where we are

it is seriously so hard to snap a picture of shoshanna mary wearing clothes lately.  i'm not sure how she does it exactly, but toward the end of every day for the past month or so, she somehow finds a way to wiggle out of her clothes and ends up running merrily around our back yard, front yard, even down our steep driveway and into the neighbors' yards.  fortunately, we live on a tiny dead end street, with the added benefit of neighbors whose children used to be little nudists as well.  we still laugh about the time we answered the door to the then-three-year-old neighbor boy, standing totally naked and by himself on our front doorstep.  "hi!" he said brightly, beaming up at us. 

my dream for shoshi and myself is like that of many people my age.  i would like to raise her (and maybe her someday-siblings too, who knows) on a piece of land with a small, cozy home attached, near other like-minded families who want to share the burdens and joys of farming, raising a few animals, and living intentionally as a community together.  i'm not trying to go totally back-to-the-land or off the grid, but i would like to live near enough to other families so we could be a significant part of each others' daily lives.  i think more than anything, that tribal sense of community is really important to us as humans, and is largely missing from the way we live today.  i would love for sho to be able to run out the door and directly into the open arms of a wild little kid gang.  i would love to be able to do the same, to grow vegetables with other women and sit by an impromptu bonfire in the evenings with my friends and neighbors.

at times i feel guilty about how far away i feel from making that life a reality for my girl and me.  things are just harder when there is only one parent.  dreams get deferred, in favor of high-quality day care and rent payments and healthy food and new shoes and and and.  but what i need to remember is that where we are now is just a stop on this long, twisting path.  what the future holds is a total mystery to us all, whether you want to believe it or not. 

and what i'm finding is that this stop isn't such a bad one, after all.  because right now, my kid gets to run out the door directly into the lush flora of my mother's garden, and into the open arms of a loving little kid gang -- and more often than not, while she's totally buck naked, to boot. 

fwiends

shoshi mary was born into a world of aunties who already loved her like whoa.  when i asked her saturday if she wanted to hang out with sara, sara and rosie, she immediately replied, "HELL YEAH." [not a direct quote.]  sometimes she just randomly brings up their names in a dreamy, in-love sort of way.  this particular kalamazoo-branch of aunties is composed of women i've been friends with through so many embarassing stages of life, it's seriously amazing they don't just laugh at me every time i open my mouth.  although, i seem to remember i wasn't the only person who thought the sex pistols were, seriously, the best band ever.

shosh is the first baby of the group, but i remain confident that she will be joined by other crazy little buddies before too long.  which is why, although i've passed along boxes of hand-me-downs to five or so different families, i have also dutifully set aside the very most awesome clothes and baby acoutrements she's used thus far in her life.  it is going to be amazing to see another face in those clothes someday; a face i already love, even though it doesn't even exist yet.  which is exactly how they felt about our shoshi girl.

a true friend makes fun of you when necessary, offers a favor when you need it most, and says "godfucking dammit" when bad news strikes, the kind that makes you see just how vulnerable we all are on this planet spinning wildly through space.  sometimes all you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and hold on tight to each other.



[sara, sara, baby sho and rosie]

[many thanks to sara and jason for loaning me their camera]

summahtime

summer, it is here.  kind of my least favorite season (what up with all that relentless sun?) but so far, so good.  i've decided to take sho out of her daycare for the summer so she can spend it running around like a naked little hooligan and kickin' it poolside with the other neighborhood kids.  it was really important to my mom that she have the full-on summertime experience, so she is going to watch shoshi full-time.  yikes, brave grandma.

this is going to be a summer of big changes for sho and me, because before too long we'll be moving out of my parents' lovely house after (holy god) eight months of staying with them, and on to a future whose shape is largely unknown. i am thankful lil shoshi mama is young and laid-back enough to roll with these punches, which would be a helluva lot more earth-shaking if she was older.  but really, she rolls with pretty much everything, and everyone, these days.  the kids from the neighborhood come knocking on our door every single day, like, "can sho come play?  is she old enough for sleepovers yet?"  to see her holding court with all these kids who tower over her, you can see she really does believe she's one of their peers, a total equal in every way.  last night a ten-year old from down the street came over and played with her for several hours, went impromptu swimming (sho naked, friend in her clothes) and watched reading rainbow afterward.  total buddies.

in other news, shoshanna has her first imaginary friend, who comes to visit every night during our bedtime routine!  not surprisingly, she is a tiger.

xoxo

first haircut

when shoshi mary was born, she had a lovely full head of dark hair.  we rejoiced and said smugly, "aren't babies with hair just so much better?"  shortly thereafter, it all fell out.  (god was punishing us, you see.)  not that i cared, i was pretty much blind to her receeding hairline and male pattern baldness at that point, so captivated was i by her juicy thighs and fat, dear little head.

a haircut seemed like a very faraway prospect for my bald little girl.  but then, over the weekend when we took the two sho-adoring girls on our street to the beach and fountains in st. joe, i noticed her hair was lookin' rather shaggy.  maybe it was the boyish bathing suit she was wearing most of the time (for some reason, those bikini swimsuits for kiddos weird me right out), but she was looking like one scrappy (happy) little dude.

so last night after her bath, there was a pair of scissors sitting right there on the bathroom counter, and i just absentmindedly started trimming.  it wasn't until about halfway through that i realized my girl was getting her first haircut! 

