slings and things

write I'm starting to realize that 98% of my "blogging" is happening on Instagram these days, so feel free to join in the fun - my handle is @eskjess

---

Which brings me to finally talk a little about a project near and dear to my heart. I recently wrapped up 6 months of writing, photography, and a sprinkling of art as a "sling diarist" for Sakura Bloom (www.sakurabloom.com). I've been a big fan of their ring sling baby carriers since Arlo was a baby, almost three years ago. My trusty linen sling became my go-to method of getting that boy out of the house - oh the walks we took, and the beautiful things I showed him. For a stroller-hating guy, it was the only way.

After Oscar was born, I was selected to write about motherhood and babywearing for volume 5 of Sakura Bloom's Sling Diaries series. It was a beautiful way to mark and remember the passage of time during what, quite honestly, was one of the hardest stretches ever. Our lives were a roller coaster in 2014, and having a creative outlet and community to share with probably saved my sanity on more than one occasion. My sling became more than just a baby carrier: it became a point of connection between me and my sons; and between me and thousands of other mothers, identifying with the same struggles and hopes and fears. It's a wild ride, full of lonely, hard days. And I learned that I am never, ever alone. 

So much more to say about the experience, which I'll save for another day. To read my full series on motherhood and babywearing and raising two boys, and to see some of the lovely photography that my very (VERY) patient husband did for me, hop on over to Instagram and visit the #jessicaslingdiary hashtag. 

On magic and tents and trying.

Yesterday there were tears and screaming and yelling and fighting and everything was chaos. Attempts at an absolutely necessary nap failed (like they do, every day). Everything was wrong. Everyone was tired and sniffling and miserable and everything was just wrong.

Screw it.

I made up two big bowls of ice cream, one for each of us. And we ate our ice cream while baby brother smiled and gurgled in his chair, still so unaware of how awesome ice cream is, and how it has the power to turn the day around.

But sometimes even ice cream isn't enough. Sometimes there is no enough.
---

Last weekend I found a brand new IKEA canopy at the thrift store and I was saving it for a moment when it was needed. We needed it.

I put it together and hung it from a low branch in the Japanese Maple. The fabric spilled out over the softest moss-covered patch in the yard, ground that springs and gives a little from the empty mole tunnels hidden underneath. A blanket billowed and settled. Giggles and smiles and dappled light. Books and quiet, looking up, pointing at leaves. I congratulated myself on really knocking it out of the park this time.

Bravo, mama. Well done. You are so spontaneous and magical and you totally were not about to lose your shit 20 minutes ago.

Five minute later, books were thrown. Every truck and toy in the yard ended up in the tent. If my idea of utopia is a twinkly patch of moss beneath a tulle tent, my son's idea of utopia is the exact opposite. And it most certainly involves trucks and lawn mowers and garbage cans and moving and running and dogs.

A bee flew into the tent. The baby cried. The tent got a hole in it. A truck crashed into my thigh over and over and over again. We hugged and tried and hugged and tried.

More books went flying.
Everyone's gone mad.

I piled everyone into the car, stopped at a drive-thru for a ridiculously expensive and unnecessary frozen caramel something-or-other, and I drove up into the hills. That's what I do now, when I don't know what else to do. I drive up. In five minutes, he was out and I sipped liquid caramel and listened to "All Together Now" on repeat for the 432nd time, blinking tears out of the corners of my eyes.

One, two, three, four, can I have a little more?

We passed horses and powerlines and fields of tall grass and brambles. The sound of baby blowing raspberries in the back, oblivious, happy. Little bare feet kicking, thunk thump.

Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, I love you.
---

Back in the driveway, parked under the shade of the big-leaf maple, I pulled the baby's carseat out and peeked at my firstborn, my big guy. Head slumped to the side, lashes resting on flushed cheeks, a truck in his hand. Dappled sunlight and softness everywhere.

in thirty years

in thirty years, I hope that I still feel good about most of the decisions I've made as a mother. I hope I go easy on myself, and I hope I don't harbor too much guilt.
(there is always guilt, it seems, with motherhood, so I'm expecting it. at least a little.)

