The Hoods are here!

Toby loves his hoodies. Not the hip shirts with hoods you see on all the young doods and petty criminals, no those I don't like because of the miniscule teeny wee chance he may catch it on something. You've seen The Incredibles?
Remember her rant re: capes? Nnnno hoods. Too dangerous, dahling.

Ennywho, the hoodies I mean are strawberries! Mount Hood STRAWBERRIES!! I can type it loud because he's sleeping, this human who once burst into tears of longing when we drove past a large strawberry billboard. As you can imagine, we don't mind an obsession with healthy and affordable finger fruits but we still regularly spell rather than utter the word "berry" unless we have the goods to represent.

So today we bopped up to the library to pick up some books on hold (one on the creative disciplines and another on creative discipline. It's where we at.) and zipped over to the farmers market across the way. I am using fun verbs because actually we schlumped our sweaty cranky unpleasantly clinging way over there, wilted little pasty white family that we are. It's hotter than Wil Smith's abs here today. I am running the A/C with wanton fiduciary abandon. Whee.

So we picked up the 1/2 flat and tried to hoof it back to the air conditioned marvel of diesel sucking engineering in a manner that would get us there very quickly but would not cause my inner thighs to spontaneously combust. It's like the running-in-the-rain dilemna, but lamer. It's similar to that walk we all do when trying to score the next spot in a line without looking like a pushy jerk: casually, coincidentally, noncommittally swift.

I believe it was worth all the dehydration just to see the look on his red stained gob. I refrained from yelling, No no no, you don't just hork it down! But realized one animated movie reference per day is enough. Besides, they are sooo horkable.

The Crappening

Just shake it off, M. Night. I know you're better than that. I am one of the four viewers who even liked The Village. Heck, I enjoyed Lady in the Water- that was a real movie, I didn't daydream that one, right?

I'm sure you didn't mean to presume I was so stupid you needed to tell me exactly what was going to happen just before it did in your should-have-been-a-short film. Unless that's what you really meant by calling it the Happening?

I was impressed with how much you made me hate Marky Mark, because I have always liked him and his cute little abs. Yes, even back when the bunch was funky. Who knew he could do simpering wuss with so few layers.

Also, if you'd like to preach at me about the environment and mother earth, please make a video lecture instead. I've heard incorporating a scissor lift can lead to some success there. You've got the condescending tone down pat already.

Holy plot, man, that stunk.

This one goes out to the one I love...

Just think, honey, we're almost there.

Back in the day...

I was the worst mom at pre-preschool today.

1. We were late.
2. I forgot his bag with the all-important diaper and cup.
3. His nose apparently ran.
4. Quite a bit.
5. I was the last mom to pick up.

Thankfully he's not embarrassable yet. Soon.

He had only one melt-down today, when I tried to leave his favorite unfoldy pop-uppy car wash toy thingy on the hood of the Jeep as we drove off. I couldn't even figure out what he was pointing at while waling for a second or two. After I retrieved it he kept saying in a soft voice to himself, "of course we won't leave it, Buddy".

I caught myself asking Isaac to put his arms through the carseat straps. One, he doesn't know any of those words or have the neurons to rub together and Two, he wouldn't do it if he could- he hates that thing.

At one time I had a functional brain.

Grumpy

Hummmm hum hum hummmmm.

So mostly around here we consider the "children's music" genre to be something like Siblings Day- (Did you miss it yesterday? Run out and buy some cards and stuff quick!) an artificial thing created to generate revenue for poorly crafted goods, that should be celebrated continually anyway.

I've rambled before about what we like to have on for the kids. But one guilty pleasure is to have Toby crawl into my lap when I'm on the laptop and ask for "the mujeek puhleez". I go to Noggin and we listen to a few annoying tunes.

Am I the only parent in America who doesn't care for Laurie Berkner? She seems sincere enough and all but her songs are cloying and she's out of tune. Moose and Zee, the Noggin mascots, are similarly lacking in musical quality but the music is not quite as over-perkified. I can deal with a couple of their tunes before closing the browser and telling Toby we're all done.

On a side note, I do like Lisa Loeb and wish she'd write and perform more stuff- Noggin should have put her stuff up all over. Apparently she's got a new cd, maybe they will now. I went to school with her talented blue-haired conductor brother, Ben. Nice guy.

Lately they have a new (to me) guy on there, David Weinstone from New York. I dig a couple of his songs and find him to have some redeeming musical value. He plays some nice guitar and sings with enough character & clarity to catch a child's ears (Toby comes running like I've opened a pint of strawberries). What I like most is that he still sounds like he's doing what he wants, and not what he thinks will garner him a larger share of the minivan contingent's credit card debt.

Here's Grumpy, easily one of his catchiest tunes. It's probably his most annoying to most people, I suppose, but I like it.

Happy Father's Day

Father's day was fun.

We used it as an excuse to grill with my parents, which developed into an excuse to make strawberry ice cream and drink Black Butte Porter with my mom. Not that we need an excuse.

