one year

wow. a lot happens in a year. 

a year ago today my dear friend amy had her sweet little baby judah. 

here we are,

nancy, amy and i, post baby.

these roommates (and by roommate i mean cram-together-and-get-ready-in-one-bathroom, crawl-into each-other's-beds-and-talk-about-boy traumas, laugh-and-cry-and-fight-together,be each-others-emergency-contacts-and-number-one-fans as opposed to pick-some-random-rent-payer-up-on-craigslist roommate.) are my very dear, with history, shared joy and sorrow friends. so roommate carries even more weight than to say my friend. to say my roommate is to say my sister, my family.

when we roommates all got pregnant 4 months apart 

matt rolled his eyes, 

shook his head, and said "you three can't do anything by yourselves." 

exactly. 

why would we want to do anything by ourselves when we can do it together? 

luckily having kids that are at the most 8 months apart 

also ensures that little m is guaranteed a prom date.

here we are, as of a year ago, all of us mommies.

happy birthday judah!

then i realized maybe i should include david, 

since he is the daddy, with his sweet brand new baby boy, circa november 23 2008.

yay for roommates, babies, birthdays and histories that intertwine!

somewhere out there

(somewhere out there from an american tail)

every thursday night matt and i hang out with a group of friends to share a meal (sometimes), and to talk about life, community, meaning, purpose, and ask some of the deeper questions that are easy to push down in the rush of day to day life. (of course, we also talk about mundane stuff too with a dash of celebrity trash thrown in.) 

last night, we held our annual pre-thanksgiving/immigration stories dinner. hmmm, you may say, what the crap is an immigration stories dinner?! since we randomly made it up a few years ago. it is pot luck style, and we divvy up the traditional thanksgiving meal between ourselves. (among other yummy items, nancy braved the turkey this year and i made my mom's amazingly delicious stuffing recipe. so. so. good.) as we eat, we share as much as we know of our individual family's story of coming to america. 

last night our stories ranged from the "longest on american soil" keith, who basically had relatives who came over with columbus on the nina, pinta and santa maria and never left (that might be a slight exxageration, but not by much...), to connie, whose parents were both born and raised in china before moving here forty years ago. 

of course, by now we've heard each others stories a few times, but in each history there are little nuggets that we love to revisit- some tragic, others funny, others a riddle that we try to figure out. our friend peter wins the award for having the most twists, turns, and mysteries, but the reality is that each of our stories is a rich gift to share with each other. every single one of us (aside from native americans) has a story of coming to this country and being the foreigner. 

in our room of 7 people, we represented family members from sicily, sweden, egypt, sudan, russia, germany, england, scotland, indonesia, mexico, france, china, and japan. 

it is rare in our culture to sit down and talk to each other (and listen) about where we come from and the people who have come before us. (well, it isn't so unusual for my aunts fern emma and audrey, who are very impressive researchers, and i think could tell me my entire maternal geneology going back to adam and eve...or for my dad and uncle martin, who have literally gone to extreme lengths to find out about their ancestors like making my college roommates approach strangers in dobel, germany) 

inevitably our annual dinner leaves us with more questions, and the assignment to "go ask your dad this!" or "go interview your grandma about that!" 

it has become a way that as friends we are more connected to each other, and we know more about each other's extended families and roots. we discover how our parents met each other, or when our family stopped speaking german, or who fought in what wars and on what side.

plus it gives good conversation topics for thanksgiving whether you are with friends or family. it is the perfect opportunity to ask stories about your family or someone else's as you down another slice of pumpkin pie.

i'll leave you with two quick ones about my own:

• so just maybe the town of dobel, germany raised the money to ship my ancestors to america because they caused that much trouble and were a huge strain on the local economy. ouch. it cost less to send my entire family to america then it did to let them stay around being slackers.
• on my grandmother fern kimmel's side, we had relatives come over to the massachusetts bay colony.

how about you? any good tidbits on your family? 

i just called to say...

(sidebar: this is how i know i am a mom. i post photos and pretend to write in little m's voice. 

i promise not to do it again, i just couldn't resist.)

hmm. who should i text?

grandma?

daddy?

or maybe my new cousin sadie?

i don't think she can text yet.

i'll just call her.

looks like it's going through...

hi!

want to hang out later? 

you can sleep and i'll try to hold you

or just play with all of your new baby stuff.

dinner, dancing & deafness

(ok, no dancing, except by little m in the video..read on)

on saturday night matt, my mom, my friends amy & nancy, and i all snuggled into my car and headed to the annual benefit for little m's school. i didn't quite know what to expect, as it was our first year attending even though little m was going to the school last year too. (how amazing to think that she has now been in school since she was 6 months old!)

(my handsome husband and pretty mommy)

(my beautiful friends nancy & amy)

there was the usual benefit fare: 

a theme 

(in our case, "the love boat" even though there was no boat to be seen. in fact, we were quite landlocked, which especially when the promotional postcard has a big boat in the water on it seems a little misleading...but there was nautical stuff galore to make up for it), 

a silent auction, a live auction, people who you usually see in jeans dressed up in fancy clothes, some casino night action, thematic centerpieces on all of the tables, and so on.

(crowd shot,

the nautical centerpiece + 

sidenote, also the piece of chocolate cake, 

which was so so yummy 

{it kind of exceeded my low expectations})

our dear friend mary claire, who used to teach at little m's school, jean weingarten peninsula oral school for the deaf, was volunteering at the event, so we got to hang out with her for a few minutes while she wasn't working. 

after the food, and milling about the silent auction, the head of the school introduced the evening and a video about the school. the theme of her short speech & of the video was "a journey of hope." as she spoke, i found my eyes filling with tears- the kind that just come even if you will them not to. 

she talked about how when one normally goes on a journey it is something planned for and anticipated. the families at little m's school didn't plan to be on this journey. we didn't plan to be at a school for the deaf with a child who was born deaf, with hearing loss, or with a syndrome. 

and yet, her words rang true. the last year and a half has been a journey of hope for us. here i was surrounded by people who i never would have met otherwise: audiologists, teachers, therapists, surgeons, other families from the school. my heart just swelled in gratitude for these many individuals who have been a part of our journey- friends, professionals, professionals who have become friends.

as we watched the video, narrated by a graduate of the school who is profoundly deaf, in the 5th grade now, and who has bilateral cochlear implants, more tears came. half-way through the brief video was a clip of our little m at morning music, dancing and laughing. what a joy she is. what a gift we've been given. and what a journey we are on.

my tears turned to laughter when nancy and amy decided to bid in the live auction. let me remind you: we have no money. notice how we are in the back row? that's where they put the people who don't bid on anything. just saying.

i half expected nancy to accidentally end up with a $4000 weekend in napa. (it's for the kids!)

but luckily they were just instrumental in starting the bidding, 

and they escaped with bank accounts intact.

(and without inciting the wrath of their husbands for bidding on a personal chef or house in hawaii)

my awesome friend hannah, whose daughter viv is the cutest thing maybe ever besides little m, raised $750 by putting 6 months of her fabulous baking up on the auction block!

so thankful for each person at little m's school - 

for the other kids who little m learns from and plays with, for fellow parents, and for the staff who gives so much so that our children can learn to listen and talk.

and thankful that we have had dear ones on this journey with us.

who needs a sticker album...

...when you have a face?

someone has discovered the joy of stickers

and she likes to share

ps um, i look about twice my age in this picture. 

sleepy, wrinkly, puffy eyes after a late night (more on that in my next post)

happy friday!

i am still enthralled by these old family photos i've scanned, 

so here are a couple i am currently loving:

me, looking quite distraught, 

and wearing an interesting fashion statement, 

circa 5 years old

my mom, my brother jonathan & i, when my mom was pregnant with rebecca

i love this one.

my mom and i, on the car ferry to peaks island, maine.

and i love this one for about twenty reasons.

have a wonderful weekend!

i am going to snuggle my new niece some more,

have dinner with friends tonight

(and i think lemon bars are involved at some point),

go to the annual benefit for little m's school for the deaf

&

figure the rest out along the way.

introducing...

my beautiful new niece, sadie fern anderson. 

she is absolutely beautiful.

born at 12:44 am

november 12, 2009

7 lbs. 13 oz.

her middle name fern is a family name: 

grandmother fern eloyse (where i get my middle name eloyse) & aunt fern emma (who is a wonderful aunt, a devoted blog reader, and way too far away in michigan)

it took quite the journey to get her out into the world. a very long and frustrating labor which, as it usually goes, didn't go according to plan, but culminated in this amazing miracle of a human being! 

we did some waiting as mama rebecca labored hard into the night.

once it was all done,

we got to meet her!

i get to be an aunt!

dear rebecca, 

you are an amazingly strong mama already! 

you worked so hard to bring sadie into the world, 

and with such grace and humor (even when things were kind of crappy.) 

you are courageous and determined and loving, and you are just beginning this new adventure. blessings on you as you rest and snuggle and heal.

dear mark, it was incredible to watch you support rebecca in labor. 

you were kind and loving and a good listener and partner despite exhaustion.

what a gift you are to each other, and now what a gift you will be to your new daughter.

dear sadie, we love every inch of you. 

i can't wait to read you blueberries for sal and corduroy,

to take you to look at art, 

to make big old messes, 

to catch you being silly with little m, 

to bake cookies with you, 

to give you auntie advice, 

to tell you stories about your grandma and your mommy when she was a little girl, 

to give you hugs and snuggles from now until i am wrinkled and gray. 

we are so glad you are joining our growing family. 

grandma can't wait to have you come play at her house.

sleep well for your mama and daddy, they are very tired.

we are here to play with you when you come home!

love, aunt susannah

(p.s. little m may be a bit jealous at first- don't worry, she will get over it)

baby love

little m is currently quite enthralled with babies.

as in, cloth ones, plastic ones, and real-live breathing ones.

(which is a good thing because she became a cousin today 

with a brand new itty bitty baby! 

more on that later)

yesterday she was eating popcorn with her baby.

some for little m...

some for baby

a little more sharing.

 the popcorn goes towards baby's mouth and

then takes a quick turn and gets plopped into m's mouth. 

(convenient)

if only she shared her snacks so freely with real live humans.

checking in, with a little hug and snuggle

(wonder where she learned that?)

looks like she'll be a great cousin- 

as long as she doesn't try to feed rebecca and mark's newborn popcorn!

waiting

always pain before a child is born-

lyrics from the song yahweh by u2

we have been waiting (patiently) for my niece to be born. 

my sister, 11 days overdue, finally started going into labor in the wee hours yesterday morning. it has been slow, and it looks like a long road is ahead, so for now, we wait. 

meanwhile, with mark at her side encouraging her and rooting her on, she breathes through the pain, hopes for reprieve, and labors until her daughter pushes out into the world. 

the last few days i have been thinking about my own labor. it is hard now to remember exactly how painful it was, but i remember that i thought i might die. i thought it would never subside, that this pain would split me in two. it was in those moments that matt would look away with tears in his eyes from my pain level that i would feel a little burst of strength, knowing he was right next to me and that i was not alone. and then, after hours of so much pain, after months of so much waiting, after breathing and screaming and pushing, the baby is here. and suddenly one's entire world shifts. the waiting is over, and the new journey begins.

somehow the joy of this new life invades and dissipates the pain, and it becomes just a memory. even the agony of waiting is forgotten as this new life begins. i think this is true whether you birth your own child, or whether it is the pain and waiting of adopting your child into your family. joy floods the pain until it eventually fades into the background.

