the busy heart

I once told a woman I didn't know all that well that I was "trying" to do something. She immediately said, "You're trying, you're lying." And the rhyme was so catchy and she seemed so sure of this truth, that I thought she must be right, even as I hated her for saying it. But motherhood has changed my sense of "trying," and now I feel sure that this woman was wrong. To me, trying--especially when divorced from concern of outcome--is a noble art. And the most difficult and important one I practice as the mother to Henrietta. For Henrietta and I, it doesn't work to force it, and it doesn't work to give up entirely. It only works to come at it from somewhere in the middle, to approach it as gently as possible, as unemotionally as possible, yet still with a great deal of persistence.  Here's what I mean: Henrietta is not, sadly for me, an eat-everything-on-her-plate kind of girl. She's picky, and it seemed for awhile she was ...

I've been thinking about a day over a year ago, when I found out I was pregnant for the first time. I'd later lose that pregnancy thirteen weeks in, but mostly when I found out, I was terrified. I mean, I was excited at first, but on the heels of that excitement came the holy-wow-what-on-earth-am-i-doing feeling. They say when you have a baby your life is changed the instant you give birth, and that's true of course, but in a way my life changed then, the first time I found out. I almost instantly felt eclipsed, like I was disappearing, like I'd never be "me" again. I worried about the baby, about the things he or she would have to go through, about all of the sadness and struggle involved in a normal human life. I worried I wouldn't know how to help, or that the sadness of his/her sadness would overwhelm me beyond my capacity to function. This wasn't an unreasonable fear: incapacitating sadness is something I'm familiar with, and there have been...

On our way out to Utah, Sam and I stopped to eat in a restaurant in the Boston Logan airport. As we walked in, Henrietta was fussing a little, and I tried to decide if this meant she was hungry or tired or wet or what. I suspected she was hungry and this was distressing because we were seated at a table right next to a couple having a quiet meal, and they seemed to be glad to be having their quiet meal, and I somehow got this vibe that they would not be interested in having me feed my baby one seat over. I'm a discrete breastfeeder, dedicated to using a cover, but still. You know this vibe? This sort of stiffening in the room when you walk in with a baby? I mean, there are rooms I've walked in that I can instantly tell are full of moms, or people who understand kids, and I feel like whatever goes down is going to be okay. But when I sense that stiffening, when I can tell people are eyeing my baby like it's only a matter of time before she ruins their meal, it makes me ner...

I posted some Instagram pictures of the nursery on Facebook (oh gosh, I'm getting so social media-y!), and though Instragram pictures are charming, it's hard to really see what's going on in the ones I took, so here are some more, with details. I'm not done with it, but I'm more done than I thought I'd get, so here it is. Here's a shot from (one of the) doorways. (There are three (!) doorways.) I made all of the rugs. Crocheted them from strips of fabric that I cut myself. Should I tell you more about how I did it? They took forever, but they are exactly what I had in mind, and I couldn't find anything like it in the real world. That's the dresser we found on the side of the road. I got the knobs on clearance at Anthropologie (the top two are golden snails, the bottom ones are turquoise-y and gold. It still needs a little love, but I love it. I love that it's full of her little cupcake suits. My dear friends came over and pu...

It didn't take me long, once I got put on bed rest, to realize I needed to learn to crochet. Or do something (anything!) with my hands, but crochet seemed the easiest. My friend Russanne  came over one afternoon to show me the ropes (or the yarns? okay, that was a really funny joke, to me.), and I proceeded to fail miserably, over and over. I'd try to make a square shape, and somehow end up with a triangle?! Or I'd try to  make a circle and end up with a weird little mushroom shape? It was discouraging, is what it was. But I kept trying, undoing what I'd done and asking google what the heck was going on, and starting over. And soon a big box of yarn I ordered arrived, and I proceeded to make this wee blanket for the baby girl. Okay, actually, first I failed again. I got a good way into a blanket and then realized it was so tight that it was more like a ... what? A scrubber pad or something. It was bad. So I pouted for a day, and then started over. And though, honestly...

This morning I was thinking about yoga. I was thinking about prenatal yoga, and how I had planned to do it while pregnant. I was thinking about this because my body hurt, and for an instant I thought, "Maybe I could do yoga," and then I remembered that I couldn't. Which led me to thinking, again, about the plans I had for this pregnancy, about how I thought it was going to go, and how few of those plans are actually playing out. Here's what I had in mind originally: I had a midwife at a birth center, and I really liked her, and I was excited about a semi-granola birth, a valiant attempt at doing it "naturally." I envisioned laboring in the bathtub and in the birth center's garden. I wanted to learn hypnobirthing and find a really good birth class. Before then I would do yoga, and I would take long walks, and I would eat a lot of green healthy things and plenty of good protein and I would be lean and lovely as a pregnant lady--you know, like a q-tip w...

Sometime back I realized that those weird shelves of trashy knick-knacks in thrift stores are actually a gold mine if you have the right eyes. Almost any of the tacky little ceramic figurines you find there can be beautiful, given a little love and a coat of spray paint. I found these three little snails awhile ago, and fell for them. They were a dollar a piece. And I knew they were meant for baby. I took them home, and eventually got around to getting a can of gold spray paint, and one evening, after a long day of bed resting, I took a very brief excursion out back to the parking lot behind our place so I could oversee the painting of the snails. I remain deeply in love with them. Someday, when this kid's nursery actually comes together, they will be a sweet addition to that space.

The only way I'm staying sane lately is to make objects for baby. At night when I can't sleep, I imagine her nursery in great detail, and then I send Sam to the fabric store (what a hero, no?) and in the evenings, after I've worked from home, I turn on Netflixed sitcoms and make whatever has struck my fancy. One morning I woke up with the idea to make the baby a stuffed monster. Sam and I dig those Ugly Dolls . You know the ones? (I think you either get them and love them or you don't ... we love them.) And we've talked about getting her one. But it occurred to me I'd like to make her one, and this was the result. Sam loves the monster, and was soon very excited about her photo shoot. He wanted a picture of her everywhere, as you'll see. (She was loosely inspired by these monsters , which I found whilst Pinteresting, of course.) Her mouth, eye, and hair are all felt. Her legs are orange on the back and yellow on the front. I hand-sewed the whole thing...