Sunshine Soup

When I have someone in my life who is enduring something tough, just like you, I want to do something for them. With food a universal currency of comfort, I've made what I call "Sunshine Soup" my new offering. I prefer savory to sweet, and this soup is a unique alternative to baked goods or casseroles. It's a simple labor of love, easily deliverable, unexpected, and unencumbered. This soup is healthy and safe for gluten free and vegan friends; it's easy to cook in about an hour; and it's like a sunshiney warm hug. 

The recipe below is the vegan version of a carrot ginger soup with potential substitutions in parentheses.  I tend to adjust quantities as I cook, but I know these ratios below make a wonderfully smooth and creamy soup. Make your own soup thicker or thinner, tarter or sweeter, milder or spicier, etc... The recipe can be halved to make less than a full pot.  Adding curry powder or yellow Thai curry paste would easily make a Curry Carrot version (yum). This soup tastes great hot and even lukewarm--a winner for all seasons.

Sunshine Soup (Carrot Ginger)

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs of whole carrots, peeled and chopped in chunks
• One white onion, chopped
• I added two small sweet potatoes to today's batch, peeled and chopped, but this is optional
• A bunch of garlic, chopped
• A sizeable knob of ginger, peeled and chopped--I prefer light ginger, so add more at this stage if you want "ginger forward" flavor
• One seeded and chopped jalapeno or Thai chili, depending on your/friends' spice tolerance
• Coconut oil or olive oil--enough to saute onions and garlic (substitute butter if desired)
• A carton of vegetable broth (or chicken if desired)
• Two cans of coconut milk (milk or cream if desired)--Note:  this soup can also be made WITHOUT coconut milk if that's not your jam--to keep it vegan, add more broth to reach desired consistency at the blender stage
• Salt to taste
• 1TBS turmeric
• 1/2 to 1 cup citrus juice--I squeezed orange into the soup initially and then lime and lemon into later to taste, making it "brighter"

Making the Soup:

• In a sizeable pot, saute onion, garlic, ginger, and jalapeno in oil until onions are tender/translucent
• Add carrots (and optional sweet potato), turmeric, and juice; saute for a bit and then add broth
• Bring vegetables in broth to a boil and then simmer on low for 15-20 minutes until carrots are soft/easily cut through with a spoon
• Remove pot from heat; add a can of coconut milk and stir
• Blend with immersion blender (or in portions in a blender) until smooth.  My soup was too thick without the second can of coconut milk and was perfect after I added it.  Blend until smooth and creamy.  At this stage I added more citrus in squeezes until the soup tasted just right (IYKYK--and it's your own taste buds that know :))

Possible Garnishes/Toppings:

• I like a little dash of carraway seed with my carrot soup--pictured above.  Crunchy roasted chick peas are also awesome
• A friend who received this soup added her own seed mix on top for some crunch/texture, including pumpkin, sunflower, chia, and hemp seeds (this friend also claims the soup makes a great salad dressing!?)
• Cilantro (or a dollop of cilantro lime pesto?) would be delicious too, along with some sour cream/yogurt
• French fried/crunchy onions

Warm sunshiney hugs come in many versions and forms.  I hope you give and receive many!

All About My Parents

Tootsie goes to a wonderful, loving, nurturing preschool, where relationships, responsibility, play, and imagination are emphasized--the same preschool her big sisters attended seemingly long ago.  

The teachers listen carefully to the little people and the important (hilarious) things they say, often recording them for posterity.  

We were treated to a Parents' Day celebration on Sunday, where we were presented with cards from our kiddos; here's Tootsie's take on her Mom and Dad:    

Some points of confirmation and clarification:

I do work with my friends.

Husband does work at da yacht club.

Husband does NOT enjoy letting the dog out to pee.

Husband and I did not meet at school, though we did attend the same high school.

Husband does like syrup, not usually on meatballs.

We do love our children when they go to school.  Apparently this is a likable trait.

List: 2015 Thanksgiving Gratitudes

My multiple, ample, excessive cups runneth over.  I am pausing to appreciate the bounty.

