Alms Park Picnic

11 years or so ago, Lou and I went to Alms Park to check it out as a potential place to have our wedding. For whatever reason, we hadn't been back there since. Until Sunday evening when we decided to pick up dinner and head there for an impromptu picnic with the girls to wrap up the big birthday party weekend. It is a great park, has a spectacular view, and is quite possibly the perfect picnic spot. We had a wonderful time - right up until a pair of gigantic and ominous storm clouds sent us packing.
And is it just me, or did Josie start looking four the moment she blew out those candles? She's still 3 until Thursday, but she looks so grown up now.

What?!

Five months is really close to six months and that is half way to a year. Cuh-razy!

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First sunflower...

...Not surprisingly it bloomed just in time for josie's birthday this week (and that would be cupcake frosting on her face).

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National Night Out

Tuesday was the "National Night Out" at Owl's Nest Park. It was really fun to see "our" park bursting at the seams with people. Josie had a great time getting her face painted, petting the police horses and trying to decide whether or not she should dance to the drum line. But, without a doubt, the highlight of the whole night was the totally spontaneous moment when Josie and I found ourselves in the middle of the massive spray from a firehose.

Lou had taken Bea to the car and planned to come and pick us up on Madison Road. That's when Josie and I saw kids running toward some invisible something and for whatever reason we both decided running towards whatever it was too. It was a little too late to change our minds when we looked up and saw a *wall of water* coming right down towards us like a big wet rainbow. We both instinctively turned to run away from it but it was too late. We got soaked and kept running but kept getting soaked. And we were laughing hysterically the entire time. Once we caught our breath, Josie said "hey mom, we should totally do that again" although she said it with a tone that indicated she had zero belief that I would say yes. I said, "okay, are you ready?" and we grabbed hands and ran toward it again. It was just as fun the second time. There were loads of kids and we were all cracking up. After a third time, Lou showed up and was a bit surprised to find us drenched. That's when we snapped the quick photos of the firetruck and our wet selves just before the firetruck shut off the water. Josie cried and cried and cried! Looking back, running through that firehose was easily one of my top five moments with Josie in her almost-four years.

 Last

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Office Decor

This is a sculpture that Josie put together and displayed in my office today. From left to right...that's the sun, a flower and rain. I think this will become a part of The Schneider Gallery's permanent collection.

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Little helper

This is one of the perks of working from home...little girls who do big favors like writing their mommy's name on top of their papers "just like at school." Aren't I lucky?

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Farmers Market Saturday

...where the bread is fresh, the lettuce tastes like the earth, peaches are ugly but delicious, smoothies are made with real fruit, music is playing from a family band, dogs of every shape & size sniff around, wildflowers are wrapped in wet newspaper, you run into friends, and feel like you have already accomplished something great for the day...all before 10am.

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"Bow-kay"

The other day Josie asked me if she could go outside by herself. The gate was locked and I stayed close to the door, curious about what she wanted to try to get away with. When she asked for scissors, I got little worried. Turns out, this is what she had in mind. I love all the different lengths. A lot of love went into this bouquet.

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More on Nothing and Everything

A couple years back, well before pre-school friends and a baby sister, Josie and I spent a ton of time together. I was so fortunate to only have to work part-time and we spent a lot of time at the Cincinnati Family Enrichment Center where we met a lot of really incredible women that remain close friends. One of the women I met there was "Miggy" - the hip mama of her NY-transplanted family who landed in Cincinnati for awhile. Miggy and her sweet daughter (known in the blogosphere as "Princess Sparkle Pants") took the same parent/child art class that we were in. I instantly liked her in a "now that's the kind of mom I want to be" sort of way - for all the "wrong" reasons (dang, that girl has an incredible sense of style) and all the "right" reasons (wow, you can just see how connected she is to her daughter within a few minutes of being in the same room).  So, fast- forward to years later. Miggy and I both disappeared from the Center at about the same time. I later found out that we both suffered similar complications in trying to have our second children. (And you'll be happy to know that she got her "happy ending" too. Just wait 'til you meet sweet little "Lamp.")

