Poor Jeep!

WFMW: Unstuffy Classical Music

This week for Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer's Works for Me Wednesday, I am going to give you an insider's guide to some of the coolest classical music and FREE internet resources for finding more you might like.

Broadening your child’s musical taste while expanding your own

As a professional classical musician (I’m a violist, in case you are bopping by for WFMW. Feel free to submit viola jokes in the comments if you like.), civilian friends sometimes ask me what music I like to play for my kid. There are a lot of pieces out there you are probably already familiar with (whether you know it or not) because they’re common in soundtracks, car commercials, produce departments and Muzak tracks worldwide. I’m looking at you, Pachelbel’s Canon and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

There are some really cool classical works out there that you may not have heard yet. I’m aiming for things that are accessible enough that you’ll enjoy them the first time but complex enough that you’ll still be enjoying in a few months (hopefully years!). Here are some of my (and my 2 year-old boy’s) favorites.
So let's dig in!






Bela Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra
I’ve blogged about this piece before, but it really does get the job done. It’s got it all: huge brass and strings parts, rhythmic drive, beautiful melodies. Bartok was a fascinating character and also happens to have written a lot of great stuff for viola. If you like this piece, you might also enjoy his 44 Duos for Two Violins. Here's a link to a free listen of one movement on Rhapsody.

Maurice Ravel: String Quartet
This is an incredibly cool piece and I bet with a little legwork you can find it online free from some enterprising ensemble, because it's one of those pieces you have to play if you want to be the new hotshot virtuoso string quartet.

Felix Mendelssohn: Octet
Can you believe he wrote this at 16? Sheesh. I totally want this played at our 50th anniversary or some other huge party. Help me think of reasons to throw a fete.

The Naked Violin: Tasmin Little
Don’t worry, she just means naked as in unaccompanied. This is a FREE release for download by well-known British violin virtuoso Tasmin Little. I am in love with her concept, and have in fact been trying to get a similar (though currently not so famous) project off the ground. I would recommend starting with the incredible Bach Partita, then moving on to the intense Ysaye (pronounced Eee-sigh), and working your way through the Patterson. Her website even includes ideas for classroom use (cough- heyhomeschoolers- cough).

Which brings us to an intro to a few of the many Rad Online FREE Broadcasts
New York Philharmonic
Here’s a great site to get you started with listening to lots of different repertoire if you don’t happen to have a good classical station where you are. You can listen to whatever they had on the air that week through your computer for FREE. And NYPhil, they aren’t going to let you down.

The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
If this orchestra were a person, for me it would be Johnny Depp. Maybe Will Smith. Anyway, it’s hot with a million t’s, and I have always loved them. Ask any classical string player about their dream orchestra job, and I’d lay money they’ll mention Orpheus sooner or later. They play without a conductor and every single musician is one of the best in the world. When I was a wee undergrad in New York, I had the pleasure of getting to know a few of them. Once I even got to listen to a dress rehearsal in which Gil Shaham (wonderful violinist) was playing and James Taylor was sharing our row in the seats at Carnegie Hall. It was neat, even though I didn’t know who James Taylor was at the time. So, that’s a tangent, but you should really look into any recordings/videos/podcasts/internet broadcasts you can find. I especially recommend their recordings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (I know, but it’s a great piece and actually deserves the fame), and the disc with Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony and Britten’s Simple Symphony is one of our household favorites.

Alexander Street has a blog offering a free classical download once a week, which I just discovered while surfing for this post. Might be worth checking out, and I know there are more like this out there.

Many classical radio stations have excellent podcasts available free, as do a ton of orchestras. The last three top-tier orchestras I played with all had a free kid's program at their local libraries. Check around- I bet there is a whole community of vibrant, unstuffy classical music near you.

So that's what works for me- another WFMW whacked out at the JWards.
Thanks for sticking with it to the final cadences!

28 days!

Because I don't count today or the day I'm actually due, there are just 28 days left on this hormone trip! Last stop, everybody off, this train is speeding back to the yard to remedy all misshapenness.

28 days is a fun thing to google, because you come up with either everyone's favorite sweatpants & beer movie star Sandra Bullock or a deadly virus.

I'm doing a little dance. It's jiggly, but it's mine.

Inspiring

I wanted to put some thought and organized writing into this post, but for now I'm just going to get it out.

This weekend at Imago, an African man called Saah Joseph came and told us a little bit about how our church and others had helped him in his pursuits over the past year. He told us a ton of churches have sent folks over to talk about how they were going to supply wells and promising him the moon, only to disappear. I cannot fathom how a church could do that to people in such dire straits. Christians should be outraged at that, maybe hunt down the offenders and slap them with fish. I recommend either electric eels or spiny blowfish. But that's not what impressed me about Saah's story: check out a few of his accomplishments.