(a few snapshots of little m's birth day)

little m, moments after birth

already bright eyed and feisty

matt with little m

notice her annoyed look- which she still makes

me, tired but happy

this may be the last time m snuggled for like a year

uncle mark with little m (he looks like a natural, right?)

aunt becca, grandma and our daughter

so for today, hope that my sister's labor will soon be over, and the pain soon forgotten.

little one, we are waiting for you. 

and we can't wait to meet you. 

we have a whole lifetime of adventures to begin! 

love, aunt susannah

happy friday!

what are you up to this weekend?

are you going to hit the road like little m looks like she's about to do?

i officially started the weekend last night by going to a FANTASTIC opening of my friend colleen's drawings, paintings and photographs. it was a really nice show in an alternative space in san francisco. (a friendly reminder to go look at art and support your local artists- if their work is good & you like it! supporting bad art doesn't help anyone...)

here is what we are up to:

art. tonight. here.

movie. tonight, part two. (m is for murder at the amazing and beautiful paramount theatre. 

yay for alfred hitchcock and yay for oakland landmarks!)

rest. hoping for some naps and stillness and space to just be quiet this weekend. 

food. as in the farmers market variety. saturday morning. me + little m + throngs of people + fresh produce. also, i am thinking i need some more treats in my life, so i may need to bake this weekend.

friends. my friend kimiko is in town! here's to lots of hanging out this weekend!

crafts. sunday. some of my friends (& strangers too) are selling their wares here. go stock up on holiday treats & help local artists! some other friends are selling ugandan beads to support bead for life. go stock up on holiday treats and help ugandan women!

baby????my sister is now 1 week overdue. she and her hubbie are anxiously awaiting the arrival of baby girl anderson, which heralds little m's first cousin and my new title of aunt! awesome. little m was 11 days overdue, so i think these little ones just like to bake extra.

maybe all of these plans will be happily obliterated 

and instead

i'll hang out in the maternity ward with the newest addition to our extended family! 

(i'm just glad i won't have to be the one pushing that baby out! go becca!)

what are you doing this weekend?

maybe we'll see you out there!

my new favorites

i recently had all of our family slides scanned, and they came back today.

here is one of my new favorites of the old photos.

my mom and i on peaks island, maine.

love love love this.

(u2)

this is a long post. i figure you can handle it because i have been so sporadically posting that this one can count as like 5 posts. 

you may recall that about two weeks ago i went on a super impulsive, slightly crazy roadtrip to phoenix, arizona with my two brothers. lucky for me, my husband is awesome and fully endorsed and backed me up on my insane plans. i figure it's good for my daughter to learn that her mom still rallies.

mission: see U2 in concert. 

and by see them in concert, i mean, be this close:

(all pics by my brother aaron. he snapped, while i sang my little heart out)

mission accomplished.

and by that, i mean for reals, 

not in a fake 

wearing-a-flight-suit-on-an-aircraft-carrier-&-declaring-the-end-of-the-conflict-in-iraq 

sort of way.

here's how it went down.

brother aaron picked me up around 6 pm, 

and we headed to brother jonathan's house to get on the road.

a few hours in we still look awake and excited.

i don't know how many years it has been since i went to carl's jr., 

but we stopped off and i indulged in a western bacon burger. 

i don't know, it did the trick, but it didn't taste quite as good as it used to in high school.

ready to get back on the road. 

3 hours down, and about 9 to go. 

i pseudo crashed in the back seat and my brothers drove the whole way. 

awesome. 

i declined to post the extremely flattering photos that aaron took of me while i slept.

don't worry- you aren't missing anything.

we got to the city of surprise, arizona at around 5 am. 

we drove straight to my friend brandon's house.

 

(by the way, this post is dedicated to brandon, because he is the one who made my voyage to the concert possible. he's the one who, after i found a single general admission ticket on craigslist in arizona, picked up and paid for my ticket. in case you are wondering, i know practically no one in the state of arizona, but brandon just happens to live in the same exact city as where my friendly craigslist ticket seller also lives. how awesome is that!

anyway, not only did he schlep over to get my ticket for me, but he woke up bright and early to pass the ticket off to me so that we could head straight to the stadium to get in line for the show.)

here's the thing. 

i need to explain this first. 

U2 general admission ticket holders have this whole routine. 

my friend nancy calls it the fake U2 government.

(just don't tell anyone in the line that it is fake, because this system becomes the rule of law.)

U2 always has general admission tickets, as in no assigned seats. 

they are usually the cheapest tickets, and if you get there early enough to wait in line, 

and race up to the stage, you can get very close to the band.

even though the show is in a massive arena or stadium, 

it feels like you are as close as you would be in a club, 

with the benefit of tens of thousands singing along with you.

this is how fake U2 government goes:

• 48-24 hours ahead of the show, people start showing up to start the "official" general admission line. usually the line is across the street from the venue, because the venue won't let you camp out.
  
• whoever shows up first has a pad of paper and a sharpie marker.
• that person gets to start the line by writing their name on the paper and writing 1 on their hand with the sharpie.
• every person who shows up after that writes their name on the list, with a corresponding number that they are in line.
• throughout the day, the line "leader" has people line up in numerical order and comes down the line to check people's names & make sure they are in the right spot.
• the line leader also comes by to tell everyone to police themselves. as in, if someone cuts, it's your job to deal with it.
• throughout the day you can leave to get food, or go to the bathroom, or go on a walk, or just take a break. at a certain time mid-afternoon (about an hour from when you can get let into the stadium,) everyone in line takes their chairs, food, books, sleeping bags, etc. back to their cars. then you can just get back in line in order again without worrying that you'll lose your spot.

crazy, right? crazy, but it works.

we got to the stadium at 5:45 am and the little pack of waiters was across the street from the stadium. we didn't even park, we u-turned and hopped out to get our numbers and names on the list. we were #100, 101 and 102. 

people are more insane than i am, because the first people had gotten there 36 hours before. um, what!?!

at 7 am, the stadium opened up the gates, 

so we dutifully lined up in order in the designated spot.

it is seriously comical, and i would laugh harder if i wasn't camped out in line myself. 

people have little boomboxes blasting U2, they spend the day reading U2 photo-books, reliving other concerts, talking about other tours, comparing old tour t-shirts, reconnecting with people they met at other shows, discussing strategy for where they want to stand during the concert. 

looking a bit beat down at 7 am, after driving 11 hours.

johnny crashed on the concrete for a while. and later....so did i. 

i think i napped about 3 hours on that sidewalk.

sneak peek in at the stage.

mid-day after our naps and snacks.

by the way, one of the funny things is that people in this line will leave 

and get all gussied up as the time to get let in nears. 

i think maybe they think if they look hot that they'll get pulled onstage to dance with bono.

i just kept my no-makeup, stringy hair, rumpled road trip look going.

the frenzy begins when the security guards tell everyone to line up because they are going to let us in.

(since this is becoming a novella, 

i won't even get into the drama that ensues when lame-ohs try to cut the line despite no name on the list or number on their hand...suffice it to say, the self-policing begins!)

it gets a little crazy as we get our wristbands and people begin to push down the long ramp to be able to run for the stage. it is a frenetic 20 minutes of being herded down to the stadium floor. lucky for me, my brother jonathan links arms with me and i am not trampled by the masses.

we wait.

after the slow, claustrophobic descent, the guards finally release us. 

two thousand people start sprinting all the way across the stadium to the front. 

oh my quads! i haven't run like that since presidents fitness testing in 8th grade p.e.

and....

victory! 

we are front row, center stage. 

we stake our claim and settle in for the two hours before the opening act comes out. 

the strategy is to get as much space as you can at the beginning, 

because as more people arrive, 

they push you forward and you have less and less room.

waiting, with my aung san suu kyi mask

after 2 plus hours of waiting..

black eyed peas came out!

they were a great show.

fergie is my new favorite. 

that girl can belt it and shake it!

i had a personal dance party-they put on such a good show, 

and it was perfect after a day of waiting.

the stadium kept filling up...

another hour of waiting...

we made a new friend, ernesto. 

his favorite band is U2 and he came with his family from mexico to the show. 

we let him move in front of me to the very front, and he was our buddy through the show. 

he plays drums, so we'd lift him up so he could see larry on the drums.

when his glasses broke underfoot half-way through the show, aaron went all macgyver and found some gaffer's tape stuck to the floor to fix ernesto's glasses so he could watch the show.

suddenly, they were all there:

adam

bono

the edge

larry mullen jr.

it was an amazing show. 

a U2 show is, for me, a spiritual experience.

and i think that after the year we've had, it was just what i needed.

obviously their songs resonate with a lot of people, 

as there were over 70,000 people in attendance singing along.

yet somehow it is still intensely personal.

i know that they are incredible showmen.

but there is something more meaningful embedded in the music than just a good show.

there is something healing to me about singing those songs-

 songs that speak to love, faith, justice, and hope. 

anthems that speak for the forgotten and love songs that have been my life's soundtrack.

these are songs and lyrics that shaped at a young age my understanding of human rights, 

and gave me a glimpse into a world larger than my own experience, that i played when my young heart was (oft) broken. 

they also contributed to my belief that art 

can be integrated with a an emphasis on social justice 

and still retain integrity and beauty.

plus, who doesn't like to sing along to a U2 song?

as you can see, we sing along.

hi friends!

would you like me to come onstage and sing with you?

i know all the words.

my two favorite moments:

• bono singing "amazing grace" acapella
• the moment when the edge couldn't remember how to start a song. he tried like 4 times before he got the first measure right, as bono and adam laughed at him. i loev being so close and getting to see those little moments in the midst of a massively & precisely engineered production.

they were filming a dvd, so they definitely played up to the cameras by a post-concert all-band lovefest. i think the edge is winking at me in this picture.

three happy siblings, hearts sung out and filled up.

ah, the bittersweet end as the stage instantly gets dismantled. 

lucky for us, we didn't have to drive home. 

we crashed at aforementioned brandon's house & 

got to say hi to his wife and daughter in the morning before driving home. 

i think i fell asleep in about 5 seconds...

just kidding

one more halloween post.

you may wonder why little m and her pal ya'el are paralyzed in wonderment.

it my have something to do with these visitors we had the other day.

my brother aaron and his girlfriend sarah dressed up again in their amazing homemade where the wild things are halloween costumes to visit little m and ya'el.

see? not so scary after all...

little m recognizes her pal sarah under the massive get-up.

did i mention it was homemade? 

and for only $20? 

crazy creative.

max and the monster have to go, 

but little m tries to get them to hang out by holding onto max's tail.

come back again friends!

(p.s. i know some pretty awesome people, right?!?)

indulge me if you will...

so.

yesterday i tossed our cute little pumpkin, which had turned from a cute jack o' lantern into a nasty moldy mess folding in on itself. yuck. 

meanwhile, during little m's class at school, the kids said goodbye to the black cat, the pumpkins, the little ghost toys, and all of the halloween-themed stuff and put it into a big box to save until next year.

i get it, halloween is over. 

but here i am, still wanting to post the jack o' lantern i made for our front stoop. 

{sidebar: maybe some of you recall that in halloweens past, 

i have gotten a little crazy perfectionist about my pumpkin carving. 

i don't mean to, but it just sort of happens...

i have a vision, and then i have to figure out how to create that vision. 

i promise (and i have witnesses to vouch for me,) 

that i made this pumpkin quickly 

and without personal angst or cruelty to the people around me.}

 see?

my pumpkin has a cochlear implant,

just like little m.

i kept it simple, so i only put an implant on one side.

i kind of love it.

rest in peace cochlear implanted jack o' lantern.

(goodbye halloween)

my lil pumpkin

we carved a pumpkin last weekend, 

and little m decided to sample some raw pumpkin innards. 

she didn't like the taste so much.

she did however have a rollicking good time at the pumpkin patch!

yay for pumpkins- in little person form and gourd form.

she's pretty cute, if i do say so myself.

friends + art + blogging

i've been a very lazy blogger.

i was chastised tonight, and well, it's true. 

i thought i'd blog a lot this week because matt's mom is here this week.

grandma pam time means more studio and susannah time for me 

while little m frolics with her grandma.

alas, this week ended up being a bit crazy.

so not as much painting as i wanted.

not as much blogging.

(an old painting, that i just stumbled upon in my studio storage. 

it's big- like, oh, about the size of a bed.)

but one of the treats this week is that a friend that i have made 

(via the world of blogging & thanks to molly in utah) 

came to visit me in my studio!

it was such a treat, and as usual, we had a great time connecting.

among the many things i enjoy talking about with nicole is that 

she is a few years ahead of me in the journey of parenting a deaf child: 

her 6 year daughter is also deaf and has a cochlear implant.

since nicole is also a blogger, she ever so kindly documented her visit to my space!

we talked, looked at art- the greeting card kind and the on canvas kind, drank coffee, and enjoyed uninterrupted conversation minus our kids.

if you want a peek into her visit, go here...

(and you should read her blog anyway, because it is just great)

u2

i am working away this morning, so a longer blog post will have to wait until later in the day...but here is a tease- a picture of my brothers and i, in the FRONT ROW at the u2 concert last week in arizona. this is around midnight, as the stadium was clearing out, but you can tell we are all aglow, with post-concert smiles. 

happy friday!

it's friday!

