Let it snow...?

Just a quick note to say: Eep! I know I haven't updated this in a month or so (okay, a month and two days, if you want to get technical), but I promise I haven't abandoned it. Tonight, we're in the process of getting ready to drive to Montana for Christmas, and assuming we make it there and back in one piece, I'll have plenty of stories when we return.

I just have to say: I think I was a much braver driver when I was nineteen. In college, my motto tended to be something like, "If the interstate is open, I will drive on it!" Yet here I sit, on the eve of our departure, and I'm obsessing over road conditions and mountain pass reports and fretting over ALL THE SNOW AND ICE we're sure to encounter. In Montana. In December. Which surely shouldn't come as a tremendous shock or anything. But, see, I've just had the last three days off from school because of snow and ice, because here in the Puget Sound area, things just SHUT DOWN when it snows even a little bit. I've spent the past week surrounded by very skittish drivers and hysterical weather reports of DANGEROUS STORMS and I kind of just want to sit on the couch with a blanket over my lap and -- knit, or something. Except I don't know how to knit. I just hope I still know how to drive like the Montana girl I am.

State of the Pug

All is not well in Blondie's world.

I don't write much about the pug here, which doesn't seem quite fair -- she was, after all, my first "baby." However, her last few days have really stunk, so I figure she deserves some air-time on the blog.

On Saturday, I noticed that her bulgy pug eyes were perhaps a little more boogery than usual. I resolved to keep an eye on it, as eye issues in pugs can become problematic quite quickly. By Sunday evening, her left eye had completely crusted over to the point where she couldn't really open it, and I knew we were in trouble. I suspected a corneal ulcer. She's had a couple of those in her seven years, and they haven't been too serious; the worst one required a few days of goopy eye ointment and an E-collar, one of those awful cone things that dogs have to wear to keep them from making injuries worse by biting or pawing or scratching. It's truly a pathetic sight on any animal, I think, but take a pug -- who can look as though you've run over their whole family when they're in a perfectly good mood -- and add one of those contraptions, and you've got I HAVE NO FRIENDS and I HAVEN'T EATEN IN DAYS and I AM ALL ALONE IN THE RAIN. I wasn't looking forward to that possibility.

We called the vet right away on Monday morning, and I took Blondie in after school. She was clearly miserable, with all sorts of crusty yellow goop around her eye (I was too afraid to look closely at the eye itself at that point), but let me tell you about my dog and the vet. She loves the vet, loves the vet with an undying adoration beyond all reason. The minute we scoot in the door she's all, "Look at me, look at me!" and the receptionists all coo at her and say, "THERE'S our Blondie! Look at her tail! She's so wiggly! Blondie! Blondie! There's a good girl!" She really struts her stuff all over the waiting room. And even though they do terrible things to her there -- they take her temperature in a rather uncomfortable place, for instance, and I always have them trim her nails, and for her, that is apparently just as bad as removing them would be -- she never stops throwing herself at people and licking and wiggling. We board her there whenever we take a trip that isn't dog-friendly, and when I go back to pick her up, the receptionists look at me glumly and say, "Oh. It's you." Then I have to wait while they march my pug through the clinic to say good-bye to every single vet, every single vet tech, and all the receptionists. And then they bring her back to me, wearing a bandana that they custom-made for her.

Anyway, she really loves the attention she gets at this place, and I trust them to take good care of her. So I tried not to panic when one of her vets (she has three, we love them all) peered at her eye and grimaced. The look on his face suggested that I should prepare myself to hear, "Sorry, but we're going to have to remove the eye." IT WAS THAT BAD.

Well, no, it wasn't that bad; Blondie isn't going to lose her eye (I hope). But it's pretty bad. She does indeed have a corneal ulcer, but it's a nasty one, right smack in the middle of her eye. It's visible even without the dye strip, like there really is just a big chunk torn out. It's horrifying. I have a pretty strong constitution when it comes to these things, I think, but I had a hard time looking at my dog's eye (and that green dye doesn't help. It made her eye all green and glowy and alien-like). I tried not to sob, "How did this happen? She's hardly outside, and she's never alone with the toddler, and the toddler is really gentle with her anyway..."

The vet said it probably was as simple as her running into something and reassured me that pugs can damage their eyes in a plain old room with walls and a door sometimes. First of all, they're not -- well, they're not the most graceful animals. Second of all, they have those really bulgy eyes (oh, how I love her huge brown eyes! HER POOR EYES!) and really slow blink reflexes. So when they run into something, or when they see something coming at them, they don't close their eyes in time. I couldn't think of anything Blondie could run into; when she's inside, she's normally lying in a heap in one of her beds, and she only moves quickly when I get her food dish (or when I make popcorn, which is her life's obsession). I suspect she injured her eye in the yard, either by wandering too close to the bush underneath our bedroom window, or by racing along the fence with the neighbor's dachsunds. She gets going so fast sometimes, and she's not looking straight ahead -- she's looking at those shrieky little dogs -- and I've seen her stumble and crash face-first into the fence when her momentum really gets going. (Ahem. I suppose now you're going to be tempted to make jokes about pugs and their FLAT FACES and how they ALWAYS LOOK LIKE THEY'VE CRASHED FACE-FIRST into something. Ha, ha.)

We were sent on our way with some goopy ointment, an E-collar, and orders to apply it every few hours. The vet thinks it will probably heal all right, hopefully with minimal scarring. Blondie gets E-collar breaks to drink water every few hours and to eat, and the rest of the time, she sits forlornly on the beanbag chair in the familiy room, the only place she can manage to get comfortable with this contraption on her head.

While we were there, I had her nails trimmed, because her day wasn't quite rotten enough. She struggled and thrashed and ended up bleeding pretty heavily from one toe (how she's never had one cut off is a miracle to me, and also the reason I will never, ever trim her nails myself). But she pranced into the hallway as cheerfully as ever, where she was promptly surrounded by people wearing scrubs telling her WHAT A GOOD LITTLE GIRL she was.

Problem? I don't have a problem. Reading isn't a problem.

We went to dinner at a pub in Tacoma with my brother and sister-in-law on Saturday night. We drove the back roads to get there, which are thickly lined with trees that part every so often to allow a beautiful view of Puget Sound. We drove down at dusk, and splatters of rain hit the windshield while winds tossed the trees, showering us with leaves bright against the grey sky. The leaves were so thick in the air at one point -- but falling in slow swirls -- that it looked as though they were coming from the sky as well. That moment changed everything about my day, somehow, in that small way that moments can.

And now, a list of books I bought at Powell's:

Paper Towns, by John Green -- I read the uncorrected galley proof in September and loved it. And yes, I still have to own this one. I'm pretty sure you understand this if you're a John Green fan.

Making Certain It Goes On: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo -- it's a completely beautiful book, one I probably won't find in the skimpy poetry sections at Borders or Barnes and Noble. I'd probably find it at The Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, because I always think of him as a Montana poet -- but I won't be there until December, and this one grabbed me now. I love his work and owning the full collection makes me...so happy.

The Little Friend, by Donna Tartt -- because it was only five dollars for a nice hardcover edition, and because I loved The Secret History. Matt spilled some of his pretentious Oregon beer on the spine and it smells a little beery now, but otherwise it's still in pretty good shape.

The Stories of Doris Lessing -- because I was seduced by the gorgeous copy, because I need to read more short stories, and because she's a brilliant and -- in my opinion -- incredibly important writer, even if she was less than gracious when she was first informed that she'd won the Nobel Prize earlier this year.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer -- because a friend of mine insisted it would "destroy" me, because I need to get over my irritation at his existence and read something he's written already before I write him off as over-hyped, because I've almost bought this book about a hundred times so far, and because I found a very nice, very cheap hardcover. I do like hardcover editions if they're not too bulky and I think they're a book I'm going to want to read and "use" again.

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon -- because the new English teacher, who reads as voraciously as I do and used to work at the Elliott Bay Book Company, said I just had to read it. And everything I've read about it suggests that it'll be an over-the-top but completely gorgeous reading experience. (Also, it was a discounted copy -- still in great shape, though.)

The Discomfort Zone, by Jonathan Franzen -- another cheap (but slender and attractive) hardcover. Because The Corrections is one of my favorite books, and because this is nonfiction and broken into easily-readable sections -- a book like this is something I can insert into my day, read a little here and a little there, and have it finished in no time.

A completely gorgeous collection of John Steinbeck's later novels: Travels With Charley, Sweet Thursday, The Wayward Bus, Burning Bright, The Winter of Our Discontent. I bought the Library of America version -- those are often really expensive, but they're gorgeous and sturdy and, despite being hardcover editions, they're surprisingly easy to cart around, unlike the typical bulky editions of new releases. It's been too long since I've read Steinbeck and he cracks my heart wide open.

I also bought my Moleskine Weekly Planner for 2009. I am severely addicted to those.

We bought Suzannah several Little Golden Books, including some classic favorites: The Poky Little Puppy, Scuffy the Tugboat, Dan the Bandage Man, and The Little Red Hen. There's one about Grover from Sesame Street that I find hilarious, and a few others, I think, that I can't immediately recall.

I don't remember what Matt came home with, because my brain has shut down. I'm going to go snuggle my stack of books now.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

She was awfully cute, even if it took a lot of convincing for her to keep her costume on. She did better at her Halloween party with the other kiddos -- I think it helped to see everyone else wearing a costume. I especially like Blondie's face here; she was all, hey, I was trying to sleep.


