blue sky day

I am 1,000 winds that blow

This is the exact location where we scattered my mom's ashes today, Carter's Lake, GA.  It was a beautiful day on the lake.  Here's the poem I read:

Do not stand at a grave and weep

I am not there, I do not sleep

I am a 1,000 winds that blow

I am the diamond glints on snow

I am the sun on ripened grain

I am the gentle autumn rain

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled light

I am the soft star that shines at night

Do not stand at a grave and cry

I am not there; I did not die.

Anonymous 

Song Book for my Baby

One of the things they say a good parent should do is sing to their children, even if you sing badly.  They won't care.  They'll still feel special.

I do sing to Ben.  But in addition to singing badly, I can never remember the lyrics to the songs.  So he hears the same 2 or 3 songs over and over again.

To remedy this, I put together a song book of my favorite songs.  Hopefully the first in a series.  They're not all children's songs - just things I like, like Jack Johnson, They Might Be Giants, and a little Ella Fitzgerald and some other classics.  If you're curious, you can download the PDF.

Now my little guy can hear me sing something other than "Frère Jacques" badly.

 

I fell from a cypess tree, you?

What's your tree?  From Celtic astrology.  Match your birthday to your tree, then find the description.  Seems to be mostly accurate!

My son Benjamin is an Ash Tree: ASH TREE (Ambition) - uncommonly attractive, vivacious, impulsive,demanding, does not care for criticism,ambitious,intelligent, talented, likes to play with fate, can be egotistic, very reliable and trustworthy, faithful and prudent lover, sometimes brains rule over the heart, but takes partnership very seriously.

My husband, Matt, is a Chestnut Tree: CHESTNUT TREE (Honesty) - of unusual beauty, does not want to impress, well-developed sense of justice, vivacious, interested, a born diplomat, but irritates easily and sensitive in company, often due to a lack of self confidence, acts sometim as superior, feels not understood, loves only once, has difficulties in finding a partner.

I'm a Cypress Tree (as is my dad): CYPRESS TREE (Faithfulness) - strong, muscular, adaptable, takes what life has to give, content, optimistic, craves money and acknowledgment, hates loneliness, passionate lover which cannot be satisfied, faithful, quick-tempered, unruly, pedantic, and careless.

My mother-in-law, Angeline, is a Walnut Tree: WALNUT TREE (Passion) - unrelenting, strange and full of contrasts, often egotistic, aggressive, noble, broad horizon, unexpected reactions, spontaneous, unlimited ambition, no flexibility, difficult and uncommon partner, not always liked but often admired, ingenious strategist, very jealous and passionate, no compromise.

My brother, Patrick, is an Elm Tree: ELM TREE (Noble-Minded) - pleasant shape, tasteful clothes, loudest demands, tends not to forgive mistakes, cheerful, likes to lead but not to obey, honest and faithful partner, likes making decisions for others, noble-minded, generous, good sense of humor, practical.

My mother was a Rowan Tree: ROWAN TREE (Sensitivity) - full of charm, cheerful, gifted without egoism, likes to draw attention, loves life, motion, unrest, and even complications, is both dependent and independent, good taste, artistic, passionate, emotional, good company, does not forgive.

What a fine house!

Our house is officially on the market.  Go ahead and gawk at the inside here.   

I did a mad-dash shove-the-crap-in-the-closets 1 hour cleaning for the photos.  We had been cleaning for two weeks, but I was finishing up a few bedrooms and thought I had 1 more day when the agent called and said "I'm coming to take pictures in an hour." My only regret is that my duvet for the master bedroom was wrinkled, so there's a shot of our "naked" bed with just the white duvet-less comforter. But you can't see that in the realtor.com photos.  You have to go to atlrealtypro.com and search the MLS# 3247281.