YaY!

have a great day!

ours is looking good so far: 

a morning mommy-daughter dance party, sun shining outside, grandparents pam & tom headed into town today, about to go on a long walk to get some coffee, a visit to the pumpkin patch with grandma cornelia this afternoon, and matt's day off after he works a few hours this morning. 

(hope your day is filled with goodness)

goodness

right now the light is beginning to fade outside;
we three are sitting in our livingroom as it slowly gets darker.

my daughter is showing off her latest dance moves for matt
(they are quite impressively diverse & include props)
as we listen to damien jurado singing "grow old with me"...
it's a
quiet & ordinary
sort of moment,
interspersed with our laughter at these funny sounds and motions that little m is inventing.

sometimes quiet and ordinary is the very best of all.

(crazy)

i've loved u2 since i was 11 years old.

back in the day...

the first tapes i owned were u2, 

passed along to me by a twentysomething who thought i'd like them, 

and the first tape i bought in a store was u2.

it may seem silly, since a billion people like u2,

but i don't really care.

i know they aren't cool, like the super indie or punk bands my husband likes.

but still,

i love them.

and i love them live in concert.

and i never miss a tour,

until now.

they aren't coming to northern california, 

so as of last night at 9 pm, 

i hatched a crazy plan...

i found a single ticket on craigslist in arizona.

i enlisted a friend who lives in arizona to pick it up for me today.

my brothers and i are driving to arizona

tonight

11 hours

to get in line 

first thing

to wait

all

day

tomorrow

and then to race in to the stadium

as soon as the gates open

to get all the way up close to the stage

with general admission tickets.

after the concert,

we'll drive home.

i feel a little crazy.

i'm so excited.

bono, larry, edge & adam: 

look for me, i'll be the one singing along to every song

(i know, along with 50,000 other people), 

happy as can be.

i hear that!

(our expert plane spotter.

little m pointing at an airplane flying by. 

when she hears an airplane she says, "up, up up, whee!")

this next week, little m's ears turn 7 months old. her cochlear implants were activated march 18th, and so she has been getting sound into her for the past seven months. seven months of amazing. my daughter is deaf, but she is learning to listen. 

i have written countless posts in my mind lately of all of the progress m has been making as she learns to listen and talk. 

for now, i'll keep it to this: it is a lot of work, learning to listen & teaching to listen. but it is a daily miracle for me to hear her say, "who, who, who" when i ask her what an owl says or "meeow" when we see a cat outside. i ask her if she wants to listen to music and she points to the ipod. when someone is headed out the door and she says, "ba-ba" (bye-bye). when we sing itsy bitsy spider and she says "tsts" for itsy bitsy, and "dow" for "down the water spout". if i ask, "where is the pumpkin?" she points right to the round orange gourd on the table.

i am truly reminded every day that watching her soak up the world of sound is a gift. i am honored to be her mom. i am humbled that in many ways i get to truly celebrate and treasure sounds for the first time as little m hears them; i no longer take the ability to hear for granted.

it is still a miracle to me that my daughter can turn to her name, or cry because of the smoke detector going off, or mimic a sound, or say dad and mom. in some ways, this journey is about me learning to listen as much at it is for my deaf daughter.

one year.

this week has been a weird one. 

it has been a week of emotional ping-pong: joy, detachment, loss, amazement, deja vu, grief.

 

monday, matt & my 7th wedding anniversary.

tuesday, my dad's 61st birthday.

and today, which marks one year since the whole world changed for my family. 

last october 16th is the day that my dad walked away from my mom, his four children, and the majority of the people that comprised his world. he chose not to be honest with us about living a second life. 

i do not pretend to understand the angst and buried pain my dad presumably experienced trying to wrestle with his identity, with living two opposing existences, or with lying so much for so long. i can only imagine the internal war that has been waging inside of him for years, and it grieves me to think that he had to resort to deception & betrayal to find some outlet for his battles. i do think that in the year since we confronted my dad in love, he could have chosen to own his failings and the wounds he inflicted with integrity. he hasn't.

often people ask me if i have seen or spoken to my dad lately. 

it feels weird to say no.

i don't tell people all of the reasons why i have chosen to cut off contact- meaning, i don't tell people how bad it really was when everything went down last year. maybe the fact that i haven't seen, spoke, or interacted with my dad in an entire year seems dramatic. 

most people know my dad to be this laughing & outgoing dad/husband figure who publicly raved about his wife and kids. so, to say that i want no contact with him sounds, well, kind of awful. 

it feels weird to recognize that i am estranged from him. we occupy the same geography more or less, as he lives one mile from me, and yet our lives no longer intersect. 

it feels weird to realize that i no longer really have a dad, or at least a relationship with my dad. 

it feels weird that little m only has three grandparents, even though all four- matt's parents and my parents- are living. 

it feels weird that when i caught a glimpse of my dad last saturday in a public place, that my heart fell into the pit of my stomach and i instantly turned and walked in the other direction. 

it feels weird that someone who i once respected is now toxic to me. 

it feels weird that it has been a year since i last looked into my dad's eyes. he looked back at me with such hatred and anger. i will never forget that look; it is seared into my memory. somehow, the look in my dad's eyes seemed more real and true that anything i'd experienced from my dad in a long time.

i try to live the way jesus lived. jesus taught that we are to love our enemies. jesus hung out with the despised: the liars, cheats, whores and destitute, and he loved them. i admit that i am not there yet. honestly, to love my dad like that doesn't feel safe or even possible. i feel like the times i extended grace and love to my dad he just stomped on it. i want to be able love this man in the way of jesus, but right now my heart starts racing and i walk in the other direction. 

for some reason i always remember this sermon my dad preached a few years ago, when he was still a pastor, long before any of this happened. he said that faith was hope standing on tiptoe, as if you are peeking over a fence at something in the distance. you can see it, but it isn't quite in your grasp. so for now, i have hope & faith. faith that someday my dad will no longer be my enemy. that he will find some peace. and rest. and grace. and authenticity.

hope. faith. love.

♥

i love this picture, even though it is so blurry and out of focus. 

this is me, with my most favorite person in the world.

(little m is my second most favorite person)

i love it because at the moment this photo was taken we were sitting with good friends, 

talking & laughing about who knows what, maybe even disagreeing, but completely at ease with each other.

today, october 12th, is our anniversary. 7 years ago we made vows to each other to love each other in the good and the hard and the in-between. so many friends and family surrounded us and promised to be a part of our community as we entered into marriage. it was a pretty amazing beginning.

this photo reminds me of the moments that i most cherish with my husband, sharing this journey of life together. our story is much longer than the past 7 years that we have been married, but i can't really remember anymore what it is like not to spend my days with him. 

i can be quite a handful, and for all of my quirks, he loves me. at the end of the day i know that my heart is his completely. (also, he is quite a handful himself, and i think most days i make him a much better person, so we are a good match.)

this has been the hardest year of my life, and yet as i think back over the year, i think our marriage has grown in depth & richness & love. 

i can't wait for another year.

i can't wait for another 40 years, until we are white-haired and wrinkly and worn, sitting next to each other, laughing.

(little m and her grandpa tom hanging out on the embarcadero 

last sunday before her aunt robyn and uncle chris' wedding)

this photo makes me so happy.

for various reasons, i didn't have a super close relationship with any of my grandparents. 

but now, my daughter gets to have blood related and adoptive grandparents 

swoop her up and love on her as she grows up.

and that makes me very, very happy.

glee

exhibit a.

exhibit b.

obviously my daughter learns well.

she's already posing for glee's 14th season 

when the deaf girl with cochlear implants wants to join glee club 

& ends up singing all of the best duets with the hot male lead. 

happy friday!

life has been a little messy around here- 

juggling little m's school, 

her apparent nap strike, 

multiple freelance projects for papyrus, 

matt out of town this week, 

my sister-in-law's wedding,

and about 28 loads of laundry (washed but not folded).

alas, 

the blog has taken the hit.

but i have some posts up my sleeves

so more very very soon

(especially as soon as i finish this deadline for papyrus!)

besos, and happy friday!

SOLD!

i, queen of sharing the hard, 

need to share the good when it's time for good news...

here i am with my cute mom

(look how joyful she looks.

despite this year of hard 

she smiles a lot more than she used to)

here is my mom hanging out with little m and my surrogate mom, shelly, 

who i like to call mamabear #2, and who is little m's grandma shelly.

(you can never have too many grandma's i say) 

here is where my mom used to live when she was married to my dad.

up until last october 16th.

you may remember that working on this house 

to get it onto the lousy real estate market was our life for 2 solid months.

you may remember that it seemed like it would be a miracle to get it sold, 

but that it would mean freedom for my mom 

from the huge mortgage &

from continued financial entanglement with my dad.

after a super long escrow, 

(as in 100 days long,

as in i thought it could fall through at any time,

so i've kept my mouth shut until now)

this house finally sold.

it is such wonderful, glorious news

and the money is sitting in my mom's lawyer's office,

waiting for all of the divorce proceeding to be finalized so everything can be divided up.

divorce is not a good thing.

broken families are not a thing to be celebrated.

i wish the last year of our life had held another narrative,

but alas, this is now a part of my family's story.

but for this good news 

i am so, so grateful.

things i do not like

things i do not like, by me

1. earthquakes. no, we didn't have one, but i swear there is going to be the big one any time, and i am so not down with the earth quaking! maybe it doesn't help that i basically live smack dab on top of a freaking faultline.

2. tuesday and thursday mornings, as in, the days little m goes to school. somehow she just knows we need to hurry to get out the door, and she goes into super slow motion. my normally super active eater starts day dreaming, looking at the ceiling, playing with her food... meantime, i am looking anxiously at the clock thinking of how we will be late once again to morning music. 

3. eggs (as in sunny side up or poached or hardboiled...unless they are a vehicle for something else, like an omelette, or cookies, no eggs for me), fish & all creatures of the sea, mayo, bananas, random pressed meat products that you eat cold (like pate, etc). matt says i am high maintenance.

4. bad drivers. i think there has been an epidemic of poor driving lately around here, and i swear i am becoming a much less patient occupier of the road. 

5. dirty dishes. especially silverware. someday we will have a dishwasher, and my heart will leap for joy. for reals. (lucky for me, i should say that matt usually washes the dishes! he's good to me like that...)

things i do like:

1. today i get to work in the studio.

(the end)

fall perfection

one of my favorite things to bake for a get-together at our house is alice waters' onion tart; it is full of deliciously caramelized onions and a perfectly flaky crust. it's easy to make and people love it- usually even if they don't love onions. also, it's the perfect division of labor recipe! matt makes the crust and i make the rest. yum. 

i've mentioned waters' the art of simple food cookbook before. i highly recommend it if you are looking for no-fail, simple recipes.

(i've modified the recipe a bit to the way i make it, after finding it online here)

onion tart

crust:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons cold butter cut in cubes
• 1/4 cup ice-cold water
• Use a pastry blender (or fork or bench scraper) to cut the butter into the flour and salt until a few large clumps remain. Pour in 3/4 of the water and stir it in with a fork. Using your scraper, continue lifting and folding the dough over onto itself until it holds together, which should take about a minute. Add more water a few drops at a time if needed. Wrap it all in plastic and refrigerate it for at least an hour. (This is where is pays to plan ahead, my friends, and this is why Matt starts the crust and I swoop in to finish it. He's a planner; I'm an improviser)
• In the meantime, cook two pounds of thinly sliced onions in a large skillet with four tablespoons of butter and a few sprigs of thyme. Cook them for at least thirty minutes (I usually end up cooking them for about 45), until they are very soft and juicy, keeping in mind that they will still face nearly an hour in the oven. Season well with salt. When they are cooked, cool them for at least ten minutes in a bowl.
• (When they are cooling I usually throw in about a 2 tsp. of rice wine vinegar & a tsp. of honey. This is a non-Alice Waters variation, but I find that it makes the flavor a little more complex)
• Preheat the oven to 375º. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to a fourteen-inch circle. Pinch together any cracks that form while rolling. Place the circle on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and let it firm up in the refrigerator for about ten minutes. 

Spread the onions on the dough, leaving a 1.5-inch border all around and removing the thyme sprigs as you go. Fold the border over the onions. 

