Come and knock on my door! The Crunchy Carpets online Baby Shower

Last week I had the privilege to drop in on our beloved Crunchy Carpets. I couldn't help myself. I just HAD to know exactly how itchy her belly button was. Seems it wasn't too itchy but she was interested in having her baby soon. So I figured perfect time for a mo-wo Online Baby shower! Nothing says have your baby right now like a Mo-Wo Online Baby shower!

It has been no mean feat for me to come up with the best shower theme for my spectacular friend CC. Did you know we have been friends for more than 20 years? Yep back in the late 80's we met thanks to our kind and radiant shared best friend, we'll call her Nerka for her brief blogging fame. And from there came the nub of our theme today, the olden days -- 80's -- and one of its principal artifacts... Three's Company! Who can ever turn down a great Three's Company reference?

Since this baby will make three chillun's for the Crunchy one to wrangle, no brainer, right? In prep for this I asked a mother-of-three friend about how it went for her. She explained that once she had that third she really had to de-stress and learned that the children were their own pack. That was similar to where CC was at last week, too; trying to find the ease and unworry. I can tell you she is not bothered one jot by what the need for a baby wipes warmer or other long expired details of extreme baby-care. My lovely girl is looking for the breezy loose-fitting bell-bottomy motherhood of child 3. Scanning existence for a yoga and macrame approach to letting it all hang out and living the motherhood to the max! Let's help her.

So our Three's Company challenge for the CC baby shower is to tell a story of sane-making easy-going parenting. What can you remind CC to let up about and be sure to hang ten the baby phase? Is there a baby gadget or piece of advice to have or to ignore? Is there a great trick to get through baby wailing? What 'easy does it' can we share?



My own advice? Never forget you can run a dishwasher as many as 4 times in a single day! I've done it!

Good luck honey. We love you and wish you a speedy delivery of your precious new baby. Stay calm, be brave, wait for the signs.Cross posted at Wet Coast Women.

Nonlinear Babies Shower: The Day the Babies Crawled Away

The finest blogger on the subject of picture books has to be the Mad Hatter. She has more than earned those stripes. When it comes to a present for the Nonlinear Ones there is something I learned from Mad I wanted to share. It is not just the book itself but also the place of the poignant, prescient picture book post. I have said before:

I want to write about all the people who have given us books. The feeling it gives me to be with the books and my children. It always seems to me like about five hundred souls are all crowded in a little child's room filling it with love and thought. Authors, illustrators and the gift-givers piled high enough to fill the room.

That's what I want for you Nonlinear Girl as these days come with the babies. A literary dogpile of all of us who look and read your dear, wise, giving stories, a little something to give back. You are a special girl and mama too. It has been a bit getting here and so much ahead, showers of happiness upon you all. As you can imagine for me it is always tough to single out certain books. Allow me to share with you the result of my torture. Here goes...

For my recommendation I insist you get a copy of The Day the Babies Crawled Away -- if I haven't already foisted one upon you. This book is many things. It is a loving tale of a mother in conversation with a curious and intelligent child that makes me think of Ada at times, gotta love a link even when it's old fashioned. It is a fine poetic text with superb image value and direction just like you NLG! It is a book of community -- something you ooze out through the blog from your communities virtual and concrete. The aforementioned oozing really defies blogging logic, I challenge any of us to demonstrate how clearly we love our local, physical communities they way you share yours with us, Nora.

This book is at its heart an adventure which more than seems a fit. But, yeah, there are lots of babies so maybe the multiples thing is my impetus for the choice? I mean I just as easily could have picked Little Rabbit's New Baby or the best book ever, Flotsam.

My knowing of this book comes to us thanks to a distant an unexpected trust in a lucky find of a blogger-mother. Someone I have come to adore and rely upon in some small way. I know from those days of second pregnancy and the babyhood after I needed those connections their intimacy and their distance. I wanted to bundle a reminder that when everything else is going crazy you can still have so and so to click at in England or on the East Coast or downtown from you. And, we will still click at you. IRL support is fantastic and though I have not said it till now, I will tonight, the online fills another need, different and important. My shower gift is a little a push on that and a lot of reflection on your thoughtful exchanges with us all this while. Nora you are one of the most generous bloggers I know. Thank you.

And, when -- or if -- you get that more children less blog feeling: we know. Go with the mama flow. Congratulations and good luck with your babies our hearts are filled with gladness for you all.

"You are our hero. Have some pies!"

From - The Day the Babies Crawled Away
by Peggy Rathmann

Want to write a post like this? Here's the deal.