Saah played on the Liberian national soccer team before the chaos in Sierra Leone in the late nineties. Since the struggles he has planted 17 churches, 12 schools and a technical program for women whose only choice before his doors opened was prostitution. His programs sound practical and effective: for $500 sponsorship the street women are taught to read, given a meal a day and basic medical care, given a sewing machine, given prenatal care should they need it, and upon graduation receive $100 toward starting a business. This is a man whose father was killed and mother shot, who was forced to escape on foot, walking more than 400 miles through the bush to a refugee camp. He is 32 years old.

He is 32. 32!

He was joined on our church stage by Benjamin Nkusi, a man who survived the genocide in Rwanda. This guy spoke so matter-of-factly with the lilting accent of Africa that you could easily have missed the facts of his story. He hid in a home with his wife when the rebels came, and hearing them fire on the room where she lay he assumed she was killed. Fortunately, she was unharmed. They were then stranded behind enemy lines without food, and he was forced to go out in search of some. He said this like I would mention a trip to Target. In fact, he had to leave their hiding place on foot, was picked up by somebody with a truck and unfortunately didn't escape the notice of the rebels. They pulled him from the truck and tied him in the back room of a bar. He said a man drinking in the bar was a "specialist in the killing of people", in just the tone you or I might mention that somebody's very good at Trivial Pursuit. Happily for Benjamin, a priest happened by while he waited for his executioner and asked permission to speak with the prisoner, then chided the rebels for having innocent blood on their hands. And they let him go. I imagine that saying this is an exceedingly rare outcome is an understatement.

After the genocide, Benjamin started a ministry of reconciliation (ALARM) and has seen executioners turn themselves over to the mercy of families of those they killed. As he said, "it was very difficult for those families, but they were able to show mercy and forgiveness."

There are so many unimaginables in these stories that I can hardly believe I sat in the same room with these people. I've seen Hotel Rwanda, I had Japanese friends who were in Sierra Leone as all hell broke loose. Reconciliation, grace, mercy, hope: these words act weighty, but what do they really have to do with my own world?

The grief and terror these people have experienced is so indescribable: hopefully it doesn't also become forgettable in the clutter of my daily life.

ps. If you'd like a good place to start with support, try Living Water International. It's our church's Lent project.

Juno (not Juneau)

I'm really glad Diablo Cody won the Oscar for best screenplay. I like her freestyling ways, and wonder if she's fun in real life or if she's too cool to just hang around with. This is a woman who pulls off leopard print and jet black dye jobs. I can honestly say I'm looking forward to reading her stripping memoir and am curious to see what angle she takes on what I think would be kind of a sad life.

And with that, my swelled up hands are numb and I'm going to need a poking stick with which to type. Pretty!

Skip this- it's ugly.

I cannot believe I have 32 days left. My hands get sausagey and numb with no provocation, I am awake every night at 4am (give me a call, we'll chat), the steering wheel in the Jeep is giving me a cello-mark on my belly button and I... well, I waddle.

I think the extra fat has infiltrated my grey matter, because even my thinking feels groggy unless I'm mad. Which is a lot more often lately, right honey?

I am drinking raspberry leaf tea and casually asking the midwives WHEN WILL YOU START THE NATURAL INDUCTION STUFF??!!! (In another 2.5 weeks.)

How do people do this with more than one kid?

A day at the beach

XOXOXOXOXOXO

I'm feeling gushy! Schmaltzy, sentimental, full of good cheer. Here, have a pic from last Easter. It has been a lovely Valentine's, and my man isn't even home from work just yet.

Toby gave his first spontaneous hug to anyone in his age bracket today. His girl Audrey (an older woman at 2 3/4) walked in and he pretty much chased her around hugging her and looking deeply into her eyes for several minutes. She played hard to get, but I can tell she digs him.

He also put his hand on my cheek and called me pretty while I was writing this post. He's never done anything like that before, either. My men are goooood, people. The bigger one sent me Valentines tulips!

Here, have another heart-stopping recipe from last night's double fondue date with my parents!
Grown-up Creamsicle Fondue

1 package vanilla chips
A splash (maybe 1/4 cup) milk or heavy cream
Grand Marnier to taste (we doubled the recipe and used one of those airline-sized bottles, about 4 tbsp)

Melt the chips with the cream, either in the microwave in 20 second intervals or in a fondue pot while stirring constantly. Add orange liquor once smooth and melty.

Give your loved ones some banana hunks, pieces of pineapple, strawberries and pulled-apart chunks of angel food cake to dip. Since we'd already done a big fondue dinner, we gave everybody their own little bowl of the good stuff instead of all dipping in the fondue pot again.

In addition to being Valentine's day, did you know it's Oregon's birthday? She'll be 150 next year.

Here's to you, my friends, family and occasional random blog readers. Hope you and yours are enjoying the day!