I've had the best results brushing the crust with egg wash, and sprinkling some kosher or sea salt on the crust. Cook for about 50 minutes, until the bottom of the crust is well browned. Let it cool completely on a rack-this ensures that the crust stays crisp. 

showered with love

my sister rebecca and her husband mark are expecting a baby girl on october 30th, 

so i threw baby anderson a shower. 

{girls only}

just like i'd hoped, it was an absolutely beautiful afternoon, so we set up in the backyard!

outside means sidewalk chalk. 

(i heart sidewalk chalk)

setting up a few hours before. 

i found this fabric on etsy that i fell in love with, 

and i commissioned my mom to sew the amazing bunting that we hung all over the backyard.

 i am sort of obsessed with how gorgeous they turned out. 

i love love love them.

{great job, mom!}

i'm sure you'll be spotting these cuties at multiple festivities in future blog posts...

sweet raspberry lemonade

easy to make (although the straining of seeds=not so much fun) & oh-so-delicious

we made rebecca a book full of wisdom, encouragement and advice for her journey as a mama

hard at work writing bits of wisdom

i wanted to have photos from both rebecca & mark's 

infancy and childhood strung as another bunting. 

mark's mom uploaded photos from when mark was a little boy, 

and i got some slides of rebecca turned into prints. 

so cute!

perfect backdrop to our yummy eats.

our menu was eclectic, but i picked things i knew rebecca loved to eat

mmm. onion tarts.

(recipe to follow in another post)

now insert assorted shower games; after all, my sister loves games!

i gocco-ed little prizes for everyone, which i'll save for another post.

for dessert we had mini brownies, 

these adorable button cookies that i spotted on sweetamb's shop on etsy 

(so yummy and so cute- as soon as i saw them i had to have them for the shower! 

plus they are handmade in chicago, mark's home city. perfect!)

and....

lemon curd ice cream cake.

delicious, my friends!

you can find the recipe on my friend hannah's blog.

(you can thank me for passing it along and hannah for concocting it)

culinary genius, 

and the best way to end the shower besides our beauty bar!

favors galore at the beauty bar: 

chocolate mints, tissues, candy necklaces, lip gloss and nail polish! 

i can't help it- 

this was my favorite part.

at the end, little m came out to visit the ladies

and her aunt rebecca

my sister, mama to be, & me

i think fun was had by all,

but by the end, 

little m was ready for the party to be over

happy monday!

threw a baby shower for my sister yesterday.

this bunting is a sneak peek-

i'm still so exhausted from all of the festivities that i am going to steal a nap 

while little m (hopefully, despite the recent nap strike) naps!

more to follow...

like mother, like daughter

when i was an itty bitty child, my mom would try to read to me, but i would reject her and just wanted to read books all by myself (even though i couldn't "read" yet). 

looks like little m is following in my headstrong footsteps at the tender age of 17 months. i try and try to woo her with my excellent narration skills, but she usually wants to read books by herself, no mommy involved. sigh. i think it is a bit disheartening to the grandmas too, as what grandma doesn't want to snuggle up for storytime?

exhibit a:

auntie nancy reads bedtime stories to micah and little m.

notice little m reading her own book while micah enjoys goodnight moon.

micah pauses to mug for the camera 

(check out that cuteness!)

m is momentarily distracted by auntie nancy and then goes back to doing her own thing.

everybody has something

on monday morning matt, little m, and i went to a memorial service for a man who was a mentor and friend to matt, the rev. dr. frank jackson. appropriately, monday happened to be world gratitude day, because frank epitomized living a life of thanks and gratitude. amidst the grief, was a celebration. it was pretty incredible to sit in a huge church packed full of people of all ethnicities, classes, backgrounds, geographies, ages, and grieve and celebrate together. 

after the service, as people milled about outside of the church, little m was running around after some "big" girls, trying to play with them. they were 8 and 9 years old, and complete strangers to little m, but somehow she caught their attention. i squatted down to be at the level of all of these little girls, and one of the girls said, "what are those things on her ears and head?" i said, "well, when she was born, she was born deaf. her ears can't hear anything. she had an operation to help her learn how to hear, and these are called implants; they help her hear the things in the world around her." i pulled one off and showed them how her implant worked, and said, "see? without this on right now she can't hear anything, but when she wears it she is learning how to listen." 

the little girl, who was wearing glasses & whose eyes were visibly damaged, nodded and said, "i was born with glaucoma. i have a tumor in my eye. but they couldn't fix it all the way. it's kind of hard sometimes." the second girl said, "i was born with really bad asthma. sometimes it's so bad my mom and dad think i'm going to die so they have to take me to the hospital because i can't breathe at all." the third girl said, "i was born with excema. sometimes it is all over my body and in my ears and even my special medicine doesn't work."

it was amazing to me that suddenly all of these girls were connected through the things that made them "different." i said, "it's true, everybody has something." 

then i started thinking about people in my life - grown-ups, that is. 

everybody has something: cancer at a really young age, a child born with special challenges, a spouse who abandons or betrays, the inability to get pregnant, the death of a parent far too soon, unjust legal issues, broken vocational dreams, damaged family relationships, chronic pain, having to work at a life-sucking job to survive...

it is also true that some of us have more than others, so we need to encourage and listen to each other. our own pain can teach us how to be truly empathetic friends and how to love others in their loss. one of the things that struck me at frank jackson's funeral was how his life was full of joy, charisma, gratitude and gentleness, after an extremely difficult and broken childhood. we have a choice whether we allow our "something" to make us bitter, or allow it to mold us into kinder, more loving and compassionate people. 

friday

this morning i am working in my studio.

life has been so full lately that it has been hard to get it there consistently,

but yesterday and today i was able to go in and paint.

{hours to work, blank paper & canvas galore, is glorious and insecurity inducing all at once.}

have a wonderful weekend!

one year ago

september 17 2008

2 babysitting uncles + 1 bowl of rice cereal + little m = a mostly successful meal

falling down & getting back up

{little m racing around the livingroom}

i have long held this flawed belief that i should be an expert at things the first time i try them. if i am not really good at something, then i either quit, complain, or feel stupid so i never try it again. (disclaimer: i don't like this personal quality, i'm just admitting that i have it.)

exhibit a: going to a new class at the gym. 

for instance, hip hop. 

for instance, hip hop that has very long and complicated routines. 

and so obviously, since it is my first time attempting the class and its' 28-move-long routine, i suck. and i never return and i feel like an extremely uncoordinated klutz who should be banned from group exercise classes. 

there are plenty of other examples, but let's just stick to one for today.

suffice it to say, it is one of those qualities that you loath in yourself, but it is so ingrained that it is hard to talk yourself out of it once you start to go down that path.

enter...my daughter.

17 months of experimentation as she has learned to nurse, roll over, eat solids, crawl, pick up her pacifier and put it in he mouth, walk, listen, and so on....has taught me one thing: it's ok to fail the first time. and the fifth. and the 78th. because by the 116th time, you'll get it. and by the 2,345th time, you'll be an expert. 

my daughter doesn't have all of the hang-ups i do about feeling embarrassed, stupid or other people thinking she's not cool. she falls and gets right back up to try again. then she falls and tries a new method.

i know this is not a revolutionary thought, but i wonder when it is that we lose this tenacity, this drive to keep trying something until we master it without fear of rejection or failure. it has taken a one year old to teach me that it is ok if i'm not that great at hip hop.

i went to a kickboxing class a few weeks ago. and i flailed and messed up and missed complete moves and jabbed when i was supposed to uppercut. i sucked. but the whole time i kept telling myself: this is the first time i am taking this class. it took little m months to learn to walk, and now she runs around the house. i'll be a little better next time.

so i went  back again, and to be honest i still wasn't that great. i started to slip into frustration and my old perfectionist self. then i remembered: it's only my second time. i'll be a little better next time.

it's ok to try something new, fail miserably, try again, and yes, try again. otherwise when do we discover anything new? i look at my daughter and she delights in the world- in all of the new and undone and potential. i want to be like that, even if i get some bumps and bruises along the way.

birthday girl

courtney is one of my friends with history. 

as in, 

we have been friends for a long time: 

since the days when we thought it was cool to wear xxl denim shirts and oversized overalls, when fine dining meant a trip to chevy's with 20 other people, 

&

when we talked about boys for hours 

despite aforementioned boys being hypothetical and not actually existing in our lives. 

as in, we have been friends for 15 years.

courtney was with me the morning matt whisked me away to propose, 

she stood next to me in a red bridesmaid dress the day i said 'I do,' 

and she showed up at the hospital within hours of little m being born. 

she is one of my very favorite people in the world, 

and i challenge you to find someone who is a better friend. 

seriously people. 

courtney is one of those friends who remembers to call you on the first day of a new job to see how it went, who drops you notes in the mail on cute letterpress cards, who always asks first how you are doing instead of talking about herself, who is good at being a long distance friend and a close up, day-to-day grind friend too. 

she listens, laughs, prays, and cries with me. 

she has truly taught me the meaning of friendship- and not in a hallmark card kind of way. 

she shows up in the good and the hard, and i love her dearly. 

last week was her birthday! 

so a group of us got together on saturday morning to celebrate 

our kind, thoughtful, amazing friend.

birthday massive sweet roll.

treats for the birthday girl.

(love the sunshiney flowers)

birthday french toast

birthday....whipped cream with mini chocolate chips?

um, apparently this is the restaurant's version of cake. a bowl of whipped cream.

matt and our friend larry were taking his kidlet brennan and little m 

on a walk around san francisco,

so they surprised us by stopping by!

then they headed back out to scout good food and coffee on their "hike"

the restaurant doesn't just give you a bowl of whipped cream...

you also get a blinking happy birthday pin!

saucy karen shows off her baby bump

yummy brownies

yay for good friends and creating longer and longer shared histories!

p.s. she no longer wears overalls.

school days

this morning

we are headed off to school

(little m has school pictures today!)

so 

no time to blog

but 

i'll be back later

happy tuesday!

early autumn

last saturday we hung out with my sister rebecca & her husband mark! we went on a walk to the park near their house to play bocce ball and enjoy the evening before dinner. it was so relaxing to go frolic at the park, and felt very italian to go on a pre-dinner walk.

little m gets hitches a ride and gets a high five from uncle mark.

(little m's cousin, squirreled away in her aunt rebecca's belly until the end of october. )

so, we played bocce, but it seemed like matt somehow won every single round. 

i usually chalk bocce up to being one of those games that entails more luck than skill. 

or maybe not...as i didn't do so hot. 

i kind of overthrew every single time - i just don't know my own strength i guess.

(or i'm just not that athletic..which is probably more accurate)

little m didn't quite understand the rules of the game, 

so she decided to play along by picking up the balls we threw.

in the end we decided to change the game 

that whomever's ball ended up closer to, or in the possession of, 

little m was the winner. 

(uh, i still didn't even come close to winning a single round)

little m & her cute aunt becca

little m sitting on top of her cousin

some downward down action in the midst of the bocce game

we moved on to play on the slide once matt won 78 consecutive rounds of bocce.

fun time sliding down and old school metal slide! 

uncle mark and aunt bec will be amazing parents. 

i think we should give them a few more babysitting times before october, 

just so they get some extra practice in. 

hehe 

i love this park. 

it was the perfect early fall weekend jaunt!

sweet treats

last weekend, we finished off a lovely afternoon hang out with my sister and her husband with cupcakes! rebecca made these delicious homemade cupcakes via a recipe by donna hay, who as far as i can tell is basically the australian version of martha stewart. they were almost brownie-like in consistency, and sooooo good. it helped that the frosting to cake ratio was almost neck and neck. what can i say? i contend cupcakes exist only to be a vehicle for good frosting. yum.

little m tasted some and decided the cupcakes met her approval.

so she begged for more

literally.

begged.

that's my girl!

foodie 101

my brother aaron & his girlfriend sarah came over this weekend for their very first class in our exclusive cooking school. (it is so exclusive that so far, they are the sole participants.) we are so official: we made up special folders for them with all of the evening's recipes, and well as brief yet enlightening biographies on their two awesome instructors (matt and myself.) {in case you are wondering, our tuition is very steep: it involves babysitting (which we immediately cashed in last night to go see julie & julia) and running to the store on the way over to bring whatever last minute food items we realize we don't have on hand.}

once the syllabus and menu was out of the way, we got cooking! 