Gratitudes:

1.  My husband with infinite patience for my job and its demands, as well as my habits... He's a rare find, this man, this father, this more-than-co-partner.  He inspires me with his patience, awareness of local and global issues, and earnest desire to teach, guide, and love our girls and pets.

2.  My daughters, who in their own unique ways give to their world, to their family, and to me.  As they and I grow older, I more deeply recognize how they reflect and gently guide me to be their better model and supporter.  Big Sis has discipline and drive as well as creativity and tenderness for family. Middle Sis celebrates a joie de vivre (goofiness) that is contagious, and a natural penchant for taking care of younger children. Tootsie is a force of nature, survivor of minor mishaps, talented copycat, and keen observer of all that occurs around her. Thank goodness she, our last, is a snuggler, too.

3.  My parents who are here and available for great conversation, family meals, childcare, professional mentorship, cheerleading, appropriate course corrections, financial assistance, grandparental cheerleading and support, and a safe place where we can flock.

4.  Extended family and friends who are wise and honest as well as forgiving and loyal and generous, and who step in, pick up our kids, create cousin company and aunt and uncle admiration, offer guidance, make us laugh, reassure, invite us over as well as come over, and support us unconditionally through life's mishaps.

5.  My job, which affords me the opportunity to bask every day in the company of people who exemplify what's possible:   Inspiring, creative, selfless professionals dedicated to enriching young people's minds and souls; and teenagers who are hilarious, infinitely intelligent, bursting with energy and potential, generous, insightful, wise beyond their years, and daily reminders that we adults don't know or control everything. Working in a public school is real work with real people and real rewards, and I'm grateful that the days that await me are full of problem solving, dreaming, teaching and learning, and evidence of what matters. 

6. Our neighborhood of community givers, activists, artists, business owners, non-profit supporters, hard workers, volunteers, and dreamers. How I love this place we've invested in and where we've bought two homes. Our environment boasts canyons, parks, playgrounds, trails, craftsman homes, hills, narrow streets, old trees, raccoons, coyotes, opossum, skunk, hawks, squirrels, rabbits, and tumbleweeds. 

7.  Our daughters' schools:  We are in our tenth year of appreciating the play-oriented, multi-age, loving preschool which has helped raise our girls. Middle Sis is attending our incredible neighborhood elementary school with its loyal and passionate teachers, tireless parent and community volunteers, and unparalleled performing arts, garden, and enrichment programs. Big Sis attends a large urban middle school where her teachers and peers, who represent true international diversity, inspire her. We love that these schools give awards for qualities and attributes versus achievements, and invite us to both shadow and participate in our kids' daily educational experiences.  

8.  My health and the health of my loved ones, which I do not take for granted. 

9.  Our house, which has had to compete with our cozy first home, but which has won me over with its peace and quiet, windows, space, views, safe cul de sac for Big Wheel races and skateboarding, and room for guests and gatherings. 

10.  Human tenderness:  One of life's pleasures is noticing the sweet spots, when siblings love on one another, when teammates share a victory or poignant loss, when acts of kindness happen spontaneously out there in the world.  I feel like I am often front row for those beautiful moments which make living worth it and humanity make sense.  

 Additional Gratitudes:

1.  Good books, good art, and good music.  I am so fortunate to know people who create all three, and my early mornings and late evenings rely on their accessibility and power to deepen my sense of my own existence.  

2.  Those who "let it go."  Ain't got time to hold on to grudges, dwell on disturbances, and generally make big deals. I am increasingly grateful for and drawn to people who keep moving forward, focused on solutions, and with a better, peaceful world in mind.  (After venting over a pint or glass).  

3.  Our coffeemaker with a timer (and the guy who loads it each evening).  My morning cup of coffee, secured before my morning pee, is an indulgence I appreciate EVERY DAY. 

4.  My iPad:  Its lit screen has allowed me to read with the lights off while our baby/toddler slumbers beside me. My books, my music, articles, photos, Facebook...all here.  

