A few things I don't want to forget

How the other night, while sitting on my lap, Cali spied the tube of sunscreen sitting on the lamp table. She picked it up and started poking it in my face, using the poky bottom corner, and at first I was irritated. Then she put the tube down and started patting gently at my face with her tiny hands. Then she picked up the tube again and poked it at my arms, put it down, and then oh-so-softly patted and stroked my arms. I realized she was putting sunscreen on me. My sweet girl!

How last night I read her Goodnight Moon and when I got to the last line, "goodnight noises everywhere," she looked up at me with a happy expression, grabbed her nose and said "noh!" I am quite certain that she thinks the last line is "goodnight noses everywhere", and this makes perfect sense to her.

The way she says "cute" ("tyoo"), with the most delighted look on her face, when she sees pictures of herself or other babies. Or, every time I get her dressed, she runs to the room with the big mirrored closet doors, squats down in front of her reflection and says "tyoo, tyoo"!

How, one day, she was lying back on her dada's chest, looking up at the sky, pointing out the birds. "Dut!" she would cry, pointing at each seagull that flew overhead. Finally, she saw a jet airlpane fly overhead and looked at it for a long time before finally pointing at it doubtfully, and saying "dut?..."

How, at the park, when she climbs up the stairs to the slide, their smooth dark rubber warm in the summer sun, she saws " 'ot, 'ot!" and blows on them to cool them down.

The little siren noise she makes whenever she reads her Corduroy book ("uh-oh, Corduroy smells smoke") or sees a fire engine from her car seat. It's the tiniest little buzzing siren noise that she makes through pursed lips, and it's delicious. I want to just gobble her up like the little piece of candy that she is.

Hooray for Coffee

Last night my twin nemeses, Anxiety and Insomnia were up to their old vile tricks. I did not get to sleep until nearly three in the morning, but on the bright side, I scored 276,000 points playing Bejeweled Blitz on my iPhone. Hooray.

Of course, just to be completely ornery, the girl woke up exceptionally early and couldn't be nursed back to sleep. I turned on Disney Playhouse and let her watch it in bed so I could sleep for another half hour. Another hooray for my stellar parenting skills.

Oh, and guess what else? The garbage men did not pick up our garbage today, for some inexplicable reason. Even though everyone else's garbage on our street was collected. Plus, raccoons got into it, and scattered garbage all around in front of our house. This put my husband in an excellent mood as well. Everyone say it with me: "hooray".

We all piled into the car (the girl and I still in our PJs) and went to the hardware store to buy a trashcan so that we can have a place to put our garbage for the next week. Luckily, the hardware store is right next to this little coffeehouse where my husband and I used to get a particular type of hazelnut-flavored coffee when we were in college 10 years ago. When my husband got back to the car with the trashcan, he also had two steaming paper cups of hazelnut-flavored coffee with lots of cream and sugar. Oh, it tasted like life before marriage and kids. It tasted like long drives along the coast, and conversations that took place while sitting on the tailgate of an old blue pickup, watching the ocean. It tasted like the sound of Alice in Chains' Jar of Flies album, and most of all it tasted of the sweet and endlessly open opportunities of an ambitious 20-year-old. It was good. And, to be honest, a little too sugary.

Words and Pictures

I started taking pictures so I could control the moments of my life and reorganize them into some kind of concise and clean revision of my memories, one in which even the bad parts contain beauty and vividness. For a while I was obsessed with the idea of taking 365 Self Portraits, a popular challenge on the photo website flickr.com. I spent hours browsing the self portrait photosets of other members, many of them astounding in their beauty and poignancy, and I envied that kind of neatly packaged record of a year in my life. I'm obviously not alone in this craving. Not only are photo websites like Flickr incredibly popular, but scrapbooking as a hobby is something of a craze these days. In fact, long before I discovered Flickr, I used to buy scrapbook magazines, not because I ever took up the hobby, or really planned to, but because I liked to look at the neat layouts of cherub-cheeked babies and smiling couples, surrounded by kitschy stickers and rubber-stamped lettering that put neat titles on life's shining moments. It's like the commercialization of life. All one has to do is open the scrapbook and then feel the relief course through one's limbs as each cheery page proclaims that yes! the baby was always smiling, the summers filled with trips to the beach under sunny skies, and Christmas a warm betwinkled blur of laughter and crumpled paper. And if the photos themselves don't convey this just right, there are always little notions and do-dads at the craft store to help drive the point home, and pretty printed papers to convey the right mood.

I like photography because I'm so mediocre at it. Unlike the written word, photography allows me to be satisfied with limiting myself to safe subjects. It doesn't force me to look at the memories so ugly that they lay crumpled like a dead thing in the corner of my mind. I'm okay with not being great at it, because at least I'm in charge of it. Those damn words, on the other hand, they don't listen. They are are naughty, always wanting to dash into the middle of a crowded street. They're a bit like children in their ruthless demands for attention and love, and like a mother, I know I'll never be quite good enough.

The longer it goes without updating, the harder it is to sit down and make an entry. It's like a family member you're estranged from, and every day that goes by, the idea of picking up the phone seems more and more awkward and unappealing, no matter how much you'd like to hear their voice.

But here I am, taking that first step, if anyone still cares to meet me here.

Really, you haven't missed much. Likely just some rambly posts about dealing with depression (snorefest), some photographs of a half-finished sweater (no, my one-year-old does not allow me to knit much, thankyouverymuch) and...well...that's it, really.

Let's see. We moved. Which was such an incredible mixture of positive and negative emotions, that I really can't come up with a way to describe it except for "gut-wrenching." I had to leave a lot behind, including nursing school, my job, and some things so personal, I can't go into it here. But now that I'm settled, life is good, in the quotidian sense. I love the beach-front town we live in, and our incredible good fortune in the house we live in. I'm getting used to being a stay at home mom, and while I love it and treasure every day, I also miss school and my job desperately. I'm gradually picking up the pieces of my ambitions, and reassembling them once again.

But the mornings here are gray and cool,and I can smell the briny sea. My house is filled with the sound of pattering feet and the sweet voice of my baby, lisping her collection of words and phrases. And today, the longest day of the year, I watched the sun finally sink below the line of trees on my horizon while nursing my girl to sleep, her solid, warm little self limp in my arms, and her hair smelling faintly of almonds. I've learned that this is as good as it gets, and that's a wonderful thing. When life hands you a beautiful moment, you treasure it, and savor its weight in the palm of your hand like a jewel. You don't worry so much about what comes before or after.