(note: these photos do no justice to the fact that sous chef sarah worked very hard and tackled lots of food making. for some reason i only captured aaron in the act of actually preparing food. i also neglected to get pictures of half the food we made and the finished product.)

our menu, (which we pillaged from various alice waters cookbooks and mark bittman's how to cook everything):

• baked figs stuffed with goat cheese
• homegrown garden lettuces with basic vinaigrette
• meatballs with a simple tomato sauce
• homegrown green beans
• homemade herbed ricotta ravioli with butter and parmesan
• raspberry sorbet with shortbread

we began with dessert so it would have time to freeze (raspberry sorbet) and chill before baking (shortbread cookies). here sarah helps aaron strain the berry puree so it is seedless once we put it in our ice cream maker.

an important thing to remember when cooking is that you need a snack so you don't get too hungry, or nibble so much along the way that there is no food left when it is time to eat! (or maybe i am just justifying our appetizer) with this in mind we started with the figs stuffed with goat cheese & baked. yum. even aaron, goat cheese hater, was down for the goodness.
with so many items on the docket, we had quite a full kitchen. food preparation was happening on every single surface; add in 4 adult bodies and a toddler, and it was definitely a party.
little m attempted to "help". or something along those lines...
aaron gets to work making the pasta dough, under matt's tutelage, while sarah and i make the tomato sauce and prep the green beans.

aaron grates onion into the meatball mixture...
and attempts to squelch his tears with matt's sunglasses. not so effective.
lots of backyard herbs to add to our various recipes.
meatballs ready to go into the oven. (they are my favorite!!!!! well, they are my super favorite when he throws in pinenuts, but we forgot to add them this time, so i demoted them to just my favorite.)
pasta rolled out and dotted with ricotta filling. look at that focus!
pressing the pasta into individual ravioli.
ravioli ready to go!

and then, somehow, i stopped documenting the evening. maybe it was that we slipped into a food coma...instead of one big meal we just ate as things came out and took little breaks over edibles. 

despite matt and my bickering over the tomato sauce, i don't think we scared our students off! next class? improvise and make a full meal using only the ingredients in the pantry, fridge and freezer. unfortunately sarah's pantry consists of...literally nothing, and aaron's stove is a hot plate, so looks like we'll be back in our own kitchen for round two!

and this is what i'm doing tonight.

so good. can't wait!

my little wallflower

someone is not dramatic. not dramatic at all.

this is a mere 30 seconds of little m faces.

grandma's house + snacks=a happy girl.

and.....go:

the end.

i think this all connects. i promise.

two years ago, exactly (as in, we hopped on our extremely crowded and stuffy plane 2 years ago on this very date), matt and i went to italy for a month. you can see snippets here and here. 

i mean, really- a month in italy? how could it not be amazing and fabulous!? i was about 2 months pregnant with little m, so aside from a great deal of 24/7 nausea and abstaining from caffeine and italian wine, it was truly an incredible time to look at art, eat good food, dip our toes in the mediterranean, and explore a foreign country together. 

one of the museums we went to in florence, Museo Nazionale di San Marco, is located in a former convent and church. we were able to go upstairs into the cells, or rooms, in which the monks lived and spent their days praying. fra angelico, an early renaissance painter and monk, lived at san marco; in addition to the large scale paintings and frescoes that he painted in the san marco chapel and other religious sites throughout italy, he painted frescoes depicting the life of christ in each of the monk's small cells. (picture a very small dorm room.) 

the paintings in these small rooms are unlike much of the religious art of the time. even religious art at this point was sponsored by wealthy patrons (in this monastery the medici family), so the works usually had subtle references to how amazing, wealthy, or powerful the sponsoring person was. (think about how in movies, tv shows, sporting events today companies use product placement, sponsorship or product tie-ins to advertise themselves) the frescoes in these private rooms are quite subdued and humble, as their purpose was devotional in nature. 

i was pretty awed when we visited at how beautiful these hidden rooms were. i imagined fra angelico painting these scenes slowly, reverently and methodically, believing he was called by god to be a painter. his job as a monk was to paint. incredible. i thought of how hundreds of years ago, these monks would have memorized every line and mark in these frescoes as they meditated and prayed daily in the same private space. i wondered if at times as the monks grew lonely or discouraged if these frescoes were a reminder of who they had devoted their lives to serving, or a visual reminder that the savior they followed and the saints that had preceded them had endured hardness and the long journey of faith. 

matt is reading a book about saints, prophets and martyrs, and was reading aloud to me an excerpt from the chapter on ignatious loyola. loyola, who started the jesuits, encountered many disappointments in his faith journey, and his concluding prayer in his spiritual exercises spoke to matt in a way that those frescoes spoke to me, and likely to those monks that prayed before them every day. 

those frescoes were a visual reminder that for me personally, as a follower of jesus, that i have a history; there are people of faith who have walked this road of life trying to follow the teachings of christ. they, too, endured crushed dreams and hopes, roadblocks, loneliness, and detours. their lives and their stories, whether visually depicted or written, act as reminders when i am discouraged with the place i find myself. and regardless of your faith, that people live way suckier lives than you or i, but they make it. and we can learn from them.

lately i have been thinking, too, about how i was in such a dark place when we first found out about little m's deafness. then darkness again when we discovered my dad's double life and deception. yet a year has brought healing: goodness and joy and perspective and grace. i feel like in some small way i can be a reminder to someone else, who may be in the thick of grief right now, that there is light coming. it's a long journey, and we keep walking the path someone has worn before us.

goodness

good things about september:

• the following tv shows are on (and although i poach all shows from the internets since we don't own a tv, i am looking forward to some good viewing): glee, project runway (finally!), (catching up on) top chef masters, the office and greys anatomy (don't judge).
• yummy bacon from the 1/4 of a pig we just got from a happy little pig farm in oregon
• planning my sister's baby shower full of cuteness
• finishing up the last 5 episodes of the wire
• the daylight still stretches until 8 pm (but alas, not for long...)
• it's still hot enough for iced coffee
• i already feel responsible, which should last all month long, considering i got an oil change today. score one for me accomplishing important things!
• the season for cute sweaters and boots is creeping up on us, maybe by the end of the month
• our garden's tomatoes will finally be nice and ripe
• remembering friends' fun weddings in years past as their anniversaries roll around!
• looking forward to not sweating as i fall asleep, since we live in an oven

words of wisdom

the other day i saw a post on oh happy day, a delightful blog that i peek at often, with a list of unsolicited college advice...it inspired me to think myself of college advice that i would pass on; a very special friend of mine, rain (above right), heads off to university in england and laura, my cousin, just began her freshman year of college. since i am now old, and graduated from college 13! years ago, much of this may not apply or may not be relevant to someone starting college now, but it thought i would pass it along. 

do you have any words of wisdom that you would add to this very personal, non-exhaustive list?

(in no particular order)

1. live with roommates, even if you are someone who needs space. don't live with people who you went to high school with, have known for years or who are related to you. live with new people, who will annoy you, teach you, show you there are other ways to make a bed, load a dishwasher, or deal with conflict than you learned from your own family. you will go crazy sometimes, but you will learn a lot about yourself, and you will be forced to experience the art of compromise. (and you will find yourself up at 3 in the morning talking about boys with someone who you never would've thought you could be friends with much less live with)

2. take advantage of all of the free (or really cheap) events on campus: movies, concerts on the quad, plays, etc.

3. don't ditch your friends to hang out with a boy 24-7. serious. even if you really, really like him. he may be around for the long haul, but even if he is, you need your friends for the long haul.

4. go to office hours. don't be intimidated or embarrassed to show up and talk to a professor or t.a.- i wish i had done this more. you will get so much more out of the course, and you will make future connections.

5. spend time thinking through what you believe and why you believe it. this is a time and space to give intentional attention to who you are as a whole person, and not just to do what you have always done, just because. nurture your spirituality. have conversations with other people about what they believe and listen to them. 

6. stay up late and be silly. there's no rush to be all big girl all the time.

7. write real letters, on paper, with pen, home to your family members about what you are learning, who you are living with, what you are thinking about. someday you will look back and see how much you have grown and matured over time. (and it is important to stay connected to the people who love you most.) 

8. have dance parties. decades parties. costume parties. theme bbqs. progressive dinners. plan fun stuff to do with lots of people.

9. learn how to cook. and bake. 

10. make treats for other people (especially cute boys). bake lots of cookies especially and eat the dough!

11. go to extracurricular events that your department holds. (i really regret not doing this!)

12. go to a semester abroad OR go abroad the summer after your senior year. 

13. be kind to other people in your classes, on your floor, or that you meet randomly. college is so much fun, but there are a lot of lonely people too who could use kindness.

14. play an intramural sport, even if you aren't athletic (um, hello, like me). or join a club, even if just for a semester.

15. if you ever live out of the dorms, have roommate dinners once a week (or more) & all commit to being there. rotate who cooks the meal, and talk about life, household dynamics, etc.

16. take classes that look fun and interesting - not just your required courses, and even if none of your friends are taking that class. (for example, some of my favorite classes were native american studies and creative writing and walking! a p.e. class)

17. call home. 

18. if you have younger siblings, invite them to come visit for the weekend or a few days and take them to class with you.

19. don't take yourself too seriously. you may think you know everything, but you really don't. be gracious in conversations with other friends at school, family at home, etc. 

20. just because there is lots of food to eat in the dining hall doesn't mean you need to eat all of it.

21. thank your family often for the opportunity to go to college. even if you are paying 100% for school, they are the ones who raised you and got you this far.

22. play pranks on cute households of boys. (if you need ideas, email me. ;))

23. if a class if full when you try to register or on the first day, be persistent (but nice). you will probably get into the class. in the same vein, if you believe you should've gotten a higher grade on a test or paper, you can always advocate for your point of view. (i learned this from my friend amy, who always bumped her grade up by convincing teachers why she picked the answer she did. it worked!)

24. don't watch too much tv. if you do watch a show, invite a bunch of people over and make an event out of it so that it's more about the people and less about the tv.

25. find a job on campus and work enough, but not too much. you want flexibility to go do fun things.

26. go on last minute adventures with friends, preferably road trips!

27. if you get a credit card, pay it on time, and don't put too much on it.

28. hang out at coffee shops "studying"

29. pay attention in class. as in, don't do the crossword puzzle or text. (but playing mash is perfectly acceptable)

30. savor every single moment! don't rush through school - it is over way too quickly.

what did i miss?

first day of school

this morning, little m and i headed down to her first day of school!

little m put on her backpack & got ready to meet her new class.

and this....

is why she goes to this school. as she was getting ready to hop in the car, she heard an airplane flying over. she pointed to her ear ("i hear that!") and then pointed up to the sky...

til she spotted the plane flying high in the sky!

m is at this school because it teaches her how to listen in all sorts of contexts so that she will be able to go into a mainstream classroom in elementary school. it is pretty incredible to see the kids who have been there for a few years talking and listening. little m's class has 6 kids in it, but there are also two other classes of little itty bitty kiddos that are the same age. there are typical hearing kids, kids with implants, and kids with hearing aids in her class.

we started at morning music with the whole school - parents, teachers, aides, big kids, little kids and siblings - 

and then went down to our class with teacher sally and teacher matt.

ah, they have lots of energy and patience!

we also got to see little m's fabulous speech therapist sharon (who we met with last year too) who we will meet with every tuesday and thursday when we go to school.

we did lots of listening

lots of exploring indoors and outside

lots of snacking

little m made fast friends with kalia, who lives only a mile away from us!

i think it's a little frustrating for m to see so many books and toys, 

and not be able to play with everything all at once.

m spent a lot of time in the kitchen, mixing up imaginary treats in a cup using a spoon.

hmm. she must see us cooking up lots of recipes!

big girl soaked up all of the newness and the other kids.

i think there will be a lot of learning about sharing...

we stayed for almost an hour after class playing, catching up with friends, and getting some more energy out before plopping back in the car seat for the ride home.

it is pretty incredible to me how well m did today.

um, how do i have a child in school already?!? crazy.

bye bye beach

goodbye afternoons on the beach

goodbye...

