five whole months of fullness.  i have been trying to get these images up for days, but the time it takes me to actually sit down at the computer other than a quick email check, logging on to my bank to see how broke we are, and maybe jotting down a bit of journaly type stuff seems to escape me.  it takes too damn long to download photos and then upload them and then insert them where they need to go.  am i doing something wrong?  or are people patient and i am not? i wish i had a personal assistant who could this kind of shit for me.  i like scissors, glue, paper.  i can make one fabulous collage by hand; painstakingly cutting and pasting for hours. but this compterized deal makes me spin.  how i am feeling right now is that I would like to never have to l og on to this wild web of illusions and time swippers. i would like all the totally fabulous writers and beautiful people i know with blogs to send me paper versions of their creation.  i would love it if i only had to get online to shop. i do love to internet shop. not sure if it’s the high in finding totally unique things and then buying them with a click or if i like the actual receiveing of those things via the real mail. my life is simple; a knock on the door from the postman with a package is pure ecstacy.

these shots tell me how time wizzes buy, like the dragonflies down by the banks of the water.  you catch moments, glimpses, and then zzzzzzzip; gone. with only the memory of the color; irredescent and luminescent, shades of oranges, blues and reds.  i mean it seems like yesterday i was smiling with my little belly a secret to the world, keeping the fact that life was bursting inside only inside.  it seems like yesterday i could still fit into my jeans and do twists.  it seems like yesterday i was waiting for sula to be born.  for mia to be born. wasn’t it just yesterday that my kids were only a fleeting thought, an idea that someday, maybe, if i was lucky, i would get them?

this will be the first pregnancy-time i have really take photos of my belly self.  i never did it with the other two. but because it’s the last, I am trying to keep those glimpses close by, hold the color and the wings of beauty right near my eyes so ii won’t ever forget. regardless if i feel huge, or hot, or tired.  i pat my body-knowledgee full on it’s back, it knows what to do to grow this life.  even if it means getting pregnant everywhere from my ass to my earlobes, and i truly do.  writing just this reminds me of the time i was wondering around a reagge festival in long beach, ca.  bill and i went up to a vendor, he was belizian as i recall, and he could not stop staring at my bare belly with the biggest grin ever.  pointing at my baby bump, he looked at bill and said in very thick patois: a real mon do dat. a real mon do dat.  Well a real womon do dat, too.  I am proud of my inner-wise creatix who knows exactly how to form me to make precious space for this child. large or small, it’s perfect.

I am full, five months, five full moons (this is how the girls and i keep track of when the baby will come; they get moons they can see, not dates they know nothing of yet) of baby.  i have dove deep in these waters, i wade through these moments, splashing between not wanting to feel so much and feeling total  completeness in my range; the good, the bad; the ugly. i am raw in pregnancy.  i am open to all my creatures, the horned and fanged ones that teach me through pain and stress and the ones with angelic silouettes that gift me wisdom through ecstatic pleasures.  the rawness of it all, i do love and embrace.  there is never a more palpable me; this baby is allowing me to feel and choose who i need to be right now.  while lives inside i see an array of choices, these inevitable changes that i am asked to make to become a new person.  sometimes this feels uncomfortable and hard.  sometimes it feels really easy and graceful. i just know that these shifts of being are to slowly mold me into mother of this child.  I am to become someone this child needs on earth.  to imagine; i am already the mother of two different people, each one of them needing intricately different mamas at different times.  and yet another person, right now, is teaching me what they need, what i need to learn to serve them.  i never knew a human was capable of wearing so many different faces of love. it is overwhelming and beautiful what we are capable of.  we can all love so much in so many different ways.  it makes me realize there is not type of person we can’t become to show love to every person that walks on this earth.  we can all open up to that unconditional part of our heart that erases what we know and fills us with no other knowledge but love. we can have no enermy or oppostion then.  that is miraculous.

these were all morning shots.  we sat outside. i drank cold nettle and mint  tea filled up with more agave nectar than  nettle while the girls guzzled down apple juice with ice and mint, a treat for this hotter than hot morning. we watched the sun rise up high enough to create light and shadow and felt the dry heat swell above and through us.  i’m sick of this heat, my mia says.  my mind jumps to judge: why does she sound so negative?  then i am smashed in the face with who she is echoing.  i won’t mention names but lets just say the voice sounded way too close to home.  i make a note to stop complaining about Grandfather Sun.  but embrace His light and heat. to try and  drive with the windows down.  to go sweat at the park and choose a non-shady spot and smile all the while. even in it’s extreme and exessive brightness and temperature here, it still should be revered and celebrated.  we could not live without it’s ancient light and energy.

mia is excited to take my personal photographer this morning.  i told her that was the plan and she got very giddy.  i decided not to brush my hair or anything.  i did put clean clothes on for a change, but since my laundry is backed -up so badly, they are clothes that do not fit anymore.  she wanted me to wear her play silks, but i am not ready for that kind of exposure yet.  mia handles the camera well.  she is careful and has a steady hand for an almost 4 year old. she knew how to angle the camera to get all of me in, tilting up ever so slightly.  i appreciate that she chops off my head, though. i don’t like to give my eyes away often.

