Some of my favorite mommy-blogging friends tend to write letters to their children on important dates.  My friend Megan has written her son a letter almost every month since his birth more than two years ago.  Kate has written her three children a letter on their birthday every year since I’ve been following her blog.  I really admire their ability to mark those occasions with wonderful, endearing words of adoration.

By this time, you have probably figured out I am not one of those mommies.

So I wanted to take the time, on this unremarkable Tuesday in January, to tell you how much I love you and what a joy you are in my life.  You’re not yet two, and yet your sense of humor, empathy, and perceptive nature are sometimes so well-developed it frightens me.  The other day we were driving in the car, and you were smiling up at me from the back seat.

“You’re smiling, Jade. Are you happy?”

“Mommy happy?”

“Yes, Jade, Mommy’s happy.”

“Mommy happy. Jade happy.”

It seems like such a sophisticated concept – that you would be happy just because I was happy – but I realize now how much of my time with you, I have not been happy.  It’s not that I didn’t love you or enjoy your company, but my brain wasn’t working correctly and it made it very hard for Mommy to be happy about much of anything.  I hope that you will never understand how it feels to be depressed like that, but I know that given our family history you have a good chance.  It took Mommy almost thirty years before she admitted that her brain needed help to feel happy, and now, I can truly say I am.

Which is why, on this unremarkable Tuesday night, I found myself entranced, watching you play and playing with you.  We built block towers. You dubbed yourself “Super Grover Jade” and we flew through the air like Superman, capes and all. You told a story at the dinner table about the dog licking peanut butter off your fingers at lunchtime.  You cooked “happycake” with Popsy after supper, serving it to Daddy and me in my running shoes.  And you kissed us goodnight approximately eleventy bazillion times, alternating between us until we were all giggling and Mommy started crying from the sheer intensity of her love for you.

Honey Bear, you are becoming one of the most beautiful souls I have ever had the privilege of knowing.  I know you have made me a better person.  Mommy is happy because you made me need to be happy.  I couldn’t let the rest of your life go by without being able to enjoy you.

Love you, Tater.

Super Mommy

To be honest, I had a really tough month.  I sank into about the deepest depression I’ve ever encountered, and it sucked serious balls.

In positive news, however, thanks to the work of a very kind family physician and the wonder of SSRIs, I am back to the land of the living and smiling.

More to write later. I’m off to bed.

Okay, here is your toddler hilarity for the day:

Yesterday, Jade and Daddy were watching some videos on his laptop. We have had an obsession with mice lately, so he found this video:

If you don’t watch it, it starts with the mouse and then it moves to larger and larger animals, until it’s finally an elephant. When the elephant reaches the top of the clock, there is ominous music and then the clock crashes to pieces under the elephant. Cute, right?

As soon as the clock broke, Jade cried out, “OH NO CLOCK!!!” and was truly distraught. We have a huge old grandfather clock in our living room, and she had to be shown the clock to convince her that it hadn’t been broken by the elephant.

After her nap, she found her toy elephant and was carrying it around and worriedly saying, “CLOCK! CLOCK! NO!”

And completely unsurprising and pathetic that we choose to use it primarily for watching videos of cats and telling one another how stupid we are for our opinions.

I’ve had a couple of different friends that I actually had to give internet “time-outs” – cutting off all contact with them online – because the kind, intelligent individuals they were in the real world were completely enveloped by the assholes they became online.  It’s like all the hearts and brains flew out the window and they became some kind of subhuman – a troll, if you will.

The really frustrating thing is that I didn’t disagree with them all that often.  Most of the time I truly agreed with their opinions, and I secretly thrilled at the verbal thrashing they were giving their opponents.  But once in a while, they even turned on me, and I realized how awful that feels.  Do I really want to align myself with someone like that? Even just online?

There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and I have some definite opinions on the whole shebang.  But I just don’t feel like a thoughtful, moderate opinion is welcome – or perhaps more likely, is uninteresting.  And that is kind of sad, because it makes it seem like it’s just the zealots on either side of the spectrum screaming talking points at one another.

So my mom and dad are out of town for the next week and a half, visiting my brother and his family down in the Land of The Snowbirds.  This leaves me with sole responsibility for the care and feeding of my daughter, plus their dog and our cats (and my husband, I suppose, although he’s a big boy and even makes his own lunch these days).  Given that I had been tending Jade on my own for the first nineteen months of her life, and playing house with Hubs since we moved in together WAY back in 2005, I thought, “No problem, guys! I got this.”

Clearly, I have lost my edge, and having another grown-up to help me run the household for the last couple months has made me totally soft.  I was in tears this afternoon, frustrated and exhausted and SO tired of having nobody to share a coherent thought with.  Even if that thought was only about the ridiculousness of Kim Kardashian’s divorce and how even NPR can’t seem to pull themselves away from that black hole of sensationalism.