I hope that mamas are wearing their babies like crazy, and that they don't get weird looks when they go to the grocery store with a baby slung to their side. mostly, I get curious looks. and the occasional "gosh I wish something like that existed when my kids were small," from kind older mothers. I hope it's nothing but another way to carry your little ones and not a "fad" or something that only crunchy (god I hate that term) mothers do. because it truly just makes life better. 

I hope the focus is on drawing our babies closer and letting them be small. I swear, my kid hit 18 months and suddenly everyone was looking at each other wide-eyed and frantic going, "where is he going to preschool?" what? really? no. calm yourself.

I hope that it really, truly, doesn't matter when or where a mother chooses to nurse her baby. and I hope that no mother ever feels bullied into covering up, or going to a separate room, or nursing in her car, or worse yet, in a public restroom. we are working hard to change that now, and in thirty years, I hope it's a shock to think that any woman was ever made to feel shame for feeding her baby however she chose to.

I hope that it's shocking that I had a cesarean delivery with my first son. I hope it's no longer one in three. I'm grateful that the medicine and technology exists to save babies. I'm not grateful for the mentality that babies are to be born on a schedule, or within a specific set of unrealistic parameters. I hope that birth is recognized as unique and beautiful and that it does not ever follow a textbook. I hope that every woman can find peace, power, and healing in her birth experiences, and not be left with trauma, however big or small.

I hope my sons grow to know how hard their mama tried. I hope they choose kind and gentle partners, and if they choose to have children of their own, I hope they come to me for support while navigating through the wilds of parenthood. And even if they don't become parents, I hope they come to me anyways.

I hope they wanna hang out. Not all the time, but every once in awhile would be cool. I'll make cookies.

I hope they feel loved.

I hope they don't remember the times that I lost it and yelled, and if they do remember, I hope they forgive me for it.

I hope that they find happiness, but I hope they know it's ok to not always be happy sometimes. I hope they are simply OK with being alive, and being human. there is greatness in simply existing.

I hope they know that it's OK to ask for help. I hope I know that, too.

I hope that it's easier to find a tribe of like-minded people to stick to. because that has been hard for this introvert.

I hope that technology exists so that socks automatically pair up the second they're pulled out of the laundry. because jesus h I cannot keep up with the socks.

I hope I have some really badass tattoos.

And a couple of chickens.

that's all.

warm

the past few days have been full of sunshine and sticky hands and sandy diapers and eating every meal outside. glorious.

(he's almost 6 months old and rarely stops smiling.)

I frequently post and mini-blog on Instagram - follow me @eskjess if you wanna keep up with the daily happenings. I'll still post here when I can, but I love how quick and easy IG is for me these days.

sunshine for all.

sunshine for all.

Doing stuff.

After Arlo was born, my husband and I would look at each other and marvel at all the time that we used to have. What did we do with all of it? Play around on the internet, watch TV, maybe. Yard work and house projects, on occasion. Mostly, it felt like we wasted it. And now that our second baby is here, I still find myself wondering what I did with "all that time" when I was the mother of just one kid.

You know what I did? I slept. I napped when that absolutely exhausting child napped, because MY LORD was I ever beat most of the time. So at least I feel like that "extra time" was well spent.

Now that there are two, and time is even more precious and naps for mama are getting harder and harder to come by, I am trying to do stuff. This winter I've forced myself to pick up the paintbrush or dust off my sewing machine, mostly to keep my sanity in my currently kid-centric universe. I need mama time. I need projects. I need to create.

I almost killed myself making hand-carved stamps for our holiday cards, but it was worth it. I love how they turned out.

And then I worked on a few sewing projects, mostly with a baby strapped to my chest in my trusty ring sling.

And most recently, I've been making some new jewelry pieces for my online shop. I also discovered that giving a toddler a pair of pliers and some beads makes for HOURS of entertainment. Seriously. 

