Random things...

From the past few weeks...


Juniper chowing down on some avocado:



























Sebastian's blue and gold banquet at the Bill Bates Cowboy Ranch and awards ceremony as he graduates from Tiger to Wolf cub!
































I walked in on Sebastian putting a fresh diaper on his sister's nakey butt.
He did a really good job.

Camping

Spring break.
Jes' chillin'...

Well, not entirely. We went camping to Turner Falls, OK last week for 3 nights. It was a blast. We have been before and will go back again at the end of summer.
There was an unexpected cold snap right before we left, which brought a wintry mix and a low of 30-something the night before we got there. While we were there the overnight lows were 41, 41 and 45. The days reached 60-something, 60-something and then about 80 on the final day.

We went with a group of close friends and their children and it reminded me of camping trips we had when I was a kid. It was great, I hope to do a big group friends and/or family camping trip every year!

While we were there we spotted numerous sneaky raccoons, a silver fox, a herd of deer, a skunk, lots of trout and minnows, a crayfish, a swarm of buzzards, turtles on a log, turkeys, and a partridge in a pear tree.

dude i really suck at this blog thing

4 months!

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies."
Sir James Matthew Barrie, The Little White Bird.

Sweet darling angel baby girl was 4 months old yesterday.

*sigh*

Sebastian

Ahhh, Sebastian...

What do I say about my first child? The one who made me a mother. The one who has both lifted me up in joy and broken my heart in almost equal amounts over the years.
Thankfully, the joy is still tipping the scales.
But boy, has this child taught me, and challenged me and frustrated me and hurt me and made me who I am today.

I've thought about this for weeks. Even before I started writing the Yossarian post. I still have no idea, so I'm going to go with stream-of-consciousness and see where that takes me. I think it might be the only way.

He is another child of mine who is showing to be very true to his sign. He is a Scorpio. And he is very possibly the most emotionally and physically passionate person I have ever had the privilege of knowing.
Fiesty, steadfast, gutsy, endowed with a snake's fierce and venomous tongue, this boy is the KING-OF-THE-WORLD!

He has these crushingly deep clear lake blue eyes that many young girls have already been lost in.

He reels you in, this one. He catches you with a glance and then casts you away with a sigh. No one has pierced his titanium shell, yet.

Sebastian's teacher has shared with me that all his classmates beg to be his partner when it's time to buddy up and he does his best to be diplomatic, and share himself around. People are so easily attracted to him. He's an Alpha, and the other kids just adore him.

It's so hard to get to know him. I struggle with this even as the one person who has known him the very longest, and dearest. We share a thread no one else ever has or will ever share but it doesn't mean I am anymore privy to his innermost.
I know there is so much that goes on in his heart and head that will be locked away in there forever.

I worry for him, as he grows, for I know he is going to be easily overcome with the trials childhood and adolescence will throw at him. As he breaks other hearts, his heart too will be broken. Shattered more likely. But he will withstand, and conquer. Not without a fair dose of agony, but eventually.

Sebastian is the opposite of both of his parents. He is Left brained. Both Chad and I are right.
Sebastian, from a young age, grasped numbers, counting, and things pertaining to science with ease.
I still can't count without using my fingers.

He loves sports, he is athletic. I can't even catch a ball.

It's a constant daily experiment, being his parent. But it keeps me on my toes, being stimulated to think outside the box, to evaluate what he needs, what works best for him. It's not easy altering your own perception of the world to best see it from another view. Sometimes, it's downright tortuous.

He wants to be a "space man". And I hope he hangs on to these dreams. I want to see him do something awesome. Something really out of the ordinary.

He is a loving little boy. He adores his sister (who just lights up for him more than for ANYONE else), and is a typical brother to Yossarian. I see them being good buddies in the years to come, when Yossarian matures a little more.

He's so young. His soul is brand new. Although he believes he came from somewhere else first. He believes he was dead before this life, and that he'll die and be born again as something fresh. He enjoys going to church and then coming home and telling us exactly why he doesn't believe in the God fairytale. I commend him for that. I commend him for having the tenacity to stand up and say no way to his authority figures. I commend him for telling me that his teacher is wrong when she very technically told him that "not everything is possible".

