Change is ___________________

Lily is healthy and happy and full of life. For this, I'm grateful.

Life is full of change.
Some say change is the only certainty.

Blog hiatus until things settle.

ps. here we are in front of our new place... a new journey starts now.

Me.

Okay guys. This is my third post this week, which is a *huge* improvement for me. In re-evaluating my blog and its content, I've decided to share a little bit more about me, the real me, and not just the fun, happy stuff that we do (that is totally worth of sharing, but not wholly representative of our real life always).

A few of my mama friends and I swapped "ten facts" about ourselves in an effort to get to know each other better and more intimately. So, I'd like to share a few things (more than ten) about myself with you with that same goal in mind. Feel free to share your own in the comments section :)

Lily & I browsing the racks at Goodwill last week.

1. My mom is Catholic and my dad is Jewish. According to religious law, I was born Catholic (it's passed on through the mama), but was converted to Judaism when I was seven years old. I was raised in a pretty reformed  Jewish household and had a Bat Mitzvah, but have had a complicated relationship with organized religion. We're now members of the reformed synagogue here in town, which I really like. Carl is Catholic. We're raising Lily to embrace both religions/traditions and letting her make her own choice about faith as she grows.

2. I have a brother and a sister, who are both older than I am (by ten and twelve years). I have a different mom than they do. My brother, Adam, lives in Israel and my sister, Kiki, lives in Dallas.

3. My sister, my brother's wife and I were all pregnant at the same time. Yep, my dad welcomed three grandbabies in the space of 6 months!

4. I am twenty-five. I'll be twenty-six on December 17. I really love birthdays and I love making others feel really special on theirs. Birthdays are a big deal to me :)

5. Carl is my best friend. I really love talking to him and hearing his perspective on things, which is usually a lot more straight-forward than mine is. Also, I tend to ramble when I tell stories and most people lost interest in what I'm saying before I finish. Carl is almost always engaged until the very end. It makes me feel special and it's something that I really missed when we broke up briefly a few years ago.

6. Having Lily saved me in so many ways.

7. I really love to rock out to angry girl Indie rock. My favorites are Alanis Morrisette, Fiona Apple, Meredith Brooks (HAHAHA) and Ani DiFranco. Always Ani.

8. I attended summer camp for almost ten years of my life and was a counselor when I was too old to be a camper. I went to Camp Champions in Marble Falls and I really think that my time there shaped me into the woman I am today. I am so looking forward to the day when we get to drop Lily off for her first term!

9. I love to travel and I've lived in a few different cities: El Paso, New York City, Austin, Salamanca (Spain) and San Antonio. San Antonio has been my favorite.
 

10. I would really like to become a DONA certified Doula. I'm pursuing my Master's degree in English Literature and initially wanted to become a college professor, but my pregnancy/birth experience has changed my life and I would love to facilitate this for other women.

12. I want to take Lily to Paris during this next Spring Break. Who's coming with us?!

13. I really want to get another tattoo soon. I have three now, but none of them are visible unless I'm wearing a bathing suit. 

14. I'm constantly trying to improve on my "housekeeping." I don't mind dishes, but I find laundry and especially putting the clothes away after laundry, really tedious.

15. We don't have tv. Well, we own two televisions, but don't have the "box" to access local channels or cable, so we just stream movies and shows from Netflix off of our Playstation 3. We've recently started to watch Breaking Bad and it is so good! 

16. I used to have a weird relationship with my body. Throughout high school and my first year of college, I was about 20 pounds heavier than I am now and would go on spurts of heavy dieting, working out, then gaining whatever weight back that I had lost. When I stopped obsessing and just ate when I was hungry and stopped when I was full, the weight fell off. I was worried that after my pregancy, I would have trouble losing the weight I had gained (40 lbs.), but I ended up losing it all and then some. This I credit to breastfeeding.

17. Lily will be 14 months old next week and I am still breastfeeding. I don't  have plans to stop anytime soon. 

18.  I'm not a night owl. I was always the first one to fall asleep at sleep overs and therefore have had my fair share of frozen bras and shaving cream on my face. I can remember calling my dad at 7 a.m. from my friends' houses to pick me up because I was the only one awake. 

19. Carl is a big time night owl. I always feel guilty falling asleep while he's still awake, but sometimes I cannot.keep.my.eyes.open.

20.  I love thrifting. Like, I probably visit a thrift shop once a week. I even have a little "vignette" at a local thrift market where I sell a few of my finds. It's called, "Lily's Lot" and it desperately needs re-stocking.

Belated Birthday Post: Lily's Go-Green Garden Party!

Eeep! I'm about a month and a half late on this one, but better now than never, no? 

