FAMILY PHOTOS BY BETTY CLICKER

The closer it gets, the more that this upcoming transition from a family of three to four seems... colossal. As in it's-hard-to-wrap-my-mind-around-it huge. As in, are we really doing this? and is everything going to be okay? huge.  I've been thinking about it and I end up doing a lot of hoping. I hope that I'm a good mother to two. I hope the love and respect that Ken and I have for each other grow that much more because of how we parent two. I hope we have a lot of patience and grace towards each other. I hope Sloane falls in love with her sister.  I hope Sloane feels proud to be an older sister and that she still feels loved enough by us. I really hope for wisdom and ...sleep. I hope that we can manage, I hope that I don't lose myself,  I hope that when the baby comes, we all hold each other and can't believe how lucky we are.

In the spirit of that kind of hoping and in a sort of celebration for how amazing it has been to become a wife, mother and still remain myself, we got together one warm evening in Church Hill and took these photos with Kate of Betty Clicker, who by the way, is just wonderful. 

WHAT SLOANE SAID .....IN MAY

(photo right after strawberry picking; note the strawberry stained hands, lips, cheeks, shirt....)

May 2
"Mom, come here and sit down. I want to tell you a story about God loves us.....(I come over and sit down.) ...God made us, and he made this table, and the sofa and this and this and this and that...God made you and me and papa....and plates and this apron and stairs. God made the trees and everything! OK?"

May 3
"When I grow up I'm going to drink gin."
(This is after I told her the gin in our bar is just for grown ups.)

May 4
"I'm just cranky because I'm hungry"

May 5
One morning, she whispered in my ear: "Mom when it's your birthday, I'm going to give you a present and a Cookie Monster balloon. "

May 8
"Mom, today lets pretend you're the kid and I'm the grown up"

May 15
"When I get bigger and bigger you can't pick me up anymore.
And when I get bigger and bigger I don't have to sit in the car seat anymore.
And when I get bigger and bigger I'm going to have a husband !"

May 16
While snuggling with her the next  morning, I asked her, "Sloane, you are going to get bigger and bigger, but can you grow up slowly?
"Ok, mommy."

May 18
We went go visit the cats and dogs at the SPCA- later at home she was playing pretend and said "Mom, I need to go visit the dogs and kitty cats at A, B, C, D, E, F, G.....next time won't you sing with me! We have to go there." 

May 19
"Mom sometimes I'm sad at school because I miss you, and sometimes I'm sad at school because I wuv you!"

May 24
 "Mom, don't let me fall in the toilet!"

May 26
In the car one day:"Mom I don't want talking right now, just shhhhh"  Which is unusual, because usually it's "mom, talk to me!" It lasted all of 5 min before she yelled out, "hey look, the clouds are moving!"

May 27
"Mom don't get your sunglasses wet! Take them off, and then after the lake you can put them back on again.....If you don't want to get them wet, you need to take them off right now." 

May 28
While driving in the car with the windows down, she pretended to grab at the trees, wind and clouds outside. "Hey mom, I'm eating broccoli trees! And then I'm eating some clouds and some grass and maybe some leaves, too...... Oh, I am so full!"

May 30 
Me: "I'm sorry I have to work while I'm at home tonight, Sloane"
Sloane: "I'm sorry I disobeyed you today mom."


May 31
"Mom, I want a horsie to be in our house!"
"I think a horse is too big to live in our house, honey"
"I'm going to ask my person if I can have a horsie."
"Your person? Who is your person?"
"Her name is ....Chasey and I will say to her, "May I have a horsie?" And then she will give me one!"
"Hmmm..well, where will it stay?"
"It can stay in the back of our house."
"And what will it eat?"
"I'm going to buy rice and chicken and chicken nuggets for the horse to eat. And the horse will say, neigh!....And it's not a brown one its a white horse!"

OUR WEEKEND TRIP CONTINUED: JMU

Currently, I'm feeling like a big pile o' poop.  I'm not entirely sure how else to diagnosis what is going on with this body of mine right now, so pile o' poop is the official diagnosis.  That's the thing about this pregnancy that I don't remember about the last one: I think this might be the 5th time that I've gotten sick during this one? Not like nausea sick (although that happened for a couple of weeks at the very beginning), but like super congested, groggy, sore throat, coughing, sneezing, mucus everywhere, and exhausted kind of sick.  It's. The. Worst.  Because the world doesn't stop for you while you are sick! Somehow, through the fog, you must try to keep up with life. Especially if you're trying to save PTO for your maternity life.  Real talk.

