yes, i said rad.

i used to be ambivalent about valentine's day. bryan and i agreed early on that no flowers, cards, grand gestures were needed. not for any political. non-consumer stance of any sort. but because those aren't the things that i find romantic. know what i do find romantic? bryan walking in after a 12 hour day and grabbing the food covered baby out of arms. telling me i look beautiful, though i haven't showered in three days and i smell like...well, i smell like a stay at home mom and i don't think there are metaphors that can make that pretty enough for me. he called me this morning after he left for work to tell me he loved me and happy valentine's day. i had forgotten. not that it was valentine's day. i mean, we have kids. we've been knee deep in construction paper and glue sticks all week. and i promised finn we would make cookies today. but, in the taffy of the morning between the sheets and the floor, i forgot that this is one of those days when people celebrate. after an exhausting day of one meltdown, a teething baby, trying all day to get the kitchen floor mopped (and failing. it's still dirty.), and not seeing my partner in crime for the entire day, i realized. valentine's day is pretty fucking rad.

like jellyfish.

my heart is a jellyfish. waving like entrails, weightless. it stings when i try to measure its mass and i cannot help but think that sometimes, it belongs in the ocean. i lay in bed, swaying, listening to the whir of the fan, to the breathing of the man next to me that chose me, that i chose, and i smell baby skin on the other side of me and i hear creaks in the hallway when our daughter comes in the room to say she wants water. she is transparent in the middle of the night. not thirsty. but she needs the reflection of herself in my sleep addled limbs in order to fall back asleep and i get it, i do. she is a tiny baby stretched out inside little girl legs and she talks half-asleep about how she doesn't like dragons and wants to know why monkey hands taste bad. there are mornings bryan leaves for work at three am, four am, five am. these mornings, i bring the baby into bed with me to nurse and he curls against my chest and falls asleep with a long, slow exhale and i think this is why people go to aquariums. to try to illuminate what is under the surface with oohs and ahhs. you know you can't capture it or explain it or understand it completely. the closest you can do is stick it in glass cage and charge admission, share the knowledge you do know on plaques with an academic font. and you marvel at it. you get up and you shift your feet to land and they feel like bruises on the bare floor, dried out and salty. it's on these mornings that i know i am trying to be good enough. even when i'm not good. even when i'm not enough. sometimes life outside the ocean is a big, beautiful mess.

perseverence

(four)

she turned four last week.
only (and already) four.
and her world is so much larger than i am able to see. i hover around her like an iridescent bubble, managing the perimeter, facing her. i don't always look out from her perspective to see what the view looks like. i make decisions for her based on preconceived notions about safety and long-term effects and i carefully add grains of sand to the scales so that the good and the bad carefully rock each other to sleep, praying with every inhale that the tipping point is far from here, one way or the other.
we reiterate over and over that she is a big girl because her brother is so tiny and we expect more than i think we would if she were the only child in the house. good or bad, she is the oldest in these four walls and i hear my voice bouncing off the floor sometimes when she screams because she is upset with my answer to her plea for a treat. i have to remind myself sometimes that she is just a tiny little creature. that her world is vast and unfurling itself onto shore and with each passing day, she is growing into a somewhat less tiny creature. that one day, i will turn around and she will be grown and waving goodbye and she won't be nipping at my ankles all day long with her lilted voice ending every statement in a question. on repeat. (my heart an overripe tomato when i think of her grown, seeds between my fingers onto the ground.)
not yet.
four.
only (and already) four. 
she started her morning with a date with her grandparents. chocolate chip pancakes. and a whipped cream face. came home to a house filled with purple and pink balloons and a handful of presents. then her godmother came and surprised her with a trip to chuck e cheese, a trip to the hello kitty store to buy whatever she wanted. mind blown.
she helped make her birthday cake (chocolate cake, mommy. chocolate frosting. and pink and purple decorations on top) and kept saying she had the best birthday ever.
she loves her little brother with abandon, vacillating between heartbreaking tenderness and expected aggressiveness. she talks about her older brother with a reverence reserved for him and him alone. she says hello to strangers when we walk on the street and she dances and sings constantly. there is no pretense with her. she does not know how to hide her true feelings.
she makes me believe in everything good about the world.
and i believe in her ability to change it.
only (and already) four.