To sum up the amount of work we did in 1 1/2 weeks:

• The dining room was a front living room.  That furniture is now in the basement.
• The table in the dining room was in the breakfast area.
• The table in the breakfast area was on the deck.
• The kitchen backsplashes were not visible because of the clutter.  All of our essentials (toaster over, blender, coffee fixings, etc.) are stashed under the counters.  And the stuff that was under the counter is now either in the basement or stashed under beds.
• See the office, how everything is clustered in one little corner?  The whole office was that cluttered.  The right wall was lined with tables and crafty stuff, and the left wall had a giant bookshelf on it filled to overflowing with books.  All of that is now in the basement.  Thank God there are no pictures of the basement!
• Baby toys and books had taken over the living room.  They're all up in Ben's room now, neatly stashed where they're supposed to be.
• The yard was full of last fall's leaves and the wooded area in front was pine straw-less.
• A garage door wasn't working.  Had to pay a stupid amount for that to get fixed.
• We had a window and bathroom ceiling repaired, and a leaking boot in the roof replaced so as to avoid repairing the bathroom ceiling again.

After all that cleaning, the real estate agent decided to up the price of the house a wee bit.  I'm glad it was worth the effort, 'cause we're beyond exhausted!

Without all the clutter, I can finally see what a fine house we have! I wish I had more than two months to enjoy it!

We'll be looking for a townhouse to rent in D.C.  Clark Howard says it's one of the few markets in the country where you're better off renting. 

I worry about not having a yard for my little Benjamin, but I can't think of a single time I've actually sat in our yard.  This is mostly because we don't have a bench, and I haven't gotten one because I didn't want to invest in a bench then end up moving to a townhouse in D.C.  In retrospect, I should've just bought a dang bench and enjoyed the yard while we had one.  After all, we bought lawn equipment that will now have to be sold.  Matt most certainly will not miss using the lawn equipment.  Taking care of nearly an acre of rolling lawn and wooded lot sounds more romantic than it actually is.  I have no qualms about hopping on the Metro to visit the many fine parks in the D.C. area, all maintenance free on my part.

Baby Ben's 16 week photos

I've decided to break Ben's photo albums down by month.  You can see the month four photos here.

Ben is now carrying on little babble conversations with us and is easily amused by our silly antics. 

He seems to be a bit of a prankster, frequently waiting until his diaper is half off to tinkle on Grandma, then laughing and smiling about it. 

He also gets bored quickly and will order us to move on to another activity by yelling "Aaahh!" in short bursts. 

He tells me he's hungry by staring at my boobs or clawing at my shirt.  What a stinker!  If that doesn't work, or I'm not in the room, he thrashes his arms and legs in unison to a burst of spitting "kuh" sounds, much like an angry cat would make, or sort of like a steam engine. 

He's wearing his 6-9 month size clothes now.  Slow down, kiddo!  By the time I wash the outfit he's wearing here, he'll be too big for it.

He likes to sit up now and can sit on his own with some back support.  If presented with anything interesting looking, he leans waaay forward and puts his mouth on it for a taste.  He also holds his fingers in his mouth and babbles at the same time.  This results in chronically slobbery fingers.

When he starts to have a non-hunger related meltdown now, I can usually "talk" him out of it with a bunch of goofiness. 

It's time for us to take his crib mobile down, but he enjoys "talking" to his animals so much that I just can't do it.  He still sleeps in a swing in our room, anyway.  We started him out in the swing because of his acid reflux.  Now we can't get him to go to sleep in his crib.  I don't know if we're ready to put in him his own room, being the overprotective parents that we are.  But if we're ever going to do it, now is the time before he forms unbreakable habits.

They say you can't spoil a baby, but some would say Ben's a bit spoiled with the constant attention he gets.  To that, I say horserubbish.  I'm going to get in as many kisses as I can before he starts pretending he doesn't know me in public.

