reasons to be happy

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Yoga Mama

1. You.

Thank you so much! Within a couple of hours of publishing the last post, Hope for Sophie, this site drove over 30 visitors to Sophie’s campaign and raised over $1600. The campaign to help Sophie now has a very sweet little video of Sophie’s family, but be warned: have tissue nearby.

So thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you to all of you who donated, posted, and sent sweet Sophie some love. You can know for certain you are making a difference.

Today Sophie starts her first round of intravenous chemotherapy. We are all anxious to know she has gotten through it and is handling it as well as can be expected. Please continue to hold Sophie and her family in your thoughts and prayers as she gets through this day and the next 3 days of chemo.

2. Silly Holiday socks. The kids insist on wearing these socks and if they are in the wash I have to really ~~beg/plead~~ negotiate some other socks onto their feet.

3. Laila discovering a love of horses

(if you have an equestrian background–Hi Shoes!–you might be able to tell by the horse’s body language that the horse had long since discovered a disdain for being a county fair, $5-a-ride horse, a feeling she showed us by trying to knock Laila off her back with some fancy footwork.)

4. Holiday projects with my sweet kiddos

snowmen. don’t laugh.

If you are the type to snicker at children’s crafts (it takes one to know one) go here: crappy children’s artwork.

we also made some really heavy ornaments ala Play At Home Mom

5. Office Christmas party (yes, unbelievably, I’m thankful for that.)

We were (awkwardly) the only couple with kids at Faris’ office party. But it was a reason to get the kids dressed up and out in Christmas lights at night. Without it I might have been sitting home in PJs folding laundry—which actually isn’t such a bad night, either. Anyway, Laila and I scored on her dress.

Laila's dress! Found this Lily Pulitzer dress at a local used shop. It has a real bell on the dog's collar and is now in heavy rotation at our house as dinner wear, park wear, and even pajamas. That's how much she loves it.

Found this red velvet Lily Pulitzer dress at a consignment shop. It has a real bell on the dog’s collar and is now in heavy rotation at our house as dinner wear, park wear, and even pajamas. That’s how much she loves it.

playing Simon Says at the office party to keep them entertained. The party was unfortunately at a full bar room in a seafood restaurant with no dessert. AND they were the only kids there...

playing Simon Says at the office party to keep them entertained. The party was in a room that was empty save for table and a full bar. It was a seafood restaurant with no dessert. AND they were the only kids there…but we still had fun.

Laila and Baba at the party.

Baba and Mama, a photo taken by Sufyan. This may well be the only photo of us together for that last 5 years.

Baba and Mama at the party. Photo taken by Sufyan. This may well be the only photo of us together without a child on our laps in the last 5 years.

after the party we walked to our car through the old town streets which were decorated with Christmas lights

shop windows lit with Christmas decor...and pin up girls. Sufyan loves the lights.

shop windows lit for nighttime window shopping. Sufyan loves the lights.

Laila was super excited to find a Santa, but Sufyan…

…Sufyan was super excited to find buttons. Have I mentioned that he likes buttons? Let me put it this way: I have to pre-negotiate walking past a drinking fountain because if I don’t he will get absorbed in pushing the one single button on the fountain over and over and we will have trouble moving on.

tired girl and the christmas lights

6. This funny bumper sticker

“I’m speeding because I have to poop.”

Juvenile, I know. But it cracked me up. There I was, driving with 2 grumpy children to an errand that I knew would only end with more grumpiness but which I could no longer ignore and lo! A poop joke. Thank you, universe.

Parenting Thought for Today: on buttons

Sufyan and Laila are as different as night and day. They are also both so different from us, their parents. Good so far, right? And I agree. I learned early on in this parenting gig that kids come to us as whole people. Guidance they need, but a pure blank slate they are not.

Still, how to explain the following:

Sufyan has a predilection for buttons. It is a focus for him such that I have to plan ahead if we are going to be in the vicinity of anything button-like. Examples include drinking fountains, the electronics aisle at Target (plan an extra 15 minutes if we are going to be near it), the credit card machine at checkout, baby and preschooler toys, and elevators.

playing with a Goodwill find. A button phone!

Baby toys have alot of buttons, in case you hadn’t noticed (think toy pianos, toy keyless entry for cars, toy phones, etc) while little kid toys for age 5 focus on building skills and dexterity. Yet Sufyan will always choose any toy with buttons over any other activity (except reading), no matter how mundane or if it was designed for newborns. Buttons rule.

Typical Mama & Sufyan conversation:

Me: I have a surprise for you! Come see!

S: Is it BUTTONS?

Me: no…it’s chocolate.

S: (disappointed) oh.

Or while watching a friend open b-day gifts

S: (jumping up and down) IS IT BUTTONS???

friend opens gift of a puzzle. Starts on next gift.

