Mama Bean fills her soul with whole sky

As a prairie girl, my eyes are used to seeing a lot of sky. When everything around you is flat for miles and miles, you get a pretty good sense of what the word horizon means. The horizon is the straight line between the Blue and the Green and Yellow. These are the primary colours of the prairie: Sky, Grass and Grain.

I need the big sky. My eyes don't merely drink in the blue, they swallow it and digest it and fill my soul with the light (or the dark, or the hazy dusk or foggy dawn...)

I grew up an hour away from the Rocky Mountains, with a half hour of foothills in between, but there is still plenty of sky to be seen on the fields around Cowtown. Still, the land of my youth has major terrain compared to the ironing board that is the Prairie Valley. I didn't know big sky like the Big Blue Sky I know now.

When I lived somewhere low, in a true valley carved by the Mississippi, on the southeast border between Iowa and Illinois, I missed the sky. I didn't know that's what I missed - consciously, I missed my then-boyfriend (not-yet-a-)Papa Bean, my family, my friends, my house (the only one I had ever lived in to that point), my stuff, and having a car (though not necessarily the Jeep I left behind. I just really missed having a car. My automobile is like my third leg. My third super-horse-powered leg.) But subconsciously, I was weighed down by lack of sky. In retrospect, as my mind wanders the streets of my college town, the buildings seem to press down, the leaves on the great big oaks seem laden and heavy. Of course, I'm remembering the streets in the muggy days of summer, which were the heaviest days in every climatological and psychological way. And what I don't remember is much sky - I don't have a clear sense of what it looked like, it's character, it's friendliness. I just didn't see enough of it, over the hills and houses and river and trees to really get a Soul Meal out of it.

(This is all framed, naturally, by the depression I was going through at the time. That being said, it's not like I was miserable in Iowa, I had a truly excellent three years there. And it's not that Davenport was ugly or anything. There was plenty of other beauty to be seen, the Mississippi for one thing. Incredible. And if I'd never lived there, I'd maybe never have seen Chicago, and that would be a travesty. Let me tell you one day about what happens to my soul in Chicago...)

When I'd visit Cowtown in the summers, I didn't understand why the place seemed suddenly so damn sunny. Now I know it's because I was under the sky again, the true blue sky of my youth, and it was weightless and freeing and full of sun like no day could ever be in the Quad Cities. (On the Iowa plain is another story. The sun is plenty bright, and the sky plenty big out there, I know.)

But now I live in on a frying pan. A very large, very shallow, very flat flat flat pan of mud and flood and Flat. Flaaaaaaaaaat. The sky here, my friends, goes on for days.

Here is what prompts my waxing on poetically about the sky: on my drive home I travel due west on a sideway that widens out with open fields on both sides, just before I turn north onto the highway, and I can see the Whole Western Front for two or three minutes (longer if I slow down, which I am often moved to do.) Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, I drive into the sunset. For one or two glorious weeks of the Spring and Fall I am driving when the sun actually sets, and it is so fricking beautiful I don't even have words.

This Spring, it has rained almost every day of May. It is depressing and maddening for so many reasons, most related to the garden. I look at that post about what we were planning to grow, and I get angry at the sky. Yes, my beloved prairie sky. Because it won't shut it's trap and stop spitting on me! And then I want to give up gardening altogether, because before I worked the earth, I didn't give a crap about the weather beyond an interruption to my outdoor plans for the day. I didn't have anything invested in whether it rained four weeks or four days. Now, I care with my hands and my feet and my stomach. My stomach! Oh, and my wallet, which is going to have to pay for all those vegetables I planned on eating for free.

But the sky apologized the other night. Underneath this big prairie expanse, I really see the rain, instead of just hearing and feeling it. As I drove home under a melting pot of grays, I looked out at that Western Front and saw The Rain. Like an errant stroke of slate coloured paint just dredged straight down to the horizon, the perpendicular straight edge of soggy green. And because I could see so much sky, I could see this isolated downpour in the grand tableau of grey and blue and purple. I could see the fluffy cotton balls of cumulus* clouds, white bodied with silver fluff shadows, right next to the rain paint-stroke, like some cosmic force-field was keeping the storm from spreading between cloud banks. And just behind the storm, the sun was still shining. I know this because those cumulus clouds were glowing, lit from behind, and flaming with the palest gold on the edges. And I could see layers of stratus clouds stretching out in different directions to the south, where the rain had already been spent. I swallowed that rainy sky and let it settle deep behind my eyes, tired from work, tired from Bean waking up too many times at night, tired from artificial light at home at work at the computer. And my soul felt full.

