New Year, New Home...UPDATED

...Homepage, that is!

That's right folks...it's been a nice run here on Blogger, but alas, methinks my blogging needs might be better met elsewhere...Téa's 1st birthday seemed like as good a time as any to make a fresh start in a new location...on a Mac website. I know, I know...not as hip, but it's just SO much more convenient when you are dealing primarily with videos and pictures as opposed to text. It's the only way I have a fighting chance of keeping things up to date.

So, here's the new site:

www.ittybittybaby.net

This Blogger site will remain up so all the content here will still be available for revisiting, just in case a walk down memory lane strikes your fancy. But for those of you ready to--*sigh*--take the next step with me, follow the link, update your bookmarks, and prepare to embark on the next chapter of life with my itty bitty baby...I hope you'll come along with us!

UPDATE: After some deliberation, I decided to password protect the new site. If you would like to be given the username and password, email me at...

hokuclements@mac.com

...and I will pass it along if you are family or friend. Basically I just don't want some person who just happens upon my site to be able to have full access to all my pictures and videos of me and my family in case...you know...they're weird. Thanks!

My 1st Year of Motherhood: Becoming a Small Time Keeper

(A few days before I delivered Téa)

(Meeting her for the first time)

(Téa and I today)

So I'm sitting in Téa's pediatrician's exam room in preparation for her 9 month check up and vaccinations...you know, running over my mental checklist of questions, trying to keep Téa occupied, the usual ped's office shenanigans...when the normally quite reserved Dr. A bursts jovially through the door and announces: "Well look at what we've got here!...An almost 1 year old on our hands!!! Congratulations, Mom, on making it this far!" Let me tell you, the streets of Beijing probably came to a standstill wondering "what the heck was that?" as the deafening thud of my jaw hitting the linoleum reverberated through the earth's core. Up until that point, my daughter's life was just a series of days and weeks and months, measured more in milestones and firsts and sleep hours and feeding times than anything else, a collection of pages whipping off the calendar or ripping out of the Book of My Life Since Becoming a Mom at breakneck speed...pages whose most dazzling contents most often included: "Just getting by today, thanks for asking." (And to be honest that is probably stating it rather generously).

There I was, innocently whiling away the minutes being the Mom of a some-month-or-other-old baby just moments before, only to be thrown to the ground by the sudden arrival of a rude and ruddy boulder into the calm and feathery softness of my blissful moment-by-moment life like a piece of falling sky: The Year. Somewhere in the midst of it all I had forgotten they still existed. And now, the first was upon me.

My inner Chicken Little panicked. Shouldn't I be skinnier by now!? Where has this year gone!? How could it have snuck up on me so completely!?

And the million dollar question: Now that is was almost over, had I truly made the most of my first year with Téa?

Everyone from my best friends to my family to complete strangers had routinely come up to me and told me "Enjoy it, they grow up so fast!"...and a part of me had always wanted to roll my eyes...it felt like that useless chestnut of yore from my pregnancy days: "Sleep now!" (Why thank you for that sage advice, Unsolicitedadvicegiver. I was, up until you made that comment, the very last person on the earth who didn't realize that having a baby means that I will not be able to sleep as much as I used to! Thank you for enlightening me. Now that you've mentioned it I will definitely be more diligent about storing up lots of sleep hours along with my pet unicorn in the Rainbow Fairyland Sleep Bank!!!). But now, with that Year notch quickly approaching, I was haunted by the fear that perhaps I had written off that chorus of admonishments a little too quickly.

And now, it was too late.

To be honest, since becoming a Mom, the Year had all but disappeared from my mental vernacular...we Mom's know that early motherhood is all about having a firm and focused grasp on the smaller increments of time. Take the month for example. We know exactly what stage they represent, how long or short they can feel, what the hidden meaning behind each one might be (Month 6? Teething. Month 8? Crawling. Month 3? Mom maybe getting a little more sleep. Month 1? Mom not sleeping at all.) In fact, months can feel like years in and of themselves after the week-speak of pregnancy, when just a handful of days can mean fingernails and hair, eyes and limbs and neural pathways, working lungs and a fully developed heart, the possibility of life outside the womb or the certainty of death. And forget about it once you deliver your baby! Days become formless hazy eternities...The sun and moon trading places in the sky becomes absolutely meaningless because the sleep that used to separate the two becomes a snatched rarity rather than a regular activity, and the only light you can see rising and setting anywhere anymore is your baby (whether she be the blinding, grating, migraine-causing kind or the soft, warm, peeking-majestically-through-the-clouds-and-making-you-melt-with-joy kind).

