Tag: memories

Re: Thoughts on Pocahontas — Disney in your Day

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment

One of the blogs I follow, Disney In Your Day, is reviewing different Disney movies (because I guess she’s seen them all?! That’s a commitment!) and she recently reviewed Pocahontas. This is particularly timely for me because I am showing it to Wee One for the first time.

Despite my better judgement, I love the Pocahontas.

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In The Adult World, Embarrassing Things Happen

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment
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How I wish they were birds.

As I promised yesterday, here’s my Bob Ross story.

Until high school, I went to a parochial school where I was bullied and I hated it. But during the summer, I attended different kinds of camps and made friends from other schools, which made the whole year more bearable.

One summer, I was taking a class called Knights and Castles, learning about Medieval times, and my best friend in that class was Aja, pronounced Asia. During the afternoons in that hot summer, I would watch Bob Ross on the old TV I had in my room that only got PBS, and I would usually fall into a lazy nap during the broadcast. Aja watched it, too, so we would giggle about different things he said or did. One quote in particular: “There are no stupid mistakes. There are only happy accidents.”

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Too Much Is Not Enough

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment

I bought a “Be Inspired” journal from one of the end cap displays at Barnes and Noble yesterday. It is so hard for me to NOT buy everything in a bookstore, but I normally find those kinds of journals trite. However, this one seemed different: a quote and short writing prompt that is actually interesting! and a quick flip through showed they were interesting prompts. For today:

Too much of a good thing is wonderful. Armistead Maupin

Write about a “good thing” of which you can never have too much.

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Mixed CD Stories

~ Sahara ~ 2 Comments

Get a beer for this one, friends, ’cause it’s got some stories to it.  In 2004, I worked for the Missouri PIRGs (a left wing political action group) and that was a hell of a summer in Sahara’s life. I’m glad I had it, but I’m glad I’ll never have to learn those lessons again.

But, when I left, I made a mix CD for myself and some of my friends from some music we had all shared that touched on some of the warmer memories of that year, and even when I listen to it now, I still remember. I wrote about one of these songs a few weeks ago, but I want to tell you about the rest.

Won’t you come see the melodious highlight memory reel??? /insert wavy back in time lines/

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Legacy, or Writing For Throwback Thursday

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment

I have been thinking about legacy lately, which was the word of this Daily Prompt. (I still hate the one-word thing, but it works for me today.)

I was thinking about the best way to save for her future and then I was thinking about writing up a will (now that I have a child) and who I would name as beneficiaries for my belongings. At first, I was thinking of things like books and CDs, and it was like the Senior Wills we wrote in our last year of high school. “Would I leave certain books to my social work friends and other books to religious friend?”

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Top Ten Favorite Memories of the Wee One

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment

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The Wee One has just finished her first full week as a one year old, and in honor of that, I’ve been thinking about (and now I’m going to share with you) my top favorite memories of her this past year. They’re in no particular order.

  1. The first time I saw her. Of course, right? I had no idea what to expect, but I did think she’d be wailing. She wasn’t. She was chill from the beginning.
  2. Sleeping with her. I was NOT going to be a bed-sharer with my baby, but I did. She didn’t like her bassinet, I didn’t like her sleeping in the swing without the buckle (she was swaddled), and it just worked for us. When it stopped working, we changed it, but I loved doing it and would advise any new mom not to worry about it if they’re doing it.
  3. Seeing her smile at me first thing in the morning. This was one of the best parts of sleeping with her.
  4. Realizing she wanted to face me. Again, when we were sleeping. She wasn’t trying to nurse, but she’s a snuggly bug. It helped me trust that we were forming a strong bond.
  5. Camping with her. We camped in the lower Cascades the weekend of her 6 month birthday, so she can brag about that. The night was a little rough, for me as least. I was afraid of her crying and bothering the other campers, so I sat up with her a lot of the night and nursed her. It was uncomfortable and tiring. But the next morning, we put her into a goose down jacket and she and I sat next to each other in a big camping chair. I drank coffee and smelled the morning woodsy goodness, and it made up for the crappy night.
  6. Realizing she twirled her hair. When he hair finally got long enough, she started reaching for it and pulling on it.  I’ve noticed she wraps her little thumb around it. She also twirls my hair sometimes when I’m rocking her to sleep. I love this, because I’m a hair twirler (as are my mother and my aunt) and I used to twirl my mom’s hair, too. #generations #family
  7. How she slept on my chest the first month. She was just a little pumpkin seed, a lumpy sock, and she loved sleeping on me.
  8. Hearing her get excited to see a mirror. Even today, when I go shopping, I just park her in front of a mirror and she has the best time.  I wish we all were so gleeful at the sight of our reflections like she is.
  9. Wearing her. I first put her in a Moby wrap when she was probably a week old, maybe a little older. (We were kept in the hospital a few days longer than normal since I had such a hard time.) It was super cold, so we were only out there a few minutes, she was really bundled up, and the wrap was over her face for the few minutes we were out there. But I pulled it back at one point to show her the sunlight. But wearing her is like getting a hug the whole time.
  10. Our bedtime routine. The four B’s: Bottle (or breast), Brush (teeth), Book, Bed. Every time. I let her take a turn holding the toothbrush and then we sit down in the glider and first I read her the story and then let her “read it to me,” flip through the pages. We rock and talk. Then, I turn off the light and turn on the white noise machine.  When I turn the machine on, she automatically puts her head on my shoulder: she knows what’s going on.  Sometimes she sings along with me and hums while I hum. When I’m done singing, I tell her “mommy loves you,” kiss her, and put a cross on her forehead before I leave. I love it.