she asked me to do some yoga so i pretended to prepared to go into a backbend (this is not the safe way to start).  which i eventually did do for her, without warming up (ouch).  she got a good photo of me in wheel,  but the yoga police may come after me for backbending at 20 weeks, so i won’t post it.  personally, i know baby likes to be aiming up high.

she actually asked me to pose like a princess.  not sure if she got the moment she wanted, but i did my best for her. princess with aching back from folding in half backwards, perhaps.

it’s funny, even with my own daughter taking the photos, i was self conscious.  i so do not feel right posing (unless i am in my panties and drunk with my husband ) so i took over the camera and snapped a few of me on my own.  much more fun and i felt much more at ease.

reflections….. 

rock n roll.

and i must end with the my attempt to allure with f-me eyes and totally stinky, hairy armpits.  

today has been a darker one in the midst of record high heat. i am too drained with emotion that i can’t even bring myself to hit shift so i can type in caps.  yes, that drained.  i can feel the moods of the Earth; the fires on sacred lands, the quakes, the floods.  like Her, I want to revolt and have a totally devastating outburst.  scream fire and shake until the ground cracks.  like i said, being pregnant makes me slither like a serpant at times, low, low to the ground, catching dirty moments from the underside. then i rise a bit and fly; like a phoenix, i love for the burn, but i have to stay down here once in a while to earn my wings. this is just today. and instead of causing earthly disasters, after dinner, we found perfect drumsticks within our drawer full of take-out chop-sticks and each of us pounded every surface in our living and dining area for a good 1/2 hour.  wood, glass, ceramic, books, nothing was saved from our tribal rhythms.  we had a drum session that could wake the dead.  i think i pounded those demons out and then i drank a jamaican ginger beer and burned lots of sage.

I have been tagged by the one and only Crunchy Domestic Goddess (who by the way GIVES things away on her blog, like really cool shit, and I am going to copy her soon because I have a lot of cool shit of my own that needs a home, so be on the look out for give aways over here before we move…which i think may be soon…more on that later.)  Apparently Amy, bless her soul, has not seen enough photos of me on this blog.  For the longest time I was committed to being only a writer, I did not want to post images of myself here, my kids and photos that corrulate with stories I tell, sure.  But for the mystery of it all, I like being just voice.  But now I have been challanged.  Amy did a wonderful little photo essay of herself from way back when (crunchydomesticgoddess.com) and I was so sweet to see her grow up into mama right in front of my eyes.

Because my photos and discs of photos are packed away, I am sorta unable to do too much right at this second, but in the next few days I will search around, scan stuff, etc… and do what I can, diving into my past and sharing it, which is sorta scary (I mean, do I share Daytona Beach Spring Break 1991? Or Dead Shows from ‘94?) That could be way to much for anyone to handle).  Anyway, I am not modest in the least, I just always wanted to spare you from the crazy visuals from my crazy mind. 

But I think that this will actually be a good way to end an era here.  As I move on, get on the road in the next month, It will be the start of something that was born so long ago; a garden of thought and ideas have grown into something to harvest.  We will be taking the next step towards some very unknown waters, new place, new way of life; I am even thinking of changing the name of this blog.  I no longer want to be misplaced.  I am finding home.  Finally.  In my heart first, because leaving security and home and embracing my gypsy is my home.  Exploration and spreading my seed in purpose is my home. Change is my home. Nature is my home.  A new chapter is on the cusp of starting.  I am just opening the page and as I move on, I look forward to sharing.  So I will try to time it so I can finish up my time here with snippets of my life until now.   I have had a beautiful life. Graced with goodness.  I have been gifted a life so full with experiences, diverse experiences, why not share a bit of that with you.  Now off to figure out how to do it.  As all my friends can vouch…I am not computer savvy.

As we were driving home from a much needed visit to water and green up north a bit all was quiet.  We had some peaceful dub music on low.  I was stretched out in my husbands new big-ass truck relaxing after a day of splashing and cooling off. My face was kissed with sun and my hair tangled with dirty lake water.  I was in a good mood. Peace.

Mama why are you getting so big?

Bill and I glance at eachother.  He smiles. I can see him anticipating where this pure and truthful almost four year old mind will go once I open up the gate.

Bill grins as he looks in the rearview mirrow and tells her she doesn’t have to answer that.

Mia, mama is getting big from growing a baby inside.  Mamas get big when they grow babies.  Where am I getting big?

Well… your head.  And your bottom. 

Bill chokes back laughter and shakes his head and sends me the ‘you asked for it’ vibe.

My head? My bottom? Or my belly?

Well your bottom.  Remember in the bathtub last night?  It looked so big, like a pillow.  I saw it when you got out it was squishy.

Yeah.  I won’t ask again. 

This is for Radical Mama and Sanne.  Although, I loved the book By Toni Morrison, Sula isn’t Sula because of it.

But you can read why she is such a Sula here. 