And HOLY SMOKES, speaking of online shops...major changes with my old Etsy shop. Etsy was just getting too hard for me to work with, from the fees they charge, to keeping up with expired listings...it was just becoming less enjoyable and more costly than I wanted. So I have moved my little Window Ledge Shop to Storenvy, and I could not be happier. It's been so easy to set up, highly customizable, and very user friendly. Please check it out - I have a bunch of new earrings and necklaces up, and try to post new stuff every week.

You know. In my spare time.

Hello, Oscar.

Just a very quick update to say that baby Oscar arrived 11/8/13 after an absolutely intense and wonderful labor and birth. We're three weeks in to being the parents of two kids, and I've gotta say that it's going so much more smoothly than I could have ever expected.

It ain't easy, but as a wise friend once told me, nothing worthwhile ever is.

More soon. I hope.

toddler brain

You know, it was really therapeutic to do this simple and spontaneous little exercise and attempt to draw the contents of my 2 year-old's brain. This is maybe 1% of everything going on in there -- my hand got tired. But truly, it slowed me down and made me realize, yeah, there's a lot happening in that tiny noggin. Be patient. Breathe.

home grown: lavender sachets

Lavender is my absolute favorite smell in the whole world, and I'm even fonder of it now as a pregnant lady who hates the smell of just about everything else. I've been growing it in my garden for two years now, and the tiny plant that once fit in my hand is wild and bushy has been covered in endless blossoms for a good four months this year.

grow. harvest. dry. repeat.

This summer I took a look at all the dried lavender I had acquired over the summer and said, hm, oh my, that's a lot. On a whim, I decided to pull off the dried blossoms and make sachets as gifts or to stash in smelly places around my home. Smelly places like my car, where you just might find a half-eaten apple or granola bar stashed under a certain small person's seat.

So yes to sachets. I made one and used up almost all of my lavender. Turns out that "a lot" isn't quite as much when you remove all the stems and leaves and pack the tiny buds into a little muslin bag. I was going to need more. One Facebook post to our community board later, and I suddenly had complete strangers offering me more lavender than I could ever have imagined. Armfuls and armfuls of incredible fragrant stuff, and now it's safe to say that I have more than I will ever need. I'm still stripping buds off of stems, but it's the most soothing chore ever.

Anyways, I made these little guys, decorated with rubber stamps. My husband requested one that said, "beefy stag," for reasons still unknown to me. It's my favorite. And "check yo self" hangs in my car, a constant reminder to keep my sassy attitude under control.

two.

Last week my son turned two. We stretched our celebrating over several days in small and simple ways. A couple of presents (wooden train tracks and Duplo blocks), a pizza dinner (his favorite, or at least that's what he always says he wants when you ask, "What would you like for dinner?"), and later a trip to the pumpkin patch with some close friends, and cupcakes the next day. It was perfect and small and unfussy.

But despite my best efforts, I found myself lost in the same clutter of thoughts that I had last year at this time. And then I decided to place a photo order of prints from the past year, and caught myself going back to review his first year. And then of course I had to look at the slideshow from his first birthday, and photos from when he was just minutes old. Photos taken in a bright cold room. Corners of the room where I was not allowed to go, because I could not move. His weight registering on a scale. His face pink and screaming, looking exactly the same way it does now when he's very upset. His eyes blinking and aware. Me kissing his head, upside down and awkward, numb everywhere but my face. My body being pieced back together somewhere behind a curtain while I smiled and choked back tears of joy and tears of sadness.

I sat at the computer snuffling for awhile until my eyes welled up and I couldn't see straight. He stopped playing with his trains and climbed into my lap.

"Mama, eye hurt." (he says this whenever I cry.)

"Yes, mama's eyes hurt right now. But it's ok, I'm mostly crying because I'm happy."

And he sat there with me while I scrolled through a few pictures, telling him, "That's my Arlo. That's you when you were a teeny tiny baby."

"Mama. My Arlo."