5.  Running.  Also known as jogging, limping, leaping, stumbling...we'll take it all.  

6.  Youth Soccer:  Our daughters play a lot of soccer and we spend a lot of time at games.  But the sidelines are where we've met amazing families and learned a few things about the culture of our neighborhood, kids' sports, and parenting.  

7.  Beautiful things and places:  The moon, my friend's living room, beach rocks at sunset, cloudscapes, that necklace, twinkling lights, flowers, architecture, fonts, the pattern on that fabric, your haircut, a garden.  

8.  Food:  I'm fortunate to have a brother who is a chef, a daughter who is a foodie, and a CSA box full of fresh vegetables each week.  I love cooking; I love combining flavors; I love the privilege of eating something different every day.   
9.  Comfy clothes.  The older I get, the more I appreciate an outfit comparable to mashed potatoes.  Soft, warm, unobtrusive, dependable, goes with anything.
10.  Funny stuff:  jokes, memes, videos, stories, our toddler, your mishap, Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert...it's such a serious place, this world.  Cats afraid of cucumbers can make it all okay.  

CHS Graduation: a Tribute to Family

My graduation address to the Class of 2015 feels especially poignant as I mourn the passing of a role model and friend from the Class of 1987 and feel closer than ever to friends from my own Class of 1989.

Graduates, many of you have been a part of the Islander Family for four years. For some of you, it has only been a few months. But tonight you will be invited to join our fifty-year graduates in a family of Islander alumni and the past, present, and future of Coronado High School graduates which stretches back 100 years.  Placing yourself on a continuum of a century of events and people can make you feel as insignificant as a moment in time, or it can make you feel like you belong.

You will always be a part of the Islander Family, but I want to remind you of the other families you forged at Coronado High School and beyond its walls this year. Those families have sustained you and they are what you must seek out as you move on beyond this place.

A family can form over the course of a century or in the time an elevator is out of order. Families grow as a result of being in the same place with the same people (and the same appetite) week in and week out.   I'm thinking of Bagels and Bibles. I'm thinking of Water Polo Waffle Wednesdays. I'm thinking of Dessert Days in Woodshop and Calculus. You've grown families in your spots on the quad at break, at Starbucks before school, and astride your surf or skateboard.  In that E period class, CoSA carpool, and at that review session. 

Chances are most of you are not taking members of your Islander Family or real family along with you on your next adventures, so be on the lookout for new ones.  You’ll find them in some expected places:  your dorm, apartment building, library, dining hall, coffee shop, on teams, and in your classes and workplace.   But there’s wonderful reassurance in the familiar faces you find in less likely places…the clerk who seems to always be there when you're checking out.  The runners, walkers, or bikers who travel your same path.  The bird and squirrel outside your window each morning.  You’ll form families with people who share your faith or who share your struggle.

Coronado High School alumni create a home for one another by meeting annually on the eve of the Fourth of July in an all-school reunion. Year after year and decade after decade, 50-year graduates flock back to the island for our ceremony.  Our campus, even if the buildings aren’t the same as when you were here, will still belong to you.  Your classmates dedicated a memorial to all fallen Islanders, and the Rock and the courts and fields and stages, and that piece of pavement where you daily met your friends here at CHS, will always be yours.

So the advice I want to leave you with is to continue to actively form new families, even fleeting ones, by making eye contact, by saying hello and good morning, by high-fiving, by hugging, and by acknowledging that you're sharing the same space for a similar experience as someone else, whether it's in traffic or in a doctor’s office, or at a concert or graduation or grief group.  These connections are what make us less alone and are what makes us want to be and keep being.

I love you, my Islander sisters and brothers.  Don’t forget to come home to us for the holidays. 

Live Like You're Hosting an Exchange Student

Last week we hosted a Chinese teacher and student in our home as part of an exchange sponsored by Big Sis's International Baccalaureate middle school. We learned about the exchange only a week before, and it seemed like there were one hundred reasons to say are you kidding me no, we do not need this in our lives right now, including that the visit was falling on a week of major events at my school (annual Strategic Planning, school board meeting, basketball game vs. rival high school, "Dirty in the Paint" dance--yeah, don't ask).  Adding in fun cultural activities, complicating an already complex carpool scheme, and cleaning the house in preparation could very well take me over the edge.  But Big Sis was excited.  And we have plenty of space in our house, which we bought for the purpose of sharing.  This is the kind of thing we love to do.  So we said yes.

