Diary of a Shrimp Grower

"Name on the cake."

2011-10-28T06:06:00.007-04:00

My big, big girl turned three yesterday, and it was a big day around these parts. She first went to school, where her teacher had put her "name on the cake," a coveted honor that literally means her name was written on a birthday cake poster. She brought pink funfetti cupcakes, decorated with Disney princess sprinkles for added flair, to share with her friends after lunch.

After school, we went out, first to Jason's Deli to have her birthday dinner of choice, macaroni and cheese, ( or "macky cheese, as we say around here), and then it was on to Paint Spot to decorate some pottery, which will also serve as Winnie's birthday present.

Returning home, Brian and I gave her the big present from us this year, a Betta fish. She admired him from every angle, then promptly named him "Harry." She'd been dying to name something Harry, as that continues to be her name of choice for our coming baby, even though we found out this week we're having a GIRL. (More on that news later.) One of her teachers even asked her the other day what the baby's name was going to be, and Emery sighed and shook her head in exasperation before saying, "Not Harry Potter."

Which leads me to the point of this post: I know in a few short years, (or even, the way my brain is right now, MONTHS), I'm not going to remember all the funny, silly, wonderful things she's doing all the time, so even though it's early, I'm going to try to remember some to write down:

Yesterday morning, we were watching a new episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, which serves as her favorite show right now. Mickey was talking about some shaped bushes way off in the distance, and Emery turned to me and said, "I can see those bushes all by myself, because now I'm free." (free = three. I spelled it phonetically according to her speech patterns.)

Leaving school yesterday, she saw someone walk by out of the corner of her eye. In passing to me, she said, "There goes somebody," with a dismissive wave of her hand. (Funny enough in itself.) I told her, "That was Nolan, Em." (Nolan is one of her buddies, and probably he first in line to be her boyfriend as soon as they think of each other that way.) She goes, "OH! Nolan is my best, best boy."

Last week, Brian, Emery, and I were out to dinner, and I was telling him the story of this little boy in the parking lot of her school who came up to hug her and said, "Goodbye, Emery... my girlfriend." I was trying to remember his mom's name, as she's a teacher at the daycare. Emery thought hard about it for a second before answering definitively, "Emily!" So I asked, "What's Ms. Emily's little boy's name?" She sat at her seat, chewing thoughtfully on her dinner for what felt like forever but was probably only two minutes or so. When I finally asked if she remembered, her mouth was full, so she shook her head and waved her hands as if to say, How could I possibly remember his name? Maybe you had to be there, but Brian and I died of laughter.

I think I need to start keeping record of these things as they happen, which I've dropped the ball on these past few months. There are so many of these moments every day, I could write all day and still not get them all down.

I don't know how it happened, but Brian and I gave birth to the smartest, funniest, kindest, funniest, most thoughtful three-year-old in the world, (or at least it feels like it to me).

Thanks for the last three years, Emery. You light up my life.

When life gives you lemons, bedazzle them.

2011-10-24T21:03:00.006-04:00

So you may have heard a nasty rumor around the LeBlanc house last week. The first Saturday fof fall break, Emery had to spend a few minutes in timeout for hitting her mom. Timeout, on this particular Saturday, was in her old crib, as Emery was wont to wander from timeout in other locales.

To make a not-so-long-but-kinda-sad-story short, my precious little Em took a swipe at me from the crib, lost her balance, and fell forward. Looking like a starfish, she flailed forward, landing left arm first on the unforgiving nursery room floor.

This was the result:

A broken radius (bottom) and a "greenstick fracture" in her ulna (top), the one that looks like a bent tree limb. :(

Sad, sad day in the LeBlanc house. Can't you tell?

This was after our first emergency room visit, which was HORRIBLE. The doctors and nurses were

great, mind you, but the experience was one I don't want to relive anytime soon. She survived it, though, and after three days of a soft splint cast that made Mommy very, very nervous, were called back in to the pediatric orthopaedist's office to replace the soft splint with a hard-as-nails cast that if she falls will only hurt the floor.

They reviewed her papers and took some more x-rays, (with the cast ON this time and with her Winnie in the room. I wasn't allowed in for the x-ray on our first visit, as I'm five months pregnant. Kind of a no-no.)

Then it was the most important decision of the day: cast color choice.

It's an opportunity to truly accessorize, so of course she took this decision VERY SERIOUSLY.

Is there any guess as to which color she chose? 'Course not.

We had the kindest, gentlest cast technician: a man named Abraham. (After a few questions, we found out he was a former Lost Boy of Sudan! Amazing!)

It took some time, but he got a few smiles out of her. She really was all business on this trip.

She was so patient and so brave. Such a big girl.

And of course, when given the option, you must bedazzle your neon pink cast with glittery sparkles. (Glittery sparkles: too redundant?)

The thing is ROCK. SOLID. As nervous as it made me, and as worried as I was, Emery didn't slow down for a minute.

Not even to let me take a picture.

Of course, we couldn't let this affect our Cinderella costume. Naturally, the glittery sparkles will work MUCH better with the costume, but this broken arm thing will NOT rain on our Halloween parade, ladies and gentlemen.

As they say, when life gives you lemons, bedazzle them.

Newsy news

2011-09-10T07:00:00.003-04:00

Well, the news is out. I've gone public with family, friends, at school, and online. I'm pregnant again, and the baby is due in March.

Yesterday, I finally told my students, and they were very funny about it. Many of them cheered (they're geting pretty accustomed to having pregnant teachers, I think), and then they asked three questions, mostly in the following order:

1. Is it a boy or a girl?
2. Will you name it (insert question-asker's name here)?
3. Who is our sub going to be? Please choose/don't choose (certain subs' names here)!

Mostly, they were very excited, although I did have one snotty little kid say that he could "totally tell", in a really ugly tone of voice.

Snotty kid aside, everyone else was really sweet and really cute about it.

They were presenting their first technology projects this week, so I opted to tell them in a similar fashion, using Glogster. You have to click around on the pictures to see the one really important one hidden underneath at the bottom...

http://lkleblanc.edu.glogster.com/mrs-leblancs-secret/

That crazy bookworm-y lady

2011-06-02T06:08:00.002-04:00

My 8th graders are moving on to high school. This is usually cause for much celebration, and it is this year, but I'm also a little more nostalgic this year than normal, as this is the only group I've taught for two years in a row. For better or for worse, I've gotten to know them really well.

Last Friday was our last day of regular classes, so it was the day I decided to do my last-day routine: organize high school writing folders, complete course evaluation, and read them a children's book. Usually I read them a teacher book called Mrs. Spitzer's Garden, about a teacher who tends a garden of flowers, and the whole book is a big extended metaphor. The kids are the flowers--some are hearty, some are delicate, some will grow anywhere you plant them, yadda yadda yadda.

(It's a really good thing my kids are NOT flowers. They'd all be dead in my care. But I digress...)

Since I'd read that one to them last year, I decided to go with the classic Dr. Seuss up lifter Oh, the Places You'll Go! I had them gather all around me on the little rug in my reading corner and I perched on a chair. It's my only chance to feel like a kindergarten teacher; I love it, and they secretly (and sometimes not-so-secretly) love it, too.

So we read the story, and I had their undivided attention. (I won't say for the FIRST time all year, but sometimes it felt that way.) Then I closed the book and spoke to them about the two most important things I've learned up to this point in my life, two bits of advice I had to figure out on my own and that I really feel they need to know as they move into some of the most difficult and wonderful years they'll have.

1. You WILL get into trouble or uncomfortable situations in high school. It's not a matter of if, but when. And WHEN that happens, you have to listen to the quiet whisper in the back of your head or the sinking feeling in your gut, because if you don't, that's when the REAL trouble starts. And...

2. You are defined by nobody but yourself. Some of you have really tough home lives, or your friends are making bad choices, or you've been through a whole lot in your short time here. None of this defines who you are; only YOU do. In this life, you choose to be a victim of your circumstance. Make no mistake, that's a choice you make every day. (I got a little emotional at this, as I have obviously been CHOOSING to be a victim lately. I was certainly preaching to myself.) But the point is, YOU and ONLY you get to decide how you want your life to be.

During one of my four classes, I come to just about the end of my advice, and a little boy seated halfway across the group from me mumbles something under his breath. By this time, I have not had to correct behavior or ask them to hush; they were rapt. (That's a very cool, very rare thing for this group.) The kids sitting near look at him at smile instead of telling him to be quiet, which they would have done if he were being inappropriate.

I smile at him. "What was that, ----?"

He shakes his head. "Mrs. L, you are going to Heaven."

The whole class twitters, some with nervous laughter. What a thing to say, after all.

I'm speechless for a moment. Choking back tears, I manage to say, "Well... I sure hope so, buddy."

There are times when this dangerous, exhausting, depressing, misunderstood profession of mine pays off in such a big way that I can't express it. There are days that pay back on my investment, ten, twenty fold.

This was one of those days.

Good luck, future class of 2015. You will be missed by many, but especially by that crazy bookworm-y lady who taught language arts in a science room. You will be missed.

Pretending to be gone

2011-05-27T05:55:00.003-04:00

When I was a kid, I would scrape my knees falling off my bike or (more often)tripping in a simple walk across the room. It would sting so badly, but it would begin to heal as soon as the blood started to clot. A scab would form, visual reminder of a pain I no longer felt, and occasionally it would itch, but for the most part, the pain was behind me.

Until, in my usual clumsy way, I'd bump into a chest or stumble on the stairs and bang into the once-formidable wound, and I would get a nervous system reminder of why I had been so upset when the initial injury took place.

Most of the time I didn't feel it. MOST of the time.

I've had an amazing few weeks: I finished the Cincinnati Flying Pig Half-Marathon in almost exactly the same time as my Derby time last year, really good considering it was SUPER hilly and rained the entire time. I felt liberated by this finish, more so than in years past, because I was doing it for myself and no one else. Running is great therapy.

My mom came to visit and we flitted around town for two weeks, which was simultaneously energizing and relaxing. She even painted my cabinets! My kitchen looks like something out of the Pottery Barn catalogue.

I'm finally working on a new blanket, one that I DON'T plan to give away, and it is going to be beautiful. It's going to take me the rest of my life to finish, but it'll be worth it.

Just last week, I took my 8th graders to Washington, D.C. I have never fallen in love with a city quite like that before. Every time I turned around, there was something else to see, something else to cherish and value as part of my national identity. It was just awesome.

And yesterday, we had a baby shower for two of my coworkers, one whose wife is due in 10 days, and the other who had to have an emergency C-section at 30 weeks. Her baby, though tiny, is fighting and developing well for a preemie. All good things. Blessings all around.

One of the women sat and looked radiant, glowing in all her soon-to-be-mama glory. She shared funny stories about her husband, read cards, and ate cake, thanking everyone for their gifts at some point during the celebration.

The other, my dear friend from work, told stories of life in the NICU, where she and her husband have been camping out since May 11th. She talked of reading books to the new baby and holding him during "kangaroo" time, when the baby is held against mom or dad's bare chest to stimulate growth and promote intimacy outside of the incubator.

The new parents joked about how their baby was so early, "beating" all these others, who were expected to come before him. She said, "Yeah he came right in the middle, and he was due in July. He was supposed to come last."

Just like I was kid again, I felt myself stumble and bump into my old, almost healed wound.

I'd made it through cake and favors and holding another friend's baby, (this one born in April), and talk of diapers and burping and nursing and deliveries. I'd been fine.

No, he wasn't supposed to be last, I wanted to say. MY baby was supposed to be last.

This grief is quiet, sinister. It sneaks up on you when you least expect it, after days of lying dormant and pretending to be gone. It shows up when you least want it to--when you're genuinely trying to be happy for a friend, when you're trying to enjoy all the blessings you have been given. Then it will rear up and show itself in a blaze of anguish, and the old ache, the one that used to accompany you on all your travels, settles back in to your bones and makes itself right at home.

At least I'm strong enough now to show that grief to the door instead of giving it a blanket and offering it a cup of tea.

I'm not angry or upset with her or anybody; she's right, of course. My baby wasn't supposed to come last. My baby just wasn't supposed to come.

Literally and Figuratively

2011-04-13T22:55:00.003-04:00

As teachers we so
look forward to the
break that spring brings.
We need the energy,
the rejuvenation,
the palpable sense that
summer is near.

So why did my break
feel so lonely?
Why did I grapple so
fiercely with
an issue long since dead,
literally and
figuratively?
Why did each day,
initially so full of
promise
and
potential,
turn into an unending minefield
of emotional WMDs?

I sit quietly at Starbucks,
planning a crucial revision unit,
drinking my soymilk Chai tea, and
otherwise minding my own damned business,
when the happiest grandmother-mother duo
walks in
with the happiest newborn on the block.
No matter how loud I turn up my music,
it isn't
loud
enough.

I sit watching TV and
finishing a crochet project,
when the TV suddenly turns to
stories of sadness,
of pregnant mothers in despair
for their unborn children.

I have dinner with a dear friend,
(a dear pregnant friend,)
one of the chosen, honest few
who will tell me the truth,
no matter how hard it may be for
the two of us.
Not awkward she feels, but aware,
she says.
Aware of me, and of her,
and her constant reminders to me.
Life doesn't give us
such honesty
very often.

Why isn't this a wound that will heal?
I need to visit the Wound Care Center
for the Emotional Heart,
not so much the physical.

I need to let go of someone
I never got to hold.

2011-04-04T11:42:00.003-04:00

love is blind he says
and of course he's right
blind to
suffering and
insensitive to sensitivity
wrapped up in its own self-worth
justification
explanation
rationalization not necessary for
the celebratory
reservations are made at that table
only for the bereaved
nobody wants to sit there
nobody wants to walk that path

I ran 10 miles, (but I only cried twice).

2011-03-27T06:32:00.038-04:00

After close to three months of training, I finished the Papa John's 10-miler yesterday. I'm glad I did it, but more honestly, I'm so glad it's over. There were several inspiring moments in the journey from Papa John's Cardinal Stadium to... well, BACK to Papa John's Cardinal Stadium, and, if you'll indulge me, I thought I might share a few.

STARTING LINE: This is the third year I've run this race, and the third year that, for whatever reason, I have to pee something awful at the starting line. In fact, I am 10 minutes behind the gun start because I am waiting in line with hundreds of other have-to-pee-or-I-can't-run runners. (Luckily, my time is based on my chip attached to my number and won't start until I do.) I follow the same pre-race routine as every other race I've run in, so I'm not real sure why this one causes me such bladder ache every year.

MILES 1-2: Boring, boring, boring. Just running, and dodging walkers, and running, and getting boxed in by people ALREADY walking, and running some more. The road is straight, the scenery is minimal. (snore)

JUST BEFORE MILE 3: This is when it starts to get cool. First, I see (and cheer loudly for) Papa John himself driving a really cool old chartreuse car. He's honking, the crowd is waving, he's probably feeling like the Mac-daddy of all pizza-sponsored 10-mile races.

Even cooler, though, are the winners that start to round the curve back toward the finish. I always see them about this time--me on my third mile, them on their (cough, cough) eighth miles. First up is the wheelchair racer. This guy is pushing with all his might on one of those specially designed race-chairs, and though sometimes these are people who've been paralyzed and have lost the use of their legs, the leader in this race appears to never have had legs to begin with. I am humbled and awe-inspired and moved to tears. (Crying when you're running is no easy feat, by the way.)

Then come the three overall leaders, two Kenyans and a tall Irish-looking white guy. They are neck-and-neck, which is the first time I've seen the leaders so close that early in the race. Very cool.

But the coolest moment of that mile comes just as I cross the 3-mile marker and enter Iroquois Park, long known as the most difficult part of this or any road race in Louisville. Enough seeded runners have passed by this point that the running crowd has stopped cheering--the novelty has worn off and we are back to the hard grind ahead. But having run this race three times now, I know what to expect, so I am looking for it. No one else recognizes it when it comes, so my voice is the first.

"There she is!" I shout as loud as my lungs let me, and there she goes: the first female runner. The leader of the pack of the fairer sex. The crowd, once again, goes wild.

MILE 4: This is when it starts to get really hard for me. As I enter the Park, I repeat a mantra in my head that actually seems to help: "Iroquois Park is no joke. Take it easy." It's not, and I do, but my legs seem to get heavier and heavier. I am beginning to struggle, but I know that if I walk in Iroquois Park, which is a three-mile loop in the middle of the race, I am setting myself up for a really difficult finish. To put it plainly, if I start walking now, I'll never get my momentum back.

I haven't accepted water yet by now--I train for miles and miles every weekend with no water stops, so why bother?--but about this time I decide to drink even if I'm not thirsty. At the next water stop, I grab a small bottle of water from a guy who is wearing a sweatshirt with the name of the school I teach at emblazoned on it, though I don't notice this until I've run past him. Seconds later I notice a former student to my left and shout her name as loud as I can. She's a cross country runner, and is handing out water as, I assume, some kind of community service opportunity.

She looks up, startled, and then sees that it is me. She screams my name as loud as she can, and I turn and see her mom, who is my school's cross country and track coach. For a brief stint at the first of the year, I worked out with the cross country team, so I know her fairly well. "Look at you!" she shouts, pointing good-naturedly at me.

It's this moment I know that I'll make it out of Iroquois Park without stopping.

MILE 5: Hard, but uneventful. Lots of rolling, gradual hills that don't look hard until you're in the middle of them.

MILE 6: What the hell was I thinking? This is ridiculous!! What kind of sadistic bastard DESIGNED this course, anyway?! The gradual, rolling hills of the last two miles turn into steep, never-ending hills that you think you'll conquer just around the bend, only then to find that the hill. keeps. going. It sucks. It really, really sucks.

MILE 7: Coming back down out of the Park, I remember that I love running and I am super strong and what a beautiful day it is and how lucky am I to get to do this?! Of course, this might be because I am now running downhill, but who's asking, really?

This mile also features my two favorite support signs, maybe ever. One is held by a small family--a mom and two little kids--who are probably there cheering on the dad. This teeny-weeny girl is holding a sign that says, "Daddy! Stop reading this and KEEP RUNNING!" I just love a sassy little girl sign.

The other one is held up by a man of significant age. He's standing next to a woman whose sign--"Kick Asphalt!"--is also funny, but not nearly as good as his. It's written in simple, black, block letters on a few sheets of layered white poster board, and it says, "Naked cheerleaders: Next Mile."

I laughed so hard it broke my stride.

MILE 8: Last weekend I ran 8 miles for my long run. When I came inside, Brian asked how my run went, like he always does, and I replied that it felt so good I thought I could have run longer.

So it's a little ironic that it's here, in the eighth mile, that I start to doubt my ability to finish and question my sanity for having begun. I am dragging, almost literally, and my legs feel like they weigh a hundred pounds each. It's a rough mile, but I get through it, and come to...

MILE 9: This mile goes by mostly uneventfully, though I start to feel almost done. It's about this time I start seeing sweaty, bed-headed people walking in the opposite direction of the running masses. Finishers. The finish line is close, I can feel it. But I won't get there before one last dreaded hill. It's one of the biggest in the race, and I know it's coming, because this is the same race route as before. The hill sits adjacent to Papa John's Cardinal Stadium, where the race will end, and people start to drop like flies all around me. They're done. They don't want to run this hill so they walk like they're on a Sunday walk in the park.

I refuse. Throughout this race, I've been repeating Japanese marathoner Haruki Murakami's running mantra in my mind: "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." I opt not to suffer, and instead focus my thoughts on why I am running this damn race in the first place. I set out to train after a difficult holiday season, one of the worst in my otherwise blessed life. I ran my way out of temporary depression, out of an almost all-consuming darkness. I ran myself through winter months and into the warm kiss of spring. And just as I am thinking all this, my iPod starts to play "Move Along" by the All-American Rejects, and I start to cry.

Context: I don't like the All-American Rejects. Their preppy, poppy sound reminds me of MTV and terrible reality TV and most everything that's wrong with American pop culture. I much prefer the soft sound of The Weepies or the hard driving sound of The Black Keys. But something about this particular song has always energized me, and it was during training for the Austin Marathon in 2008 that I listened to it for the first time. Back then, I was finishing up 9 miles, too, and at the time it was the longest I'd ever run. This was a very different run, but no less poignant, and the comparison of that moment to this one is not lost on me today.

More Context: I have exercise-induced asthma. The crying throws my breathing off, and for a few scary moments on the hard side of that hill, I don't think I'll be able to keep going. I ease off my stride a bit, and my breathing returns to normal, but like I said before: crying when running is no easy feat. I don't recommend it.

MILE 10: Easily the most fun mile of them all. By this point, every muscle in my body is screaming, "STOP!" but I'm no longer questioning whether I will. I am running hard into the stadium, and I remove my headphones, because here's where I know everybody feels like kind of a big deal. They are showing the runners on the Jumbotron and announcing names on the loudspeaker. I never was much of an athlete, but boy is it fun to run the perimeter of that stadium where those big-ass football players pound each other into ground beef in the fall.

Also, it's fun because it's about to be over.

I collect my Powerade and Panera bagel (Sin-amon Crunch--yum!) and my banana for consumption after my stomach gets settled again, which won't be for another 45 minutes. Though we tried to set up a rendezvous point, it's tough finding Brian and Emery for a while, and I start panicking a bit in my head. What if I never find them? I don't have a phone, or keys, or money, or... THERE THEY ARE!

Emery wiggles her way into my arms, and though it feels like all my muscles will rip apart, I hold her and squeeze her and kiss Brian squarely on the mouth.

This is a good day, maybe the best kind of day, and the fact that I won't be able to climb stairs normally for the better part of a week after this has not yet crossed my mind. For now, I am happy, blissfully, uncomplicatedly happy, and life is a beautiful thing once more.