Apology accepted, Sky. I love you forever.

*(yes, I had to look that up, because I missed the climate unit in high school science, because I was too busy taking IB science that ignores the weather unit. The actually useful to my daily lie weather unit)

**(yes, I need to start carrying a camera in my car for these evenings. I also get a pretty good glimpse of the Eastern sky on my way too work Monday and Friday mornings, although my sleepy fuzzy brain doesn't always fully comprehend how pretty it is.)

Mama Bean can't be bothered to be completely crunchy granola

For the first eight months of Bean's life, we didn't have to buy any wipes. We were given a bunch of refill packages at our baby showers, and we already had a box of two from before he was born. Why? Apparently wipes (alcohol-free, scent-free, every-gosh-darn-thing-free) are useful when you're hunting, so Papa Bean bought some for his single excursion of 2009, but only used a few of them.

In addition to using cloth diapers, we also wanted to make our own washcloth wipes that we could wash and reuse. When the refill packs ran out, I carefully prepared the Internet's recommended mixture of baby wash, calendula oil, and tea tree oil. They smelled really good, and washcloths wipe up poop so much better than disposable wipes. They just grip or absorb or something - we find wipes tend to smear everything around before finally getting things cleaned up. I think it's because wipes have more fluid and soapy stuff. I made the washcloth wipes damp but not soaking.

So we like using the washcloths, but I don't like making them. I fold them to fit into a normal wipes container, which will hold about 25 of them. So every 25 wipes I have to make a new box. At anywhere from 1 to 5 poops a day, that's a box every 5 or so days. It's more work than I expected. So was cloth diapering, but I can handle the diaper work. I don't want to handle the wipes work. With diapering, I can tell myself it's cheaper for us, and it's good for the environment, and that makes it worth it. Washcloth wipes are good for the environment, especially since we just add them to the diaper laundry, but it's not necessarily saving us that much money. I was using up our baby wash, and essential oils really quickly - just lucky that I happened to have both calendula and tea tree oil on hand, but it would be expensive to get new bottles when they ran out, which was going to be pretty darn quick.

Rather than get defeatist about it, I had the best intentions to brainstorm ways to make it less work. For example, I could make a big batch of the wipe solution (like, two liters at a time) and then it'd be easier to just pour out 2 cups for each new box. Another important factor (impediment?) is only having 30 appropriate washcloths on hand (You know, the cheap, thin dollar store variety. They are the perfect texture.) If I stocked up to like 50 or 75 cloths, I could have three boxes folded and ready to just moisten and be ready. But then I'm wrangling 50 or 75 tiny pieces of flimsy terry cloth in my laundry. And that just don't appeal!

Okay, so I am defeated after all. We bought a package of refills (We buy in bulk because we is cheapos!) because we're headed to Cowtown for a visit and wedding, and we're going All Disposable while traveling. And then the box of washcloths petered out today, during big smelly dumps of Epic Stank-times, and that was just so exceedingly frustrating. (I know, I know, if that's the least of my problems...) So I think we're gonna give up on the washcloth experiment for now.

The other important lesson of the day: don't loosen Bean's poopy diaper, and then go looking for a washcloth. Have the wipe In Hand and Prepared For Duty. Because otherwise, little Bean hands are going directly into giant, stank-fest Bean poop, and then - well, then it's bathtime in the middle of the day. Yippee!!

Not that I can stay frustrated for long. Did I mention the giggles? OMG, the GIGGLES. Seriously, I'm almost sad to put him to bed, because then there's no more giggles until the next morning. How do I survive?!? I know, I know, if that's the least of my problems... yeah, life's pretty sweet :)

Mama Bean has clearly been absent

Good. Grief.