Little Dove.

Moments when the moon is high and again when the dawn is born, I feel your spider-like movements, tickling the inside of my womb, exploring and moving about within your inner cosmos, an atmosphere you call home.  These quickenings are just beginning to happen, setting me free from wondering: is there really human life growing inside?  Until now, I have just felt bursts of pure love. But you grow like the rest of us now; hands, feet, heartbeat, sex organs, eyes, lids, toenails.  Your small strong flesh has large life, big spirit, humungous love. 

Even though your dada is not hip on the Dove images I have all around me (he thinks you will be born with that name and it’s not in his heart right now, but I explain it’s our special thing).  It is still how I envision you soaring.  I keep thinking of the Italian folktale about the Prince who finds his true love after cutting open a lemon.  Out of it flies a beautiful fairy, his wife, just like he always imagined her to be; white skin, hair as red as blood.  When her life becomes endangered she turns herself into a dove,  dove with white feathers and a red beak and flies away to escape harm (eventually she becomes a fairy again and they live the life together).  But for some reason you are a blend purity and wild passion.  Fairy and Bird. An evolutionary and revolutionary.  Spirit and flesh. 

I feel so amazing.  Never in a million years could a predict that I could feel so strong, energized and light with a two year old AND three year old to run after while I carry you in my bulging belly.  But I feel like I have this supernova style energy swirling inside of me: you.  Despite all the frantic housecleaning for showings and stress of still waiting for the right buyer, I am fabulous.  You make me feel utterly sexy, actually.  I am embracing the curves and the dips and the molds.  I actually like the extra 13 pounds I have packed on in 19ish weeks.  Perhaps because I am happy and called to move, those pounds feel solid and good, soft and pliable.  Through your life,  I found my Astanga yoga practice again.  The sweat and movement, the constant backbends and handstands, greeting the sun for almost two hours straight and then the stillness and the Vedic chanting.  It’s been exhilarating to practice this path pregnant.  Never have I thought I would attempt anything other than prenatal or yin-like yoga while with child, but I am now fully wonderful in a very yang practice and it is what my body wants.  But I am taking it easy.  As my teacher said the other night: Easy is so much better than harder. I agree and although we bring ourselves inside out, we make it easy, joyous and never pushy. You are pretty bad-ass little one.  You long to rock-climb in thunderstorms, spearfish in shark-infested waters, and snow-shoe over crevasses.  After spending the majority of time with Sula inside sitting on the couch, nursing a toddler, I enjoy feeling this freedom.  I feel empowered.  Just like our beautiful friend AD said; “This baby is really allowing you to step into your true Goddess form.”  I agree. 

Now if only my insides weren’t falling out, everything would be pretty much perfect.  As I sat in M’s office for our 2^nd pre-natal:

So, are you doing you Kegels?

Um.  Yeah. (Pause. Smile.)  No.  Hell no.  Those things…ugh.

Well, I am just thinking about the incontinence you had after Sula…..

What?  Me? Leaking?  Huh?  Ohhhhhhh.   Yeah.  That’s right.  My mind erased  those weeks after she was born when I pissed every time I sneezed and at the drop of a hat I would just out and PEE my pants. Completely. It was like there was less than a second notice that it was coming and there was no way I could make it to the toilet this quickly.  So I would actually pee the whole time I ran to the toilet and by the time I got there I had soaked my pants. Once when I was hiking down Camelback Mountain, about a month after you were born, I peed.  Just like that.  In front of a troupe of people.  It just came out.  M did remind me then to do those kegels.  I didn’t listen.  It did finally go away so I thought all was good. 

Gotcha.  Ok.  I’ll start.  I promise.

So of course I didn’t do them until one day last week I felt like my yoni had gained about 10 pounds and it actually felt like my bladder and my transverse colon had dropped and were trying to squeeze out through my urethra.  My perineum felt more swollen and sore than in the 9^th month.  I felt like I was carrying 20 pound weights in my crotch.  And of course I emailed M and reminded me of my little issue with kegels and suggested I should wear a belly scarf, nice and tight, like all the smart mamas in other cultures do to keep their muscles and organ all in one place.

So little one, in the mail this week, this will arrive. Because there is NO WAY in hell your mama will be putting on anything like this.  And I have taken upon the very strict practice of doing more kegels than one could think humanly possible.  I do their step ones, the holding 10 second kind, and I even sometimes do them to the beat of the music in the car while I’m driving. 

