mandalei

Sometimes I think we need a kickstart to get going.  We’ve been planning things to do for Jack’s room for so long now, but the last time we started painting, I was 7 months pregnant, we were up at the house for the weekend, and we couldn’t get the trim finished before I just couldn’t take the bending and leaning with my gargantuan belly.  When we made it back up to the house the next time, it was the day of our final move-in, and was  2 weeks after Jack was born.  The trim?  Yeah, it’s still not painted.  (FYI, if someone tells you not to pick paint colors when you’re pregnant, believe them.  Or decide on a complete decorating scheme from a distance. What once was a solid stained wood is now striped with glossy paint.  Oops.  We also learned we have to prime everything first, and since it is Jack’s room, we’re not in any rush to do that.).

Anyway.  As I was saying.  Kick in the pants, right.

I changed my mind, too.  I had this whole plan to get going on a pirate-themed room, but just couldn’t commit.  It wasn’t the pirates, it was me.  Sorry about that, I still think you’re swell guys, but *everyone* was into pirates (and I was, but not because of those movies–one of Jack’s ultrasounds looked just like a Jolly Roger!  Of course, one of them looked simian, too, but I hadn’t considered Planet of the Apes.  Go figure.)

Ahem.  So I changed my mind and settled on rockets and robots.  I had found this great fabric from Australia, and then spent weeks tracking it down in the U.S.  It and some of its complimentary fabrics are now mine!  I also found a rocket-shaped corkboard from PB Kids on sale for stupid cheap (15 bucks, originally 70) as well as 2 blue curtains (also on sale–marked the same color, and I thought they were the same color, but um… they aren’t.  but I couldn’t tell right away so most people won’t notice), and a series of hanging panels with rockets at Home Goods, and last weekend, Ben and I found a painting at that same Home Goods with a robot and planets AND a space ship (months after the initial purchase of the rocket panels!)!  Keep in mind, this collecting spree was only spree-like in that it was all cohesive in terms of theme; the buying process spanned several months.

It was the robot painting that really did it for me.  Now I had A Theme.  A Motivation.  We hung the rocket panels and the corkboard and the robot painting two days ago.  Today, I cut two strips of my rocket fabric, and sewed them to the curtains, and we hung them tonight.  I won’t go into the second embarrassing curtain story here.  One embarrassing curtain story is enough for now.

And now… now I am really inspired.  I have decided there’s no better reason to start painting again than to make something for my sweet boy’s room.  I sketched out some plans, and hope to transfer them to canvas tonight.  By golly, it’s a triptych, no less!

In the meantime, I have to finish gramma and grampa’s quilt, I have three more quilts promised elsewhere and planned,and we still need to finish painting the house.  On that note, I am going to go finish reipping out the quiltling I don’t like on Gramma and Grampa’s quilt, and get that finished tomorrow or Thursday at the latest.

Pics to follow at some point.

Jack hasn’t had a middle of the night feed in the last three nights, and last night he slept from 7:45 or so until about 7:45 this morning.  No waking to fuss, or complain or anything.  It was so very, very nice.  And this morning?  He’s the sanest and happiest I have seen him in a while, so I think the uninterrupted sleep is doing good things for him.

And for us.  Hurrah!

At least, enough to have started eating crayon.

MMMMmmmmmm.  Crayon.

This recipe for Grilled Asian Flank Steak and Sweet Ginger Slaw from Je Mange La Ville was very, very good.  You should try it!

Today Jack is one year old. Last year at this time, I was coming out of the OR and feeling a little surreal about having a healthy and HOWLING little boy. We would find out later that the nurses knew who he was by his voice alone, since they could hear him outside of the maternity ward. When he was born, I learned two important things: the surgeon thought my insides were “very pretty”, and Jack was officially a “big boy”.

This year, we have learned just how much one little man can change our lives. We have watched his sense of humor come forward more and more, and his vocabulary (spoken and signed) develop: He has started saying “Mama” and “Dada” (and maybe “cat” and “up”). Jack loves animals of all kinds, can eat as much as an adult at any meal and still wake up hungry at 3 a.m. every morning, and try to snap his fingers when we snap in time to songs. He loves funk music and will bob up and down to it, and will try and mimic Seamus the Cat’s squeaky meow by squeaking in a high-pitched voice. He wrinkles and scrunches his nose when he smiles if he is doing something he thinks is dangerous and fun, or if he’s doing something he thinks is going to be funny or exciting for us.