Sweet Potato

I decided to feed my bottomless-pit of a child sweet potatoes today.  Just a taste - he's only 3 1/2 months old, so baby food is not a nutritional mainstay at this point.  But Lord, I hope it keeps his belly a little fuller!  He's been draining his mamma with his 1 1/2 hour meal spacing lately! To the breastfeeding nazis out there, I know he's probably going through a growth spurt and is trying to increase my production, so I won't supplement with food often.  But it sure is cute to watch him suck sweet potatoes off of his spoon, bib and fingers!  You can see the mess unfold in Benjamin's photo album.

The view from here

Ben in his Baby Bjorn.

A rambling post about honor, life, and lessons learned - 4 weeks that changed my life

Honor is living by the virtues, showing great respect for yourself, other people, and the rules you live by. When you are honorable, you keep your word. You do the right thing regardless of what others are doing. Honor is a path of integrity. ~ The Virtues Project

"Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud."  ~ Sophocles

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them." ~ Mark Twain

In this capitalist nation of ours, true honor is hard to find in a business setting, especially if it involves giving up some of your money.  I have been fortunate to work with a handful of business people of integrity. Jeneane Sessum is one of these most honorable people.  Jeneane stood up for what is good and right in the world when no one asked her to do so.  I am completely humbled by the fact that she did it because of something that happened to me.

Here is the story of 4 weeks that changed my life.

Last November 16th, I was 38 weeks pregnant and had just finished working many hard weeks to launch a fresh new web site for my company.  Against all odds, including the departure of my boss to a new company, my taking on of most of his work, and a mysterious breakdown of the content management system, I published that web site on time.  I was exhausted but very proud of my work.  The previous week, I had been in an accident that technically totaled my car, crumpling the frame, but that left it drivable.  I had still been driving it the 40 miles each way to the office.  My new, wonderful female boss told me on many occasions that I should work from home the last few weeks of my pregnancy.  So that day, November 16th, I took her up on her offer.  I logged into my e-mail from home and read rave reviews from a big account exec on how well I had helped one of our biggest clients.  The house was quiet as I watched the sun rise from my house's hilltop view. Finally, I felt like I could start winding down from one of the most challenging and messed-up jobs I'd ever worked.

A few hours later, I got a phone call.  At first I thought it was a telemarketer and I was prepared to head him off at the pass. Turns out it was the new Chief Marketing Officer (who was also trying to hide the fact that he was running for Senate in Texas.  But everyone knew.  Damn Republican.)  Had he called to congratulate me on the new corporate web site, which I launched on time for a trade show despite all odds?  Quite simply, no.  He and the legal council had called to let me know that my position and the position of the other web coordinator had been terminated, effectively eliminating our department.  Terminated, I said?  But I'm giving birth in 2 weeks - how am I supposed to go out and find a job?  I won't share the details of the severance package, but it wasn't generous.

Here I was, 9 1/2 months pregnant, I had worked my ass off for this company, and this is the thanks I get?  And they must have been planning it for a while - they were fanatical about getting that web site posted by November 15th.  But karma is a funny thing.  The lead web developer quit without notice in protest to take another job that had been chasing her. One of the other developers left not long afterward - they dumped my work on him and he wasn't an XHTML/CSS guy.  Others in the company were stunned and my female friends were fearful of their rights.  If they could off someone as hardworking as me at 9 1/2 months pregnant, how were they going to treat the rest of the female employees?

And Jeneane, who was to write a Canadian version of the site, quit the account in protest, leaving money on the table.  They still don't have a Canadian site.  Serves them right.