When you are a mom, frankly, every moment matters. We know that one hour of pushing can feel like 7, thirty minutes of sleep in 24 hours can refresh you enough to get by, that one second leaving your child unattended could lead to ____(insert your worst fear)____, that 5 minutes of listening to your baby cry can feel so much like 20 you would bet a hundred dollars on it without blinking, that in one afternoon your child can learn and master a skill that will be used and built upon for their entire life, and that in one hour (with practice!) you can complete the same amount of cleaning, chores, and household tasks that once--in the luxurious laziness of a former life--took you an entire day. We Moms know all about the importance of the Month, the Week, the Day, the Minute, the Hour, the Second, and (yes, even you...) the Millisecond....We are the Small Time Keepers. We deal in moments.

For me, the freedom--nay, the requirement--of taking on a more narrow life focus that motherhood has afforded me has been downright therapeutic (therapeutic like a vigorous salt scrub that leaves you a little tender and smarting afterwards, but also leaves you with skin and an outlook on life that are decidedly smooth). For a former perfectionist/self-destructionist/suffocating-under-the-weight-of-a-lifetime-of-expectations-ist, Motherhood was just what I needed to bring me back down to the earth and get me grounded in the "now" of my everyday life. It helped me to finally get out from under the "should"s and "could"s that have hung over me almost to the point of smothering me all my life--the anchor of a troubling past and the pull of an unattainable future. There was always a past to live down and a future to live up to, but never a present to live in...it kept my eyes perpetually trained outward and my heart in bondage, suspended in the shapeless, now-less purgatory between dreams and regrets...like an abandoned astronaut lost in Big Time Space...starving to death and running out of oxygen...literally reaching for the stars, yet missing out on the life that wizzed by under my feet and out of my reach.

But this year brought a new freedom and purpose and direction and worldview to my frazzled rabbit hole of a life. The new overwhelming love I felt for Téa opened my heart enough for me to be reticent to the Lord's plan for a new restored me...plans that began with shedding some light into those dark cobwebbed corners I'd been avoiding and woman-ing up to dealing with what's been hiding there. What I found by turns challenged me, threatened me, shook me, encouraged me, surprised me, and empowered me....truly, It boiled me down to the essence of who and what I really am, for better of for worse. Much of what I found there, at the heart of that stripped down, de-belled and de-whistled me, had been buried long enough to render itself unrecognizable...almost new. So in that way, Téa's birth marked a rebirth for me as well...a beginning of a journey back to a home I had long forgotten but am slowly but surely beginning to remember as I walk the rooms and explore the object I find there. Hello there long-forgotten me....it's nice to see you again!

And then, there's Téa. Ahhhhh, my Téa! When I look at her I feel so grateful...that I should have the privilege of being the mother of this sweet and snuggly little spitfire is just beyond me! What a revelation she has been each day...so small and curious and trusting. I think of her holding on to our coffee table for balance and swaying to the music (whether it be in her mind or actually playing), crawling all over the house with her little diaper butt in the air, spouting jibberish as earnestly and casually as if she were telling me about the weather...the unabashedly joyful look that comes over her face when I come to get her from her crib after her nap, the calm that comes over her whole body when she's nursing, the way her little arm hooks around mine when I carry her on my hip...The feel of her tiny hands resting on my arms when I'm reading her a story, the way words like "Up" and "Book" and "Owl" (Aaaahwooooooo!") sound on her lips when they are brand new, the way she squeals with happiness when I walk into the room and how something as innocuous as an old mascara tube or a rubber spoon can turn into the most engaging toy in her hands....and I realize I have never loved anything in this world as much as I love that little girl!

Not only do I feel grateful that I get to be her Mom, I also feel grateful that the Lord saw fit to dig into my life so generously...to give me a chance to really enjoy her and be present with her...to be able to let go of that lost-in-space life and get grounded in the down and dirty "now" of each moment we have together.

