i want to tell you

I miss it here.  I miss unloading and spitting things out.  I was going to post our old poetry this month but then I somehow lost all of the poetry?  I had it pulled out and now I don't know where I put it.  It isn't that I am out of things to say, it's more that I've gotten comfortable keeping things in my head and it felt cozy for awhile but now it is suddenly feeling crowded in my brain space.

I want to tell you about dumb things and important things and sad things and happy things.  About my new coffee table and what I have recently made out of some of the many many (way too many) vintage sheets I have in the closet and how my camera is broken and Bubble Guppies songs are stuck in my head 24/7 and how I am obsessed with the Goodwill bins (THE BINS, the outlet, oh my gosh, help me, it's like dumpster diving, you have to wear gloves) and how alternately blissful and incredibly lonely I feel.  I just don't know how to say these things because I have forgotten how to type and share and the lock has gone back on my internal diary and it feels funny to say it all out loud. I want to shake off the locked up feeling.

So help me out?

Ask me anything.

I will answer as many as I can these last few days of April.  I promise.  I will do my best.  I miss it here.

Ask me anything.



prince hal

It's thunderstorming right now which feels pretty wonderful.  Clark says guess what, the plants are taking a shower.  They are.  Good for them.  I think it would feel physically nice to be a plant, probably thin and flexible and dancery. It would get pretty boring though.

I have posted on twitter a few times about Hal and all of his needs.  High needs.  I think he is technically a high needs baby (he is everything on that list), but I feel like I have to clarify that he isn't nonstop fussy or unhappy or driving me crazy.  If I had to describe him, I'd say he just seems annoyed that he is a baby.  He wants to be big.  He wants to walk and talk.  He wants to feed himself.  He is happy and smart and he has great motor skills and he waves and tries to say "hi" and smiles a ton and is so, so ticklish.  But his emotions are Big and he lets you know how he feels.  He is intense and energetic.  He never stops moving.  Trying to co-sleep with him is like trying to sleep with a raccoon.  And he wakes up every morning somewhere around 4am and stays awake yelling and wiggling and doing the raccoon thing for hours, until the big kids wake and it is a new day.  And he KEEPS ME UP all of that time.  UP and AWAKE, most of the night! So I am very very tired and grouchy until about 11 every morning.  I have to drink my coffee and put my makeup on and get dressed and stare myself in the mirror and repeat that I Can Do Stuff before I start feeling like a normal human being.  I'm not dying or miserable or anything with all of this.  I am mostly perplexed, slightly amused, slightly frustrated, and tired.  But whatever, whenever I look at him, greet him, or talk to him, I smile.  And talk babytalk.  And pinch his little cheeks and he always smiles back and laughs, even if then he goes right back to yelling at me like he's in charge of my life, which I guess he kind of is right now.


Do or did you have a high needs baby?  Did they stay kind of fussy or get a little easier as they learned to talk and walk?  My theory is that Hal will sleep better when he can do the things he wants to do and be independent, but my belief is rooted mostly in hope. Clark was/is a spirited toddler and preschooler but a pretty average sweet baby.  Alice was a very mellow baby, really as easy as can be, and is kind of a pill nowadays though still very cuddly.  Ahhhh, these unique complicated baby kids!  It's like they're little PEOPLE or something!

Edited to add!  I almost forgot to include the fact that Hal is eight months old today.  He is.  Eight months.  Also wanted to include this video because Luke and I looked right at each other when we saw it and said, "THAT IS SO HAL" to each other  This is so Hal.  Ha.


i almost included a singing-along video but wimped out

There are times when I should probably cry but I don't.  Maybe I cried too much as a teenager or I've cried too much in the last couple of years or I don't know. My crying reflex response to sad things has just lost its snap.  It's broken-in now, kind of tired and not so easily impressed.

