Uncommon Grace

Meme-in'

In the midst of hunting down appliances and packing (how is it that stuff takes up so much more space when it's in boxes?!), I haven't been taking too many pictures. But, I did come across this meme that's going around flickr today, and decided to join in. I'm usually awful about participating in memes (sorry to anyone who has tagged me!) -- they tend to overwhelm me -- but this one was so much fun!

These are the questions, from the upper left:

What is your first name? Grace. Most of the images that came up when I typed "Grace" were of swans, which is just so not me. So I chose the above image.

What is your favorite food? Indian food

What high school did you attend? None: I was homeschooled

What is your favorite color? Pink, of course!

Who is your celebrity crush? Dave Matthews -- in a silly way. That photo up there just makes my heart beat faster. Luckily my husband is a pretty secure guy, because I have been crushing hard on Dave for 14 years.

Favorite drink? Mojito -- but really only those made by my husband. :)

Dream vacation? While my recent trip to NYC was quite awesome, my dream vacation is London, London, and only London. I am a huge anglophile. Did you know that about me? Though I've been to Europe, I haven't had the chance to visit the UK or Ireland yet.

Oops! I left out this one: What is your favorite dessert? Cherry pie!

What do you want to be when you grow up? Not so sure if I loved my answer here, but I said "peaceful." I am pretty anxious and intense, so I hope that one day I can outgrow those characteristics a little bit. ;)

What do you love most in life? That's an easy one -- my children! I cheated to add this one. But I'm good with that.

One word to describe you. I was going to say "intense" but none of the images that came up were quite right, so I switched it to "perfectionist."

Your flickr name. It's UncommonGrace. The shot of Graham is one of my most "interesting" photos on flickr to date.

Click on the photo above to get photo credits and so on.

Elisabeth wanted to do one, too.

Hope your weekend is going well, everyone!

Bring in the Boxes

{photography in this post by Elisabeth}

We found out a couple of days ago that we got the house we wanted, and so we're moving in less than two weeks!

We're excited, although I do feel a bit like a chicken with its head cut off. I'm a pretty bad (read: disorganized) mover, so everything is a bit topsy-turvy around here.

I've been spending about half my time on Craigslist looking for stuff we're going to need: washer and dryer, freezer, swamp cooler ... the list goes on. And the packing. Oh, the packing. I have never been happier that my children go to bed early. Tonight -- just as soon as my husband returns from a box and newspaper (OK, and movie and treat) run, and I finish this post -- it's back to the madcap hilarity (er, packing). It's funny how even something small like emptying a bookshelf or packing away some CD's makes the house look and feel different.

The children have been having no end of fun using boxes to construct tunnels and hideaways -- and collapsed boxes make great slides, too. So it's all fun!

New York

Since my wee ones are sick and our routine is a bit on its head this week, I thought I should finally do my big New York post.

Whew. It's been a whole month since the trip, and I don't want to do too much description of it -- just share photos.

It was fantastic to spend the weekend in New York with my mom. The weather was glorious until the morning we left, when it became chilly and foggy.

We did some shopping -- mostly on Erin's recommendations.

We met up with an old friend (who I hadn't seen since her wedding almost 6 years ago) at a cute tea shop. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of my friend in the midst of all the catching up.

I had my first blog meet-up, with Kristin, who came into New York for the morning on one of the days we were there. She gave me a sweet birthday gift, which I just realized I haven't photographed yet. I'll fix that later today.

We ate at two great restaurants (both were Kristin's suggestions). La Paella was beautiful and yummy. Becco was just so delicious. And we ate at Sardi's for the tourist experience.

And we had lunch one day at Serendipity3, because I just had to go there -- for the touristy thing, too. (And my sandwich was so good that I'm still thinking about it.)

We went to see The Country Girl on Broadway starring Frances McDormand and Morgan Freeman. And we went to see The Phantom of the Opera -- which was an experience.

We stopped at Purl and Purl Patchwork. The girls in Purl noticed that my bag was made with Joelle's fabric, though the girls in Purl Patchwork did not! I got a little bit of Liberty of London fabric to make a little something for my girl.

We walked -- a lot. We rode the subway -- not quite as much. And we took some cabs, too.

We nearly saw the Pope, who was visiting at the same time, but just missed his motorcade.

Best of all, we saw Satyagraha at the Met (click that link and watch the 4-minute video! It's amazing!), which was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. Really and truly. It was beautiful, and just esoteric enough for me. ;)

It was a great trip.

