::this moment::

{this moment} - A Friday ritual inspired by one of my very favorite bloggers, SouleMama.  In Amanda's words: "A moment I want to pause, savor and remember."

just like that

My, we are in the thick of it (in more ways than one, you'll see!).  The first week of December turned to week-end, and there was holiday celebrations on Friday, Saturday and Sunday!  Drinks, and sweets, and things I normally don't eat.  Laughter and cold, fresh air.  Giving of the first gifts.  It was an invigorating and fun weekend.  My Monday was been spent in yoga pants and a sweatshirt, Sly in his jammies all day, cleaning up, resting, and preparing for more merry making to come!  I have five projects going at once, along with the usual suspects: dinner, dogs, dishes.  But, I have peppermint bark and the Charlie Brown Christmas Album for motivation, and just like that, the holidays are upon us!

Quick changes have happened with my baby boy in one week's time, as well.  He sits!  He crawls!  He eats!  Just like that, I've been expanded into a whole new realm of parenting.  I'm baby-proofing, watching, and most of all enjoying Sly's delight in his new moves.  With these new skills come some bumps of the noggin', of course, but mostly it is just shrills of delight from Sly, and laughter from Mama and Papa Bear watching our baby focus on an object, and then crawl, scoot and boogie to go get it!  Amazing, these babes are.  I love to watch him learn everything for the first time.  It makes me feel like I am learning it all again, too.

I love this season of gift-giving.  It has always been incredibly satisfying to me to give a gift of love, small or large, to those I hold dear.  This time of year I generally have to hold back from giving too much or too many.  If that's even possible.  As I write those words, I feel understanding for my own Mama, who so often has given us so much.  We try to stop her, but I guess it's the way some Mama's show love.  I agree, it is fun.  This year, I am giving lots of home-ade items, more than ever before.  I hope they are enjoyed and appreciated, as I have enjoyed truly putting love and energy into each gift.  That said, I can't show too much here on the blog or it may spoil the magic of surprise!

This week I aim to finish up the making, and doing, so I can sit back in enjoyment of my home and son before the traveling for Christmas begins.  I want to be present, fully, in this time of dark, feeling it's stillness, appreciating it's zen, before the light shifts again. 

yarn & books (& repeat)

Two great things that have come from spending lots of time sitting on my butt and nursing are a reintroduction to knitting and reading for fun.  Pure fun, people.  I have spent most of my book-time in the last 6 years reading for learning.  Which is great, and I still do lots of that.  But, boy oh boy have I enjoyed the novels, the memoirs, the research just for the heck of it that I've allowed myself to do in the past 5 months.  

The knitting is of a more practical nature.  My initial thought was wool hats for the whole family (minus Stevie :) ) by winter time.  So, I started with the Sly baby, working on the Umbilical Cord Hat from Stitch'N'Bitch.  I made it once ... too small.  Passed it on to a newly born baby girl.  Changed up the pattern to fit my boys big noggin, and right as I came to attaching the I-cord, or "umbilical cord"tassle, I popped it on his head to see how it looks, and well, I just don't like it.  Even with the increase to the pattern, it still doesn't cover his ears and it slides up after wearing it a while.  I should have gone even bigger but ... I didn't.  I've decided I'm just going to unravel it and put the whole hat on hold for now.  He's got a precious Peruvian chucho which works great anyways.  Moving on, I cast on last night for a bright purple soaker instead.  Papa Bear wasn't thrilled with the purple yarn for his little boy, but I think he's gonna look like a rock star with this on, some shooting star legwarmers, and that awesome dinosaur hat of his!

Back to the books:  I flew through Inconsolable, as you may know from my last post.  When I started reading this book, Papa Bear referred to it as my "depressing book".  The premise is after all a woman's tale of suffering with Postpartum Depression and a colicky, refluxy baby.  But I'm telling you this book is hilarious at times.  And more importantly, it is real.  Allow me to offer just one more passage from it (I know I offered a few in the last post) about the pitfalls of one's expectations for motherhood:

Maybe I was stuck in some kind of hipness trap (which is funny, because I'm about as hip as a Kansas city reference librarian), that there are other kinds of pitfalls.  My body will go back exactly the way it was.  Of course we'll still have sex when we're parents!  My kid will not wear something like that.I'm not going to carry a bag with bunnies on it, unless a bunny is the new Gucci logo.  I'm still going out to shows.  We are not watching Barney in this house.  