In that way, I feel like I can close the book on this first year with Téa with a light heart...with that inner Chicken Little of mine mollified that though that piece of sky has officially and undeniably arrived, it is a good and welcome arrival. Let each new boulder fall, each year come and go...at this moment in my life, I am content knowing that I have done my best to live in every feathery "now" that came before this boulder touched down in my moment-by-moment, Small Time world, and that--God willing--I will continue to learn how to live in every delicious "now" that will follow.

Month 12 Pics and Milesones

(Waiting at Cafe Mimosa)

Month 12 Pics

(You will notice that the pics don't include her actual Birthday day...I decided to do those separately in the interest of getting her 12 month pics up in a sort-of timely fashion. Coming soon though, I promise...)

Yes indeed, folks. We have made it to the one year mark (relatively) unscathed! I have a post going up after this one that is all about the emotional aspects of what this first year of Mommy-hood has been...a post that took so ridiculously long to put together and was so rambling and disjointed that I almost scrapped it a hundred times, but--lucky you!--I finally slapped all those scattered and mismatched thoughts together into something at least moderately cohesive so my meandering, convoluted, and overwrought 2 cents will finally be on display for all three of you remaining readers to half-heartedly skim over! Don't say I never did anything nice for you. :)

As for this post, I just wanted to take stock a bit and mention a few highlights of Téa's developmental life at the one year mark:

Téa is still crawling and cruising and not walking, though she often absentmindedly takes her hands off of whatever she is holding on to and ends up standing unassisted for a while before realizing what she was doing and promptly sitting on her bottom. She is very sturdy and could definitely walk if she wanted to, but she knows she can get around much faster crawling. Mommy and Daddy are certainly not complaining! She can take her time. :)

She is down to one nap. She sometimes takes two, but that is extremely rare and usually only happens if she woke up really early in the morning or woke up midway through her usual 2 hour nap for some reason or another.

She is jabber-talking a mile a minute, and at the year mark Jer and I could pick out the following words:

• Up (Her first word. She also says "Uppa uppa uppa" while doing the "all done"/"all pau" sign, so we aren't sure if she is trying to say "all pau" or if she is just saying "Up" over and over while doing the "all pau" sign)
• Dada (this could have been her first word...we aren't sure if she was just saying consonants or if she knew to whome she was referring)
• Dog (when we ask her what the dog says she makes the most adorable little barking noise! I have to get that on video...)
• Puppy (PAAAApeee!)
• Owl (Aaaahwoooo!)
• Book (Boooooowh!)
• Hi (this word comes out sounding like a high pitched "hush!")
• Bird ("Burr!")
• Chicken (This word comes out sounding like "chk")
• Kick (this just sounds like she's making an exaggerated "k" sound, but she actually kicks when she does it, so we know that's what she's saying.)

Still no "Mama" or "Mommy" of any kind, though she does refer to my boobs and the contents therein as Mummumms...somehow I don't think that counts.

She is also really into animals and animal sounds. She tries to roar and tweet and bark...it's the cutest ever.

She has 8 teeth (all in the front) and eats everything in sight, except for Avocado and Squash. She can be finicky about Banana too. But she loves yogurt, brown rice, beans, tofu, chicken, salmon, sweet potatoes, greens, tomato soup, garlic bread, and--of course--cheerios.

She is down to 3-4 nursing sessions a day...once in the morning, once for her nap, another possible on for that elusive second nap, and once at night. Yes, she is still nursing to sleep, and though I have no idea how I'm going to break that habit when the time comes, I am enjoying it now while it lasts.

She is capable of drinking from a sippy cup, but I still give her her water in a bottle because I noticed that sippy-cups = biting whilst nursing, which = blood and pain and an unhappy mommy. So we are sticking with the bottle for awhile.

She is showing an interest in eating with utensils and sometimes refuses to eat unless she gets to help guide the spoon in her mouth. She knows to extend her arms through each arm hole when I put on her shirts to switch whatever she's holding to the hand not going through the arm hole. She also knows how to twist her arms around her carseat straps to help me get her in and out of the car.

At her one year checkup she was still 98th percentile for height and in the 70's for weight. You can definitely see that she is very tall...she is almost as tall as Desmond who is almost 2!