The exchange students and teachers were arriving the evening of Super Bowl Sunday, and we learned in the morning that we had been assigned a male teacher and student.  We were disappointed; as a family of three girls it seemed obvious we would be paired with girls.  And how would it work with one adult and student?  We made an attempt to "trade" our guests with friends matched with two Chinese girls, friends who have three sons.  For a variety of reasons, though, we needed to stick with the original plan.  And that night we met our teacher, Dong, and student, Li Ze ("Tony"), and began five amazing days of cultural exchange.

Dong and Tony accompanied Big Sis to school each morning, so they participated in carpool and shadowed middle school students and teachers.  We picked them up each afternoon, taking them to the beach, Balboa Park, the Hotel del Coronado, and Seaport Village.  We introduced them to Souplantation, celebrated my birthday with them at Corvette Diner, and ended the week with Tony's favorites, pizza and spaghetti.

It took only a half-day for the awkwardness to wear off and for us to realize we were experiencing something wonderful.  I began thinking that there were some life lessons to be gleaned from our week.

1.  Opening Our Home Opened Our Family.  Hosting guests brought out the best in all of us.  Big Sis was a gracious, attentive, and generous hostess, ensuring that Tony was included in all conversations and activities at home and at school.  They became fast friends.  After a week when Big Sis and I had not been jiving, I welcomed reasons to praise and appreciate her.   Tootsie was charmed by our new family members and had Dong, father of a four-year-old, carrying her around and adopting a special protectiveness of her by the end of his first day with us. Hosting a foreign exchange inspires such simple generosity--we became ambassadors for not only our family and our daughter's school, but for our city, our state, our nation, our culture.  We became Team Family, with a shared purpose (versus what sometimes feels like competing interests):  invested in them being comfortable, welcomed, part of us.  We wanted them to have whatever it appeared they desired or wished for during their visit.  We saw glimpses of ourselves in their reactions to us:  we're funny; we're loud; we're busy.  We practiced our best behavior for most of their time with us until inevitably our warts (sibling bickering, parental impatience) began to show.

2.  We Need to Act Like Tourists More Often.  While some of my work obligations were non-negotiable, our guests inspired us to leave work and school early and embark on mini-adventures we normally wouldn't on a weekday:  roam the park, play at the beach, make family dinner a priority every night.  One evening during our dinner-time sharing of the Best Parts of Our Day, Big Sis offered that spending more time as a family and doing simple but fun activities was a highlight of the week.  It was a powerful reminder that the busy schedules of our daily lives don't have to preclude a quick evening dip in the ocean or pick-up soccer in the park, exploitation of this beautiful city we live in and all it offers.  We are challenged now to think, if we had foreign guests right now, where would we take them; what would we do?  And then consider doing just that, just because.

3.  Expressing Curiosity about Fellow Humans Enriches and Expands Us.  We were excited to share our guests and our experience with family and friends.  My brother and his wife brought their children over for a boisterous family dinner with Google Translate experiments, comparisons of and cross-cultural help with homework, discussions of food, and passing around of babies. We were reminded by Dong, who, per the Chinese norm, has one daughter and wishes he had more, what a privilege large families are.  Each new person we introduced Dong and Tony to brought out different sides of and information from them, too, including our Auntie T who's been to China four times, and our friends who are half Chinese.  We take a certain amount of multiculturalism for granted in our country, but we don't often take the time or have a safe opportunity to question and share with the clear intent of understanding one another's culture for the sake of better understanding humanity.

4.  We Live in a World of Wonder and Wonderfulness. Approach Life as an Adventure.  Practice Curiosity. Tony and Dong had never been to the ocean.  Have you been to the beach with people who've never been to the beach?  That made the beach 10,000 times more fun than it usually is.  The digging in the sand, the cartwheels on the shore, the squeals when waves of chilly water lapped over toes, the sunset:  all of it inspired a giddy celebration of simply being, and being in nature.