Unsorted emotions, however, still surprise me and come out as tears.  This is sometimes embarrassing.  Parades do me in.  Little kids doing cute little kid things.  Shared experiences, with lots of people all cheering for the same thing.  Something about the big-ness of all of this, or something,

Watching "Tangled" with my kids on Saturday night I cried a stupid amount. I cried when the Disney Castle came on the screen and I cried during the opening song and I cried at the paper lanterns and the boat and the romance and the singing and the ending. I did.  Something about the film made me feel like a little girl and also like a mom and there was an odd but surprisingly pleasant dissonance there that came out as tears. It was the first Disney movie my kids have really made it all the way through.  And we watched it again the next day, and then again the next day, singing along and laughing.  They really loved it.  I kinda loved it too.  Okay, whatever, so I loved it.

(photo not really related to the post, just cute)


my stripes

So after I posted the thing about how I was totally gonna blog a lot more!!! but before my last post about how I love old junk, my baby got sick. Sick sick sick. RSV and an insane ear infection that would not clear for weeks on end and then, because I wasn't struggling enough, my back went out. March felt like the longest month of my life because I think it technically was.  When you only sleep three non-consecutive hours each night, it's like adding 3-5 hours to each day.  Add those hours up for a month and hoo-boy.  March was like, an extra week long. I was awake for an entire extra week! I am tempted to go all Steve Martin in The Jerk on you here and also attempt to describe how long the month actually FELT, but I will spare you the calculations. 


Hal has never been a great sleeper.  Even back to his old self, he wakes up a few times at night.  Compared to my other two (as babies) he is a lot more high needs. He is just such a different little guy. Have I mentioned here how active he is?  He rolled in both directions at two months.  He started dragging himself around at 6 months, and a few days after he turned 7 months he started crawling, full-speed ahead, around the house.  He is now 7 months + three weeks and DOING THIS:


Clark and Alice both walked at 14 months.  I do not suppose Hal will be following that trend?

Even though he is my third child, he is a brand new entirely different kind of little person in my life.  It's funny, now that I have three children, to witness first hand how much of personality, sleeping, eating, motor skills, and so forth, are just encoded in DNA.  I have more or less parented each of my babies in the same way, but they are all very different people.  Hal is a not-very-sleepy, active, sweet, tiny kind of person.  He isn't chubby and he isn't cuddly.  He is smiley and very ticklish and he thinks Clark is the funniest person on Earth.  He has brown eyes.  His hair is still a mystery. I can't wait to find out more. 


All of these photos were taken from my instagram account.
Are you on instragram?  I'm @swonderland - please friend me, I am addicted.

(I am also @swonderful on twitter and on Facebook, too.  Of course!)


thrift store manifesto

when i was a little girl my grandma used to take me to the salvation army with her.  i never really understood what she was looking for, but i liked the way it felt in there.  like being in someone's house, full of their worn-in things.  it's warmer in there than it is in other stores and it smells funny and it's full of treasure.  every time we went in, i hoped there would be a sparkling sequined dress or something, for me.  the last time i remember going in there with her, i was probably 12 or 13 and knew about vintage and wanted to find something really amazing so i could casually say i bought it at the salvation army with my grandma, but i didn't find anything memorable.

when i was in high school my favorite store was a resale shop in the basement of a retirement home. it was a thrift store for the things the (rather well off) retirees didn't need or want anymore.  it was a very happy place for me.  i bought some things there that i still own; a pillowcase with a lavender kitten on it, a vintage hardy boys game board. the last time i stopped in clark was a baby and i wore or carried him down to that basement, i don't remember which, but i do remember that it was a struggle down the stairs and that i got a lot of funny looks and i didn't find anything memorable. 
now i have my own favorite salvation army, and i go there, a lot.  i got to take my grandma in once.  i knew how much she'd like it, and she did.  we were in there for a long time and we bought christmas things.  i know this place might eventually fade away from my life, but for now it feels like sparkles and treasure and being with my grandma.  it's warm and smells funny in a cozy-to-me way. alice and i always check for sparkly dresses in her size and sometimes they have one, and we buy it.