But what really gets me is how loving he is. He will crawl–now walk–right up to us and put his arms around our necks and his head on our shoulders and settle in for a long hug. Sometimes a kiss (with or without biting). He’ll rest his head on our legs while we pat him on the back, and if we’re lying on the floor, he’ll come and lie on top of us and give us kisses and head-butts.

This year has been hard, since we moved to a new place so soon after his birth. I think Ben says it best, though, when he says that Jack fills a hole he never even knew he had. It’s been hard a hard year, but also one that we would never change for the world. Thank you, Jack, for being with us this year–we love you more than anything.

The last month has been one of those where you turn around and say “where the hell did my last month go?”, even though it was packed with friend-y goodness.  We had two weekend visits with friends, and then went to Michigan for almost a week to celebrate Ben’s mom’s retirement, and to have a birthday party for Jack with the family.  We had a great time, and Jack loved being out and about (even though it was pretty darn hot).  We also were in town for a wedding shower for Ben’s cousin, and had a great time hanging out and eating (and eating and eating).

Jack’s official birthday is on Father’s Day this year, and we’ve decided to have a party.  At this age, the party is actually more about us getting friends together more than anything else.  My parents are able to come in for it (it’s their anniversary on the day of the party), so it’s going to be a Red Letter Weekend.  There’s alot to be done before it happens, though.

In other news, I have my interview on Thursday afternoon for a half-time Latin position.  It’s at a public school, and they require certification but are willing to waive some of the requirements given my experience and background, which I will find out after the interview.

But you know what?  I don’t even know if teaching is what I want to do anymore–I’ve been in academic “stuff” for so long, I don’t even know what else I would be good at, although I like to fancy I am one of those “show once” sorts, and can be proficient within a few months.  I was thinking about how I am just not feeling excited about being in the classroom, even though I like teaching and am good at it, and then I started thinking about, well, what AM i into?  What am I excited about doing when I wake up?  And it was a hard revelation that I would much rather be with Jack and watching what happens with him right now than anything else–that I love being able to cook for us (even though I hate cleaning), and I love seeing Ben during the day.

So why is it a “hard” revelation?  I think it’s because I have always thought, for years, that I would be on of those women who was a real go-getter in whatever job I was doing.  Which, for a while, was academia.  About halfway through my PhD program, though, I realized I just didn’t care enough about the subject matter to a) give up my freedom of choice about my personal life and b) devote years of my life to it and research and stuff and miss out on a family of my own.  yeah, yeah, before people get upset, this was my decision based on what I had observed about women in the realm of academia as well as my personal perceptions about what the state of the job market was and would be.  I miss the travel, and the ability to talk about experiences most people will never have had, and when I look at some of the places people in my discipline have been and the stuff they have seen… yeah, I will admit that I get a little jealous of that.  Of being someone who was accomplished in the field.  My traveling is definitely curtailed.  However.  I think of what my dad told me, once, when I talked to him about this subject, a man who had also been through the academic lifestyle, as a student and a professor.  His advice was more along the line of a question: When you die, what do you want on your tombstone: she will be missed by friends and family, or she made tenure?

So, now that I have been home with Jack for a year, I was idly browsing through the job listings, and found one for a town a little ways away.  I applied on a whim, and got a phone call immediately after they received my application saying they were very interested.  I have had two weeks now to think about the whole thing.  Being a teacher, with the teacher benefits (vacations same as Jack, retirement, being a two-income household again) are all great things.  Worst case scenario, though, I would also have to go back to school to work towards certification while I was teaching and while Jack is still less than two years old.  The college with the accredited classes I would go to is about an hour away.  We probably wouldn’t be eating as well/healthy as we are now.  The house work wouldn’t be as kept up (not that it’s so great right now–like I said, I hate house work).  And… I like being able to do things for my family.  Do I want to add that to everything else?   I never thought this would be me, you know?  Wanting to stay at home as a mom.

Big thoughts.  Still not sure.  Of course, not anything to get my panties in a wad about right now, since I haven’t even been offered the job!