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The Other Shoe

May 26, 2011 By Kelle

We are on our way home from an impromptu two-day retreat, and I have turned the very back seat of our car into a temporary office. While my knees are jammed between two car seats and I occasionally have to angle my screen to compensate for sun glare, I can’t complain. My office windows currently happen to offer the breathtaking view of Charlotte Harbor, its canvas peppered with boats whose white sails contrast nicely against the sky, and there are two sweet bodies—one at 10 o’clock, one at 2—to keep me company.

A quick trip to drive Rebecca to her parents’ house on Gasparilla Island turned into an extended stay for us—one that involved mornings sipping coffee on the dock and evenings deciding what Big Olaf ice cream flavor was the best (it’s a tie between Butterfinger Blast and Kahlua Krunch).

Yesterday morning, as I made a comfortable seat out of sand and positioned myself so I could sip my coffee, watch the pelicans and still keep an eye on Nella who was busy investigating sea oats behind me, I did what you may have done at the intake of this very sentence. I laughed. Seriously. Seaside coffee? Pelicans? Babies and sea oats? Ride a unicorn, why don’t you.

And my first instinct is to tip the scale, shifting the balance back where it belongs. Birthday party, Isle of Capri, morning coffee on the dock—Fun’s ahead by three points in our lives, and if events aren’t fairly proportioned between work and play, home and away, I’ll feel like we’re doomed for the other shoe to drop. Like that imaginary pinched chick with the tight bun and the clipboard who hands out good and bad will notice our unfair share and come lay hell on our lives.

I’m learning to ride the wave though. Balance occurs naturally, and feeling guilty for a few moments retreat or immediately packing up and heading home, purposefully running out of gas along the way, isn’t going to help anything. If anything, a short, calm intermission has revitalized me to return home, restore order, clean clutter, and get back to work, all the while remembering to welcome more tranquil moments and to be grateful for all of it—the highs, the lows, the crazy, the lazy, and the mortar in between.

I look at balance a bit differently now. It isn’t a game of keeping score so much where good and bad, chaotic and quiet, stressful and restful have to be even players in our home but more so a measure of our response to harmonize the presence of whatever circumstances happen to be hovering. When challenges come, we accept them, learn from them, chop and puree those damn lemons into something sweet and likewise, when the good and easy comes, we drink it in gulps knowing that, like hardships, it won’t last forever.

Sea urchin

It just so happens we had the privilege of leaving the good faucet on a little longer this week.

Rebecca’s parents are also from Michigan and, while we collectively recalled what we missed about our home state–namely, the October russet landscape and fall apple orchard adventures–we unanimously concluded that there is something quite marvelous about babies growing up on the gulf.

We also realized, after spending a couple days in a fully carpeted home, Nella really does know how to do a real crawl with the whole alternating hand/knee coordination thing–and she does it well. But the minute Smartie’s knees hit hard surface, she’s skidding her belly seal-style–not to be underestimated, however, because Sister can slither quick and gracefully like the speedy little lizards who dart across our garage floor every morning. She high-tailed it from one end of the walk-around porch to the other in all of one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand seconds.

Finish Line Reward.

And, just like a kid at show-and-tell, we whip out our family’s best moves for people we haven’t seen in a while. Like we have Lainey perform that pointed toe tappy thing she does from ballet (applause, applause) and when Nella slips her foot out of her high chair during dinner, we yell for everyone to come look.

It was a good couple days.

Can I get an “amen” for how good it feels to watch your friends love your babies? These kids are my heart and when you love them, you consequently just found yourself a deeper place in my own heart. Likewise, to let my friends know I love them…sometimes loving their kids is the best place to start.

As balance would have it, I’ve just smashed my arm into an old Nutrigrain bar, and its sticky remains are glued to my forearm. Nella is unhappily awakening from her travel nap, and we are pulling into our driveway where the scene from my office windows has shifted: a lawn that needs to be mowed, trash cans that need to be put away, a house with closed blinds that, if open, would reveal a post-party hot mess that calls for clean-up.

Oh, it’s good to be home.

The other shoe has dropped.