She was trying to reach for her sweats -- I'd tossed them on top of her dresser. She even sobbed "Please!"


This is a baby backpack I had as a child. You can see her little doll's feet sticking out at the bottom.


She did love carving pumpkins! (If you look carefully, you can see my stack of books from Powell's on the dining room table. Hi, books!)

Let me tell you about this girl I know...

This is what my baby looked like one year ago, give or take. She was pretty bald still. She ate most of her meals in her high chair. She could walk, she could run (albeit a little unsteadily), she could get into all kinds of mischief. She wasn't talking in words most of the general population could understand, but she could communicate with Mama and Dada pretty effectively. Also, she liked to walk around with two old cell phones held up to her ears. "Oh? Oh?" she would say. (That's hello, by the way.) She enjoyed emptying the drawers in the kitchen, stacking the cans in the hallway, and playing with the pots and pans.


This is my little Zannah-Banana now. She can walk, she can run, she can climb up on our bed and hurl herself over the side. She can help me bake muffins, she can take care of her babies by feeding them and kissing them goodnight. She can throw some pretty impressive tantrums, but I prefer to think of those as manifestations of a passionate little soul. She makes up for them in sweeter moments; after her bath, for example, I wrap her in her fuzzy yellow duck towel and she says, "Snuggle?" and I pull her on to my lap and rock her and kiss her, and we just stay like that for awhile, her damp little head tucked under my chin. She has hair now, enough for bows and pigtails. Her bangs fall in her eyes now, but I can't bear to cut her hair just yet. She likes order; every afternoon when we come home, she pulls off her shoes and lines them up against the wall, and then she pulls off her socks and trots into her bedroom where they are deposited in her hamper. She says please and mink you, and she is generous with hugs and kisses.

She is the most wonderful person I have ever known. Sometimes, I still can't believe she's mine. I look at these old pictures and I can't believe she was ever my tiny baby -- and I can hardly remember my life without her.

We spent the past weekend in Portland. I had an IB workshop there on Saturday, so about a month ago I came up with the brilliant idea that it would be fun to bring Matt and Suzannah along. Matt cheerfully agreed, planning to spend Saturday doing daddy-daughter things with Suzannah -- the zoo, perhaps -- while I attended my sessions. We cheerfully booked a hotel room and thought we'd have a grand time. Suzannah did so well three months ago when we stayed at the Great Northern in Havre; surely this would be a piece of cake.

We arrived in Portland sometime after ten o'clock on Friday evening. Not particularly early, but hardly in the middle of the night. Suzannah didn't sleep much in the car, so we thought she'd explore the room, we'd settle in, and have a semi-decent night's sleep.

I really don't know why we thought that.

For one thing, Little Miss was so totally over her pack 'n play. She's really too big for it, but we didn't have a huge bed at the hotel, and anyway, she doesn't sleep with us anymore. (And it's not like we wouldn't have let her, it's just that when she's in bed with Mama and Daddy she thinks it's much more fun to bounce on our heads than sleep.) Besides, she slept in it a few months ago with no problem. Well, whatever -- she wasn't having it. We put her in that thing and she screamed like we'd put her in a shark tank. We brought her into the bed with us; the head-bouncing commenced. I set up a bed for her on the floor that consisted of her pack 'n play mattress, her fuzzy blankie, her pillow, and Cookie Monster. Get in bed, I told her, as though it were any ordinary night. To my utter surprise and delight, she snuggled right down. I slipped back into bed with Matt and we spent a moment congratulating ourselves before a small blonde head appeared by my side of the bed and a tiny finger tapped on my face.

"Mama?" a sweet little voice said. "Tuck you in?" Which meant that I was supposed to tuck her in. Again. So I did. Press repeat. Like fifty times.

Finally, feeling rather hysterical, I suggested to Matt that we ignore her and let her do WHATEVER until she passed out SOMEWHERE, because isn't a two-year-old supposed to fall asleep after midnight? I won't even tell you what time we all finally fell asleep, but you should know that Matt and I were forced to spend our precious few hours clinging to the sides of the bed while our daughter sprawled in the middle.

I think Suzannah must have known, on some level, that she had better be a perfect angel on Saturday or we were liable to ship her to Montana from the nearest post office. Despite having not nearly enough sleep on Friday night and not having any sort of nap on Saturday, she and her daddy had a lovely day at the zoo, and I had a fabulous workshop and quick but fruitful trip to Powell's. (Powell's. It deserves its own entry. Trust me on that.)

We were so exhausted on Saturday night that after an early dinner with one of my colleagues, we decided to just head up to bed early. Surely, we thought, our darling daughter would fall asleep right away.

I really don't know why we thought that.

But this time, it only took ninety minutes. During that ninety minutes, Suzannah bounced on our heads, read Hop on Pop to herself while she nestled between us (and we tried to ignore her), finished the book and started to tap it on my face, climbed up and down and up and down and upanddownandupanddown, asked for water, asked for goldfish, asked for granola bars, demanded that the lamp be turned on, and screwed with the alarm clock. Finally, I scooped her up and plopped her in her pack 'n play and prayed she'd fall asleep before her howling had us all evicted from the hotel.

After five minutes of sobbing MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY, she finally gave up and asked for a change. She laid back on the bed with her arms flung over her eyes in exhausted defeat. I changed her and prepared to tuck her in between us, desperately praying she'd stay there, but she collapsed wearily against my shoulder and asked to go to bed. As in, her own. I put her down in the pack 'n play and she dropped to her pillow, wrapped her arms around her Cookie Monster, and went to sleep until eight o'clock in the morning.

The Monkey Song

Every morning during our drive to daycare, Suzannah and I sing together. She always asks for one of three songs first: The Wheels on the Bus, The Monkey Song ("Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed"), or the Farm Song (Old MacDonald). The Monkey Song is her favorite.

Five little monkeys jumpin' on the bed
One fell off and bumped her head!
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said
No more monkeys jumpin' on the bed!
Four little monkeys...

(Oh, is that stuck in your head now? I'm so terribly, terribly sorry.)

She chimes in perfectly on bed, head, said, and...bed, again. And she shakes her head emphatically on the "No more monkeys!" part, but instead of saying "No more," she says, "No no!" In perfect time, though. I love it.

And I have to confess something. Two times this week after I've dropped her off, I've driven more than halfway to school still singing merrily along with "Five Little Monkeys" or "Old MacDonald had a farm" or "I've been workin' on the railroad" before I realize I'm alone in the car and can actually turn it to NPR or something not intended for toddlers.

Nothing is worth more than this day

Today was a Very Important Day at school, and I skipped it in favor of a Very Important Day with my family. Today was daycare's annual trip to the pumpkin patch at Remlinger Farms, and there is just no way I'm going to miss something like this. I had to give up two days of "wellness leave," but it was a complete no-brainer -- what would I regret missing more? A day devoted to improving our WASL scores, or a day of sheer autumnal perfection with my daughter? My sister-in-law made plans to come along as well, and last night my husband phoned on his way home from work and said, "You know, I think I'm going to take the day off and come with you guys." Perfect. I'm just supremely grateful that we were both in a position where we could afford to do that -- to take the day off, to spend it together in the fall sunshine, outside the city. (Incidentally, it was supposed to rain all day -- but the weather was simply gorgeous, partly-sunny and warm enough to leave our coats in the car.)

I went last year, and I enjoyed the experience, but it was a whole lot more work. For one thing, Suzannah hadn't been walking all that long. She could walk, but she was too little and too new at it to walk with me, or with a group, so I ended up carrying her around on my hip in the sling all day long. I also carried our lunches and the diaper bag around for most of the day, because it was less trouble than hauling Suzannah with me out to the car all the time. I was hungry and exhausted by the end of the day, and there was that awful fiasco with the corn maze, and by three o'clock I didn't really care if we left with pumpkins or not. This time, though, Suzannah could walk (and go on rides!), and I had two adults with me! Between the three of us, all we really had to carry was the camera. (Speaking of which, I'd go ahead and add pictures right now, but it's still in the car and my husband is currently driving that to Trader Joe's for dinner fixin's. Be patient, loves.)

So the weather was beautiful and Remlinger Farms was huge and fabulous. We took a ride on the steam train, made friends with some chickens and sheep and goats, played in the hay jump and hay maze, and went on some rides. My tiny little baby daughter is big enough to go on rides. Matt took her on the first one -- something resembling a little tilt-a-whirl -- and I kept calling out, "Hang on to her! She's my only baby!" I relaxed when I saw the huge grin on her face and heard her little giggle as they whirled by. I actually took her on the little roller coaster, and she loved it. She liked the rides a lot more than the hay jump, which weirded her out a bit. (Oh, but you should have seen my very grown husband in there. He had as much fun as any of the tots and emerged with hay in his hair.) After lunch, we took a hay ride out to the fields, zipped through the corn maze (which I survived because I was not ALL BY MYSELF this time), and chose four lovely pumpkins to bring home with us. The only real drama occurred when Suzannah tripped and fell in a patch of mud and squishy rotten pumpkin. If you know my girl, you know that she DOES NOT LIKE TO BE DIRTY, and there she was with mud and slime all over her jeans.

(Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, we also had drama this morning before we even left when I hid Suzannah's crocs. She wanted to wear those, and I told her she could have her tennis shoes or her boots. That was not an acceptable choice, and she howled about it for twenty minutes. She threw such an impressive tantrum, in fact, that I was completely amazed that she didn't fall asleep on the way out of town. She not only stayed awake, but she was in a perfectly wonderful mood all day, even without a nap. She conked out briefly in the car on the way home, right in the middle of a bite of goldfish crackers, but not for long enough to count as a nap by any stretch of the imagination.)

It was a good day. And tonight I'm really looking forward to putting on sweats, eating a cozy dinner, and doing nothing more than watching a movie and eating chocolate after Suzannah goes to bed. These are the moments when I just think, you know, my life is pretty sweet, and what I really want is exactly what I've got.

Neat freaks: 1. Messy Boys: 0.

"Dude," my husband said the other day. "Our daughter is in the living room stacking books." He frowned slightly, no doubt feeling suddenly outnumbered. It's true; this is one area in which Suzannah definitely takes after me. Last weekend, we stopped by Kyanne's house to pick her up before we went out for Greek food. I trotted upstairs to use her bathroom, and when I came back down, Kyanne informed me that Suzannah was organizing their refrigerator magnets.

This afternoon, just after she went down for her nap, I heard her hollering for me. I poked my head in her room only to have her crossly inform me that her hoodie needed to be put away; her daddy had tossed it carelessly on top of her dresser when he carried her into the house after our afternoon excursion to the mall after church. She hopped down from her bed and padded into the study with it, where she placed it in its "proper" spot on the back of the loveseat.

Also, every afternoon, the first thing she does when we come home is take off her shoes and socks. She lines her shoes up on the little rug we have by the door, and she runs straight to her room to drop her socks in her laundry hamper. I'm not absolutely sure this is something I taught her -- not consciously, anyway.

That's my girl. Say what you want about us neat-freaks; I'm convinced our next child will take after Matt, so the universal balance will once again be restored. In the meantime, please let me enjoy these small delights without too much mocking.

Other things the Zannah-bean is up to these days:

One of her favorite things to do is tend to her "babies." She has three little dolls that she tucks into a doll bed that used to belong to me. This is a very involved process that requires me to help her make the bed after she tears out all seven blankets and the pillow, and then she tucks them in and kisses them all and feeds one of them (her favorite, I guess?) a bottle.

She sleeps with a pile of stuffed animals -- a couple of bears, a giraffe, a moose, and an elephant -- and they all have their place in a pile at the foot of her bed. It only appears to be a random pile. Word to the wise: Don't mess with it. Cookie Monster, on the other hand, sleeps snuggled in her arms, and it is JUST TOO CUTE FOR WORDS. Cookie gets the most kisses.

The Intriguing Toy of the Week is Daddy's flashlight. She thinks it's hilarious when I shine it on a spot on the floor so she can pounce on it, only to see it suddenly appear halfway across the room or on a spot on the wall. (This makes her sound rather like a kitten, doesn't it?) She likes to aim it at the ceiling and wave it around, too, and when she's finished playing with it, she very sweetly says "bye-bye" to the light as it's switched off and returned to its proper place on the shelf.

She and the dog continue in their relentless campaign to bother each other to madness. The only one approaching madness, however, is me. For now, the pug is doing a pretty good job as stand-in for a sibling.

***
In other news, I'm reading The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins. I've been reading it for, oh, two months now -- but not really, because I keep putting it down to read other things, which happens sometimes. But I'm really into it now, and I've decided I should read some good old Victorian lit every fall. There's always someone escaping from an insane asylum, or being imprisoned against her will somewhere, or being switched with someone else at birth. There's usually plenty of fog, and perhaps some blood coming out of a wall. Good times. It is good to read something besides contemporary fiction, I think, especially as someone who writes and teaches English, because it works my brain in an entirely different way. I love it. Makes me miss college. Teaching literature is wonderful and stimulating, but sometimes I miss being on the other side of the desk.

She does listen...

Suzannah just brought me her banana and we had the following conversation.

Suzannah: Mama? A bite?

Me: You want me to have some of your banana?

Suzannah: Yeah.

(I take a bite.)

Suzannah: Good girl.

At least they don't say ANTEE-GAWN this year...

I know I've said I won't write about school on this blog, and that's still mostly true, but raise your hand if you could use a good laugh today? That's what I thought. This little gem is too good not to share.

First of all, let me say that I love my sophomores this year. (Actually, I love all four of my classes -- isn't that scary? I always thought it was a rule that at least one class per year will have you drinking wine straight from the bottle on Friday nights.) My sophomores are just so stinking adorable this year. A little loud, and very fifteen, and lacking in filters between their brains and their mouths, but mostly really cute.

Anyway, today they were working in groups. Each group was assigned a different theme from Antigone (think ancient Greek tragedy) and they were making these big charts relating to that theme, using quotes from the play to support it, blah blah blah. So I'm hanging back, just watching them work and listening to them chatter, and I notice one boy drawing a pig on his chart. More specifically, drawing a person in a toga holding a leash with a pig on the end of it.

Me: Hi. Um, why is there a pig on your Antigone chart?

Kid: I thought that instead of a dog, they had a pig.

Me: WHO had a pig?

Kid: The family! You know, like instead of having a family dog, they had a family pig.

Me: There is no dog. There is no pig. WHERE in the play is there a pig?

Kid: In the rough draft? It didn't make the cut?

That was ten hours ago and I still can't stop laughing about it.

On the fickle nature of toddlers...

Suzannah has been purely delightful this week. This, I've learned, is life with a toddler. Last week, I'm pretty sure I wondered aloud at least once a day whether it would really be such a bad idea to box her up and ship her off to my parents, who usually respond to my complaints about whining and attitude and tantrums with "Well, she just needs Grandpa and Grandma." Or, more helpfully, "No, she's not [crabby, unreasonable, stinky]. Have you tried [giving her a more appetizing dinner, reading her a story, being more competent in general]?"

Okay, just kidding. My parents are actually very awesome, but they laugh at me a lot and, I suspect, exchange plenty of knowing glances.

Anyway, this week, Suzannah has been just wonderful. She's in a good mood in the afternoons; we play a lot, and we sing a lot, and we read a lot. (A lot.) She gives her daddy huge hugs in the morning before he leaves for work and waves cheerfully.

"Buh-bye!" She calls. She says buh-bye to everything these days. Buh-bye, bathwater. Buh-bye, house. Buh-bye, doggie. Oh, wait, except she really means that. No, seriously, the dog is looking at her, she is standing right there by her table and watching her eat breakfast and why am I not doing anything about it? Buh-bye! Buh-Bye! Away! AWAY!

It's actually a little heartbreaking when she uses buh-bye that way. She uses it on either Matt or me at least once a night, and she tends to alternate. On Monday night, for instance, I wasn't allowed to go near her after her pajamas were on. She wanted Daddy to do her nighttime diaper, she wanted Daddy to help her brush her teeth, she wanted Daddy to bring her a drink of water. When I went into her room to check on her, she howled, "No! Daddy! Buh-bye! BUH-BYE!" She waved at me. "BUH-BYE!"

Last night, it was the other way around. I have to tell you, I think I handle this better than Matt does. (Hah. This is the true test of whether Husband reads my blog, isn't it?) His feelings get hurt and he usually tells Suzannah that she's going to Make Daddy Cry, which, as you would imagine, does not particularly interest her. I'll grant you that it can be a little sad when my tiny, distraught daughter sobs BUH-BYE and waves at me through her tears, but I get over it. Especially since the last time she did that, it was about four o'clock in the morning.

"She wants you," I mumbled to Matt. Then I rolled over and went back to sleep.

I watch the sun burn circles in the sky

Finally, the rain comes again.

I love fall for all the usual romantic reasons: the changing colors and their fleeting vibrance, the sweet damp mulch of leaves under my feet, the scent of woodsmoke on the frosty air, the transition to sweatshirt weather, pumpkin spice lattes, cider, trips to the pumpkin patch. Near the end of August, I become increasingly neurotic. I do not relish the last days of stale afternoon heat, especially once I return to school; teaching is much easier in more subdued weather.

I always miss Montana at this time of year -- I miss the mountains rising above the golden fields, the colors in the trees and the snow in the mountains. The first frost, the first crunchy layer of snow on the grass. Two years ago, while I was on maternity leave for a semester, I traveled to Minnesota with Suzannah and my mom for Concordia's homecoming in October. We spent a couple of days in Bozeman, and I realized it was the first time in six years that I'd been to Montana during the fall.

Carmen drove home with me for mid-semester break in October of our senior year. I remember so clearly one golden afternoon of that long weekend; we climbed through the barbed wire fence at the edge of my parents' property and made our way down to the creek. We found a bridge consisting of wooden planks placed across two logs that stretch across the water and sprawled on our backs, our legs dangling over the side. I tipped my head back until I was upside down, gazing at the sky and water and inverted trees. A gust of wind shook the remaining golden leaves clinging to the branches, and they swirled above our heads in colorful flurries before drifting down to land gently on the water, the ground, in our hair. It was a moment of such still perfection it was hard to believe it was real. I watched one perfect leaf dip and twirl until it landed and the current carried it downstream. The beauty of it almost hurt with its simple intensity.