I hope and pray that one day, Sebastian will get beyond our little galaxy.

I thought it only fair...

To at least give my other children a post of their very own in light of Juniper's dedication.

So, I wrote some of the following on a message board last week and figured it a good jumping off point to talk about my middle child.

My Yossarian.
I have a pretty strong connection with this little soul I think. I can relate to him. Maybe it's a middle child thing?

He is not as young as his earthly years might have you believe.
He will be three in April.
But his soul is well traveled.
You can see that in his eyes, and it's mimicked in most of his actions.


He is a Taurus, through and through. Bullheaded. He is Stubborn, Strong, and Determined.
He will not, under any circumstances be fooled, conned, or reasoned with.
Reason doesn't exist in his world. He relies on pure instinct and whim.
There is only one truth and that is his own.
He does not follow rules, and is absolutely unapologetic for that.
He will look me in the eye and tell me clearly what he'll do instead, with such strong conviction that all I know how to do is shrug my shoulders and let him be.

Who am I to knock that determination?
No one, that's who.

Funny thing is - I thought Sebastian was spirited when he was little.
That's a laughable thought, these days.
Yossarian has taken that title and claimed it as his very own.

Beyond all that though he's the most openly giving of love little kid I've ever known. He GUSHES over all of us, lavishes us with his affection. We get passionate kisses and hearty embraces daily, out of the blue, which is the best kind. I never have to ask. He knows when is the best time to smother me - usually when I am angry or distracted or stressed or absolutely not expecting it. Always perfectly timed by him.

He will do wonderful things in his life. He will make art and love. He will dance to street music and appreciate little things, like warm bread and soft leather.

Most importantly, he will not surrender.

For Juniper

Little girls are precious gifts, wrapped in love serene.
Their dresses tied with sashes and futures tied with dreams.

I decided today, what better way to really start this thing, this most time consuming thing that will be ignored way too often, I am sure. What better way than gushing about my daughter? Nothing. There is nothing better.

It's evident to me now, more so than ever before, that it is our birth right, as girls and eventually as women, to be a muse. It is a blessing (and often a curse) woven into the very threads of our feminine tapestry from conception.

Looking at my daughter is a humbling affair. She isn't just cute. Of course she is cute, precious, adorable, angelic. But calling her those names, those elementary, plebeian names makes me feel beggarly in their wake.
Beyond that she is beautiful. She is heart-breakingly, breathtakingly, mind-blowingly, tragically beautiful.

She possesses an all-encompassing beauty. That's right. Even her gas escapes in a song.
When she cries it is a lyre, and when she coo's, it must be from a harp.

Every slender finger, every pale lash, every soft fold of her tiny vulva. It is all impossibly perfect.

I have to qualify that I have two beautiful sons. Two amazingly spirited, funny and gorgeous sons.

I love them each with as much vigor as the next, but it is a different sort, the love for my sons and the love for my girl.
My sons are the sunshine. My daughter is the moon.

They will never have the certain softness that a girl has. That look Botticelli captured perfectly. There is always going to be something slightly harsher on a boy, unyielding.
They may be chubby babies with squishy thighs and bottoms, and cute kids with round plummy cheeks, and tall almost men with scruffy hair and pink pubescent lips learning to enjoy kissing...
But they will never have the softness that comes with being female.

It really has taken me by surprise. This awe I've found with being the mother to a girl. Mother to a daughter. I would never have thought it would be quite this powerful. And maybe it's not the norm. Maybe just after 7 and 2.5 years of being the mother to boys, I was all but lost in a sea of testosterone. So this sudden surge of estrogen in the house was shockingly unexpected.

It is welcome, of course. But I don't expect that the sharp inhale of air and the pricking in my eyes that occurs when I see her glorious naked little body before me will cease anytime soon.

Francesca Lia Block got it right when she wrote "In every girl is a Goddess"...


Smitten, every one of us.