I like how you express yourself with your specific, very specific needs in food.  Eating really has never been so much fun, and babylove, mama loves to eat; she lives to eat.  She gets up in the morning because of the potential foods that she will cross paths with during the day.  You have been relatively vegan in taste.  For the first four months any sort of animal by-product besides cottage cheese made me throw-up.  This month I am slowly swallowing and enjoying organic chicken and turkey and the occasional gelato from one of the best gellaterias in The States.  You like the particular flavor they only make on Thursdays and Fridays; fresh organic yogurt and figs from Sicily.  It is truly the closest I get with God when I eat it.  It makes us hum with joy.  But not often, just occasionally we eat it and when we get a bit it carries over time.  Other than that, creamy cheesy things aren’t your favorite.  Which surprises me because I love a good cheese. We still go for the cottage cheese, but only because I know it to fill us with needed protein.  Otherwise we down rice noodles with soy, sesame, nut butter and tons of Sirracha.  Wilted greens, sprouts, tomatoes, shredded carrots added.  These little chocolates from Trader Joes that are like mini-peppermint patties and are so refreshing, we like those, don’t we.  Tasty. I made a batch of Baba Ganoush on Sunday and we have been smearing that on Wasa Crackers all week.  Delish. And at the same moment we began craving it, M prescribed me cooked and spicy foods.  My heart beat was so slow and my pressure so low that at our last prenatal, I actually inquired if I was dead or alive.  Spicy foods might take up my internal constitution a notch.  I need some heat.  I think that I try to be so cool in this true external desert heat (eating raw foods like cucumber, cherry tomatoes, fruits, high quality salmon sashimi, etc) that my inside temp lowers and I slow way down.  So Indian food has been bringing us to spicy food heaven as of late. Channa Masala, Spicey lentils, curries, you name it, and we are feeling a bit more heat. You alre also very certain that for lunch every day I make a dressing from veganaise, the juice of 2 lemons, 2 cloves of pressed garlic and olive oil.  It doesn’t really matter what I eat this dressing with, but I eat it.  I must.  And this week black licorice has been your demand.  And pineapple is a sure winner.

I can’t believe there ever was a time when I knew nothing of you.  When I thought you may be out there in the ether, keeper of the akashic records, I figured you to be just a spirit guide.  But now, in my blessed life, I have the opportunity to hold you in the flesh; to guide me this plane.  Your sister Mia, who more than ten times a day comes up to our belly and lays her sweet porcelain cheeks up against it and whispers, “I love you baby, I love you” told me something interesting just today.  She said that when she lived at the source nobody was there but Sula, you and the other baby. 

Other baby? Honey, there is only one more baby coming to us.

But there was another baby there, mama.  But I was going to be first.

There was another baby.

Uh-huh.

Little one, there is not other baby with you in the space, is there?  I mean, I know not in my belly space, but in the big space?  Perhaps it was our angel, who of course, in all innocence and purity would be a child.  When your sister said this, I felt sick.  My whole life I felt like I was meant to be a mother, but never a mother of many.  Many would be four.  Three is so perfect. I see things, feel things in odd numbers.  3. 7. 21.  Those are the numbers in my life.  Certainly the latter are impossible.  My insides are trying to squeeze through my yoni, no other baby can live inside.  Mama gettin’ old.  Dada gettin’ snipped.

Your sister Mia also said something funny today.  She has been insisting that baby is a girl.  You can only be a girl, because that is all she wants.  I smile and say a girl would be perfect, but so would a boy.  And she says no not a boy, a girl. But today she said

Mama, I think I want a boy baby.

A boy.

Yeah.  I thought of a really cool boy name.  Elroy.  Isn’t that a cool name?

Dove, you will not be Elroy if you are a boy.  Don’t worry.  I think Dada and Mia watched Jetsons while Mama was in San Jose a couple weekends ago.  Elroy.  And we’d of course have to get you a dog named Rover.

I have been thinking of your birth.  I wonder where it will be.  Here.  Washington.  Somewhere along the way. With a midwife.  With friends.  With just me and dada. At home. In water.  In the hospital. Vaginal. Surgical. I am preparing for it all.  Having Mia and Sula, in both their diverse, safe, private births at home have brought me to where I am today.  I know however you choose to come, where you choose to come, it will be perfect.  It may be exactly how I want it to be.  It may be different.  Either way, it will be the moment you are born; sacred, intense, a miracle.  It’s strange how with your sisters I refused to even glance in the direction there might be a transfer or intervention.  No way. Not me. But I am so comfortable in my birthing role now that I don’t fear any of it.  Not one bit. I can’t even fear death.  The only thing that might possibly bring fear into my being is not being supported in thewhatever moments evolve, surrounded with love and comfort is all that matters.  I know as long as I envision a circle of health and love and peace,  we will be provided for.  Again, how you have opened my mind, empowered me, allowing me to see things not only from my own inner and outer eyes, but from a universal source, a place where there is no judgment, a place that is teaching me to release propaganda that I once thought to be truth/knowledge and outcomes that I once thought were fixed.  You are holding my hand, walking me closer to that place to be really in the moment, to finally get inside that popular saying ‘just be’ where it is all empty.  Empty of all mental knowledge and become Beginners Mind.  I am seeing that is my only no-path to freedom.  To look at all things not with thoughts of wisdom and knowing, but thoughts of newness and vulnerability. To learn in my cells from that behind me and to be destined for what is in front, but never to sway in either of those places.  To be a teacher I must be a true student, a brand new student. I want to be a good teacher to you, and to me too. Thank you little one.  Thank you for these gifts. I open them slowly.