I was thinking about how the heck I must have made it through the days back in Virginia, and I realized just how much of it had to do with the addition of the dog.  Although he is a big old loveable galoot, he really is just a second toddler, albeit with fewer words and a total lack of table manners.  Also, this house is a lot bigger than the old apartment, and housekeeping just takes more time.  Still, by the end of the afternoon I found myself relaxing a little more and beginning to find my stride again.

Just thought I’d throw a plug in here for my friend Tonya’s blog.  She’s doing NaBloPoMo, too, on top of all the amazing work she does as a knitting teacher, designer, and mom to two adorable little guys.

Nah. Blow. Poe. Mow.

God, that sounds awful…one would think that the folks behind National Blog Posting Month could find a better abbreviation than NaBloPoMo.

Anyhoo, I was inspired by my friends who are once again braving the battle of NaNoWriMo and thought that the least I could do would be to spare a few minutes a day to write a blog posting.  You few faithful readers who have checked my blog in earnest since August, hoping for another shred of my special kind of “wisdom”, this month is for you.

I was thinking a lot about the topic of writing today, in preparation for this entry.  And I started thinking about how much of a chore it can be to write something like an essay or term paper – besides the hours spent behind the keyboard actually writing the damn thing, there’s also the mountains of research, and the exhaustive process of mapping and outlining the whole thing.  Then follows the paranoia of checking one’s margins, citations, punctuation, spelling, grammar, even font size and spacing, before holding your breath as you click “print” and hope to God that the paper doesn’t jam or the printer doesn’t run out of ink.

It’s remembering those moments that’s keeping me away from any kind of school environment these days (those, and the lovely monthly bills from Sallie Mae).

But a blog – yeesh.  It’s supposed to be fun!  It’s supposed to be creative! An expression of your personality! Your sense of humor!  I love the notion of having a blog, much like I always loved the idea of keeping a journal or diary in high school.  But in execution, I haven’t been the best at regularly writing.

Theoretically, I love writing.  It’s something I’m good at.  It’s a helpful tool for someone who has a lot on her mind and never seems to be able to articulate it vocally.  I, who spends hours after an altercation thinking of the witty things I should have said, should truly be a fan of writing for the way it lets me express myself precisely.

And yet, thinking about writing something often puts me in a cold sweat.  I imagine it is just my rampant perfectionism talking, but there’s something so permanent about writing my feelings down.  There’s no room to tap-dance around the ideas I just voiced.

I guess this is why stuff like NaBloPoMo exists – to make you do it and stop worrying about how “right” it is.

I remember, during my undergrad, an afternoon in composition class with the wonderful Dr. Mark Polishook.  Most of the time, those classes were less about correcting poor compositional structure and more about the philosophy of composition, and I remember one of my classmates lamenting how hard it was to write music.

“Come sit here, at the table,” Mark said.  “For the next five minutes, while the rest of us talk, I want you to fill that page with as many notes as you can.”

“But I can’t write music that fast!” the student lamented.

“Yes you can. You just can’t write good music that fast,” smiled Dr. Polishook.  “But how will you find the good music from the bad if you don’t write it all down?”

Here goes my five minutes.

I’m finally getting around to this blog again.  I’ve noticed that with most parents who blog, there’s an inverse proportion between their child’s ability to walk and the number of blog posts written.  I have truly succumbed to that pattern.

On the other hand, I’m also finally under my pre-pregnancy weight, so there’s that.

It’s been a busy, busy spring and summer for us.  Jade keeps me busy, inside and outside.  She loves the playground, loves the pool, loves her playgroups, and LOVES fruits and vegetables (which she can finally chew well, thanks to her newly acquired molars and incisors).  Mike has been busy with work, and we’ve been spending our weekends with friends who are in and out of town.

We’ve also been doing some traveling. We spent Memorial Day weekend with friends in Pennsylvania, and we just recently returned from our second trip to Oregon this year, for Mike’s brother’s wedding.

Which brings us to the big news of the summer: We are moving back to Portland in September!

We’ve been doing some soul searching since Mike’s grandfather passed away back in May, and we concluded that we would like to be closer to our families.  It’s been a longing of our hearts for a while now, and Jade has been just the catalyst for this change. So things are crazy, but I will be doing my best to revive this old thing!

“There’s a voice in my head that tells me what those little things mean,” I told my mother.  I was stretched out on the living room floor, with the front page of The Dallas Morning News spread out in front of me.  I had just read the headline and a couple paragraphs out loud, much to Mom’s amazement.

I was three years old.