This kind of thing

2011-03-03T21:12:00.005-05:00

There are days when polite lunchtime conversation is simply more than I can bear.

Sitting around a lunch table with colleagues doesn't usually sound so bad to me--I really, genuinely like everyone I work with. But two of my eight teammates are pregnant, and one has a wife who's expecting, and one has a daughter-in-law who just delivered a baby.

No other wing is really safe, either. My dearest friend at school is so pregnant she's about to burst, and another fellow team leader's wife is about to give birth to a fourth bouncing baby boy.

There are days when I walk in to lunch a bit late, perhaps after grading one last round of reading comprehension quizzes or analyzing and reworking yet another week's worth of lessons. And when I arrive, I am blasted by the same late pregnancy anticipation conversations--"last night, we SAW the leg as he moved" or "I told him I still wanted to hang out even if I'd be pregnant out to here" or "I know I'll be huge on our trip to D.C., but I still want to do this and that and blah and blah."

There are days when I am held in my chair only by my southern hospitality. My genteel upbringing is the only thing keeping me from jumping up out of my seat and screaming, "Could we PLEASE for the love of GOD talk about something besides your fugging babies!!!"

Instead, I chew quietly and stare at my food, smiling when I'm supposed to and laughing when it seems appropriate. I'm pretty sure my abstinence of speech goes unnoticed, or if people do notice, no one has said anything to me about it. I'm not sure I want or need them to, actually. I know grief, once it's past the point of acceptance for most everyone else, becomes tiresome for the people observing the bereaved.

I'm hard to understand, I suppose. I will convince you of my okayness, totally sell you on the idea that I'm healed and fine, brushing off any helpful attempts at questioning. I will keep the topic at arm's length--Brian and I rarely talk about it anymore. But still.

But still.

There are also days when I am happy and joyful and have a spring in my step. (More so now that spring is closer and closer at hand.) I'll walk and talk and share funny pregnancy stories of my own and give helpful tips that no one gave me and be a generally agreeable person to be around.

The really shitty part is, though, I never really know which of those people I'll be when I wake up that morning. Debbie Downer or Susie Sunshine.

I suppose this kind of thing will do that to you.

:/

2011-02-28T20:24:00.003-05:00

how wrong to lean on the
edge of desire and doubt yourself
before even the chance to step off
into the abyss.

and how wrong to deplete
replete
repeat
and wonder why
you hurt in your soul
and feet.

birds do not doubt.
they fly.

horses do not doubt.
they run.

does the cog in the clock know
its purpose?
know that it moves times forward?
does it recognize futility in its action
or in, perhaps, inaction?

(sigh)
Mondays suck.

Gangly, awkward, pockmarked adolescents

2011-02-03T05:59:00.003-05:00

Every day, my students come into my classroom and sign in. It's a simple procedure: 8-10 means you're having such a great day you can hardly stand yourself; 5-7 means pretty good/can't complain; 4 means you're having kind of an awful day but you don't really wanna talk about it; and 1-3 is Red Zone, which means you're having the worst kind of day, and you've accepted the fact that Mrs. LeBlanc is going to come bug you about it to make sure you're okay. The sign-in process serves two purposes: 1) it helps me take attendance (Bonus!) and 2) It helps me connect and understand my students better on a daily basis.

Yesterday, one of the quiet little guys in my gifted class signed in at a 1. Now he's usually a happy-go-lucky kind of kid; the day before he was a 10. He's not one of my "frequent fliers", someone I have to touch base with regularly.

So I stop by his desk during their independent work time, crouch down next to him so only he can hear me, and ask if everything's okay. He's gives me this look like he wants to say something but doesn't want anyone to hear. It's a painful look, one that I can't stand for very long, so I tell him to wait and we'd talk after class.

Class ends--it was a fun one. Everyone was participating and laughing and actually learning. One of the rare days I feel like I know what I'm doing--and I can see my little guy is lingering. He's trying to wait without making it look like he's trying to wait.

I walk over to him and say, "So what's going on with that number, buddy? You never sign in so low."

He takes a deep breath before he says, "Well... I have this dream," and bursts into tears.

Context alert! Before you can understand this next part, you need to know this: this kid's father and sister were killed in a car accident when he was very young. He lives with his mom, brother and other sister, but the tragedy of his life is something he carries with him daily. Literally. He carries a picture of his dad that he'll take out periodically and look at during class.

He continues.

"I have this dream that my dad comes to talk to me." He starts crying so hard he can't speak, so I ask questions. How often do you have it? Every night. Has that happened ever since your dad died? Yeah. Every night since. He collects himself and is able to keep going.

He comes to me every night and talks to me in my dream. But last night-- His voice breaks and he lifts his glasses to pinch the tears out of his eyes with one hand. Last night, when he came he told me he couldn't come talk to me anymore. He said there was something I didn't know about what happened to him, but I wasn't ready to know until I was 17. He said he wouldn't come back to see me until then.

Naturally, I was speechless. I asked more questions.

Were you able to speak to him last night?

Yeah. I kept asking him to tell me what it was and he wouldn't. I kept telling him not to go. But he just kept inching away from me.

Did you tell your mom?

Yeah.

What did she say?

She said that she thinks maybe it's a good thing. That maybe it's because-- He can't talk anymore, so I try to finish his mom's sentence.

Your dad wants to try and help you move on? He nods.

Then it becomes clear that he's said his peace. The proverbial ball is now in my court.

"Honey, I don't really know what to say right now. The only thing I can think is that there are some people out there who would have a hard time believing what you're saying, but I am not one of those people. I am a firm believer that there is a whole world around us at all times that we don't know about and couldn't understand if we did. I guess I think that what your dad gave you--with those visits at night--was a gift, but now that you don't have that anymore, it's not that he's gone. I think it's a little like a one-way glass now; he can see you, even if you can't see him. And I know 17 feels like a lifetime away, but it will be here in the blink of an eye. I know that doesn't help now; right now it just sucks. It just sucks that you don't have your dad to help you grow up."

I asked him if I could give him a hug; if it would be alright. He nodded. Funny middle school trait, though: I hugged him and he stood stock-still, arms at his side. I wanted to laugh out loud when he did that.

I wrote him a pass to his next class and cushioned it with a few minutes so he could go to the restroom or get a drink of water. He smiled at me and wiped his eyes, took the pass and left. My other team leader walked into the room to tell me something, and I burst into tears just as my student rounded the corner away from me.

People wonder why I teach middle school. There aren't words sometimes for the beauty that hides inside my little gangly, awkward, pockmarked adolescents, so I don't really know what to say to them.

But I do know that a battle is raging inside that kid, and he's probably waking up right now and crying, afraid of a life ahead without guidance from the most important man he ever knew. It's the most important battle he'll fight in his life, and I get to bear witness. And maybe, if he lets me, I get to bear arms against his demons, too, and show him that there is light still left in the world, even when his own light has gone out.

So she could always remember what the sun looked like

2011-01-31T19:06:00.005-05:00

We've been very busy in the LeBlanc household lately. Doing stuff like...

fingerpainting with wonderful, magical, no-mess paints.

(She doesn't seem to mind the less-mess version.)

Rearranging the kitchen drawers so the contents are more visible.
For some reason, she felt the need to put her fridge magnets in my measuring cups while chanting, one at a time,"Chicken NU-ggets... Chicken NU-ggets..." I have no idea why.

Working on Valentine's Day crafts.

(Can you tell which one is Emery's and which one is mine?)

Posing for the camera phone, of course. She's even gotten hold of my old Palm phone and has started asking, "Picture, Mommy? Okay?"

I also started working on a cap for goodgoes.org, a non-profit organization that's currently running a drive for homemade newborn hats, either knitted or crocheted. You download the pattern, work up your hat in whatever colors you want, and send it off. But I misread my pattern a bit, so before it looked like this...

it looked like this.

Quite the size difference, right? In fact, most of the way to the end, I stopped and was looking at my hat, wondering how in the world it was the right size for an infant. Brian looked at it and said, "Are you almost done with your twelve-year-old hat?"

So naturally, the hat is his now.

I then decided I needed to make myself a hat, finally. I've been working up lots of stuff for other people lately, and I thought it was high time I made something I could enjoy after I'm done.

After a bit of Googling, I found this Rasta hat pattern that I LOVE. I have wanted a hat like this forever.

And I read a poem once, (a poem I cannot remember or find to save my life), that had a line in it that said: "She wore a yellow hat in winter so she could always remember what the sun looked like."

I've wanted a yellow hat ever since.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing my new yellow hat!

You can see just how big it is by the size comparison with my iPhone. At one point during the crocheting process, Brian said, "Are you almost done with your Frisbee?"

He also made the comment, upon my first try-on last night, that I looked like I should be stoned in order to wear it.

I don't care, though. I like it.

And that's all that matters.

Faster than a speeding... treadmill?

2011-01-30T06:30:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was my first long run to begin training for the Cincinnati Flying Pig Half-Marathon on May 1st, which I am not yet registered to run in but am determined to do. It was a little breezy, and since I haven't been running outside up until this point, I decided to take Emery to the Y and run there. One of my dear friends at work tipped me off to the Y's amazing toddler play room, which is so hidden you practically need a secret password and miner's helmet to find it. I was excited to try it out.

Her nap ended about 1:20, and the toddler room closes at 2:30, so I dressed as quickly as I could and rushed her off to the Y, which is about 10 minutes away.

We get back to the playroom, which is a glassed-in room that overlooks the McDonalds-playplace-on-steroids room for older kids, and she started to get the glazed-over look she sometimes gets when I'm dropping her off somewhere, new or otherwise. I told her I'd walk around the room a little bit with her, all while the extremely nice baby sitter, Ms. Charlotte, is trying to ease Em's transition into the room.

Then the lady turns to me and says, "Mom, you do know this room closes at two o'clock, right?"

"Two?" I squeak. "I thought it was 2:30?" She shook her head and explained that at that time, they would take the toddlers down to the nursery, (which, I must say, is a depressing room that would stifle any child's imagination. It's one of the major reasons I haven't wanted to take Emery with me to workout; I can't bear the thought of dropping her off in a such a depressing place).

I give Em a quick kiss, promise to be back very soon, and take off running to the bank of treadmills so I can take off running. By this time, it was 1:38.

Now, I should preface this next part by saying that even thought I've run two half-marathons already and even though I ran a full marathon once, in the past few months I have done next-to-no running, and it is as if I am starting completely over. I've been taking the tortoise route to running lately, which means I plod steadily through my run but without too much exertion.

Not yesterday, though. I jumped on that treadmill and plowed my way through the two miles I needed to log. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, even though I was running about 2-minutes-per-mile faster than I have been. I finished the two miles in 18 minutes, running a 9:13 pace, before stopping the treadmill and riding it off the back. I couldn't even wait for it to stop completely before heading back to the toddler room.

By this point, finishing by 2:00 had become as much about that "can I do it?" mentality as it was about saving Emery from the depressing nature of the baby room. I rounded the corner and there she was, walking like a good little girl in line with the other little ones, heading my way.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and held out my arms. "Hi, baby! Mommy ran really fast so I could come get you!"

I could have run ten miles in ten minutes for a hug like that.

A sketch

2011-01-25T20:48:00.004-05:00

My inspiration for a moment's creativity comes from the work of Brian Andreas, which can be found at this website. I highly recommend you check it out and maybe, like me, get the daily stories sent to whatever email you actually check. Every day they're good; some days they're damn near clairvoyant.

That guy is a genius. I am a hack.

But here's my attempt:

Just one mile

2011-01-24T15:01:00.003-05:00

Taco soup and friends last night. The girls played and we sipped drinks made with whipped cream vodka (yum!) and watched the game and caught up. It seems every one of my dear friends has gone through something difficult the past few weeks , or now, or is about to, or something to that effect.

And at the end of the night, my next-door-neighbor-and-very-dear-friend stayed and chatted with me as the dark deepened outside and as a fluffy snow started to fall.

We talked about her job and how unhappy she’s been in it. She’s not fulfilled, she’s stressed, and as long as I’ve known her, which is going on five years now, I’ve known that what she really wants to do is teach yoga. Has always wanted. Still wants.

So we chatted about that goal, and what her reasons were for not doing it. I listened as best as I could and gave ideas when I thought of them, and what it all amounted to at the end of the conversation is that she’s not moved forward with her lifelong dream out of fear. Fear of failure, fear of beginning, fear of change—it doesn’t really matter. It’s all just fear.

And then it dawned on me—in talking her through her goals—that I’m suffering through the same malady. Three years ago next month, I completed my first, and only, marathon. I worked by butt off (literally) and uncovered a tenacity in myself I did not understand before. Since then, I’ve run two half-marathons, but I’ve not done any running in about six months. Maybe seven. Okay, who am I kidding? Nine months. NINE. MONTHS.

I stopped running at first because I was tired of training and tired from the race. Usually, you take a couple of weeks for recovery, but this stretched a little longer than usual. I trained for a brief time at the beginning of the school year with the middle school cross-country team, but don’t let it sound juvenile. They’re three-time state champs. These kids can RUN. But then school got crazy and I had to stop.

Then I got pregnant. I stopped running because, with my last pregnancy, my doctor told me, “No more races.” I followed her advice again this time.

Fat lot of good that did me.

I think the reason I sympathize with my fear-addled friend is that if I start training for a race again, I’m admitting that everything that has happened has happened, and I’m ready to be “normal” again. Normal = not pregnant.

I mean, I’m NOT pregnant, but I’m not ready to be not pregnant. Like, in the long-term sense of the phrase.

But, after our hours-long conversation last night over oatmeal cookies and Rice Dream ice cream, I decided being afraid doesn’t make anything better. It doesn’t put back anything that was taken, and it doesn’t protect from the inevitable ills of the world.

It just softly gnaws away at goals.

So this morning while my students were typing and I was unnecessary in my own classroom, I dug out my old training schedule. I was first thinking I wanted to register for a full marathon again. But there are a whole lot reasons to NOT do that right now that have nothing to do with the fact that it’s 26.2 miles. (I suppose that might warrant another blog post by way of explanation.)

Since I’ve done the Derby miniMarathon twice before (I hate that name. 13.1 miles should NOT be called a “mini” marathon.), I decided to look outward and choose a nearby city with a nearby race. I ended up on the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon’s website, which is one of the biggest races in the country for recreational runners. They even have a “Flying Piglet” race, where 2-3 year olds can run a 25-yard dash. Lttle Em could get her first race t-shirt!

I Googled the race a bit, and came across this blog with a post about half-marathons that almost made me laugh out loud while my students were busily typing up their speeches. I decided to include it below; some of my blog readers are runners, and I thought you guys could relate to this.

I'm signed up for the Monument Ave 10K. I have not run since getting a free pass in the form on pneumonia in early February. I have friends coming to town to run the race with me. I have a bib number, new shorts, and 9 days until race day. I'm so going down.

You have 46 days!
You can do it.
All you really need to do is run a mile.
Don't get distracted by having to do it 13 times.
All you really need to do is run one mile.

One mile. That puts you at mile 2, and well on your way. After that, you reach mile 3, and you can't believe you're out there doing exactly what you said you would a couple of months ago.

Take a break at mile 4 and make up a story about the person who just whizzed past you. Imagine that they have overcome great odds to be there--and be inspired by their incredible (albeit imaginary) journey. The story you make up about them will probably have some truth to it.

Ah, mile 5. It's just one mile. All you have to do is run a mile.

At mile 6.2 you will have set a new personal best for your 10K time. Relish it.

Somewhere between mile 6 and 7 you will reach the halfway point. Do not, do not, do not start thinking about Zeno's Dichotomy. You WILL reach your destination.

Mile 7 will bring challenges in the form of hunger and possibly a new blister. Drink your water. Tell Emma a joke. Have one prepared in advance.

Eight miles. Eight miles. Take in the fact that you have just walked/crawled/panted through eight miles.

Spend mile 9 framing up the essay you will be writing about this experience. Think of the first line.

At mile 10 you may have the pleasure of experiencing a fatigue that makes you an emotional firestorm. As your body starts to become more and more tired, your mind will race with memories of every sad thing that ever happened to you in your life. You'll ache for things you have lost. You will think of everyone you would like to see at the finish line, but who will not be there. You will wonder why everyone in the world doesn't just break down weeping at least once a day. You might weep. Right then and there at mile 10. Crying and running is so hard. Embrace it. Before you have completed mile 10, the universe will give you a sign that it is all going to be okay. And that you are exactly where you need to be. Doing what you need to be doing. For me, once, it came in the form of a falling leave that landed squarely into my upturned palm. That leaf was my long gone sister coming to finish the race with me. The stem of it is still taped to my finishers medal.

Try to avoid the maniacal laughter that comes when you start realizing certain things at mile 11. Things such as Could it possibly be true that I traveled to this point voluntarily? You mean to tell me that I actually paid money to be here?

The crowd goes wild at mile 12. Others are finished at this point and are already wearing their medals. They will line the course and cheer for you and all the runners who are still at it. You will feel their energy. Do NOT think about all of the people who have finished before you. Instead, think of the MILLIONS of people who you beat JUST BY SHOWING UP. A long time ago, I finished an early morning 8-mile trail run dead last. My son greeted me at the finish line and said, "Think of all of the people who didn't even sign up for this race--who would never even imagine doing this on a winter morning. You beat all of them".

You'd think that once you reach mile 13 you are done. You will want to hunt down the person who decided that a half-marathon would be 13.1 miles. Insanity. I'm not gonna lie to you, that tenth of a mile might suck.

But then, oh my gosh, then. Then. Then. Then. You will cross the finish line. I am not even going to try to tell you how you will feel. It's a secret. A treat. And it will be ALL yours. I promise you will love May 3.

All you have to do is run one mile.

I think I can do that. I can run one mile. No fear. No pressure. No concerns about fertility or health. I will feel better, I will be more confident, and, most importantly, I will get another sweet race medal.

Catharsis

2011-01-21T20:40:00.004-05:00

One month later and I'm feeling reflective. Life is different, but life is only now worth writing about. (At least for my own purposes.)

I haven't had much to say the last four weeks, only because I haven't been quite sure where to start or how to move on. Or whether, frankly, I wanted to move on.

I spent some time in the hospital in Texas, I spent some time in my doctor's office in Louisville, and I spent some time in school, pretending to be okay. I spent one morning in church, singing and crying in front of (literally) God and everybody, and I've spent every day thinking that maybe NOW I'm over it. (Burst of tears. Recovery.) Okay, maybe NOW.

The worst of everything happened on Christmas night, (which in itself is the worst of everything), but the recovery since then has been infinitely more complicated. While I was in the thick of it, I could blame the pain or the bleeding or the hormones for my seemingly endless bouts of tears. But then that phase ended, and the pain subsided, and something else still hurt. Something indescribable and something not many people a) knew about or b) could relate to. Like I told Brian at one point during our Christmas holiday, it's like there was a death in the family that no one was talking about.

Since we've returned to Louisville, there have been days, weeks even, when I haven't cried. I've mostly been wistful--I've got about a dozen friends that are currently pregnant, and occasionally their milestones (milestones I would have been reaching, too, in an alternate ending) get to me. I haven't gotten really upset about it, because I really am happy for them. But I can't help, try as I might, to feel some sense of loss in the presence of their ever-growing bellies.

Today, after what amounted to about two weeks of no tears ("This facility has been tear-free for TWO weeks!"), I had a not-so-minor meltdown. These seem to happen on snow days, for some reason. (My first bad-news doctor's appointment was on a snow day, for example.) Thank God for that--I could not imagine hearing all the things I heard today and still trying to maintain my composure in front of 120 very nosey, very observant 8th graders. For reasons that are much too selfish to name, I fell apart.

Brian was at work, and Emery has been in recovery from a nasty bout with chronic bronchitis, so we were home from school together, Em and I. Twice during the day, I started a crying jag that I didn't think I'd ever climb out of , and Emery was right there. She's been a real two-year-old lately, throwing fits at the drop of a hat. But today, one look at me crying turned her into a 28-pound ball of empathy. She consoled me, she smiled her sweet baby smile at me, and she held me the way I'm supposed to hold her. I think something in her knew I just couldn't act like Mommy for a minute, and she was brave enough to keep it together for the both of us .

She is a gift, and so is my husband. In the last month, I have learned more than I ever cared to know about miscarriage, including the extremely high rate of pregnancy loss amongst both women I have known for some time and those I've not known that long. I knew it was common, in the way that you know something because you studied it in a book, but now I know it in my bones, and that is a very different kind of knowledge.

Though I am working on it every day, I'm not okay yet. That may be difficult or annoying or inconvenient for some, but I don't care. It just is. I'm not here to impress.

I'm just here.

2010-12-22T11:44:00.006-05:00

An Angel in The Book of Life wrote down my baby's birth,
And whispered, as she closed the book, "Too beautiful for Earth."

2010-12-17T06:18:00.002-05:00

Dear Baby,

It’s very quiet in the house right now. Your daddy and sister are asleep, and I was, but I can’t sleep any longer. I cannot stop thinking about you, and wondering. I am too sad to sleep.

Four weeks ago, I took a pregnancy test and the reading came back positive. Your daddy and I were so happy. Scared, but happy. We wanted so badly to add on to our blessed family and you came at just the right time. I slowly started to tell friends and family, who I’m sure told their friends and family. Your arrival was much anticipated.