(As a too-early-in-a-post-to-have-an-aside aside, this is my newest speech idiom. I say it more often than is humanly possible. And I don't even feel like breaking the habit, because it's so much better than saying for EFF's sake (without the 'eff' y'know?) all the time. I guess I have to start watching the potty mouth around the Bean, so eventually I'll be saying things like Crikey! and Drat! or something...joy.)

For the first few weeks, I was keeping this mental list of all the things keeping me from posting, but now I don't really have a great handle on it. I know there were a series of visitors - my parents, Papa Bean's youngest brother and his girlfriend, then Papa Bean's parents. During the visits I started to lag on my RSS feeds entries - I used to clear it by bedtime every day which, in hindsight, is so totally ridiculous I don't know what was wrong with me. I had upwards of 500 new items to peruse before I finally started clearing some feeds that I just know I'll never be bothered to actually read. It's not so much that I don't still really enjoy or care about all the sites I've subscribed to. I think it was more a lesson in how much excess time I was spending trying to stick to an arbitrary standard (clearing my feed) that really doesn't change anything meaningful in my life's function or purpose.

Then I had a wicked low back spasm that just completely laid me up for three or four days. I couldn't sit, I couldn't stand up, I could barely lay down comfortably. I was cuddling up to ice so hard I got freezer burn patches that are still tender and bruised (oddly enough.) I took a Monday off from work. I didn't even turn on my computer for at least two days, and then only to clean up my email. And that was another good lesson. As internettingly connected as Papa Bean and I may be, I think I'd lost some perspective on the difference between my on- and off-line lives. I will always contend that online life is every bit as real as my offline one but offline has that important distinction of being physically and temporally Immediate and Present to my physical and temporal circumstances. Online everything is removed in both space and time, that's just the facts.

I needed to remember this now, because with every day, Bean gets bigger, smarter, and more Immediate and Present in his own ways. I want to spend all his waking hours making him smile and giggle in that impossibly adorable way that I didn't even know existed before him. His waking hours are longer now, and that's just going to keep me away from the computer for now. After experiencing how much a physical problem kept me away from fulfilling his most basic needs (I could barely nurse him, let alone bend to change his diapers, or lift him from the crib) I know I can't let online issues keep me from him anymore. It's not good for either of us. I go through giggle withdrawal.

Finally, our life tippled through another wave of change, as Papa Bean started a new job. He has been on parental leave for the past six months, and would have stayed stay-at-home-daddying if a supreme job opportunity to work at the college where he's taking his pastor schooling hadn't come up - with an ASAP sort of start date. He's still an IT guy, and as an employee, his tuition will be paid. How awesome is that?! We have arranged for child care to start in August, when his parental leave would have been exhausted, and that is when he will start full-time. For now, he works part-time around my clinic schedule. Part-time, he makes essentially the same amount as he was making from parental EI, and with an excellent new benefits package (plus the tuition thing, did I mention the tuition thing?) which is good.

Since I went back to work, I haven't really been with Bean alone on a regular kind of basis. At work, I was away from them both, and when I was home, Papa Bean was generally always around. He was the one on parental leave at Home With The Baby, see. So this part-time working thing is a new world for me - it's just me and Bean when PB's at work, and just PB & Bean when I'm at work. It's like we're both part-time stay-at-home parents lol. This is now the primary factor in my decreased 'puter time. I don't know what that means for blogging right now. I definitely have missed it, and regularly have post ideas float around during my long commute or night-time nursing. With each new day sans posting, the unreasonable pressure I put on myself to Get On With It Already weighed down my motivation somehow, and I'd just go randomly wander through my RSS instead. But I'm back now. I'll try not to disappear again... (Thanks to everyone who encouraged me that I've been missed. I truly appreciate you!)

Mama Bean posts two weeks of links on Sunday (good grief) - May, 16, 2010

I know, I know, where have I beeeeeeEEEeeen? If I told you, I'd have to kill you. Well, not really. I'm just busy working on several impossibilities right now, namely: 1) adding hours to the day, and 2) cultivating a money tree in my backyard. I trust you understand. However, these endeavors will be fruitless. Unfortunately, this will not necessarily free me up to blog more, as the failure to lengthen my days is a key issue. Perhaps the solution lies in efficiency? But I'm a mama; efficiency fell by the wayside sometime during the end of the 2nd trimester of pregnancy...never to return again?

