Skipping Down the Stairs

For reasons I can’t really put my finger on, the death of Michael Jackson just seems so surreal.  His music meanders through much of the landscape of my childhood.  I know the news coverage of his passing is going to continue ad naseum and there is a lot of other really important news pushed to the side for stories of his life, but I’d like to share one memory from childhood that I think you might get a chuckle out of.

I distinctly remember LOVING the Thriller video as a kid.  I still get chills watching (or people doing the dance) even now as an adult.  One night while flipping through TV Guide, back before the internets when people actually had to use a paper catalog to figure out the TV schedule, I was excited to see thriller pop up several times in the pages.  I gleefully tuned in only to find it was not Thriller, but the description of some “scary” movie.  I was crushed.  But I later developed a taste for scary movies, go figure.

So I leave you with this, which mixes the nostalgia with the AWESOME.

This is the place where I get to express myself without the limit of 140 characters.  No wonder it’s been so quiet.  It seems all I can muster these days are snippets of thought to share with the world.

Today has been sort of an odd, emotional day.  I rock these hormones like nobody’s business, let me tell you.  I found a couple more “lost” friends on Facebook today.  And it was great to see their lovely faces, but it also served to remind me what a tumultuous, awkward, insecure time of high school (really ALL school) I had.  I was literally consumed with comparing myself to my peers.  So much so, that I can remember most of their names, but am usually in complete shock when someone outside of the small circle of friends I had remembers me.  That painfully shy, insecure, tall, geek of a girl that is so often epitomized in popular culture was me.  It’s still me, in a way, while I watch from the brink and avoid the spotlight at all costs.

I hear a lot of people talk about their teen years like they were the best of their lives.  And I wonder who these people are and how they managed to remain so confident and care-free during what was such a torturous time for me.  Everyday I came up with a plethora of ways in which I did not and would never measure up to my peers.  Instead I threw myself into band and books.  I eschewed prom and all those other school functions, despite people telling me I would regret it later.  I still don’t regret it.  And I dreamed of what life would be like once I got away from the small town I grew up in.

And now, thanks to the wonder of technology and the interwebs, I get to see a bit  into the lives of these people I always considered somehow superior to me.  And we’re not so different these days.  We probably weren’t so different then either, though a Katrina left with any time to worry/ponder about something makes great mountains out of what are in reality, tiny, tiny mole hills.

Wow, that was a lot more than 140 characters.  Must go Tweet to recover from the shock of using all these complete sentences.

There are certain rites of passage that we are told about, beginning fairly early in life.  We just went through one of them: we bought our first house!  Over the last month or so, we placed a bid on a home, nervously awaited that bid to be accepted, provided mountains of virtual paperwork to our mortgage specialist, and in a flurry of signatures became homeowners.  We moved to a different part of town (Hello Deep South Austin!) and now have twice the living space we had in the condo.   Quinten now has a yard to play in.  It only took him about 2 days to decide it was ok to run through the grass.

We’re now on the City’s single-stream recycling system.  With all the recycling we’re now able to do, not to mention the composting we’re starting, I think with a few tweaks on what products we buy (think packaging), we might get really, really close to ZERO waste.  It’s exciting!  The neighborhood has a very different feel to it, especially after having lived in Brentwood for the last 8 years.  More working class, less I don’t even know what.  Obviously my words are escaping me.  But it feels good to be without an upstairs neighbor.  And I love the feel of the grass under my bare feet while I watch my toddler run back and forth in the yard.  And I love that we’re home.

There is a small bit of sadness involved with leaving the condo behind.  There were so many firsts there: where we first lived as a family, where Quinten took his first steps, where Enid was conceived.  But, for me at least, it also represented the place where I toiled to become part of the family team, instead of charging forward as a lone, headstrong woman.  In taking this big, home-buying step, I feel like I have finally relinquished my need to have a quick exit should things get too “heavy” for me to deal with.  The condo was always the place I saw myself fleeing from in the night, child/ren in arm as I continued my pattern of running away from problems I didn’t want to invest myself in fixing.  All told, it was a hard 2 years for me (for us).

So this is me turning over a new leaf.  I am no longer Katrina, runner-away from all things hard (but probably worth the effort).  I am Katrina, wife, mother, homeowner, passer of another adulthood rite.  It feels pretty good, actually.  I wonder if anyone else has noticed the difference.

Nearly the two month mark of silence here – where does the time go?

Enid marked 11 weeks yesterday.  It was also her first day in someone else’s care.  It was also my first day to have a large space of hours to myself, in as much as one gets time to herself at work.  All told, it made for a relatively bittersweet day.  I teeter-tottered between feeling guilty about needing the time away from her, and reveling in the fact that I could freely work, use the lavatory, eat lunch, and just in general leave my office without having to keep my sweet but needy girl happy and quiet.  So this is a good thing, this time apart, in the sense that work has become much less stressful and returned to being a balancing act between boredom and mania rather than the place where I juggle my 2 full-time jobs concurrently and slowly lose all semblance of sanity, patience, and sense of self.