"Yes, yes. Always, my Arlo."

Happy two, my big guy.

it's a big world, baby.

Whenever I think of my childhood and the time that I got to spend with my dad before he died, I most often remember how he simply showed me the world. We got out. We visited the city and museums, and he taught me to love dinosaurs and science and The Weather Channel. He quizzed me on algebra while we waited in the car before my piano lessons began, before I had even started learning algebra in school. Two of my favorite Christmas presents ever were a microscope and a set of litmus papers, and I grew tiny brine shrimp to look at on slides and tested the pH of every liquid in the house. My dad had a gift for letting me learn without pushing me too hard in one direction or the other, gently guiding my interests the moment that the first spark appeared.

One of my most vivid memories is going to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry and gazing at the long glass case of preserved human fetuses, or "the babies in the bottles," as my dad liked to call them. I can't recall the first time I set eyes on them, glowing and floating in space, but I was small. I do remember feeling a mix of wonder and sadness: wonder that I could have ever been that tiny; and sadness, when I asked my dad where the babies in the display came from and he had to explain to me that they were no longer alive. I just stared and stared.

He has no idea how that moment, and the repeated museum visits thereafter (I always had to look at the babies in the bottles), helped fuel more curiosity about my world and my place in it than anything else. Maybe he just liked getting out and exploring new places, and I was just along for the ride. Whatever his motives, he gave me the gift of curiosity whether he realized what he was doing at the time or not.*

The awkward health classes in middle school, the book about "becoming a woman" that my mother strategically placed on my bed - all those things did nothing to teach me about who I really was. No. The best lessons were learned when I was at the mercy of my own curiosity, while taking apart old watches or setting up our very first computer to run a program to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence - and then sitting there staring at the screen forever, waiting, hoping, and feeling small yet important.

Curiosity. I see it in my firstborn's eyes already, when he pokes at a slug in the driveway or points up at the sky with his tiny finger to find the moon. He knows it. He has the spark. And I'm so grateful that my dad taught me, in the most subtle ways, how to ignite it.

*For the record, I think my dad knew exactly what he was doing. And he loved it.

old-timey

I can't remember where I was, but a few weeks ago I caught a whiff of Murphy Oil Soap. It's always funny to me how a simple little smell can transport you back to a time and place, and Murphy Oil Soap will forever be associated with my Worst Job Ever in the History of Jobs. I was 17, and working as a "photographer" at a newly-opened Old Time Photo Studio. You know the kind. They're found in tourist destinations across the country, stocked with racks full of musty lace and velvet bustiers, pin-striped suits, and flapper dresses. I put the word photographer in quotations because, really, I spent more time mopping the awful pine floors with that awful soap, trying to pry fake tommy gun props from the hands of toddlers, and trying to sell, sell, SELL the biggest photo packages possible to the wealthy tourists that visited the town in the summer.

Thinking back, I was probably one of the luckier employees. Never deemed attractive or friendly enough by my boss (or so I heard from a couple of my equally awful co-workers), I got out of the task of wearing long-sleeved Victorian garb and standing out by the road to wave at passersby on 95-degree summer days. He made the pretty girls do that. Instead, I was told to smile more and sell photos, and occasionally press a shutter button on a camera that was all set up and ready on a tri-pod, and then press another button that would print out the images instantly for customers.

The people running the place knew nothing about photography. Inspired by a traveling carnival setup they had seen, they jumped into opening a brick & mortar studio to make a quick buck and hired a bunch of poor unsuspecting high school kids as employees. One time a woman came to the studio with her daughter, pointed to a picture on the wall of a sweet curly-haired blonde cherub holding a parasol, and said, "I want her to look like that. Exactly like that." So we dressed her little girl up in the same pink lace and ruffles, styled her with a parasol, and took shot after shot while the mother insisted that each image wasn't quite right. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that her daughter was A) Asian, with beautiful dark hair and eyes, but clearly NOT the girl in the frame on the wall and B) Just not that into it. Who could blame her?

