Reed doesn’t take to napping easily.  He would rather look around and smile and play until he is severely overtired and grumpy.  Getting him to sleep can be amusing, stressful, funny, frustrating, meditative, sweet, restful, and any combination thereof.

So, I have taken to drinking a calming herbal tea I learned to make from this book while nursing the little one before trying to get him down.  I don’t know if it’s the smell that settles him in, if it effects the milk, or if it just relaxes him through me, but it does seem to have an effect.  Either way, the tea is very pleasant and very nice to take whenever you want to wind things down. Catnip is more known around here for the effects it has on cats, but it has a much longer history of human consumption.   Don’t buy it from your pet store, but look for it where loose herbs and teas are sold (try a local co-op or alternative health store or just grow your own).  In humans, rather than creating a wild euphoria, it is quite sedative.

1 part chamomile
1 part fennel seed
1 part catnip

Steep ten minutes.

So, the lentils I tried sprouting never really sprouted.  They just got fatter and fatter and fatter for two weeks and then were relocated to the compost pile.  I don’t know if the lentils were old and dead or if it was too cold.  I suspect the former.  And the dress I bought was only just okay, so I’m sending it back.  I also baked a loaf of bread that was very very far from perfect.

I don’t really mind failing once and a while.  What would be the fun in life if I did it all perfectly the first time?

The library is at its best when the sun is just beginning to set and the houses aren’t quite sure whether or not to turn on their lights.  It is busy there, quiet and busy with kids home from school and adults home from work.  People aren’t lingering, they are moving and making nice noises: walking, turning pages, zipping backpacks, scanning books.  Sometimes, I go just to hear it, with no intention of checking anything out.  I go and walk the aisles with Reed strapped to my belly.  We just watch and listen and run our fingers along book jackets while it grows darker outside and more houses turn on their lights.

95% of the time I love being a mom.  I mean, the entire act of motherhood.  I love  Reed’s face in the morning.  I love watching him get stronger and bigger and wiser.  I love watching him watch the world.  I even love the less shiny things:  rocking back and forth with him as he cries and cries while the sun comes through the window, waking up with him in the night, washing diapers.

The other 5% of the time it is usually cloudy outside.  Adam is gone.  And Reed probably hasn’t had a good nights’ sleep.  And then he most likely didn’t stay asleep for more than a few minutes in the morning.  And then by afternoon he is so tired all he does is cry.  And in the evening, it is more like screaming.  And I still love being a mom, I guess, in that 5%.  But I am irritable and grumpy and just want to wash my hair.  Reed, please let me go wash my hair. And all I can do is pray the prayer that has been finding its way to me since day one, “God, please teach me to be a mother.”  It’s a prayer that God always seems ready to answer.  God is also a mother.  But despite all prayers and answers, I am still irritable and grumpy and frumpy.

But, eventually night does fall.  Even on days like that.  And the babe does sleep.  And within a few short hours of quiet, I have forgotten the endless crying and yelling and and rocking.  And I’m just looking forward to his smile in the morning.

Endless cups of coffee.  Winter light.  Bowls of soup.  Tired, old snow.  Roasted roots.  Cold hands and feet.  A sun that sets later each night.

Actually, I don’t mind February.  I don’t mind it at all.  I’m glad it is still winter, and I am bundled up inside.  I am reading The Brothers K and taking a photograph every day.

Cheers, February.  I’m glad you are here.

February 2, 2007

5 Things I’m loving about 2007 so far:

1- Hanging out with my roommates more. Our hours had gotten so consumed with business and boys that we hardly saw each other. But, that’s been different lately. Angie is still pretty busy (and understandably so with work and school and a wedding to plan!) , but I get to hang out with Monica and Janelle almost every day. Lately, there’s been a lot of space to sit around and drink tea and make dinner together and talk and talk and talk. I love that.

2- My city. This will be my first full year as a student and as a Madisonian. I love school. I love Madison. I’m glad to be here.

3- The discovery of Japanese treats like Mochi and Yan Yan and Pocky. Thanks, Adam. Speaking of him…

4- My boyfriend.

5- All the good stuff to come this year. I think there will be a lot.

It’s not a big or earth-shattering list, but, the year has just begun…
What do you love about 2007 so far?

Number 23

I’ve always loved seed catalogues.  When they arrived to my parents’ house in the wintertime, and I was a little girl, I would sit with them day after day, circling and starring and initialing the roses I thought we should plant (I always circled one called “Peace”) and the novel fruits and hollyhocks.  And now I got the first seed catalogue at my first house.  And my mind is swirling with tomatos and cucumbers and carrots and terraces and trellises and sketched and resketched garden plans.  And I love seed catalogues more than ever.