Questions and Answers

Ack! Typepad created a new Compose editor and it appeared on me yesterday -- and it's driving me crazy! I am having so much trouble with links and with, um, backspacing over typos (it's in Beta, so there are some kinks they're working on, I guess.)

My promised post about meal planning may or may not happen later today -- my little ones both came down with fevers and nasty coughs yesterday, and so, although I made dinner at the usual time, I was busy running back and forth between it and the two sickies and didn't snap any photos.

I did want to answer a few questions from the last post, though.

I got a couple of questions about why some, like me, feel it's so important to have an early bedtime. There are two reasons, in my mind. The first one is that children need a lot more sleep than we sometimes think they do -- 12 or more hours in a 24-hour period for children younger than 7 or 8. Especially if children have to be up early to go to school or a class or daycare or whatever, then (I think) giving them dinner at 6:00 so that they're realistically asleep by 8:00 on a regular basis could really cause chronic sleep deprivation -- the symptoms of which can be subtle or really intense, depending on the child. (I wonder if attention disorders might not be related to sleep deprivation? Just my hypothesis ... I'm not diagnosing anyone!)

The other reason to have the children asleep early is, of course, so that Mama can have some time to herself. :)

I also got a couple of questions about how the dinnertime ties into the bedtime. This is the most important part, I think. I think that it holds pretty true for most families that I've observed and asked -- two hours after the children sit down to supper, if bedtime follows in a pretty orderly and efficient manner, is the time that they will actually be asleep. I have tried about a gazillion other things to get my children to sleep earlier, and when I finally recognized this and shifted our dinnertime earlier (at my mom's continued urging), things fell into place. My husband is a school teacher, so he is often (but not always) home in time for a 5:00 supper. On days that he's not, I do go ahead and feed the children before he gets home. I know that family meals are a big deal, but I think that the overall rhythm of the family is really more important than a rigid idea of "every member of the household must eat the same meal together at the same time." For us, while our children are so small, it's OK for them to sometimes have dinner with just Mama, and spend more time with their Daddy at other times. And, I'm sure as they grow older, we will shift our dinnertime back to a later time.

Some of you wanted to know about what time my children rise and whether they nap. The first part of that question is easy -- they are usually awake before 7:30, although that can vary a little bit with James depending on his nap situation.

The nap part of that question is complicated. Both of my children were naturally morning nappers, and I discouraged that a little bit when they were tiny. With Elisabeth, it was because we were, at that time, pretty involved in various social activities (which were fun, but perhaps we did too much if I couldn't accomodate her need for naps). So she gave up napping at a pretty young age. Now I insist that she have an afternoon quiet time because she really needs it, even though I wasn't so good about recognizing that earlier on. James, also a natural morning napper, had his natural napping rhythm disrupted a lot when he was littler due to classes and other commitments that we had in the mornings until he was about 14 months old. (Less than what I did with Elisabeth, but still disruptive to him.) Right now, if he takes an afternoon nap, he's not sleepy enough to go to sleep at night, so I don't allow him to nap past a certain time. If he doesn't get his nap, he'll usually sleep about 14 hours at night. If he gets an early enough nap (which I try to get him to do every day, but sometimes with more or less success), then he'll usually wake up around the same time as Elisabeth, between 7 and 7:30.

And finally, about the book The Seven-O'Clock Bedtime. It is not my all-time favorite parenting book, and I hesitate to recommend it to people with infants or even young toddlers, because I feel like the system, and overall approach to meeting very young children's nighttime needs, is a little bit too strict. As I mentioned before, I have absolutely no problem nursing a baby to sleep (and frankly, it's just so much easier!), I do share my bed with my little ones, and I really don't agree with "crying it out" or sleep training of babies. But, with slightly older children, I thought that there were points in the book that were useful -- it's kind of a "take what works and leave the rest" kind of book. Whew! I'm glad I got that off my chest!

Does that help? Do you have more questions? 

when it's time for bed...

I've received several emails -- heartfelt emails from other mothers who are "in this" right now -- since my last post. Many of you, both commenters and those of you who have privately emailed me, wanted to hear more of my household management and parenting tips. The first thing that I'd like to say -- before I get into some concrete suggestions that have really been helpful to me and my family -- is that I am not a good household manager in general. In fact, it would be not only untrue, but really laughable to call me so, as most of my friends will confirm. But I do have some things that I do well in that arena.