75

my dad turned 75 this weekend. although that's not technically true. because his birthday is tomorrow. there was a huge party and lots of food and the largest number of retired detectives i've ever seen in one place. i heard vague references about my dad's life as a cop and i forget sometimes that he wasn't always closer to the end than the beginning and i think that maybe there was a moment that afternoon where he forgot why he was there and i can only imagine him looking out at this sea of old, familiar faces and wondering where the time went. was it in the yellow ballon? or did the blue one hold the years, weighted down. he held my kids, his two youngest grandchildren and i felt eighteen for a minute. a feather of an adult, preening for him.
he has parkinson's. it is aging him faster than normal wear and tear.
i am my father's youngest child. by years. he still calls me his 'baby' and i still soak it in when he says it and smile. and i float in the sunlight near the ceiling.

the words. they are restless.

my words are all restless right now. i feel them, dancing around issues and knocking over glasses but i can't seem to get them to explain to me why they are here in the first place and why they won't just sit down. in alphabetical order. i feel that if i pluck one of them from the back of my head, a story might sprout. but i just tried it and all of these other words were attached to the space between and i couldn't untangle them so i put them in the pile of christmas tree lights that haven't quite made it to their proper storage space. i have observations about my daughter's new habit of throwing a fit at bedtime, my son's newly developed ability to eat mashed bananas and avocado. the fact that i have a daughter and a son in the first place makes me feel like writing letters to strangers. but these words. they just won't stop circling around. they will not gather themselves together. so i'll just let them rest. less.

boundaries

it's in the seventies during the day. finn is learning about the seasons at school and she sees pictures of snow and talks about ice skating. she asks if it will be snowing when she wakes up tomorrow. how about after? what about after that? i tell her that no, it won't snow here. we could drive to snow and bryan shakes his head with his eyebrows scrunched and i smile because i know we are the people who want to have the family excursion of driving to the snow to watch her play in frozen dirt and mud for ten minutes before deciding she is too cold and wants to go home. but we aren't really those people, if we're being completely honest. i am in my pajamas. i have been in my pajamas all day. this is the type of people we are. the type of people who think 'oh crap' if there is a knock at the door because what if we won publisher's clearinghouse and i answered the door with my breast milk stained tshirt and camera bulbs flashed. do they even have publisher's clearinghouse anymore? i would still enter except for the fact that someone read my palm once and told me i thought i was luckier than i actually am.
we learn a lot about ourselves when we have children, yes? like my flash of bright white overreaction when finn denies something i know she just did. looks me right in the eye and says 'no.' bryan's bubbling over when she ignores him when he's talking to her. we both know these are our issues, not hers. that we teach her more about herself by the way we react to the worst parts than by the praise she gets for using her kind words. that our broad, sweeping generalizations about her being in 'big trouble' fall into her palms with the same weight of not being allowed to have one more juice box. we all have our boundaries. yesterday she walked into the bathroom while i was in the shower. and she said 'mommy i love all of your parts. i love your heart. i love my heart.' and i remember that she isn't even four yet. her boundaries are paved with juice boxes and markers on furniture. mine are paved with the intention of prevention. and trying to explain that even though it doesn't snow in los angeles, it still snows. in winter. and that, yes, we can go there. 'after this day? how about after that?

socially awkward butterfly

last weekend i drove two hours to attend a surprise party for a friend i've known since junior high.  strapped the baby to my chest when i got there and stood, rocking, talking to people i hadn't seen in years. people who got babysitters for their kids and who weren't nursing. i felt misshapen, stretched out. i couldn't remember how to have a conversation that didn't include talking about children. yet i cursed like a sailor and waved the sarcastic banter flag because i felt awkward and postpartum wearing my one pair of jeans that fit. the baby's flailing arm connected with a friend's glass of wine and left her soaked and it wasn't funny like when you're young and drunk and stumbling. i was the lady with the baby at the party knocking over drinks. i didn't stay very long.