- Do you remember learning how to swaddle a baby? What's that, you've never done it? Well, this is how it's done, in 47 easy steps! And while this particular post may seem like an exaggeration to the uninitiated, I assure you, it's not.

- I love Zooey Deschanel, I love her music with She & Him, I love her dancing in this video for In the Sun. It makes me think of Feist a little bit. Happy + Love. Please enjoy and smile.

- This is a cute little chart of what various intoxicants will make you do in various situations, such as being at a party, or being near the phone. For example, with alcohol, in the bathroom you will puke. Or, with PCP, near the cops you will attack them with a dead bird. I mean, this is stuff everyone knows, right? But it's handy to have it in a little chart like this!

- Sunday's coming! The ultimate parody of your average mainstream large church service. It's funny because it's TRUE.

- These folks loved Sunday so much, they turned an old church into their home. I think it's a very beautiful re-purposing, but some commenters feared intimacy might be a little awkward, with so many stained-glass saints watching. And Pastor Jim prefers churches to stay as churches.

- This is how science works. Really. Magnets really are metal with pieces of gravity in them! Duh. Unfortunately, it's a tumblr site that doesn't update by RSS. Check back regularly for updates. The funniest updates of your life.

- What if they made action figures of the Bronte sisters? It would be awesome, that's what.

- I read an insane amount of celebrity gossip. It's silly, like, I'm sure some of my time shortage could easily be resolved by curing myself of this addiction. Oh well...I mostly read Oh Know They Didn't (the neverending pit of gossip, there is no way to read it all, just let it wash over you in all its trashy glory) and Evil Beet now, but Pink is the New Blog really introduced me to the online world of gossip. However, Trent evolved, I didn't grow with him, and stopped reading. But this is a cool post about a song Kelly Clarkson wrote in response to the whole Ryan-Tedder-wrote-the-same-song-for-both-Kelly-and-Beyonce debacle (cf. Kelly's Already Gone v. B's Halo. I like both songs, and I like them for that catchy little four chord hook Ryan gave to both of them...)

- How to mow your lawn without mowing your lawn. It really is the best idea ever.

- A little NYT infographic on the privacy rabbit-hole that is facebook. There's a repeating cycle of privacy hysteria that circulates on the web - facebook's not safe, twitter's not safe, blogs aren't safe, the internet is full of creeps, throwyourmodemAWAY OMG!!1! Of course, this is not the solution. As Neil points out, a new concern is the potential for lock-in. If this is how the world communicates, this is how we must communicate if we want to be in the world. But how to be safe? How to teach my children to be safe? It's daunting, as the graphic demonstrates.

- Cleopas and his friend did not "see" Jesus, on the road to Emmaus, until they were ready to see him. Here's some interesting commentary on the purpose of the delay in opening their eyes. I found it uplifting, the last paragraph in particular.

- The National Doodle Day raises money to help neurofibromatosis research by selling doodles during NF Awareness Month. This doodle is by Gillian Anderson's (Agent Scully, drool) daughter Piper. Apparently, she's old enough to be in art school now. Which makes me feel old enough to be like a grandmother or something. Check out the other doodles in the series, too.

- Who knew South Koreans take football so seriously? It's mind-boggling, the coordination required to make this work. Makes the Wave at hockey games seem so...juvenile :)

- Remember this video of new Photoshop's content aware feature? Well, here's an amusing little spoof of it. It's really well done, right down to the script and voicing.

- I have 205 links on fbook right now. The very first link I ever shared was a short film called The Tribe, narrated by Peter Coyote. It was freely available on youtube when I linked it, but is now only available privately. Here's the official website. I'm sad I can't access it anymore... The second link I shared was pictures of Michael Stipe and Thomas Dozol's apartment. The third link I shared was a poignant video allegory of The Instruction Manual of Life. Every time I watch this clip, I see something new. For example, the letters on the cabinet he builds around 4:19 spell out bullshit. Never noticed that before. The fourth link I shared was a cute short film about young love. And the fifth thing I shared is a spoof of Nickelback's Rock Star called Worship Star by Shekelback. If you know anything about Christian contemporary music, you'll find it as hysterical as I do. I posted that video a year ago. Cool.