S: (jumping up and down) IS IT BUTTONS???

friend opens gift of a make your own dinosaur kit. Starts on next gift.

S: (jumping up and down) IS IT BUTTONS???

Buttons. My friend Jenna used to call him the “Button Boy” when we lived across from each other for the first 2 years of his life. By 10 months old, Button Boy could operate my iPhone to the extent that he could unlock it, scroll through the screens to find his applications, and choose an application to play.

Sufyan will even daydream about buttons. If I tell him an “Alice Mouse” story (which I make up and tell at dinner, or sometimes at bedtime), his favorite will be the one where Alice finds a panel of buttons to push and each does something different. He will get this look on his face. A look of pure, unadulterated joy. BUTTONS.

I can’t explain it. I can’t worry about it (because I know many of you are thinking of the Autism scale). It’s just him. It’s Sufyan and I love him for it. At least we know what to get him for his b-day…I’ll just shop the electronics aisle at Goodwill.

Yoga Thought for Today: on Cosmic Kids Yoga

yoga nap.

Since Sufyan has been logging an average of 2 hours a day reading (often more) we have begun to mandate a yoga practice at our home every day to get him some physical activity. Laila is so physical and active that the yoga is just more of the fun she’s already having.

This practice is short, and it’s kind of chaotic from an adult perspective of what makes for a good yoga practice, but my kids LOVE it.
Just thought I’d share:

Growth

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Yoga Mama

I am 3 hours away from my family. This is the farthest I have ever been from Sufyan or Laila. The room is dirty. They forgot sheets and there is no towel. The trash bin is full of the last person’s detritus. And you know what? I really don’t care.

I am grateful for this time to myself. I am grateful that this is a beautiful state to drive in. I saw cows leaping and playing 3 times on this drive! I am grateful that my mom gifted me a private room at the retreat center that I am driving to.

The night is so silent here. The wind is moaning through the wooden stairway which is built between the dormitories and which leads up to this room. It’s 3am and the silence is deafening. I am setting up my computer for white noise.

But first, I am so grateful to hear true silence again. I am reminded of times I slept on the top of a mountain called Concho in WV as a young white water rafting guide. I am reminded of times I slept in the Red Woods of northern CA as a young woman and times when I was deep underground exploring a cave and turned off my headlamp to experience true darkness. Like that. I am so grateful. I had forgotten how constant the highway sound is in my world!

Concept of Mortality and the 5 year old

Sufyan is dealing with the concept of mortality right now. In the last 6 months he has begun asking questions about death. More than asking questions, he often makes statements to see if I will agree or not. To see if he’s right.

loves to dress up! Note the remote control connected to nothing. A Goodwill find. He loves buttons.

It started like this: “Mama? When Laila dies, then will we get more alone time together?” (which cracked me up).

Then it shifted to, “When we die we are still here, right? But just we can’t talk. Right?”. (which is challenging because saying no means providing a better answer and saying yes means I’m lying. Unless ghosts really do exist.)

Then it was, “Mama I don’t want you to die because if you die then you won’t hear me when I call you and I need you!” (which broke my heart and I’m glad I was driving so he couldn’t see my tears from the back seat.)

Then, “Mama I think when we die we are still here but we are just…you can’t see us. But we are still in this house. Because I never want to be without you.” (ditto the above. more tears. Honestly, I never want to be without him either.)

“I don’t want to die because I want to always think and when you die you don’t think any more. I want to always think about gears. And buttons.” (he’s hilarious. And REALLY obsessed with buttons to the point that I think I can say that if samskaras are real then yes my son, you will still be thinking of buttons in your next life. Have no fear.)

casual day at the office

*Note: Sufyan woke up last night from a sad dream and told us about it. But at the end of the dream he found a panel of buttons and his tears turned into giggles of glee. mmmm. buttons.

Finally, “Mama when you die then we will just have Baba and Laila and Sufyan and instead of Mama we will just be lucky!” (I was all, “huh?”)

he made us dinner all by himself the other night! It was taco night!

needed a little help opening a can…

what an incredible Baba.

I am grateful that my husband so often refuses to rise to the bait and snap back at me—I’ve been a little stressed lately. Hence the retreat. I’m learning so much about enduring love from my husband. I am grateful that my little Laila has been so loving lately. I am grateful that my brother, SIL, and 2 nieces are happy right now. I am grateful for knowing love as huge as what I feel for my family.

the dynamic duo prepares to get groceries.

Laila

Laila’s growth has been amazing lately. Her vocabulary is expanding, her physical abilities are beyond precocious (example: she can reach up and hold a bar, swing her legs from the ground up over the bar above her head and hang upside down. She’s not quite 3. Oh, alright, twist my arm. Here’s a video:)

and she is really into helping me (sweeping, cracking her own eggs for breakfast, opening the fridge to get the bag of sunflower seeds for our salad).

spreading the sauce for homemade pizza night.