Mom attributes my early reading to a phonics song I had on cassette tape. I had listened to it at bedtime for as long as I could remember:

To this day I can remember most of the words, and I sing it to Jade sometimes, too.

It’s funny, the things that you remember inspiring you as a child. Some of the experiences I had as a child made my mind come alive and struck such a chord that I still recall them.

Another memory is that of a little ditty I learned in Cherub Choir, the children’s choir at King of Glory Lutheran Church in Dallas, TX.  It was a set of lyrics applied to the theme of Bach’s “Little” Fugue in G minor:

Little Fugue, this is the organ fugue by Bach

First it takes off and goes around

And around, and around, and around, and around

And then it takes off for the sky before it ends

I still sing those words every time I hear or think of that piece of music. It was the first time I’d heard of a fugue, and I remember thinking for the first time, “Wow, this Bach guy was really good at music! I’d like to hear some more.”

Allison – Allimonster Speaks
Barb – Spencer Hill Spinning & Dyeing
Batty – Batty’s Adventures in Spooky Knitting
Dave – Notes from the Field
Eileen – Art Deco Diva Knits
Evil Twin’s Wife – The Glamorous Life of a Hausfrau
G – Not-A-Box
Haley – Aimless Tangents
Jennifer – Ask Poops, Please
JMLC – Daydreams and Ruminations
Kate – One More Thing
LC – LC in Sunny So Cal
LeeAnne – This is the life…
Lisa – As If You Care
Louise – Child of Grace
Marcy – Mittentime
Melanie – usually, things happen
Nikki – Land of the Free, Home of the Depressed
Peri – knitandnatter
Sara – yoyu mama

For the record, we have not decided whether or not we want more children.  There were enough times in the first year that I wasn’t sure I wanted my ONE child that made Mike and I agree that we wanted to proceed with caution.  Pregnancy does not flatter me, and I did not enjoy myself all that much.

I think what is so irritating about the pressure to procreate is that it assumes we are all completed by the same things.  Some people find great joy in a large family, full of noise and laughter and tears.  Others are very happy with their one or two children.  Some have fuzzy kids, and some live a very contented life without children at all.

It also assumes that everyone who wants to have children, can.  There are so many worthy, deserving parents who yearn to love a child, but due to biological, financial, or sociological factors, are denied that great desire of their hearts.

There is no one recipe for a family, much as there is no one recipe for pizza.  Everyone has their own taste, and with families, much like pizza, even when it isn’t the best, it’s still pretty good.

I am really out of the blogging habit lately, but the Madhouse just keeps on rolling along.  I hope you’re reading these other blogs, because they are terrific stuff.

Allison – Allimonster Speaks
Barb – Spencer Hill Spinning & Dyeing
Batty – Batty’s Adventures in Spooky Knitting
Dave – Notes from the Field
Eileen – Art Deco Diva Knits
Evil Twin’s Wife – The Glamorous Life of a Hausfrau
G – Not-A-Box
Haley – Aimless Tangents
Jennifer – Ask Poops, Please
JMLC – Daydreams and Ruminations
Kate – One More Thing
LC – LC in Sunny So Cal
LeeAnne – This is the life…
Lisa – As If You Care
Louise – Child of Grace
Marcy – Mittentime
Melanie – usually, things happen
Nikki – Land of the Free, Home of the Depressed
Peri – knitandnatter
Sara – yoyu mama
Yorkie – Den of Iniquity Prime

I have been a busy, busy girl, between Christmas, Mike getting pneumonia, Jade and I trading about six rounds of colds back and forth, an impromptu trip to Oregon for some family time, and finally, an ear infection for Jade and a sinus infection for myself.  And yesterday was Jade’s first birthday, too…PHEW!

I’ve been thinking about blogging a lot, but nothing is coming out and I haven’t been keeping on top of my Madhouse entries, either.  Someday, I’ll be back, and hopefully soon.  Probably later this week.

In the meantime, PLEASE check out all the other amazing bloggers on the Madhouse list!

Allison – Allimonster Speaks
Barb – Spencer Hill Spinning & Dyeing
Batty – Batty’s Adventures in Spooky Knitting
Dave – Notes from the Field
Eileen – Art Deco Diva Knits
Evil Twin’s Wife – The Glamorous Life of a Hausfrau
G – Not-A-Box
Haley – Aimless Tangents
Jennifer – Ask Poops, Please
JMLC – Daydreams and Ruminations
Kate – One More Thing
LC – LC in Sunny So Cal
LeeAnne – This is the life…
Lisa – As If You Care
Louise – Child of Grace
Marcy – Mittentime
Melanie – usually, things happen
Nikki – Land of the Free, Home of the Depressed
Peri – knitandnatter
Sara – yoyu mama