I love my days home with Reed, full of smiling at each other, learning things, doing my small things around the house- practicing thrift and home economics (in the true sense of the word) in little ways that I find so immensely satisfying.

Today, I listened to this talk by Wendell Berry for the 10th time (#6 “Our Land, Our Food, Our Responsibility”).  It always helps me to remember.

I like what he says, here, in one of his poems:

“Hope to become kinder than power instructs you to be
and hope to become poorer than wealth invites you to be”

Enjoy your Friday, everyone.

January 23, 2007

I am back in Madison and my laptop’s power cord thing is busted. Or so Adam tells me. (note: I am so grateful for my Madison boys: Adam who knows how to fix things and the definitions to obscure words and Eliot my little warrior-mouse-catcher-man and purrbox. What would I do without them?) This is why I haven’t written about vanilla sugar yet or my first day of classes or reflected on Norway or how great Madison is or posted the pictures of that amazing amazing snow or whined about how much I spent on bloody books (I spent around $350 on bloody books…and counting!) or gushed about how great my bloody books are. All in due time.

I returned to the States five days ago and a lot has happened since. At first I spent hours and hours kissing Adam and looking into Eliot’s eyes and telling him how hansom he is. Eliot is so hansom. Adam and I also went shopping, and the boy spoiled me by buying me zillions of Penzey’s spices and the greatest pepper mill ever (which I’m using for the grey sea salt from Penzey’s) as well as the second greatest (I’m using that one for the pepper). He also bought me vanilla sugar. And my life will never be the same.

I’ve had vanilla sugar before, but never such delicious vanilla sugar in such a handy little shaker. It is lovely and wonderful and I don’t intend to live without it. Yesterday, I made too much rice for lunch, so as a sweet afternoon tea treat, I sprinkled it with vanilla sugar and drown it all in milk. And it was so so lovely. And then last night I put it in my hot chocolate and I bathed in it this morning and would have brushed my teeth with it, but that might give me cavities.

2nd great food discovery: Trader Joe’s carries crumpets. And it turns out I like crumpets. I like them a lot.

Yesterday was my first day of classes. I’m taking five this semester and had all of them my first day: 4th semester Norwegian, History of Western Culture: 1300-1850, The African Storyteller, The African Autobiography, and Creative Writing: Fiction and Poetry Workshop. I was worn out by the end of it (and still am recovering from all that brainy stuff moving in my head). But I love my classes. I love love love them. I wish they were food so I could mix them together to make blueberry pie and sit down with a fork and gobble them. I have a feeling that these classes are going to be a lot of work. There is a lot to read, and I’m actually going to want to read it all and not slack off. It may be the death of me. It’ll be great.

Speaking of reading, I better get to it! I hope you’re having some sweet days and I hope you by some vanilla sugar and sprinkle it in your coffee.

*Oh. I almost forgot food discovery #3. Adam and I went on an obscure madison market tour and bought pocky sticks and green tea mochi balls at a little Asian market. After enthusiastic consumption of the mochi ice cream and a deep longing for more, we discovered that Trader Joe’s carries them. Adam bought one of every flavor. I heart mochi.*

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This was written just five days before Adam proposed to me.  About five days before this post was written, I had silently decided that I wanted to marry Adam.  Those might have been the longest 10 days of my life.  Thank goodness for that vanilla sugar (I wasn’t exagerating, I really did put it on everything!).

I think I will buy a couple vanilla beans one of these days and make some vanilla sugar of my own.

When we moved to Stoughton this August, the river by our house was busy with a big gaggle of geese. I loved to watch them swim and rest on the riverbanks. There was one goose amongst these wild Canada geese that wasn’t like the others. It was a barn goose, plump and grey with a bright orange bill, always close to her wild mate. As the other geese began to fly north, I wondered what would happen to this goose. Geese mate for life. Could she fly? Would she fly? Would her partner leave her behind? Their numbers dwindled until it was just the two of them sitting by the icy water. And then the temperatures dropped and I did not see them.

Today, Reed and I went walking by the river, and we saw the barn goose and her mate swimming with the ducks. It warmed my heart to see them, still alive, still together. It made me feel good about the world to know that a Canada goose would rather spend a cold Wisconsin winter with his mate than a warm, sunny one without her.

What a wonderful planet this can be.