I'm trying my darn best to hang in there, although, I do occasionally ask Ken, "Am I dying?" and yesterday I yelled at the dishwasher.

At least back before things took a turn, we had that lovely weekend. When I was putting Sloane to bed on Sunday night and we were reviewing our weekend, she asked "mom, can we go on another trip again?" 

 We kept things simple but it was just what we needed - lunch at our favorite Peruvian chicken place, A&T's (a farewell lunch since they are closing...woe!), the creamiest ice cream at Kline's, a dip in the pool at the hotel, a walk through our college campus, a late dinner at Taste of Thai, followed by a family sleepover at the hotel with all three of us in a king sized bed.

During our drive and walk through campus we did the thing of reminiscing, asking each other about favorite moments, playing what-ifs, and just feeling grateful for the time that we had there. I mean, if nothing else this IS where I found the person who was going to be my life partner and baby daddy; I guess now, babies' daddy.

And just look at what a good baby we made! I've been holding this girl extra tight these days. She is growing so fast and I am very much aware that these last few weeks of pregnancy are the last few weeks where it will just be her and us. Things are going to be very different after this baby comes, and I hope, even better! But still, this time when it is just her, we will never have back again, and I am trying to cherish every moment of it....pile o' poop diagnosis be damned.

SHERANDO LAKE & ROAD TRIP PLAYLIST

And just like that, it's June!

We went on a little road trip this past weekend, heading west into the mountains. We heralded it as our last trip just the three of us before the baby comes and it was wonderful to get away together. Our destination was Harrisonburg and on the way we stopped by a camping site and recreational park in the George Washington Forest Park called Sherando Lake. It was beautiful, the weather was perfect and I left feeling utterly relaxed. 

We took a dip in the water, built sand castles, sand turtles and sand birthday cakes, had a snack on the grass under the trees and looked for rocks in the stream. I can't wait to come back here someday...

I made a playlist for our road trip, because al proper road trips should have a good playlist; here was ours:

Hold My Hand | Jess Glynne

Want To Want Me | Jason Derulo

Slow Dance | The Tallest Man On Earth

No Room In Frame | Death Cab For Cutie

Into The Wild | Lewis Watson

Georgia | Vance Joy

Ever Said Goodbye | The Weepies

Touch The Sky | Hillsong United

Thinking Out Loud |  Ed Sheehan (one of Sloane's current favorites!)

Open Book | Jose Gonzalez

HOMEMADE POPSICLES

Popsicles! Sloane had her first Popsicle from King of Pops the other day and the precision and joy with which she polished it off was truly impressive. I love knowing that King of Pops Popsicles is made with the good stuff and with that same kind of motivation I decided to start whipping up batches of Popsicles at home so I know exactly what goes in them. I started with what I think is probably the easiest version - yogurt fruit Popsicles! All you do is mix some vanilla yogurt with chunks of fruit and pour it into the mold. I like that these could also double as a breakfast bar because of the yogurt ;) 

The ones pictured here was our first batch and I didn't mix the fruit and yogurt together which is why they look layered, but I think mixing it all up is the way to go. 

Sloane loved these!

The next popsicles I want to try are:
-just plain old pureed fruit bars,
- honeydew popsicles reminiscent of Melona bars!
- and popsicle versions of the green juice or green smoothies that we make all the time.

MEMORIAL DAY

Sometimes a slow meandering walk through the park on a beautiful day is exactly what you need. 

I had to work this past weekend but on Monday I cleared my schedule and was intentional about going slow. In the afternoon, Ken, Sloane, Rusty and I took a stroll around the lake at Deep Run Park with no other intention except just to walk together - and sometimes that's the best kind of a walk. I took photos with my camera but I also gathered a store of mental images that I keep coming back to: the lushness of the greens, the variety of leaf shapes, the patterns that the shadow of branches and leaves on the ground made in contrast with the bright sunshine, the glitter on the lake water, and Sloane's feet as they walked as fast as possible to keep up with Ken and Rusty.

We passed a bush of the most glorious smelling honeysuckles and here is Ken trying to remember how to suck the honey out of them.  These remind me so much of my childhood!

Sloane loves helping walk Rusty by holding the end of his leash. They walked like this the entire time!

We stopped by a gazebo for a break and to snack on a few cherries.  

Cherries are soooo good right now!

I'M A MOTHER, HEAR ME ROAR...... AND SAY SOME OTHER STUFF

There is going to be another newborn in our lives soon and I'm trying to wrap my mind around it.  I daydream about the fresh newborn scent, the skin like petals, the weight in my arms, the teeny tiny everythings.  I think about what it was like when we first brought Sloane home, and I've been looking through pictures and old blog posts during that time to remember.  