But I love where I'm at, too. I think the trick, for me, is to make sure I get out of the city a time or two during the fall. Last October, I played hooky from a day of "professional development" and went to the pumpkin patch at Remlinger Farms with Suzannah and the other kiddos at her daycare. The drive was beautiful, a reminder that I don't have to drive six hundred miles for hillsides rich with autumn colors.

This week, though, I'm simply grateful for the rain. Mornings are quiet and foggy again, and my nerves aren't quite so jumpy. It's easier, somehow, to find that beautiful balance between motherhood and teaching and everything else, the reminder that each part of my life feeds the rest.

This face can cure anything

Suzannah, wearing her daddy's hat


"CORN!"


This is the first thing I see some mornings...and it's my favorite.


Behold, our ARTWORK! Suzannah did all of the painting. I contributed the eyes and the pipe cleaners and the little smiles on the caterpillers. Oh, but she actually stuck the eyes on, so nevermind. We keep meaning to cut leaves out of the painted paper bag.


She makes this smushy face a lot.

The small things make everything better

When Suzannah sees Matt wrap his arms around me or kiss me, she immediately drops whatever she's doing and runs to us and demands to be picked up and squished into the middle of our hug. We are happy to oblige, since she's such a squishy little babyhead, and toddlerhood often makes her too busy for cuddling.

"Sandwich!" We cry. "Suzannah sandwich!"

So now, sometimes, even when Matt and I are doing our own thing but happen to be in the same vicinity, Suzannah will shout, "SAMMY!" Which is our cue to scoop her up and squish her between us and cover her with kisses and threaten to munch on her tummy or ears.

Okay, that part is me. But what a yummy little sammy she is.

Like mother, like daughter

Ever since my daughter was born, people have said she looks exactly like her daddy. One person I teach with even called her Matt's "Mini-Me" for a long time. Now, I am not opposed to this, because my husband is a good-looking man, and also, my daughter is simply gorgeous. There's just no other way to say it. I'm not complaining about anything, because she's perfect. It's just that sometimes, it'd be nice to hear that she has some of me in her, too. I mean, she came out of me. I swear she did. I was there. I saw. (Well, in all fairness, when my mother saw Suzannah's first ultrasound picture, she immediately proclaimed, "The baby has your nose!" And I guess that's sort of true -- which is fine, since my nose is one body part I've never taken issue with.)

Now that Suzannah is older, though, I see more of me coming out. Some things are obvious, I suppose. She loves her books quite passionately. She loves her baby doll, loves to carry her around and feed her and put her to bed (I had some deep attachments to certain dolls and stuffed animals from quite a young age). She's a weird little neat-freak in ways that perhaps go just a touch beyond that normal toddler obsession with "order." She knows what she wants and grows easily frustrated when we don't immediately get it. She's a playful soul. She loves water. Her emotions are huge, and sometimes they get the best of her.

But there are things I can't quite put my finger on, too, things I can't explain or identify or point at. When she falls asleep at night, I often tip-toe into her room and snuggle her a bit -- just to kiss her soft little cheeks, stroke her arm, smell her hair -- and I feel such a deep recognition somehow, such a profound sense of knowing this little person. Sometimes, that feeling hits me when we're locked into some mother-daughter conflict, when I've told her no or failed to properly accomodate some immediate desire and she's angry with me, howling her red-faced fury to the heavens. It goes to my core sometimes, even when I want to laugh, or when I feel frustrated at my two-year-old's sheer lack of reason. I know what the world feels like sometimes, and reasonable or not, it's hard not to just howl myself when things seem unfair or too big to process like an adult.

I'd make a crack here about how that's why gin and tonics exist, but my mom reads this blog.

Anyway.

Last weekend, when I went back to the farm for my grandfather's funeral, I had two mini-revelations.

First: I was upstairs with my mom in her old bedroom, and on her desk is a picture of me. I'm about two years old, and I have that one ridiculous curl on top of my head; like Suzannah, I didn't have much hair at the age of two, but my mom made the best of it by twirling it all around a single curler. But that wasn't the part that struck me. For the first time, when I looked at a picture of me I saw something in my face that I see in my daughter's face now.

"Suzannah looks like me a little here, right?" I asked my mom. She seemed surprised.

"She looks a lot like you," she said.

Second: When my grandpa retired from farming in 1988, my dad filmed the auction. Recently, my mom converted the old VHS tape to DVD, and we watched it after my grandpa's funeral last weekend. It was fabulous for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it captured the essence of what I'll always remember about my grandfather and our relationship with him. That grin. The way he walked, the way he lifted his hand in greeting to everyone. The way he'd casually sling an arm around my brother and me, rough and affectionate. I loved it.

What I didn't expect to see, though, was a shot of me, by myself, climbing on to his four-wheeler. I leaned back, oh-so-casually, because I was so cool at the age of nine. I wouldn't look directly at the camera; apparently I was shy. (It's okay not to comment on that, people.) My mom called my name. I turned slightly, almost coyly, my bangs falling over my forehead. I smiled. And in that moment, the twenty-nine-year old me saw something in the nine-year-old me that was eerily familiar -- because it's the same look I see in my two-year-old daughter. That same sideways smile, the same look in her eyes.

I don't even remember who first cried, "That's Suzannah!" But it felt good to know that other people saw it too. And maybe I shouldn't even need that, because I know she's very deeply my daughter, but it kind of made me want to pump my fist in the air and say, look out, world, here we come, my girl and me.

And it all begins again...

It's nearly nine o'clock as I write this, definitely past Suzannah's bedtime. She's in bed, but she's not sleeping, nor does she seem remotely interested in sleeping. Tonight, she's just talking, talking talking talking, rattling off every word she's ever learned, punctuating her stream-of-consciousness chatter with "Okay!" every now and then. Matt and I are trying to follow what in the hee-haw she might be talking about, but I think she really just likes to play with words. She's my daughter, after all.

I've been quiet here lately, due to the frenetic beginning of another school year and a very fast trip to Montana over the weekend for my grandfather's funeral, but things are settling down and I'm finding my groove again.

I was flipping through old journal entries, and I found this:

I feel good tonight and I've felt remarkably calm this weekend. I'm noticing a pattern, now that I am about to begin my fourth year of teaching. Something happens the weekend before the kids arrive. I stop panicking long enough to trust that everything will be okay, that everything will just happen. And even on a deeper level, that the universe is actually pretty kind. It's a vague and unspecific but completely comforting feeling. I felt it enter with my breathe last night as I walked across the parking lot after my workout, this generic "everything will be okay" feeling. I remember writing something similar in my journal three years ago, when I had every reason in the world to be terrified -- living in a new state, a new city, beginning a new job and wondering if I had what it takes to do it well. I've had it every year since then. I don't know what it is, but every year, on the weekend before school officially starts and my kids arrive and I find myself hurtling into the incredible momentum of teaching teenagers again, I somehow, miraculously, remember to breathe. And trust. And believe. These moments are the whispers that keep me moving and believing.

What's interesting is that the shape of my life is so different now, but that feeling, that golden September optimism, is still there. I suppose it's a sign that right now I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be.

Raise your hand if you can believe that this is my eighth year of teaching English. I know. Also, I meant it when I said I wasn't going to write about school on this too-public blog; the stories I tell are really too juicy and dangerous for that. You're just going to have to buy my book.

In memory of my grandfather

Charlie Griffith
June 9, 1924 - August 31, 2008

Shifting the Sun

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When you father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.

~ Diana Der-Hovanessian ~

My girl, she loves her some nekkid time

Tonight Suzannah and I were getting ready for the bath, and she bolted down the hallway, giggling her head off, naked as the day she was born. She raced to the kitchen, where Matt was cleaning up dinner. He had Bob Dylan playing on the stereo, so she scooted on into the family room and proceeded to dance and dance and dance. My girl loves to dance and she loves to be buck nekkid, so we just let her rock out with her nudie self for awhile. Sometimes even toddlers need a little stress relief. I'm thinking she probably needed a break from all the work she's been doing on her book: 1001 Ways To Avoid Bedtime.

Matt may or may not have had the camera handy. We'll get our sweet revenge for sleep deprivation later, I'm sure.

The story of a house and its new little chef

When we bought our little 1960's ranch-style house a mere two months after we were married, it had recently been remodeled by the owner. Everything was crispy-new and smelled of fresh paint. It was a smart move on the owner's part, because it was like a blank canvas; I could immediately envision the place as ours.

Of course, it was awfully white. White walls, white baseboards, white door frames. I knew I'd want to paint eventually, although the thought intimidated me a bit as I'd never painted a room in my life. I helped my dad paint the trim on the outside of our house once, and once he made me stain a fence (do you see how I suffered?), but he claims that more paint made it on to my legs than the house. See, though, that's not a big deal when you're painting outside. So paint might get accidentally flung on the grass, or -- on one's little brother or something. Big deal. And okay, painting is pretty much the easiest home improvement ever and a monkey can do it, I KNOW, but it's an entirely different story when we're talking new carpet and wood floors and a completely neurotic, obsessive-compulsive neat freak.

Still, I finally worked up the courage to choose two colors for the living room. The only thing I had left to do was convince my husband that Memorial weekend would be a great time to paint. (I think I may have called it bonding.)

"But isn't the living room already painted?" he asked hopefully.

"It's all white," I explained, as though that should have been sufficient. When it failed to produce the desired response, I continued, "It's like living in a tooth."