Her favorite games are being chased and tickled, unpacking and repacking bins and boxes, unstacking and restacking her mini buckets, and riding in her little cart (see video). She also loves books...she wakes up from her nap and points to her bookshelf and says "Booook!" almost every day...she even turns the pages all by herself. She also loves to eat any and everything a baby isn't supposed to eat. Books, boxes, DVDs, iPhones, remote controls...I even catch her laying prostrate on the ground gnawing on the baseboards...no joke. And I may have caught her chewing on the firewood once or twice as well. Embarrassing but true.

That covers the developmental stuff. Also this month--a first for mommy and baby, albeit under sad circumstances...We flew to Vegas to visit my Grandma Swallie by ourselves! (and yes, it was as crazy and stressful as it sounds) Unfortunately, it was to say goodbye...she was dying, and though I had gone there hoping to introduce her to Téa before she passed, she was unconscious by the time I got there and died the day after. :( To top it all off, Téa was so miserable without Jer, she was an absolute terror the entire time. It was nice to spend time with my Mom and I ended up getting to introduce Téa to most of my Swallie family which was great, but it was such a bummer because it worked out that Téa just wasn't going to last long enough for me to stay for the funeral so I had to miss it. :( At any rate, I got to sing a few songs into Grandma's ear and Téa was in the room squealing away, so I'm hoping Grandma got to hear that we were there and perhaps meet Téa in her own way before she passed.

On a lighter note, this was also Téa's first Valentines Day, which Jer and I celebrated with a tasty brunch at Cafe Mimosa. It brought me back to last Valentines Day when I was hoping against hope that Téa would be born that day so she could be a Love Day baby (and also so I could get her OUT already!), but little did I know it would be almost 2 weeks past my due date before she'd see fit to grace the world with her presence.

OKAY! WHEW!!! Well I think that covers most of it. ONE YEAR!!! We made it! Thank you for coming along with us on this crazy journey. Stay tuned for pics from her actual Birthday day, coming soon...in the meantime, take care and love to you all!!!

One down....

Happy 1st Birthday Téa!!!

Month 11

(CHEEEEEESE!!!!!)

(Our happy family)

(Bathtime cuteness)

(digging for gold)

(The cousins snuggle up during one of their many visits this month)

Month 11 Pics and Videos

This month actually officially began Christmas Day, so these pics effectively begin the day after Christmas.

Jer and I totally fell prey to the styrofoam airplane...you know the one that guy in the mall was whipping around like nothing leading up to Christmas? We made the mistake of standing too long next to him, which led to him engaging us in his little spiel, which led to us being totally shocked at the fact that it was only $15 (WHAT?!?!?! ONLY $15 FOR MOLDED STYROFOAM THAT PROBABLY COST 3 CENTS TO MAKE???), which led to us deciding we HAD to have one cause it looks SO easy and fun, which led to us being up-sold on the decorative tape (read: electric tape), which led to us having our little day with the plane in the park that you see in the pics. Turns out it's really not that easy to fly, as evidenced by the videos. In the end, it was worth it for the laughs, though I doubt it'll be much more than a dust collector in our garage for awhile.

Also this month, Jer and I took a trip up to Pasadena to visit with Kaimana and Colin and Desmond for a little post-Christmas togetherness. The kids were absolutely adorable together as always and as evidenced by the pictures, and the boys got to try out their new matching child-toting hiking backpacks Christmas presents while Kai and Colin took us on a walking tour of downtown Pasedena. It was such a great visit we could barely stand to leave and ended up staying way beyond our planned pre-traffic departure time. Instead we hung out through dinner and as a result had to wing it a bit with Téa's bedtime routine...Téa took her first big-girl bath in Desmonds tub, and also was transfered for the first time from the car seat to the crib after bedtime. I am extremely happy to report that with a little transitional nursing, it all went off without a hitch. This was a huge revelation for us, because it makes more frequent visits with Kai and Colin a possibility since we now get so much more hours of hang time for all the driving.