One slow summer evening, I was left to run the entire shop by myself. And as luck would have it, a group of mothers collectively toting about eight children, all under the age of five, came in for a large group portrait. Even now as an experienced photographer, that task seems insanely daunting for one person, much less a 17 year-old kid. Somehow I got the whole crew dressed and styled, but no surprise, the studio became a mess in the process. Costumes and feather boas were strewn everywhere, kids were pretending to shoot each other with prop guns, and the atmosphere was just...chaos. And of course, just as I was getting everyone into position for their shot, my boss rushed in and exclaimed that the place was a disaster. He took over the shoot, and I cleaned up the mess, humiliated.

That night I stayed late to tidy up the place. The smell of Murphy Oil Soap burned my nostrils worse than usual, and I was reprimanded for missing a spot on those stupid bone-dry pine floors. I remember trying to think of a good excuse to quit. It wasn't long after that I decided that I couldn't bear another shift - I called in and said I had taken a babysitting job for the summer and would not be back. They could put my check in the mail. It's the only job that I've ever quit like that, with a lie, and without giving any notice. And it felt incredible.

Since then I've had a string of jobs, some good, some not so good, and some hovering somewhere in the middle. But nothing, NOTHING compares to bizarre antics of the Old Time Photo Studio.

Today I collect vintage photos. Real "old time" portraits, like the one at the beginning of this post. I hold those images in my hands and can't help but wonder if, in a hundred years or so, some crazy couple will open up a kitschy studio so tourists can recreate the look and feel of the early 21st century. Maybe it's too soon, but I have a hard time imagining racks of...what? Chevron print and ombre? Tom's shoes and boots over leggings?  iPhones and Starbucks cups for props? A fake backdrop printed with a Toyota Prius riding off into the sunset?

Whatever happens, I'm willing to bet that Murphy Oil Soap will still exist.

There is a hole.

I really miss writing. Blogging/writing was always such a wonderful healthy outlet for me, and then life happened and the gradual decline went something like this:

1) I started to get self-conscious about what I was posting, and heavily edited my writing to try to keep everyone happy. It became not fun, and my voice felt lost. And that's just sad.
2) I had a baby.
3) That baby became a toddler.
4) I became pregnant with a second baby.

I honestly don't know how the full time "mommy blogger" set manages to wrangle their children and write at the same time. I don't aspire to be a mommy blogger, by any means. But I am a mom, and I love to write, and I have a thousand blog posts composed in my head - I just have a hard time getting them all out onto the page. Perhaps it's because I always have the urge to write about EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE. But really, what I need to remember to do (and it's how I blogged long ago) is to just pick one tiny thing and write, write, write about it, there, in that moment. I need to write about the cow, not the whole 40-acre farm, if you will.

I'm not going to lie: The past (almost) 2 years since my son's birth have been hard. We're largely on our own out here in Washington, all family is back in the Midwest, and we're just starting to grow our circle of friends. I unexpectedly quit my full time job after my son was born, and that's still an adjustment. Things are tight, so there's no sitter and no super predictable schedule filled with activities and classes. We do what we can, and I like to think that in some ways, it teaches my son more about the realities of real life than anything else. What we lack in schedule and rigidity, we make up for in rhythm. Rhythm moves us through each week, picking up tempo as need be, slowing when we need some calm. I'm content with that, but it means that sometimes, OK, a lot of the time, "me time" falls to the wayside. And it means that sometimes I can't spill all those brewing words out into a blog post or onto paper as much as I'd like. And it means that a small part of me sometimes struggles to feel heard.