Her emotions, however, have always been something of a force of nature. She is a cyclone followed by a soft summer night, a bouncy spring day followed by hail and lightening. Repeat.

she gets herself dressed, too…

elasta-girl at the park

However, she has recently developed a new method for dealing with a non-negotiable “no”. It is brilliant if I do say so myself. And it’s simple. She just makes up her own reality.

Example: It’s bedtime. Laila insists that she is too hungry to sleep (a common ploy to avoid sleep lately). I tell her she can eat again with us all in the morning. She starts to yell, then throw herself around the bed, then get up and hop around trying to hit anything near enough to be slugged. The anger escalates to hurricane velocity, the walls get a beating from tiny heels and still it’s time to sleep. Just when I think she really can’t get any angrier and I’m feeling frustrated and sad for her, she suddenly stops and says, “MMMMMMMMM! This food is YUMMY! Thank you Mama! MMMMM!”. She even pantomimes eating. And then…it’s over. Universe back under her control, her wishes answered, now she can sleep.

At first this freaked me out. I wondered how in the world I should interpret this behavior. But now I am just totally amazed by her. In a world that is not under her 2 year old control, armed with emotions bigger than she is by far, and a mind that is seemingly just biding time until her body catches up, she is coping. In her own Laila way. My girl is going to rule the world (says her Mama).

Also, instead of “guitar” she says, “tiktar” and I love it.

Parenting Thought for Today: maybe you already thought of this
You know those tiny containers of play-doh that people gave out on halloween instead of candy? Well if you are like me you went to Target the day after halloween and bought 2 bags of them at 70% off because play-doh is expensive (unless it’s homemade). But then that leaves a billion little tiny containers to throw out or recycle…

don’t throw them away!

I came up with a use for some of them when I was trying to pack for a weekend retreat. They are PERFECT for packing a few days worth of face cream, hair product, and/or hand lotion. A much better size for a weekend getaway than the usual travel size, which for me is too big and often leads to wasting whatever goop I put inside it.

More Growth

And finally, the traditional kid experiment! Day one of growing an avocado tree:

lighter

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Yoga Mama

What does it take to get a couple hours to myself?

Wet, cold weather. Kids and mom stir crazy in the small apartment. Passing a pleasant day by playing in the car, making grocery shopping a big event complete with lunch at a “real table” (says Laila) and (they can hardly believe it) cookies. Texting friends funny pictures of myself stuffed in my kids’ car seats as they pretend to drive our parked car.

stuffed in Sufyan’s car seat

Someone texts back hinting that I need to socialize with people older than 5 more often. Oh, yes. Yes I do. There is a cold drizzle. It’s early bath time. One more hour until Baba comes home. I have a mom date planned tonight. I am going out with a friend for a glass of wine at a wine bar in the center of town (where all the women are beautiful and all the salaries are above average).

To orchestrate: I prep the kids all day that I will be gone for dinner and bedtime routine. There are tears and then excitement. There is preemptive nursing. The kids are bathed early. PJs are set out. Baba comes home and takes them out for ~~distraction~~ noodles. I use the time to get dressed. On go my favorite boots (black leather with small silver buckles, knee-high). Black tunic dress. A very long vintage costume necklace that I bought when I was 19. Vintage inspired coat with peter-pan collar. I actually put on make-up including Stila eyebrow powder which requires the coolest little stiff angled brush to apply. I won’t exactly fit in at the town center, but I will look like me and that’s the point. Well, a cleaner, more stylish and distinctly better put together me.

The plan: since we only have one car and that car is currently out at a noodle house, my husband will call me when he’s on the road, at which time I will go outside and wait in the cold and damp dark-like a thief-for my beautiful family to go inside and start bedtime routine without me. Then I will slip into the still warm car and drive off to freedom. If they see me…I’m toast.

Gah.

My friend cancelled our mom date. No shmancy little wine bar for me. No sitting at a glossy table with a new red wine to enjoy. Why not go alone, you ask? Well I thought of that. In fact I looked the wine bar up and they have live “bar cams” and what I saw did not look like a place to go alone and enjoy the vibe. Did I mention it has bar cams? Bar cams. I don’t know whether to be impressed or depressed.

So here I am, at a strip mall coffee shop drinking hot chocolate. While the place lacks soul (the cup sleeve is sponsored by Orbit gum. I know this because of the piece of free orbit gum glued to it), it’s a brush with life outside my small sphere so I’ll take it. It feels good to be out. It feels good to be just me. I can pass as a writer sitting here with my lap top. I can pose as a woman who always wears vintage jewelry and black leather boots.

*update* I just discovered I have dried glitter glue on my chin. My cover is totally blown.