But yesterday, in the middle of one of the worst ice storms I can remember in Louisville, our doctor gave me an ultrasound, and you weren’t there anymore. (Part of me wants to explain what the big words I’m writing—like ‘ultrasound’—mean, but another part of me thinks that where you are, you are most certainly wiser than me. Earthly explanations like that are probably not necessary.) You were supposed to be eight weeks old, but your little sack only measured five weeks, and there was nothing inside it but a little yolk. A yolk that you were supposed to be attached to, and weren’t.

How can I explain to you, my Baby, how devastated I was and am? How can I put into words the sorrow I feel in my marrow, that my loss feels like my heart has ripped in two? Did you know, Baby, that when people say their hearts are broken, they can actually FEEL that heartbreak? I can. My hearts hurts.

I don’t know you, since you never were. I don’t know what kind of person you would have become, whether you would have preferred to play quietly or bounce around the room like the Tigger your sister loves so much. I don’t know how long it would have taken for your teeth to come in, or whether you would have been a good sleeper, or whether you would have liked to cuddle. I would have loved you with all that I have and tried so hard to be a good Mommy to you, just like I’ve tried with your sister. I didn’t even know your name.

I know there are people in this life who try in vain to have children of their own and never can, and I count myself so blessed that I have your big sister, Emery. You guys would have loved each other. She’s so smart and empathetic and thoughtful and helpful. She would have played with you and brought you bottles and, when you guys got older, she would have driven you to the mall and shared secrets with you that I would have never known about. She’s only two now, and I’m not sure she understood that you were in my belly, but she said something funny last night. I was on the computer looking up some baby information to help me understand what happened to you, and she pointed to the baby on the screen. “Yook, Mommy. Baby in the belly. BAby in the BElly!” She patted her own stomach and somehow, I knew she knew about you.

There was an ice storm yesterday, Baby—I mentioned that, right? It was fitting. The skies were gray and the roads were slick with invisible slipperiness, and it all matched my mood so perfectly. You just never know when a dark cloud will form, and you never know what icy threat lies in wait for you on the road ahead. I counted my chicken, Baby. I counted on you too early. You were not ready for me to add you into our family tree, and you were called back home to our Heavenly Father, instead of here to your Earthly one.

Your Daddy and I are not done trying. We want to have more children, but I don’t know how the next part works. I don’t know if YOU will come back to be with us, or if my one shot to meet the future you is now gone. I don’t know if now you’re a little angel, and maybe we’ll be visited by another little soul who needs our love and attention. I don’t know if we’ll be visited at all, by you or anyone.

One of the baby books I was reading last night said that miscarriage does not mean that the mother cannot have children in the future; on the contrary, it means the mother is capable of conceiving and has a higher likelihood of conception shortly thereafter. But it also said that with a miscarriage comes a kind of loss of innocence. Now the parents know that not every pregnancy leads to a baby. In the next pregnancy, they will be that much wiser for it.

It’s your innocence I miss, Baby. We didn’t have a name for you, we didn’t have a room yet. But we had prepared our hearts for you. We had talked and dreamed and held each other, hoping and praying for health and prosperity. Not all prayers are answered, though. Ours weren’t this time. You were called Home, and I am left here to try and figure out what went wrong. To try and make a place for another little angel, or maybe you, to come back and fill our hearts all over again.

You are already so missed, Baby. I didn’t know you, but I love you just the same. If you get bored up there with the Heavenly Hosts, come back down and see us. Daddy will teach you how to kick a ball, and I will cook with you and make crafts, and Emery will share her toys and give you the sweetest hugs and kisses. Even Denver will love on you, in her special puppy dog way.
We love you, Baby. We miss you, too. Take care up there in Heaven, and I will think of you every day. Give Jesus a big hug for me.

All my love,
Mommy

A two-year-old's vocab list

2010-11-29T17:03:00.002-05:00

I luh loo = 'I love you'

Mishoo = 'miss you,' synonym for 'I love you'

Gaggis = glasses, which she dutifully fetches for her dad every morning

Mishup = lipstick, which she requries be smeared on her lips afte watching Mommy put on makeup

Suh-shy = shorthand for 'You Are My Sunshine,' the best song in the world

Deewah = Denver, the beloved family dog

Boo baff = Blue bath, now a required nighttime ritual, after receiving Crayola bath drops for her birthday

Habirftay = 'Happy birthday'

Tih-toes = walking on tippy toes

Duh-joosh = Downstairs, or another way of saying she's not tired anymore and wants to play

Jaff = Giraffe

Howl = Owl

Ehfunt = elephant

The consistent answer to "What did you dream about last night?" = puppies & "titty tats"

And her name? Emmy Kaye Bonk

Red eyes

2010-11-03T23:42:00.003-04:00

Too many days
and
not enough time
to reproduce images
in celluloid form
for reminiscing at rehearsals and reunions
Exhausted by the concepts
and unable to communicate the down deep
without sounding whiny
I hold you
and sing that song
for the seventh time
wondering how many versions
I can realize before losing my own sanity
Your wants are simple and few
frustrating in their simplicity and
total demand
I reach out and
hold the hand inside you
best as I can
which is never good enough
to let either of us
sleep through the night.

The Summer of the Bathing Suit

2010-07-21T23:10:00.004-04:00

With a title like that, you know we're going places, right?

This summer, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my bathing suit. Now, I was wish was one of those girls who considered this a really good thing, but I have an extreme aversion to swimsuits. You see, I have always been and will probably forever be so dad-gum self-conscious. It's like parading around in your underwear, people, c'mon now.

It started when we went home for a few weeks in June and went out on my dad's boat or laid by Mom's blow-up pool. (It's a lot less ghetto than it sounds, trust me.) This was the second year I have sported what Brian affectionately (I think?) calls my "Mom Suit". It looks like this:

I think it's really cute, but he's got a thing against one pieces. (I think it's called "being a man.")

Since having Emery, though, I'm still a bit averse to two-piece suits, as my tummy's a little poochier than it was. I'm just not ready to be flaunting all that just yet.

So, while we were down in Texas, I found an AWESOME bathing suit that I LOVED, but had no business wearing. I bought it as incentive to finally lose the five pounds I need to be back to my pre-pregnancy weight, and then the 15 pounds I've been wanting to lose for... I dunno, ten years or so.

This new little suit will, hopefully, be worn when Brian and I head to Aruba for a four-night trip in October to celebrate our 6th anniversary and Father's Day, both (obviously) belatedly. I'm on a strict diet and exercise regimen until then, with hopes of wearing the little bitty swimsuit on the beaches of a tropical island.

Oh, and I took a picture of myself in the suit as a reminder WHY I'm on a strict diet and exercise regimen, for those days when I get sloppy.

But I'm not there yet, and so I remain in my vampy Mom suit, trotting from the pool to swim lessons, where this week I was photographed multiple times by Brian's sister and her boyfriend, a professional photographer. I realize they were taking pictures of EMERY, not of me, but I was still in a bathing suit and having to suffer the indignities of being adjacent to the center of attention. Uncool.

To add insult to injury, next week I go on a leadership retreat to the river with my coworkers/ friends, most of whom I've never worn a bathing suit in front of. Three days of drinking beer (which I'm not allowed to have--too many calories) and floating in a river (in a bathing suit--did I mention that?). I wish I were more excited about this than I am.

Here's the thing: I have never been, nor will ever be, a girl who LOVES to go bathing suit shopping. I'm always fighting the battle of the curvy figure, which people speak so highly of and yet make fun of when they really see it. I have a hard time reconciling that.

I'm married to someone who has to really work to gain weight, and yet I've struggled my whole life to keep it off. I have to work harder and eat less than just about everyone I know, or else the pounds creep up quietly, bombarding me on an otherwise happy summer day or in the dressing room of The Gap.

I want nothing more in this life than for Emery to NEVER feel the way I do about her own body.

I'm getting better about body image as I get older, and I feel like this time I'm really taking my health seriously and considering all the elements when I'm attempting to shed pounds. My weight has always been the albatross I wear around my neck, dragging me down into pits of discontent and self-loathing. Time for things to change. It's not just about me anymore; I need to set a healthy example for my little girl, who's destined to grow up in a voyeuristic, over-sexed culture of the female body. She needs to know what it looks like to be healthy.

Also, I'm pretty sure Brian's gonna make me wear the little bitty bathing suit whether I lose weight or not.

Miss Independent

2010-07-14T11:58:00.005-04:00

The big painted butterfly on the wall of the library rec room was almost a deal breaker, but she walks carefully forward and surveys the room with a skeptic's eye. A few other kids come bounding in behind us, all sticky fingers and energy, and it's clear they've done this before. Veterans. But this is our first Toddler Story Time, and at only 20 months, I'm not even sure she qualifies. We're both a little nervous at the newness of it all.

I find a seat on the carpeted stairsteps meant for arena-style seating and point to the row of stuffed animals lining the opposite wall.

"Emery, did you see the babies over there?" I say, gesturing good-naturedly so she'll see my enthusiasm and know not to fear. Her mouth forms her trademark "O"--that face she makes when something is new and cool and exciting--and she heads toward the wall, making a beeline for the giant lion.

The days are long when you're not used to being a Stay-At-Home-Mom, (or SAHM, the acronym I've learned the online community owns), and since I'm only home during summer months during my recovery time as a middle school teacher, I'm adapting to the extended time with my high-energy baby.

I feel so guilty for feeling overwhelmed by the end of the day--am I not in love with my child? Of course I am. Am I a wimp for feeling worn out, when she still goes to daycare twice a week so I can get prepared for the next school year or get my house clean? Yeah, probably. But we're both learning how to live with each other--her in the world at large, me in the world as it's changed with her in it.

The tension in the room starts to build as the red-headed children's librarian arrives, all saccharin smiles and bright shiny teeth. The crowd has gotten thick now, and Emery has to work hard to snake her way through mommies to get back to me. Everyone starts to sing a welcome song, and she looks at me, no doubt wearing the exact same look of confusion that I am.

"Look who came to read today, read today, read today, here at Story Tiiiime!..." Emery's not impressed by the vocal stylings of the room, but she starts to perk up when Carrot Top brings out the first book, Jump! She is a bookworm, just like me. The kids are instructed to raise their hands in the air and yell the book's title when prompted, and I do my best to keep her on task. Not easy. She's more interested in simply observing, learning the art of Story Time from the seasoned attendees around her.

We finish that book, sing another goofy song, move onto another book, and so on and so forth. As the half hour progresses she starts to become more comfortable, and she eases off my lap down onto the floor, sitting in her own little W shape, feet resting squarely on either side of her body. She's engrossed.

As she's making her innocent, curious way down in front to be closer to the action, I spy a mother in front of me with two small children, their ages flanking Emery's 20 months. They are squirming and fidgeting in the normal way kids do, but the young mom is having none of it. She wants their hineys planted squarely on either side of hers, she wants them to sit still, she doesn't want any ducks out of order. Understandably, the older child is annoyed and the baby doesn't understand. He just feels the urge to crawl away, to seek out adventure in this new, baby-centered world.

Ironically, the independence this mom seems to fear, the kind she refuses to allow in the small window of age that her kids will still listen is the very kind of independence I want for Emery. I don't want her to feel shackled to my side anymore than I want to feel weighed down by the weight of parenting responsibility. This world is ripe for exploring, and I want her to explore it, to grab hold of new opportunities and learn from those around her, ideally without pushing or hurting anyone else to get to what she wants. Of course I want her to be safe and smart, but my greatest hope is that she can learn to work and live harmoniously with her friends, even the new Story Time kind of friends.

The toddler meet-and-greet wraps itself up with some kind of cheesy goodbye song, and Emery and I hold hands as we walk out the door. Well, she holds my one finger, anyway. She often stops our walks to correct my hand-holding, if it's not to her liking, and you know what? I kinda like it that way.

Things keeping me busy... in no particular order...

2010-05-04T21:14:00.010-04:00

Chairing Teacher Appreciation Week activities for Emery's school.

Crocheting a (hopefully) halfway decent blanket for Project Linus, and teaching 30 middle school girls to knit/crochet/sew so they can make one, too.

Watering and fertilizing and praying for the sustained life of my brave little vegetable patch.

(This is a very old picture. My snap peas have grown quite a lot since then, though my lettuce did not survive much longer after this shot was taken.)

Creating a basket's worth of felt fruit for my dear friend Beth's daughter's 2nd birthday.
(I didn't use a pattern, but it was harder than it looks.)
Keeping an eye on Sassy McCool, as always.

Some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant.

2010-05-03T19:00:00.003-04:00

I don't think it's any kind of secret that I love what I do. I was born to teach, I think.

I mean, that's not to say I wasn't born to do other things. But I was born to spend most of my days surrounded by the chaos and wonderment that teachers are used to. It's where I thrive. Lots of days, it's so much fun, I laugh when I get my paycheck in the mail. "Ha! I get paid to do this!" (Okay, I said lots of days, not every day.)

So this next part might sound weird. I have taught at my wonderful school for almost four years now, and at the end of every year, I wonder if that's it. I wonder if I really will be back next year.

I don't know why I keep doing this. I guess maybe because before I became a teacher, the longest job I ever had lasted six months, (unless you're counting part-time jobs, but I'm not. Because they were part-time. Even the name implies non-commitment.)

So here I am, looking down the barrel of tenure, which I will be granted on the first day of my fifth year. Next year. At the end of next year, I'll be able to say I've been a teacher for five years; FIVE YEARS. The only things I've ever done that long were performance stuff, (singing, dancing, etc.) I can't believe I'm grownup enough to be able to say that about a job.

I have found great success in this field. The kids seem to love me (most of them), my colleagues appreciate me (most of them), and more days than not I am happy to get out of bed and be doing what I'm doing. That's more than a lot of people can say, I know.

This year I was a top three finalist for a teaching award sponsored by a local TV station. I wrote six essays, was observed teaching a class, had three separate rec letters filed, and endured a really tough 30-minute interview by a panel of judges. It was exciting and flattering and such an honor. My students were excited for me, my family, my peers. I was excited for me.

Then Friday I found out I didn't get it.

Here's the funny thing--I'm really okay with that. I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about how much other people care about me. Not that I didn't already know, but it sure was nice to get that reminder.

I don't need validation by the local news to know I'm a good teacher. Sure, sure, the black tie dinner in my honor would have been pretty cool--a first for me, for sure--but there'll be other chances. I needed to lose this, I think. If for no other reason than to remind myself that my teaching is not what others think it is--it's what I make it.

I did find out I got the highest interview score. That helped.

You, me, and the bourgeoisie

2010-03-31T20:25:00.003-04:00

I am not nearly the renegade
I want to claim to be.
Disappointment lies cloaked
beneath the charming veneer
and small victories play out in
front of a live studio audience.

Behind door number one a different life
but richer?
More confustrating?
Even those who know us best know not of trials
or sufferings
despite descriptive reenactment.
Why does a mountain of maybes
unfold into a world
of never-knews?
How does daily toil become something
not renegade,
but bourgeois,
and beautiful?

The quick and dirty

2010-03-24T21:11:00.005-04:00

Not much time to blog lately, so here's what I'll do: The following are all the topics I would've loved to blog about in the past six weeks, and (obviously) didn't have the chance to get to...

-Trying to start a garden. Left my seedlings outside during a hailstorm (while at work. Couldn't save them). Since then, my peppers & snap peas are still okay, but my watermelon and squash are suffering. We'll see. More posts on his later.

-Registered Brian and I this weekend for the Kentucky Derby miniMarathon, round two. Have to run 9 miles for training this weekend. Not so excited about that.

-Singing at Maundy Thursday and Easter services this year. Finally singing again, and couldn't be more excited about it.

-Working on starting a Project Linus group at school. My little class of 30 or so middle schoolers is going to make blankets for sick children and I will finally have a legitimate, non-grandmotherly reason to crochet.

-Got tickets for the Bob Schneider concert this Friday night at Jim Porter's Good Time Emporium (intimate setting, and I love his shit!) but still looking for a sitter. Emery will be asleep the whole time, but no options just yet. Leads me to some depressing conclusions....

-Nominated for a teaching award. Really nervous about this. More to come.

-Emery bit a kid at school, although it was basically the other child's fault for sticking her hand in Emery's mouth. Having nursed my child, I can attest: She's got a strong bite.

There's prolly more, but it's bit that kind of week. More to come later...

Home

2010-03-06T21:07:00.000-05:00

Teeming with activity,
family and purpose.
The air feels different.
Smells different.
Smells like Texas.

I can feel his presence in the air, the sounds,
of life back amongst the familiar.
Tomorrow I'll sing for him,
and hug family
and show off the baby.
Though my heart has stone weight.

I read once
'You're always you
and that don't change
and you're always changing.'
How true.
How fitting.
How necessary
to remember.

Death gives pause

2010-03-03T09:10:00.006-05:00

Two phone calls.
Two deaths.
Two lives that'd seen
the best of days
and the worst
in the thousands they'd lived.
Many would be grateful for the
opportunity
to live so long.
Many would be grateful to have
known
such kind souls.
Our lives are
enriched,
having known them.

Death gives pause
to the fact that we are mortal.
We know this
logically.
Few know this
realistically.
I am coming to a place of realization
in my older age.
I will be confronted with mortality
more often
as the years progress.

Life cannot stay static,
no matter how bad or good.
It must change.
Has to change.
Energy enters the world.
Energy leaves the world.
Energy makes impressions on
energy left behind.

I have been asked to honor
one of the fallen
by raising my voice in remembrance
this Sunday.
He praised my singing so much,
more than most.
We sang together,
I sang for his wife,
and now I'll sing for him, too.
This surrogate-grandfather
-slash-
distant-cousin.
This lover of life and of song.

I will travel a thousand miles
(literally)
to honor a man who'd honored me so much.
Emery will come too,
providing much-needed distraction
for a family treading water
to keep from drowning in
grief.

Singing at weddings is easy.
The people are light,
bouyant in celebration.

But here...
emotions you keep at bay
challenge the dam
once surrounded by those
who empathize.

Prayers for the family,
please.
Prayers for a life
now lived
forever,
elsewhere.

Is this weird?

2010-02-23T19:42:00.004-05:00

The day before yesterday, I posted approximately one million hours of video footage from recent Emery exploits. The videos were mostly from this month, including some funny-but-typical baby shots and goofing off around the house. I mostly put them on there so Mallorie's mom and dad could see the girls hootin' and hollerin' and splishin' and splashin'.

It took most of the day for the videos to upload, (stupid YouTube and your stupid slow processing), but by the end of the day, the videos were on there.

I did very little promotion of them, seeing as the videos were uploading while I was at school. That night I posted a link to one of my new favorite videos on my Facebook page, but by the time I'd posted it and returned to my YouTube page, I noticed something fishy.

Many of the videos had been visited, some by friends on Facebook who'd made comments, some by family back home, I've no doubt, and each had between 6 and 20 hits. Not a lot, admittedly, but I don't use YouTube to network or make money; I use it to keep family and friends in the loop when it comes to Emery.

But the one that caught my eye was the video of Mallorie and Emery in the bath tub, which was hilarious in a very baby-ish sort of way. I posted some of the photos here, and I think just about anyone can agree that they're cute and silly, just like the girls.

But the video, which I'd called "Bath Time is the Best Time", had 66 hits in four hours. 66 HITS.

This really, really bothered me.

It probably shouldn't have. I probably should have written it off as Mallorie's family passing around the link and laughing hysterically at our girls' talent in washing each other's hair. But I felt very grossed out.

I took it down.

Am I totally overreacting here?

A friendly visit

2010-02-21T11:21:00.005-05:00

Last weekend for Valentine's Day, our friends Ryan and Melanie swapped nights with us for babysitting. That way, each couple had a little bit of grown-up time, at no babysitting expense.

Saturday night Emery visited Mallorie, and Sunday night, Mallorie came to us. The results of the evening are as follows:

First friends reunited. Hugs all around.

After getting reacquainted, they waved goodbye to Mal's mom and dad, making sure the pair made a safe departure from our driveway.

Then we had a bite of homebaked pizza and sliced apples. Dee-lish. (I know this because Mallorie is a notoriously picky eater, and she ate her whole tray-ful.)

They played a bit with the toys Emery chose to highlight as her personal faves.

(I love this one. Makes Mallorie look guilty. "What? What'd I do?!")

Then the two of them did this for a while:

Screaming like a banshee wears a girl out. Time for a warm, relaxing bath.

You really should pamper your friends, you know.

And make sure to compliment her on her new hair-do.

Who needs relaxing? DING! Round TWO!!!

It was a great night. The next day, however, we got pounded. It was somewhere in the vicinity of 5-6 inches of snow, with more coming every hour for three days. It was rough.

While Brian shoveled the driveway and our steps, Em and I stayed indoors and rooted him on.

"Go Daddy!"

Snow days are cuddly days, to be sure.

Valentine's Day!

2010-02-11T21:29:00.003-05:00

How to make cute, homemade Valentine's cards for a class of one-year-olds. (which really means for a class of one-year-olds' parents):

Step 1: Draw a cute design or four on a piece of paper. Copy and cut out.

Step 2: Glue together pieces of cute grocery store list paper to replicate cardstock.

Step 3: Glue tiny notepad (in coordinating colors of grocery store list) into little envelopes.

Step 4: Place wee amount of seeds in wee little envelopes to give to wee little ones.

Step 5: Take a couple of ibuprofen and/or a glass of wine to alleviate overwhelming smell of rubber cement.

Step 6: Glue "growing"-themed designs to front of cards and tape seed packets to inside of cards.

Step 7: Write a little note that makes adorable connection between "growing" seeds to watching our little friends grow.

Step 8: Personalize and repeat. Eight times.

They turned out pretty cute, though I have no idea why the first picture is turned like that. I uploaded it twice to try to avoid it.

