october

man, i love this time of year. it's just the coziest, and cozy is my middle name. (speaking of cozy, i bought this book for sho at a secondhand shop yesterday, and it is quite possibly the coziest bedtime book i've ever seen, filled with beatrix potter's illustrations of various sleeping animals, each one more ridiculously cozy than the last. we read it ten times before bed last night, and i did not complain once.) 

sho's halloween costume is made, with help from my parents who made her the most witchin' tiny broom out of bamboo from our yard last night.  i was a little disappointed when she said she wanted to be a witch, mainly because i love frustrating projects that keep me up way past my bedtime, evidently. she was a raccoon for her baby-halloween and medusa last year - both elaborately awesome costumes that went pretty much undocumented due to a lack of camera both years. but you know, making her into a witch turned out to be perfect, plus i feel downright giddy being done twenty-four days before deadline. that has never happened in the history of my life. plus, i've just put up some homemade decorations to surprise sho with when she comes home from an afternoon at her grandma and grandpa's.  dude, i'm on top of it this year! 

 in the meantime, i'm going to curl up in bed with a good book.  my head just exploded at the prospect of doing that, easily a top five fave life activity of mine which i basically never make time for these days. oh, fall. why can't you be my life partner? you bring out the best in me.  i'll bring you breakfast in bed, and never take your fine ways for granted....

twirly girl

my dear pal emily is getting married in 19 days (whoa!) and she asked shoshi to be a flower girl in the wedding.  sho's been practicing her "flowler girl" skillz a whooole lot lately, which largely consist of 1) throwing pom poms and 2) twirling.  it is my impartial opinion that she could totally go pro with this skill set.  today her dress arrived in the mail, and she was psyched.  it took some serious finagling to get her to finally take it off, and she kept saying, "i want to go there now!"

kinda interesting to think of time as a temporal location to travel to.  sometimes i wish i could slow down the journey just a little....

gnarly deck, bro

the top scores from some thrifting done this weekend were the handmade slippers featured above, which i will be marrying shortly, and a tiny skateboard for sho.  "it's just my size!" she's always saying, and it is.  we've been putting her on a skateboard since before she could walk, just 'cause they were always lying around our house on the north side, and the floor there was a smooth, polished plywood.  it was an old house, but all five tiny rooms on the lower floor had been ripped out, creating one big room perfect for skating from one end to another.  even though i'm really not great at it, skateboarding is a big part of the crazy whirlwind story of david and i getting together for the sole purpose, looking back on it, of inventing sho.

with the help of this little board, and shoshi now being, in her words, "a big, brave girl," she is able for the first time to really ride on it by herself.  which consists of about ten parts falling to one part riding, a feeling i'm quite familiar with myself.  she kept falling and getting back on and falling, repeat, for a really long time, before i finally took pity on her and held her hands, pulling her around the house on the board at great speeds.  something about the look on her face as we whizzed through the house, sheer delight mixed with exactly zero fear, has me a little worried for what the future may hold....  

my good luck

a little while ago, i entered a giveaway on the super charming blog petite biet...and WON!  oh hell yes, my bonnet-loving day was MADE!  i've been obsessed with baby bonnets since before sho was born, but always had a really hard time finding one that was not 1) actually a hideous bucket hat or 2) covered in scratchy frills and ribbons.  the ones by urban baby bonnets are so lovely that i've seriously had a wistful eye on one ever since sho was a babe.  the giveaway instructions were to leave a comment with your favorite bonnet, so i did, even though the one i picked out was a limited-edition cold-weather bonnet and therefore more expensive than their regular bonnets.  when i won, ub2 explained that there had been a miscommunication and that actually, the winner would be sent a random bonnet, not the one they chose.  that's awright, i was still mad psyched about my unexpected bonnet bounty.  then...a few days later...a package in the mail arrived...(do you like this narrative suspense?) with the expensive bonnet that i'd picked out inside!  DUDE! (cool story, bro.)  i'm in love.  also cool, all bonnets are made in the usa by work-at-home mamas who are paid fairly for their work.  the prices aren't cheap, but when you think about what you're paying for -- really beautiful, one-of-a-kind items and workers paid fairly -- it feels like a good, ethical buy.  anyway, i just wanted to mention my luck and gratitude.  most amazing of all, sho loves it too!

 

baby baby

ever since shosh was born, i've really tried to keep the amount of baby gear in our life down to a minimum.  this is partly out of financial necessity but mostly out of aesthetic necessity; i really didn't want our house to look like a plastic primary-colored explosion.  i've tried to keep the amount of stuff shoshanna has scaled down to some high-quality items and good art supplies, hoping that if she didn't have an entire floor of the house dedicated to plastic toys, she might be more likely to go outside and use her imagination to play.  (i was pretty heavily influenced by little house in the big woods during my pregnancy, specifically the ingalls girls' much-loved faceless doll made out of a cornhusk.  ah, those were the days.) anyway, i digress.
sho's been sleeping with a fan on in the background since last winter, in spite of my guilty feeling that probably having cold air blowing on you isn't the healthiest way to sleep.  it never occurred to me to buy a sleep sound machine until a week or so ago, when it started getting too cold to sleep with the fan on.  i used to nanny for a wealthy family who had a white noise machine in every room, and i think i just sort of subconsciously thought of them as a rich person's accessory or something?  who knows.  i peeped 'em out online, and ordered one with a projector on a whim.  whoa!  possibly the most fun twenty bucks i've ever spent?  sho calls it her "glowy machine" and has eagerly gone to bed and slept with it in her arms every single nap and bedtime since it arrived in the mail a couple days ago.  the projector is delightfully low-tech, with slowly circling images of jungle creatures or fish or sleepy planetary objects, and it also has the option of heartbeat (my favorite), ocean (sho's favorite), rain, white noise, and six lullabies.  this is starting to sound like a sponsored post, which it sure as heck isn't, so i'll shut up now.  but man, i do recommend this marvelous sleepytime accessory.  sleep machines: not just for rich folks, y'all!  you heard it here first.   