I've also been thinking about being a mother: what it has meant for me to be a mother these past few years and what it might mean for the coming years. 

Mothering is such an all consuming, boundary pushing, crazy joyful, and also a really difficult thing....all of which is a giant privilege. I'm constantly pinching myself about how lucky I am to have the chance to be a mom, especially to someone like Sloane.  I still look around occasionally, thinking, "Who, me?" 

At the same time, it isn't all that I am. It's important to me that it not take over my other identities. Some of my other goals may be put on hold or shuffled around a bit, but I'm resolved to grow those other parts of myself that I have been cultivating all my life. Which brings me to the question of whether women can 'have it all'. There's been many responses to this quandary, one of them being 'Yes you can, but just not at once' or more recently, a pushback against the expectation of it all in the first place, i.e. Do men ever ask themselves the question of whether or not they can have it all? 

I do want it all. I love getting the most out of life.  That's how my faith has shaped me. I live in pursuit and I live in the moment because that's how my family shaped me. 

But how that fits into my role as a mother - I'm still figuring it out. And it probably will be an entire life time of figuring it out. I've been surprised at how much I've been able to still do - things haven't changed all too much, in fact, it's only made it richer.  But the predicament seems to come back to what it may mean for pursuing a "career".  I do want a career, whatever that my look like. I want interesting work and I want to love my work.  I'm still trying to get there, but in the meanwhile, my fantasies mostly have to do with the flexibility of a job more than what I'll actually be doing. That flexibility has become vastly more important now that I'm a mom.  I'm totally open to the fact that my 'work' might look like a variety of things over the next few years - full-time, part-time, or other changes. 

As a working mom, there is a lot on my plate. Not just because of the working part or the mom part, but because of the cooking part, the house cleaning and managing part, the administrative parts, the relationship part, the self-care part and the parts where I am trying to figure out how to be doing a job I love. On bad days (and a lot of these days are in the dark cold days of winter), I'm overwhelmed. On good days I think, wow I am stuffed to the brink with treasures.

It helps, when I question about whether I'm doing things right, to think about all the other mothers who do the day in and day out: my friends in their various situations, my own amazing mother, my wonderful mother-in-law. I am in the company of some brilliant women and I only have to look around me when I am in want of inspiration and encouragement.  Wisdom from all sides tells me that it's a challenge but it's a kind of challenge that transforms....and redeems.  My little one reminds me that it's the most precious of times, especially when she holds me close in her bed and we whisper stories to each other. 

My first year as a mother, I learned a lot about balancing. My second year as a mother I learned about prioritizing. This third year's lesson seems to be about having the wisdom to take care of the things in my life that I love. I'm coming up to my fourth year now, and it will be as a parent of two. There are things I'm apprehensive about, but I feel heartened by these reminders. Plus, I'm always up for an adventure.  

So far, it's been incredible. 

WHAT I'M READING V.4

....or I should say, what I'm listening to. I downloaded an audiobook app the other week and decided to take advantage of all the free audiobooks that are available on that app.  I had never read Edith Wharton before (she is the first woman who won the Pulitzer Prize (1921)) and there was a plethora of her work so I figured it was a good place to start as any. I dived into 'The Age of Innocence' and I got totally hooked! Over the past week, I made my way through 'The Age of Innocence', 'The House of Mirth', 'The Touchstone', and 'Ethan Frome'. My favorite of these was definitely 'The Age of Innocence' and my least favorite was 'The Touchstone'.

The density of words in her novels are delicious because she weaves them together so well and uses them so artfully that it's a constant pleasure to approach each sentence. She draws a rich and vivid world with her words so that I can not only see it in my minds eye but I can feel what it must have been like to be there (I loved fantasizing about New York City in the early 1900s), and it's fascinating to discover the effect of the environment on her characters and their choices. She's funny, too, and in a sharp wit sort of way, and this combination of smart and funny is what kept me engrossed.

I'm eyeballing some more classics by female authors to move on to and I'm deciding between Willa Cather and George Eliot; either way, it should be epic!

SLOANE TELLS A STORY

Sloane loves hearing and recently, telling, stories. Here is her rendition of Jack and the Beanstalk, one of the stories that Ken has been telling her at bedtime. It is so much fun listening to Ken tell his version of a story and then to hear Sloane's version of his version.  She also has been making up stories of her own and sometimes they make sense and sometimes they are completely nonsensical - here you can see how she transitions from Jack and the Beanstalk to getting silly about words and plot lines that she is making up as she goes. 

You guys, having a little tot tell you stories - it's the best thing.