I had high hopes of making homemade treats too, but I think Last-Minute LeBlanc is gonna pick them up at the store in the morning. I'm too pooped. These cute little cards took an hour and several million of my brain cells. (The rubber cement, you know.)

Happy Valentine's Day, friends! Hope it's filled with friendly notes and sweet treats!

Emery hijackes the blog

2010-02-09T09:53:00.004-05:00

Good morning, friends of Mommy.

I haven't been to school in two days. Yesterday I had something called a fever, which made me feel really snuggly and tired. Mom seemed nervous. She touched my forehead a lot, so she stayed home from school too. It was great! We slept in and everything!

And then the snow started this morning.

And now Mommy and I don't have a choice. There isn't any school today for either of us, even if we wanted to go.

I gotta tell ya, we're going a little stir-crazy. Mom keeps saying something about "cabin fever", but we don't live in a cabin, so I'm not sure what she means.

The snow must be getting to her, too.

(I think we may have lost the puppy out there somewhere.)

To help make the days go faster, I'm trying to keep myself busy.

So far, I've rearranged the cabinets.

It was fun, but it didn't help much. And Mommy kept grumbling about having to wash everything again, so I stopped.

Daddy's been tickling me to try to distract me from the cold.

But he had to go into the basement to "make some calls", so that didn't last long.

So I decided to try to scale the new wall that appeared on the stairwell.

It was pretty fun, but Mommy got kinda mad.

I was all, "What's the big deal, Madre? I'm safe."

Anyway, I'm trying to stay positive in the middle of all this snow and not seeing my friends at school. (Mommy's not doing such a good job. Something about doing something bad to a certain groundhog. I was all, "What's a groundhog?")
But I am really ready for the spring. C'mon sun.

You can't make this stuff up.

2010-02-08T07:02:00.004-05:00

Examples from pieces of writing I've spent my weekend grading. They're too funny to keep to myself:

"One of the reasons this is a problem is because of the economic backwardness of the economy."
Find out more about this issue in the files from the Department of Redundancy Department.

"One thing I liked about the book is the way you made learning history fun. An example of this is the part about colonists turning to cannabilism to survive, but our teachers won't mention it because they're dainty."
I am. I am very dainty.

"First of all, this book is acceptionally phenominul."
They'res nuthing relly rong with this won, I just thot it was histericul.

"It's like a teacher in your hands."
Now, she was creating a metaphor here describing how great a book was, but that's an image that's a little too descriptive for my taste.

"Kids should be able to read healthy, enriching stories, not about cursing, drugs , and sex."
I agree. He wrote about Andre Agassi's autobiography Open. No wonder he was disturbed. (Kinda makes me want to read it, though.)

"Time traveling always seems so confusing to me, but you made it easy to understand."
Wow. What has confounded generations of scientists has been proven possible to a 7th grader through a young adult novel. I'll have her write down the formulas for me--there are some college days I'd like to do over.

Oh, so funny, these kiddos. Their quotes are the silver lining on the cloud that is having to grade eight million and nine papers over the weekend.

Diary of a Shrimp-Growing Bookworm

2010-02-07T20:43:00.003-05:00

IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! If you fancy yourself a reader, you MUST READ this book!

I don't often make endorsements like this, because I read a shameful amount of books, (seriously, SHAMEFUL. If you knew how many you'd wonder about my marriage and career and how often I'm feeding and bathing my child. It's a sickness, I think.) but anyone who considers him or herself a "reader" must read Laurie Halse Anderson's book Speak.

I met Anderson and spoke with her briefly in Philadelphia at the NCTE Convention in November. She signed my copies of Wintergirls (which I had already read and loved) and Speak (which I knew a lot about but had never read), but I had not picked up the latter copy until this weekend.

What an idiot I can be.

Speak is in my top five, easily. Right up there with some of the all-times: To Kill a Mockingbird and Peace Like a River and Their Eyes Were Watching God. It's an amazingly amazing book, powerfully powerful, able to render me speechless with all but two adverb/adjectives in my lexicon.

And, by the way... it's about depression.

Well, it's about a girl who suffers a trauma just prior to high school and then falls into a depression, and it's frighteningly accurate. If those sullen teenagers I teach could write books of nothing but their thoughts and fears, those books would sound a lot like Speak. I finished this book-slash-case study in one day. That's fast, even for a redonkulous booknerd like me.

Anyway, it's way good. Go read it.

A "heart-stopping" moment

2010-01-29T11:38:00.004-05:00

15-month checkup today, and Emery has a heart murmur.

Terrifying.

Apparently, though, this is not one to worry about. Dr. McCormick (whom I love and trust completely) said it's called a "flow" murmur or an "innocent" murmur, which I guess is the kind of murmur you want to have if you have to have one.

He listened to her heart as she was sitting up so still and so patiently on my lap, and then he laid her down and listened some more. This apparently helped determine what kind of flutter was in there, because when Emery lay down, it went away.

He also said that should she ver spike a fever the murmur will be very obvious. If ever we needed to take her to the ER, the doctors there will surely ask how long she's had a heart murmur. Apparently, it's my job to tell them it's a flow murmur, and not a big deal.

Of course, I went home and Googled it. Web MD says:
A heart murmur is an extra sound that the blood makes as it flows through the heart. Your doctor uses a stethoscope to listen to your heartbeat. When you have a heart murmur, your doctor can hear an extra whooshing or swishing noise along with your heartbeat.

It can be scary to learn that you or your child has a heart murmur. But heart murmurs are very common, especially in children, and are usually harmless. These normal murmurs are called "innocent" heart murmurs. There is nothing wrong with your heart when you have an innocent murmur. Up to half of all children have innocent murmurs. They usually go away as children grow. If you have an innocent murmur, you do not need treatment, because your heart is normal.

So I guess if this is gonna be a reality for now, it's not as bad as my imgination would suggest.

Ah, parenthood.

The lexicon of a 15-month-old

2010-01-26T05:45:00.008-05:00

January 27th is Emery's 15-month birthday, which sounds a little like Alice in Wonderland's celebration of her "unbirthday". It's a pretty big deal, though--big enough that I have to take her in for her 15-month checkup on Friday. Why would this milestone need a checkup if it weren't... well, a milestone?

Anyhoo, I thought I'd break down the words Emery is working on right now.

Mommeee & Daddeee

(She sounds like a little French person, emphasis on the second syllable.)
puppeee

(For our dog, Denver, or just about any other dog in the world. She often wakes uo saying this. She'll also bark on command.)
mimi

(Emery. This is about the cutest thing ever.)
mah

(More. She also signs when saying this, in case we're really dense.)
mah

(Also 'milk'. She'll do a different sign for this one.)
no

(Shakes her head)
yeah

(Nods her head)
ackle

(Apple)
bah

(Ball)

buh

(Book, usually when she's asking for us to read one.)

hot

(She blows on whatever it is after saying this.)

hiiiii

bye-bye

bebe

(Blanket)
chee

(Cheese)
pah-pah

(Her attempt at Pop-Pop, my dad's grandpa name.)

Upon request, she will sign the following:
Please
Eat/food
More
Thank you

(This one's a bit inconsistent, but we're working on it.)
Milk
All done

She seems to understand a few words/phrases, too, even though she can't say them yet.
Do you want (fill in the blank)?

(She'll respond to this question.)
Snack

(She knows and loves this word, my little piglet.)
Sit down.
Put that down.
Come see me.
Give that to (fill in the blank).

And recently we've been working with her on animal sounds. She makes the sounds for:
puppy

(a sort of guttural dinosaur noise, twice in a row)

cat

("nooo")

cow

("mo")

bird

("teet teet")

lion

("rawr")

tiger

(same as lion)

fish

(She actually sucks her cheeks in and makes the face for this one. SO FUNNY.)

I'm sure there are more words than this and Brian will have to correct me. She's growing so fast, I just cannot believe how much she already knows how to do! I know I'll probably regret saying this later, but I can't wait until she can talk--I want to hear what's going on in that little head of hers!

Hanging with friend Mallorie in Mal's Radio Flyer.

We wanted to wear our rain coats... so what?

Hugging on Mallorie's puppy Brinkley. Denver does not let her do this.

Mommy's little ragamuffin.

Fairy princesses wear jeans, did you know?

I like to say I'm crafty (in every sense of the word)

2010-01-24T22:01:00.015-05:00

Until about a month ago, my talents only lay in the things I had always known how to do fairly well: sing, teach, mother, wife (is that a verb?), sew (a little), knit (even less), Facebook (fairly sure that's a verb), and run. Or jog. Depends on the day.

And then, right around Christmastime, I got a wild hair and decided to teach myself how to crochet.

Now, I knew how to make a crochet chain already, but that was it. I could make one looong chain. If you needed a long chain, then by golly! I could MAKE you a long chain!

But I had my sights set higher. I wanted to make hats! and scarves! and (sharp intake of breath) flowers! You can't make flowers when you knit! (Or maybe you can. I only ever made scarves. I never got around to the more advanced knit-witchery.)

At my middle school's book fair in November, I purchased a crochet set (meant for 12-year-olds) that looked pretty user-friendly (because it was meant for 12-year-olds). When I finally got home and was able to spend some time on it, (read: Emery was distracted by members of her extended family) I took it up.

And now I am addicted.

First of all, crocheting is SO MUCH EASIER than knitting. I don't know why I ever bothered with two needles. The yarn falls off. If you drop a stitch, there's a very complicated method for picking it back up again, (which usually meant I just pulled it out and started all over, or else there was a big hole in my knitting.) (Is it just me, or are there A LOT of parentheses in this post? Hmm.)

It's faster. It only involves one little hook, and if Emery is getting into something, I can set it down quickly without worrying that I'll never figure out where I left off. Not so with knitting! I was always lost, it seems.

No. I am now a loyal crochet convert.

I started by making little jewelry envelopes, (which I gave as gifts to friends of the family). Then I moved on to flowers (so fun! I attached them to everything!) and a bath bar (a little pouch for a bar of soap. Gave this one to my brother.) Some of these projects don't have pictures, because I was making them so quickly I didn't have time to stop and papparazzi my work.

I did get a shot of this one, though:

Emery "helping" me crochet her scarf.

"Idn't my scarf just precious?"
(I'm really proud of this project, actually. It has a little hole for you to tuck one end of the scarf into the other, and it's secured by a double-sided flower on one end. I designed it! Can you believe it?)

Prior to my learning the crochet process, when it was still in the idea phase, I was shopping around for inspiration at Joann's--my favorite of all craft stores--and I found this incredible free crochet pattern for a "Pond Friends Stacking Toy". Now, I stress that this was when I had no idea what I was doing with a crochet needle. This monster project was kind of my great white whale, if you'll allow the huge reach for a literary analogy.

So, come New Year's, and I've made a scarf, a ton of flowers, lots of little envelopes, and I'm almost to the end of my 12-year-old's pattern book. I decide it's now or never. It's time for the Pond Friends.

I had no idea this project would take a month of my life.

Now, to be fair, I decided to make two at a time: one for Emery and one for her BFF Mallorie for Christmas. I had gotten Mallorie a little something already, but I wanted to make her a special present, one that meant more than something store-bought.

So for every piece of the toy I finished, I went back and made a second one. Row by row. It took forever, but it was so worth it. Lemme show you.

The original Lion Brand pattern looked like this:

"Hello! I am an adorable, easy (looking), FREE project from the craft store! Buy my supplies and be fooled into making me!"

The one I actually made (well, the TWO I actually made) didn't look totally unlike that pattern. They weren't exactly the same, though.

"Hi! I am the actual pond friends toy! I am MUCH LARGER than I appear on the pattern!"

It's true. The pattern made it look like the toy would turn out somewhere in the six inch height range. It ended up being more like 16 inches, and please don't get me started on all the comments made about what the frog post looked like without the bumblebee and ladybug and dragonfly rings around it.

But I still think it was mighty cute. I even found these adorable labels at Hobby Lobby and affixed them to the bottoms of Mallorie's and Emery's toys.

The girls seem to enjoy them, and now I'm working with Mallorie's mom Melanie on some beginning crochet stuff so she can make one too. Good times.

Oh, and I learned something else. Baby girls can turn just about anything into jewelry.

2010-01-19T19:25:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I wonder if here is where I'm supposed to be or if where I'm supposed to be is on the way to some bigger there and then I wonder whether the wondering makes me seem disillusioned or ungrateful or illogical because look at what I've got... people would kill to have what I've got and it's that thought that makes me come back to where I am, grounded in what I'm doing at that moment and then I'm reminded by the light in his eye or the twinkle of her laugh that here is exactly where I'm meant to be, in this very moment, and that they are so right to say that you should be happy in this moment, for this moment is your life.

S.A.D.-ness

2010-01-13T08:59:00.002-05:00

Not such a good day today. Emery woke up with a diaper that really put Pampers to the test, and I could smell the stench of nighttime poop from the hallway outside her room. Not good. I tried to change her; she screamed. I tried to take off her jammies and put on her school clothes; she screamed. I tried to set her down to make her a cup of juice; she screamed. Then I went to drop her off at daycare, and…

Well, you get the idea.

The thing that kills me is I’m already having a hard enough time as it is staying motivated to come to school, without having Emery’s tear-stained face and grabby little hands burned into my brain for the rest of the day. All I really want to do is snuggle up on the couch with her and Brian and wait out the winter. I never felt this way in Texas—I never felt sad during the winter months, perhaps it had to do with the fact that my wardrobe didn’t really change because the weather didn’t really change. You’d put on the same clothes you did in the spring and fall, only you’d put a lightweight jacket on top and, for the most part, you’d be fine.

I think maybe I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. (Thus the 'S.A.D.' title of this post.)

I addition to winter-born sadness and child-born sadness, my heater in my car is all jacked up and I left my coffee (an extremely delicious Peppermint Mocha HEB coffee blend) on the side table in my front entry this morning. My first block is going to have to struggle through a coffee-free teaching experience this morning, while I wait for the not-as-delicious school coffee to percolate in my veins.

I am grumpy.

Perhaps, then, today would be a good day for the first Grateful Journal entry of 2010:
1) I am grateful for our 6th wedding anniversary coming up this Sunday. What an accomplishment! Brian and I have worked hard to maintain our love, respect, and pride in one another, and we’ve got another successful year of marriage notched on the belt to prove it. Yay us!

2) I am grateful for good friends. Our neighbors came over Sunday to exchange Christmas presents with us, and it was such fun. Good food, good conversation, and good company!

3) I am grateful for good coworkers. I have had some much-needed conversations this week with some of my dearest work pals; I’m so thankful for them.

4) I am grateful for the opportunity to sing at church this Sunday. Brian says it’s an audition for their contemporary service singing group, and maybe that’s true but I haven’t sung anything but lullabies for about three years. It’s time for SOMETHING musical to happen in my life.

5) I am grateful for the cool writing group I found online this week, called The Stuffed Owl Aspiring Writer’s Group. How perfect is that?! The first meeting is this Saturday, but I’m not sure I’ll be ready for it. I’m thinking I may check it out in February. Still, it’s really nice to have an outlet and some accountability for my writing.

6) I am almost finished with my big craft project that I made for Emery and her friend Mallorie. I can’t go into details yet, because I haven’t given it to Mallorie yet, but as soon as I’m done, I’ll post pictures and tell you all about it. (See the "What I'm Working On" tab on the right for a link to a picture of the example. Pretty cute.)

7) “The Big Bang Theory” is back! I love that show. It’s waaaayyy better than American Idol, which was a tired format about three seasons ago, in my humble opinion.

8) It’s Wednesday, and I don’t have to run today. Although I love the way I feel when I’m finished, I do love the days off from mini-marathon training; I can just go straight home from school instead of heading to the stinky ole gym.

Hmmm. I guess I have more to be grateful for than I thought. Good reminder.

Emery: A Multimedia Presentation

2010-01-11T20:07:00.006-05:00

So I FINALLY got around to uploading the videos from our camcorder, and while I wait one thousand years for them to upload to YouTube, I thought I'd share my all-time favorite from this year.

This happened only last week, so it'll really show how grown-up Emery has become. Girl's got sass. I have no idea where she gets it.

Reflections of a foodie... (or at least someone who watches a lot of "Top Chef")

2010-01-09T19:47:00.006-05:00

I would like to take a moment to apologize for not being present on the blog sphere as of late.

I could go into lengthy explanations of my recent return to work (hectic) after a trip home to Texas (fun) and a busy Christmas/New Year's break (blessed).

But I won't. The sheer vastness of the blogs I'd need to fill each of those stories in would take me all night, and I'm tired. (Which has also been the reason I haven't blogged lately. I'm tired.)

So I guess I'll skip ahead to right now. Right now I'm thinking abooouttt.... food.

Yes, food. And no, I'm not hungry.

Around this time of year, much like the rest of Western civilization, I start to get reflective about the kind of food I'm eating and what it's doing for my body. I haven't felt all that great these last, oh... two months or so, and I think poor nutrition and an inconsistent fitness regimen are to blame. This has led me to make a few resolutions, because--to quote the headband-y girl from the Progressive Insurance commercials--"It's resolution season!"

I won't bore you with all the gory details, (I did mention I'm tired, right?) but I'll give you the Reader's Digest condensed version.

In 2010, I resolve to:

1. Ensure that 1/2 of my daily nutrition comes from fruits or vegetables.

2. Make more meals from scratch.

3. Start the "Emery" diet.

Now anyone who knows Emery might think that by the Emery diet I'm also referring to the seafood diet--when I see food, I eat it.

You'd be wrong. No, I'm actually serious on this one.

I won't allow Emery to drink sodas, eat greasy, fatty, fried foods, or indulge in anything that's high on empty calories and low on nutrition. So why should it be okay for me to eat that stuff? If I start eating nutritionally dense food at each meal--really making each bite count--I'll feel better, I'll look better, and I'll be setting a good example for her.

Like right now: I really wanted one of the scrumdidliumptious oatmeal cookies I made last night--with chocolate chips AND whole wheat flour!--but I refrained. I had two after lunch. So instead of scarfing down two more, I'm eating a carrot. It's kind of sweet, but more importantly, it's satisfying my need to snack.

Okay, so it's a little tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, granola-making, hippy-ish to eat a carrot for dessert. But I FEEL better. That should count for something, right?

Phew! Enough deep thought for one night. You didn't come to this blog to read what I write. You came for pictures. I know my audience. So here are some of the latest:

29

2009-12-15T06:25:00.003-05:00

Today's my birthday.

Well.

I have a lot of feelings about my last year as a twenty something. For example, I'm teaching poetry right now. Yesterday, I shared a presentation to my students about places where poetry "hides" in my life. I showed them a picture of me and my dad fishing, circa 1986. One of my students not-so-softly said, "If that's a picture from when she's five years old, shouldn't it be in black and white?"

Ouch.

Aside from the fact that youth is wasted on the young, I have come to a simple, but cliche-sounding conclusion. I really, truly, honestly need nothing for my birthday.

This may be the first year I've said that and mean it. But it's true. I don't want anyTHING for my birthday.

Instead, I want experiences. I want time to spend with my family--the promise of an uneventful evening at home, or the excitement of a night out with Brian.

I want them to be healthy.

I want ME to be healthy, so I have all the time in the world to spend with them.

My students--the nice ones, not the ones that call me old--are always asking me what I want for Christmas, and I'm always stumped by this question.

I have everything I want.

How much luckier can one girl get?

What a difference a year makes

2009-11-28T08:08:00.003-05:00

All I can say is WOW.

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving 2009

"And all the turkeys cowered in fear at her approach..."

2009-11-26T06:47:00.002-05:00

Not such a mild-mannered schoolteacher on Turkey Day... did you know? I'm a turkey-thirsty roaster of turkeys. Mmmm... Turkey-licious.

Last year's Thanksgiving vs. This year's...

Last year...

I didn't plan out my menu very well, and we ended up eating kinda late. (Around 8 pm)
We fed Brian's boss, whose house literally almost burned down when he was on a road trip. (Long story.) In short, he came back and his family kept going. He had to eat somewhere.
I had to skip out on the meal halfway through to nurse the baby. I wasn't dressed appropriately. It took forever.
Emery wore a cute little fall-ish outfit, and mostly slept through the meal. She really had no idea what was going on.

This year...

I started the brine much earlier, so the turkey would be done at an appropriate time for eating.
Our neighbors/best Louisville friends are coming over to join us. Sometimes they go back to New Jersey, sometimes they're in Northern Kentucky, but this year they get to spend the holiday with us! Yay!
We'll be linking satellites at 3 pm today to video conference with my entire family. Not because they miss ME, of course, but because they're dying to see what Em is wearing. I'm okay with that.
The A&M/UT game is TONIGHT. That's jacked up! Why did they decide to do this? Good news: it IS showing on ESPN here. I have a happy husband today.

Updates and pictures will come later, when there are updates and pictures to actually show. Until then... say your prayers, Turkey.

Just when you think you've got it all together...

2009-11-16T18:24:00.003-05:00

...Monday comes along and slaps you in the face.

Last night, my bills were paid, my laundry was done, and my baby was sleeping the sleep of...well, babies. I cooked an easy, wholesome, yummy dinner, I got a bit done on Emery's blanket, and caught up on my favorite vigilante serial killer TV show, Dexter.

In short, I was on top of the world.

Then today comes along, and I am drowning.

I'm planning a field trip for 400 students to Cincinnati, which has been a near-constant reminder of just how sucky I am at keeping details in mind when planning. So tomorrow we're all on the trip, which means I have lost a day for planning the rest of the week. I have a newspaper meeting after school, which means I had to have the entire paper laid out, proofed, and printed TODAY, as well as organizing the meeting minutes for my staffers tomorrow, which also had to be done TODAY.