While we didn't see each other at the Center anymore (and well-intentioned playdates never quite came together) I kept up with Miggy's blog which I found (and continue to find) incredibly refreshing in its honesty and candor. She puts it all out there - courageously and poignantly. And I've been so grateful for her blog and the way she has shared the story of her beautiful family many many times.  (If you've never clicked on the link to her blog over in my blogroll, I dare you to try to read a post and not find yourself going back time and time again for more. Don't be surprised if you learn a few things in the process. And get ready to fall in love with her two sweet girls...and her mad sewing skills.)

So all of this is the long way of saying, this morning I read her post "Nothing and Everything" and it resonated so much with me that I just had to share it.

She says:
It's easy to define ourselves by what we do, but those things don't always accurately portray who we really are... I think my children have done more to chisel away at my ineffectual exterior revealing a truer and better me...Of course there are many days where it doesn't seem that way, many days where I feel like the worst version of myself and wonder who gave me stewardship over two human lives in the first place...but it's there.  The subtle changes, the small and large sacrifices, a little-bit-better me.  In one sense those helpless, beautiful creatures have given us absolutely nothing.  Instead they have taken almost all our time, energy and mindshare, not to mention a fair amount of our financial resources.  And because of that, they have somehow given us everything.


Now that I have been fortunate enough to get to do this parenting thing all over again, it has really caused me to pause and reflect on what it means to be a mother.  For example, I remember when Josie was about Bea's age I started spending evenings making pureed baby food. It struck me as the strangest way to spend my time. How funny, I was actually being a parent. One night in particular, it hit me: "Whoa - I'm a mom. This is crazy. I used to spend my free time doing lots of other things and now I'm staying up too late making homemade baby food. This is insane." For a long time, it felt as though I was "playing mom" and it was a totally common occurrence to joke with friends and family about how hilarious and strange it was that we had a baby. And I'm not sure when it happened exactly. The slow evolution from that to now, where life before Josephine & Beatrice seems like a distant memory.  There are glimpses into that former life, but our new life as parents is largely unrecognizable from our lives before it.

I guess what I am putting out there is this. It's not as though I've been struggling lately with wanting that old life back, because I really don't. And while it would certainly be nice to have a little more "me-time" in theory, I'm not quite sure I'd find it as fulfilling as it sounds once in practice. I guess the reason Miggy's post struck such a chord with me today is that her epiphany acted as the catalyst for my own. To paraphrase the C.S. Lewis quote she shared - at some point, we start separating breaks from our former life as interruptions of that which is "real" or our "own." At some point we realize that those "interruptions" are our life - all of them - the good, the bad &  the heartbreaking, the mundane, the blissful & everything in between. And quite thankfully really there is no going back.

And that was the thought that hit me as I got to the end of her blog post this morning. And the post, like so many she has written over the years, has been bouncing around in my head all day where it has grown and evolved substantially and, like most good thoughts, raised more questions than answers.

So Miggy - thank you. In my growing pursuit to be more present in my life, you continue to give me (and all of your readers far and wide) the enormous gift of your genuine and authentic reflections on raising a family.

And to all of you - those that read our blog and click up the tally on the blog visits - those of you who are new friends and old friends, people I talk to every day and people I haven't talked to in years, those of you who keep reading for the reason unique to you - thanks for being part of this new life of ours.

Maiden Voyage

This morning Josie road off to a Day Four of Nature Camp in her new big kid booster seat. The transition was tear-provoking for us as Lou removed her carseat to make way for the booster. The cow carseat, which will soon become Bea's, is the one that we brought teeny tiny, brand new Sweet Baby Josie home from the hospital in almost four years ago. (And such a sweet memory of it taking a full half hour to do a ten minute drive because new dad Louie refused to go above 25 mph.) Josie is over the moon about growing up, but I can't say we share the same enthusiasm for the idea.

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those little hands

Quite often during the day, Beatrice reaches out for her big sister....

 And Josie always obliges...

This little tiny hand and these teeny tiny fingers are too too precious.

(Dear Future Carri, while it is highly unlikely that you will ever forget the fact that Bea always, *always* wraps her hand around your finger when she's nursing, this is your reminder.)