Finally he agreed, and we painted the living room, and I loved it, and he loved it, and I wondered aloud eighty-five times how I could have lived in that house with that white living room for a whole entire year. ("It wasn't that bad," Matt said.)

[Edited to add: Matt just asked, "Did I really say that? That it's already painted?" And I said yes, baby, you really did. But then I felt compelled to point out that it doesn't even matter anymore, because according to my STORY, you did. He shrugged and said, "Well, I guess you're the doing the blogging, huh?"]

Gradually, we added colors to different rooms -- sage green in our bedroom, "sandstone cove" in the kitchen and family room (which is very light but still makes our base boards and door frames stand out nicely), and, when I was quite pregnant, a light, buttery yellow in what would become Suzannah's room. Our study is still white, mostly because neither one of us is particularly excited to move the desks and computers and bookshelves, and the guest room hasn't been touched, either. That's probably going to be my next project (and I'm thinking a light, dusty blue).

I was thinking about this today -- about the evolution of houses into homes. Paint is really only one part of that. I was just watching my daughter play this afternoon, and it occurred to me that our family room really has become her play room, and I love that. When we moved into this house, the family room contained one of the faded green love seats from the farm, our exercise bike, Matt's CD shelves, and the little 13-inch television I got for Christmas in college. Our "entertainment center" was really this wooden cart I bought at Office Max or Target. As a sophomore in college, it held the tower and printer to my computer next to my desk in my dorm, and when Carmen and I moved into our little college apartment, we kept the microwave on top of it. Our living room furniture consisted of the other faded green love seat and another old recliner from the farm. Suzannah's room had a futon and a closet full of camping gear.

Over the past few years, we've slowly replaced the old furniture with pieces we bought together: a couch and recliner for the living room, a new love seat for the family room. We bought a bigger TV and a modest but "real" entertainment center and moved the little 13-inch television and cart into the guest room. We gave away the futon and bought a crib and dresser. We bought shelves for the camping equipment and turned our storage room into a baby's room.

Now, our living room contains not only our comfortable "grown up" furniture and bookshelves but baskets of children's books and a tent. The family room holds a toy chest, a toy piano, a dollhouse, and Suzannah's brand-new wood kitchen. It's where Matt and I sprawl, legs tangled together, to watch movies after Suzannah goes to bed. It's where I nap with the pug in the afternoons, where I used to spend hours nursing my firstborn. It's where Suzannah watches Sesame Street and dances to Bruce Springsteen and The Ramones. It really is a family room, in every sense of the word. I love the way this house has told our stories. I don't know how long we'll be here; it's certainly not a huge house, and maybe I can't really see raising teenagers here, but it's exactly perfect for us right now. (Besides, when it seems like we have too much stuff for the space we have, my natural inclination is to want to clear out some of the stuff -- not move it into a bigger space where we'll accumulate more stuff.) I love the way it reflects the changes and growth in our family and becomes more and more ours.

So these things were on my mind as I was watching my daughter play this afternoon. Our latest addition to the family room is a beautiful wood play kitchen. It's something I wanted to give her for her second birthday, and I'd begun to check them out in a couple of toy stores in Seattle. Then, Matt's dad asked if we'd maybe like it if he built her one. And I'm all, are you kidding? That would be amazing.

So they brought it with them to Montana and we managed to fit it into the back of our CR-V, and now it has earned a spot in our family room, between our hutch and Suzannah's toy chest. It's completely beautiful. I knew it would be, but it surpassed every expectation I had. I mean, it embodies the term "labor of love." And Suzannah loves it a lot. Yesterday was fairly low-key in that we didn't go anywhere, we just hung around the house trying to readjust to being here, and Suzannah spent a lot of time cooking for Mama. Her grandparents also gave her a nice little assortment of pots and pans and utensils, so she made several batches of "soup." She strolled around the family room, wandering in and out of the study, merrily banging a spoon around inside one of the pans.

"What are you making this time?" I asked her.

She marched up to me, thrust the spoon at my mouth. "Try," she commanded.

So I did, and then she stuck the spoon in her own mouth. "Mmm, nummy!" she said.

"Yummy soup," I agreed.

"No." She shook her head. "Roni." She leaned forward for emphasis. "Roni." Her mother is slow to catch on, I guess, because I thought we were still on soup, but clearly this was a batch of macaroni and cheese, whoops, yep, I can definitely tell now.

"Macaroni," I said. "Nummy."

"Roni," she said again, smiling. And then she demanded that I take another bite.

The world is old enough to break my heart

We're home from our end-of-summer vacation in Montana. I'm experiencing a bit of the post-vacation blues, but I thought trying to capture a little of it might make me feel better, although the evening is shaping up to be a pretty cozy one: We're unpacked, the car is cleaned out (that feels good), and the kitchen is filling with the aroma of pad thai and Matt's special green beans with peanut butter and shallots and garlic and whatever other magic ingredients he tosses in the pan.

First of all, I should add a disclaimer: I love living in Washington, a lot. I've never regretted moving here, and I know I would miss it deeply if I ever left. But my heart is home in Montana in a way it never will be anywhere else; that is just a simple fact. Most of the time, I am at peace with having roots there and living somewhere else, because I love a lot of landscapes, and I have roots there, too. But for the past several days I've been all over, I've been through the mountains of southwest Montana, I've seen the sun set over the Bridgers, I've driven through the prairies and in and out of mountain ranges between Bozeman and Havre, I've traveled long stretches of highway and met only deer on the road, I've driven on winding gravel roads, and I've breathed the sweetest air that exists in this world. I love every inch of that state, and every time I leave, even though I've been leaving for over a decade now, it aches.

And now that I'm faced with this text box, trying to figure out how to capture an entire trip in one entry, I realize that's a task more daunting than I have the energy for tonight when all I really want to do is curl up with hot buttered popcorn and whatever Netflix sent us. So I'll give you the highlights, instead.

Bozeman: Lots of good coffee, a date with Matt while my parents graciously watched Suzannah (we feasted on filet mignon and lamb chops at the Montana Rib and Chop House in Livingston before watching a hilarious performance of The Foreigner at the Firehouse 5 Playhouse), hiking to Grotto Falls with my parents and Suzannah (2.5 miles with a feisty two-year-old who wants to DO IT HERSELF, thank you very much, is a challenge), meeting Joannah's new baby, hiking on Kirk Hill with Matt, buying books at Vargo's, and eating Dad's grilled salmon and Mom's huckleberry pie. We missed our traditional meal at MacKenzie River Pizza, but the rest of the visit made up for that.

Great Falls and Havre: Meeting my oldest friend Julia's baby girl, driving around Great Falls in the twilight and revisiting my old haunts, driving the deeply familiar roads to the hi-line, praising GOD that our daughter SLEPT in our hotel room at The Great Northern (the last time we shared a hotel room, the child was awake until three in the morning when her father strapped her in the carseat and took to the freeway, and we have been afraid of a night like that for seven months), taking pictures of our tiny tot snuggled in the middle of our king-sized bed (she wouldn't sleep there, though, much to my dismay -- it's been so long since she slept snuggled against me), stopping to visit my grandparents in Gildford and eating KFC with them, driving to the farm just to see it, and taking to the road once again...

(In case you couldn't tell, I actually really love the driving. I took the wheel between Havre and East Glacier, because Highway 2 is my heart's territory. The highway dips and stretches to the mountains in the distance as we drive through Shelby, Cut Bank, Browning. Houses near the road are often shabby, and clothes flap from lines in the breezy heat. I lose track of what year it is, what age I am, what car I'm even driving. It's a little like the way I felt in Great Falls, driving around my old neighborhood; I saw the ghosts of my other selves, really almost literally saw them. I could say, that brick house, right there? I remember it, I remember riding my bike here, and I remember climbing in that tree and running past this house because we were always so scared of the old man who lived there, and there is that same dent in the screen door all these years later, do you see it? And I know that no one else can get inside my memories, but I swear, it's as though I've taken a tour of my whole life and it's not in my head at all -- it's right there, playing in front of my eyes on this street corner, in that park.)

Glacier National Park/Whitefish: We met Matt's parents and grandpa and David and Tia (the newly engaged couple!) there. They rented a beautiful house near Whitefish, where we spent our evenings cooking cozy dinners and reading and playing outside and relaxing. We spent time in the park each day, and I just have to tell you, it is still true: Glacier is my favorite place on this earth, especially Apgar Village. (Talk about suspension of time. There are pictures of me on this beach at Lake McDonald for every year of my life through high school. Almost nothing has changed, save for the location of all the stuffed bears at The Cedar Tree. The hanging signs outside Eddie's still advertise broasted chicken and trout dinners. They serve the same hot chocolate in those old brown diner mugs I love so much, even though their menu has been updated to include trendy things like veggie wraps on spinach tortillas. Everything smells the same.) We drove to Many Glacier, over Logan Pass and the beautiful Going-To-The-Sun road. Matt's parents spent an afternoon with Suzannah so we could hike to Avalanche Lake; it's special to us, because it's one of the things we did the summer we began dating. We ate a picnic lunch on the shore of Lake McDonald and were surprised by sudden clouds and fat spatters of rain. The sky darkened, the waves frothed. The street through Apgar Village steamed and shone, and as I walked back to the car I thought, this is a moment of unutterable perfection and I am living in it.