And on a lighter note.  Maternity clothes all suck.  I have a freakishly long torso which makes being pregnant quite easy, lots of room for you.  But I have short legs and the ass of 2 melons.  Don’t I sound freakish?  Well, let’s just say the maternity clothes out there try their hardest to assure me I am. Nothing fits right.  Nothing.  But fuck them.  I am filled with the shape of you and I am strong.  My whole body becomes pregnant, not just my belly.  In this reality, people make clothes that are a boxy and ugly and tent like or oh-so-adorable and chic and too tiny for my pregnant curves.  So I have found perfection in other clothes.  Besides 2 pants (some way too expensive jeans i have yet been able to afford to buy and some Gap cargos that actually fit all areas of body) a cheap skirt, and this shirt, because come on, how could I not, I am boycotting all other maternity clothes until I am too big and I live in the cold, and then maybe I will just wear blankets wrapped around me.  So all my tops come to me sweatshop free and made in the USA from here (just a size or 2 bigger and there tanks and T’s truly are so soft and stretchy) and I will forever live in these pants here.  And that’s it. Nothing else. Unless it’s handed down and cute.  It’s got to be cheaper than a whole wardrobe of ugly-ass clothes that don’t fit.  I am all for highlighting The Bootie…not smashing it into jeans for asses the size of a 12 year old boy.  Just remember that little one, if you are a girl, rock it.  Rock your curves.  If you are a boy; celebrate and honor the flesh a woman’s bones are gifted.  They are a gift to you, too. We form it to protect you.  It layers upon to make your milk.  It is righteous and needed.

These past five months have been a shock, a sickness, and whirl of excitement, the beating of two hearts within and many, many gifts of love and patience and simple daily joys of just knowing you and I are still One.  Your sisters, your father, and me, we all adore you. We feel like we may have caught a shooting star, by the luck of Jupiter.  We welcome your changes and shifts and honor each stage it presents itself to us.  We hold you.

Let’s keep reflecting each other, Dove.  It’s so good.

I love you sweet soul.

Mama.

Jane tagged me and I can’t turn down a challange. 

Um, I tag Isabel.  

1. I was in an all-girl breakdancing crew when I was in 5^th and 6^th grade (1985-86) called the Cosmo Kids.  We had T-shirts and wore spiked wrist-bands and carried 3x3 pieces of cardboard with us wherever we went. I think this life opportunity forever turned me on to the beatbox and bass.  Thank the Gods of Hip-Hop for that
2. When it comes to organized anything, religion, organizations, committees, groups, clubs….I hide.  I run and hide.
3. Slogans of any kind, especially ones that people feel the need to display on bumper stickers really, really annoy me.  I mean, why do you think I care? It’s such a self-fulfilling act.  One does it either to A.) Show Off  B.) Piss people off and/or alienate or C.) Make themselves feel superior.  (Much like these lists.  I mean, who gives a shit about my 8 things, fer reals?) 
4. Pregnant or not, I don’t live without at least 2-3 shots of espresso a day. My favorite way to drink it in the desert is spilled over a half cup of ice and filled the rest of the way with whole milk. I know this not to be the best beverage for the baby inside.  I know this and I still drink it. I really, really enjoy it so I wonder if it might work like the water crystals theory: if I am happy drinking it, fill it with love, can’t it bring health to my baby???  Maybe a stretch…
5. I have lived in four states (NY-three different cities/towns within this one. CA (best ‘hood in LA). ID. AZ.) I am on my way to my fifth. (I can hardly breath I am so excited. But that is not new news.)
   
6. As much as I know being around people is part of my path—my stars reveal it— I am really a total introvert and big time hermit.  I like my own company very much and truly enjoy when it’s just me (not something I get a lot of since becoming a mother).  It’s best when you find a friend who enjoys their own company a lot as well and then you can just spend time being together, but alone. (Kristen, if you are reading this, you really are superb at thisJ)
7. My most favorite kind of day would go like this: Get up very early, with the sun, go hang out at a local coffee spot that makes kick-ass strong brews, nibble on a muffin and drink some espresso.  Strap on some hiking shoes, throw on my rhinestone embellished camelback and trek on a serious hike up a mountain, preferably a hike where there is a fresh water source  to sit by and write for a bit.  Sweat a ton, breath really deep; get to see lots of green, thick trees, huge boulders, ravens and owls, climb to a high elevation, at least 10,000 feet, like this one, so high I get a bit dizzy.  Enjoy amazing, breathtaking views from the top to remind me how small I really am and how blessed we are on this earth.  Run down. Get sushi and drink sake, lots of both, and get drunk really fast because of all the exercise. Pass out hard.  This day could be with or without other people; but definitely people who don’t moan and complain about hiking up the sides of high mountains and who don’t talk too much.
8. I bite the skin around my fingernails when I am stressed. You should see them now.

The routine has shifted.  We are making changes.