Since Carl was in El Paso for his internship during the month of June, I threw her a birthday party in San Antonio to celebrate with all her little friends before we flew to EP so celebrate with family. I'll be posted photos of both, but first here's a recap of her party here in San Antonio.

The venue was the San Antonio Public Library Foundation's garden and cottage. This party was a mostly DIY project, and I'm thrilled with how it all turned out. Happy belated birthday, my sweetness!

this is the garden where we threw the party.
sadly, our photog didn't snap a pic of the whole setup, but this gives you an idea...

singing to the birthday girl

i baked organic, gluten-free cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting from scratch. they don't look all that great, but they were really tasty, if i do say so myself..

anna & elliot

vanessa & max painting a birdhouse

crafts and handmade party hats

 

megan & pistol 

sammy & elliana

maria & lily
(maria is lily's daycare provider who we all adore)

lily & mary, our amazing neighbor who helped *a ton* that day

birthday girl face

our beautiful group of first-time mamas & babies 

 

lily & my mom, who drove in from el paso for the big day

 baby friends

 i love this shot of my sister, kiki and her family. they drove in from dallas to celebrate

birthday wishes!

Paddle On

Carl celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday on July 11, which fell on a Wednesday this year.

Carl has been dying to learn to kayak. He was bitten by the bicycling bug last year, and for his birthday, he got a nice road bike and set the goal of completing a triathalon (he reached that goal this past June). So, when a Groupon deal on a 3-hour long guided kayak tour showed up in my inbox, I snatched it up and planned a special day for the two of us. Since his birthday fell in the middle of the week, the kids would be at daycare and summer camp, so I packed up some trail mix, jerkey, hats and sunscreen and arranged for us to meet the kayak group at 8 a.m. on the day of Carl's birth. As luck would have it, we woke up that morning to a near-torrential downpour and our kayak trip was postponed. BOO. (Carl & I ended up making it a date-day since I had already gotten the day off work. It was great).

I rescheduled the kayak trip and a few Fridays ago, we finally went. It was SO fun. Like, so fun. And beautiful. And hard (more taxing than I had anticipated). I definitely got a work out (and totally flipped my kayak within five minutes of us being in the water) during our three-hour trip. We paddled down the San Marcos River which is about 40 minutes from where we live in San Antonio.

It was a lovely, lovely time. The scenery was straight out of a movie and the company was even better. Carl and I were the slow-pokes of the group and kind of half-floated-half-paddled the river, lazily and with little else on our minds than the cool, green water beneath us.

 

Catching Up and a Poem on Year One

Hi, friends. It's been a very long time... months since I've written here, though I probably think about this blog and how badly it needs updating everyday. Free time has been particularly scarce this summer. I think I've mentioned it before, but I am so busy that I actually feel guilty spending down time on myself, and not using it to do a load of laundry, or dishes, or homework...none of which I ever seem to quite catch up on.

Tonight, class was cancelled. Since Carl and I have class at the same time (we're both taking evening courses this summer), we carpool, so while he sits in class, I'm sitting in the library... catching up on some much-needed blogging. So much has happened since I wrote last. Mother's Day? That feels like a million years ago. Since then, Carl has completed two legal internships and a triathlon, I've become closer to a lovely group of young mamas, Lily turned one (a we celebrated with two parties!), Carl turned twenty-nine, Ryland joined us for the summer and turned seven and we just returned to San Antonio from a weekend at the coast. Lots of cake around here.

rye & lily lounging on our new hammock

Over the next few days, I'm going to be playing catch-up around here, and posting some photos of things that have happened to us over the past months. I don't want to forget any of it, and sadly, it all seems to have gone by so quickly.

And in honor of my cancelled (poetry) class this evening, I'd like to share a poem I wrote about Lily's playgroups. I don't know if I've mentioned before, but Lily and I are members of a pretty incredible parenting group here in San Antonio, called San Antonio Natural Parenting. I've made a lot of amazing women (and babies) through this network and for the past six months, have been coordinating a monthly playgroup for working mamas. There are a half-dozen or so of us who happen to be first-time mothers and have become pretty close. It's been nice. Here's a little something I wrote, inspired by our dates...

Year One

Six young women sit cross-legged
on a hand-me-down quilt
stained with strawberry slices
and banana puree.

A half-dozen babes find freedom
near the blanket’s edge
and it tastes like blades of yellowed grass
& tiny fistfuls of dirt,

outfitted in small-scale sundresses,
miniature collared shirts and Madras shorts
that make even strangers smile
and point to ripe baby thighs—
resplendent and spilling
out of colorful cloth diapers
(that have come a long way
since safety pins and fabric scraps,
don’t you know).

The women,
like seasoned artisans,
trade notes on soft-milled laundry soap,
homemade diaper crème,
the many uses of virgin coconut oil
and laugh about the smell of baby poop
and how it’s sweetest from the breast.