Alas, Georgia is a "right to work" state, and I had no legal recourse.  In the end, the experience was for the best.  It forced me to reflect on my journey from one dot-com to the next, all run by rich white men.  Not all of these men were "bad".  But it was enough to make me want to kiss the dot-com companies good-bye for a while.  I had lost my identity in them.  I was iXL. I was Kinzan.com.  (Both defunct now.)  I worked late nights and gave them my 20s.  I moved away from my family and friends in search of someone else's fortune.  I took care of the clients instead of taking care of my grandma when she got sick and passed away, and instead of taking care of my mom through her 1st and 2nd battles with breast cancer.  These women had given me the courage to succeed, and I thought, as I climbed ever higher in a male dominated industry and gritted my teeth through situations that most wise people wouldn't tolerate,... I thought I was succeeding.  But I was only pouring my very being, my life, my health, my youth, my relationships, into someone else's dream.  And their dream wasn't about saving the children or helping the poor or making this world a better place for everyone.  For most, their dream was about saving themselves and having big boats and a corporate jet and a fat bank account.  I only worked for one company whose executives ever went without a paycheck so employees could get paid well, considering the size of the company.  And I left that company in search of bigger and better, onwards and upwards, and I got rightly smacked down. 

In the end, it couldn't have been a more well-timed smack.  A week later (and a week ahead of schedule), my water unexpectedly broke as I was headed out the door for some R&R at Barnes & Noble.  At the same time, my dad was rushing my mom, in late stage breast cancer, to Nashville for another emergency surgery to clear her cancer-ridden lungs of fluid.  The next day, my mom and I were in operating rooms at the same time, hundreds of miles apart.  I had an emergency C-section and delivered a healthy baby boy.  My mom came through her surgery and went back home. 

A week later, my mom was back in Nashville.  When my dad called and said they had started her on a morphine drip, I knew she wasn't coming home.  Against my dad's wishes, Matt and I packed the car in 2 hours flat and called to let him know that we were driving ourselves and an 8 day-old baby from Atlanta to Nashville, through rush hour traffic, over mountains, and through a freezing rain advisory.  We'd be there that night and he couldn't stop us.  It was trial by fire for traveling with a baby.  I hobbled my c-sectioned self into the lobby of the hospital in Nashville pushing a stroller for the first time and trying fruitlessly to stuff a diaper bag underneath while everything fell out of its pockets when my dad walked up, gave me a great big hug, and said I wish you hadn't driven here tonight, but I'm so glad you're here.  My mom had almost died earlier that day because they forgot to reconnect her oxygen to the right line after surgery.

I called my brother and told him to get up there.  He was already on the way and would be there in the morning.  The week before, when he had almost not come across town to visit me in the hospital because he was busy with work, I gave him a lecture that went something like this:  The people at work do not care about you.  The thing you're working on right now will not matter in 10 years.  The only people who will still care for you then and still be here are your family.  The things I did for that big start up company don't matter now, but mom always remembered that I never went with her to chemotherapy.  Please learn from my mistakes.  I told my mom that night about my talk with Patrick, and she was very glad to hear it.

Fast forward to Nashville.  She looked bad.  Only her eyes still looked like my mom.  The next day, she looked better, and she lit up when she saw Benjamin.  She called him the most beautiful baby in the world.  She was a little drugged and tried to kiss him through an oxygen mask.  She was too weak already to hold him, so her favorite nurses and doctors passed him around as she watched.  I pinned her Northside Hospital "I'm a Grandma" pin on her gown.

She fell in and out of lucidity over the next few days and not all of our conversations made sense, but the words that mattered were spoken.  I said my goodbyes and my dad told us to get home with that baby.  I'll never forget how she hung onto my hand that last time. 

We came back a week later so I could keep my dad company and sanity while he waited.  She was a shell of her former self, unconscious and barely breathing.  When no one was in the room, I told her it was ok, that we would be ok but we would really miss her. She needed to go be with Grandma Freeman.  She opened her eyes and seemed to close them in exhaustion.  That night, December 19th, I left for dinner.  Dad called and said she wasn't doing so well.  God put every traffic light and slow elevator in my way, and I made it to the room just seconds after her last breath.

Finally, I had been there for my mom.  And finally, I understood how much strength motherhood takes, and how no one ever talks about how hard it really is, and how my mom must have been a saint for her patience with my brother and I.  Finally, it all made sense.  If nothing else, we are here on this planet to love and be loved by others.

