work

i keep laughing at this picture of shoshi mama at the doctors' office last week for the dread PINKEYE.  she had this very dramatically WTF/i will keeeel you expression on her face the entire five minutes the doctor did her examinations.  stinkeye or no, being a nurse or doctor must be such hard and satisfying work....

work!  i dunno, right now i'm the receptionist at an office building for about 15 businesses (way to use that degree!).  sometimes i think about how many secrets are being told behind the walls in this building every day, between the lawyers and the psychologists and psychiatrists and the financial consultants.  in fact, sometimes i am amazed by how many secrets are told to me, the secretary!  i love those moments when a person, waiting for the lawyer and too full of grief or frustration to resist, starts telling me the intimate details of their divorce.  or the parent of a child meeting with the psychiatrist starts telling me how difficult it's been.  i trip over myself offering hot chocolate and the mason jar of crayons i brought in for the kiddos here for counseling, offer small details of my own separation so people won't feel embarassed telling me so much...those parts of my day are the best, when i can interact in a meaningful, real way with people.  one woman yesterday said, "you've helped me so much, i never thought of it that way!" regarding her straying ex.  maybe i'm just nosy but...i do love to listen.  i guess maybe i am just starting to imagine a career-life for myself beyond answering phones, however faraway it might seem....

birthday ruminations

"what is it about this day that's been so great?" my mom said last night, after sho finally fell asleep, a dreamy smile on her face (seriously). "it was better than any other day this year."  our eventual hypothesis was that birthdays are meant for kids.  when you are small and largely powerless, a day when everyone sort of caters to your wishes and treats you like someone big and important, is literally unbelievable.  i got that feeling from sho all day, from the moment she saw the streamers hanging in the kitchen, to the second when i walked into her daycare (in the middle of the day!) and all four of her grandparents were already there, about to eat chocolate and sing to her and her alone...she just could not believe what was happening to her.  the lake trip afterward with vanessa ("neesy," as she's known to us) just put the icing on the cake, so to speak.  it was such a pleasure to treat our shoshi--especially when the treats were so very cheap, and the appreciation was so great.  things are tight for us money-wise right now, but it didn't seem to matter to her at all. 

i hope that i can always remember that, about kids and money.  sometimes, to be honest with you, i get to feeling so jealous about other blogs i read, and the lovely organic fabrics and pricey vintage clothes and hand-crafted this and thats they can buy for their children, the elaborate nurseries they create and attentive husbands whose salaries sometimes allow it all....especially when, at present, sho sleeps with me in my old bedroom at my parents' house, and i (or friends) honestly make most of her clothes and toys, or buy them on the super, super-cheap...it was good to know that she still feels pretty ballin'. 

anyway, her favorite gifts (as of yesterday) were the streamers (a few dollars), that cheap little plastic microphone, a pink care bear and some truly insane dance/ballet leotards (pictured above) that neesy found at a garage sale.  that's it.  i think the triycle & blocks love will come later.  (and, can i just send out a prayer of thanks that shoshi has neesy in her life, because...i just cannot with the pink and princessy.  but she really does love it, always prancing around and saying things are "so, so boo-ful, mama.  so boo-ful."  well, i can get down with that, i suppose.)  so i guess just: thank you universe!  for the beautiful day and my beautiful, thankful girl.  and all the people who help make her feel like an awesome little dude, everyday.  (except when she's not being awesome.  thanks for that, too.)

hap bir-day shoshanna mary!