Tony and Dong approached all moments with eyes wide open, ready for surprises and learnings.  Every meal, every routine, every drive somewhere inspired more curiosity and questions and awe from our guests.   There were some comical iterations of this, too.  I sent Big Sis downstairs with a box of tissues for their room on the second night Tony and Dong were here.  The square Kleenex box, decorated on the outside as is customary, was mistaken by our guests as a gift, so they expressed overwhelming gratitude to Big Sis for the specially delivered present...and then found out it was tissues and were a little embarrassed.  Our tall pepper grinder was a mystery, so we emptied it to show them what it was and how it worked, with all of us grinding and sniffing pepper in demonstration.  The pepper reveal led to a tour and tasters from our spice cabinet, with Dong sampling Tajin and needing a tall glass of water as a result. Our family's structure, with Husband having the day off on Mondays and watching Tootsie, and my often-long work hours, was eye-opening to Dong, who described more traditional gender roles in Chinese families.  Meanwhile, we kept reminding ourselves that China was a country of largely no siblings, recognizing how our big-family backgrounds informed our world views, and even the questions we asked our guests.  We asked Tony and Dong what surprised them most about America.  After thinking a while, Tony, from Beijing like Dong, responded, the air.  The clean air.  Viewing our world through their eyes imbued with a renewed sense of gratitude.

5.  Caring and Giving Provides Us with Higher Purpose.  Most of us give to and care for others as part of our daily lives.  But moments when we are accountable to others in new ways recalibrate our priorities and help us find our center.  I have times when I work later than I planned and my family pays, and I feel guilty but also that the sacrifice is necessary.  But this week I felt a renewed sense of obligation and tug.  When I left work it was to be there for my family AND our special family, whom I grew to love in short time.  Hosting Dong and Tony made work feel a little less critical.  It made going home more so.  It made life richer for all of us.  We're going to try to hold on to the important parts, and embrace opportunities that stretch our family beyond ourselves.

2015: In Which Lice Appears to Be More Important Than Family News

Well, hello there 2015; I'm finally getting around to acknowledging your arrival.  We greeted you in the company of my parents with a champagne toast, fresh off the plane from a wonderful visit in the Caribbean with my brother’s family, where seven cousins, two extra aunties, as well as dogs, cats (both young and old and ailing*), guinea pigs, iguanas, geckos, and mosquitoes shared a house with a view of the sea.  We swam, ate, hiked, cooked, played football and baseball, talked, snuggled, and mostly just enjoyed being related and being together.  Tootsie soaked up love and attention twelve-fold. 

2015 opened with Middle Sis’s 3^rd grade teacher’s resolution that There Shall Be No More Lice in her classroom (even she contracted the critters, poor lady).  I’ll be discreet and share that we were intimately involved in a lice intervention the day before school resumed, and it was only a week later that we received the teacher’s email of surrender:  “Lice Is Back.”  If one can conjure humor while managing the specter or reality of lice, there’s a certain comedy to be recognized in its effects on otherwise sane-appearing and level-headed mothers.  Creatures so tiny with such magnitude of power to bring successful, confident, resourceful women to their knees!  We join a sisterhood around the trauma of lice, a sorority of horror and sharing of remedies, with crying and raw-scalped children who are victims of and audience to the drama of slathering, combing, shampooing, laundering, drying, spending, rinsing and repeating. 

Lice is prehistoric.  Lice doesn’t discriminate.  Lice will never be vanquished.  It’s kind of awesome, and I mean that literally, how the little buggers maintain their hegemony over us, no matter how rich, educated, clean, willful, and powerful we think we are.  It’s only our Type-A vigilance, our determination, that keeps the villains from rising up in whole new civilizations, complete with hierarchies and alphabets.

[And here's where Big Sis points out with disdain that I've devoted more of this blog post on lice than I have on our trip to the USVI--Ed.]