I want to write about the hard stuff, openly, candidly. I feel like some people are taken aback when I talk about motherhood with brutal honesty - sometimes I feel like no one wants to hear about the not-so-pretty moments, or that they wonder if I'm constantly unhappy. I'm not. I only want to be realistic and truthful in the words that I share, because motherhood has, in so many ways, completely knocked me on my rear. So many of my expectations about being a mother were colored by golden "lace curtain and rocking chair" moments seen in magazines, on blogs, and in sweet snapshots shared on Facebook or Instagram. Yes, those moments exist, and I share them liberally. The cuddles are bliss, the good days are really REALLY good, and the love you feel toward your child is like nothing else in the world. But I think if you are having a day where your toddler is screaming because "Nooooo pants! Noooo shoo-shoooooes!" and your dog ripped open a bag of flour, and you're sweater is covered in banana mush, you get to talk openly about those days just like you get to talk openly about the cozy sunshine days, the snuggles and hugs, and the moments of incredible discovery. I want to talk about both kinds of day with equal passion, because, well, life is not one or the other.

Or maybe it's just the Libra in me, always seeking balance. 

Anyways, there's a hole in my heart that was once occupied by words and art and music and my own thoughts, and I want to write about it all. I want to write about how my son's birth was hard and scary and how I'm anxious about this next baby's birth. I want to write about how my early days of motherhood almost broke me, how hard and rewarding breastfeeding was, and about how my boy's toddler days simultaneously fill me with joy and pride and exhaust me to my core. I want to write about how I love him so fiercely that it sometimes scares me. But I also want to write about how motherhood can also be isolating, tremendously taxing, and monotonous.

And most of all, I want to feel a sense of self beyond my son and motherhood again. I miss the "old" me and cautiously embrace the "new" me - I'm still getting used to her, like I'm finding out that I had a long-lost twin after all these years. It's been a much slower adjustment than I ever imagined.

I've missed the honesty, the beauty, and the release of writing.


Deep breaths. It will come.

hello, hello.

Just popping in with a little update.

This space is in limbo. When I'm not chasing after a very VERY active, intense, sweet, smart, toddler, I'm working on my photography business and taking whatever freelance projects come my way. It has been unpredictable, hard work, that's for sure. So this blog, and my shop, are just going to have to sit for awhile until I find my groove.

Do we ever find a groove? I hope so. I feel like I've been searching for mine for over a year now (or forever, maybe?), and I'm starting to think it'll never show up.

Come April, I will not be renewing my www.windowledgearts.com domain, so you'll be able to reach this blog and it's feed at http://windowledgearts.blogspot.com.

And if you have any ideas or suggestions for what I should do with or add to my Etsy shop, I'm all ears. Making jewelry is fun, but the amount of time and effort that goes into photographing finished pieces, writing descriptions, packaging and shipping, and keeping up with listings and renewals is just too much to handle with very little payoff. So I'm torn. But I'm not throwing in the towel just yet...

Lovestorm

The end of January was so stunningly awful for so many good people. Was it something in the air? Were the stars askew?

In our lives, there were brakes that suddenly needed replacing, a flat tire, getting (hysterically) locked in the bathroom with a toddler, dog poop, and the worst case of norovirus imaginable, all in a span of just a few days. Mercifully, I was spared from getting sick. But my husband and the little dude were not. So. Much. Barf. I am a little traumatized. As is the interior of my car.

All of these things seem remarkably trivial when I consider what some of my friends have been going through. So while I may gripe out of lack of sleep and boredom at being stuck in the house for so long, I'm simultaneously grateful that these troubles are minor and not life-altering. I just wanna give the world a big hug. January, I don't know what the heck happened there. But I welcome this short new month with open arms and a furious storm of love.

compass

There's something that always seems to happen mid-autumn, when the days get grayer and wetter and I feel stuck, physically and mentally. Physically in the sense that I cannot get outside and get some sunshine, and the rooms in my house grow smaller and smaller - even more so now that I share that space with a little person who gets bored very very quickly.

And mentally in the sense that my brain feels slow. A little less alive and very much in need of some nourishment. I haven't had the chance to sit down and make some real art in well over a year now, and I think it's starting to gnaw at me. I've said it before, but there are some days where I really feel like I might die if I don't just get out there and create something. Anything.