 

[sho in her new birthday jammies, which she calls her "ballerinas"]

dude, i hope i never forget the look on sho's face as she rounded the corner this morning and saw a kitchen decorated in head-to-toe streamers and a huge stack of cardboard blocks, where last night there had just been an ordinary kitchen and high chair.  she could not believe her eyes!  she kept running around yelling, "hap bir-day uma!  hap bir-day chuck!" (that is what she calls my dad, for unknown and hilarious reasons).  we kept saying, "happy birthday to YOU, shoshi!  it's YOUR birthday!"  i tried to take a picture, but every single one turned out blurry because she was running around so much.  her little self could not even with the excitement.  i'd put out a couple little things for her to open this morning too, a little pink squishy ball and one of those cheapo microphones that echo.  i think those could be her only presents and she'd be totally psyched.  "hap bir-day CHUCK!" she would yell into the echo-phone.  "hap BIR-DAY!!!"

our shoshi is so dear, and geezy petes so easy to please.  i love a kid who can get that worked up over some streamers and a $1.99 microphone.  it's only nine o'clock and this is already one of my favorite days.  just like the morning she was born two years ago, as a matter of fact, at 8:05 am after a hazy night of hard labor at home.  by nine o'clock, already one of my very best days.

["don't wory guys.  i GOT this birthday"]

revelations (not the bible kind)

tomorrow is shoshanna's second birthday, and dudes, i am so excited for it.  i even had a hard time falling asleep last night just thinking about it, oh god i'm a nerd.  about 90% of our loved ones' birthdays have taken place in the past few months, so she has had a lot of practice with the whole birthday thang, and often runs up to me yelling, "hap bir-day, mama!"   i think i'm so excited because this is really the first "holiday" that she understands, can anticipate and truly appreciate. 

[sho and i at her first birthday party. photo by vanessa hardy]

i stayed up waaay too late last night making her a silky-soft pair of summer jammies (from a thrift store slip) with a pocket made from this lovely scrap of fabric my friend sara gave me, and scored a wink-wink deal at the salvation army when the checkout guy gave me a huge tub of big cardboard blocks for one dollar.  i also splurged (well, $27 is a serious splurge for my budget) on a nice, non-annoying keyboard to replace the 99 cent one from salvation army that she's been playing all winter.  best of all, i'm making dirt cake tonight to take to her daycare birthday party tomorrow...and then, i have the rest of the day off to take her on a surprise trip to lake michigan (i.e. "the oceant") with our friend vanessa!  dude!  i'm way more excited about this day than i was about my birthday and mother's day combined.

[vanessa and shoshi, one year ago]

so yesterday, after i picked up sho from daycare, we headed to the store for a "quick trip" to get the ingredients for her daycare dirt cake (i got gummi worms and edible flowers y'all).  holy god it was a shit show of the highest order.  sho was tuckered out and refused to stay in the cart, so we alternated between her running alongside the cart and the very short me (somehow this made it all the more embarassing) carrying her on my shoulders as i pushed our cart.  i was hot, tired, and flustered, trying to keep this kid from all-out losing it in the middle of a super-crowded grocery store.  and i try not to talk about this, but i was angry at her dad, too, for not even acknowledging her birthday yet and for leaving me to do this--all of this--on my own, every day, with no financial help to boot.  i thought, "man, anyone who sees me right now is thinking: 'that woman is in over her head.'"  and i realized that that is kind of my biggest ego trip/fear, for anyone to think that i can't handle my life or the things that are happening in it.  but dude...sometimes i can't.  so what?  we've all been there.  (or if not, your life has been way too easy.)  what on earth good does it do for me to pretend i'm doing totally groovy, with a screaming toddler on my shoulders and a spilled carton of blueberries at my feet?  i don't know, it was just a good thing for me to realize.  i can fail at this sometimes, it'll be okay.

it almost made that cluster-cuss of a grocery trip worthwhile.

sewin' monsters

last night and this morning, i raided my scraps stash and sewed up three lil monsters for a customer who was headed to a baby shower for twins, and has a little one of her own.  they were pretty fun to make.  each monster had one crinkly ear (plastic grocery bag) and one ear filled with rice, for tactile delights.  sho (not normally a stuffed animal/blanket loving kid at all) got ahold of em and hugged them tight, dancing around the yard singing, "fweinds, fwiends, i haff some new fwiends!"  it was pretty much a total shitstorm trying to distract her long enough to kidnap back her fwiends.