The biggest thing that I can offer as advice, a piece of advice that I have been given by my own mother many times over the last six years (it took some time for it to sink in for me) is that children must eat supper early if they are expected to be asleep early. If you are pretty good about keeping yourself and your little ones moving along from one thing to the next in an efficient manner, then two hours from the start of supper to the time you intend for them to be asleep is about right. If you or they tend to dawdle, then it may need to be even earlier! (And therefore you might have to work in a bedtime snack about 60-75 minutes before their intended asleep time.) There's a book called The Seven-O'Clock Bedtime which speaks to this as well. [I read The Seven-O'Clock Bedtime several years ago and there were many things in it that did not resonate for me in my particular circumstance -- we share a bed with our little ones (Elisabeth is in her own bed now, although I often put her to bed with James in the big bed and then transfer her later), I have no problem with allowing my babies to nurse to sleep, and of course, we aren't working with an external school schedule. In other ways, though, I thought that the advice given in the book was pretty good.]

What this ends up looking like for our family on most days (my cello teaching days are usually an exception) is that I start making dinner at about 3:30 or 3:45 and have it on the table at 5:00. When I first started doing this, it was a huge paradigm shift for me. It felt so strange to be making dinner so early in the afternoon. But I made myself get into the habit, and it has ended up working really well for our family most of the time. After dinner, there is not a lot of time for doing other activities before bed, but the children do usually play outside for about 20 minutes while I check email or something. (My husband does the dishes because he is a super-hero.) Then, by 6:00, we are getting into pajamas, brushing teeth, and beginning bedtime stories. I also sing, say verses and prayers, and usually light a candle during this time. James is asleep before 7:00 virtually every night, and Elisabeth understands that she needs to stay in bed, even if it takes her a little bit longer to fall asleep. She has just started falling asleep without my being present in the last year or so, and it was like a miracle to me! She was (and is) very intense, very "high-need", very active, and very demanding of attention and energy from me. I never believed she'd be able to fall asleep on her own, but lo and behold, even the most high-need child will eventually be able to do it. So, have faith, mamas! It does get easier!

Anyway, although I know when I outline this, it sounds like a very rigid schedule, we are really just doing the same things that we have always done (even in the days when they were asleep much later), but I just make sure to start supper early. That has really been the key. Once you have them fed, it becomes much less of a struggle to get them off to bed.

For us, as a family who works with Waldorf-inspired ideas around rhythm, the key has been to find things in our day -- like the dinner preparation-eating-getting to bed process -- that we can work on in a consistent way each day. I have discovered that "instituting a schedule" is a much different thing than living with a rhythm. But that's another post all its own!

Another piece of household management advice I can offer relates to meal planning. Since this post is already super long, how about on Wednesday I'll share photos of tomorrow's dinner making process and talk about my approach to meal planning and cooking?

Tonight I'm off to do some cello playing, and tomorrow a very dear friend and her two wee ones are spending the day here with us. So see you Wednesday!

On "Creative Outlets for Mothers"

{At a rehearsal earlier this week for an upcoming recording session.}

Thank you all so very much for your well-wishes, tips and advice, and inquiries about my talk last week. I'm so sorry I haven't been able to respond to any of you -- I have to say that it is completely possible to underestimate the importance of having a reliable computer. I know I certainly took it for granted way too much! Our new computer has arrived, but still needs all the software installed and so on, which requires my husband and his brother scheduling a time to do it. Ugh! Who knew that the death of our computer more than a month ago would turn into such a huge hassle?

OK, I'm done venting now. My absence this week has been due in small part to still working with the laptop which I don't have access to every day, and in large part to not one, but two un-charged camera batteries. That I'm too lazy to plug them in says something, I think.

So, the talk. Wow. I was so nervous about it. But it went really smoothly. One of my biggest fears was that I wouldn't have enough material planned for my entire 90-minute time allotment, and to a certain extent, that was true. I had a solid 60 minutes of points that I wanted to address, and then I opened it up for Q&A and input from the group. Fewer people came to my talk than had signed up, but I think that had to do with it being on the first day of the conference when everyone was still getting settled at the conference center.