I am spearheading a teambuilding project for the faculty, which has to be compiled, organized, and printed by Wednesday afternoon's faculty meeting, which really means TODAY, since I'll be on the aforementioned field trip tomorrow.

Then Thursday at the crack of dawn, (or even before, really), I am driving 10 hours to Philadelphia for a national English teachers' conference. My colleague and I are road tripping--because we're cheap, let's be honest--and at said convention I'll be presenting two mini-sessions on technology in the language arts classroom. This means a couple of things--I have to have two days of sub plans written by Wednesday afternoon, (which, in this case, really does mean Wednesday, not today), and I have to have compiled and copied all the elements of each of my presentations before taking off down the Philadelphia Turnpike Thursday morning.

Normally, I would do these things after school for an hour or so, but tomorrow I have a meeting with the newspaper staff from 3:30-5pm, and Wednesday I have a faculty meeting from 3:30-4:30, at least. The baby's got to be picked up by 6, and I work 30 minutes from her daycare. You do the math.

To top it all off, Emery's had runny poop for the last week, and the pro biotic powder the pediatrician told me to mix in to her food isn't helping, because she WON'T EAT IT. She threw a raging, bloody fit when I tried to feed her the oatmeal I had spiked.

SO. In an effort to stay positive, I'm going to grateful journal tonight.

1. I am grateful my family is safe and home together for the evening.
2. I am grateful for the yummy-smelling Italian sausage dinner on the stove.
3. I am grateful I had good lessons today, even if everything else was screwed.
4. I am grateful for my husband, who "shift changed" with me so I could blog and decompress.
5. I am grateful for my supportive family and friends, who, though they can't always help, are always willing to lend a hand.

Your daily dose of weird

2009-11-09T20:10:00.005-05:00

Thanks to Statcounter.com--a very cool website that tells me all kinds of statistics about who's reading my blog, (I'm onto you, anonymous blog reader in Morgantown, North Carolina!!)--I have some very weird--albeit hiLARious--stats to share.

One reader in Washington, D.C. found my blog about our dreaded mouse situation by Googling "mouse poop in cushions".

One found my little corner of the Net by Googling "where are the ketchup and mustard grammar". Now, I have no idea what that means, but this creative Google phrasing led them to a post of mine that had something about grammar in its title.

Did you know I have readers in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, United Kingdom? And Roden, Drenthe, Netherlands? And even Taichung, T'ai-wan, Taiwan?

I know what you're thinking.

"Haywards Heath? Lauren, EVERYONE has friends in Haywards Heath."

Well, I'm just a little impressed with myself, is all. Let me have my moment.

(But it IS weird, right?)

Yesterday, a year

2009-10-28T22:50:00.003-04:00

In the hazy fog
of my induced twilight
your voice rang out clear
and true
and quite like a little piglet.
One year ago,
you cried and fought
and demanded a thumb
and were whisked away from me
before I even saw your face.

You were weighed and wiped
and shivered in the cold
of a newly encountered air,
having only recently been encompassed
with the warmth and comfort
of a woman you both hardly knew
and knew better than anyone.
I was a mere vessel.
A ship of life
carrying you to a new shore.

And here you are,
sprightly and vibrant
and so full of life
that, sometimes, it hurts to look at you.
You command attention,
even when you don't mean to,
but especially when you do.

Everything has changed
and nothing has changed.
I feel,
by turns,
I have aged twenty years
and not at all.
The time has passed in a blink.
The time has passed by the slow creep of hours
spent waiting for you to feed
to sleep
to wake
to see
to walk
to grasp.

Waiting for you to know me.

How can I explain to one so small
that my life has been irrevocably changed
by only your presence in it?
My body has changed,
my lifestyle,
my time,
but none of that matters
in the way it once did.

My mind has changed.
The world has
at once
been drained of color
and renewed of it.
Dark corners are darker
and sunny days more vibrant
because I see them again through
a first-timer's eyes.
I feel more deeply,
love more fully,
sleep harder
and lighter than ever before.

I watch as you step tentatively,
reaching out for me, for Daddy, for a nearby chair,
as you begin to make your way in this world.

Only one year ago, I didn't know
your name
your face
your smile
your laugh
your anger
your fear
your hands.

I only met you
one
year
ago.

How can it be that

already

I cannot
imagine
life without you in it?

Working from home... so don't tempt me, Internet.

2009-10-19T08:10:00.005-04:00

Home by myself today. I think this is the first time in a LONG time that I've been home by myself.

It's the first weekday of my fall break, and I actually have work to do. Grading papers, planning for next week, getting my house in shape to go out of town on Wednesday all meant that it was necessary to take Em in to school today so I can move around the house freely. I feel some guilt, sure, but I'll feel so much better when everything's done.

Incidentally, I was met with this funny little quip in my inbox this morning. Thanks, Babycenter. You've overcome your poopy emails. I forgive you.

How old are you now?
In one short week, your baby will be 1 year old!

You, however -- thanks to those nights of not sleeping,

making each day equivalent to two days -- will technically be two years older.

And when you factor in the bionic aging power of babies, this is really 20 years.

Which explains a lot, no?

Indeed, it does, Babycenter. Indeed it does.

First friend's first birthday

2009-10-18T11:10:00.020-04:00

You may have noticed there have been conspicuously few pictures in my diary as of late.

We went on a picnic a couple of weeks ago, and somehow the camera got tossed in a bag with a leaky sippy cup, and it just stopped working. Kaput. End of the Kodak Easy Share road.

I have wanted a "magic camera" for some time--and have whined about wanting one for as long as I've had the idea in my head--but it wasn't really an option until recently. Due to our child's upcoming birthday party, and due to our even more quickly upcoming trip to Arizona, and due to my insatiable need to take really good pictures and no equipment to do that with, we swallowed the pill.

We bought a camera.

Wait... let me rephrase that. We may not be able to pay our mortgage this month because we invested in a Canon EOS Digital Rebel Xsi SLR nearly professional-grade camera.

It looks like this:

It's probably the most expensive electronic device I've ever owned, including the computer I'm typing on, which is only a year old.

Anyway, to celebrate this momentous occasion, we carted the camera and all its accouterments to our friend Mallorie's first birthday party. Some of the highlights of this night are as follows:

Birthday girl, Mallorie Reagan, with mommy Melanie.

Homemade cake and lots of family and friends. Good times.

And a loyal friend to assist with cleanup. Thanks, Brinkley.

Emery quite enjoyed test-driving Mallorie's birthday presents.

And being the center of attention. Or trying to, anyway.

" Hi! Two more weeks til I get to do this, too!"

C'mon, Lou--gimme my maracas!

Emery imitating my silly camera face.

It was a great night. We hung out with friends, ate cupcakes, Emery consumed almost an entire bag of smoked bologna (don't ask), and stayed up waaay past her bed time.

Which, naturally, led to this:

Morning-after face. She had a sugar hangover, and it wasn't pretty.

But the party sure was fun! Thanks, friend Mal!

Some really, really wonderful things about my day, (in no particular order):

2009-10-12T19:06:00.005-04:00

The crappy coffee that I bought at Target (pumpkin pie flavored--Sounds good, right? Wrong. TERRIBLE.) actually became not only decent but downright YUMMY when I put in about twice as many grounds as the normal allotment. I drove to work a happy, caffeinated girl.

Emery ate all her breakfast and didn't throw a fit this morning. Usually not a big deal, except that lately she's refusing almost all food. (I think it's the horrible, painful-looking molars cropping up in the back of her little bitty mouth.)

I was observed this morning, and it went swimmingly. This is really good when you take into consideration the fact that I forgot about planning for said observation until about 8:15. My class started at 8:30. Good thing I can wing it with the best of 'em.

One of my students brought back a book I loaned her that I'd been dying to read myself, and I just finished my other book last night. GREAT timing.

Edited and finalized a really kick-ass first edition of the Patriot Press newspaper, to be distributed Wednesday. My kids are AWESOME writers.

Outside during recess time, one of my special ed students asked me to walk with him around the circle. As we walked, I showed him the new edition of the paper, (which I happened to be editing at the time), and he cut in with this: "You know, you've been my favorite teacher so far this year." LOVE it. Coming from this tough little cookie, that's quite a compliment.

Wore an outfit I really like today. Felt cute all day. (No small feat.)

Brian had a customer dinner tonight, and while I was planning a quickie empty-calorie fast food meal for myself on my drive home, he called and said he brought home Jason's Deli for me and it would be waiting in the fridge. Love that man of mine.

Bath time was the BEST. Picture it: Em splashing in her baby tub, David Gray doing a live set on World Cafe in the background, Mommy holding a glass of wine and sitting next to the tub, splashing with baby and laughing at her antics.

Emery went down with very little fight, lulled to sleep by David Gray's voice singing some smooth ballad from his new album.

Only 7 pm and I have the whole night ahead of me. Maybe I'll read? Take a bath myself? Surf the Web for a while? The possibilities are endless.

The house of the Sicky Sickersons

2009-10-07T21:06:00.003-04:00

Dateline: Crestwood, Kentucky.

It's 3:00. I'm halfway through my last block of the day. We're in the middle of a discussion about washing your hands properly (Sing the "Happy Birthday" song through one time, people!), which was spurred by--although my class doesn't know it--the email I had gotten earlier that day confirming that one of my 2nd block students has H1N1. Fucking pig flu.

So because I'm concerned--and rightfully so, I think--about my child's welfare, I have a long-winded discussion with each block about washing their hands, which brings us back to the moment. Right in the middle of it, I get a phone call from the front office. It's Brenda on the line, and she says those eight ominous words, words I never want to hear.

"Lauren, I've got your daycare on the line."
(You counted them, didn't you? To see if I counted properly? Well, there ARE eight. 'I've' is a contraction. Suck it.)

Sam, Emery's teacher, tells me that Em has spiked a temp of 102.8, (currently her highest temp on record! Yahoo! Oh... wait...) I rush out of the room, barely giving my AP time to cover my class and barely giving instructions for my students to have any work to do. My girl needed me. I was OUT of there.

Did I mention that Brian is out of town until tomorrow? Business conference in Vegas. I've been a single parent for five days. The plot thickens.

I get to the school and instead of rushing her over to the pediatrician's office, I rush her home. The doctor couldn't get us in until like a quarter to midnight or some shit, so we went home for a few hours and waited.

By the time we got there, the entire eastern half of Louisville was waiting in the waiting room. Some of the kids were snotty boys with mean Mommies, and some were snotty boys with nice Mommies, so mostly I tried to keep Emery occupied until they called us back.

Once there, in the exam room, she was crabby, crabby, crabby. I tried the following:
Pacifier: Nope.
Juice: Not interested.
Bear: I'll pass.
Blanket: Not now.

At my wit's end, I tried our bungee jump routine: flipping her upside down on my lap and screeching, "Upside-down babEEEE!", which she usually loves. This time she tolerated it, but the more important part of that moment was the fact that I learned she was getting not one, not two, but FIVE new teeth. One on the bottom right, two on either side of her top teeth, and two molars on top. Jeezuz, no WONDER she's been pissed off at the world since Brian left. She was aching, her and her poor little gums.

Anyway, long story short, cuz I'm tired and crabby and no longer in the mood for detailed blogging, we stayed at the doctor's office for forever and a day to be told that she did NOT have the flu, (thank GAWD), but she does have some kind of virus. Her fever will not go down tonight, and it will probably stay up tomorrow, too, so she need to stays home from school. Which we are.
Sub plans have been submitted and emails have been sent. We're officially playing hooky tomorrow. (Although can you call it hooky if you're flat on your back, shivering from the cold but burning up at the same time? I didn't think so.)

This is really, truly the sort of email I am now getting on a regular basis.

2009-10-06T21:09:00.008-04:00

The following is from my previously beloved mommy advice web site Babycenter.com. This is the site that got me through my preganacy, the first tumultuous months of mommyhood--and has now succeeded in totally creeping me out.
Really, Babycenter? Really?! Compare my baby's poop to PICTURES of OTHER BABIES' POOP?! What mothers on God's green Earth are taking pictures of their childrens' squishy dipes and submitting said pictures to an online magazine?

A picture of a baby getting his cute little tush wiped? REAlly?! And then, just below this whole poop-inspired email--an email wholly dedicated to poop-related stories and all things poopiness--there's this little jewel:

"Know someone who would love these emails?"

No. I don't. My friends are normal, and amazingly, Babycenter, they don't want their inboxes flooded with emails about poop any more than I do.

Honestly.

Evolution

2009-10-04T20:07:00.004-04:00

I have come to a place not so much of peace, but of understanding.

Once upon a time, I had delusions of grandeur. I believed--as many young people believe these days, I think--that I was special, that I was different, that I was set apart. I truly believed that I was destined for richness and fame because of my talent and "specialness". I was going to live the new American dream. I was not going to grow up to be a "normal" person, not just another number in the growing American census.

But time passes. Reality sets in, and so does age--old age? How old do you consider 28 to be?--and your perspective changes. The paradigm shifts.

I am a schoolteacher. I am married to a salesman. We have a baby, and a dog, a two-car garage, and a mortgage. Could my life BE any more normal?

And yet, I am perfectly okay with this.

If I were to have a conversation with my 18-year-old self, I'm sure there's lots she wouldn't understand. She wouldn't get why I'm not pounding the pavement in NYC, working to get an audition or that coveted part on Broadway. She wouldn't be able to accept that I haven't been to a real audition in four years. She would not be able to fathom that my coworkers have never heard me sing.

She would be curious about the baby, because she doesn't have much experience with babies. She would wonder about my teaching career, probably calling it "pedestrian". She would look around my very suburban neighborhood and accuse me of selling out. If I'd bought a house, it should have at least been in an interesting neighborhood, like the Highlands or Crescent Hill.

But I know things she doesn't know. I know of the alchemy of loss. I understand that those volatile college years--both wicked and wonderful--are a mere microcosm of life, like a lens zoomed in too close on one object. Life is so much more rich and complicated and wonderful and terrible than those four self-righteous years in the bubble.

I know what it means to work for love, to not just sit back and let it happen the way it can when you're young. I know about bringing life into the world, and the complexity of emotions that come with that: the confusion, the bone-deep exhaustion, the loss of sense of self, the love that doesn't know how big your heart is, so it splits it wide open.

My life may be simple. It may be small and it may seem interchangeable with so many other lives out there. I may never make an impact outside my house, my community, my hometown.

But I've learned that importance is relative. Because to a small few, I am irreplaceable.

When my little girl cries, she calls for "Mama". When she reaches out, it's for me, and me alone.

So a small life? It's perfectly fine by me. In fact, I think it's what I've wanted all along.

Our new winter hat

2009-10-03T08:40:00.003-04:00

Ketchup and mustard

2009-09-27T20:46:00.007-04:00

In class, sometimes I'll have what I like to call a "ketchup and mustard" day, which is code for "Catch up on work, must you?"

Let's call this post the ketchup and mustard post. I have neglected you, little blog, and it's time to catch up. I must.

Item #1 on the Ketchup List: My new cooking project.

As inspired by the October issue of Real Simple, the greatest magazine EVER, I am embarking on the most ambitious cooking project I have ever tried. One dinner a night for AN ENTIRE MONTH. The menus are laid out, the shopping lists are pre-written--I just need to buy and chop and stir and serve. So the first week's ingredients are in my fridge and tomorrow's protein is thawing. On the menu? Tilapia with Peppers and Olives. I'll let you know how it goes. Hopefully I won't fizzle out after a week or two. (Hell, who am I kidding? Hopefully I won't fizzle out after a DAY or two.)

Item #2 on the Ketchup List: Emery's Owloween Party

Yes, Chi-O's, I have stolen the moniker of our most famous (infamous?) date party ever, the Owl-O-Ween party. Emery's first birthday will be held on Halloween this year, it being only four days after her actual birthday. It WAS the day she came home from the hospital, after all. (The ridiculousness of how fast this year has gone warrants its own blog post. I cannot begin to explain how weirded out I am by the fact that it is time to plan her 1st birthday party.) Her invitation is ridiculously cute. See?

Hers is obviously personalized, but Tiny Prints wouldn't let me link the actual image. (If ever you want a really awesome, albeit slightly pricey, invitation or announcement printed, Tiny Prints is the way to go. Emery's birth announcements, our first Christmas card as a family, her bday invitations, all Tiny Prints. SOO worth the price--around $1-$2 a card.)

Oh, and by the way, I DO have her costume planned, but that will have to wait for pictures. It's too cute for full disclosure just yet.

Item #3 on the Ketchup List: Our mini-vacay in October

My mom is coming up to spend two weeks with us in October, and at her suggestion, Brian and I are planning a little vacation to somewhere we've never been. On our list so far? San Francisco, coastal Maine, Boston, the Grand Canyon, and Washington, D.C. We're waiting until Tuesday to book flights, since Tuesday is traditionally the cheapest day for airfare. (Ask anyone who flies a lot. They'll concur.) You may have noticed that there aren't really any sandy beaches on our list. This is not for a lack of desire to travel to any sunny, sandy shores, but more because I'm worried about going to a gulf coastal resort in October, deadliest of months during hurricane season. I have no desire to see a much sought-after trip ruined by rainy seasonal weather and bad planning. (Sight-seeing trip it is!)

Item #4 on the Ketchup List: Emery's latest adventures

Did you realize that today is Emery's 11-month birthday? I can hardly believe it myself. Here's what the little stinkweed is doing now:

Cruising on all furniture, at extremely high rates of speed. The child can MOVE.
Saying "mama", "dada", "uh-uh" (which is her baby way of saying 'uh-oh'), and imitating us when we tell her 'no'. As in, "No, Emery', no fingers in electrical outlets." Emery responds by saying, "Na, na, nana." (Only say it really high-pitched and whiny.)
She cocks her head when flirting with you. Much like a puppy listening to a new noise. As in, "Aren't I CUUUTE?"
Girl can dance. She bobs up and down and smiles her toothy, scrunched nose smile when she hears a song she likes. Her favorite song? "Take My Hand", by Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama. (Are you reading this, Kristy Knight? Ask Blake to put that one on the FAS list. It's supremely awesome.)
She has five teeth. FIVE. And, like, three of them came in at one time. Needless to say, we didn't sleep much that week.
Three of those five teeth, (the ones on the bottom), caused several near-fatal car accidents Friday morning. Please see the next entry for explanation.

Item #5 on the Ketchup List: Emery no longer has a "thick frenulum."

Friday morning at 8:28 am, I get a call in my classroom. It's Brenda, one of our awesome front office ladies. She says, "Lauren, I've got your daycare on the line."

This is NEVER a good thing.

When they have called me at school in the past, it meant A) I forgot to bring her bottles when she was only drinking breast milk for sustenance, or B) she's horribly sick and running a fever.

This time it was the never-before-experienced category C) she's bleeding profusely and they can't get it to stop.

Enter the aforementioned near-fatal car accidents. I called the office manager and said "Peace, ninjas, I'm out!" or maybe something slightly more professional, and was on the road to her school in twenty minutes. Problem is, her school is a thirty minute drive from my school, and when you're stuck behind the halfwits that were on the road Friday morning, some standard rules of the road need to be relaxed a bit to get to your baby. (Don't worry: I never doubled the speed limit.)

You see, Emery had been playing and cruising and experimenting with toys in the way of any normal 11-month-old, when she tried to balance herself on something plastic with wheels. Naturally, it didn't hold her, and she slipped and smunched her face on something else plastic. Funny thing is, she didn't cry. Not until her teacher noticed something in her mouth did she go to investigate and find that EMERY'S MOUTH WAS FILLED WITH BLOOD.

(At this point in the retelling, I kept imagining my child in a perfectly fine mood, with a mouth full of blood, all of it dripping down her chin like some tiny, tiny vampire. I was horrified, and also slightly amused.)

So we went to the doctor straightaway. He examined it, and called over his cute little pediatric intern to examine it too, and that's when I learned this handy bit of trivia: the little, almost non-existent flap of skin that connects your lip to your gum is called your "frenulum." Emery, apparently, has a thick one, and Dr. Davis (my least favorite doctor in her practice, by the way. He smells like alcohol and has a lazy eye and repeats himself incessantly. He's also, like, a THOUSAND years old or something.) said that she may have done herself a favor. Some children with thick frenulums (I LIKE that word!) have to have them cut by an oral surgeon because of potential interference with proper dental development. Emery, when she fell, sliced hers in half with her bottom three teeth, thus preventing us from having to pay someone to do it for her in the future.

So THAT'S a silver lining, I guess. (I did have a long talk with Emery about the benefits of paying someone to do something for you, instead of trying to do it yourself and risking life and tooth in the process. My life, her teeth, that is.)

So that's news. Nothing much to report. We're happy, our teeth are still intact, and I don't have to teach tomorrow. (Field trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum--King Tut exhibit!)

Oh, AND the greatest television show ever--Dexter!--starts tonight. All things considered, life's pretty good right now.

Family tree

2009-09-13T14:41:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, in realizing I hadn't completed a few key pages in Em's baby book, I set to the task of finishing it out. Her birthday is six weeks away, and I didn't want it to take me by surprise. (Incidentally, I think I'm gonna be a little sad when I won't have to write her monthly updates in her book anymore. Maybe this blog will serve that purpose. Hmmm...)

One of the biggies that I hadn't done was her family tree. So after a morning dedicated solely to research and organization, here's what's in her book: It took forever, but it was worth it. Now there ~~aren't any~~ are less blank pages taunting me when I look through her book. :)

A bigger, more detailed, version of Emery's family tree can be found here, if you're interested.