We reminisced and I realized yet again that I hope J and I can give our boys even some portion of the fun we had while growing up with our parents. Go ahead, roll your eyes internet. My college friend said we sounded like the Brady Bunch. Looking back I can hear the tinge of longing in her voice, but at the time I felt like it was just one more way in which I was a goody two shoes from a freakishly small town.

The rarity of our intact and more importantly enjoyable families isn't lost on us. Usually. Unless you're talking about me in Junior High, in which case I'll plead the fifth...

Hope you had a good day, too.

Bonding begins with 99 cent die-cast metal.

Toby has taken upon himself the important task of educating Isaac about the deep importance of all things wheeled.


Isaac adores him already, and is very trusting. Plus, he likes the bouncer to bounce.


Toby's favorite pose as big brother.

Well, I never.

It would be nice if, after calling and asking to see our house in 20 minutes, house hunters would at least come inside and have a look. I know it's not their fault that I ran around for 19 minutes tidying, picking up and shoving the boys (one of whom I woke from a nap) into the Jeep. But still, you could pretend you want to see it as I'm driving away instead of sitting in the driveway talking about the next place on your list.

At least the place was in order, if only for that one shining moment.

Do you think free viola lessons for a year with the purchase of our home would be an incentive or disincentive?

Aisaac

I think I went back to gigging a bit too soon.

Don't get me wrong, both the orchestras I've played with this past month have been great. The first was for a conductor I adore who reminds me of a favorite uncle and we did Missa Solemnis with lovely soloists and the only thing I can think to complain of is that the venue was a shmancy catholic church and sounded exactly like a deafening bathroom. My hands would have been protecting my ears if it weren't for the viola they were full of.

Isaac was only a few weeks old at the first rehearsal for that noise, so J brought him to me at the breaks to eat. Let's take a minute and be thankful someone invented this nursing privacy blanket thingy, shall we? I'm working on making myself a couple of knock-offs so I can have one in every bag. If you have a pregnant friend who's planning to boob the kid, get them one of these puppies and I swear she'll remember you in her will.

I also played with the Portland opera, and I am trying to figure out if the woman who sang Aida sold her soul to get her voice or is simply an angel on break from the sparkling gates of heaven. She reminds me of Renee Fleming, whom I might cyber-stalk if I were a socially dysfunctional tecky dude. Amneris kicked it old school, too. I had no idea how much I enjoy Aida- it was almost never a countdown of page turns to the final notes, which really are haunting despite always being described as such by critics.


The conductor, who must be very closely related to Jerry Stiller, was fantastic. I am not kidding- these are four-hour rehearsals and the time skips by. Everyone calling him Gigi made me feel more familiar than we are, like I might bump into him at a streetside cafe in Venice, peer over my huge black sunglasses and offer to buy him a glass of wine while he fawns over my adorably precocious yet incredibly well behaved wonder children.

So why then, in the midst of all the wine and roses, did I wish I weren't working?

Isaac's early weeks were, as everyone warned, entirely different than our memory of Toby's. We joke that he had two moods: asleep and pissed. He has an adorable scowl. Once after I got stuck in old-people traffic exiting the hall's parking garage, J greeted me with a screaming baby and "What HAPPened?" before I could even put down my case. In his defense, there are few circles of hell deeper than The Baby Won't Ever Stop Screaming. Now that Isaac's got a few months under his wee little belt, the learning-a-stick-after-driving-an-automatic phase has mostly passed and we've laid off comparing every single thing he does to rosy memories of his big brother. That, and he has indeed stopped screaming. (mostly)

It surprises me, though, how much just one gig on my schedule made in the feeling of a day or even a week. He probably picked up on my tension. I've probably ruined him something awful by failing to grow my hair seven feet long and wear gingham recreationally, but he was in trouble from the beginning what with a viola being practiced within earshot and such.

In conclusion, if we have another one of these things, I hope I remember to beg off any work for the first three or four months. Even though he was only ever in my hands or his dad's and even though it was nice to get out and smell the Egyptians (Aiiiiida!).

Was that it?

Was that the longest I've gone without posting? I hope so.

So what's up with you, outside world?

In our little compound it's all about placating the insane and caring for the incapacitated. Two and a half is an interesting mental arena. Nine weeks of age can be summed up as a constant state of leakage. I can truly say it keeps me busy.

I'm in the fantastic dreams and daydreams stage of post-partumdom. I hated it last time, and this time it's even peachier. Most nights just as I'm falling asleep a short scene plays doubletime, something like the opening of CSI or House but it horrifically stars either one or both of my boys. I see what's coming usually and can stop it from playing out in my hormone-pickled brain, but still it's no fun. I'll be glad when whatever gland's going off gets itself stabilized.

Whew. Well, I've been asked to come outside and clean up the 'piders. One of life's deepest pleasures has to be having a toddler come take your hand to assist in a task or complete an adventure. Sometimes it's empty webs or flecks of dirt, sometimes there are actual arachnids involved when he mentions his beloved bugs, so I better go see.

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???!!!