***

Today was rough. I wrestled with a sad toddler who can't quite communicate his needs and wants yet, who throws a tantrum if I don't feel like climbing up and down the stairs with him all day (he grabs my hand and pulls me to the stairs to help him up and down...over and over and over again), and who had his morning frustrations capped off with shots at the doctor's office. The day turned dark and rainy, but was saved by the most delicious pho I've ever tasted, hot and rich and salty. And then bedtime was mostly tears, feverish pitching about, limbs kicking and hands pushing me away, and then finally wrapping around my neck and giving in to a heavy, sweaty sleep.

I hate shot days. 

***

So I drew this. A doodle. I used to draw shapes like this all over my notebooks in school. Endless mandalas, compass roses, fans and petals.

And now all is centered and right again.

a perfect fit.

Thirty.

Yesterday I turned thirty.

Three. Zero.

Thirty has been feeling heavy to me, and I've been struggling to put my finger on just what it is, but I think I'm getting closer to figuring it out. Yesterday Dave and I had a good chat about all of the crappy stuff that happened in our twenties, and how we should be happy to move forward and leave everything behind. It made me feel a whole lot better, in the moment. Turning over a new decade feels, in many ways, like a fresh start.

But mixed in with all the hard, stressful moments, my twenties were filled with so many big awesome things, and I can't help but feel a little sad that they are done. I studied abroad in Ireland. I graduated from college. I got an amazing first job. I got married. We moved to Seattle, and both found incredible jobs out here. We bought a house. We had our first baby. I left my job and finally started my own business, for real this time (though I'm still figuring things out).

So many big things.  Wham bam. Done. And now there's this little voice inside that says, "Look at you. You've done it all. There's nothing left." Which I know is not true. And I feel silly saying it, but I'm struggling to figure out what to look forward to next. I'm a planner. I like to know. Of course, watching my son grow and enjoying my family are the unspoken Things That I Look Forward To the Most. But my goals feel very different, and more about slow measured growth than about huge life changes. That's something new to wrap my head around.

I think a lot of my anxiety has to do with the unknown. I had a pretty good idea that all of those milestones from my twenties would happen, at some point, in the span of a decade. I kind of knew what to expect. But now I have absolutely no idea what to expect, and thirty and beyond feels like this great big blank slate and it scares me. I'm scared to watch my mom and my in-laws grow older. I'm scared of what it will be like for my son to go to school. I'm scared that my business will fail, miserably. All reasonable things to have fears about, and it will pass. It always does.

So that's where all the heavy comes from. That, and late fall in the pacific northwest is gray and thick and heavy, too. Fitting for a birthday I'm not too terribly excited about.

But a birthday I was really super excited about? A certain little dude turned one a couple of weeks ago. Oh my stars.

Nothing heavy about this kid. He's sunshine (most of the time) and firecrackers (all of the time) and he walks and runs and babbles and when he laughs it sounds like a fountain, or a tree full of birds.

And right now, that is enough.

Nesting slippers

Let me tell you a story about these slippers.

Almost exactly one year ago, I started my maternity leave and found myself face to face with large amounts of wide open free time before my little dude arrived. I spent the bulk of this time on a bizarre mission for the perfect pair of slippers. My packing list for the hospital was complete except for the slippers. "Bring slippers!" everyone said. "Slippers! (and a shitload of other stuff I'll NEVER EVER need)," all the online lists from mommy bloggers proclaimed. But I had no slippers. When I imagined myself shuffling down the hospital hallways, bent over and trying to walk through contractions, I was most definitely wearing a cute pair of slippers, not some thin hospital-issue ankle socks with the grippies on the bottom.

Clearly, I was not going to be able to birth a child without slippers.

But I had very specific criteria for the perfect slippers: they couldn't be made from any weird polyester, which would make my feet sweaty and uncomfortable; they couldn't be fluffy or furry; and they had to be cute. And under $30. I went to every department store and mall within 30 minutes of my home. I hauled my 40-week belly from store to store, but everything was wrong. SO WRONG! Too fluffy. Too pink. Too polyester. Too expensive.