Big Sis wants No Part of Lice, so while I was out of the house for a few hours one day, she helpfully stripped our couches, beds, and pillows and generated a mountain of (quite possibly) unnecessary laundry.  It wasn’t long after I recovered from my own grousing and folding of sheets and towels that our elderly dog’s bladder control surrendered.  Into the washer and dryer went multiple loads of dog bedding and towels.  And it wasn’t long after I committed myself to the cycle of dog clean-ups that our washing machine surrendered.  And it wasn’t long before the washing machine broke that Husband conveniently left town.  Right after that I recognized that Tootsie had Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease.  Right after that our babysitter fell ill with a horrible flu.  Right after that Tootsie spent some time in my office at school.  Right after that I had my own cry right there in my office.  And my mother’s help and proximity became valuable AGAIN.  Not to mention her washing machine.

Meanwhile, Husband and Middle Sis were in Arlington, where his father was interred at the National Cemetery.  The special ceremony was on Husband’s birthday, and he was surrounded by a crowd of family members.  He and Middle Sis visited sites in Washington D.C., and bonded with cousins Middle Sis had never met.  The three of us who remained at home sent our hearts, and Big Sis worked through her disappointment over not attending and experiencing all the family bonding back East.    

And Middle Sis returned home last night with an eye infection* and was excluded from school today.  SIGH. 

Some weeks just bring more gifts than others.  I'm feeling gratitude that Husband is back, Middle Sis's eye is healing, Tootsie seems healthy, dog has puppy pads to pee on, we don't appear to have lice, and we've got a three-day weekend to purchase a new washer.  

Onward!

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.

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.

Turned All the Way Up to Eleven

Tootsie is on the cusp of turning one year old, on the cusp of walking and talking and ditching the breast and the bottle.  She is on the cusp of beyond babyhood.  I mused on her sweet uncalloused feet last night, respecting how little time of tenderness remains.

This month of her almost-oneness, the month when, a year ago, our lives went topsy turvy, has been emotional.  I can easily recall planning for the upcoming year at work, packing for travel, unpacking at the new house, and enjoying pregnancy.  Summer feels like Boston.  It feels like the hospital.  It feels like uncertainty and anything can happen.  It also feels like family, like love, like hope and excitement.

Tootsie is busy, busy, busy.  We took her on her first airplane ride since coming home from Boston, to Iowa to visit Husband's father.  We spent much of the weekend in the hospice house with family, Tootsie providing distractions and entertainment, cruising from chair to coffee table, babbling and growling and cackling with laughter at her sisters.  Life continues, we all nodded, as the seventeen-year cicadas swarming in the trees outside provided a fervent symphony.

She eats curried chicken salad, apples, diced grapes, and even Baked Lays potato chips (benefit of a trip to Subway with her babysitter) with her sharp little teeth, including new fangs on top.  She loves swimming, soccer balls (gooooooaaaaaaaaallll!), toys with microphones, and rocks.  She sings along.  She makes noises like an elephant.  She loves her baby cousins.

As always, she grins and smiles and laughs far more than she ever complains.  She's been ours for almost a year.  We can hardly remember life without her.

Happy to Have a Happy Mother's Day

Since last Mother's Day, our third daughter, Tootsie, joined the family.  By now most of you know the saga of Tootsie--born two months early across the country, and with meningitis.  Tootsie and I spent six weeks together in a Boston hospital apart from Husband and Big and Middle Sis.  But the truth is, after a fairly speedy recovery from her infection, Tootsie was pretty good to go. Throughout the ordeal, we were fortunate on many levels, benefiting from the care of incredible health care professionals in an amazing hospital, the overwhelming support of family and friends, and a lack of related long-term health issues.  Today, you would never know our bouncing baby girl was a preemie.

Because this was my third go-round with pregnancy and childbirth, I knew to watch myself for signs of baby blues.  I figured I was particularly susceptible at this point in my life, with a new job and already busy household.  Returning to a recently purchased home with a fragile newborn and two daughters who missed their mom added a few variables.  But I had no idea how difficult things would be.

While this Mother's Day morning I woke up cheerful, loved up my girls, did a load of laundry, went for a jog, and enjoyed brunch with my family, mere months ago, in the throes of serious post-partum depression and anxiety, I struggled to get out of bed each morning.  Now that I'm reunited with Myself, I have the perspective to appreciate how scary post-partum depression can be for a normally happy, confident woman and her family.

