It's a One-derful Life

It's Sunday night, or Back-to-School-After-Thanksgiving-Break Eve, and I'm feeling grateful for the time off and the good times.  I'm also noting that last year at this time I felt grateful, but walked on shaky legs, wondering how to cope with my life and my job and mostly just Being Myself.  This year, I'm celebrating this one-year-sixteen-month-old and all the joy she has brought us.

I was explaining to my aunt, who was here visiting this week, that without Tootsie, it would be easy for us--with two daughters eight and eleven years old--to each go our own ways:  someone reading here, another on a computer there, someone at a friend's house, on a bike ride...but instead Tootsie is her own nucleus for the family, our touchstone.  Everyone gravitates to her in the mornings when she wakes.  She's the first one we ask for upon arriving home.  Her antics and tricks are the center of our attention.  And as she's a toddler, we know where she is at all times, in her best interests and ours.

Last year she felt like a hurricane to me in terms of magnitude on our lives.  This year I recognize her as the eye to the hurricane we are, swirling around her and magnetically drawn in, a beautiful antithesis to entropy.

We took her on a few hikes and walks this week.  She's almost running and jumping now, loving to walk on different surfaces and stopping to run her hands in the dirt (and to eat a rock or two) and to smell every flower.  She practices words and phrases and signs some too, and when she doesn't know what else to say, it's "bee-baaa" or "baaa-beee."  She dances to Sesame Street and Katy Perry.  She's empathetic and compassionate and caring, giving loves and hugs to her cousins and friends and siblings and often teary on our behalves.

She's been sick the past few days with a high fever, sleeping and cuddling and breastfeeding around the clock.  Our initial panic at her high temperature reminded me that she has been remarkably healthy since her time in the hospital.  Our hearty, heart-full, happy girl.

We are so, so grateful.

Pumpkin Made Saucy

I'm not doing so well at the writing-every-day routine so far.  But I'm thinking about writing almost every day!  I'm also thinking about exercise every day.

Tonight I made both pumpkin pizza (original recipe here) and ravioli with pumpkin sauce, two favorite seasonal dishes I haven't made in a while.  For tonight's version of the pizza I used naan bread for the crust (super quick and way easy), sweet Italian chicken sausage, shredded mozzarella and romano cheeses, and arugula.

I used the same pumpkin sauce for the ravioli (spinach and cheese), and sprinkled with shredded romano cheese.  The ravioli went to feed the twins' parents.  We ate the pizza.

Pumpkin sauce makes for a mellower/less acidic sauce on a pizza, and in my view, draws more attention to the toppings.  Worth a try!

Twins...and Toddler

Our new baby cousins were born last week--beautiful, healthy baby girls and an uneventful labor and birth!  Now we have Tootsie and her cousin, only two weeks younger than she, and the twins.  It's going to be awesome to have two sets of kiddos at the same heights bumbling around.  The two older toddlers are already great fun.

Slay me for this, but I wouldn't mind another baby.  Husband said he wanted to throw up at the mere mention, and can rest assured that my tubes are tied.  So I'm happy to have not one, but two new babies to satisfy my need for infant snuggle time.  And when I watched my sister-in-law pumping yesterday, in an attempt to build a store for two babies (how do you do that?), I backed off my baby envy a little.   I am still breasfteeding Tootsie.  Which is not like breastfeeding an infant, by the way.  More on that later.

Tootsie is completely smitten with the new babies.  She was like a Love Bully, kissing the baby I was holding with aggressive passion, over and over, and insisting on feeding her her bottle.  She must have said "baby" a hundred times or more.  She was transformed into (by juxtaposition) a giant smothering affection monster, a manic crazy overwhelmed older cousin in love.

It was quite a sight to behold, and I used my left arm for defensive moves as she continually came in for head butts/kisses, as my sister-in-law observed with nervous laughter.

There's no absence of love, as well as little fingers and toes in our family.  It's awesome.

NaNoWriMo

I forgot that I promised myself I'd write every day in November, like I did a few years ago in an effort to force myself back into a discipline, which, like exercise, tends to make me feel better about myself.  I  just haven't been writing, and recognizing that is a reminder of how much my life--and I--have changed in the past year and a half.  I'm determined to reacquaint with the Fer who writes regularly, the Fer who is excited to connect what happened today to some lingering thought that has been bouncing around in her mind.

But November 1 is almost over, and I only have scattered and disconnected updates:

Tootsie walks and talks and signs words like "please," "more," "dog," and "milk." But most importantly, she's learned very recently how to throw an epic tantrum, and has been practicing daily since.  We've experienced our first Store Episode and Stiff-As-a-Board-Can't-Get-In-Carseat Antics.  Thank goodness she's still cute and loving, and a dancer and snuggler.  Her habits include placing everything from belts to dishcloths to pajamas around her neck and pretending to feed and walk her dolls and Elmo.  And because of the number of hours she has spent since birth at the fields, she can kick a soccer ball.

At the Patty Griffin concert tonight, she covered a Jimmy Durante song:

"You've got to win a little, lose a little,
yes, and always have the blues a little.
That's the story of, that's the glory of life.
That's the story of, that's the glory of life."

I was struck by how true that analysis is, and what I'm still learning to accept--this notion of living with the blues a little.  I'm trying to fight less, stop myself from a mantra of "I don't WANT to be this stressed/tired/frantic/overwhelmed," and instead figure out how to make life less so, in the face of things I can't or won't change in the short term:  I'm a principal.  I'm a mother of three.  I'm busy.  I have bills to pay. I have laundry to do.   

And I was thinking earlier this week that there are seemingly a million little things people do for me and mine everyday to make life easier, better, more beautiful.  The colleague who waters my plants; the friend who texts me a coffee icon and an invitation for a fresh cup; the friend who drops off lunch; the parents who offer advice, childcare, and meals; the neighbors who drive my kid to school; the babysitter who comes to me to pick up my baby and goes out of her way every day; the friends who reassure, advocate for, and believe in me; the husband who holds it all together, day in and day out.