But the truth is you will become the parent you are, and who knows what that is?  Perhaps you will do inconceivably dorky things.  Perhaps you will begin wearing puce polyvinyl pants instead of tasteful seperates from Petite Sophisticate because they are more vomit-repellant.  Perhaps you will out grow your DIY Tank Girl tee shirts when you milk comes in, and you will wear periwinkle cotton nursing sweaters because your next-door neighbor gives them to you and they're comfortable and free of charge.  Perhaps you will set aside your cherished avocations (transexual fetish photography, herotica, competitive checkers); perhaps you will discover new ones.  Perhaps you will become a single parent if you are partnered; perhaps you will become partnered, suburban and domestic after all if you are single.  Perhaps your great-aunt will break her hip and come live with you, displacing your life partner's klezmer bandmates who've been crashing in your guest room, and you will turn around twice and find yourself the very model of unpaid domestic caregiving, and you will scream and cry and go to bed at seven every night from sheer exhaustion.

Who gives a fuck?  You'll do what you can.  

As I totally recommend this book, I should also share Ingman's own advice that this is not a book for pregnant first-time-moms with no history of depression or mental illness (read it after baby arrives), and also not for those bothered by the occasional drop of the F-bomb.  I really liked it though, and think it a wise read for any mother-baby care provider (or wannabes, like myself) and I can only imagine that it would have struck me as even more poignant if I had suffered with PPD.

I have now started reading Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert and am lovin' it so far.  I put this book off for a while after all the hype of Eat, Pray, Love becoming a movie and staring Julie Roberts, and during that time I forgot how much Elizabeth Gilbert's own voice resonates with my heart.  I, too, am a skeptic of the institution of marriage ("Marriage is a friendship recognized by the police" says Robert Louis Stevenson), but I am a huge fan of intimate, romantic, life long partnership.  This book is Gilbert's exploration of matrimony as she prepares for her own, government forced, marriage.  

I'm linking up, a little late, with Ginny at Small Things for Yarn Along.  If you want some knitting inspiration, check out all the other lovely folks sharing their hand knits on her page today!

Work in Progress

I was going to write a post and show you my works-in-progress, knitting and reading wise.  Then I thought to myself, "Well, my whole life is a work in progress!  How can I take a picture of all that?"  I just don't think all of my works in progress can be captured by a photo.  Or even with words.  There's just so much I'm working on doing and being.  So many projects I've started already, at least in my head if not in action.  Yet when I reflect back at the end of the day, sometimes all I have "done" is held, nursed and played with Sly.  Maybe a load of laundry.  Probably a meal or two.  Possibly some asana and reading.  Hopefully a walk outside. This path of parenthood is really one of the greatest practices in patience.  It's a much needed practice for my life.  I have a tendency to get lost in goals and sometimes struggle to reign myself back in and say "Not now, Lis.  You have plenty of time in your life to become, do, create ______ (unleash a whole chain of desires here)."

My heart desires to start a garden, become a Certified Anusara Yoga teacher, develop sewing skills, begin the journey on the midwives path, Oh and be a really great, aware mama that gets to spend lots of time at home, too.  This is just the cream of the list.  But right now it is absolutely imperative that I spend this time, this precious new-born-baby-first-time-mom time just sitting. listening. wanting. processing. deciding...

Because ultimately, the goal is to be my self and shine my inner light.  Shining my light. aligning with the Divine doesn't have to mean accomplishing 100 things a day.  Being present with my child is a great accomplishment.  My Self is ever evolving, (as is yours, my friend).  I set intentions each day, each week, each month, and the surrender them to the ocean of life.   While working towards goals is important and necessary, the simmering in the present, the releasing of to-dos is really just as necessary.   In this sense, I hope that I am always a "work in progress".

So Now, I join in with Ginny of Small Things for the "Yarn Along".  A dear friend has offered me her stash of wool yarn to make hats for my family this fall.  This beautiful blue is for my baby boy, and I better knit quickly because his head is growing so fast!  Already 17 inches!  Along with the yarn, I am reading You are Your Childs First Teacher and How to Know Higher Worlds.  Both are borrowed from a friend, and are about Waldorf education/the philosophies of Rudolf Steiner.  I am loving my introduction to Waldorf, it feels very natural and common sense to me, and I am so excited to learn more.  

For more yarn and reading inspiration, be sure to visit Small Things (link above) and take the tour of all those participating in this weeks Yarn Along.

Also, blessed International Day of Peace to you all.  How's that for a work in progress?!  Let's work together and love together, because wether we like it or not, we live together.  Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu 

Coca tea, reminiscent of the peace I found one year ago,  in Sacred Valley of Peru