letting the days go by, water flowing underground

david is 5 months old today. i just can't believe there was ever a time when he wasn't here. in that same breath, i can't believe he's already 5 months old. at this moment 5 months ago i was laboring in my bed with madrona petting my hair asking jesse very calmly and very quietly what else needed to be packed up. we were preparing for the journey which would take us 12 houses down the road and a million miles away from life as we knew it.

for me, there was no such thing as time - there were only contractions coming and going. there was no such thing as a baby on it's way - just the ebb and flow of comfort and discomfort. and as is so often the case in my life, there was fear. but there was also peace and grace in the love of my caregivers, in the knowledge that the bodies of so many women before me had moved through this exact same process, and in the prayers and energy of my family.

and in so many ways as a result of giving birth to new life i am a new person myself, having been reborn into motherhood and into the joy and light of this amazing adventure. but i am also the same old me and i carry all the good and bad that i carried before. i lose perspective, i have a sense of humor, i care about my job and career, i am competitive, i am jealous, i am compassionate - sometimes to a fault. i am nervous, i am optimistic, i am self-critical, i am creative, i am overly honest about myself. and it's only lately that all of this is really surfacing. i have been surprised to find that in the midst of this new phase of life, the old me is still alive and well and i am faced with the challenge of acceptance and integration. as athens area artist "chub" puts it, i am "a little good, a little bad - like most folk..."

 

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p.s. we let david lick on some cantaloupe. i think he liked it. and then again, he seems to like everything he can put in his mouth. :-)

soaker

i completed a super cute and very functional soaker for david! for those of you unfamiliar, a soaker is just a wool diaper cover. i have tried a couple of different patterns and i finally found one that i really like. it came from a book called "the expectant knitter" that i picked up from tuesday morning on a trip with ellen and safia. it's the same book that has the awesome leg warmers (which are completed, btw - picture to follow soon).

i am now in between projects. i started a pair of fingerless gloves, but i'm just not feeling motivated to work on them. instead, i think i'm going to make some more gnome hats in preparation for the christmas hoot (coming up on decemebr 12 at the wonderful little kings shuffle club!!!). i made enough last january for the regular hoot crew, but it dawned on me today that ellen, rube, and safia will need hats, too. i'll keep you updated on my progress...

so updates on my knitting are not that exciting, i know, but i'm having a bit of writer's block. i think a lot about blog topics but at the present moment, none are coming to mind. :-)

a little bit more

david has begun to grow into some of the things i made before he was even conceived! it's interesting to look back prebaby and even prepregnancy and realize how different things are now than they were then. as i told my sister, being a mom is the hardest and easiest thing i have ever done. she accused me of being inarticulate, but i think that's the best i can do for now.

as david has been growing and changing, so have i. it seems that every day is a renegotiation of what it means to be me. one of the hottest mommy topics seems to be the balance of work, motherhood, family, and self, and i am finding myself facing these challenges more intensely as of late. and really, it may be more accurate to say that i am working on the integration of all of these rather than each one individually. i think by themselves, each thing is fine, but for some reason or another i am struggling with an increasingly overwhelming feeling that things are going to begin to unravel. and it's cyclical, but building.

so often i feel as if i am the only one. i know i am not, but when you spend most of your time with yourself, in your own world, in your own mind and body, it is easy to forget that you are not the only one who questions herself. i am not the only one who makes mistakes. i am not the only one learning as they go. so in the spirit of honesty, here is something i'm not feeling great about and a smidgen of the thoughts that go along....

i kept david in the sun and crowd and noise so that we could be in a parade on saturday. i thought the weather would be cooler and more overcast  and was very unprepared for the heat and sunshine. also, and perhaps more importantly, i wanted to go with the flow (like all the other folk sans baby) and felt uncomfortable disrupting the rest of the gang. so while i was able to keep my baby safe and fed, was he as comfortable as he should have been? was the experience worth the heat and noise? did i choose to keep other people comfortable at the expense of taking the best care of david? i like being the cool mom that's able to be out and about and i'm angry?, disappointed?, sad?, scared? that on this occasion my anxiety level rose to the point that i still haven't quite recovered.

so what is the lesson here? i'm not ready to make any hard and fast rules about what i will and won't do, especially given the fact that every day is new and different. david is never, never the same thing twice. but i think i need to be more conscious of the costs and benefits of my pursuits. the only way that i seem to be able to bring down my anxiety and this feeling of impending doom is by reminding myself that i can make different choices. i can adjust. i can move from one feeding to the next to the next.

and i can knit, sometimes.

craft it forward

allison, my beautiful and talented sister in law, introduced me to this awesome idea through her blog, http://allybuilt.blogspot.com/. here's the deal....

I will send something handmade (by me) to the FIRST FIVE people who leave a comment on this post.
They must then post what I have sent them on their own blogs and pass it on (send something handmade to the first five people to comment) and so on. It can be anything, as long as it is handmade by you, and must be sent out by the end of 2011.

What do you think?

Want to Play?

I know, it's so exciting!

brand new blogger

besides a wedding blog, i'm a first timer and although i'm quite sure this will be read by an extremely limited number of folk, i am nervous. my motivation for beginning this blog is to participate in "craft it forward" but i'm thinking it just might be fun to showcase the crafts that i make and especially to showcase the crafts that i make being worn by my babe. nothing better than a baby in a craft.... just sayin'.

at this moment, however, the baby is fast asleep and, being that i am not crazy, i have chosen not to wake him up for a photo shoot, so you'll just have to imagine how awesome these leg warmers will look when they are finished and he is wearing them....

sleeping baby

Leg Warmers