I love sleeping with my children.  I love how safe it feels to listen to their breath in the middle of the night.  I can become hypnotized by watching the rise and fall of their chests or back, lungs expanding and contracting in such a miraculous rhythm. Something I have done since the first time each of them laid down outside my body was to share sleep with them.  They spent the first week of their lives sleeping on my chest in bed, while I propped up with pillows.  I could sleep in the half sitting fashion quite well, as well as any new mama, and they could snuggle, slightly elevated, with their lips a breath away from my breast, my mouth resting on their barely there head fuzz.  Shortly after, they got moved next to me, my arms hooked around their heads and my legs curled up so my thighs would touch their feet.  I encircled them.  A big C surrounding their newness. A boob always hanging out for easy access so that eventually I stopped having to wake to feed them. They were so small, little and baby bird-like. I wanted them to feel like they still had the shelter of a womb.  I needed to feel like I was a fence of love, enclosing them to me. I needed it.  Did they? I like to think they at least liked it.

As time passed we would separate, or bodies needing more space, and more sleeping room was made for us to wiggle and roll on our own.  My back could now turn to them and when I felt little hands pawing my back I knew it was time to roll over and feed. Their backs turned to me and I would sometimes do a mini-spoon to their bodies.  They would sleep between dada and me and sometimes they slept just on his side once they stopped wanting mama milk at night.  As they kept growing we would find them at the bottom of the bed, lying across the backs of both our legs, a foot smashed against a check, a hand draped over my nose,  or even laying horizontal at the top of our heads.  Recently we have found the littlest one curled on the floor with a dog.  The oldest laying on the floor against the bedroom door. 

For almost a total of four years they either fell asleep easily at the breast, in the rocker, being danced to in the music studio, being driven-down or with us next to them for semi-short periods of time.  Both girls are somewhat sleep ‘fighters’ (as my mama says: they just love life to much to miss it and some kids don’t need a lot of sleep), but as babes we could always work it out.  Nothing ever devastated us or exhausted us.  They always fell asleep and we could always spend some time at night doing what we needed.  As time passed, the sleep thing did not stay the same, it did not get easier, instead it started to become a struggle. The bedtimes got later.  The absolute refusal to settle down started to happen.  We succumb more and more to bribes or just throwing them in the car with nowhere to go, blaring jazz and letting them fall asleep to the beat of the city lights and Miles Davis.  It was the one thing we thought we were failing at.  Why couldn’t we get a bedtime routine down?  Why were they fighting sleep?  Why was it taking so long to get them settled and in dreamland that we fell asleep with them, so tired from the hours it took to get them down, that neither one of us could muster the energy to get up again?  What had we done wrong?  The co-sleeping?  The nursing down? Always, always being there, no matter what, at night that we made them anxious and dependent upon our sleeping presence?

As soon as my belly began to grow with this new little child, I knew that changes not only within were being born, but on the outside as well.  Sula slowed down nursing on her own for the most part and began asking to peepee on her little plastic potty that had been stored away in a cupboard. She now sits down for long periods of time with her books and ‘reads’ to her beloved and cherished Baby LuLu.   Mia has leaped and bounded in maturity as well; her vocabulary is becoming outrageously large, her drawings detailed and wild, her movements even more refined and brave.  They began taking solace and refuge in the fact that they were sisters, arms linked, causing trouble, and even taking care.  My heart began to ease as I saw how this process was going to take care of itself.  We would all grow and shift and things would not seem as hard once there were five of us. We’ve been doing okay with these kids, they are walking their path, it always comes together without force or much struggle.  This is good.

Everything except that sleeping thing.

Although I could feel the transformations occurring at the pace I felt comfortable with…I needed to speed one thing up: the bedtime.  I think because my girls were nursed whenever they felt like it and nursed to sleep for so long and always had us in bed with them, this was going to be the hardest change to make.  What was once the most enjoyable part of my day became my least favorite. I don’t mind sharing the bed with them, not at all.  I still enjoy it like I did when they were fresh babes.  What I mind is what our bedtime ritual has become, how sleep happens in this house.  It does not make me happy.  It makes me daydream about sneaking them more and more of chamomile tincture (homemade, infused for months in the highest quality and volume vodka one can buy legally) in their nighttime tea.  I want to POUR it down their throats.  And the more I want to force the sleep, the worse it gets.  Of course.

Now, in a perfect world I would like to put them to bed, read them a book, sing a blessing song, give love and say goodnight.  They look up at us, snuggle together and say, ‘goodnight’ back.  I turn on a night-light.  I leave (just like in the books, mama? Mia asked when she heard me joking about it with B.)  My husband and I could then clean up the house, make some tea, read books, watch a movie, stretch, screw, write.  But I am willing release that notion or perfection, and give something else a go.  What has been happening ever since Sula stopped nursing to sleep and we stopped caving and driving them down, is that either Bill or I struggle for an hour at least , going down with them down with them, they are totally hyper, kicking, jumping, wailing their bodies around to stay awake (Bill got a nasty, nasty black eye from Sula last week when she head-butted him in her attempts to stay up by flinging her body around) and then we fall asleep before them, they wake us up, we are grumpy and tired, we try again and then whoever is the bedtime parent that night falls asleep for the night. Passed out. By the time they really need to sleep they have crosses their line, fueled up on some sort of intergalactic kid energy source and are jumping off the walls.  I will spare you the screaming details if Bill is the bedtime parent. I will spare you the way we feel at the end of the night when they are passed out and we wake up at 1am, in our clothes, our teeth furry from not brushing and our bladders full. I will just simply say: We need to take back just a little sliver of our nights.  Because we are only human and need a break.  Because soon enough there will a new family member needing us as well.   