i think maybe i like drawing monsters with big teeth and whatnot so much because you don't have to be so perfect all the time.  lopsided head?  crooked eyes?  uneven legs?  go on with your bad self!

it was good to try sewing something a little different.  i always forget to take pictures of the orders i make for folks, but now that i'm a total blogger i'm goin' for it!  would you like me to make you an ugly monster for the child of your heart's affection?  holla at me, sarahvaneck@gmail.com!  each one comes in a brown paper gift bag with a vintage sewing pattern as tissue paper.  the price totally varies by how rich you are, because i am a communist.

happy weekend!

sk8 or die

three summers ago, when david and i first started hangin' out (and, it turns out, a scandalously short time before shoshi came to exist in the world), i was recovering from a hard time in my life and was, at the age of 25, strangely out of nowhere fascinated with skateboarding.  i was like a twelve-year old boy who had suddenly discovered boobs, mtv, and skateboarding (maybe not in that order) for the first time. the thing about skating is that it looks easy, but as soon as you step on your board and kick off the cement, you realize how little control of your destiny you really have.  i fell so many times.  i was way too old to be failing like this, at simply stepping on a board and kicking off.

but i kept going back for more.  i started to realize that the more you just sort of let go, the better you do.  the more free and wild you feel, the less you fall.  dude, it was so totally symbolic.  i ran into david, whom i'd known for ages, one night at bell's, and mentioned my recent skateboarding passion (it was sort of all i could talk about at the time, like any freshly twelve-year old dork-skating devotee).  he said that he, too, had been 'boardin it up more than ever lately.  we met up downtown, i carrying my little brother's scuffed skateboard from back when he was a twelve-year old skate fanatic.  i felt like a total badass anytime i could coast on the board for longer than ten seconds. 

we skated together a lot that summer, kicking off from the rough pothole-strewn north side pavement in front of his brand new hundred-year-old house in the ghetto, and going as far as the heat and our scraped knees would allow.  this video still sums up so much of what i remember from those days, and this song.  i will never listen to either of them without remembering those barely pre-shoshi days, for as long as i live. 

soon i was knocked up, and far too consumed with turning that old north side house into a dreamy babyland to skate much more after that.  but i will always smile at any skateboarder i see racing past, feet kicking ferociously and hair swirling in the gliding breeze...'cause without skateboarding, i don't know if there would be a shoshanna mary today.

no pictures

  

last night when i got home, shoshanna wanted to go down into the basement (a favorite place of hers, for dank and unknown reasons).  i kept putting her off distractedly, doing other things first. then my mom said, "why don't you go play with sho?  she's waited a long time to see you."  oh man, duh!  so often i am doing other things when i'm with my girl, checking my phone or sneaking peeks at my book.  it's so hard to be really present with kiddos sometimes, especially when the repetitive activity they want to do for the fifth time in a row makes you want to run screaming in the opposite direction.  (candyland, can i get a witness?)

so i said, "shoshi, do you want to go paint outside?"  what what!  she was all, hell yes.  especially when i then stripped her down.  paint and outside and naked?  three of her all-time favorite things!  throw in some chocolate and she might just have exploded with happiness.  so i refrained from the chocolate.  anyway, so i spread out a roll of brown kraft paper and forgot about paintbrushes.  she used her hands, feet, booty, rocks, grass, the cat, etc, to spread the paint around.  before long she was a glorious mess, head to toe paint monster.  she had streaks of red paint across her shoulders and cheek like an awesome warrior goddess, and oh my gawd i wanted to run inside for the camera like a total crazy person.  no!  i told myself.  sometimes cameras are just another way of not really being present, at least for me.  so i made myself sit, and just soak in the moment without needing to document, catalog, or share it as it was happening.  it was not easy, which means that i am a dork and also that i should probably do it a lot more often.

so that's why the only pictures are unrelated ones my mom texted me while i was at work today...but the ones in my mind of our painting session sure are bright and clear.  is there anything better than a juicy little baby booty waggling around, covered in paint?  you'll just have to use your imagination....