This month also marked the first time in Téa's life that I have been left alone overnight with the baby...Jer had a trade show in Vegas for 3 days and 2 nights. I was so nervous and thought I would be totally overwhelmed, but actually, when all was said and done, I was pleasantly surprised to find that when faced with a challenge of even this magnitude, I was able to rise to the occasion. I didn't realize how much I could get done when I knew it was all on me to do it...and conversely, I didn't realize how much time I waste on a daily basis because I know Jer will be home later to help out. :) The day before Jer got home, I worked out twice (a run at Salt Creek and then Malin's workout class at Pines Park), came home and made dinner for Téa and I while also putting together a pot pie for our friends the Schenkenbergers who just had a new baby, set the high chair up in the bathroom and literally took a shower and fed Téa at the same time, then took the pot pie out a delivered it, then headed home and did Téa's bedtime routine (usually Jer's job) all by myself, then cleaned the whole house before finally passing out. It was very empowering, I must say. Any doubts I had about my ability to stand on my own two feet and be a great Mom were completely alleviated, which was huge because before that, I was feeling very much dependent upon Jer for certain things, which was messing with my head and my confidence and authority as a Mom.

The most fun part of Jer being away was the first night, when Kaimana graciously agreed to come down to spend the night at the house with me for a grown-up slumber party! Her being there was totally indispensable...not only because she was a second set of hands with the kiddos, but also for moral support during that first 24 hours that Jer was gone...not to mention a little much needed girl time. We had such a great time girl-ing and sister-ing out, we've decided the boys need to do a trip once or twice a year so we can do it more often! After day two (crazy multi-tasking day) and night two, I headed up to her place the morning of day three of Jer-lessness, where the kiddos got to play again (they were really getting used to each other by this point) before I headed back to meet up with Jer at last!

All in all I definitely came away from those few days without Jer with so much respect for single Moms...and also with a new appreciation for Jer. Nothing like a little absence to make the heart grow fonder. :)

This month was a big one for me for yet another reason not depicted in the photos...I had my first writing session since I gave up my music after becoming pregnant...I got a chance to write with Jim and an amazing and talented artist he is working with named Jackie Thon (yes, that Jackie Thon)...I was really nervous that somehow my songwriting muscle would be too atrophied to be effective, and though I did have to shake some cobwebs off, all in all I was pleasantly surprised that things flowed pretty naturally despite my long hiatus from all things music. It helps that Jim and I still have an natural repore from our months of partnership and that Jackie is a really warm and fun personality, and just a damn good songwriter. At any rate, the whole episode gave me hope for my future in music, however and whenever that might take shape. A big thank you to Kaimana for being my day care...I wouldn't have done it if I had had to leave Téa in Dana Point...I'm getting better about leaving her with people but I'm definitely not there yet!

Last but not least, this month was the month Téa said her first word (besides Dada, which she said but we weren't sure if it was really with comprehension of what the word meant or if it was just her forming the consonant)....it was January 16th. I was feeding her in her high chair, and at the end of every meal, I say and do the signs for "all done" and "up" before picking her up. She has been doing "all done" for awhile, but has never done "up". I said "All done? Up?" and she said "Up!" clear as day while doing the all done sign--like she had been saying it her whole life! I serously almost cried I was so proud of her! :) The whole rest of the day everything was "Up! Up! Up!"...She even crawled up to me and grabbed onto my leg and said "Up!"...it was such a special moment for me because I felt even more so than with the signs that she was really beginning her ability to communicate with me about what she wants and is thinking about in that little mind of hers...there have been so many more words since then, but that was the first. UP!

Everything else in the pics is pretty self explanatory...there are a lot of videos in this album so you might need a little more time to get through all the content, but there are some pretty cute ones in there. Enjoy!

Téa's First Christmas

(Téa has a quiet moment after the Christmas carnage with her favorite toy of the morning)

(A Christmas cutie!)

Our Christmas this year was a refreshingly low-key affair...In truth, I was feeling pretty grinch-y leading up to it...Jer was doing insanely long hours at work getting ready to close out the year and besides feeling totally lonely and blah from missing him, I was finding zero motivation to get out of the house to do any shopping with Téa in tow...God bless her, but she has made shopping a much less enjoyable experience for me in general, let alone during the most notoriously crazy and crowded time of the year. So I was definitely having a bah humbug kind of a season.