 We have consciously begun the shift. B and I looked at each other in the eyes; shook hands, knocked fists in “respect’ and nodded in a way that we knew this was it. We were going to become creatures of bedtime habit and ritual.  And we would do this night in and night out until we reached some state of equilibrium, where my kids slept and we got some peace.

Being such loosely wound individuals, with a schedule side to us that resemble lazy melting molasses in the summer, this is going to be a lesson to us.  We are flying by your pants kind of parents.  We like the unknown.  We do not shy away from ritual, as a matter of fact, ritual is our own form of schedule, but now we are combining it with good old routine.  Here is how works is.

Bedtime in their bed is at 7pm sharp. Not a moment later.  This happens after some encouraged quiet play; consciously we mellow the mood after dinner. Then they bath in warm water with lavender and roman chamomile oils.  Music, books, stories, and both our bodies next to theirs for a long time, at least ½ hour.  We rub them and massage them and hold their hands. We whisper sweetness into their ears, validate their fears and need for us to stay all night, but the reassure them we are right outside the door. Then we kiss them and then we leave.  Sometimes they stay in bed for 2 more hours acting like banshees, utter monkeys, ricocheting off the walls, bouncing from the ceilings.  It sounds like a circus.  We ignore it for about 10 minutes and then we go back and calm them down and leave. Sometimes they come out asking for a million different things.  We give them water or milk or a potty break and then tuck them back in. Not once have they fallen asleep on their own. Yet.  If by 8:30 they are not asleep (like I said it hasn’t happened yet) then one of us goes and lies down again for another 10 minutes then we leave again.  And that keeps happening until it gets too late then one of us stays until they (and we) pass out.  So basically we are still doing what we didn’t want to do, but we are trying to stop it. We are in the process. We are weaning all of us from what has been and slowly bringing about what had better start happening soon.

I feel good about it.  I don’t know how long it will take. As long as it happened well before Little Dove arrives in January, then I will be fine. The next step is to sit in a chair by the bed while they lie down.  And then we move farther and farther away until they can just fall asleep on their own.  I read that in some gentle parenting self-help book while I was browsing the shelves at Borders.  Let’s see if it works.  I never want them to feel alone.  When they are scared I want them to call for us.  But we have given them the tools. We have been with them.  We have comforted them. We have held them. Rocked them. Nursed them. And were not going to stop.  But now is the time where boundaries need to get set up, some scheduling and rules are in order.  We tell them that mama and dada are a few feet away, but they need to cuddle and fall asleep on their own.  We spend a long time lying next to them, preparing them for sleep, but then we need to get up and they need to learn to just close their eyes and do it.  Sleep is not scary, sleep is good, very good. And now they have each other to dream next to. 

Hopefully with come consistency and lots of love, this thing will work.

And of course, in the middle of the night, after Bill has woken me up (or vice versa) and I leave their bed and go into ours I sleep for a few more hours.  Then I am startled.  Confused.  I wake up to something missing, gone.  I sneak into their room, scope them up in my arms and carry them back into bed with us.  Wrap my arms around them.  I tell them that they can wake up in our bed for as long as they want.  Because nothing is as wonderful to waking up to three other people that you love more than the world.

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(this photo is about a month old.  right before mia did the hack on her hair.  i would have a more recent photo but i left my very-expensive-for-me camera in a hotel in San Jose last week and well…they said they sent it back to me…and i still have not gotten it back…and nobody is returning my phone calls…so we will see if i ever get to take photo of my kids again.  sigh.  i should not be allowed nice things.  really.  seriously.)

Recently I began writing Sula’s birth story. I meant to finish it for her by her second birthday, but things with the house-selling-life has not made for a leisurely writing life.  Like Mia’s story, I didn’t pen it until well after the actual birth.  Not because I didn’t want to or because I didn’t have time, but because the space between birth and now fills me with understanding.  Both of those births, so different from the other, had so much to do with more than when contractions came or what I felt during the birth, or who was there and what I felt like afterwards.  Although those things hold great value and weight,  to process and remember they are crucial, but for me, birth has to do with the whole body journey walked and the lessons learned, from conception to present moment.  I began writing Sula’s because I finally got it. I took it too one word, one lesson. A very big one for me.