driving home, i was struck by something. it wasn't melancholy. it wasn't regret. it was something liquid, metallic. it shined and it smudged and lay on the passenger seat the entire two hours home.
and the thing is this:
i haven't yet reconciled being a mother and being me.
i mean, i know how to be myself around my kids. and i have never been more myself in a relationship while still having room to change and grow. and yet. i'm a bit in flux, i think. as a person. my body is somewhat hijacked because bearing children is amazing, yes. but it is also somewhat traumatic. it takes time to recognize yourself. i never quite got there after finn and then i got pregnant again. i didn't last this long nursing with finn. this time around, it's amazing and beautiful and awesome and yet i feel in limbo. like my body is on loan and i've never been a fan of living out of boxes.
this unsettled feeling is strangely comforting and humbling and i'm not sure how to wear my newly stretched out skin just yet. i'm not sure what i will look like when this is all over and i am at a point in my biological timeline where my skin and my hair and my nails need to be tended to. not expected to take care of themselves anymore.
i document the tiny moments in my life and i lose friends on facebook because all i post pictures of is my kids. but i can't help it.
right now? my life?
this is what i DO.
THIS is who i am.
there is more to me than the things my children say and clogged milk ducts and grey hairs. but the more is somehow less than. at least for right now.
i can't help it.
so, if you happen to see me out. at a party. somewhere.
i apologize if you ask me how i am and i tell you a story about my kids.
this is what i DO.
THIS is who i am.

this is the year

this is the year. not because of anything that might make sense to a scientist. not because of the mayan calendar or preconceived notions or new year's resolutions. it's just...the year.
two kids and done. tubes are tied. i turned a corner and the year changed and all of a sudden i'm swinging from the rafters toward forty and realizing that perhaps i should harness up all that i know in case i need to use it one day. then again, i just had to google 'toward vs. towards' because i found myself with mouth pursed and brow furrowed, left ring finger hovering over the 's' key longer than necessary and i got sidetracked into wondering what i would have done without google and if the dawn of all of this technology has made me more or less intelligent.
this is the year where i start to see my daughter as someone. not just as some mysterious creature taking shape but as the little girl who will become a young woman who will start remembering most of her childhood from here on out. this is the year i have to get it right so that all of the other years will balloon out in the right direction.
this is the year my tiny baby boy will walk and talk and become a toddler. and while he toddles i will slow down and cry at each milestone because (a) it will be the last milestone of that kind for me and (b) i am such a fucking cliche.
this is the year i will make soap by hand. because pinterest showed me how. i will close certain chapters and maybe write new ones and i will continue to unload a verbal barrage upon bryan when he walks in the door at the end of the day because i've been dying to unload the nonsensical garbage i've read online while the kids are resting. i will plan more art projects than i have time to do, i will photograph even the most mundane of moments with obsession. i will continue to make grand plans for the future that include vacations and potential tattoos and new gadgets for the kitchen. i will make pasta or butter from scratch and then wonder why i ever felt the need to do so.
this is the year i will make good on my promise to bryan to write. 
this is the year i will write.
this is the year i will write.
this is the year i will write.
this is the year i will remember that i always said life would begin in my thirties and realize i was wrong.
it's forty.
this is the year.

so this is the new year

i couldn't remember what day it was this morning. i thought maybe monday. i dreamt of dogs and kidnapping and cameras and wet sand and i spent a solid 1/4 of my dreaming trying to find a lost baby. my mind snapping like a flashbulb trying to remember where i put him. who had him last. trying to rewind the tape and i woke up with the baby right next to me and when i nursed him he bit me.
if i hadn't checked facebook last night i could have easily overlooked the fact that it was new year's eve. i watched a documentary about the salton sea and thought about when my dad and step-mom took me fishing there and we camped in the middle of the desert and i coudn't stay in my tent because of the sand storm. i spent one whole afternoon dipping myself in the water like an ice cream cone and watching the rings of salt dry on my bathing suit. i was still so young, round belly and spindly arms. i have pictures of myself holding fish and i remember how desolate and brown the water felt. how warm. i never knew the desert could smell so wet. there were no waves, just water and sand. and wind. and heat. we cooked the fish we ate and i didn't enjoy it as much as i enjoy the memory. then again, i'm not a desert girl. with or without an oasis.
funny how the perfect spot to create a desert oasis turned into a mirage after all.
we made family goals this year. well, individual goals. as a family. because we are the sum of our parts. and our parts are full of possibility and we know that the only way to keep ourselves afloat amid all the chaos and runoff is to each have our own dock. our one combined goal is to make/craft something together as a family once a month. i already have art projects bookmarked and yet i'm thinking that there might be months when we need to craft hope or love or patience. and that the tangible result of these things might look less like art.
but more like home.