"I PLAN ON WRITING AN EPIC POEM ABOUT THIS GORGEOUS PIE..." (Gordon Cole, Twin Peaks)

This day was all kinds of fantastic: a picnic at Remlinger Farms, a pilgrimage to North Bend (well, a pre-pilgrimage), and an evening in West Seattle. Very Saturday and Very Summer. We were due; for the past several weeks, Matt has been hard at work on various house and yard projects, so we've mostly stuck close to home. Today, though, we eyed the invitation to Matt's company picnic and thought, you know, this looks fun, and we don't have much summer left. So we loaded up the car and headed out of town.

The drive to Remlinger Farms is really lovely. I love heading out on Highway 18, into the mountains and away from the city. In the fall, the colors are spectacular. Today, the mountains were deep green under a sky heavy with storm clouds. The sun broke through often enough that I figured we'd be fine for the picnic, and I was right: the first fat drop of water landed on my arm as we were heading back to the car afterwards. We drove towards Seattle in a downpour, and when we stepped out of the car in West Seattle the air was sharp and clean in a way it hasn't been for weeks. We even heard a little thunder in West Seattle while we were browsing through one of our favorite little toy stores, and I erupted with an embarrassing amount of enthusiasm.

"It never does that here!" I cried.

"You must be from the Midwest or something," the saleslady said.

But the rain spared the picnic, so we spent a few pleasant hours eating hamburgers and potato salad and corn on the cob and partaking of things like the climbing wall (Matt), the henna tattoos (me), and the big inflatable bouncy house thingie (Suzannah). Let me talk about the bouncy house thingie for a moment. You all know what I'm talking about, right? Those big inflatable things that kids can go inside and basically just . . . go crazy jumping around and throwing themselves off the walls? When we arrived, I gave it hardly more than a passing glance because it was full of a bunch of Big Boys. Big as in, like, fourth grade. Big as in, there is no way I'm going to let my two-year-old baby girl in there with a bunch of crazy ten-year-olds who are playing a game of Who Can Stay Conscious The Longest After Head-to-Head Collisions. We moved on.

But after we'd eaten and checked everything out, I noticed that the Bouncy House Thingie was more or less unoccupied. There was one girl there -- she was maybe nine -- whose eyes lit up as we approached.

"Does she want to go in?" she asked. "I'll go in with her!"

Truthfully, I wasn't sure Suzannah would go in. She's kind of a cautious child sometimes; she takes her sweet time approaching something new. But when she finally goes for it, let me tell you, she GOES FOR IT. This proved to be the case with the bouncy house. She sat just inside the opening, tentatively. She watched the nine-year-old bounce gently nearby, encouraging her. She giggled a bit and bounced around on her knees. Finally, she stood up, and suddenly she was shouting, "Jump! Jump! JUMP!" She was just beaming. And then she went from jumping to running. Around and around and around. And then she went to tumbling. And then running some more. And then tumbling again. A few other kids -- a young boy and a girl just a tad older than Suzannah -- joined her. They were all very good about not clobbering my child with their happily flailing limbs, and Suzannah would probably still be in there now if I hadn't grabbed her ankle as she bounced by the entrance. Even that made her shriek with delight. The entire trip was worth it just for the Bouncy House Thingie.

Oh, and the pre-pilgrimage.

I've become addicted to Twin Peaks, that bizarre show that aired in 1990 when I was probably too young to fully appreciate it (or, you know, be allowed to watch it). It was filmed around here, and the Twin Peaks Diner is actually Twede's Diner in North Bend. If you've seen the show, you'll understand why I wanted to see this diner. Actually, what I really need want to do is order a piece of cherry pie and a cup of black coffee ("a deep black cup of joe"), but since we were full of picnic food and were planning to eat dinner at the Elliott Bay Brewery, I settled for merely staring at it in blissed-out wonder. (Actually, my husband will tell you that when we found the diner I spent a full five minutes convulsing with glee. And it's true.)

West Seattle was all about the ahi tacos at the Elliott Bay Brewery and hot cocoa at Coffee to a Tea afterwards. The evening ended rather abruptly when our over-tired little lady got upset and crawled under the dollhouse (it was up on a little coffee table) in the kids' corner and cried bitterly into her hands. She cheered up once we got her into the bath at home, which only goes to show that when kids get a little squinky, you should always put them in water. It works every time.

And now I'll leave you with a few glorious tidbits from one of the most brilliant shows to air on television.

Pete Martell: Mr. Cooper, how do you take it?
Dale Cooper: Black as midnight on a moonless night.
Pete Martell: Pretty black.

"This must be where pies go when they die." --Special Agent Dale Cooper

"Harry, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just… let it happen."
--Special Agent Dale Cooper

Show me a day when the world wasn't new...

Suzannah attends her daycare for a few hours a week during the summers; this is mostly to ensure a smooth transition when I go back to teaching in the fall. It also gives me a few hours to do things that are easier sans toddler and gives her the opportunity to spend time with her buddies. Yesterday, I tagged along on a daycare outing to Northwest Trek, which is basically a wildlife park where you can see all kinds of animals up close in a natural habitat. We had a completely fabulous time; we saw moose and wolves and Bighorn sheep and bison and mountain goats and elk and caribou and LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS, OH MY! Suzannah really digs the animals these days, and was very excited to name each one as she saw it, although she was equally excited to announce each tree she saw, as well. And even though that meant pointing to about five hundred trees, all of which looked more or less the same, her enthusiasm for discovery just bubbles over.

Also wonderful for me is watching the ways in which Suzannah just thrives in the company of other kids. She's grown up with this little group, and she loves them all (you know, most of the time). It was fun for me to actually watch her play with them all day; I love the way she interacts with them so easily and happily, running around like crazy and laughing. She has a "big sister" of sorts, an older sister of one of the boys; she's in about the fourth grade, I guess, and Suzannah just adores her. She came along yesterday, and when Suzannah started to grow restless on the hour-long tram ride, Maddie just scooped her right up and said, "Hey, Suzannah, look at this!" The change of scenery -- and arms, perhaps -- settled her right down, and she was happy to hang out with her friend. Suzannah also holds her own quite well with the toddler boys, much to her daddy's chagrin. One of them is always trying to hold her hand, which she tolerates, and one of them is just a big old rotten wrecking ball of noise and Suzannah will probably end up marrying him one day, mostly because her father already heartily disapproves of this kid and any attention he might bestow on his little girl. (There's a backstory here involving the little hellion pushing Suzannah down, like, a year ago. Ever since then, Matt's lips visibly curl whenever this kid's name is mentioned. I love that protective side already!) And then there's this wild little kid, I mean he's just always spazzing out all over the place, who ran up to Suzannah with a spray bottle and squirted her right in the face (we brought tons of them along because it was hot yesterday, and very muggy. It proved to be an excellent idea). I suspect Matt might have just picked this kid up by the scruff of the neck and tossed him to the wolves right then and there, but instead of getting upset, Suzannah shrieked with delight and shouted, "AGAIN!" Basically, she handles the rough-and-tumbleness like a champ; it's when someone takes something away from her that she's likely to turn on the angry waterworks.

Anyway, we had a wonderful day. I never pass up an opportunity to go on a field trip with my daughter, even during the school year. Last fall, I played hooky from a day of staff development to go to the pumpkin patch at Remlinger Farms, which was considerably more difficult than yesterday's outing in that I toted Suzannah around in a sling all day long and nearly had a panic attack when we were separated from the group in the middle of the corn maze, which has resulted in my NEVER WANTING TO DO A CORN MAZE EVER AGAIN, I mean I am seriously traumatized by the memory, thank you very much, but that's another entry. Yesterday was a breeze; Suzannah even consented to riding in her stroller on the trails. Normally, she is much too independent for that, but miracles happen.

Matt and I take Suzannah everywhere we go, and for the most part, she fits so easily into our lives (as long as we come prepared with snacks and things to do, of course, and this is not to suggest she's never been a total stinker when we're trying to finish our food at a restaurant), but I think it's so important to take her places where it's really all about her experience, where she doesn't have to integrate herself into an adult's world. In some ways, sure, having a child ages you -- you cross into a different world, where you are the same age as every other parent no matter what year you were born -- but in many other ways, children keep you young. The whole world is new again. No matter how many trees or bears or raccoons I've seen in my life, when my daughter's eyes are wide and shining at the miraculous world, mine are, too.

The Big-Girl Bed

Tonight I very nearly tried to give away my child at IKEA, although I doubt anyone would have actually taken her.

GOOD MOTHER POLICE, IF YOU ARE MONITORING THIS JOURNAL, YOU CAN COME AND TAKE ME AWAY NOW.

But seriously, it just went so badly that I was like, what am I thinking, taking this girl out in public? Who do I think I am, to believe I can handle my own daughter anywhere? And the other day I had the gall to feel all cheerful and competent, like hey, I like this mothering business, and I might even be good at it. Well, that'll teach me. And I know, logically, that a bad day shouldn't take such a toll on my self-esteem, but it does. Especially when it happens in public. I came home vowing that Suzannah would be an only child for awhile yet. POSSIBLY FOREVER.

