September 3rd, 2008 Lisa
This may be cliche, but I feel like a part of my heart has been pulled out and left at kindergarten! It’s the silence, the quietness in my house, the way my two year old daughter’s voice sounds more noticeable. It’s feeling unneeded. It’s that someone else is caring for my little boy, and I am here, waiting for him to return safely to me. I supposed all mothers go through this - different rites of passage where our children slowly spread their wings, each time a little farther. This is my small moment of mourning; where did the past five years go?
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August 27th, 2008 Lisa
We spent a week vacationing on Bainbridge Island, in the Puget Sound near Seattle and I have so many wonderful ideas I want to write about - from seeing our old friends and their families eating out of their gardens, kayaking across the sound, exploring a fairy garden (those of you with 5 year old girls should definitely know about this!), sitting around a campfire with the kids roasting marshmallows to make ’smores and enjoying the simple pleasure of throwing rocks in the water for an hour. Or two.
First, though, I must confess what happened this morning, back in my real world where school is almost starting and I’m making decisions about what/where/when in the busyness of our lives: two babysitters showed up at my house, at the same time. Yes, I had booked two wonderful girls to care for my kids without realizing I had booked them. There’s that thing they say about losing brain cells when you have kids — well, I lost a few.
I’m fortunate to have a little time each week to myself, hopefully to nurture myself so that when I am with my kids, I’m more relaxed. Mothering with grace, as they say.
Onto fairies. My girlfriend S. told me her daughter L. started getting into fairies, so she (the girl) wrote a letter to the fairy. The fairy wrote back, this went on for about six weeks with L. writing each day to the fairy - or, actually, fairies — sometimes she wrote ten fairies in one day! She’d ask them questions, asked for a wand, and the fairy/fairies always wrote back. Finally she asked for a fairy house, and the fairy replied that she couldn’t build a house but that perhaps Grandpa could help and presto, there is now a little fairy house nestled in her back yard among the tall trees.
I love this story because first I got to witness my son and L. explore the fairy garden together, and we couldn’t pull them away. I also love it because writing and reading weren’t the primary focus, but obviously in her attempts to communicate with the fairies, L. was working on these skills. Too often when I want to “teach” my kids something, I do it literally, sitting down to practice letters or read sight words, but its so much more fun (for kids AND parents) to teach in disguise - to explore a fairy land or pirate land or outer space and do a little reading, ‘riting & ‘rithmetic along the way. Thanks to S. & L. for sharing their fairies with us.
To end today I want to share this shot of my daughter, listening for the sound of the ocean. . . . it reminds me to just stop, and listen:
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April 25th, 2008 Lisa
I remember the contrast of yellow and blue in the photo, the way his tiny fingers spilled onto the clothes; his forearm nestled close to his face. His head turned back, just a bit and his four day old eyes closed as he dreamed about whatever babies dream about. His feet crossed, a bit webbed probably from his position inside my belly for so many months. I remember the moment, sitting with him in the chair while my husband clicked the shutter on the camera, click, click, click. And that photo became my firstborn’s birth announcement, that moment sitting in the rocking chair in our house on Alvira Street etched in my memory forever.
Between sleepless nights and the sound of “kids” always in the background, its difficult to capture these moments in time, these moments that really are what life is all about. I know as parents we all take the photos but getting them somewhere beyond a shoebox or a hard drive is difficult.
MamaBlogs aims to make that part of parenting just a bit easier by finding the best tools to capture and preserve key moments of our children’s lives. I’m not talking just about first Christmases and first days of school, but perhaps most importantly the things that are the foundation for the memories they will have: the time a little girls big brother taught her how to ask for “lollypops”; the time your son woke up and said he wanted to stay in pajamas all day and paint; the time Dad pulled a son’s elbow out of his socket by roughhousing just a bit too much. How do you capture all of these memories in a way you can share with your child when he or she grows up?
Stay tuned…and soon you’ll preserving these golden years in a way that makes all your mama-friends jealous!
Click here to see the birth announcement. . .
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