The next few weeks were a blur as I received a melange of sympathy, Christmas and baby cards, some people sending one of each.  Many wrote that it was a blessing that my mom saw Benjamin  and that I had been given such a great gift in the face of such a great loss.  If anything, taking care of him took my mind off of things.  I was a lactating, sleep deprived zombie and had little energy for emotion.  The breastfeeding nazis try to make you think that ignorance is the reason breastfeeding fails.  They don't warn you that the craziness of sleep deprivation is what leads your husband to break out the formula in pity of his poor wife.  File that away for another post.

A few months of motherhood and of processing all that happened in those four weeks has lead me to a life change.  I'm building my own small business on a foundation of integrity.  I work at home.  And many times a day, I take a break to play with my son, change diapers, relieve my tired mother-in-law from volunteer nanny-hood, wipe up copious amounts of spit, read baby to sleep with stories from Character is Destiny, and weave for him tales of those in heaven who love him.

Surviving the first baby photo session

Awww, isn't he cute?  This is Benjamin, my 3 month old baby boy.  Just like any proud parent, we think our baby is the most beautiful baby on the face of the planet.  I think "Baby Gap ads?", Matt thinks "only a privileged few should be allowed to gaze upon his majesty The Benjamin." 
So leave it to Sears to take unsmiling photos of our beautiful baby.  In this photo, he looks stunned.  I know, my first problem was that I went to a chain photography studio.  My baby should only have the best, right?  Easy said when I worked a fat corporate job and could afford a Pottery Barn Kids nursery.  Now I'm a lean and mean stay-at-home entrepreneur mom. I clip coupons.  I go to Goodwill.  I take my baby to Sears for his first photos.  Don't get me started on the Mommy Wars yet.  I'll let you know how the suburbanite mom experiment pans out in this blog.  Right now we're talking about a crazy photo shoot.

Things to know about taking your baby to a photography studio:

1. Your baby will be unfamiliar with the surroundings and will probably have a wide-eyed, gaping mouthed expression as he tries to figure out what planet you've taken him to.
2. The studios operate on baby time and may not be able to get you in at your scheduled appointment time.  Be prepared to feed him, change some diapers, and deal with a little crankiness from all family members.  I had to breast-feed Ben twice in the back of an empty studio, and I had to sit on an old bean-bag chair that had been used as a prop by a million germ-ridden kids.  Yuck.
3. You may not be able to get those "whole family" pictures you wanted.  Chances run high that your baby will only have enough patience to get through 2-4 poses of him alone.   By the time we who had all dressed up for the occasion were ready to try the whole family photo, Benjamin let us know he'd had enough.  And the whole ordeal had exhausted everyone.  THE BEST TIME to get in a family photo, in my opinion, would have been when he was very, very young and still sleeping most of the time.  But then our pediatrician put the fear into us about the RSV virus in the wintertime and we avoided public exposure until Ben was 2 months old.
4. Studio lights are hot. Dress your baby accordingly. Ben started out wearing an adorable sweater set especially purchased for a photo session.  After 5 minutes in the studio, he was beet red and crying.  We had no choice but to strip him down to his diaper. 
5. Your usually-smiling baby may refuse to smile for pictures.  No goofy shenanigans whatsoever could make Ben smile.  He's still cute, but we wanted everyone to see that wonderful grin!
6. If your baby is out-of-control fussy, be prepared to walk away.  You don't want that day immortalized.  This happened to another couple whose cute 2 year-old suddenly became inconsolable in the studio.  Don't be devastated if your baby won't cooperate.  Just try again later.
7. Listen to the photographers ideas.  You may think that background and the lacy pillow look tacky, but it all comes together rather nicely in the photo.
8. Don't take it too seriously.  Yes, it may be the only time you can capture your baby at three months.  No matter what happens, you'll always have an interesting story about the day those photos were taken.

Here are the rest of Ben's photos from that day:

And here's what he normally looks like at home, smiling, with clothes on:

Happy home-body baby, drool and all.  No spotlight for this shy boy!