i first cut my own hair when i was around fifteen, and the only professional cut i got for the next ten years was when i worked briefly at a fancy hair salon in san francisco.  i love cutting hair, and have given most of my friends at least one cut at one time or another, usually sitting outside, shielding our wine-filled mason jars from the falling hair with one hand.  i discovered that the secret to keeping sho still is giving her a bowl of bean soup and some chips, and telling her "giving you an awesome haircut" when she asks every fifteen seconds or so, "what doing, mama?" 

cutting hair is one of those few things for me that i can do by instinct, like i can rearrange a room's furniture or the words in a sentence.  there should be a word for the satisfaction such instinctual action brings.  not to mention the end result, a kid who looks equal parts cute and so dang grown up.

honestly though, even though i loved baby-sho, i am really coming into my own as a mother during this older phase in her life.  the "why" phase has begun and i love it.  this morning:

sho: what doing, mama?

me: making myself some breakfast, kiddo.

sho: why?

me: so i don't get hungry later on.

sho: why?

me: because then i would get grumpy.

sho: why?

me: because my body would be telling me that it is slowly starving to death and i need to do something about it, like hunt for some berries or kill a lion.

sho: (after a long silence)  okay!

behind the scenes

did you know that my friend neesy and i have a little business together called native home?  we've been sewing and selling our things together for more than a year now, mostly using vintage or repurposed materials (read: our grandmas' zipper collections, soft old sheets, burlap coffee sacks), and always one-of-a-kind.  we make pretty much everything from baby clothes to tote bags, birthday crowns & tutus to screenprinted michigan-love vintage gear for kiddos, with some baby salve and lip balm thrown in there too.

yeterday morning, nees borrowed her stepdad's fancy camera and we proceeded to take about a thousand pictures of everything we've ever made that's left over from the festivals and shops where we've been slangin' our wares thus far.  'cause we're opening an etsy shop!  

are these two not the cutest ever?  the three of us are such a team in life, it makes sense that we'd invent a killa business together too.  sho made a pretty good model, to the extent that any two year old possibly can.  it was a fun day.  it reminded me a little of the photo assignments from the photography class i took in high school, except with a lot fewer contemplative pictures of my feet.

no vintage-wearing children were harmed during the making of our shop...at least, not more than usual.  it should be open in a few days, i'll keep y'all posted!  

xoxo

UPDATE: our shop is open!  take a peek if you'd like, it sure is full of wood, sunshine, and soft moss.  (not to mention everything we're selling.)  we make sure to price everything reasonably too, so if your heart desires it, you can probably make that dream come true!

the cool kids

when my brother and i were growing up in the same neighborhood where my parents still live, there were approximately three kids in the entire neighborhood and you had to walk about a half mile to find 'em.  but about ten years ago there was a young couples' revival in the hood, and now there are big kids beating down our door pretty much every day, asking to take shoshanna to play in the treehouse across the street or to perform other littlest-kid mascot-related functions. the big kids--two girls who live on our street in particular--are so, so good with shoshi that i would honestly (theoretically) trust them to care for her for an entire day, even though they're only nine and ten years old.

anyhow, yesterday was a neighborhood pool party at the next door neighbors', and although the big kids are incredibly good about including her, there naturally came a moment when shoshi was overlooked.  everyone was busy spreading out cushions and towels on a little porch area, and from afar i saw sho's shoulders slump and her mouth turn down.  when i asked her what was wrong, she said with great sadness, "shoshi want to lay down, too."

the words, they shot unexpectedly like an arrow into my heart.  it was hard enough negotiating the battleground of human childhood interaction the first time around, but to have to stand silently back and watch a person whose pain is truly your own pain, magnified, do it all over again?  lord help me.  but then moments later, the tide had shifted and the scene looked something like this:

and i realized how important it is for everyone to experience those moments of exclusion and sorrow, maybe especially a naturally outgoing kid like sho.  the better to later understand and include others with, i say.  so: bring it, evil kindergartners of the world...BRING IT.  it's only a matter of time before we will crush you with our love.

signs that sho is turning into a big kid

1.  the house is becoming more and more filled with all manner of lions, tigers, dogs, frogs, & babies.  i remember the first time she ever pretended anything (to my knowledge), she was a snake slithering down the hallway and i was so psyched about it.  finally she is a person! i thought (somewhat ironically).  filled with crazy imaginings and dreams, just like all the rest of us.  last night she was quite certain a rustling outside her window was a tiger, "maybe sick tiger, mama, but good tiger."  these butterfly pictures were taken this morning; not sure why a butterfly requires socks on her hands and three-sizes-too-large ballerina slippers, but you go on with your butterflyin', girlfriend!

2.  she knows certain sayings and songs that i never taught her.  best of all, they're often slightly off, like when she rides the pony at the grocery store and yells "HEE HAW!" or when she sees a pirate (you know, as one does) and snarls "arrr, makey."

3.  there's a pair of strawberry flip-flops that her lovely grandma leslie gave her for her birthday, and i think i will keep them forever because they are pretty much the first item of clothing that she has insisted on wearing...all the time...even though they match about 1% of what she wears and fall off repeatedly.  i feel like i've been waiting for the mismatched, punky brewster phase forever and i say bring it, girl.  see if you can top the madness i came up with when i was a whippersnapper, wearing stirrup pants, polka-dot socks, blue cargo pants, magenta converse, and too-big surf gear from my california cousins...all at the same time.  and that was last year!