Pouty face

2009-09-11T06:33:00.004-04:00

This is Em's new trick: pouting until she gets what she wants. It looks something like this:

It is EXCEEDINGLY hard not to laugh in her face when she does this. No tears, just... frowns.

Emery and Daddy, sittin' in a tree...

2009-09-06T17:07:00.002-04:00

K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

A weekly recap

2009-09-05T12:16:00.007-04:00

It's been a hectic coupla weeks in the LeBlanc household.

We stopped over at the Kentucky State Fair to watch the puppies do their frisbee presentations.

And to flirt with passers-by.

We napped as we ran errands, and Emery simultaneously advertised for my school's water project. (Read: she likes to play with my school keys.)

We had visitors (ummm...visitor, I guess) from Texas. My friend, Lauren, came into town to cheer on her friends competing in the Louisville Ironman, while mentally preparing herself for her November Cozumel Ironman. I helped her out by keeping her company and eating Mexican food. It was very rough on me.

We went out to LaGrange, KY, and watched the bicycle part of the Ironman, specifically miles 38 and 68. In truth, it was very inspiring, and Brian and I are now talking about triathlons. We just need a couple of bikes first.

Emery was more concerned with her beauty sleep.

And making sure she didn't get too much sun damage.
Then, as the weekend ended and the week began, we found ourselves participating in "Crazy Fun Week!" at The Oak School. Monday was "Color Day", in which every child wore red. (Mommy was a little frazzled Monday morning, though, so we didn't get a picture of Emery in her red watermelon outfit. It was cute. Just trust me.)

Tuesday: Pajama Day! Emery donned her favorite monster jammies, complete with her uncoordinated-but-cute-so-we-wore-them-anyway penguin slippers.

(She was still a little sleepy when I took her picture, as you can tell.)

Wednesday: Mismatch Day! Her outfit consisted of a purple dress, red polka-dot bloomers, one orange sock and one green sock. It pained me to send her out in the world this way, but I'm a sport.

Thursday: Crazy Hair Day! Because I regularly put her hair in funny little sprouts, we decided to shake things up a bit. I got the top of her head wet, and used one tee-tiny glob of gel from Brian's stash to coil her hair up in a little Ed Grimley do.

Friday: Team Colors Day! It was the inaugural wearing of the Texas A&M onesie we've had since she was born. (She's only just now big enough to wear it.) I had to put a barrette in her hair--even though it didn't match--because Aggie colors aren't very girly. Of course, neither would Texas State's (maroon and gold) or University of Louisville's (red and black) have been, so whatever. She wasn't that into it on Friday, but this was the best picture I could get. Brian didn't want me posting the one where she was screaming.

That's all for now! Gotta crawl, my peeps...

Honesty

2009-08-31T19:48:00.007-04:00

I have come to the bitter conclusion
that her life will not always be filled with
sunshine
rainbows
feather kisses and songs.

No matter how well intentioned I am.
No matter how many PTO meetings I attend.
No matter the milk I make.

There are people in this life who will teach her other lessons.
Pain.
Unfairness.
Immorality.

I have come to this painful realization:
My job is not to shelter her from these unfortunate realities.
Heathens
hedonists
distractions of faith.

My job is to ground her.

To teach her that truth can be found
amidst blackness and sorrow.

It hurts me,
causes actual pain,
to look into her eyes and know
that her life will not be without anguish.

She will suffer.

She will fall.

She will fail and weep and mourn and grieve
and I will have to watch.

I cannot learn her lessons for her.
I cannot teach her to fear the fire
without allowing her to feel the heat.

Unfairness unequaled.

This ache knows no geography.
It amasses in my heart and spreads to
every
other
vital
organ.

Keeping her sheltered will not keep her safe.

She must live through this
~~torturous~~
~~unjust~~
~~unfair~~

honest
life.

My life... in highlights

2009-08-17T20:54:00.002-04:00

Not the kiddie magazine kind of highlights... the I'm-too-tired-for-true-blogging kind... Out of dutiful obligation to my regular readers, here goes my recent life's updates in a few sentences:

School has started again, for Emery and for me. It's been an adjustment for both of us, but we're crying less, so that's good. No big breakdowns yet, (for Emery anyway.)

It's quiet in my house right now. Brian's playing basketball at church and I just put Emery to sleep... again. I can't help it that I want to rock her when she wakes up two hours after she went to bed. She won't want to be rocked when she's 16--why waste the opportunity now? And really, is there anything better than a sleepy baby crashing her head into your chest and snoring when she's finally given up the fight? I didn't think so either.

We're finally going to sit down with our pastor and make plans to a) officially join the church we've been going to for four years and b) get our baby baptised. I'm thinking right after her first birthday party, since (hopefully) there'll be lots of family here.

Emery clapped tonight. It was really cool. Also, she's starting to show a real 'tude. She gets frustrated when you tell her no and actually gives a pretty significant "Hmph!" when she's mad. That's not as cool, but at least it proves she developing properly.

Three Cups of Tea should be required reading for all humans. I'm convinced that if it were, we wouldn't be at war. As such, I'm making my 8th graders read it. I believe in enforcing my opinion where I can. Go into teaching, people. Change the world, one kid at a time.

My book club is reading The Time Traveler's Wife. I felt like such a dip wad when I went to Half Price Books and asked for a copy and the guy behind the counter said, "All the popular fiction is right here, and as you can see, we're out." I wanted to shout, "I'M NOT A WEEKEND READER! I DON'T JUST READ BOOKS WHEN THERE'S A MOVIE OF THEM!" Then I was totally annoyed with myself for feeling the need to justify my purchase to a totally pretentious d-bag like that.

We watched a little bit of Homestar Runner in my team meeting the other day. I was stoked.. If you don't know about Homestar, you really need to click here. But please don't expect to get it right away. He's an acquired taste.

Emery is eating real food all the time now. For example, her breakfast: one whole banana, mom's milk (well, that's not real food), and a quarter of cinnamon bagel. For lunch: a baby hamburger and sweet potato fries. Dinner: two pieces of ham, one piece of Havarti cheese, and an organic, baby version of a Nutri-Grain bar. She eats constantly, by the way.

Three mice bodies have been found in our house. It's too gross for me to recapture so I just... won't.

Recently watched "Into the Wild" with Emile Hersch and was disturbed for days. It's an amazing movie, but the fact that it was based on a true story is incredibly messed up.

Time to blog off. I have two very important things to do just now: put sheets back on my bed (because Emery peed on them yesterday at about 6 am), and paint my nails with my new favorite polish, OPI Red.

Adios, amigos...

Nine months and new tricks

2009-08-04T11:13:00.007-04:00

Emery turned nine months old last week. This is amazing to me. I cannot fathom that she has been on the outside of me almost as long as she was on the inside. I guess there are some things in this world we are not meant to truly understand.

Anyway, we went to the doctor for her nine month checkup yesterday, and here's what he told us:

She's teething again. The top two this time. This would account for the miserable nights I have had to endure recently, when she has once more decided it's a good idea to get up and hang out in the middle of the night. We've broken out the Motrin again.
Her measurements look like this: Head circumference = 44 cm. (50%), Length = 28 1/4 inches (70%), Weight = 16 lbs, 10 oz. (15%) This last one is a bit concerning. She has basically only gained one pound in the last three months. I blame her dad and his wicked-fast metabolism for this.
She's not quite anemic, but she is low on iron. We have to give her little iron drops now, but apparently, according to my mom, I needed this as an infant too. So there you go.
She can eat pretty much anything she's interested in and that won't make her choke, with the exception of swordfish and mackerel. (Too much mercury. There goes the big swordfish feast I was planning on making. Riiight.) This accounts for her dinner yesterday, which consisted of a large amount of guacamole from El Nopal, our local crappy Mexican food restaurant, and bits of my chicken fajita meat. Yum.

She had to have a few pokes with a needle--one finger prick to test her iron levels in her blood and one upper thigh shot to vaccinate her from Hepatitis B--but neither made her terribly upset, which was good. In fact, she didn't actually cry that hard until, when I went to put her pacifier clip on her shirt, I caught some of her skin in the tracks. She screamed bloody flipping murder, and she now has a lovely set of red tracks marks near her armpit. I felt about three inches tall.

On a different note, some fun things that have happened this month include the introduction of a few new tricks, including playing tug of war with the dog and playing her lips like some new kind of instrument. I've included a short clip of each as a visual. They're pretty funny. (PS: Pardon my white chicken leg in the second video. I didn't realize I was recording myself until about halfway through the shot. You'll see.)

(PPS: It's kind of dark too. Sorry about that.)

Reality check

2009-08-01T22:08:00.005-04:00

Occasionally, I am slapped in the face by reality.

Something will catch my eye or my ear and snag my heart along with it, reminding me not to allow life's little disappointments to weigh me down. I have so much to be eternally grateful for.

Tonight, the thing reminding me to seize the day is this blog.

I could sit here and whine about the mice in my house. I could complain that Brian is gone until Wednesday and my house is a wreck. I could lament the expedient passing of summer, wishing away my last few days at home before starting back to school.

But I read this blog and this man's strength and I am reminded that I. AM. BLESSED.

I have a healthy child. A loving husband. A great job, family, house, and friends.

What more is there?

Things I have reluctantly learned about mice this week include (but are not limited to):

2009-07-31T20:32:00.008-04:00

1. Their droppings are one-fifth the size of rat droppings.

2. They poop in a line as they travel, often along your baseboards as they prefer to keep to the sides of rooms.

3. They love chocolate and dog food.

4. Once they have found a way into your home, they will hide there, somewhere squishy and quiet. (Like, as a for instance, the insulation in your basement.)

5. They like to hang out in your kitchen drawers, preferably where you keep your dish towels or oven mitts. (They will make a home out of your oven mitts, by the way.)

6. Their babies are blind. BLIND. (shudder)

7. They have a preference for hiding in cardboard boxes.

I wish I could say I have no need for this information, but unfortunately, I have a dire need.

My house is infested. We don't know where they are, but we think they're in the basement. We've been visited twice by Orkin, and each visit has been truly enlightening. Or disturbing. Mostly disturbing, actually.

The exterminator, (who was a WOMAN, by the way, and one I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, although she was extremely helpful), taught me a lot about how to mice-proof my home.

She found the quarter-inch (QUARTER INCH!) hole in the basement they were coming in-- through an intake pipe for the AC--and told us it needed to be sealed up.

She mentioned it might be a good idea to put all my storage in plastic boxes instead of cardboard and to seal my dry goods in the pantry into plastic storage tubs.

She checked and cleared the baby's room (Thank the Lord!) and reassured me we don't have rats.

She showed me how the bait traps work, and explained that sometimes, the bait will make the mice disoriented. This means I might find one drunk, for all intents and purposes, and hanging out in the middle of a room one day. (If you hear a faint screaming from what sounds like a long way off, it's probably me. Lots of you are reading this blog from Texas, but you'll hear me. Don't worry.)

The silver lining in all this is that I spent the better part of the afternoon yesterday reorganizing my house. Well, my kitchen and basement anyway.

I didn't take pictures of the mouse poop, as I was too horrified at the time. But trust me: it was bad. REALLY, REALLY BAD.

I did take pictures of the finished product, though. I don't have a before shot to show you, but just picture this: messy and covered in mouse poop. Got it?

My very organized, (hopefully) mouse-proof pantry.

The under-the-sink area. This is WAY organized compared to the not-pictured "before".

In case you needed details...

The incredibly organized storage closet in the basement.

And the silver lining?

In reorganizing the basement we found some little treasures like this one: Brian's high school football jersey. Cute lil #19.

Resolution

2009-07-25T06:51:00.007-04:00

Waiters bustled back and forth, serving pasta and ciabatta bread, hurrying to refill water and wine glasses. As they rushed, they continually passed a small two-top, each seat filled with a girl.

The girls toasted their get-together and ordered their lunches and spoke of pleasant things and times gone past. They smiled at each other and waited for the conversation to turn, of its own accord, to all the unspoken things they each had to say.

Several hours ticked by, and the lunch crowd lessened, but the tiny two-top stayed filled. Their meals had come and gone, barely noticed, as they feasted on each other's words instead. Words can fill you up and keep you satiated much longer than any meal ever could, it seems.

Those pleasant topics of conversation--babies, jobs, partners, school--turned darker, more real, and all was laid out on the table's tiny surface. For all the years of bitterness and resentment, for all the lost opportunities for reconciliation, here it was, laid bare and naked, the truth in its most raw form.

And yet, no harsh words were said. Rather, kindness coated each word, layering what they were saying with a thick coat of love and forgiveness. Each felt their guard slowly dissolve, that protection they had worked so hard to forge to protect themselves from each other. It was no longer necessary, now.

Such beauty and honesty in this world is rare. One does not come by friendships this strong every day; friendships that can withstand the test of time and estrangement must be earned to be kept.

The yokes of bitterness were removed from each girl's neck and placed gently before them, compared once before being left behind forever. They stood up and walked away from the little Italian restaurant, arm in arm, so free of uncertainty and doubt that each felt lighter, less encumbered by their old nonsense.

Forgiveness had come and bowed her head to each girl, granting them peace in turn.

Such days of beauty cannot last forever, though we may wish it at the time. Twilight descended. The girl who came 300 miles hugged the girl who came 1,000.

"Thank you for having me. Thanks for letting me come," said the former.

"Thank you for coming. I'm so glad we did this," said the latter.

And in the gloaming, each reminded the other of the love they felt. The first girl got in her car to drive back home, and took her friend's heart with her.

My grateful journal

2009-07-22T09:21:00.008-04:00

In the last two months, I have come to the conclusion that, for me, staying home with Emery can sometimes be a lonely job. It's difficult to get her out right now, as she's going through a serious bout with separation anxiety that makes it difficult to even put her in a stroller, (which can make running errands considerably less than fun). This means that most days we just stay in, taking care of the house and the garden and each other. This is usually just fine with me; anyone who knows me well will tell you that you need not mess with my laying-around time.

But some days this is a real challenge. You see, as much as I love my laying-around time, I also need goals and appointments and deadlines to keep me going. Otherwise, I would just lay on the couch all day, every day.

Random, but necessary, subject change: A couple of years ago, I was watching, (against my better judgment), an episode of Oprah. (I'm not really a fan, you see.) This particular episode featured a self-help guru who advocated the use of a "grateful journal" every night for those of us who tend to see the world as "glass half empty".

For a long time, I fancied myself an optimist, finding the happiness and hope in every situation. But as I've grown older, I realize that I would be much more accurate in calling myself a "realist" or, on my darker days, a "pessimist". This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I've learned. Michael J. Fox had a special on TLC the other night called "Adventures of an Incurable Optimist", and in it, he explains that a pessimist is one who must look head-on at the worst-case scenario in a given situation in order to feel better and move past it. This is TOTALLY me.

This may help explain why it sounds like I am sometimes whining or bitching on this blog. I don't intend to sound like an ungrateful person or unhappy with her lot in life. I am truly blessed and this is not news to me. But I have learned to accept that in order to function, in order to analyze a situation from all its sides and find the best path, I must wallow in the dark side now and then.

I have also learned, however, that it is not good to do this on a regular basis. Or at least, if I do, it's healthy and necessary for me to come back to what's good, remind myself what's going great, thus helping overshadow the negative in my life. (Like being stuck at home all day.)

Back to Oprah. (Doesn't it always come back to Oprah? I'm sure she'd tell you it does...) Anyway, her self-help guru was touting the use of a "grateful journal", which you sit down to each night and write down any number of small things you are grateful for from that day, even if it was the worst day of your life. Sometimes Brian and I practice this exercise over dinner, especially on nights when one or both of us has had a particularly rough day.

So, in an effort to quell the tide of blah-ness that can sometimes come from being home all day with only "oooh" and "goo" for conversation, I have decided to journal my gratefulness from this past week.

TOP 10 SMALL, OFTEN UNNOTICED THINGS I AM GRATEFUL FOR THIS WEEK:

1. Reading in bed with hubby and puppy. Once upon a time, I declared it illegal to have a TV in our bedroom, and I'm so glad I did. We read, we talk, we reconnect after a long day without the idiot tube to distract us.

Seriously, how cute are they? All cuddled up and snuggly. (sigh)

2. Yummy, yummy breakfast from this morning. Most days it's just coffee and cereal; today, I decided to make myself something more hearty: turkey bacon, red bell pepper, jalapeno, and cheddar cheese omelet. YUM!

3. Emery's high chair. Ah, the miracle of this invention! I plop her down in it, sprinkle the top with some Cheerios, and I can clean the kitchen, do some laundry, or simply make myself some breakfast (see above) without being baby-handled and distracted. And Emery loves it, too; she doesn't feel like she's being left out of the action.

4. Harry Potter. I know I'm going to sound like a real nerd, but it is such fun for me to disappear in a good book, like snuggling up under a warm blanket on a chilly winter's evening. And this series is just like that, as comfortable as a conversation with an old friend. I don't often reread a book, but I read this one two years ago, and I am amazed at how it can still reel me in.

5. My current knitting project. It might take me the next six months to get this blanket finished, but it relaxes me so much, knowing I can take my time now on something that will last a lifetime. My goal is to have it finished by Emery's birthday, but if it doesn't get done til Christmas, who cares?

6. This recipe from the Today Show yesterday. Artichokes AND pasta?! Sign me up! (Oh, AND I'm grateful for the time I have during the summer to actually cook dinner. That's always good.) I couldn't find a picture of the yumminess, but if it sounds like something you wanna make, you can get the recipe here.

7. HGTV. Seriously, this channel is a lifesaver when there's nothing else on. (And most of the time, during the day, there's NOTHING on.) I'm pretty happy with the way we've decorated, but if ever I need some decoration inspiration, I turn to Vern and Candace and this wonderful channel, and I'm all set.

8. Multi Vites Gummy Vitamins for Adults. Even Brian is taking his vitamins regularly, now that I can toss them into his mouth like gummy bears.

9. This blog. I've never been able to keep a written journal until I started one online. I didn't realize how much I NEED to write.

10. And then there's this: This was shot yesterday, and already this morning, she was a bit more mobile. She's slow, but she gets where she needs to go. Other than that, I'm not sure it needs much explanation.

I am super cool.

2009-07-20T22:08:00.004-04:00

At the end of last year, I decided to horde my pennies for this fall's trek to Philadelphia. The National Council of the Teachers of English is having its annual conference there, and the last time I went, (three years ago, now), it blew my mind and revolutionized my teaching. I feel like the cost, albeit pricey, is worth the fun times I'm sure to have.

So I rented the room, made plans for the cross-country drive with my colleague Kristy, and started to get excited about the prospect of fun working times in a city I've never visited. How much better could it get?

It got better.

My former professor, Sara Kajder, a prolific author and the inspiration for the currently sleeping BookSpace project, Facebooked me a few days ago and asked if I'd be interested in leading a 90-minute technology Q&A session in a "Tech-to-Go" kiosk at the Philly convention. (I should probably mention here that in addition to being one of the people who inspired and led my teaching, Dr. Kajder is a highly sought-after presenter at conventions such as NCTE, conventions which are extremely difficult to earn your way into as a presenter.) Would I be interested in sitting in and answering questions for other teachers across the country who want to incorporate more technology-based projects into their classrooms?

Umm... YE-EESS! Did I even have to think about it? NO-OOO!

In short, I am extremely excited about this opportunity; not only because I get the chance to interface with teachers from all over the place and share cool ideas for engaging students through new, interesting technologies, but because the invitation itself is one of the highest compliments I have received in my short career as an educator.

In closing, I have attached the link to a post from last August, one that shows the introductory video about myself I create for my classes every year. This is a good example of the kind of technology we do all year, about ourselves and books we read and cool things my students like to do. I haven't started my new intro video yet, but I'll post it as soon as I finish.

Accio, babysitter!

2009-07-18T08:14:00.004-04:00

One of my girlfriends at work, during a conversation about how babies change your life forever, made the statement that having her first child didn't change her life nearly as much as she thought it would.

I can't say the same.

That same girlfriend lives in the same town she grew up in, surrounded as she is by her parents, her husband's parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. Her babies stay with their grandparents while she's working, and they often hang out there on weekends while my girlfriend and her husband go to weddings or parties or dinner.

One of the toughest things about being far away from family is the absolute lack of babysitters. I have plenty of people who, when Emery was born, shouted claims like "Call me anytime! I'd love to babysit!" They seemed, as I believe they were, totally sincere in these statements, overtaken at the time by the sight of a precious little newborn.

But when the time comes for us to actually call on some of those people, we are often met with disappointment. Plans have already been made, and whatever dreams Brian and I had of spending an hour or three doing something sans baby are squashed, and we look forward to making it another Netflix night.

Granted, most nights, staying in is preferable for me. It's easier, cheaper, and often more fun than going out--Brian and I have never lost the ability to make each other laugh. But every now and then, something comes along that necessitates our leaving the house--like, say... oh, I dunno... the release of the latest Harry Potter movie, which I have looked forward to for months--and I need to leave Emery at home. There are precious few people to choose from that are willing and able to watch her.

Very frustrating, indeed.

I mean, it's not like I reread the 6th HP book in preparation for this movie or anything... it's not like I have been pausing and rewinding every trailer, looking for some clue as to how the moviemakers are going to handle the most intriguing chronicle of the boy wizard...

Ugh... I guess I'll put it on my Netflix queue in six months.

You-Tubular

2009-07-14T09:03:00.005-04:00

So I've just reactivated a long-ignored YouTube account and uploaded a few videos that were hiding on our camcorder. I thought it might be a fun way for family and friends to see our little stinker and get a glimpse of the day-to-day around here.

The following clip shows how Emery wakes up from her naps just about every day. (By the way, last night she slept soundly from 8:30 to 6:45! Yippee!)