It was about the wait.  Waiting.  Waiting without needing to act upon or rush the wait along.  With Sula, it was about the week before she arrived and less about the perfect arrival that she chose.  Her “labor,” the pains and contractions that presented themselves to me to breath through were in the days I was in waiting,  the days of letting go of ‘dates’ and releasing heaviness and heat and longing. That right there is were the essence of this child’s birth story lies.  The labor was sweet gifts, a gentle, primal taste of heaven, hardly anything to write about, because bliss just is, it cannot be told.  Instead it was a scripture in patience. To gather the patience I had to learn to surrender. And to really feel no gravity of surrender I had to just trust, or have faith.

 In writing parts of her birth story down a couple weeks ago, I continued to reap the rewards of her emergence in my life. Because now once again, it teaches me. I wait.

 I am not good at it.  I will be the first to admit it.  Waiting sucks for me.  I don’t like waiting for the cookies to be done, or the movie to start, or my house to sell.  I don’t like waiting to do something I am really excited about, especially when there is nothing, and I mean nothing to do but wait.  Powerless, I sit, and try to find power in this moment of stillness.

 In the past, if we were ready to move on, or I wanted to change jobs, it was easy.  Hand in my notice.  Find another job.  Weasel out of the rental lease.  Get in the car, throw the dogs in, pick our next spot on the map and GO.  But now I find myself in another situation.  I can’t just go.  I have a house to sell.  And there is nothing I can do (except magic, pray, visualize) but wait. I am so impatient my tongues itches.  But then I am forced to remember the birth of  Sula Pearl.  When I tried to speed things along, wanting her to come out because her ‘due date’ had way expired, and began taking Cohosh cocktails and castor massages, I heard a small yet freakishly large voice whisper to me; Stop. Mama, I will come when I am ready. Sit on the couch, eat another piece of chocolate cake and wait.

 Again, I try to live in those moments when I finally understood that there was nothing I could do but admire the way the Earth spins and the sun rises and falls and the moon glows above.  A baby would be coming in her own time.  And now this house will be selling when it is ready to be passed on, when we are ready to move down that road we paved. I try, and I get it most moments, but I have to say that my cultivation of patience is suffering from drought.   My ability to fold forward and surrender myself to this earth, this moment, is shaky and sore at best.  My faith, I begin to question like prosecutor at the stand.

 And it has only 12 days.  12 days.  And I could peel my skin off from anxiety.  I call Bill 100 times a day, Anything? An offer? Yet? And to make it worse I spent the entire morning, hours, at the bookstore with two books in my hand: Bellingham and Mt. Baker and Northwestern Washington.  I drooled over the local restaurant listings in Bellingham, words like “all local ingredients” “fresh crab legs” “homemade ice cream and donuts for 30 years” “children’s outdoor exploration theatre” “short ferry ride to Lummi Island for fun with kids” “organic coffee shops” “walk everywhere on the interurban trail” “Outdoor movie theater”….I could go on and on.  I torture myself.  I live there already in my head.  How can somebody so ready to expose their wings and fly not be ready to go elsewhere?  Worse than that, how can somebody, with a belly beginning to swell like the sea, midwifeless, not need to find home and settle?  I sit in this wait, and listen.  Subtle sounds calm me, heavy winds inspire me.  I hear things that I can rest in.  Still, I have ants in my too-tight-around-the-belly pants.

 Yet there is no induction for this.  No drip IV or medication to wipe me out until it’s over.  I must feel this longing. I have no choice. This desire and yes, at moments pain, because it is stressful to wonder and not know and have so much at risk, financially and emotionally.  But I must, there is no other way around it, than to honor this. This is nature, human existence.  No intervention needed.  I listen to the house creak and the flies tap their dance against the window.  I hear the wind bend my backyard’s desert trees. I learn about this time, of just being here, looking at my kids as they spend their last moments dancing on these crooked bamboo floors.  Their last moments running through the sprinkler in this very sweet and unnaturally grassy backyard.  I feel my heart yearn for change, my feet ache to travel.  My skin burn for rain.

 This morning for the first time ever, after a very horrendous and aggressive tantrum at the store, Mia expressed to me her sadness in leaving her house.

Mia, wha’ts going on? What are you feeling? You are such a nice person Mia, gentle and kind.  why are you choosing to do things like hit your mama?

Because I’m sad.

Why, baby?

I don’t want to go to Washington.  I don’t want to swim with Orca whales.  I don’t want Satchel and Uncle Osso to visit and go on daddy’s boat.  I want to stay at my house with my dogs. Tears and more tears stream down her face.

I didn’t say anything for a while.  I just rubbed her soft pink leg and looked into her eyes.  I briefly explained that the house is a good house and everything in it we will take with us, especially the dogs, and her books and dolls…everything she loves will come with us.  Her face softend as if she had not thought her things would follow us there. Then I said to her

But let’s just have some fun while we are here waiting.  Let’s just live here now and have fun. Okay?

She brightened up, light coming from her eyes, beaming down like a Jacob’s Ladder.

Yeah mama.  Let’s have fun!  Let’s have fun!  Can I have some gum?

Sure.  And maybe we’ll make a chocolate cake too and sit around and eat it.

It’s all in the wait.  It makes the final outcome all the sweeter, finer and more infinitely perfect.  This, I am sure of.  I have to be.