Mama Bean had a wonderful first Mother's Day

I spent multiple minutes of my Mother's Day wondering where the apostrophe goes. Is it Happy singular Mother's Day? Or Happy all-the-mothers-in-the-world Mothers' Day?? I, personally, think it is more appropriate to say Happy Mothers' Day to all the moms every where in space and time, but apparently the powers that be (Hallmark?) have determined Happy Mother's Day is how it is. So... now I've spent multiple minutes of everyone else's time recounting the process. Excellent...

I mostly just want to talk about the absolute bestest part of my first Mother's Day, which was right at the beginning. It was the part of the day where my Fruity O's ended up all over my lap.

Papa Bean went early to church for band rehearsal. Normally we wake up at the same time and go in one car (to conserve gas? The church is, like, five minutes away *shrug*) but we went to bed really late, so I stayed in bed, although I didn't really get to sleep much later. I mean, I wake when Bean wakes, y'know?

So I'm cruising through the morning. I fed the Beanlet all relaxed and lazy-style in bed, so comfy and warm. Then we changed his diaper. (It's just better doing this after nursing. We used to change his diaper right out of the crib, but then he always pees during or shortly after eating breakfast, so now he gets his clean diaper afterwards.) Then I did my morning routine, got dressed in a new shirt from Old Navy, and poured myself a lovely, colourful bowl of Fruity O's. I had a whole ten minutes to eat breakfast before loading up the Bean bucket and leaving in time to arrive early at church.

But Beany Burrito Bum was cranky pants and didn't want to sit in the Command Centre while I ate. So I thought I could eat with him on my lap. Fatal error, friends. 3, 2, 1 cereal in my lap. All over the new shirt, all over my jeans, all over the Bean sleeper, and the floor. No more cute new outfit debut, no more ten minutes to eat breakfast, no more early to church. Happy Mother's Day! *woo hoooooooo...*

As K says, "Those mother's days where the kids make you pancakes apparently take a while to show up."

The question became, how to orchestrate clean up. I mean, who or what do I address first? Get myself dry while Bean cries? Get Bean dry while my jeans slowly adhere themselves to my thighs? Wipe up the desk and floor before the sticky sugar-cereal uber-milk spreads itself into the nooks and crannies of my laptop? (This is an exaggeration, thank goodness the milk came nowhere near my computer.) Is there any efficient way to get it all done and still make it to church, albeit late?

The sticky clothes had to go first, so imagine (or not) me performing the rest of the clean up essentially in my underwear. I rediapered Bean-butt, and even put him in a cute onesie and overalls outfit in the hopes that late church was still in the cards. But he whined and fussed and cantankered through the whole process, so I just put him back to bed. And yes, cranky pants went back to sleep...eventually.

Then I started laundry, wiped down the desk, gathered the fallen Fruity O's, moved my computer mat outside to dry, took a shower, and redressed myself. I'm not looking for snaps or pats on the back for this - it's what anyone would do, right? But here is what I thought as I did it (and they are essentially the same realization):

1) I'm a better parent when I have Papa Bean around to lean on. Tag team. Coordinate. Share the load.

2) I. don't. know. how single parents do this.

So the start of my Mother's Day basically made me realize how much I appreciate and love my husband. Which was a pretty good start to the day actually. It makes me happy to celebrate our partnership and be grateful for him. For one thing, I wouldn't be a mother without him. And I wouldn't be the mother I am without his support. So, yeah, it was a good first Mother's Day. I'm sure that's what Bean had in mind all along, right? Right? Little stinker...

Mama Bean is a baby-related liquid manager - Volume 1: Starting fluids

I call myself The Fluid Wrangler. I see myself as a giant walking sponge, dispensing, diverting, disposing of various bodily liquids at every turn. It's practically All I Do. I thought I could just write a little post about it all, but I have now determined it will take weeks to describe it all. What a grand adventure! I know, we're all pumped...