Nonlinear Babies' Shower Book Reports

Very soon our dear Nonlinear One will be eyeballs to eyeballs to eyeballs with BABIES! Time for a celebration!!!

As a librarian I was blessed with two book showers for my babies and that's what I propose for NLG and family. I've heard reports she has enough socks. So if you are a friend of Nonlinear Girl (or if you want to be and my oh my don't ya?) here's the virtual baby shower plan.

Let's write NLG a booklist. For those of you with second (and third, and fourth) children I think you might agree with me that in those in early days it's crucial to have great stack of books to look through while you -- and the new big sibling -- deal with all those feeds and all that getting to know stuff.

To give it a bit of a challenge I have some rules, feel free encouraged to break them. Please post something about a book, a book you do, or don't, recommend; a story that says something special for you about the early days with infants or nascent big sibs; or, any and all other manner of message you might want to make to the Nonlinear family we all know and love so much.

1. Make it a picture book. I think there is a need to emphasize the visual with an image-impeccable specimen like NLG; I will be posting on my choice, The Day the Babies Crawled Away, in a couple days.
2. Books can be on any theme although books that are about boys and girls or big sisters or new babies or HATS!! might be especially fun to track
3. Send me an email at motherwoman04 AT yahoo.ca by May 25th and I will post all the links for Nora's easy reading. Let's face it, at this point the little ones are makin' her tired all over.
4. Post the button on your own blog and link back in the post so we may effortlessly enact the more the merrier model.

When we're done we will have some lovely suggestions for trips to the library and at least one new book too. Knowing the Nonlinear Family is a fan of Powell's Books in Portland I think their inventory of extra-special books will help me supply a book drawn from among the titles posted.

And, an extra prize for the first poster to guess my 'tired all over' reference. (p-man is NOT eligible for that one.)

The Posts are coming in:

mama without instructions' Books for Babies
the host post The day the babies crawled away
the cheesefairy Babies for Nonlinear Girl
sarah got twins?
Slouching Mom Favorite
Mayberry Mom Gruffalo Twins
MadHatter Pure Poetry

... and we're getting lots of nice suggestions in the comments here too. Thanks everyone I think we are all excited about the 2! 2! who came in month 5! to make The Nonlinear quantity a new and exciting Prime number. And, I 'm just really hopeful this is going to lead to actual post from Nonlinear Papa. No pressure.

Many Blessings Come

It was raised this week that there are more kids coming to the blogosphere. It was opined that we shower the again-moms with loving views of the special happy baby times!

I said in the rapture of my daughter's birthday last week. Our children come to us with nothing. They know us only to love us. Don't let all that pooping, and crying and not-sleeping get in the way of that. Many blessings come to you both, Bec' and Kristen.

I wrote of the closure on infancy at the House of Wo ... Our children are born incomplete in themselves. They are not like the new foal who wobbles about or even the kitten who stumbles with eyes closed. They are born more helpless. Prior to my motherhood I did not appreciate this and I did not appreciate the nourishment a newborn baby gives me. On Tuesday my son passed from newborn to infant and I have left the experience for good. Some might think it odd but I will miss it.

I think of the little babe so dependent on others in those first three months as something precious. It is the trust -- so fleeting in our humanity -- that amazes me. I also think of it, quite selfishly, as my redemption. While a child grows inside me I think they are a part of me. As it happens this does not sharply extinguish for me with birth but instead it dwindles in the flash of time from newborn to infant.

What you need to know about me to understand is that when it comes to me I do not, cannot, always love myself. But this child? It was a part of me, paradox. They arrive, helpless and are unavoidably a piece of me I must love without reservation. I do this wholeheartedly and this redeems me. It seems especially true when they are wee. That is when they are most resonant of what I need to unreservedly love. What am I saying? I should love my pants-crapping/screaming self? Well maybe...

And if you follow the link... you'll see I published it at 1:48 AM. GAME ON!

Oh Baby

Here at June's end the times are heavy for me. I rest on the cusp of being an individual again. A bit ill at ease about it.

Every morning I drive to work past the maternity hospital and my insides wrench. I think of that June two year's ago when I thought I would give birth any minute, and didn't. I think of the June four years ago when I was so oblivious to what was ahead, my legs sticky in the hot weather, consumed with guilt that I would leave work. Just leave it. Not a whiff of a clue that I would revel in our separation.