I had prepared a long handout, formatted into the categories Why?, What?, When?, Where?, and How? The handout was mostly about the nuts-and-bolts of incorporating creative expression into a mother's daily life. I included reasons for having an outlet of any sort, and why creative outlets are specifically helpful; a really long list of ideas for different things to try (many of which came from your helpful responses to this post), as well as things to consider when choosing what to do; different ways to schedule it into the course of the day; the importance of creating a dedicated space for and valuing our creative work (as well as different ways that space could work for us, and ways of making it fit!); and finally tips on getting started, and a resource list of tons and tons of books and websites (and links to some favorite blogs, too!).

My talk itself did not actually follow the handout. I had prepared a slideshow of about 250 of my photos. (They were all taken from my flickr account, so you have all probably seen most, if not all, of them already.) About half of the photos were of objects that I've made, and about half of them were just examples of photography of mine that I like for one reason or another. I had the slide show playing in a loop throughout the entire talk, and began it before anyone arrived, so as to "set a mood". I began the session by playing some Celtic music on my cello, with only a minimal introduction. I didn't want it to seem like I was performing for the group, but rather inviting them to share a creative experience with me. Afterward, I shared with them a poem that had been shared with me by my herbalist and mentor.

Then I introduced myself, talked about my own creative journey -- which began with my mother, as all things seem to do ;) -- and my depression. I feel that my reemergence as a creative soul is so intertwined with the severe depression that I experienced after James was born that the two cannot really be separated. So I talk pretty frankly about it -- to friends and strangers.

And then I talked about inspiration. The definition of the verb to inspire that speaks to me most deeply is "to stimulate or compel to action." I love that something very small -- James's rapt attention to a saxophone player, a pretty little corner in my home, Elisabeth peeling apples, the two of them puddle-jumping -- can compel me to action. A lot of times, that action finds easy fruition in my camera's capable lens. But sometimes, it requires me to seek out a bigger project, something different, something else that I can do or make or create. For me, the biggest part of inspiration is this call to act, to do something with what I see, feel, and experience, rather than allowing the moment to wash over me and be lost. I think that many of you other crafty mamas and bloggers seem to get this at a very core level -- either instinctively, or quite consciously, and this is one reason I love this community so. (Even though my computer dilemma has taken me from your midst for the time being. I do think about all of you so much.)

I also talked a bit about mindfulness/living in the moment, and some household management/parenting tips, such as an early supper and bedtime for little ones (the best advice I have ever received, thanks to my own mama!), and about the importance of being a strong adult presence in our children's lives rather than a playmate. (For those of you who would like to know more about that subject, Jean Liedloff, whose book The Continuum Concept has formed much of the research basis for so much of what has come to be known as "Attachment Parenting", has an article on her website which talks about this in more depth.)

Most of what I talked about can be kind of summarized as "when we nurture ourselves, we nurture our families". I didn't say this in the talk, but I truly believe that when we model living a creative life, we give our children the freedom to grow and learn and experience life all the more fully.

May Showers bring...

Some news from me! (Photos here are from our first good rainy spring day. During a pause in the rain, my wee ones had enormous fun doing some puddle jumping!)

We ordered a new computer. Thank goodness. It's not the Mac that I would have hoped for, but it'll work. A whole lot better than this "can I borrow the laptop again?" thing that is happening right now!

I'm leaving tomorrow for the parenting conference that I'm giving a talk at. Oh, my. I am so nervous.

And finally, I think we've found a place to live! It all rests on our references now. ;) It's a pretty sweet little house with a great big backyard and a fantastic kitchen. As with any house (especially when renting), there are compromises to be made. It doesn't have a fireplace, which I really thought I'd never be able to live without -- but I guess I will, and it's only two bedrooms, so the play/creative/art space for the children as well as what will be my own creative space are in a dark basement. We'll have to figure out ways of brightening it up (and we haven't talked to the landlords about painting yet, so I don't know if that's a possibility or not) without spending a whole bunch of money. It's important to me that we do manage to make the space comfortable and workable for our needs, though, because obviously that's one of the reasons we're moving out of this teeny place.

But lest I leave you on a "we're moving into a dark basement" note -- the backyard! It's fantastic! With trees! And a garden! and a wooden swingset! And the kitchen! It's so spacious! With a gas stove! And there are hardwood floors throughout the house! Which I grew up with, and wanted to have once again so much. So we're pretty excited. 

five-two

5/2 :: May 2nd :: a return to our 52 weeks project. There are so many amazingly beautiful and creative shots in that group -- I really want to get more into it. So here are our three pairs of shoes today. James is, of course, jumping.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone! It's cold here -- we're having a late spring, it seems. But I am looking forward to a fun weekend of making, at any rate!