For more video fun, visit our YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/laurenkleblanc

Zoo-billy zoo

2009-07-11T21:17:00.008-04:00

Such a fun day.

Kind of overcast, but lovely breeze--perfect day for walking around the Louisville Zoo. Emery hadn't been, so I was super excited to see her little face light up at the sight of all the crazy new animals. I mean, she freaks out just looking at Denver. I think we may have a future zoologist or vet on our hands.

I was sad upon first arrival, as there was a sign that said "Elephants are not on exhibit today." Just two years ago, a baby African elephant--Scotty--was born, and I haven't see him yet. I was bummed we wouldn't get to see him today.

My sadness didn't last long, though.

Can you see little Scotty there? The quality's not great--it was on my cell phone camera--but the thing no camera or phone could capture was Emery's little laugh. She was giggling at the elephants and blowing her signature raspberries. They were definitely her favorite animal of the day.

Also on her list of animal faves were the eagles from Asia (not the bald kind, I can't remember what they were called), the gorillas, and the lions. She wasn't feeling the giraffes--they were a little too still for an 8-month-old--and she slept through the reptile house, which was probably good. I was super creeped out by some of those snakes. Ugh.

Great first zoo trip. Magic 8 Ball, do you see more of these trips in my future?

'All signs point to yes.'

Lone Star Lollygagging

2009-07-06T13:07:00.012-04:00

After my long, involved post about the mouse in our house, I caught some flack from my mom for spending two measly sentences on our two week visit to Texas. Part of why I didn't spend much time writing about it was because a) I wanted to post pictures from the trip and b) I left my camera down there.

Fortunately, my parents uploaded the pictures to their Snapfish account last night, so I thought I'd post some today. YOU'RE WELCOME, MOM!

Note: These are in no kind of order and follow no theme. They're just fun photos.

Trying out a princess walker at the Galveston WalMart.

Brian's big fish. It was YUMMY.

Emery in the wading pool. Such a cool cucumber.

Playing on the beach with Mommy.

Lots of learning to be done at Moody Gardens.

Enough! No more pictures!

A meeting of the minds with Pop-Pop.

Toes!

Staying safe on the boat.

First time in the Gulf as a family!

Babies can fly, you know.

Relaxing in the best swing on the face of the earth.

Riding around the bay on Pop-Pop's boat.

Trying the ocean on for size.

A slice of lemon at Avery's Cafe.

If you give a mouse a... house?!

2009-07-05T11:54:00.005-04:00

It's been a whirlwind of a month, one that would take many, many blogs to cover. I'll give you the Readers' Digest version:

Emery can very clearly say "Mama" and "Dada". Sometimes when we request one word or the other, she'll blow a raspberry or say the opposite word in her lexicon. As in, Lauren: 'Emery, say Mama.' Emery: (Long pause.) 'Dada.' (Big smile.)
She's also (kind of) crawling. It's just an inch at a time, and it's often accompanied by some rolling over, but she gets where she needs to go alright.
We went down to Texas for fishing and family visiting. I am very out of practice for triple-digit temps, by the way.

Each of the above could make for a very interesting post, given all the details I'm leaving out, but I must share with you our latest adventure/disaster.

A couple of weeks ago, when I was packing my lunch for school, I found a bag of almonds in our pantry had been chewed through on the sides. Our dog couldn't have done it, so we suspected mice. Days later, this suspicion was seemingly confirmed by the presence of mouse poop on one kitchen counter top. Brian laid out some traps, the kind that hide the dead mouse body upon capture, at my request. (I didn't want to look behind my utensil holder and see a dead mouse lying there. What lovely kitchen decor. Blegh.) After that, we saw nothing more for a while.

Then we returned from Texas--our two-week mini-vacay--to find a roll of toilet paper that had been sitting on the floor of our guest bathroom was torn to bits, stripped of a good portion of the first few layers, one mice-sized piece at a time. This was the last straw. I called the Orkin man.

The (very strange) exterminator came and laid traps, plugged up holes in our garage, and sprayed some stuff around our house, but did not find the alleged rodent intruder. I felt marginally better that a professional had laid his bait, but less assured as days passed and there was no sign of this tiny almond thief.

Fast forward to the 4th of July: we invited our friends Melanie and Ryan over, along with their almost-nine-month-old, Mallorie. (She and Emery are first friends, from prenatal water aerobics to present day.) We grilled out, clinked our beers, and toasted America's birthday. After dinner, the party moved to the living room, where apple pie and ice cream was served and the babies rolled around together, showing off for each other and grabbing toys from Denver with sticky baby fingers.

When Denver had had enough of her ears being pulled, she wandered over to Ryan's side of the sectional to be petted and loved on. To my embarrassment (and despite his assurance that "It's fine!"), she snuck up onto his lap to cuddle.

"That's weird," I said. "She never gets on the couch unless she has her own cushion."

As if she knew we were talking about her, Denver began burying her nose in the couch, digging and rooting. At first, it looked like she was scratching an itch, but the more she did it, the stranger it got.

"She smells something," Brian said. "Hop up, Ryan. Let's lift up the cushions."

Ryan reached in the couch and pulled out a small handful of brown pellets. "Huh," he said. "It looks like..." he sniffed his hand, "...dog food."

My stomach dropped.

Ryan reached back in the sofa and began to pull out handful after handful of Denver's Iams. We pulled off the cushions and flipped the coach over to reveal approximately ten pounds of the stuff, tucked away in the lining of the underside of the couch.

Let me paint a VERY CLEAR picture for you: I vacuumed so much dog food out of my couch that my Dyson had to be emptied.

TWICE.

We went through every possible scenario: where the mouse could be, whether it were breeding, what other parts of the house we should check and what else we had found. I showed Ryan the chewed up roll of toilet paper.

"Have you found the toilet paper they took?" he asked. I shook my head. "Well, that's where its nest is." (Shudder.)

After many mouse-related jokes and anecdotes, (including Ryan's MacGuyver-like mouse trap that uses only a garden hose nozzle and one kernel of corn), and after the serious debate of whether this discovery were worthy of buying a new couch, our evening ended and our friends went home. Still totally creeped out by the whole thing, I demanded that we embark on a mouse hunt of our own and turn over every damn cushion on all three floors of our house.

We put the baby down for the night and went on a mouse hunt.

We checked the beds. (Nothing.) The baby's room. (Nada.) Bathrooms. Closets. Playrooms. (Zero. Zip. Zilch.) We finally made our way down to the basement, where we had snuggled up the night before to watch the first couple of episodes of John Adams.

There, underneath the cushions of my favorite squishy green couch, were a stash of almonds.

ARRRRGGHH!!!

In each comfy, cozy side chair in the basement, (as if Mickey were worried he'd need just one more), a single almond was placed behind the seat. On the other side of the basement, the futon had three little rice-sized mouse poops on the cushion.

The little bastard had been EVERYWHERE.

Grossed out as I was, Brian and I vacuumed and laughed our way through the house, amazed at this little mouse's sheer determination and pluck. I mean, he climbed up and down those basement stairs who knows how many times, only to stuff my couches with... okay, never mind. I can't go there yet. Too fresh.

After vacuuming the last bit of poop I found, Brian sat down at the end of the couch, near the side table that holds one of two lamps in the basement. I spotted it and said, "Look under that table."

And there, tucked behind a pillow I hadn't seen in months, was a mouse nest made of toilet paper. We found its den.

Here was a large amount of brown rice poop. Here were the remains of a few almonds that didn't get stashed away for a rainy day. And here they went, sucked into the vacuum to send a message that had not yet been adequately communicated: You are not welcome here. This is a house for HUMANS. (And the occasional canine, of course.) NO MICE ALLOWED!

I am not sitting on any couches today. And because I can't replace every stick of mouse-contaminated furniture in our house, I'll be on the horn with Stanley Steamer as soon as they open tomorrow. The Orkin man, too. If I'd known my dog was going to do a better job finding mouse evidence, I would have given her my $91.

Now I need to go lay down. I have shuddered so much typing this post that my shoulders hurt.

Stupid mouse. (shudder)

Summertime, and the livin' is easy...

2009-06-10T20:17:00.004-04:00

Well, school is finally out and I can finally start to relax.

After tomorrow, that is.

We have one more day for teachers--a professional development day on the standards-based grading system our district is getting ready to adopt--and then I can officially relax until August.

I say until August because I signed my contract. I will return to work in the fall, thus making me (for now) a real-life working mom.

If you've read my blog in the past two months or so, you'll know that I have truly struggled with this decision, weighing the pros and cons for months on end. (Actually, since I found out I was pregnant.) I have avoided the difficult decision, and the difficult conversations, because I didn't want to face up to the fact that I won't be spending every waking moment with my baby.

But even as I avoided talking about it--this elephant in the room--I found myself more and more saying "Next year when WE..." and "This unit should really be redone so WE should..." I was aware of it every time, but I felt my heart turning more and more toward one side of that fork in the road.

The last week of school, our office manager innocently placed our yearly contracts in our mailboxes and asked that we sign and return them by the 3rd. The conversation I had so carefully avoided was now staring me full in the face, daring me to ignore it. I had to talk to Brian. I had to make a decision, one that was final.

So that night, sitting down to dinner at the only decent Mexican food restaurant in a 15-mile radius, I broached the topic. Brian's short reply, after swallowing a mouthful of burrito, was this: "Well, simply put, whenever you talk about next year, you talk about teaching."

More was said after that, but the point had been made: I had already made up my mind. I am a teacher. I don't have to apologize for it, and I don't have to pretend otherwise. It's who I am. Good people take their much-loved babies to daycare every day. Nothing is wrong with that.

The other thing that made this decision palpable was something said to me by my mentor, Susan, after reading this very blog. It may seem like common sense to you, dear reader, but it was what I needed to hear: this doesn't have to be permanent. I keep thinking that I am making a life-long decision: to be a stay-at-home mom or to be a working mom, for better or for worse. Maybe next year I'll take time off. Maybe when the next baby is born I will. I am making this decision for NOW, not for five years from now. There's a lot of peace in that knowledge.

I have just one more day before my whole summer full of fun with Em. Can't help smiling at that.

Hi, my peeps.

2009-05-26T20:54:00.002-04:00

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my mom's blog.

I can't tell you how tickled that makes me.

Smile big or go home...that's MY motto, anyway.

Have a great day.

Love, Emery

The bookworm strikes again!

2009-05-19T05:46:00.015-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was up really, really late (or really, really early, depending on how you look at it), feeding Emery and wishing I didn't have to go to school that day. My train of thought went something like this:

(sigh) I REALLY wish I didn't have to go to school today. Or at the very least, I wish I could bring her with me.

Sure, I could swing that. I'll bring Emery to school. Maybe the kids could read books to her or something. I have some children's books in my classroom.

Er, well... WAIT... maybe if they wrote their OWN children's books... They could...

And so the project was born.

I texted my teaching partner, Kristy, and a week later we were fleshing out what has now been called the "best thing" our school has ever done.

We introduced the project to the kids and explained that not only would they be writing their own children's books, but they'd be reading them to a real-world audience of little kids, most from the K-1 classes down the road at the elementary school next door, and some teacher's kids.

It was a hit. The kids were immediately engaged. (Of course, it helped that Kristy and I pooled what little supply money we had left and begged our principal to fill in the gaps so we could buy every student their own hardbound, blank book to fill up with the story they created.)

The process went like this:

1) Each student received a "storyboard", a step-by-step rough draft sort-of thing, which had the exact number of pages as would their hardbound blank book. On the storyboard, they plotted out their book, deciding what would go on each page, including text and illustration. When they finished storyboarding their book, they brought it to Kristy or I, depending on who they have for language arts, and we gave them our approval and their blank book, (or our suggestions or corrections so they could come back and get their book).

2) They began plotting out their book IN the book, which made many of them very nervous. They knew real kids would be reading these after all.

3) They practiced reading them to each other and themselves. They would be reading these to little kids after only about two weeks, from unit introduction to presentation.

And so the big day arrived. We set up the school's multipurpose room, flashed a welcome sign on the big screen, put on a little Jack Johnson ("Curious George" soundtrack--LOVE it!), and waited for our friends to arrive.

And arrive they did. We had three K-1 classes per block, which meant we were about one-on-one or one-on two for reading all day.

After about five minutes of reading, Kristy or I would get on the mic and announce that the first reading is over. "Would all of our Locust Grove friends stand up and move to the 7th grader on your right, please?" (They were arranged in a big circle.)

It was SUCH a blast. Of course, my little muse was there too--Brian brought her up right after lunch and she stayed with me the entire day. I didn't get any pictures of her, unfortunately, as I was the camerawoman for the day. Never had time to turn my Kodak on myself.

The final component of the project will come soon. The students who don't wish to keep their books will have the option of donating them to Kosair Children's Hospital, the premier children's hospital in the state. More pictures coming soon on that part of the project.

Now, obviously, I don't usually blog about my school life, but I felt this project warranted an exception. It was the perfect marriage of home and school, a balance of the professional "Mrs. LeBlanc" me with the relaxed, personal "Mommy" and wife me. Such a happy day.

**UPDATE**:

We're FAMOUS!

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090527/ZONE09/905270334/1027/NEWS0102/East+Oldham+Middle+students+become+authors

Stupid, stupid talk radio

2009-05-12T05:40:00.004-04:00

Some afternoons on my way to pick up Emery, I'll tune in to one of the MANY talk radio stations on XM. I don't know why, but sometimes it's comforting to listen to other people talk without the responsibility or expectation of a response from me.

Anyway, last week I was listening to XM Stars, which features the Dr. Laura program in the 4 o'clock hour. She's this very bossy, brassy woman who likes to speak in black-and-whites, in absolute truths. Sometimes this annoys me about her, and sometimes it's refreshing, but never have I been so personally offended as I was last week.

She read an email from one of her listeners who began the letter by saying, "I am my daughter's mommy." I'd heard a lot of people use this declaration before I figured out it was Dr. Laura's code for, "I stay at home and take care of my child." Although I find that a bit annoying, I continued listening.

The listener recounts a disastrous episode with a former employer of hers, which happened to be a day care facility. She had gone in to meet up with her old work buddies and show off her newborn son, and while she was in the infant room, (Dr. Laura paused here to blast the name "infant room", saying that just made her "want to throw up, calling it that"...whatever...) there was a little boy who kept crying and crying. The teachers in the room said he had "attachment issues", dismissing his crying for a while before figuring out that he hadn't been fed yet that day. The woman gave them a piece of her mind before leaving in a huff and then writing to Dr. Laura, vilifying day care facilities and patting herself on the back for working from home and being "her daughter's mommy".

I don't have a beef with the woman for writing in; obviously, the place she used to work at was unfit to take care of children. If this were my child's day care, you can bet your ass I would pull her out immediately. She has every right to vent about their incompetency.

What royally pissed me off about the email was Dr. Laura's response. She used this message as a vessel to espouse her belief about day care facilities, saying "Well if this doesn't show you what it's like at day cares, I'm not sure what will." She went on to say, "But I guess that's the sacrifice the child has to make so that Mommy can put on her pumps and go to work every day."

It's getting my blood pressure up to even think back on that statement.

There is SO MUCH that's wrong about what she said, I don't even know where to start. First and foremost, the school I take Emery to is more conscientious than even I would be if I were home with her all day. They keep track of EVERYTHING, from how many ounces of milk she drank to exactly when and why her diaper needed to be changed. They record her moods, any exciting things she may have accomplished that day, etc. What happened in this nightmare scenario from the radio would NEVER happen at Emery's school. The system they have in place won't allow it.

More personally, my going back to work has nothing to do with putting on pumps and throwing my child to the wolves in an effort to feel important. Sure, feeling important and needed is a nice side effect of my return, but it is not my sole motivation. My family comes first. Period.

What Dr. Laura doesn't take into account is the financial need of some mothers to return to work. Brian and I have set up a comfortable life for ourselves; we watch our bottom line like everyone else, and because we've worked hard and saved our money, we have a lot to be proud of in this life. But the economy being where it is right now, my returning to work was the best option. We probably would have been fine without my income, but we would have had to make some drastic lifestyle changes, including the possibility of moving to a smaller house. That just wasn't feasible at the time.

I have done my research--trust me, I have. (I went into bookworm overdrive in the weeks prior to my first day back from maternity leave.) The research shows the vast majority of children who come from two-income households are not any more emotionally distant from their parents than those whose mothers stayed home with them. They often grow up smarter and more social because they're exposed to more words and more children each day than those who remain at home, and despite the commonly accepted truth that they get sick more often, it is now generally accepted by pediatricians that babies in day care have stronger immune systems in the long term, resulting in lower chances of asthma when they're older.

Maybe this sounds like so much hooey, written to make me, as a working mom, feel better. Quite honestly, there may be some truth to that. Sure, I have some days when I drop Emery off, give her a smooch, and zip out the door, totally well-adjusted about the whole 'working mommy' thing.

But then I have some days when just the idea of going to work brings tears to my eyes, and hearing Dr. Laura rant against the working mom validates all the reasons to be guilty that my darker side whispers to me in the quiet of the night. I resent her making me feel that way. I'm a good mom, dammit, even if I do send her to day care.

Ugh. I'm not sure if I feel better.

Just keep running...

2009-05-08T05:38:00.018-04:00

I've been trying to get back out on the road as much as possible since having Emery, and whenever I can, I bring her with me. I like to run in small road races, because it gives me something to work toward, and if there's one thing I know about myself, it's that I'm goal-oriented. If I don't have something nagging at me, I'll be perfectly fine just sitting on the coach eating pita chips.

We completed the miniMarathon, Brian and I, although it was hella hot and we were conditioned for much cooler weather. Emery stayed with a friend of ours, and was, I think, happy to see us when we returned but confused about the pungent aroma we carried with us that day.So this weekend is our first road race since the mini two weeks ago--the Throo the Zoo 5K. It does just that--runs through the Louisville Zoo, which is notorious for its hilly terrain. Should be interesting, seeing as neither Brian nor I have run more than 20 minutes or so in the last two weeks.

13.1 miles was a bit too much to push a stroller, but 3.1 I can definitely do: I have pushed her in two 5Ks prior to this one. So last night, we packed up the family and headed over to Calistoga Artisan Sandwiches for the 5K packet pickup and to have a tasty little nosh for dinner.

It was super cool--the Louisville Zoo docents were on hand with a couple of owls, a giant snake (which I went nowhere NEAR...(shiver)), a bearded lizard, a funky-looking box turtle, and a wallaby. I thought Emery might get a kick out of the animals, but I'm not sure she was into it.

She wasn't really feeling Winona the Wallaby, which looked and felt like a giant bunny.

Archimedes the Great Horned Owl was really cool. He had a VERY intense gaze.

The great highlight of the evening--aside from meeting a morning show DJ from a popular local radio station (think 104.1, Houston folk), and almost colliding with Papa John, the mastermind behind the pizza chain of the same name--was that Emery sat in her first restaurant high chair. She did great, even though I had to stuff my jacket behind her. She's a bit puny for the seat.

We had a good time taking pictures of Daddy and baby...

...before Emery got a hold of the camera and turned it on me. I'm not sure if we have a budding photographer on our hands or not. These kind of look like paparazzi photos to me.

Good times, good times...

Dear Emery,

2009-04-27T19:55:00.002-04:00

I have just put you to bed and am now sitting here in the quiet of the house, listening to the birds chirping outside my window and thinking back on the past six months.

Six months ago today, you came into my life and rocked me to my very core. You--this little pink ball of fury, all spitfire and neediness--came crying into the world, taken as you were from my womb and placed somewhere safer, more permanent. My heart.

We stayed up nights together, learning. You about the world, and me about you: how to feed you, hold you, soothe you, rock you. And I found that every cliche I'd ever rolled my eyes at, every sappy song on the radio or cheesy Hallmark movie, suddenly became true for me in a blinding, violent way. You shook all the cynicism from me, with your tiny hands and needy mouth and perfect, round little cheeks.

The best part of my day is when you first greet me, whether that's in the crib in the morning or at your school in the afternoon. I have never felt so needed as I do when you turn up your perfect face into mine and smile, puffing your cheeks out in just that Emery way that you have. Rocking you to sleep at night's not so bad either; I could sit there all day and breathe in your lovely baby smell, while you work your fingers in and out of the necklace Daddy gave me on the day you were born, the one with the interlocking circles, for which he said, "See? There are three of them. And there are three of us, now."

My little Princess Pea, my words are useless, for they have all been said already by those more eloquent than I. You have changed me, for good. You have made me see the world not through rose-colored glasses but through life-colored ones. I see the beauty in the everyday now, infinitely more than before, and the danger, too; I'm constantly on the lookout because of you. I know now what my life is worth, and the price I'd pay to keep you healthy and safe.

I watch you watch the world--uncovering something new and fascinating in the click of your puppy's paws or the flash of an aquarium fish or the bright colors of the TV remote buttons--and I am reminded what the world should look like, new and fascinating and available, if I'm willing to peer just a little bit closer. You kick your legs and beat your fists as if to say, "WOW, Mom! Look at THAT!" You grab with such ferocity and hold with such intensity, and by these small acts I am reminded that life should be grabbed and held and lived with this fierceness every day.

Emery, what I want for you is to grow up healthy and safe, strong and beautiful. I want you to always be as excited about life as these first six months; I want you to be kind and giving and think of others first; I want you to work hard and find happiness, in whatever path of life you choose.

Thank you, little one, for looking at me the way you do; it fills me up inside. Thank you for restoring my faith in the goodness of this life. And thank you for choosing your Daddy and me... I know there are a lot of families out there that you and God could have decided on.