Of course, I don't really mean that (I don't think). But it does give me pause. It doesn't help that when we finally came home I was greeted with a puddle of dog puke on my kitchen floor. And while I was cleaning that up, the dog decided to stroll into Suzannah's bedroom and puke there, too. (I swear, my dog doesn't puke all that often; it's just that apparently, I feel the need to share it with the world when she does.) You think you're having a bad day? ADD SOME DOG VOMIT. It's the icing on the cake.

Let's forget about the IKEA trip, though (I'm certainly going to try). Tonight, big things are happening. We converted Suzannah's crib into a daybed. That's right. She's sleeping into a bed she can climb into and out of all by herself, whenever she wants. Are you afraid? Because I am, a little.

(Note: I know that she's definitely old enough for one by most people's standards; I have mama friends who've had their kids sleeping in Big Kid Beds from much younger ages. We never pushed it, though, just like we've never pushed anything else -- mostly because Suzannah has always been completely content with her crib. And, I don't know, when people talk about their babies climbing out of their cribs I always think an appropriate response might be to add a LID somehow. Just kidding. Mostly. Seriously, since she spent her first year-and-a-half sleeping with us anyway, I never thought much about the "appropriate" time to transition to a real bed.)

Anyway. So our daughter has a bed now. Did I mention she can climb in and out whenever she wants?

I figured she was ready, but I had no idea how the transition would go. My daughter is not one of those children who falls asleep any old place when she's tired; she doesn't nod off on the couch, or on the floor. Ever. (Seriously, I see my friends' pictures of their little ones who fall asleep in all these weird places and I'm like, they just fall asleep right there? While they're playing? I don't understand.) I figured she'd delight in her newfound freedom and create all kinds of nighttime chaos, so I thought it'd be best to deal with that before I went back to teaching in the fall since it doesn't really matter that much if I'm sleep-deprived right now. We were pleasantly surprised, though; she loved her "new" bed and couldn't wait to go "Night night" in it. Or so we thought. Because ten minutes after we thought she'd gone right to sleep, she came trotting down the hallway with a huge smile on her face.

I confess: I can't think about that moment without laughing. We have officially become parents who say things like, "You get back in bed, young lady!"

I'm happy to report, though, that as of eleven o'clock this evening, she's been sleeping soundly for about an hour. Both Matt and I had to lie down with her at some point, but I didn't mind that, since it's something I haven't been able to do in quite some time. (She loves to get in bed with Mama when she wakes up early, but does she sleep? No. She says, "Night night!" and proceeds to kick and squirm and shove her feet in my face and stomach and she pokes and giggles her little head off.)

I actually called my parents tonight to report that their granddaughter was SLEEPING IN A BED that was NOT A CRIB. Because it really does feel that huge to me, like all of her milestones do. Thankfully, they responded perfectly.

"Oh, she's so BIG," my mom said. "Call us right back when she's asleep and tell us how it went."

So far, so good. Ask me again in the morning.

Okay, fine, you can have a pony...

Here's the thing about two-year-olds: They're often not very reasonable people.

Sometimes, a two-year-old might have a temper tantrum because you put her plate of fruit on the wrong side of her bowl of oatmeal. Sometimes, she might burst into tears because you've run out of raisins, and even though yesterday she hated raisins, wanted nothing to do with them, threw them on the floor, and fed sly handfuls of them to the dog, today she MUST HAVE RAISINS, what do you MEAN they're all gone, why don't you just go ahead and STARVE her, because you OBVIOUSLY have no regard for her well-being.

You are expected to read her mind when she invents a new game. For example, when she lies down on the floor and pats the space next to her head, you are supposed to lie down next to her, stick your feet in the air, grab them, loudly announce that you've grabbed your feet, sit up, stick your feet out in front of you, draw them back in, quickly stand up, and then trade places with her, because she's scampered to the other side of the room. What, you didn't follow that? Then YOU LOSE, my friend. And watch out, because she gets crabby when you don't keep up.

She absolutely must wash her hands in the sink immediately following a meal -- her meal, that is. If you're not through eating, well, that's too bad, because she needs to stand on YOUR chair. Not the empty one, but yours. And please make sure you reach for the right kind of soap when she asks for soap; she might actually want to try a squirt of Ultra Palmolive with Orange Extract tonight instead of the usual hand soap. You will be expected to know this based solely on the power of your intuition.

All of these scenarios, by the way, occur within the space of one hour. You're pretty much loony-tunes by six-thirty every night. When your husband walks in the door, you throw your two-year-old at him and run into the bathroom, where you lock the door for fifteen minutes. You may bring the dog with you, and the two of you will share meaningful glances.

Just kidding. Well, about the bathroom part. Really, you're okay with being a little bit crazy at the end of the day, because there are also moments when your two-year-old crawls up in your lap and lets you rock her for a few minutes. She just quietly leans her head against your chest, and you melt a little because she's so busy these days -- the cuddling has to be on her terms. She won't let you know ahead of time, and it rarely works to scoop her up while she's busy concocting her daily plan for world domination -- she'll just wriggle around and say, "Mama," until you put her down. But once or twice a day she'll just crawl right up in your arms and stay there, and you'll get to rock her and smell her hair and her sweet, soft skin, and you'll whisper that you love her, and you think there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more perfect than this moment.

And then she will place her soft little hands on either side of your face and turn your head towards her, and she will say, "Mama, kiss." And she'll pucker her lips a little and lean towards you and press those soft little lips against you. Sanity is a pretty small price to pay for that.

Word of the Day

Allow me to let you in on a little secret: I miss co-sleeping.

I never assumed we'd do the "family bed" thing. I always thought we'd have our baby sleep in our room for awhile, even a long while, definitely -- but probably in her own space. We even bought a bedside co-sleeper/bassinette-thingie. But you know what? Suzannah hated it. We all learned very quickly that we all actually slept when I brought Suzannah into the bed with us, and when we mastered nursing in bed, well, that was just bliss . Seriously. That's all I cared about, because in those early days, I was completely convinced I would never sleep for more than three hours at a time EVER AGAIN, and I pretty much would have sold my car, my house, a kidney, and possibly future children if I could have just had a little more shut-eye. What can I say -- sleep deprivation does crazy things to your brain.

But it was more than the fact that we all seemed to get more sleep that way. I simply loved seeing my daughter's perfect, milk-drunk face as she drifted off to sleep snuggled in my arms. I loved holding her and smelling her and feeling her nearness. I loved hearing her sleepy sighs, loved the way she would touch my face or the way we'd just look at each other and bask in the newness of our life together. It felt absolutely right, and for some reason, I just never worried about all the warnings I heard from well-meaning advice-givers -- you know, that we'd NEVER get her to sleep alone, that she'd grow up clingy, yada yada yada. It's the same thing we always heard about breastfeeding -- that she'd NEVER stop unless we MADE her. For the record, when Suzannah was ready to transition to her own room, she made it perfectly clear. And when she was done breastfeeding, she made that clear, too.

I miss both of those things, even though I realize that my little girl is just growing up, that it's the right and natural order of things.

But sometimes when I kiss her goodnight, I want to linger with her a little while, want to stroke her hair and hug her and kiss her until she's like, OKAY, MOM, YOU CAN GO NOW. She'll literally drop to her mattress, pull her blanket around her body, and say "Nigh-nigh." She can be pretty firm about this, actually.

But before she does this, I have to hug her a million times, and lately, after I say "I love you" I grab her, squeeze her in one final hug, and say, "Squeeze!" Hey, a vocabulary lesson never hurt anyone, right?

She picked right up on this, as she's adding more and more words to her vocabulary each day. So now, she'll hug me back and say, "Fweeze!"

This evening, we were clowning around after her bedtime story (yes, when we should have been winding down and doing something more peaceful. I don't know, baby meditation or massage or guided imagery or lullabies or something) and she grabbed her own feet, squeezed them, and said, "Fweeze!"

While I was changing her, she asked for a wipe. She gripped it tightly in her hands until it started dripping moisture onto the floor. She grinned. "Fweeze!" she cried.

And every time she does that, I just have to scoop her up in my arms, give her a crushing hug, and say, "Squeeze!" And of course, what it really means is this: I love you so much I can hardly even breathe.

Mother, I just can't do a THING with my hair...

(Suzannah and Kyanne)

BREAKING NEWS: Two days ago, on Tuesday, July 15, 2008, Suzannah Grace Winslow wore her hair in pigtails all afternoon.

PIGTAILS.

I know that some babies are born with enough hair to braid before they go home from the hospital. I know that many, many children who are my daughter's age wear pigtails every single day. But Suzannah is her mother's daughter, which means that she was doomed to spend almost the first two years of her life in a state of baldness (even though I have plenty of hair now, far too much hair for hot summer afternoons, which means that in a spontaneous fit of hair angst on Saturday, I went and had it all chopped off -- but I digress). Lately, though, her hair is actually starting to grow. It's fine and blonde and it kind of looks like a mullet right now, although when she wakes up from a nap or gets a little sweaty it tends to turn into this mass of curls (and that she inherited from her daddy). I refuse to cut it just yet. We've been clipping it into bows for awhile now, but this week I decided to try the pigtails.

I play with her hair all the time in the hopes that she'll be used to my messing around with her head -- otherwise, I figured, when I try to do something to her hair for the first time, she'll freak out. So I'm always tugging at it and running my fingers through it, and for the most part, she tolerates it pretty well. Over the weekend I tried rubber bands for the first time, which resulted in her batting irritatedly at my hands and saying, "Ow." I gave up, perhaps too quickly.

On Tuesday, before we went outside to play in her pool, my friend Kyanne distracted her with play-doh. While they busied themselves taking the play-doh out of the little containers, I knelt behind Suzannah and wrestled her hair into two little pigtails. I wasn't going for perfection this time -- I just wanted to see those cute little spikes of blonde hair sticking out from the side of her head. Because I am DUE.

And they actually looked adorable. I spent the next two hours squealing, "It's a totally new look, isn't it?" And Kyanne nodded and smiled tolerantly. It's true, though -- they made her look like such a little girl -- yet another milestone, a transition, a growing away from babyhood and into little girl-hood. It is pure sweetness.

My daughter, the fish; also, some stuff about my teeth

About the time Suzannah learned to walk, she decided she was through sitting down in the bathtub. It was the strangest thing. She'd still splash around in the water -- but she wouldn't sit her little bottom down. If I tried to help her do so, she screamed so loudly the neighbors probably thought I was trying to drown her. I did try to get her into the shower with me a couple of times, but that wasn't terribly successful, either. So for the better part of a year, I had to bathe her standing up in the tub, pouring water over her. (She didn't particularly enjoy that either, and sometimes I had to play a little game we call "Speed Bath.")

Lately, though, she approaches bath time a little differently. It goes something like this: I say, "Should we go take a bath?" and Suzannah goes tearing into the bathroom, where she tries to climb into the tub immediately. Last night, I didn't say anything at all -- I just went in and started the water. When she heard that, she came running and tried to climb in, clothes and all. I managed to wrestle her sundress over her head, but when I asked her to run it across the hall and put it in her hamper, she looked at me and howled, "No! Bath!"

Once she's in the tub, not only does she sit, she throws herself down on her tummy. She kicks and splashes and laughs, and if I say, "Suzannah, are you ready to get out?" she very deliberately wags her head back and forth and says, "No no. No. No no no." Her tone is actually quite polite in a "Not right now, thanks!" kind of way. However, if I decide it's time to get out before she's ready, she's not so accommodating -- so I've figured out that the way to end the bath without tears is to drain all the water from the tub before I try anything. She says "bye bye!" to the water, and then when the tub is empty -- and not a moment before! -- she'll consent to drying off. My guess is that we'll have more success with her wading pool this summer; last year, she was extremely tentative, although when I stuck her sand and water table in the pool and stood in there with her, she played cautiously. I think she wasn't terribly fond of the chill of the water outside, but that doesn't seem to bother her anymore.

Last week when Matt's family was here, we drove to Point Defiance in Tacoma and wandered down to the beach. All I could think was, why haven't we come here before? Because Suzannah loved it. She didn't play in the water much, but she loved the waves crashing around her feet, and she stood at the shore and yelled, "Whooooaaa!" A starfish washed up on the beach, and while it probably wasn't terribly healthy, it was still alive -- so I held it in my hand and convinced Suzannah to touch it. She was surprisingly gentle. (Actually, I've noticed this with Blondie, too; Suzannah is getting so much better about petting the puppy nicely, which we've been working on for, oh, her whole life. And yesterday Suzannah very nicely fed Blondie about three handfuls of oatmeal under the table. VERY SNEAKY, Suzannah, but cut it out with the mind games -- Blondie doesn't know that the next morning when she lingers hopefully nearby that she is NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK AT YOU.)

***

Let's talk about teeth. Specifically, mine. This is for all of you who make fun of my compulsive brushing habits.

So, I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned yesterday. I've gone every six months since I moved to Washington; my dentist is a stickler for that. They're incredibly thorough; they take little measurements on all your teeth every time you visit, to see how much gum recession you have. Then they deliver all the predictable lectures on flossing and brushing gently. (I'm not good at the "brushing gently" part, I admit it, although since I began using a Sonicare I'm a lot better. Also, I'm not good at the coffee drinking, as in, I do a lot of it and THEY CAN TELL.) My visits are comfortingly predictable: I get all the same lectures on flossing and brushing gently, delivered by a cotton-candy-voiced hygienist; I endure the INSUFFERABLE SCRAPING (you all know what I'm talking about); my teeth are polished up and flossed; the dentist comes in, peers in my mouth for five seconds, says everything looks great, and asks how school is going. And then I get a carnation.

All in all, not too bad. Except for the INSUFFERABLE SCRAPING, which makes me dig my fingernails into my palm so hard they leave marks for the rest of the day.

"Doing all right?" the cotton-candy-voiced hygienist asks.

"Ugh-huh-ggghh," I say. (Which is all anyone can ever say with an open mouth, especially if it's filled with those horrible cotton rolls and latex-covered fingers. So why do dentists and hygienists always insist on trying to carry on a conversation?)

I haven't actually been to the dentist in nearly a year; I had an appointment for early spring, but I was really sick -- coughing and sneezing and phlegming all over the place, and I could hardly talk. So I canceled it. The soonest they could get me in was yesterday (unless I wanted to go at seven o'clock in the morning, which I didn't), since they book that far in advance. I managed not to think about it until about an hour before my appointment, when I decided I probably shouldn't have my morning coffee before a cleaning. And then I promptly started to freak out about ALL THE SCRAPING THEY WOULD HAVE TO DO, because I hadn't been in since last August.

The visit began like any other; one hygienist poked around my teeth, murmuring numbers (the lower the better) while another one wrote them down. It was like I was waiting to hear the score on a math test -- did I pass? Did I do well? Did I get an A? I was pretty sure my numbers were appalling, that my teeth were about to fall out, that I'd be lectured about flossing (wait, that happens anyway). But when she finished, she said, "Boy, I wish my numbers were that good."

"No kidding," said the other one. Really? Okay, that wasn't bad.

And then the scraping started. But it only lasted a few minutes, and it didn't seem nearly as vigorous as it usually does. And then she stopped.

"You have no tartar and hardly any plaque," she said. "I don't have a lot to do today."

Bells began to ring and a choir of angels descended from the fluorescent lights above my head.

"Really?"

"You're done! You've taken really good care of your teeth this year."

Would you like me to let you in on my secret? I brush my teeth after lunch every single day. I haven't always done this, but I started carrying a toothbrush in my school bag this past year. Every day, I make sure to allow enough time at the end of our piddly lunch break to brush my teeth before heading back to class. It makes sense to me; afternoons are not my best time of day, and if I freshen up a bit, I feel a little more energetic. Also, sometimes I like to eat things like hummus or chicken artichoke hot pockets, and who wants to taste that all afternoon?

But you'd be amazed at how many of my colleagues make fun of me for this (and this is as close to writing about school here as I'll get). One lady in particular always manages to wander into the bathroom while I'm brushing my teeth, and she always, always laughs. In, like, a knee-slapping way. "Oh, there you go again!" she cries. "You and your toothbrush! You're so funny!" And I'm always like, uh, okay. Then I ask my lunch buddies, "Is it really THAT weird?" And some of them look at me and say, uh, yeah, actually it kind of is, why don't you just chew some gum?

BECAUSE I ONLY HAD TO BE AT THE DENTIST FOR A TOTAL OF THIRTY MINUTES, THAT'S WHY! I can take any mockery for that.

Look at the bright side...

It's always lovely to wake up to the sound of the pug eating a puddle of her own vomit in the middle of the bedroom floor. (Should I add a disclaimer to this blog? A warning of sorts, to alert my readers to the fact that sometimes I write about dog puke and kid puke and other gross things no one really wants to read about but that are a fact of my life and therefore fair game? Eh. Consider yourselves warned. I've never particularly cared about writing appropriate things -- I'm sure my mother will confirm this.) I hope it's not an omen, an indicator of how our day is going to go. At least I didn't step in it. Maybe it's my lucky day. Any day in which I don't step in warm dog vomit in bare feet is better than one in which I do, right? (In case you're wondering, no, this doesn't happen often, and yes, actually, I have stepped in warm dog vomit in bare feet. My apologies if you're eating lunch right now.)

In other news, here's a little riddle: How many minutes does it take a toddler to get into trouble while her mother cleans up the breakfast dishes?

Answer: No minutes. It takes no minutes. Seconds, maybe. It's unbelieveable, really; Suzannah is completely capable of entertaining herself with her dollhouse or her baby and stroller or any number of toys, and often she's so absorbed in her play that I could probably take a bubble bath or read a few chapters in a novel before she'd even miss me. So I didn't think it was ridiculous to assume that this morning she could do that for, oh, five minutes while I put a few things away. I busied myself in the kitchen, wiping the counter and washing the dried remnants of oatmeal out of her bowl. I let the dog out. And then, guess what I heard?

Nothing.

Suzannah was silent. (Did that just send chills racing up your spine? Silence is never a good sign when your child is awake.) I turned around, and sure enough, she'd vanished. I strolled casually into our bedroom, because that's one of her favorite places to play, and found her bent over the toilet in our bathroom. She was not only bent over it, she was armpit-deep in it. I tried not to scream, because I had a feeling that wasn't the worst part. I was right. The worst part was discovering that she had unspooled an entire double roll of Quilted Northern into the toilet bowl.

"Suzannah," I moaned. At the sound of my voice, she turned to me and beamed, clearly oblivious to the stricken expression on my face.

"Potty," she announced cheerfully.

At least she knows where toilet paper goes, I guess. I'm so proud.