speaking of books that are fun to read when you have a baby on the way, i thought i'd share a few of my favorites.  reading has always been a huge part of my life, which is why it's strange i don't mention books here more often.  anyway, i have given or recommended all of these books to more friends than i can count, preggo or not.  and as a bonus, most can be found used on amazon for a few dollars!  (it's pretty much my favorite pasttime to send cheap used books to friends who might like them.)

waiting for birdy by catherine newman.  this was one of my favorites even before i had a kiddo on the way, a  funny, kind, slightly neurotic memoir of the pregnancy and new baby days of catherine newman, who blogs here.  i wish she had more books, because i would read them all.

operating instructions by anne lamott.  man, i love anne lamott, especially her fiction.  this is raw and honest and so funny, it's the kind of book that makes you feel less alone in your craziness.  she has a new book out, some assembly required, written with her son about the first year of his son's life.  i can't wait to check it out.

the blue jay's dance by louise erdrich.  my friend ash sent this to me along with some plantain salve and mother's milk tea when sho was born, and i read most of it aloud to my week-old girl as i nursed her endlessly in those dreamy and exhausting new-baby days.  it's beautifully written, a perfect antidote to the newborn days when you start to fear your brain might turn into a milky and exhausted puddle of mush.

our babies, ourselves by meredith small.  as someone who loves anthropology and sociology, this book was fascinating to me, and many of the things i learned from it have stuck with me and impacted how i've raised sho.  it's just a really interesting look at the way different cultures raise their babies, and how the traditional american way is just one tiny part of the many, many different ways to have a baby in this world.  man: i want to read this book again!

spiritual midwifery by ina mae gaskin.  probably the most famous book on natural childbirth, written in the 1970's and hippied out to the max.  a lot of the ideas in this book about childbirth -- to view pain as something to work with, not fight against, for example -- have helped me in many areas of my life beyond giving birth.

whew!  this was a long post.  if you're still here, thanks for stickin' around.  and if you have any books that were essential reading during your own baby days, please feel free to share in the comments!  i pretty much love reading about babies, any day o' the week.

out on the town (sorta)

we did another art fair yesterday at the old dog tavern in kalamazoo.  i met some of my best friends there, in high school and back when it was the kraftbrau, at this impromptu comedy night i used to go to.  it's been years since i've been there and it was pretty great to see that the place is still going strong, ridiculously potholed parking lot and all.  there's something so kalamazoo about that spot, with its crooked different-sized doors, scarred wood floors and random nooks and crannies, and years and years worth of paint and photographs layering the walls.  the building is really narrow and right next to the train tracks, so when a train thunders past, the entire building rattles and you have to yell to be heard above the roaring whistle.  it's the kind of place that made me finally fall in love with the midwest, hard.  

the setup yesterday was outside, along this brick walkway with a big garden on one side and the curving railroad tracks on the other.  sho joined us for a few hours, then my mom came by to pick her up and put her to bed.  it was one of only a handful of times that i've been out after sho's bedtime since becoming a single mama, and it was really fun, especially once it got dark and only the yellow glow of lanterns lit the little avenue.  i was just talking with my counselor (oh yeah i got one!  i kinda think everyone should) about how isolating it is to have a young one and have to stay home with her every single night.  i've been a hardcore homebody for the past year, and i think it's time to start breaking out of that a little.  so, last night was a good start.  and a lot more profitable than our last festival, too!  i bought a few little gifts for people, including the amazing monster below for sho-girl.  (the etsy shop of the woman who made it is here, no monsters up but i know she has some really amazing ones of all sizes and fabriques available.)  its mouth is a deep pocket and the ears, tongue, and fingers are filled with these little pebbly things that are rather nice to fondle.  and it doubles as a pillow (with pocket) which is pretty much sho's jam.  we'll see if i can hold off until christmas to give it to her...        

long-sleeved gratitude

 one of the many fun parts about having a little one is that they're always growing.  so with each change of season, you get to totally reinvent their wardrobe!  for some reason, fall snuck up on me a bit this year (probably because i started to believe that summer would nevvvvverr enddd) and so all of a sudden there i was, staring vacantly into sho's closet for long minutes at a time, wondering what to clothe this little dumpling of mine in, exactly.

that's where my mom came in.  over the past week we've hit nearly every thrift store and consignment shop in town (total exaggeration), and wham bam!  sho's closet is pretty much stocked and ready for winter, thank you ma'am.  in this and so many other ways, my mom is my partner when it comes to raising shoshi.  she is the one i talk to about the sleep book i just read, or glance over to smile with when sho is being funny or straight-up maddening.  she is the one who changes more of her dirty diapers than anyone else, who gets up with her in the morning and gives her a kiss before bed.  she is the one i can count on to help me fill sho's closet with warm clothes.  i am so grateful, for her and for all the other people who help raise this little girl of ours.  between my mom and dad, shoshi's other grandparents, all my friends (sho's many loving aunties) and extended family, and her papa, we are both just so lucky.

p.s. i just learned that the stats on top baby blogs have been reset, so your vote is real appreciated!  thanks so much for reading, it really does mean a lot.

congratulations to the booty balm giveaway winners, mean green mom and jennifer!

your winnings will be on their way to you very soon...