The sleepy South Texas sun pours
over the field and hours pass
like a nap-time ritual
bubble bath splish-splash
and the first year of motherhood.

Soon all eyes turn to the littlest one
that has found her feet.
She stands two feet small--
a bald sapling—
wild-eyed and unflinching.
 
Twice she careens forward
before her doughy legs
give way and foil the plan
she has been hatching since birth.

A flash of pink gums
and a dimpling chin reveal
the saddest face you’ve ever seen
sweetened in an instant
by a swooped arm and the taste
of mother’s milk.

The others nod in approval
offer knowing smiles
and a few cradle their young
disrobing a breast in solidarity.
 
The babes draw a quick drink
and for a moment
they are sated.

A Belated Mother's Day Post

Hi, friends. It's been a while, huh? Last week marked the end of a very busy semester; it was my first time taking a full graduate class load while working full-time AND being a mama. Needless to say, I had very little time for much else. I have a few weeks before summer classes begin (woot!), so I'm excited to be able to get back to my poor, neglected little blog.

Last weekend, we went kind of wild in celebration. The Friday night before Mother's Day, we toasted the end of the semester at our favorite BYOB pizza place and ended the night with a few rounds of Scattergories.

 posing & pizza

After sleeping in on Saturday morning, Lily, Carl and I ventured out for some yummy Mexican food and a rare trip to the mall. Banana Republic was hosting a Mother's Day sale, so my loves treated me to an outfit for the special day!

 fajitas and a little ham

Then...we decided it was time to visit  local tattoo parlor and see about getting the tattoos Carl and I have been wanting for a while. So we did... Nearly eight hours, a few burgers and red plastic cups of gin and juice (ha!) later, we left the shop with gorgeous Lilies on our bodies in honor of our little girl. Like most everything we do, we made the tattooing a family date. Lily was with us the entire time, and was a huge hit at the shop.

  

playing with papa while we wait...

 

ouch!

 my lily :)

Mother's Day was really lovely. Carl cooked me breakfast in bed and we all headed out to Landa Park, a gorgeous public park in nearby New Braunfels, Texas. We paddle boated, rode the cute train around the park and fed the ducks, then ate lunch at a famous smokehouse. Afterward, we drove home and took a much-needed family nap. Couldn't have asked for any better.

I hope all you mamas out there had a wonderful Mother's Day, too!

(I realize this post is a week late, but I wanted to recap my first Mother's Day before writing anything else. Carl left this Saturday for a six-week legal internship in El Paso, and while I am *so* very proud of him, I miss him terribly and really want to keep the blog current while he's away. Stay turned for Lily's eleven month update!)

9 Months

(so lily really turned nine months old on march 23, but you know how it goes...)*

My Dear Lily,

Nine months, little mama! Nine wonderful months have past since you were born and each passing day with you seems even more joyous than the one before. This past weekend, I realized something, er I realized a few somethings: you are my very best friend and I really love just hanging out with you. (I also discovered that you've recently developed a tickle spot on the bottoms of your feet. So fun!)

Of course, I've known for months now how much I love having you in my life and how desperately I miss you when I'm away (even for a few hours), but lately there's been a different kind of dynamic between us.

Playful. Sweet. Silly. FUN.

We share secrets. We share snacks. We share showers. We share a really crazy amount of love for your papa. We shop together, we dance together, we indulge in weird NetFlix documentaries together. And even though you can't quite find the words to say what's on your mind, somehow you always get your point across. In your very own Lily way.

We've been working really hard lately trying to get you to crawl. I even bought a big, nice rug for your nursery for you to sit on and explore. You seem so determined, so ready to be mobile, but you're not *quite* there yet. Papa's been especially persistent. He's got a cool towel trick that he's been working on with you for you to get used to the feeling of crawling. You'll get there. A few more weeks, I think.

Last weekend, we all spent some time at the pool at our school. At first, you and I sat at the ledge of the pool, dangling our toes to adjust to the cool water. Then, we propped you up in your inflatable seat and set you floating along the shallow end (we were with you, of course). You loved it! Loved! You started flapping your arms across the water, splashing us with delight. You had a great, big toothy (you have SIX toofeers now, little one!) smile on your face and even tried to dip your face in a few times. So much fun!

Lately, you and your papa have been especially inseperable. The two of you just adore each other and it is so wonderful to watch. Your papa really looks forward to Tuesday and Thursday evenings, when it's just the two of you for a few hours while I'm at school. Sometimes, I come home to find the two of you curled up to one another in bed, and I my heart sings a little song.

I don't think I'll ever find the words to express my love for you, or how lucky I feel to be your mama. You are my happiness, and I hope and pray that you are having as much fun as we are, my little beauty.

All my love,

mama.