sharing a day in the sun

putting our toes down into the sand

splashing in the water

tasting salt on my lips

walking for miles in the early morning

watching surfers catch waves

lazing around & taking lots of naps

eating good breakfast burritos

people watching

goodbye to spending a good week with great friends

(obviously the younger set does not pose for photos)

goodbye view from my window, palm trees and all

goodbye to little m charging into the water, fearless & joyful

goodbye to the sound of waves crashing

& the feel of wet sand under my feet

goodbye to the joy of a day with no schedule & no list of to do's

hopefully we can preserve some of the rest of being away 

in a beautiful place with friends we love

(goodbye summer)

stay-day-food-cation

we are very lucky to get 4 entire weeks of vacation a year (well, matt does, and since i am self employed, i can decide my schedule)...so we've taken three weeks this august. the first week of our vacation matt planned the entire thing so i never knew day to day what we were doing. it was kind of a stay-cation, but we took day trips, so then i decided it was a day-cation. throughout the week i realized that since matt was planning our activities it was quite food-centric, so i coined it a food-cation. 

my mom is a teacher, and has off in the summer ("off" being a relative word, since my mom is in constant motion and works on projects at all hours and all times), so she took care of little m for the week more or less. we did stop home to check in with her and had a day where we were with her all day, but she mostly spent the week with grandma.

i've been meaning to post some of the pictures from our foodcation... we started the week in big sur! which is where, 7 years ago, we got engaged. it was fabulous!

the view from our hotel room

so grey and peaceful

time to read & talk & enjoy our fireplace

i was in a happy place...reading magazines in the bath while drinking wine with no little m wanting to hang with her mama

um, hello- how fun is that!?

we ate multiple times in 24 hours at the big sur bakery & restaurant.

amazing. delicious. and worth a drive down (or up) highway 1

more time to sit

(do you like that half of the photos on my blog contain food although it is not a food blog?)

nice to sit in the sunshine & linger over my latte

we kept ordering more treats to share

matt's happy place involves whole milk. 

his tea must have whole milk to be epic, so needless to say...he was content.

on our way home we ate there for breakfast, and then...

stayed long enough to eat lunch!

we migrated inside to one of their long wooden tables (i want one for our backyard) and enjoyed a delicious lunch, complete with creme brulee for dessert.

so.

good.

we bought a cookbook from their restaurant, so if you are too lazy to drive there, 

come over to my house and i'll make you a yummy meal!

final days of summer

(the mid-day beach scene outside our window)

we are enjoying our last week of vacation with friends at a beach house in san diego.

somehow we missed the memo on the prerequisites for staying here:

• for females: lower back tattoo, string bikini, jogging down beach barefoot in aforementioned bikini, surgical enhancement, and a flat tummy that has not seen pregnancy
  
• for males: shirtless, a tribal or barbed wire tattoo along bicep, a large plastic cup of beer accompanying you at all times unless surfing & the evidence of a lot of time spent at the gym

but i digress. 

and the reality is that aside from matt and jeremy's tattoos (which are neither tribal nor barbed in nature), we kind of fail to live up to any of those attributes. 

our condo - 4 adults and 3 kids full - is full of activity, lots of fun and right on the beach.

a few moments from our week so far:

post beach daze

eli concentrates on his puzzle

enjoying the view from our window while i drink morning coffee

race between eli and his mama, kim, to finish their puzzles

(complete with trash talk from a three year old:

"i'm gonna work you!")

iced drinks & sunshine while the husbands stay home with napping children

random trivia: i love straws

random silliness...

and some glorious time playing on the beach

until the sun slipped beneath the water

and the light faded

happy weekend!

well, it was time to leave our cabin by the lake

(just look at that amazing deck)

pack up, and head south to finish up vacation in sunny san diego!

have a great weekend!

ouch

(monday - little m, post clean up and medical attention)

apparently, vacation isn't vacation without a trip to urgent care. 

little m decided it would be fun to land on a stone fireplace. i should clarify- little m's front teeth and lower lip decided it would be fun to land on a stone fireplace. in a split second, after hearing the sound of her teeth hitting stone, it felt like GALLONS of blood came gushing out of her mouth. seriously. matt and i were both freaking out because the gash went all the way through her lip- from the inside to the outside. and, her teeth looked like they had been pushed into her gums. it was all very lovely- mopping up all the blood as she screamed her head off, matt running up the hill to get our car, racing to find the hospital. in the end, we have to clean her up a lot and give her some ointment, and hope that her teeth are ok. meanwhile, my daughter looks like the daughter of angelina jolie - just wipe off the snot and clean her up a bit and her lips look quite voluptuous!

lazy days of summer

we are still enjoying the beauty and peace of lake tahoe! 

alas, tomorrow morning we head home. 

(although i can't complain- we still have one more precious week of vacation left, which we will spend on the other end of the state in san diego)

a few glimpses of our moments here...

in matt's opinion, south lake tahoe trips are not complete without a trip (or two) to red hut

little m was quite happy here. a high school football team was eating behind us, and she was completely enamored by them...something about their t-shirts strategically cut into tank tops showing off their entire midsection must have done it for her? (yikes. really? how are homemade sleeveless tank top situations a good look? very 1986 midwest small town if you ask me....)

(yummy breakfast about to show up on our table)

little m even got her own plate of deliciousness

lake tahoe also = lots of cooking, which also means improvising with a stripped down kitchen

roro and daddy time

meals out on the deck overlooking the lake

reading

matt only brings about 46 books every time we leave the house- and this time was no exception

time to hang out in the sun

(if matt looks pained it's only because he is trying to read in peace while m naps and i keep interrupting him... {shocking})

old mossy stone stairs leading up from our cabin

warm deck

diet coke, writing, catching up, reading to little m

cozy cabin

splashing in the cold water of lake tahoe

i am not a super huge fan of bodies of water, 

but luckily it seems little m has inherited the swimming-is-fun and the fearless genes

snacks in the sunshine

our little sumo wrestler playing with crayons 

it's amazing how being in a specific place brings back memories. this is the same spot where one of my best friend's had her rehearsal dinner, the exact cove where matt and i came for part of our honeymoon, and where we came and stayed in a cabin with dear friends a few summers ago. to be enjoying a week away from the busyness of life, and also to remember a history of enjoying this place is renewing. there are still things on our minds from life at home; all has not stopped just because we are away for a few days, but being in a space outside of oakland has been a gift. remembering special moments in the past has also been a gift. i'm thankful for so much.

here we are,

busy as can be,

on 

vacation

(someone likes the water)

wish you were here

um, we are on vacation!

in lake tahoe.

right smack dab on the lake.

and it is amazing.

last week we were on a daycation...kind of like a staycation, 

but we took day trips in which we ate a lot of yummy food. 

but it also entailed a lot of driving.

this week we are at a cabin on the lake, doing not much at all 

but napping, lounging, reading, eating, enjoying the beach, and talking. 

it is so peaceful.

(absolute bliss i tell you)

pictures to follow...

dear vacation,

will you marry me?

xo, sooz

(16 months)

little m is 16 months old today!

she is quite the monkey these days...

full of personality, sounds and new talents.

she is obsessed with climbing up and down stairs, 

babbling, 

walking (and trying to run),

saying "uh-oh" with a shrug when she drops something or doesn't know what to do, 

playing peekaboo and tag,

taking the book from you to "read" all by herself,

pulling out all of the tupperware,

banging on her drum and dancing to music,

playing with bigger kids,

eating anything and everything,

pointing up at the airplanes she hears,

and squirming out of your arms to go do her own thing.

she is hearing more and more every day, and making new sounds all the time.

it still is a miracle to me 

every time she turns to my voice, responds to the sound of her name, makes new noises that i have never heard come out of her mouth, tries to mimic a sound or when she dances to music.

i don't think it will ever get old.

she is 16 months of wonderful.

summer means....

(fresh corn)

(homegrown strawberries)

(painted toes & barefeet & flipflops)

(backyard time watching the neighbors' whirlygigs)

(longtime friends visiting from far away)

(a garden that is bursting with veggies)

(lots of water breaks)

(visits to the audiologist & the sound booth...and better and better results!)

(yummy time at the ferry building in san francisco)

(burgers that remind you why burgers are so good)

(unrestrained laughter)

(art)

(and more visits to the rooftop garden/cafe at sfmoma)

(roasting marshmallows...and s'mores!)

(celebrations al fresco!)

and...

vacation!

(you may have noticed there has been a little less of me!

we have been having internet issues for the past few weeks and now we are on vacation!)

i'll be posting, but a little less frequently (maybe only a couple of times a week...)

happy summer!

won't you be my neighbor?

if you've read my blog for long, or you know me,

you know that i love me some oakland.

some people may treat it as the much maligned, full of issues stepchild of san francisco,

but i beg to differ.

(don't get me wrong, i know oakland has plenty of problems, 

but it is a much richer place than most give it credit for.)

san francisco isn't "the city."

oakland is.

i also love our street.

we are a mish-mash 

of ages, cultures, backgrounds, socio-economic levels, languages, life experiences.

but how to you get to know these things about each other unless you meet 

and talk about more than the weather?

unless we pause for longer than the brief hello over putting out the garbage to learn about who we are living next to and across from?

last night was national night out, so we joined our neighbors in enjoying the august evening,

talking

making new friends

hanging with old friends

(this is our next door neighbor tiffany

who gave little m her nickname roro when she was an itty bitty baby)

eating ice cream for dinner

catching up on the neighborhood gab

we stayed out far past little m's bedtime...

but it was worth it!

i heart you oakland, and you too, agua vista street!

alas

(little m and her uncle johnny)

um.

my baby has a mullet.

a grief that lingers

most of the time i am so busy with life that i don't dwell too much on the fact that my dad abandoned our family in october. well, if i'm honest with myself, i suppose his betrayal began a long time before that, but we just didn't realize it until october 16th. that is the last time i saw my dad, and sometimes i watch that final moment in my mind  over and over like it is on instant replay.

usually there is too much to do every day, so i find myself making it through the days pretty well. in no particular order, these factors have helped: weekly counseling sessions, good friends, a god who can take my anger and grief, a tender husband, a joyful daughter and a mom and siblings who are wading through just as much muck themselves. we kind of carry each other, and are carried, through this tenuous season. 

this blog is a public forum so i have refrained from blasting my dad on here, as much as i may have been tempted over the months. i don't really need to broadcast in this space what he has done, even vaguely; public humiliation is not really going to fix anything, and i doubt it would even feel very good for more than 5 seconds. suffice it to say, i have been wounded very deeply, and i have lost a father. 

i remember almost ten years ago, when a father i knew left his wife and two beautiful daughters, who were (and remain) good friends of ours. i could never wrap my mind around how he could leave these three amazing people for what seemed like such empty reasons. i wanted to run into this man on the street so that i could punch him and scream at him and shout, "what is your problem? how could you desert them like that? how could you abandon your own daughters? they are precious and you are just walking away?" i never ran into him; i never got to yell at him. i haven't seen him since he left his family so many years ago. i know it wouldn't have done any good; his decision had been made already, and his family figured out how to move forward without him. but i still don't understand how he could love something else more than his own children.

today i am in the quiet of my studio. it has been hard to paint because my mind has been racing all afternoon. when the music stops i am alone with my thoughts, and for some reason today all i can think of is the fact that my dad has chosen another over me. jonathan. rebecca. aaron. my mom.

that makes me very sad. my soul is weary within me.

pretty

(working in my studio today. 

listening to music while i work. 

spotted this snippet on the rockstar diaries .

been listening to it on repeat for, oh, about an hour. 

today my soul is quite weary and it has hit the spot. 

enjoy.)

berry delightful

you may or may not remember, but little m never met a berry she didn't like.

our friends nancy and keith had a blackberry picking party yesterday!

little m played it sweet with her daddy and stole half of his stash. 

she preferred to get them the easy way - 

by stealing them straight from his bowl instead of plucking them off of the bush. 

(smart girl!)

we took the rest home & made blackberry sorbet for dessert.

delicious!

joy

delirious laughter + drool + mommy and little m time + insane tickling = pure joy

(sit small)

this has been quite a week.

we have had dear friends in town all week visiting us all the way from england. 

this morning i plopped them off at the airport, 

so sad to see them go but thankful for the time we've shared.

we now have other dear friends visiting from philadelphia. 

