From Little Children Learn

I'm no self-help writer or anything, but while traveling a couple of weeks ago, I nailed down one tricky little way to increase your faith in humanity:

Take a toddler to an airport.

On my various trips wading through airports and flying with a baby, I have been awed by the emotional encouragement strangers have invested in me and my child, ready at any moment to help as I wrestled with the demands common to traveling alone with a kid--

The kind old couple sharing our five hour flight who held six month old Halle, though she screamed with separation anxiety, so I could use the restroom.

The exotic looking woman with flame red hair, rough tan skin, and fading tattoos who stopped to say, "God bless you."

The peppy flight attendants who learn Halle's name and repeat it throughout the flight, making her smile.

The business man who simply gave me a smile as I chased her up the airplane aisle for a fifth time, her little legs taking her anywhere but her seat.

The people who have let her crawl on them and play with their stuff, chew on their bracelets or watch movies on their laptops, who have smiled and waved and played peekaboo when they really wanted to read or sleep.

Most recently, at 9:00 p.m. in a Chicago Midway airport gate waiting to board our final flight home, I found myself laughing to tears along with thirty other tired and disheveled travelers as we watched little Halle stumble around like Jack Sparrow on her new walking legs, going from stranger to stranger to show them her most prized possession: her belly button. In a moment of willing vulnerability, the crowd laughed together as we watched this carefree toddler roam, assured and proud of her belly.

These are people caught in the weariness of travel, the gray layers of an airport, and yet the kindness emerges in ways that give me the most tender of feelings for these people. Taking a toddler to an airport has not discouraged me, but shown me the power of innocence to encourage good.

...And now, on a less formal note, pictures from our visit! A dreamy afternoon at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

The girl loves to show off her belly button:

She refused to touch the grass with her hands, and every time she began to fall forward, she would throw those hands back, tighten her abs, and scrunch up her nose in concentration, determined to defy gravity.

 

 

Forget her belly button, Halle found out her finger fits perfectly in her nose...

  

 

Stripped: To the soul who found my grocery list

The other day as I was unloading groceries into my car, the wind picked up my grocery list and carried it into the sky in a whir of motion. I watched the white paper against the storm clouds flit at an impressive pace across the parking lot, rising toward the city buildings beyond the street. The paper rode so high I watched it sail for what seemed like a mile at least. I stood by my empty grocery cart, bewitched. (Really. The baby was chillin' in her car seat, the milk getting warm, and I'm just standing there all wind-blown, my mouth hanging open.) Who is going to find that? I thought, and then felt the sudden need to make sure I'd fully dressed.

If you are the innocent who stumbled on that list and read it, you know these things: I didn't get my sweet potatoes, black beans, granola, or eyeliner. You might wonder why some items were highlighted blue, others circled, and others with black dots next to them. The answer is that I often wonder this, too. Why did I circle the cremini mushrooms? Maybe you can tell me.

If you've read my list, you have definitely noticed that sometimes I just don't have time for vowels. You might assume I'm some healthy foodie because I buy nonfat plain yogurt and black strap molasses. But what you won't know is that I accidentally bought 10% milk fat Greek yogurt last time and I will now have to spend the next two months mixing it with the nonfat plain in an attempt to remain in my current pant size. You also won't know that the entire jar of molasses turned itself over while we slept, the stuff slithering over three shelves of food and under my fridge, where it still sits in a sticky pool, mocking me.

If you read my list and thought, "A female wrote this," you'd be right.

Once, back in my undergrad days, my boyfriend and his roommates found a shopping list on the ground inside the local grocery store, and its contents amused them so much they brought it home to display on the fridge. That list--its quirky spellings and obscure ingredients that I can no longer recall (mom brain)--popped up in conversations for months and I know we shed plump tears from laughter. Yet I remember even then feeling a little bit like I had trespassed.

If you discovered my flighty shopping list, know this: I felt naked as I watched it--two weeks worth of collection--slip away.

It's a One Year Old!

Though she is nearly fifteen months old now, I still want to share some of the photos I took of my little Halle after she turned one, as well as some nursery details, since both are always changing. (Please forgive the many focus fails. Baby on the move!)

Halle is hilarious right now, and I'm doing my best to soak in this kid as she is in this very moment. I know phases at this stage of childhood enter and exit quickly and all could change the minute she wakes up from her nap, but right now the only thing annoying about her (ha, I can say that about my own kid, right?) is that she screams when she is frustrated (it's an art form she is exploring). Otherwise, she smiles and babbles constantly, gives kisses all day (with her mouth closed! huzzah!), says please in sign language whenever she needs something, waves "na-night" when we lay her down to sleep, plays happily by herself while I cook dinner (this was most definitely not our experience last week--phases!), and is teaching herself to walk, which she prefers to do in private while holding a T.V. remote. She brushes her hair, brushes Mama's hair, brushes Sonny Boy's tail, and I honestly get the butterflies regularly she is just so cute.

Besides comments about her big blue eyes, one of the most common phrases we hear about her is, "You've got yourself a serious baby." And we do, and we love it. She is her own authority, she has opinions, (The other day, before she would let me get her out of her crib after a nap, she pointed me around the room, directing clean up of any stray toys and books that had been missed before her nap. Serious.) and she has an inner stability that makes me proud.

She's a good one.

(Note to future, tired, fed-up self: you really did feel all the happy feels you wrote about above, Kels, you'll feel it again! Ha.)

(Note to those who think this sounds too perfect: she also pooped in the bath three times in two weeks.)

  

  

Parenthood has been good to us.

Tip Me One Way, Internets

Today while the baby napped I

exercised
showered
cleaned up breakfast
unloaded the dishwasher
started laundry
let the dog out
did my hair and make-up
painted my toe nails
super glued a broken mirror that had been waiting for days to be fixed
and entertained the thought, "I'm going to start a small business."

I brainstormed product, marketing, creative angles, colors. From task to task around the quiet house I floated on excitement. Then the baby woke up with pink eye and I thought, "Or not the business."

I do this constantly, swaying back and forth between lighting the torch for my own ventures and blanketing myself completely in the demands of being a mother to a toddler. My dreams ignite usually within the comforts of a clean home and a healthy family (and, let's be honest, a sleeping kid). Then one of us--and soon the rest of us--gets sick or injured or sad, and I fall behind on dinner prep and I didn't walk the dog and I feel so tired and I just want to watch Gilmore Girls and suddenly I could care less about my creative business. And I usually end up thinking, "How the heck does Joanna Gaines do it?"

My husband--awesome dude that he is--gives only encouragement. The only thing he asks is that I commit to my dreams and stop with the swaying. (And, to be transparent, to decide on a dream. I have a few.) You don't want to know how many blog post drafts I have sitting around, just waiting for a loving moment of focus to dot those i's, cross those t's, and get that cherry on top. (A real cherry. Maraschino who?)

This post doesn't get a cherry. (Or an edit. This is raw, y'all.) I don't even have a conclusion. I don't have a wise crack or a lesson learned or a sweet story reminding me how it will all work out. Instead, I'm writing this free form, mid sway. So, internets, what say you?

And, since this is a blog, a photo or few: