Already here
Posted on | June 17, 2009 | 15 Comments
A little bit of photo booth goofiness for your Wednesday. It’s how we started our morning, at the counter and on the couch smooching and giggling, me and my two boys. (Don’t you just love Bean’s little broccoli top?)
It is already mid June. I can’t believe it really. How the time blurs once the days warm up. Buttercups are everywhere, daisies, the first wild strawberries in little glades at the edge of the woods.
The goose is broody. Bean stuck two hens eggs into the warm circle of her nest and there she sits, some patient instinct advising her to hunker down and wait for new life to happen.
The New Hampshire reds we got in the mail a few weeks ago are feeling plucky with a new set of rust colored feathers. They’re in an outside run now, scuttling about, catching bugs. They’re fun to watch. I love the way instinct summons chickenness for them. It’s evident in all the ways that they are: heads bobbing, peeping to one another sociably, grooming their new plumage, and to think they’ve never had a mother.
We’re so different, with our long babyhood, then childhood stretching out for years and years. I watch Bean learn new words. He repeats them, uses them in context. I am utterly enamored with the way he is right now: full of drawings and ideas. His pictures are jam-packed with action: wheels turning, light switches, fire hoses, robots, homes for little mice.
On his bike he’s become a daredevil, skidding to a stop, making dizzy loops around the road, cutting tight corners, riding over the bumpiest of potholes at high speeds. I love watching him ride. I love his yellow thunderbolt helmet and his lightening grin as he passes by, legs going at top speed. He is perpetually dirty this summer. Jam on his shorts, on his chin. Mud on his feet and grass stains. He goes through two sets of clothes a day, easy. Sometimes more.
In the garden we’re mostly done planting. Bean comes down with me in the morning while Sprout naps, and we get an hour or so in before we hear him on the monitor.
This year’s crop: moon & stars melons, sugar babies, lemon cucumbers, zucchini, yellow crook-necked squash, potatoes, rainbow chard, yellow peppers, five kinds of tomatoes, purple cabbage, carrots, broccoli, radishes, four kinds of lettuce, spinach, ashworth corn, onions, parsley, dill, thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, chives and sage.
As the short growing season heats up, I’ll be planting more flowers, more carrots, more cucumbers for pickling (DH has a ridiculous pickle habit). We never got our act together with the berries, but Bean and I have scoped out a copious patch down by the neighbor’s pond that we aim to visit in a couple of weeks.
We have fun in the garden. I made Bean a tepee out of slender logs. Then gave him a packet of beans to plant, and sunflowers, and pumpkins all around. Today while I was spreading straw he came down to the garden dragging a quilt to hang over the tipi frame. Inside is a quiet secret little boy space full of packed dirt and small rocks, a pine bow for a broom, a magic door. In his bouncy seat, Sprout watches, pleased as peas.
I realize lately that I haven’t written about Sprout much. I expected to have more to say, honestly. I expected it to be harder, to be more of a fight to adjust to life with two boys, but in truth it’s been a breeze. He sleeps. That’s the main thing. And I say this with utter awe and gratitude and reverence because Bean did not sleep so I know. But Sprout sleeps and he smiles and he’s trying to sit up already. He lies on his belly and watches Bean play with matchbox cars and he’s as happy as a little fat clam. He grins and he giggles when you zerber his tummy, and he mostly just feels like he’s been here with us forever. Four of us.
I know this post is all over the map. I’ve been working on my book every night after the boys go to bed, more words there, less words here I guess. But I have questions for you today. A little bit of informal research.
What does settling down mean to you?
How does marriage change you?
How do children change you?
If you could chose all over again (or if you have not yet chosen), would you stay footloose and single? Why or why not?
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15 Responses to “Already here”
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I am Christina Rosalie
Hello. I'm so happy you've stopped by!
I am a multimedia storyteller, digital strategist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, MFA graduate student, and mama of boys. My first book,
will be published by SKIRT! Books in September, 2012.
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June 17th, 2009 @ 1:48 pm
Your family is beautiful, and it’s wonderful to feel the joy in your words.
June 17th, 2009 @ 2:02 pm
What fun pictures! Your boys are just adorable!
If I could go back and choose, I would choose the same life, the same 2 beautiful girls (bratty days like today and all). I just wish I would have had them younger (*29 was the first one) so I would have more energy. I also wish that I could have had more time with my husband before we had the girls. But he was 44 when I met him, so that limited our time! He was 46 when we had Savannah.
Marriage has made me more relaxed, happier, & less self centered, now that I have somebody else’s opinion to consider.
Children change EVERYTHING! it’s exhausting! time consuming. NEver time for myself. Always doing something for them and with them. It’s the hardest job on earth, though I don’t have to tell you that! YOu are in the thick of the physical exhaustion. I have hit the mental exhaustion stages with my 9 & 7 year old…UGH! they know what buttons to push, what words to say etc.
IT’s mind boggling how smart they are. I am thinking this stage is starting with your Bean and his questions and needing answers.
Life is beautiful, but challenging.
But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Excuse me, while I go get my girls out of their rooms from time outs for fighting! ha ha!