I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow.

Happy half-birthday, little girl.

Love,
Mommy

Decisions, Decisions

2009-04-21T05:51:00.002-04:00

Last night, I was pulling the meat off a chicken for our chicken pesto pasta dinner, (I promise this random start IS going somewhere), and came across the wishbone. It was greasy and slippery, but I rinsed it off and hurried over to the couch so Brian and I could pull and make a wish.

As I knew would happen, because he is infinitely stronger than I am, Brian pulled the bigger half, which means his wish will come true. I'm hoping mine will, too, even though I don't have the benefit of chicken bone prophecy on my side.

My wish was to find peace with my decision about work next year.

We're coming up on the end of the school year, (SIX WEEKS LEFT!!), and now's the time for reflecting on the past year and looking forward to a new crop of 7th graders. I have made no bones about the fact that this year would be a "trial" year for me; I didn't want to decide to stay at home with Emery without ever having tried to be a working mom. Brian and I both knew that this would have eaten me up inside, the constant wondering.

So here I am, three months into working motherhood, and I still don't know. The problem is this: when I am at school, I feel important. My being there has meaning. I enjoy the camaraderie, I love to teach, and I feel like my presence has value and weight.

But when I get home, and I look into her little eyes, I don't want to go back the next day.

So how do I reconcile the two?

On the one hand, we've got the pro-work arguments, and there are a lot:

I work at the most awesome school ever. I will probably never find a more flexible, relaxed culture in a school environment again. I understand this.
The economy being what it is, it would be wise to keep my job for now. Brian has made it through two rounds of layoffs at his job, but you never know what's coming down the pipe.
Next year, I won't be coaching dance team and I have a longer planning period. These contribute to my decision in that I will be able to get more work done in school, and it will require so much less of me outside of the workday. When the bell rings at 3:26, I can leave, too!
Life as a teacher is really compatible with having a family. I get summers off, (even though I'm never truly OFF), and all the major holidays.
I really love Emery's daycare provider. I just joined the PTO there, so even though I'm a working mom, I am an involved working mom. That means something, I think.

On the other hand, I constantly feel that pull to stay home, because:

I want to spend every waking minute with Emery. 'Nuff said.
I would not be a stressed as I am now trying to keep up with my own house. The stupid chores are about to kill me as it stands now.
There would never be a risk of me missing a milestone or having to catch it via nanny-cam into the daycare. (They have camera access. I check on her at least three times a day.)
Less cost for gas to school (30-minute commute each way) and daycare tuition (don't even ask).
I do have the option to take a one-year leave of absence and still retain my position with the district. I wouldn't be guaranteed my same job at my same school, but I'd be close-by.

There is such a weight on my heart about this. I am praying about it, but no answer has settled yet in the dust storm of my mind. One day I feel totally confident about going back to work and managing it all, and the next day I cry when I drop her off at daycare and vow to wait out the year and be done.

I want Emery to grow up to be a strong, confident, independent woman, and I want my decision to be the right one to get her there. I miss her terribly when I am away, but is it best for her to have a mom who wants to be fulfilled personally by work she finds inspiring? Or is it smarter for me to devote my time to her so she feels valued and important every day of her life? Can't she feel that way, depending on how I treat her, no matter what decision I make?

Weigh in. I have lots of fellow bloggers and readers who have made this decision already and I would love to hear how you went about it. Is my reasoning faulty? Am I on the right track? What was the deciding factor for you?

Help, friends...

Laundry Day!

2009-04-18T12:20:00.005-04:00

I can often be heard saying that the laundry has gotten so out of hand it's becoming dangerous. Usually I'm just joking. Today, however, the piles have gotten so high I'm afraid that if I bumped into one of them it would topple over on me and I'd be squished.

Please consider this Exhibit A:
So today is Laundry Day. (And Dishes Day... and Vacuuming Day... and Grocery Shopping Day...)

An open letter to the Easter Bunny

2009-04-11T18:43:00.005-04:00

Dear E.B.,

You have been replaced.

I will henceforth be known as The Emery Bunny. I believe it is in the best interest of children everywhere, seeing as I am much cuter than you are.

See?

Thank you for your years of service and dedication. Please consider this your (pastel) pink slip.

Sincerely,
The Emery Bunny

Happy Easter, everyone!

Shhh...

2009-04-10T05:43:00.002-04:00

Some of you may have noticed that many of my posts happen quite early in the morning, like this one. It's currently 5:44 am, and instead of sleeping peacefully next to my husband, I'm blogging. Why? you might be asking yourself.

Because it's so quiet.

All day, every day, my life is filled with the sounds of noisy children, quite literally from the moment I wake up until my head hits the pillow at night, and often quite a bit after that.

The only time of day that I have to myself, the only time that is filled with such a blessed absence of noise, is before the fishermen are up.

There are some mornings when Emery will wake, demanding to be fed at 4:30 in the morning. I'll go in and nurse her for a bit, change her diaper, and get her settled back in her crib, but by the time all that's finished, it's so close to 5 am--the time that my alarm is set for--that there's really no reason for me to climb back into my bed, cozy though it may be.

For most people--normal people, I should add--this would understandably put a major crimp in their activities for the day. I mean, really, who wants to be awake at such an ungodly hour?

I'll admit it: I do.

The earlier I'm up, the more quiet time I get to have. I can drink a cup of coffee in peace, enjoy a bowl of cereal or slice of toast, and listen to the sweet, sweet sounds of nothing. I can write a new post, check my email, catch up on yesterday's news--things that used to be part of my normal, everyday routine that I now consider luxuries of my pre-baby past.

Inevitably, this quiet has to come to an end. I have to go through my morning rituals, preparing lunches and packing bags for the day, but there is always the promise of tomorrow morning, when I can wake up with the rooster and sit in blessed peace, unbroken by voices or cries or other noises sure to fill the rest of my day.

Just five more minutes of quiet. That's all I need.

Shhh...

Breaking my own grammar rules

2009-04-07T05:34:00.003-04:00

One of the things I teach my students about how to write well is to be wary of the exclamation mark. It is an oft-abused little piece of punctuation, and sooo loved by middle schoolers. (Because they're so excited! About everything!) When used in excess, I tell them, people are likely to take you less seriously. (Because you're so excited! About everything!) It's kind of like writing in all caps; unless you want EVERYONE TO THINK YOU'RE SHOUTING, it's a good idea to stay away from the caps lock button.

In my own writing, I stick to this rule pretty fast. That is not to say that I refuse to use the exclamation, just that I am cautious around it. I don't often feel very exclamatory, I guess.

Please keep this little factoid about me in mind, as I am about to break my own rule in the most egregious fashion.

Emery stayed home with me this week for my spring break, during which time my mom and dad (Winnie and Pop-Pop) came to visit. She had a red-letter week, to say the least, and it falls upon me to share her most recent developmental milestones with you. (Forgive me for sounding like one of my middle schoolers. You'll see what I mean.)

Emery cut her first tooth! She was running a low fever, which made me nervous, but turns out it was just the precursor to a tooth bud! Looks more like a mouth ulcer than a tooth to me, little white spot that it is, but it's definitely a tooth! Pictures coming as soon as she will let me take them!

Emery can drink out of a glass! Not a sippy cup either--a real, big person cup! She even reaches her arms out and opens her mouth to guide the water in--so cute!

Emery can kind of sit up by herself now! Of course, I'm not letting her sit alone, in case she topples over, but if she's sitting on my lap, say, she can sit unsupported! She kind of acts like you or I would when sitting on an exercise ball--there's a little bit of wobbling, but she's definitely getting there!

Emery loves every kind of food I give her! I am so lucky to have a baby who'll eat just about anything--she even had a tiny bite of Mommy's sugar-free Jello snack! (Although the little gelatin bite went slipping out of her mouth as soon as it went in! Once she figured out how to eat it, though, I couldn't eat the rest of my snack where she could see--too much grabbing!)

Emery loves to wear sunglasses! Weird, right?! I found a pair at a little kid's consignment shop over the week, and when I put them on her, she didn't even try to take them off! My little Hollywood baby!

Okay, phew. There goes my enthusiasm for the day. Thank you for indulging me in a little new mommy excitement. I really am the proudest mother hen, even if you don't see a lot of THIS! on my blog.

Musical airports

2009-03-26T14:50:00.001-04:00

The sky was dark as Brian pulled into Standiford Field and helped unload our baggage. Emery wiggled merrily in her car seat, batting at the lion and elephant dangling from the handle, totally unaware of my anxiety. I was finally going to be one of “those” moms, toting a baby on one hip and my carry-on on the other.

I was praying she wouldn’t cry.

On the first flight, from Louisville to Dallas, we were seated next to a cute little 18-year-old named Andy, on her way to visit her army boyfriend stationed at Ft. Hood. I worried aloud about my need to nurse the baby if she got upset, and Andy just shrugged.

“I’m the oldest of eight,” she said, picking pieces of her popcorn snack out of her teeth. “It definitely doesn’t bother me.”

The second flight, from Dallas to Austin, we were seated next to Shad, (“Like the fish?” I asked. “Exactly!” he said), the cutest little gay guy you’d ever meet. He was traveling with his “friend” Randy, on Shad’s “dream” vacation. (Incidentally, that vacation involved a four-city tour of Texas: Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and Houston. Not MY idea of a dream vacation, but this guy works in HR and has to fire people all day. He deserves a break, in whatever form he sees fit.)

She got a little mad on that flight, which, ironically, was only 35 minutes. It was as if she were telling me, “Look, I’ve been good LONG ENOUGH. Get me OFF of this PLANE.”

On the way back from Texas, on our connection to Atlanta, we sat next to a Mexican cowboy, outfitted with his own Stetson and shiny belt buckle. Emery smiled at him for thirty minutes straight before promptly falling asleep until the descent onto Georgia turf.

It wasn’t until the connection from Atlanta to Louisville that she decided to get really pissed. As I waddled back to the last row on the plane where we were seated, (and I say waddled because I was so loaded down with baby stuff), I heard a faint cooing, getting closer by the minute. In the seat next to us sat a sweet-faced, grandmotherly woman who exclaimed, “Well, lookee here!” the minute we sat down.

“If your Mommy doesn’t mind, I’ll hold you while she gets settled,” she said to Emery. I thanked God for blessing me with one less cowboy and one more grandmother to ride next to, and thus began our plane-bound friendship. I never learned her name--this woman who swapped me her window seat when Emery got mad and needed to nurse and who told me her own mile-high breastfeeding nightmare, bound as she was between two men with no cover to shield herself from prying eyes--but I thanked her profusely for her kindness and understanding, and when the flight ended, left to pick up my bags.

The long-feared trip was over.

In between the flights, it was a roller coaster of laughter and tears; just as I suspected, Emery’s presence was like a ray of sunshine in a darkened room. We reminisced about Mona, ate too much food, and enjoyed each other’s company.

I am reminded again, as I look back on not only this weekend but Mona’s life, that we do not belong to each other. Emery does not belong to me, I do not belong to Brian or my parents; we are merely on loan to each other for a while. God has entrusted our hearts into each other’s hands for safekeeping, and this is a huge responsibility. So huge it hurts to think about it too much.

Hey, but at least we survived the flights. Thank God for small (and large) blessings.

The girl on the bus

2009-03-20T08:57:00.000-04:00

I pulled into the walgreens parking lot, intent on purchasing a snack for my screaming belly and a bottle of Zicam to battle my cold. As I gathered my purse and started to turn the key, I was caught by the sight of a yellow school bus stopped at the red light in front of me.

Empty, I thought. Weird. School just ended.

But it wasn’t empty.

One little girl sat in the very last seat on this side of the bus, face pressed to the glass as she waited for the world to pass by again.

She looked lonely to me. But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was bored or sad or simply had no expression because a long day at school had wiped her out.

My mind started to wander ten, eleven years in the future. Suddenly, that little girl was Emery on the back of the bus, alone and waiting and not right next to me, where I am used to her being now. My heart started to ache for her, for the inevitable hurts I know she’ll have to endure in this life, even if I want to keep her safe from any harm that would ever come her way. By sheltering her, I would do her more harm than good, this much is certain. But I can’t help wanting to keep her safe by my side forever, where nothing and no one could ever break her heart.

Every one of us was once someone’s cherished infant child. We were born into this world and people, whether a large group or one person, rejoiced at our arrival. Somewhere along the way, some of our fan base fades, and for some, loneliness becomes a familiar companion.

My life may not ever be flashy or glamorous. It likely will be small, adorned with small miracles and trials when stacked against the grand scheme of things. But I no longer care whether or not I change the world. I want to change one life: Emery’s. I want hers to be the happiest, most secure, most lovely childhood anyone ever had. I don’t want her to feel the sting of loneliness or alienation. I want her to feel as loved as she is.

The light changed from red to green, and traffic resumed. The little girl, eyes unseeing as her thoughts floated on somewhere else, passed Shelbyville Road and out of sight.

Flight of the Sweet Pea

2009-03-19T08:53:00.003-04:00

SO I never realized, before today, how challenging it would be to travel with an infant.

There's the matter of all her STUFF, for one thing. I'll need to bring her car seat, a stroller for getting through the airport, and her diaper bag full of necessities, as well as the little darling herself, obviously. She'll be riding on my lap, which should make for an interesting flight.

Then there's the matter of her milk and pump, which will have to accompany us as well. I can only imagine what TSA will think as my Medela Pump-In-Style bag goes through the scanner.

On top of all this, there wasn't a single direct flight available from Louisville to Austin; thank you, spring breakers. This means I get to deal with little baby ear-popping on four ascents and descents. I'll have a bottle on hand for just such an occasion, but I'm incredibly nervous about this. Even though Emery is extremely good-tempered, there is a high probability she'll hate flying and I'll be THAT mom, the one desperately trying to console a screaming infant as unsympathetic passengers look on.

Makes me wonder how many times I have been one of those unsympathetic passengers. How naive and selfish I was.

Ah, well. At least we'll have each other, Sweet Pea and me.

Sad, sick day

2009-03-16T10:01:00.004-04:00

A few days ago, I awoke to the sounding of a little angel coughing up her little angel lungs from the next room. It seems the upper respiratory infection Emery was battling a couple of weeks ago has returned, this time accompanied with what sounds an awful lot like a baby smoker's cough. Since I'm with her most of the time, and since I can watch her on the internet when I'm at school, I'm pretty sure she hasn't started smoking. My little sweet pea is sick.

All weekend, I attended her little runny nose, wiped her boogery face, and patted her on the back when she hacked, not paying much attention to staying out of her way.

So it wasn't a big surprise when I woke up this morning and had considerable difficulty swallowing.

I called in sick, emailed my sub plans, and went for my cell phone to call Emery's school to let them know she wouldn't be in. That's when I got a text from my mom: Jess just came in and told me Mona passed away a few min ago...

Ramona Parkerson, very dear relative of mine, (I call her my aunt, though I'm pretty sure she's technically a cousin), has been suffering from pneumonia due to respiratory failure caused by a childhood battle with polio that forever crippled her immune system. She lived in San Marcos, where I went to college, and where, since before I can remember, I have gone to spend time with my family who all live there.

She got really sick last week, but survived long enough to make it clear that she did not wish for her life to be suspended if God meant for her to pass. Naturally, this was difficult for her family to understand, wanting her to live forever as we selfish mortals tend to do, but her wishes were listened to. Because of the damage to her lungs, she could not properly expel the carbon dioxide that her body created each time she exhaled. This usually harmless gas, when not released from your system, builds up in your tissues and is quite fatal.

Early this morning, enough of the stuff collected in her body that she--quietly, peacefully--slipped off to a sleep from which she would never awaken.

Her memorial service will be held in San Marcos this weekend. Though I am pained I did not get to say goodbye, and even more so that she never got to meet Emery, I am planning on taking the baby and flying down for her memorial. Her husband, Curtis, has asked me to sing. I've sung at many weddings and in many shows, but this will be a first. Difficult though it may be, I feel it is my duty to ease whatever pain I can, especially at the request of those grieving so deeply.

I do not want to let the small silver lining here go unnoticed--this side of my family has not yet met my baby girl. Emery is such a ray of sunshine in my life, and I'm sure her presence at Mona's service will be a salve to some wounds that may never fully heal.

Hopefully, our coughs and sniffles will have subsided by this weekend. To those who feel inclined, I ask for prayers of healing--for sore throats and hearts.

Exercise knows no bounds...

2009-03-08T13:15:00.012-04:00

Fitness is an important part of the LeBlanc household, and I guess you'd have to say we've wasted no time in integrating that aspect of our pre-baby routine into life with little Emery.

First, there was the Frostbite 5K, held on Valentine's Day:

Then yesterday, we ran the first leg of the Triple Crown of Running, the Anthem 5K Fitness Classic. Mom pushed pea pod in the baby jogger again. (You gotta really keep an eye on traffic!)This morning, we set up the Johnny Jump Up, which may take some growing into. Our little peanut may still be too peanutty.

It was still pretty fun, though. And, as every athlete knows, you gotta refuel after any good workout. We think barley makes a yummy post-workout snack.

Now Dad is trying convince Mom it's time for baby golf.

We might need to find a better-fitting hat, though.

Baby's first bites

2009-03-02T21:23:00.013-05:00

Teaching and mommy-ing are each really fun. Together, they are likely to be the end of me.

However, Emery, Brian, and I have managed to get into some semblance of a routine, and this weekend we had a fairly significant milestone: baby's first bite of cereal.

Sunday night when we tried it, it didn't go over so well, as evidenced below.

She was SO not in the mood. It didn't help that she'd had a rough weekend of sniffles, coughs, and immunization shots, which brought on a temporary fever. (Scary!)

But tonight we tried again, and I think she was feeling much better, because the cereal was a hit! Of course, we wore most of it, but isn't that how it's supposed to go?

I survived

2009-02-03T05:52:00.001-05:00

Day one of back-to-work week is over. I survived, but barely.

That's pretty much all I have the energy to write. More updates later.

Stop the presses...

2009-01-30T16:49:00.002-05:00

Emery laughed.

On one of our many snow days this week, we were hanging with our friends and next-door neighbors, making sandwiches and goofing around. Emery was watching my neighbor, LouAnn, smear mustard and mayo on everyone's orders, and LouAnn was goofing off for Emery's benefit: dancing around the kitchen, singing a song about ham and turkey. Emery was smiling in her usual Emery way, which is to say that her nose was crinkled up and her tongue was sticking out. (It's really cute, by the way.) And then she just... laughed.

It was the kind of laugh you give at a party you don't want to be at, one in which you find yourself laughing for the joke teller's benefit rather than because you found his joke humorous; sort-of a blase "heh-heh", like Can you get ON with it, please?

Even so, I think Emery's was genuine. I don't think she quite has the knack for social conventions yet. She's only gonna laugh when she thinks your sandwich-making, silly-song-singing dance is actually funny.

5 years married, 12 years together...

2009-01-27T13:47:00.009-05:00

...and I couldn't be happier.

Snow day

2009-01-27T06:05:00.003-05:00

The street outside our house is blanketed in a thick layer of white foam. All but the most resolute employees have blank driveways, free from tire marks or footprints. The streetlights cast an eerie golden glow onto the soft white blanket, and everything is so still. There is no wind. The snowflakes coming down sound like a shower of white noise, like we're all tuned in to the wrong radio station on the dial, but the volume is turned way down. It makes a soft shhhhh-ing.

I could go back to sleep, but I don't want to miss this exquisite, rare calm. I feel so grateful. One more day at home.

View from a Starbucks

2009-01-26T15:15:00.006-05:00

Emery is sleeping, and I am at home. I think God knew I wasn't ready to go back to school yet, that I needed another day or two, and so He dumped just enough snow on the roads of Oldham County for the administration to decide we needed the day off. Hallelujah.

In lieu of going to school, we have had a simply enchanting day, first taking such a lovely nap together on the couch, Emery poised precariously on my right boob and needing readjustment every so often, as she would rub her face into my chest and wiggle just enough to her left that she'd end up tucked under my right armpit. After we woke, we went to the Y so I could get in my 20-minute training run and Emery could play with the ladies in the Y's childcare center. She's loves them--or it might be the variety of bouncy seats and swings there that are different from our own that she loves. Not sure.

After the Y, we swung by Starbucks for something warm to drink. Emery had finally fallen asleep again, and I wanted somewhere quiet to sit and read and relax. Plus, I have a gift card.

As I approached the counter, a man just behind me to my right called out, "How old's your baby?" He was one-half of a very smiley couple, and I walked over and showed her off a bit.

"Three months," I said.

"She's precious," the woman said, and it was then I noticed that her legs were propped up in his lap and he was rubbing her thighs. This did not stop upon my noticing. In fact, he rubbed even more vigorously and said, "We want one of our own," and then his hand crept up further on her leg, as if he were about to show me how they planned to go about acquiring said child.

Ewww.

Anyway, Emery was a little angel and sat napping quietly in her car seat, which I rocked with my foot as I read my library book for about half an hour.

I'm not often a happy, shiny person on the inside, though I may appear so to those who know me superficially. I am full of doubts and cynicism and suspicion, second-guessing myself and others on a daily basis. But today, I'll tell you, life is good. A hot cup of tea, a piece of lemon cake, and a happy, healthy, smiling, napping baby: it's a simple life, but what more is there?

Ready or not...

2009-01-25T17:28:00.004-05:00

School starts, again, tomorrow. I can't go into the way I feel about it right now, because I'm trying desperately to repress those feelings and get some stuff done around here. I'll explore that area after I have attempted a few work days this week.

Much like the first day of school, I have opted to address my maternity leave and return with a little video. This time, though, it's from Emery's point-of-view.