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Congratulations to the winner of a new Sweet Seat, Comment #462: Picture Parables: Love, love, love your way with words-so much so, that I’m having contractions with my first on the way, and I just HAD to read your blog this morning!

Picture Parables, please send your contact info (and a picture of that new baby!) to kellehamptonblog@comcast.net, and your new little one will soon have something pretty to sit in!

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Finally, it just so happens to be an appropriate time to launch the renewed sponsorship of Mamalode magazine because look who’s on the cover of the current issue:

Opening the mailbox to find a new Mamalode issue is always a welcomed surprise. It’s a good read–full of thoughtful writing and beautiful complementing photos. I love the variety of Mamalode’s content, the freedom of which the writers are able to express themselves, and the overall message that motherhood is hard but rich. Essays are raw, honest and encouraging, and I am proud to be a part of this “Enough” themed issue with “The Secret Reserves,” an essay on overcoming feelings of inadequacy and doubt in mamahood.

Mamalode is quickly growing. Be a part of it and get your subscription HERE.

One comment on this post will randomly be selected to win a free subscription, courtesy of Mamalode.

Stay classy, San Diego.
(sorry, I’ve been wanting to use that)

Making Memories…half-full.

March 23, 2011 By Kelle

So, there is this story my mom tells that I love. It embodies so much of the adventurous mother spirit I know she had when we were little and makes me smile…and wish I could have been her friend back then. Apparently, as my mom tells it, she was home with us kids while my dad was working and, as usual, wasn’t going to let not having a second car keep her from getting out. So, she packed us all up–strapped my little body on top of my sister’s lap in one of those junky seventies strollers and made my brother walk beside her because she was hell-bent on making a memory. Except my mother would never say “hell-bent.” Anyway, as legend has it, she was pushing the day-care-on-wheels across a busy street and, right in the middle of the intersection, the stroller broke and we all like, crashed to the ground in tears. Knowing my mom, she probably laughed and gracefully waved cars on while she picked up the pieces and attended to wounds. And then she probably found some even cooler way of getting to where she was headed with three kids and no help. The point is, I remember lots of occasions like this…where my mom hurdled obstacles to take us to museums, drag us to the park or chain an early model of the bike trailer to the back of her Schwinn for an excursion (ours was called “the bugger,” I remember it well—it was black, hardshell, and my stomach lunged everytime we turned corners because I swore it was going to break loose from my mom’s bike and we’d be left in traffic).

I think about this a lot. The fact that making memories and getting out of the house and packing diaper bags and taking pictures of the smiles between the whines and pulling over to feed Nella in the middle of a 45-minute drive to an orange grove in the middle of nowhere isn’t ever easy. But it’s worth it.

I’ve lived here for almost seven years now, and I’ve never been to an orange grove. I’ve driven past them, yes, but I’ve always wanted to be in them, between those rows of trees actually picking those oranges. And now that I have two kids and am, well, hell-bent on filling my mother’s adventurous shoes, it was high time we made the excursion.

It was beautiful. Just like I imagined.

But, I’m not going to lie. Sucking-the-marrow excursions come with the hassle. The real story goes something like Lainey’s crying three rows in because it’s hot as blazes and she’s thirsty, so I’m now clawing oranges apart like a bear, wringing them into her mouth for juice and it leaves my hands annoyingly sticky. A small army of fire ants makes it through the window of open peep-toe in my sandals and starts a buffet on my feet…and then they yell to their uncles and cousins to come join them. Poor Nella’s trying to sleep and her head keeps sliding until it gets so far, then she bobs, opens her eyes, cries, pulls her head up and starts the little repetition again. Or there’s the backpack I’m lugging or the five gallon bucket of oranges on a pulley that tips and knocks out six oranges every time we try and move to the next row.

But–and there’s always a but–it’s a memory. A memory my kid won’t forget. And you know what? You should have seen the plastered smile on my girl as she dodged from one orange row to the next with a “hey mom, here’s a good orange” or the sweet cat that practically made love to the red rain boots (um, dickersons).

There’s the way the sunlight spilled through openings in the overlap of orange tree branches, splitting the light into magnificent rays or that feeling of satisfaction as I clicked my shutter with the chance that maybe I’d catch a bit of that brilliance.