(if any of you have ever been in my teeny home you will find it comical that we have been housing so many visitors)

friends with history- 

relationships that last across distance, over the span of time, and changes in life circumstance. 

these are the types of friends who don't care how clean your house is, 

or who can tell from one look that you've been crying, 

that ease your burdens by listening and then saying just what you need to hear, 

that make you laugh until your sides hurt,

that stay up until 4 in the morning with you talking 

about the most important things in the world or nothing at all.

this week my parents also both signed 

divorce papers.

good to be with friends.

good to talk to them. 

good to just be quiet with them when life takes tuns you weren't expecting.

it has been quite a week.

a tragedy. serious.

dear freaking entire west coast,

please get a rita's already. 

it is summer after all, and i can't even indulge once without heading across the country.

i wish my friends coming from philadelphia this week could secretly stash some away for me in their luggage, but i don't think that would work so well. 

frozen delight+ cross country flight=bad news bears.

isn't the bay area supposed to be the temple of food or something like that?

i'm just saying.

xo,

susannah

happy friday!

the last few days i have been sorting through loads of medical insurance paperwork, bills, and the parts of my to do list that i have been putting off. so not fun when you are knee deep in a mess of paper, but i'm almost done! so i am enjoying a cup of coffee at peets while little m hangs at home with her papa. 

i love that fridays is matt's day off! 

and

i love the weekend!

have a good one!

xo

foodie friday

so, matt doesn't like it so much when i rave about him on my blog. he kind of squirms and rolls his eyes. in response i say, "sorry, deal with it. rave on i will and that's all there is to it." 

don't get me wrong- sometimes sweet mateo drives me crazy: he hates car heat, i love to be toasty; he loves punk rock, i am destined to duet with u2; he is anti-microwave, i am all about heating every baked good up for 15 seconds; he wants to take a vow of poverty and live in intentional community in the hood, i am just content to live in the land of ghetto birds (but with my own kitchen and a space to call my own); he drinks english breakfast tea with whole milk and 2 cups of sugar, i drink nonfat lattes. when it comes to disagreement, i am the hothead, not him. my poor peace-loving husband married a fiesty one. so don't let me mislead you into thinking it is 24-7 roses and cupid arrows at our house...but truly, most of the time i do think my husband is great. 

like when he makes awesome food.

a few weeks ago he made gnocchi from scratch and it was incredible...

yummy. 

fresh gnocchi and straight from the garden basil, mortle and pestled into pesto.

happy belly!

(clarification)

(the beach, summer 2008)

i feel that i should clarify (my last post) by saying:

• i am very thankful for the leaps and bounds that little m has already made. she does respond to sound in ways that she never, ever did before having cochlear implants.  she does babble. she does have some receptive words and (maybe, hard to tell) emerging expressive words. she is doing so, so well and i am very proud of her. little m so works hard at listening and learning! i didn't make it mean to sound so hopeless, because truly i believe her growth already is a daily miracle.
• i know that she will be in a place where she is speaking and listening. i know this because i see kids who are older than she is, who are doing exactly that! but i also don't want to pretend that there aren't times that it isn't hard, and that all of this work (although i know that it is worth it) is tiring. sometimes i just am grieving the necessity of doing so much work.
• it's been a hard "deaf issues" week. first, i increasingly realize what typical hearing kids are doing at a much younger age because, well, i have been around more of them lately. that isn't a bad thing, but it brings these feelings up & i want to be honest with myself about that. second, we had a lot of appointments last week and then a very hard therapy session this morning. it has been a week where it makes me sad that little m has to go to all of these hearing loss related therapies and audiology appointments. i feel bad for her when she is tired and cranky and yet is slotted for a therapy or booth test. i wish she could just snuggle in her crib for a nap, or play on her floor and not with a professional. but i am grateful for the people she works with- they are amazing.
• i don't think that this issue is just one for those of us who have deaf or special needs children. we live in a culture of comparison, and i myself hate when i am feeling competitive or comparing, so i thought i'd bring it up (as ugly as it may be.) i feel like it has struck me even more since becoming a parent, although i think it is rampant in our society (and maybe human nature?) in general.
• i don't feel like this all the time. but it is there enough that i thought i would give it a voice, so that if you have ever felt the same or similar you wouldn't feel alone.

(thanks for the encouragement, to those of you who have commented. 

i am grateful to those of you who are a few steps ahead of me, 

as well as those of you who are on a different journey but who walk with me,

even though i am a broken person, mother, and friend) 

the comparison game

one of the things that i've discovered in this thing called being a parent is that it entails a lot of comparison. 

it starts at the very beginning with what your pregnancy was like (nausea? sleeplessness? weight gain? heartburn? backache?) 

and continues through to what your labor was like (complications? how many hours of active labor? how long did you push? all natural? drugs? how soon did you get drugs? c-section? c-section after pushing?) 

and then it keeps going once this little human is out in the world and has become a part of your family (colicky? how good of a eater is your baby? what type of temperament-mellow? fussy? how well does she sleep? how fast is he to roll over, scoot, crawl, cruise, walk, eat solids, potty train...)

i am not being critical; much to my own chagrin, i am the queen bee of having issues with comparison. and i've asked just as many of those questions as the next parent, whether i like to admit it or not. once i found out that little m was deaf, i was like, "oh great, now i'm really going to have issues with comparison." at least i know myself well enough to know that much; sometimes i do compare little m's language progress to that of her hearing peers, and it puts me into a dark and discouraged place. 

when she was very small, the words that would most pierce my heart would be because other moms would complain that their infant couldn't sleep if it was noisy or that the baby would startle easily. i would just get quiet when other parents talked about how their baby loved this musical toy or the song on their mobile. i would see little newborns turn toward the sound of their parent's voice and it was like i was dying inside.

now my sweet daughter is getting older, and so are her little baby friends. sometimes it isn't even a baby i know that triggers my sadness; it can be a random infant in a store or at the park that is at least 6 months younger than my daughter and is making sounds that i have never heard come out of her mouth. 

babies that are 

6, 8, or 10 months younger 

than my daughter 

are babbling dada 

or mimicking speech sounds 

or speaking actual words. 

and little m is not. 

and i grieve it every single time. 

i almost started bawling the other day when a baby months younger than little m pointed at the bubble container and said, "bub-bub." little m looked on and smiled and continued climbing the stairs. i teared up and repeated, "yes! those are bubbles." simultaneously i felt such sadness that my own daughter was nowhere near expressing herself that way, and guilt that my first thought was loss rather than rejoicing in this little one's verbalizing.

it's complicated. 

because i don't want a different baby. 

i don't think my daughter is broken. 

i love all of her, and she may not be defined by her deafness, but it is a huge part of who she is and who she always will be. i don't begrudge the celebrations of other parents as their child first babbles, says words, strings together a sentence, sings a song. i don't want to feel envious or compare my child to theirs, but i do. i don't want to cry when i hear a baby echo the voice of his mom of dad, but i do. i want other parents to be able to tell me that their baby just said a first word or a sentence, and not worry that i will downward spiral or resent them. i should be able to celebrate this thing that i want just as much for my daughter. instead it still feels like a tender, recent wound.

the funny thing is that it's easy to compare to the norm. it's easy for me to be sad that my daughter is a few years behind her hearing peers; with her cochlear implants she will have access to speech and language... she will be able to speak and listen someday. but there are children who get implants when they are much, much older, and have a far more difficult road to acquiring language; some of those parents are comparing their child's progress to a child like mine, who has been implanted early, with a crunch in their hearts. besides, there are children who have far more hurdles to overcome than my little m, with syndromes or complicated diagnoses or multiple developmental delays.

some days are hard. some days having a deaf daughter breaks my heart for twenty different reasons. some days i struggle with feelings of discontentment, or weariness, or grief. some days all i do is compare, compare, compare. some days i don't like myself very much.

but i am learning, through this beautiful child of mine, to have gratitude in this journey. i would hope that i am learning to listen, see, feel in ways that are not marked by comparison and envy, but by grace and joy. 

storytime

my sister rebecca is a reading specialist. 

i think her literary bent has rubbed off on little m; 

check out her absolute joy in devouring the written word.

(little m praising the reading gods)

i think she's ready to join book club!

bon voyage

our friends are moving to france for five years.

yay for them and boo for us.

monte, kristy, and...

their two sweet monkeys, sophie and elodie

are leaving the delights of oakland

for this:

i think i would be content sitting on that bench for the next five years, no joke.

meanwhile, our friends nicola, rain, and jair are on a visit to the bay area from england and our friends lydia + anna talked about their honeymoon to tahiti, for goodness sake!

so all of a sudden i am struck with wanderlust, imagining where i would fly away to for a season of life. it isn't happening anytime soon, but it is always fun to dream of possibilities. i've been reading this great book for bookclub about africa, and it made me miss west africa.  i told matt i would love to head back there sometime, especially if i could do work similar to the last time i was there, making drawings for storyboards about health related issues for villagers. not as sexy as the poisse, france. 

it would also be fun to live in italy or france for a year or two. i don't know if i could do it for longer, i might grow too homesick.

pros:

a. way cuter kids clothes

b. good food + good wine

c. culture galore: old buildings, history, art...

d. the possibility of euro-hopping and galavanting from country to country for a weekend trip

e. maybe matt would pick up an accent - you never know...

f. proximity to our european friends: nicola and the girls in england, niki, robyn & chris in the netherlands, bono in ireland

g. little m picking up another language

h. in italy- gelato and cappuccino; in france, wine and crepes

cons:

a. euro-smell (ie the underutilization of deodorant type products) 

b. we would be so poor; "hello, weak dollar; nice to meet you," the euro

c.  far, far away from our sweet ones here

d. the unfortunate practice of women of ALL ages and body types wearing very teeny bikinis + men wearing speedos. tragic.

how about you? where would you head off to?

things i love at this very moment

fresh from the tree peaches, nectarines and plums!

sharing long meals with friends

eating outside

celebrations, big & small

not doing much at all but hanging out

listening for airplanes

(little m can hear them pass by, understands the word "airplane" and she points up at the sky!)

sparklers!

summer camp

having the time and space to share life

the front yard with friends from far away, the ice cream cart passing by, watering the garden, sunflowers growing tall, laughter, an entire afternoon of talking and lounging, peets iced coffee, strawberries straight from the garden

little m having relationships with people who love her

impromptu playdates

strawberry shortcake smackdown! 

this yummy version that i concocted vs.

matt's version.

i think i lost.

(but it was close)

and who really loses when you get to eat two versions of strawberry shortcake 

in the same sitting?

the light at the end of the day

i love summertime! 

what do you love right now?

summertime

the other day this double rainbow arched over oakland- 

it felt like a sweet promise over our tired city.

little m is 15 months old today!

somehow rolls of fat=supercute on her,

but not quite as scrumptious on grownups.

just saying.

the.best.ever.

going back in time to our vacation a few weeks back, i conclude with the most amazing day. we'd dropped our little monkey at matt's parents, and headed for an overnight trip to solvang.

{two tidbits:}

1. it was the first time we've left little m overnight since she was born; although we have left her with babysitters galore for entire days. 

2. matt and i have chronic plan-making issues. in other words, any time we have a free day or weekend & we try to make plans, then we either enter the zip code of indecision city, we get in a fight, or we end up doing nothing because we can't figure out what we are going to do. so with 36 hours to plan, we were a little anxious about our impending open-ended fun-fest.

but fun fest it was! in just a day we were pretend food critics, wine tasted, went to a rummage sale at the local mission, happy houred, sampled peaches at a peach farm, coffee shopped, book stored, watched the wire (shocking, i know), walked through ye old town of solvang, eclair gobbled, slept in without being awoken by the delightful cries of my daughter. 

it rocked. 

don't we look happy?

we sat for a while at this amazing winery and just talked.

sunshine, conversation, surrounded by a peaceful vineyard with my favorite person.

pretty great, right?

and then, we discovered the. best. thing. ever.

um, no it wasn't these succulents. but they sure are pretty, right? 

and they were hanging right outside of the best thing ever.

it was a pretty good clue that what was inside was super adorable.

we had stumbled upon a tasting room, 

and were lured inside by the pretty vintage trailer 

advertising cupcakes inside.

i couldn't resist.

i'm sorry, did domino magazine (r.i.p.) manifest itself as a wine tasting and cupcake shop?

i was dying from how great this spot was.

adorable city.

how cute are these cupcakes?

you can get yourself one cupcake, or two, or...

a freaking flight of cupcakes, my friends. 

as in, taste 6 different flavors of amazing.

as in the aforementioned best thing ever.

as in, 6 mini cupcakes, just enough to share with your very favorite person.

you only see three cupcakes here because we devoured the first three in mere seconds.

these aren't dry cupcakes in which the cake is merely the vehicle for the frosting 

(which in my opinion is the problem with most cupcakes. 

sure, cupcakes are pretty, but most of the time not so tasty.) 

these yummies have nuggets of delicious filling in the center of each one, 

and the cake itself is moist and so good.

this retro trailer was parked outside. love love love it. how cute would this be, stocked with cupcakes and hitched outside of your next party? but alas, i live half a state away, so i'll just have to hit enjoy cupcakes up the next time i am headed to the southland. or, i can just dream of the delight by following their blog.