Tara
June 17th, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
most days i love being married. its the times when i want a major change, to move somewhere new and start a new career that make me miss singlehood. but day to day life is so much better shared. we are starting a family, with a little boy due in october, we are soaking up the last summer just the two of us and looking forward to the change a baby will bring.
June 17th, 2009 @ 2:47 pm
Married at 19, it took me 36 years to befriend and then alienate two wives, but I’d marry again and father another brood of children … if I could find a woman who’d have me. Settling down with a particular woman (and the blessing of children bouncing ’round the house for a few years) sounds marvelous — as it was; but settling down (as in finally stepping sideways, or even just slowing down, to let life pass?) sounds like a curse.
June 17th, 2009 @ 2:50 pm
marriage is hard, or at least it is for me. it’s worth the work, but sometimes i wonder what it would be like to not be in this, especially after all these years. i look at the rough times as a blip in the long picture of our lives together. and that’s what i want at the end of a day: a life together.
if we hadn’t had a child, i think our relationship would have evolved differently. because we waited awhile before having her, we know and remember what our life was like before we became parents. yes, we talk about those days wistfully at times. but there are many, many more times that we delight in our little family and so, yes, i dream about single days and know, that soon enough, my time will be my own again and then i’ll be wishing for the days when my girl desperately needed me to love on her. sigh.
June 17th, 2009 @ 2:53 pm
Your garden seems like so much FUN! My husband is the gardener. I appreciate it from afar.
Settling down just always WAS for me. I never sewed wild oats, traveled, or flew by the seat of my pants.
I started dating my husband when I was 16. I was a sophomore in high school, he was a senior. We went to the same college as well, and got married when I graduated. I have been with him for more of my life than I have been without him. Marriage was (from what I remember) an easy transition. We just continued…
Having Children. Well. That is a different story. I had been married for 9 years when I found out I was pregnant. I think being a parent, especially being a mother–a stay at home mother–has eclipsed my being a wife. I never really had to work at my marriage until I wasn’t earning my own money and we had to negotiate this parent thing. I don’t think it is easy, although sometimes it is. I feel like I have lost myself in the shuffle sometimes.
Of course, I would do it all again. I have a great little family here, and a happy life most of the time. I know there are no do-overs, but sometimes I wish I would have kept my own job for my own sanity and for a bit of financial independence. My kids start Kindergarten next year, so I am gearing up to find a job when they enter first grade. I am trying to just put myself out there in the universe. Be open and follow…and then I can find what is best for me in this new stage of my life.
June 17th, 2009 @ 9:23 pm
I starting dating my husband at 16 and we married when I was 20…baby one came along when I was 23 and baby two at 27 and now we’ve been married almost 25 years and have moved 13 times…
I really can’t imagine a different life !
and the only tough time we have ever had, has been the last couple of years with our son in high school…actually it’s been a nightmare…but he’s ours and we have to love him !
June 17th, 2009 @ 9:41 pm
Those pictures are wonderful…I love the emotion that they evoke and how they so well capture those moments of just being with each other.
Your questions are big, huge really. I might write a blog about them if I find the time and I’ll link it if I do. Even a long blog probably could only brush the surface of my thoughts on these particular subjects.
good luck with the book writing!~
June 18th, 2009 @ 2:53 am
You live such a FULL life.
June 18th, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
Love the pictures!
June 19th, 2009 @ 4:31 pm
Love the pictures! Can you tell me how you combine many photos into one? I’m fairly tech savvy, but haven’t figured that one out yet. I’m not on a mac, though…
Thanks!
As far as answers… I’ve loved some of your musings about how you still are figuring out that parenthood means NOT having time when you need time to yourself, but needing to wait. I am a new older mom and am feeling tired (first baby at age 36; he’s just over one now) and it’s hard to imagine fitting everything in for the next couple decades. Your posts are inspiring!
June 19th, 2009 @ 7:30 pm
Hi Gina,
It’s all about Picasa! You can download it for free from Google!
C
June 20th, 2009 @ 5:34 pm
most of the changes I would make to life revolve around career. self awareness and self confidence. But you know when you look back you could change things but who knows if it would be better. sure I have made mistakes, who hasn’t but, but I am not sure I would change them, even the hard ones.
June 21st, 2009 @ 11:37 pm
Thanks! One more chance to actually answer your questions:
Settling down, for me, means a house, a stable relationship, a kid. That’s the ultimate “staying power” for me: having a child with my husband. Marriage changed me from one who was always wondering if I should stay in a relationship to KNOWING I will stay (barring anything really crazy). If I could do it all over, I might have married earlier in my life’s path, still do wonder what would have happened if I’d settled down with one of those other guys.
June 22nd, 2009 @ 8:03 am
No marriage and no children yet, but as for settling down …
settling down in my own skin. Getting to know myself. Finding out who I am and standing on this very earth with both feet, grounded, wherever I am, focussing on *this*. With him. That’s what it means to me. I thought it was about places and big dreams and getting there … and it is, but it’s about *this* place, where I am standing, walking, laughing, living, and the big dreams about small things, these decisions on how to live my “wild and precious life”, being here.