There was the tangy scent of citrus, the relief of finding ant-free mounds of grass to stand on, the laughter that followed Lainey falling to the ground after the orange she was pulling finally snapped.

There’s forgetting about sticky hands because the orange you ripped through in the middle of tree-plucking tastes that sweet or the call you make to your friend in the heat of it all just to tell her “Dude, seriously, you have to bring the kids here. It’s awesome.” Because it is.

It is worth it. It is always worth it.

This cat freaking loved us. It was so cool. Like I paid him to stick around because the girls couldn’t have been happier by his presence.

Sometimes Lainey will retell a memory from months ago. Like “Hey Mama, ‘member when we went to that tall slide park?” And I’m remembering the disastrous time I woke her up from a nap and regretted my park decision as she whined and cried and hated that great big slide I thought she’d love. I wait to hear her version of the memory months later and am always surprised when a not-so-hot experience is retold as, “That was fun. Can we do it again?”

Attempts to share time with your kids, to do something special with them, to strap them up in a crappy stroller and face traffic to get to a park…those memories only get better with time. I often wonder if the childhood memories I have of our family Christmas were really as magical as I remember. They are epic in my brain–storybook perfection. And I wonder if maybe there were tears or maybe there was fighting or maybe there weren’t a thousand presents like I swear there was. But there is no convincing me it wasn’t perfect. And, despite the exasperation of our orange grove trip yesterday, there is no convincing me it wasn’t, in its imperfection, indeed the same…perfect.

Photography by Lainey.

Making memories is an investment. Like buying stock guaranteed to increase its value. It’s win/win, Baby.

And right when I think the goodness of our trip has far outweighed the hassle, a nice man pulls up in a pick-up truck with little Wilbur in the back and lets us pet him.

We are now swimming in oranges. Orange recipes welcome. (Orange buttercream frosting, anyone?)

Orange grove info HERE for locals. Awesome place.

I’m happy to have Bambaroos Boutique back as a sponsor. They’ve added the most exquisite tutus to their shop (satin ribbons and thick tulle…gorgeous for a flower girl…check out this one!), and we, of course, love their vast selection of clips and handbands for both littles and mamas!

Use code BLOGS to receive 10% off your order. And a comment will be randomly selected from this post to receive a $25 gift certificate to Bambaroos Boutique. Happy shopping! Happy Wednesday.

Oh, and thank you so much for your incredibly heartfelt words on the last post. I read many of them out loud to Brett, and it reminded us again of the honor and privilege of this new journey in our life.

Silhouettes

March 16, 2011 By Kelle

Pop Quiz, hotshot: which of these photos is the real dancer leaping on the beach last night and which one is me, pretending to be a dancer?

If you guessed the graceful swan in the first picture is the real one, you’re right. The second one looks like it needs a chalk outline and some crime scene tape. Like I fell out of a 15-story building and landed on the canvas of a sunset.

All this to say, Heidi and I headed to the beach last night and among watching our kids eat sand and scream at seagulls, we were sidetracked by the beautiful sunlit silhouette of the real dancer who was all whippin’ out the grand jete. And I apologize if that’s not a grand jete, but it’s the only ballet term I know, and I do my best to drop it when I can.

Lainey, unlike her mama, possesses some instinctive grace and poise.

We started ballet for her on a whim, thinking we’d do an 8-week course and peter out like we do a lot of other stuff, but she loves it. Seven months in and the kid passe’s more than she walks. Okay, I lied. I know two ballet terms.

Heidi’s response to the above move…and I quote: Who do you think you are, the (expletive expletive) Black Swan?

At least she properly represents her hometown with her choice of beach cup.

So, where were we?