One particular trip to Target, very very near my due date (in fact, I think it might have been ON my actual due date), was particularly memorable. I walked into the store, and all of a sudden I felt a rush of warmth and "fuzziness." I truly felt like I was in some sort of half-asleep dreamland. I was there looking for slippers, but I ended up buying a bunch of weird impulsive stuff that we didn't really need. Like that goofy bottle drying rack that looks like grass (which actually tuned out to be AWESOME), and some bed sheets with snowflakes on them that didn't match anything in our bedroom. I think I got a doormat, too. Seriously?

Looking back, I think this was the start of baby's long slow journey into this world. That warm fuzzy feeling was probably a rush of oxytocin signaling my body to get things moving, already. I went into labor later that week, and after he was born I got that exact same woozy feeling every time I nursed him during the first few weeks. Oxytocin, yo. That's some potent stuff.

But back to the slippers. I never did find a pair in any store, so I took to the interwebs. After, not even joking, hours of slipper-hunting online, I finally found the perfect pair of Smartwool slippers. Made of real wool! On clearance! And relatively cute! But at that point I was actually scheduled for an induction in a few days (turned out I wouldn't need it, anyways), and I knew that my precious slippers wouldn't make it to my doorstep in time. I had pretty much let go of my vision of laboring in the perfect goddamn slippers and just wanted that baby OUT OUT OUT. But certainly I would need slippers for the days and weeks after, while I blissfully nursed my baby in a warm bed, propped up by pillows while sipping tea and resting HA HA HA HA.

I never once needed a pair of slippers during my time in the hospital. I never even thought about slippers, and when they did arrive, I really didn't care anymore. But I've gotta say that afterwards, once I was finally up and getting around, they were really great slippers. And still are.

I guess some women scrub their floors or clean their stoves. Apparently, my form of nesting was to think about slippers nonstop and do weird shopping at Target. So now, whenever I wear them and look down, I laugh at what an insane person I became in those final days of pregnancy. They're a good memory.

Fort

When things start getting a little dull around here, that means it's time to make something. Anything. So we throw the crib mattress across a book shelf and an ottoman (because, who am I kidding, he doesn't actually sleep on said mattress. might as well have fun with it), drape a blanket over the top, and call it a fort.

And a mighty one, at that. At least for a 10.5 month old (!) little dude.

A fort is the perfect place for reading. I Am A Bunny is his absolute favorite book. I don't know what it is, but this book is magic and soothes him when nothing else will. (Usually. Ha.)

Ahoy there, little explorer.

Our fort is pants-optional.

I'm so glad I have someone to build forts for. If you want to see more awesome fort action, check out Fort Fridays over at All For The Boys!

Hello, world.

What on earth did I do with my life before My boy came along? Seriously, what did I do with all that time? Sad to say, I probably wasted it away watching lame sitcom re-runs and dinking around on the internet instead of watching my son chew on coasters and shove sticky fistfuls of rice snacks in his face. Good times.

This sums things up nicely. I can relate. Not that all babies aren't a little "high maintenance," being babies, after all. But as I write this, my son is skirting around my desk chair, dumping toys down the back so when I lean back I get stabbed with blocks. It's only a matter of seconds before he crawls under my desk and pulls the toner door off my printer. That's why I don't blog much any more.

But I miss it.

So here's a long overdue update.

- I left my full time job, officially. It was so hard, and I still struggle with that decision. But ultimately, I know it will be one of the best things that I've ever had the courage to do.

- I picked up my freelance photography business again. Visit my photography blog at jeskelsenphoto.blogspot.com to check out what I've been up to. Not pictured on blog: an ongoing job where I get to photograph piles of 90s stuff. Think skip-its, super soakers, and furbys. YES.

- I am working on my first little illustration gig. For a book. It is awesome.

All that while trying to work from home and wrangle a little dude, who did indeed find my printer in the time it took to write this, and now demands some snuggles.

So until next time...