The kids are both growing so quickly.  Enid already rolls from back to tummy, flashes the most adorable, gummy smile, and has become less of a inconsolable screamer and more of a curious, happy baby.  And every day I am amazed at how quickly Quinten is changing, becoming more of a boy and less of a toddler with each passing minute.  He calls me Mommy now for the most part, instead of Mama.  And he even tried out calling me Mom the other day and in that moment I had this sense of how quickly it’s all going to go, how quickly he is shedding the baby and becoming the child.  It’s such a hard line to walk, being eager to see them grow, and also being afraid and in awe of how I blink and they’re different people again.  It is these moments that make me want to bring time to a screeching halt so I can really enjoy the gifts each child has brought to me instead of getting caught up in the hustle that are our days right now.  Alas, that power is not mine.  Must get better about living in the moment.

In other news, we’re buying a house!  T-Minus 10 days until closing.

I know, I owe you a birth story.  It is forthcoming, someday soon.  My laundry list extends from here to kingdom come right now.

Parenting these two young children is so trying right now (the toddler he whines, the baby she cries lots and lots), but I want to make a list of my successes from today, in hopes that I look back on these early weeks as mama-to-two and remember something good about myself (and about these two sweet souls I’m responsibile for).

Today I took both kids to Sun Harvest by myself.  Sure, we were only there for 10 minutes, Enid was screaming her head off as we paid for our items, and the whole purpose of the stop was to get Rescue Remedy for me and Gripe Water (sadly out of stock) for her, but I got both kids into and out of the store safely, quickly, and didn’t forget anything.  Success!

Today I also took both kids to Shipe Park.  Quinten got to play on the playground and the swings, Enid slept in the sling, and Quinten and I got some mama-toddler time wherein we shared a fruit bar on the park bench and then swung on the swings.  Success!

While at the park, I successfully managed to change toddler out of a poo-diaper in the front seat of the car and did not: get the front seat messy or get poo anywhere on me.  Still, the most amazing part of this feat was changing a 3-foot tall toddler’s diaper in the front seat.  Success!

Enid is stirring now, but for almost 2 hours straight, both children have been napping.  I had two simultaneously napping children!  Of course, for the first hour, all I did was work.  And then I washed dishes and then folded laundry.  But I am now taking 5 minutes for myself!  Should probably work on that last part, but I’ll declare it a success anyway.  Success!

Screams are beckoning from the direction of the swing.  Toodles!

Quiet around here the last few days, eh?  There is an good reason for the silence, I promise.  At 40 weeks, 1 day, our daughter made her official debut into the world.

Enid Rose, born 2/23/09, 12:25pm, 11 pounds, 12 ounces, 23 inches in length

I plan to get my birth story typed out in the next day or so and will post it here, but in a nut shell she is perfect in every way we could imagine.  We really didn’t need all that pesky newborn clothing, anyway.  Who am I kidding, if you know us in real life, you know we are both tall people and that there was little hope of having an average-sized baby.

We were allowed to escape the hospital yesterday and for the first time since Monday, I took a shower in my own bathroom.  Who knew one could miss a dirty, tiny bathroom so much?

Quinten is quite enamored with his new sister.  We all are.

I am deep in the throes of late-pregnancy.  My sleep is so interrupted at this point, that I am mananging to wake up nearly every hour on the hour at night.  I’d say half of those wakings are nature-related, but I’ve also been waking up with mind a-racing for the last week or so.  Maybe this is my body’s way of re-introducing me to the world of newborn-induced-sleep-deprivation.  I just wish my husband’s body came with a similar mechanism so I wouldn’t have to suffer alone.

Other than the sleep issues, I’m actually feeling pretty good, all things considered.  I even managed an hour-long outing to the park with Grand-Master Q and Andrew on Sunday without spending the rest of the day in a sneezing fit of allergy-induced misery.

Quinten is becoming quite the conversationalist these days.  He seems to have really picked up a lot of our speech mannerisms lately.  He now asks us what we’re doing, and when answered, generally follows up with the requisite why (the first of multitudes of whys to come, I know).  If I ask him what he’d like to eat, he’ll actually say hmm and look like he’s really considering his possibilities, before demanding to be let over the kitchen gate so he can stare at the contents of the refrigerator and maybe make a food-decision.  He also takes particular issue with being told no and responds with some variety of  “not mama no!”, which I take to mean he doesn’t want me to tell him no.  I know 2 comes with its own issues and power struggles, but man he sure is a lot of fun to be around these days.  Is it tempting the fates to say it’s my favorite age so far?  Probably.