We enjoyed a night out for pizza earlier this week before Poppa and Gary had to head back to Michigan. I like nights out for pizza. I like that it feels vacationey in that most pizza nights are spent at home, and going out for it is out of the ordinary and therefore more appreciated. I like the vibe of a pizzeria–the framed signed pictures of celebreties swearing it’s the world’s best pizza, the grease-stained tablets the waiters use to pencil in your order, the pitchers of fountain Coke that tastes better than usual…fizzier and colder. I like to read the story on the back of the menu that tells how the pizzeria started…how some young guy had a good idea and a great recipe and poured his life savings into starting a chain some years ago. And I like the little black-and-white picture right next to the story…the one where that young guy is smiling, balancing a great big spatula with the famous pizza pie.

Dude, what is up with our family and this new face?

We had just finished dinner when Lainey caught sight of a young girl taking a ride on the Eurobungy, this giant trampoline/bungee jumping device stationed outside the shopping center where we had dinner. And then my girl shocked me. She pointed and confidently said, “I want to ride that.” I wanted to tell her that I knew better, that she’d be catapulted into the trees, that I knew she’d just start crying to get off the minute we got in line. But I didn’t. I wanted to let her fly…to figure it out for herself even though I knew–like, could bet money–that she wouldn’t follow through. Because she’s timid and little and only three.

“Are you sure you want to ride it? Do you see how high that little girl is jumping?” I asked, careful not to sway my voice to suggest pressure either way.

“I want to ride it,” she said again. So we got in line and I waited for the moment I’d break out my prepared consolation of “That’s okay, Baby. You tried. Maybe next time.”

But she never cried. She never even hesitated. She listened to the instructions, she followed directions, she shy-smiled as her feet lost touch with the trampoline and the motor got louder as she was hoisted higher and higher. I started nervous laughing. We all did.

This is nuts. I know my kid. She’s not this girl. And then the Eurobungee man grabbed my girl’s foot, pulled it down like a sling shot, offered one last “Ready?” (followed by a nod and a smile), and then, BAM. My girl rocketed into the sky with shrieks of laughter that made heads turn in a two-mile radius. My timid little three-year old catapulted toward the fronds of towering Royal Palms that lined the sky, and our mouths gaped not only at the absurdity of a toddler’s silhouette hugging the moon but at her grin and gratification of the human rubber band ride. She surprised me again. My girl is brave and adventurous. She is almost four.

Twenty minutes later, we high-fived and applauded. Bravo, Brave Girl.

She’s on a little metamorphosis, compiling some sweet new adjectives to her ever-growing character.

She tried hard to pretend she didn’t think this was funny when she walked out of her room like this the other day.

But under all this brave and adventurous stuff, she’s still just little. She still asks me every couple weeks, “Hey Mama, when I was borned, did you cry happy tears?”

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Anyway, we’re halfway into the week and can’t ignore the fact that it’s the peak of south Florida weather right now…the best of the best. The very reason the term “snowbird” exists. It’s beautiful and breezy and warm. I am completely swayed by seasonal changes, craving all the things you’re supposed to crave when the calendar turns–pinks in spring and apple spice in fall. I am dreaming of florals and pastels and drapes that dance when the wind from open windows suddenly sweeps in. And currently in love with spring around our home…

And it just gets better from here.

I’m excited to have Me You Health back with us as a sponsor. Me You Health is a free easy way to encourage well-being awareness. “We transform discoveries from health, well-being and social connection research into simple, action-oriented pursuits that encourage meaningful behavior changes.” Join them on Facebook, check out their site and try completing their daily challenges.

I love today’s challenge: Find out something new about a neighbor, acquaintance, or local business owner.

I found out my sister sometimes puts her dirty lunch dishes in her desk drawer at work at the end of the day if she’s eager to leave. And then she has to soak them for days. And I told her I was writing that, so it’s approved.

Me You Health challenges make you think a bit more about things we seem to forget, including exercise and nutrition. Try loading some of their applications on your phone like Every Drink which alerts you throughout the day to drink enough water or Monumental, a fun app that keeps track of the stairs you climb and virtually compares it to exploring the world’s monuments.

So there. Mid-week happies.

Winner for the Petite Lemon $50 gift certificate:
Comment# 765, Sherri: Had to let you know that my little podunk town in Tennessee reported your dolphin story on the radio as I drove to work yesterday…small world, eh?

Sherri, please send your info to kellehamptonblog@comcast.net. Congratulations!