Over it

After my last post I am feeling lighter. I have folded the experience into the mix and am moving on. Thanks to everyone who sent kind emails, made supportive comments, and refrained from making non-supportive comments. There is no negative thing about my involvement that anyone could have said that I haven’t thought, anyway.

One thing that is certain, I would not change the fact that we lived in Palestine. It is an amazing, vibrant, and fascinating place.

Deciduous

Fall is my favorite season. The leaves, the weather, the colors. Fall smells good. Burning leaves smell good. Cold air and damp earth both smell good. They smell like my childhood. One private delight: every fall I get visceral flash backs to being 16 and smoking Djarums or Nat Shermans and feeling pretty damn alive. I’m one of the lucky ones who never got in the habit of smoking anything, but for those times when I couldn’t resist the drama, my cigarettes either smelled delicious or looked like they were invented by an unicorn.

Yet another reason to love fall: my kids playing in the leaves, under bright red and yellow canopies of leaves.

First Halloween

Don’t get me wrong, my kids eat sugar. It’s just that we try to avoid sugar in the following forms:

1) candy 2) fruit juice 3) large amounts. Sometimes bake cookies an we eat them. Sometimes I take them out for a cupcake at THE MOST AMAZING CUPCAKE PLACE in the world.

BUT do we ever let them just have a piece of normal, every day, run of the mill candy for the helluvit? Never. My kids don’t get candy on a regular basis and given our dental history, that really shouldn’t be surprising.

So, when Sufyan and Laila found out that there was this thing called “Halloween” when adults would be handing them candy in exchange for 3 little words, they were in disbelief. Then they tried it, and it worked. Every time. By the 2nd successful “Trick or Treat!”, they were so giddy about the presence of such glorious sugar in their possession that they were visibly giddy. The following are mostly photos of Sufyan, because he was the most stunned by this development and he made the most amazed faces:

they just found out that they will get to ask for AND receive candy. Today. Right now. Go. Sufyan is like, “SERIOUSLY?”

Happy dance! He cannot believe that there is actually candy in his bag! I mean, people are just handing it to him. CANDY!

still in absolute awe. THERE IS A LOLLIPOP IN THIS BAG.

LOOK! Look at this! It’s happening again! That guy is just giving me CANDY! CANDY!!!

and this. This is also candy. And also mine. I have CANDY. LOOK.

Laila. Quietly amazed like she doesn’t want to break the magic candy spell someone cast over this day.

Laila and Sufyan, here’s to many more Halloweens together. I love you with all my heart. I love you both so much I can’t fit it into words. Seeing you have fun makes me happier than anything else in my life. Now go brush your teeth.

Weeping and a-wailing, the Farmer in the Dell.

I can’t decide whether to go with how much this clip makes me love them (limitless, boundless, huge love), or that it’s just friggin’ hilarious.

(the lyrics are partly from “This Train” and then that’s Sufyan playing slide whistle and coming in at the end with “Yip Yip Yip”)

Parenting Thought for Today: Mother/Phoenix

How intense it is, becoming a mother. Lately whenever I look at any woman with her children I think, “That is a woman who has gone through an incredible transformation.” She has passed through the eye of the needle. I wonder what she was like before she had her children. I wonder what it was like for her to shed that pre-child identity. How hard was it to rebuild a sense of self after self became “mom”? I’ll give you a hint: it starts with “really” and ends with “effing hard”. It’s more than a new role. It’s more than a lifestyle change. It’s more than more work with less sleep. Essentially, everything you once were is burned away. What you don’t gratefully, willingly, happily feed to the fire will be useless to you (for now). It’s beautiful, and it’s so hard. Life is ashes for a while after child birth; your “self” fed to a fire burning around the clock, fueled by the most primal raw love and urgent connection to something at once huge and infinitely small and delicate. From your own body came this baby, and now with your own body you will protect, nourish and grow a child. Without food or sleep, you transform into a being that can exist on sheer willpower and love. Talk about a tiger mother. So that the house may fall around you, but not on you. The waves crash to either side. “Nobody ever asked me if I thought I could be everything to someone” (Ani Difranco). “I’m a mother! Treat me like a mother.” (Chrissie Hynde). And then…the raging fire becomes a hearth. You start to remember about food and sleep and frienship. Your baby gets older. The crisis, however beautiful, is over. Now for the marathon. Now you are a phoenix. How to rise up from this ash?

Yoga Thought for Today: light

Yoga continues to be my super glue. It’s a safety net, too. I am getting myself out to a yoga class at least twice a week and in combination with home practice it’s becoming consistent and lovely. I know myself through yoga. I have awakened again on my mat. This one thought keeps whispering to me as I practice: you are a being of light. When I remember it, I suddenly find that sukha in my asana. True, lovely ease. Effortlessness.

Here’s to ground under our feet and air in our lungs and prana in our many bodies and light throughout our being.

Piles of Laundry

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reasons to be happy

Growth

lighter

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