Thanks for walking down memory lane with me, as I so often as you to do where the Wee One is concerned. 🙂

 

 

Top Ten Ways Going Out as a Mother is Like Going Out As A Tween

~ Sahara ~ 3 Comments

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is brought to you by cigars and a whisky flight. (Oh yeah, and it’s the Wee One’s first birthday today!  I lost my baby today and gained a toddler!)

Last Monday, a girlfriend and I went out and had so. Much. Fun. I mean, so much fun, and since then, I’ve been thinking about how similar going out after baby is to going out in junior high and early high school. Unlike previous Top Tens, these listed in the order in which they come up in a night.

(Note: This was in the early to mid 90’s, so we didn’t have the internet or even ubiquitous computers. We had landlines and cassette tapes. And acid washed jeans.)

  1. You dress differently. In youth, since I was going out, I wanted to look cool. So I would wear the one shirt that was a little tighter/lower cut, the one I wouldn’t normally wear. When I go out after baby, I’m not worried about access to my boobs, and I knew I wouldn’t get any spit-up on my clothes!
  2. You wear makeup, usually badly. In junior high, I wouldn’t wear makeup really, and when I did, it wasn’t put on very well. It wasn’t always even mine own make-up! I have found that post-Wee One, I wear make-up so rarely that I’ve kind of forgotten how to put it on.  When we went out, my friend was wearing perfume – she got in the car and she DIDN’T smell like baby wipes. I was like, “What is that weird aroma?”
  3. The first few minutes together are spent telling stories about how you got away. In junior high, the story may involve what you told your mother or what you had to go through to get a ride. After baby, you’re dancing around bedtimes and evading separation anxiety, so it can be hard to leave the house. My girlfriend’s daughter has strong separation anxiety right now and her husband distracted the child as my friend slid out the door. She said she could hear the baby’s wail as she went down the hall. On her way to the car, she tore her pants.  “But I worked so hard to get out, and I couldn’t go back in and have to leave again, so fuck it.”
  4. Once you get out, you go to a place you wouldn’t normally go. In junior high, we would go places our parents wouldn’t want to hang out, maybe even places we weren’t supposed to hang out. This time, my girlfriend and I went to a cigar bar, a place I used to go with fervor, as you well know, and I haven’t gotten to do as much since the Wee One came along.
  5. One there, you tell everyone you meet that you got away. Not that we would do this in junior high, but there were several references to it amongst the group.  When my girlfriend and I went out, we told the hostess at our restaurant, our waiter, then later, a bartender and a couple of strangers that we were having a girl’s night out.
  6. You eat what normally wouldn’t or couldn’t. I feel weird drinking alcohol when I’m out with the Wee One, unless it’s wine and I’m in an Italian place. When I was a freshman in high school, I would go with girlfriends to Applebees and we would all order virgin strawberry daiquiris. We felt so cool drinking those, but we wouldn’t try to do it in front of our parents, who would look at us sideways.
  7. You scream with laughter. As much as we loved our families as kids, and as much as we love our babies now, we felt free in a way we normally weren’t.  We felt joyful and full of life, and that was our way of expressing it.
  8. You talk to lots of people. When you’re finally out on your own in JH, you’re the one doing that talking, not your mother. Your opinion is the only one that matters. AB, you can suddenly make conversation with anyone about anything and stand there and talk for as long as you want! Which wasn’t always a good thing, as it might lead to #9
  9. Get talked to by someone inappropriate. In JH, it was the creepy guy in the food court who kept smiling at you when he refilled his soda. This time, it was a guy at the craps table who thought he was slick in asking about my friend’s husband. (Now that I think about it, it was probably the same guy.)
  10. Come away from it feeling very much alive. Both then and now, you laugh for days afterwards and hold on to the memories for a long time.