Besides feeling a tad more anti the Consumerist's Christmas than usual, I was also feeling especially anti-tradition-for-tradition's-sake...Jer and I had long ago decided to nix Santa Claus from our family's holiday vernacular, but now I was calling everything to the stand and putting it on trial...why do a tree? Why red and green? Why anything that didn't point directly back to Jesus?...it's his birthday party isn't it? I think that with Téa in the picture now, I felt inspired by my responsibility as a parent of my own family to lay the proper groundwork for our future traditions...and I didn't want a remodel, I wanted to tear everything down and pick up each piece of rubble to inspect it for soundness before I put it back into the plans for my Christmas Tradition House, if you will. I wanted to make sure I could look Téa in the face someday and cohesively and intelligently explain why we did and didn't do things at Christmas time, rather than having to have that hem and haw moment of, "Well, that's just the way we've always done it"...I didn't want to be a hypocrite, teaching her not to get caught up in the world's way of doing things if it didn't line up with scripture in other aspects of her life, yet keeping traditions rooted in absolutely nothing having to do with Christ on what is supposed to be a holiday commemorating and celebrating his coming to earth.

Over thinking it? Probably. But on the other hand, I feel like when it comes to spiritual traditions in general it's a good idea to stay mentally on your toes a bit about the why in keeping the traditions we do...or risk falling into the trap of going through the motions. Cause who wants to end up like the Pharisees who had all the doing right but none of the heart behind their actions, or the dissonant clanging of cymbals devoid of that maker-of-all-things-sweet-sounding--you know, Love--as in 1st Corinthians 13? Not me.

At any rate, these were the things banging around my brain this holiday season as I holed up in my house missing Jer and avoiding shopping and just generally feeling pretty sorry for myself. :) I do feel like I got it out of my system a little bit, and also (and probably most overwhelmingly) like I've got at least a few more years before I really need to have my crap together. So at any rate, that was sort of what made up my down-time leading up to Christmas day. That and stressing about the fact that I didn't get any Christmas cards done for Téa's first Christmas and what kind of a mom does that make meeeeee????? But that's another story. (Short version: I got over it.)

But then, as Christmas Day was just days away, the ghost of Ebinezer Scrooch began to lift his chains from my dis-spirited heart, and I started to get excited. The day before Christmas Eve I went out and did all my Christmas shopping...I stuffed the stockings, I went to the awesome boutique toy store up the street and got a bunch of toys for Téa (by the by, this will be my first stop every year heretofore when I am feeling low on Christmas spirit...nothing like retro looking wooden toys with bows on them peeking through the windows and Christmas music playing while you shop to make you feel like something out of a classic Christmas movie of old...consumerism be damned!), I picked up some wrapping paper from a friend's house and wrapped the presents...and it finally started to feel like Christmas.

Our Christmas morning was exactly what I hoped it would be, just our little family of three getting a chance to enjoy one of the rare times each year when being together and focusing on loving each other is all there is to do. And I think it helped me understand the why behind the consumerism...its the act of seeking out the perfect gift to surprise the person you love. Probably fairly obvious to everyone else but me, but sometimes you just gotta go through it all again to fully understand. Seeing Téa playing in the wrapping paper and getting to know her new toys and the look of surprise and delight on Jer's face at all of his new toys made understand...and it made me thank God all over again for giving me such wonderful gifts in these people to share my life with and be a family with. Sigh. God Bless us everyone, Tiny Tim!

After a great morning and a lazy afternoon, we got ourselves all gussied up and ready for Christmas night with Jer's side of the family, the Marshall clan. Thankfully, Grandma Gloria's house and Marshall ground zero is right down the street, so it was very low stress for us. We had a great time mingling with our extended family, showing off Téa's super cute outfit (thank you GungGung!) and new tricks--she was clapping, putting her arms up, pointing to her nose, mouth and eyes (thank you "You're Baby Can Read!")--and headed home in good spirits.

So all in all, Téa's first Christmas was a success. Plus, I got a Wii, which, really...I mean...awesome! The gift that just keeps on giving. :) But seriously folks...well, seriously nothing...I guess that's the full report! Follow the link below to see the pics, and stay tuned for Month 11, coming soon to a blog near you! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Téa's First Christmas Pics

Desmond's Owl

I thought I'd just go ahead and put a pic up of this little guy I made for Desmond for Christmas...

I actually like him so much better than the pink floral one I did for Téa way back when...I like the solid color with the patterned "wings". I was thinking I might recreate a version for Téa that could be the "Daddy Owl" to the pink one's "Mommy" and then maybe make a baby one too. Where I expect to find the time to do that I have absolutely no idea (When Auntie Liz was in town she watched Téa for an entire afternoon and evening while I sewed this little guy up). We'll see! :)