The very creation of a baby starts with fluids. I was going to call this Volume 1: Sex or Volume 1: Seminal Fluids (haha seminal...) but then I realized what sort of Google traffic that might bring and thought better of it. But seriously, when I became awash in baby fluids during those Delirious Early Days, and pondered my new Wrangler status, I did have to laugh when I realized we'd been "wrangling" baby-related fluids from the get go.

Despite understanding the concept of semen since Grade 4 sex ed, it was still surprising in a fairly disturbing way to discover sex is messy. Like, there's fluids involved. Sticky, mucus-y, impossible-to-clean-in-any-sort-of-easy-way fluids. (Ack! Why am I writing this? My brother reads this blog. Gah! But but but I just feel like any complete list of mommy-relevant fluid management responsibilities must begin with this important, y'know, Beginning.) This state of affairs has created this tiny, pragmatic voice at the back of my head whenever together time is considered, particularly as it pertains to venue. Throwback-to-our-reckless-youth In-the-car-style Passion? Tiny voice questions if we'll be able to get that out of the seats. Run-of-the-mill On-the-bed-style Lovings? Tiny voice wonders when the sheets are due for laundry. (I don't know.) Ever-so-steamy In-the-shower Intimacies? Tiny voice: "Perr-fect."

Frankly, the stickiness of sex is a strong argument for abstinence to me, but I am admittedly squiggy about this (see tiny pragmatic voice above...) I'm just saying maybe we should be honest about this with our youth and young ones. It's about the Birds and the Bees and the Clean Up. I remember this rhetoric growing up that you shouldn't have sex until you're emotionally ready, whatever that means. You were supposed to be ready to talk with your partner about your feelings and all that. But I say, you have to be ready to talk with your partner about wiping up semen. Ready to do so maturely, and with a substantial amount of good humour. If you can't do that, you are not ready.

In all seriousness, management of these particular fluids is an integral part of parenthood for all couples, most painfully for those struggling through infertility, which is a HUGE issue - something like 1 out of 8 couples, right? The costs of this Fluid Wrangling - emotional, financial, marital - are enormous. Which underscores the enormous silver lining of the whole sticky mess, that is, that out of that mess come babies.

And out of those babies come, well... that's for next week ;)

Mama Bean blames That Smell on Bean. Not beans. The baby...

Bean farts quite a bit, so most of the time, That Smell really is his fault. But you know, adults fart, too. Less audibly, perhaps, but more stink-ily. But it doesn't matter anymore, because whatever the smell, wherever we are, whoever may be around, that smell is now automatically blamed on the baby.

It's like a reflex. "What's that sm-" "It'sthebaby. Drop it. [whispering] Don't embarrass him..."

It's just easier this way.

Easier for our marriage. Easier for our friends and family. Easier. for. me.

I've often wanted to admit this on facebook - "Mama Bean just blamed a stinky fart on Bean, but it was really her. teehee" Except that's not anything people on facebook want to read. So I'm putting it here instead.

Of course, now that the truth is out, it won't be as convincing when I divert the blame. We'll have to get a dog or something (hint hint.) Well, and eventually we'll teach Bean to blame that smell on a sibling. A male sibling. It's just uncouth to blame it on a sister. My brothers never blamed farts on me. (Silly them...they were mine teehee. Again, nothing I would broadcast over facebook.)

Bean is neither physiologically able to control his farts, nor verbal enough to defend himself against my false accusations. Even when he is both sphincterly and verbally able to assert his autonomy, I will still blame That Smell on him. I can do that, I am The Mother.

Ultimately, Papa Bean will get old, and all farts and burps - gaseous emissions in general will be attributed to him. I don't remember a time in my childhood when my dad was not The Default Farter. In fact, I think this encouraged him to become less discreet about his emissions, because really, if you're going to get blamed for them anyway, you might as well fully claim the ones that are, indeed, yours. Papa Bean's a little prissy about his gases right now, but I trust age and repeated accusations will mellow him in this regard. He will accept his fatherly role as The Default Farter with grace and forbearance.

I have to consider these things in advance. It will not bode well if I have no one to blame That Smell on. Because, people, That Smell is always my fault.

Shhh...don't tell anyone. And if anyone asks...it was Bean.