Happy Birthday, Sweet Baby Maeve!

My baby is one today. She was born by c-section at 9:40pm after a 15 hour trial of labor for VBAC.





This past year has gone really fast - but in a wonderful way.






She is a bright little ray of sunshine, very happy and calm.





Happy birthday, sweet girl. May the year ahead bring you joy.

Arrr, Mateys!!!

Kerwin and I were talking about idiot parenting this morning - you know, helicopter moms, people who refuse to challenge their children to grow, or use imaginative play, etc. Somehow this led to talk of Freyja and her VERY "Type-A" personality - and that if we give her the support and resources she needs, she'll grow up and do whatever she wants, and kick ass at it - and we'd never tell her "No, don't get a music degree, get a math degree."

So Kerwin asks her, "Freyja, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Wanna be a PIRATE!!!!" She growled, brandishing her cereal spoon. Now, this is not surprising in and of itself, since we've been talking about a pirate birthday party for some time now, but what she said next was classic.

"What did she say? Did she say she wants to be a pirate?" I said. "Freyja, if you're a pirate, Miss Chelsie (our DCP's 14 yo) won't like you anymore. She's scared of pirates, remember."

She thought about this for a minute (and I wondered if I'd gone too far with "won't like you anymore", then pointed her finger at me and shook it - "Well I will just tell her to GET OVER IT!!!"

I almost choked on my english muffin. And this was after she climbed up into my bed at about 7:30 and said "Mumma, I have a question." all matter of fact and oh, so grown up. "If there are spiders on the wall and they don't stay in the corner, and I don't like them and they scare me, will they bite me?"

It slays me just how much she sounds like a KID these days. My baby is almost gone.

The Scent of Awakening

This is my entry for Thordora's June Pulsate Olympics.

I walked into my mother's house today and smelled Paganism. My mother is Lutheran, and as far as I know holds no Pagan leanings - but the smell that wafted into my nostrils as I set my things down was unmistakably the smell of the small hole-in-the-wall shop where I conducted my spiritual awakening over the course of a couple of years. The shop is out of business now, and I'm not sure what, if anything, resides there now. The smell of the store (and my mother's house today) is the same as any new-agey or occult store that sells incense in a small space - exotic woods, musk, eucalyptus and who-knows-what-else all mixed together, but that smell will always remind me of Wings and the incredibly kind and patient people who worked there and answered my questions, let me spend entire afternoons picking their brains, and tolerated my endless browsing to only walk out with $5 worth of merchandise. There's a shop in the town where I now reside that smells similar - but they sell mostly beads and bohemian hippie clothes, so it's not quite the same.

That smell takes me back to when I still looked for the wonder in everything, and anything seemed possible. It was a time of transitions, leaving the trappings of childhood behind and figuring out what to take with me into adulthood. It's the smell of a few poor decisions mixed with a lot of great ones. It's comforting to smell, yet bittersweet - the reminders of those wonderful people who were so good to a girl on the verge of discovering herself, who reassured me that as long as I "checked my gut" and remembered "why my friends call me 'Mama Heather'", that everything would work out in the end.

It did. It has. It continues to. For the smell of awakening, for the time, talk, and wisdom you shared - thank you Dawn and Sherri, and all others whose names I cannot remember. Blessed be.

I Want to Love You Madly

You crawled into our bed at 5am today. I heard "Daddy, I gotta go potty!" and then I dozed back off. I woke up a few minutes later to eskimo kisses and "I love you too, Mumma. You go back-a-seep, OK? I gonna cuddle wif you, OK?"

Little one, if you only knew what those little charming exchanges do for me. They give me fire in my belly, awaken the fierce and protecting mama who has to save and protect your innocent sweetness from the harsh, cruel world. They make me snuggle up to you, cuddle you close, tangle my fingers in your silky baby curls and pray, beg for the world to stop and hold still forever and let me keep you close to me just as you are. They don't last, those moments.

When I came back from the potty myself, you patted the quarter of my pillow you weren't occupying. "You yay down, wight heah. Wight heah, Mumma."

"Wight heah, Mumma."

My darling girl, I never want to be anywhere else.