There at BC Women's Hospital I wandered the parking lot in the early morning light of September almost four years ago. My identity about to explode. Shattering of self, or was it a cleavage? There I had those two dear births, blessing filled progress toward the rattle of bones that divided me and them. There is a part of me inside addicted to the senses of it. No doubt borne of the instrinic surprise of it all; myself completely romanced by the unknown -- all that is foreign in pregnancy and especially from two lucky childbirths.

It is over for us. We will not have any more babies and that makes this really such a strange time, this aimless June. I have for so long been 'that pregnant woman'... the mother. That is, in fact, how one new administrator addressed me last week. "Ah, yes. You. You're the mother."

What the hell?

But I am. I am the mother. A month today since I returned to work and only a few steps back towards that former self. A true worker with an innate ability for the oblivious. Will it come again?

****

I know that some comment how parenthood made them more aware... more attuned to life, involved, connected. I wonder about that feeling. I mean it has occurred. But still, I'm a bit more in the camp of parenthood has made me less oblivious.

Gratuitous Boob Shot

Yeah, I thought that would get your attention.

Tune in for an insiders look at the Wo Family (ain't papa man quite the camera-in-filmerer-guy. SNORT). Anyway you saw my son on this blog last week. Here is his sister visiting he and I in hospital when he was all of 6 hours old last July 17. Happy Birthday Baby, it has been "nice to meet you". It's sad sometimes to think it is all over. But as you can see, I have my hands full.


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Cry me a River

It is a soft sunny afternoon and I am more than weary, nearly tearful. My husband has been working late and I am not up to the challenge. But we are getting by.

I just finished putting down my now 11 month old son for his nap and his sister is 'off to dreamland' ?? maybe... I do enjoy these waning moments of babyhood. It presses on me of late 'the end'. For it is the end for us. Two children was sort of off-hand thing anyway. Three is a no-go. I say often, "I would love another baby. We just can't have another child."

They are fathomless depths, she say endeavouring to avoid the word bottomless for its negative connotations, these children. There is more than everything we can do for them. I don't see the upsides yet you tell me of AlphaDogma. I miss babying. I miss their gaping maws stilled at the breast. The laughable aspresso and the even more laughable streams of assvice. The simplicity of physical needs and the acceleration of being those first twelve months hold.

It's over in many ways. Man we had a good run.

What's Up Doc

I read Sweet Juniper. If I say nothing else about it that blog is a wicked intersection of what I like to think is the wry-est, cleverest and yet most impecably kind gang of parent bloggers. Sure we're sarcastic, I mean we put the what's up doc into the game of child rearing in a way few can resist.

But the intersection offered a turn of late. A five-car pile up really.

Last month I caught the link from Sweet Juniper to sweet|salty and began reading the diary of an amazing mother. A mother navigating something beyond sleep wars and job shares and schoolyard tears. I was in awe of what she told us and grew in a way a little sick of my own blog. Her tale so heavy, her words so true.

I know her only in words... as words. I wonder at times about how she told us. It is not an isolated thing really. There are others. Those brilliant mothers who explode the caustic myth that mothers might be authors of their children's lives. Those who faced the unfaceable and told us about it. I came late to their experiences and my respect is something, I reluctantly admit, I frame in distance.

Instead it was in this collecting of the memory for the small boy Liam that I most fully met the process(ing) of a mother. A blog is such a precribed recollection. Prescient almost. At the juncture today just after Liam's passing I need not scramble for words to share the experience with my husband or the many other readers swimming in some mist of abstraction. The words are there. They are her words. I hope the power to publish them helps Kate.

There are questions (and answers) swirling about whether blogging can empower. I don't have any answers to this question merely suspicion. Suspicion it does. That as we work behind our glowing screens we can say more here than elsewhere. That in a venue so potent for abuse and mistruths the opposite might prevail. And, that this is a route to power. Not conventional butt-kicking manly power but something else. Something precious.

The word I keep coming to is truth. I mean there is no making this up (and yes I know that's an understatement beyond all belief). Kate laid plain a wall of truth that blows me away, as I've said. Truth so sheer as to make me want to look away. But I am unable to abandon the stream of words that invite understanding. A sacrifice of privacy to gain nothing and yet something is created. Care, and that insufficient word, support. I wake today to read the words and question. I question that which seemed inalienable. That which told me yesterday that I was working to love my children as much as I could.

Then I see her words. I feel her words and know I have not loved mine as ultimately as she. I pray today and always that I never face, as she has with such eloquence, the love of mother to transcend even being. Tomorrow I face another day to love my children more than ever. In some part because of words in this machine. Bizarre.

In memorium. God Bless Liam.