I feel it's important to acknowledge how many women enter into what is universally considered the blessed state of motherhood with the monkey of PPD on their backs--a monkey accompanied by Fear, Lack of Confidence and Motivation, Guilt, Self-Loathing, Malaise, and Search for Meaning, among other unwanted guests.  The challenges of parenthood are great enough without attempting to mother from the bottom of a well.  Sitting among first-time mothers in my therapy/support group, I wondered if I would have had more children if I felt the way I did this time after our firstborn.

I am well enough now to know I would do it all over again.

But the journey back to rational thinking and happy days felt long and hard (and necessitated work on myself I'd never felt compelled to do in 42 years), and I suspect I will always keep an eye trained on myself and my vulnerability to overwhelm.

Whatever the causes of PPD--hormonal, societal, circumstantial, genetic--it's important we are mindful of the mamas out there. It's easy for those of us missing infants and rocking chairs to exclaim to new mothers that these are the best of days and aren't you just so in love?  I was always in love.  But I was also wide-eyed and paralyzed by a sense that everything was Just Too Much to Handle.  Thankfully, perceptive family members and friends began throwing out lifelines as I floundered.

We've got to continue to ask new and experienced mothers probing questions, offer help and support, and be persistent about seeking professional care when there's concern.  I was told a million times that the best mother is a healthy one.  I was told a million times it would get better, and a thousand times I didn't believe it.  But I am a happier, healthier self than I was six months ago, and I love being a mother more than ever.

Happy Mother's Day.  This year, I am not taking the "happy" for granted.

Behind the Photo Shoot

It was a long shot (ha!) from the start:  scheduling a family photo shoot the day after first soccer games and a sleepover at our house, during a heat wave and amidst our Adjustment Time.  Husband was all in, though:  he wanted a family photo to use for cards for the countless thank yous we will write to our dear friends who have been feeding us, gifting us, cheering us.  Meanwhile the girls scowled at the long-sleeved black shirts and jeans I set aside for them.  They scowled in general.  It had been a rough morning of sibling rivalry and poor attitudes.

Except not really that rough, unless you acknowledge that sleepovers turn children into ugly, whiny, irrational shells of their former selves.  Big Sis was in full throes of Sleepover Detox:  Crying,  bemoaning her pitiful self.  I had little sympathy, having endorsed her sleepover and next-morning pedicures and endured little sleep, myself.

We adopted the Get With the Program approach:  You will go, and you will smile and you will Do This because we are asking you to and it's about Family and Knock It Off, for the love of all things holy.  She and her red-rimmed eyes trudged into the car, and we apologetically showed up on our photographer/friend's doorstep.  She was glad to see we were not perfect, after all, as our marketing director suggests.  The girls commenced having trouble sharing the same space right away, what with one of them touching the other accidentally.  I could tell by Husband's frozen jawline it would be a long afternoon.

Tootsie took stage first, though, and was marginally cooperative herself, squirming and hiding her eyes behind her little hands, versus curling up in sweet sleep like the babies in the pictures adorning the walls of the studio.  She paused for one bottle and a breastfeeding top-off as well as some gnawings on her binky before our photographer could cajole her into some relaxed positions.

Thank you to Melissa of Just Hatched Photography!

Next came the photos with the girls.  There were some dorky grins and fake smiles, but the magic came when Tootsie was in the arms of a sister and they were directed to look at her.  No more fighting and dirty looks, just pure love and adoration.  Thankfully caught on film.  Husband and I joined them and we pulled off some Wholesome Family Togetherness too.

It's the whole Facebook thing, right?  The images we project can be deceiving.  Our photos are lovely and capture our love for one another and our closeness.  But in any family, and certainly in ours lately, there's exhaustion, frustrations, emotions across the spectrum burbling underneath.  So I'm capturing the outtakes.

We survived intact, and Big Sis was even inching toward her cheerier self by the time we left.  Until she bonked her head on the car door...