(but faithful reader michele mollkoy, who also lives not so far away, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't hightail it over there and pick yourself up some yummy. like asap.)

when love gets messy and real

(photo not by me but i can't find where i borrowed it from)

i am reading a book for my book club right now, Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan, a nigerian writer. it is an emotionally leveling book of short stories which take place in Africa. i highly recommend it, although be prepared for it to move you. i read an interview with the author the other night. i was struck by this comment that uwem akpan made during the interview when the interviewer asks him about his impressions of life in america:

The rhythm of life here is different from that of Nigeria... [for instance, in america] the thing about old people staying in “homes” away from home blew my mind. 

in nigerian culture, the elderly are cared for by family until they pass away. but in our own youth oriented western culture that is not the norm. i don't mean to say it never happens: my own aunt and uncle relocated to another state, separated from their own routine and community, at a personal and financial sacrifice, to care for my grandfather until he died. but it is rare that we bring our old family members into our own homes to care for them, and it is unheard of to bring someone old, frail, and difficult into our home when they aren't even related to us.

the morning after reading this interview, i got an email from meeghan, a friend of mine who, along with her husband darin and young son, adopted an elderly woman named guinn. i hesitate to tell their story, because it in no way can capture the fullness of how they have served and cared day in and day out for an old (often cranky) woman who is no blood relation. but i think it needs telling.

they have known guinn for ten years and she has lived with them for the last 7 years and the majority of their marriage. they adopted her into their family so that her wishes, to not spend the end of her days in a home, would be fulfilled. 

to love someone like this

in your home

every day

it isn't sexy or temporary or easy. 

love like this means feeding, clothing, washing, wiping, changing another adult. it means enduring hard days with lots of doctors appointments, adult day care, bad attitudes, dirty diapers, and so on. it also means living with three generations in one space, and the rich gift it is for your small child to share every day with someone who is at the end of their lifetime. caring for guinn it is like caring for an infant, except without an adoring sweet face that grins back at you and coos or cuddles. the mess and complete dependence is there, but the sweet moments and small joys are scattered in less frequently. 

but my friends follow the teachings of jesus, and so that is exactly what they do: try to follow the example of how jesus lived. they love guinn the way that jesus loved people: at a cost, even if the person they loved were scorned or annoying or ornery or forgotten or worthless to the rest of the world. 

a lot of people talk about loving radically or following the tenets of the faith they embrace, but most of the time it gets kind of watered down or normalized into something that fits into our schedules or lifestyle. meeghan and darin live what they believe, and they model for their son justice what it means to truly love and care for the world around them, starting in their own home. it has not been an easy road.

in the email i got from meeghan, from the other side of the country, i got the news that guinn passed away this tuesday morning. 

meeghan, darin, and justice loved her with dignity and grace, honoring her life even when she was difficult to love or inconvenient to their life's plans. they brought a stranger into their home and loved her like a grandmother, like a daughter. 

i want to love like they do.

put a ring on it

i've been meaning to post this for a while, 

but my sister in law robyn is engaged! 

(how cute are they?!)

such fun family celebrations- my sister has a baby girl on the way, and now another new member of the family! we got to meet robyn's fiance, chris, over the july 4th weekend, which was so fun. they are so sweet to each other, and it made me excited for their wedding in october (matt will be marrying them!) we got to taste cake with them at one of my favorite east bay treat spots: sweet adeline's. can life get much better than to cake taste at 8 in the morning? not so much.

(listen)

the other day i came upon this video clip of michael chorost, an adult cochlear implant user, explaining what it is like to hear with his cochlear implant. it is very short (less than five minutes) and very clear and concise. i felt like it gave me new insight into what little m feels when her "ears" go on every morning! i always wonder what it feels like for her the moment the magnets go on and sound enters her world. in the morning, little m is often startled after hours of silence; it takes her some time to adjust to all of the sound that appears instantly, even if we are very very quiet. someday i'll get to ask her what it is like...

(and, i noticed that his surgeon is the same exact surgeon at the california ear institute, the fantastic dr. joe roberson, that did little m's cochlear implant surgery!!!) 

here's the link if you'd like to watch the video:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/listen/video/michael/michael_chorost_sub_mov.mov

...deja vu vacation posting

...oh, i know you are all on the edge of your seats, wondering how our vacation concluded. or not. i've been a bit slow, which is why i am not a very good blogger. you know, life happens and hurtles along.

we left beautiful friends and beautiful weather in san diego and headed north, stopping to stay with our friends jeff and jenny and their adorable little munchkin henry. one of my very favorite things is watching little m and henry play together; it is like watching pure, unadulterated joy and curiosity. let's call our vacation what it was: a tour of potential arranged marriages for our daughter, since all of our friends have adorable boys! little m and henry had lots of love time: 

eating snacks, exchanging toys and saliva, reaching out to each other. 

warms my heart, those two.

can you see the love in her eyes?

how cute is this smile?

henry can't keep his hands of my daughter!

and, matt and i had a great time with henry's parents (as usual)...

good talks and food of course, but jeff introduced us to the pilot episode of glee! um, so good. and love watching tv with jeff and jenny because they give fabulously comical and engaging synopsi (is this the plural form of synopsis?) of shows like american idol, so you think you can dance, etc., so you don't have to watch the whole thing. shockingly, matt got sucked in by jeff's quick version, so we watched the whole episode of glee. (i loved it. go watch it on hulu!)

i love our friends. they're great.

matt and i hit all of our favorite spots in our old town, and then hit the road again to deposit our darling little m at her grandparents house in ventura so that we could get away overnight sans our daughter! 

(the 4th of july)

last year on the fourth of july i was holding my 3 month old out in front of our house when my elderly next door neighbor, who did not realize that little m was deaf, said, "she's going to be up all night with all the noise around here." 

i smiled and nodded, knowing full well that even in our neighborhood of oakland, full of countless illegal and loud fireworks that start in mid-june and continue until all hours on july 4th, my daughter would sleep right through it. she wouldn't hear a single firework go off, even with her powerful hearing aids cranked up. i went inside and cried, and every firework that exploded last year (and there were many) pierced my heart as a reminder of the fresh pain of little m's deafness. i cried a lot that night. little m slept all night long, oblivious to all of it.

as i write this, it feels like i am stuck in a war-zone somewhere, as fireworks have been going off for hours and hours on a pretty constant basis. we are talking big, huge, loud, super illegal fireworks. i swear it sounds like bombs are going off in the street in front of my house. to say it's a little crazy would be an understatement.

and my daughter is sound asleep. she, of course, can't hear any of it.

but earlier, before she went down, while her implants were still on, she heard fireworks. she looked up in the sky in the direction of the sound. she heard so many of the loud blasts that i think she was a little scared and startled. 

my baby is full of joy and delight whether her implants are on or not. she laughs and observes and soaks in the world even when her ears are silent. but it is a gift that she can hear. this year, as the fireworks exploded all around our house, i had tears in my eyes (shocking) - tears of gratitude that little m can experience the noises all around her, and that i get to be a part of the journey.

fast friends!

last week we went to fairyland with little m's friend from school viv, and her mama, hannah. hannah is one of my blogging friends! i think she is a pretty amazing mom; her sweet vivian is the cutest, with such charm. little m only has a couple of receptive words (spoken words that she actually understands the meaning of), but vivian is almost two and has tons, so it was so fun to hear hannah talk to viv and have viv understand respond! (something to look forward to someday!)
little m and viv may be on different journeys, but they are both quite tenacious beauties, with lots of personality and they both have parents that love them a whole lot!

it was a gorgeous oakland day, and even though a lot of fairyland is aimed at little kiddos who are somewhat older than m and viv, they loved every single minute of it! and, they got along swimmingly. the best part of fairyland is that it is an old school pre-disneyland era spot, and many of the exhibits are sweet sweet sweet. it's a charming, non-product-placement kind of spot! little m and viv very patiently enjoyed the day and each other while hannah and i as we chatted away about life and our experiences.

little m was really into watching the ducks,

but she wasn't quite tall enough to look over the fence so she had to peek through the holes

(the girls)

(happy)

today, july 2nd, is my mom's 60th birthday.

(happy birthday cornelia ruth)

she deserves a party, 

but instead she is up past midnight as the hour strikes her birth day, 

baking cinnamon buns for those she loves, 

because that is the type of woman she is: 

she serves others without complaint and because it gives her joy.

she is a woman of faith, wisdom, beauty, and perseverance.

she is a mother, a pray-er, a writer, a teacher, a lover of truth, hope and beauty, 

a pilgrim, a friend and a sister. 

she loves words, going on adventures, children, integrity, music, a good leather chair, brand new journals, vanilla ice cream, talking on the phone, clean kitchen floors that have been scrubbed by hand, maine, coming up with theories on just about everything and watching radiant sunsets.

she will sidle right up to you, put her arm around your shoulder, come in close, and ask you how you are...how you really are, and then she will listen.

she will wake up at 4 in the morning to make you a pie or cinnamon buns because she heard that you like them, and she knows you've been having a rough week.

she will go completely out of her way to do you a favor or give you a ride or extend you some kindness.

she will treat you as if you were one of her own children.

she will eat leftover apple pie for breakfast.

she taught me that there are more important things in life 

than being concerned with the surface of things, 

that what matters is living with integrity regardless of who is watching.

today i celebrate my mom, 

and the richness of her character

and

 the way she has walked in grace and courage throughout her 60 years.

xoxo

(little m making the "daddy" sign)

little m loves her papa. 

often we will be in the middle of playing or reading or snacking, and she will start signing "daddy." um, hello my darling sweetpea, mommy is sitting right in front of you!? but i get it; i like to hang out with her daddy too, and could pretty much do it all the time. so, you know, i empathize. and, every time she signs daddy a little part of my heart goes crunch, because i think of how her face lights up when she sees her daddy and what a wonderful it is to my daughter that she has such a good dad. it is pretty cute how often she does it, with this earnest searching look in her eyes, as if he will suddenly appear if only she signs for him.

love it.

{today}

today was a good day:

no reason in particular.

thankful for...

• my healthy body that got me through the class at the gym that kicks by bootie here + back again
  
• playtime, snuggletime, sillytime, storytime, bathtime, and all-the-other-time with little m. i love being a mom from the first moment i see my daughter in the morning until it is her bedtime, and all those in between parts too. and then, at night, i sneak into her room (which isn't that hard, her being deaf and all, and not able to hear me) and gaze down at her lovingly and in awe. i adore her.
• sunshine and ice cream and fun visitors that just drop by and red painted toenails and tanktops and strawberries and clean dishes and finding old photos.
• my beloved. oh, i just love my husband and even though he thinks i totally take over the whole bed (i kind of do) and make him stay up too, too late (i for sure do) and i talk to him when he's trying to read (it makes things more interactive) and do things the roundabout and least logical way (um, yeah, that too) and am a complete and total handful (guilty), he still loves me too. i am his favorite and he is mine.
• blowing bubbles in the warm july sun on my front stoop. (i'd love to call it a porch, but, well, it just really isn't large enough to even pretend.)

what are you thankful for today?

sweet treats

this is the plum tree in our backyard right now, loaded down with sweet and juicy little plums. someday 

i want to have lots of fruit trees in my yard, 

so that i can just run outside and pluck a pretty little treat off of a branch 

and then 

treat myself to another!

come over and pick some of our plums! 

(they are delightful)

(and so are you)

eat your greens!

(an ode to fruits and veggies)

i am so not on vacation now, but it's fun to recap the glory days of two weeks ago...and i have been sloooow to upload photos, so here we go: belated blog posts. 

on our way out of san diego, we stopped at not one, but two, fantastic spots! 

first, we stopped off for breakfast with xuchi, a friend of mine from art school. (xuchi and her husband josh are artists and in addition to being great people, both make absolutely beautiful work.)