I have been trying to find 5 minutes to blog for several weeks now.  Oh well.  Here I am.

Big big news for us:  we are expecting another baby mid-February.  We are very, very happy.  Punkin' will be 20 months old, which should be interesting.  We wanted our children close together in age for the long run, but next year will be a chaotic one I'm sure.  I'm so so excited to be bringing another wonderful new person into our family.  (I get a little nervous about caring for a 20 month old and a newborn.  However, I'm trying to break the cycle of negative self-talk I've engaged in over the past couple of weeks about the "struggle" it might be.  The timing is perfect because it is what it is.  Resisting what is simply causes misery.  Being profoundly related to what is so has brought peace and freedom to me in so many areas of my life.  This is what's so:  we're having a baby in February.  Our daughter will be 20 months old.  It will be glorious.)

I am finding pregnancy the second time around to be very, very different.  Not time to sit around with stars in my eyes, hands on belly, dreaming about and romanticizing motherhood while sleeping around the clock and letting my husband take care of me.  Now I am so busy with Punkin' that I really don't have much time to think about it.  It's more like a random flicker of awe and wonder in my consciousness like:  oh yeah, I'm pregnant!  I really am carrying a new and wonderful life inside me!  I am trying to hold onto these brief and happy moments of awareness of this new life, all the more precious because of their brevity.  Then they're gone in the next moment, faster than you can say poopy diaper...  :)  I am feeling very lucky to be experiencing all of this.

I was feeling really good until a few days ago when "morning" (aka all-day) sickness set in big time.  Saturday I was in the pool with Punkin' and had to get out in a hurry because I almost puked in the pool.  Eeew.  Last night I was up until 3:30 AM throwing up.  Punkin' of course wants held, loved, played with, etc. just as much as always no matter how sick or tired I feel.  Thank lucky stars for my amazing husband.  He is an unbelievable partner and a stupendous father.

I have a big event coming up next month.  My family and friends will be putting on the 5th annual carnival at a day camp for kids with mental retardation and developmental disabilities.  We raise funds, bring in all the games and prizes, host the event, and clean up.  The camp just has to bring their campers outside for all the fun.  It's a riot.  The campers have a blast, but I honestly think the volunteers are the ones who enjoy the day more than anyone.  I am excited this event is still going on.  I started it 5 years ago to get my family together to put aside differences and spend one day together serving others.  It has brought about miraculous healing in my family.  I am so proud of us all.  It is a great, great event.  It takes a lot of work, so right now my hands are very, very full:  Kidz Artz, the carnival, feeling really, really sick and tired from pregnancy, working, keeping a household together, and (most importantly) being the best mom I can be to my baby girl.

Speaking of Punkin', she is a wonder.  What an amazing sweet little person she is.  She is so sweet.  She is giving open mouth kisses these days.  (Why do babies kiss like that at first?)  I get THRILLED every time I ask her for a kiss and I get one.  It's like the best feeling in the world to be getting affection back from this child I have poured love and affection into for the past year.  Also, she's learning hugs but she pretty much only doles those out to her baby and her stuffed animals.  She grabs them tight and rocks her whole body back and forth in a big 'ole hug and it is really the cutest sweetest thing ever.  I find it so interesting watching her kiss and hug her baby doll.  It's unreal what she has learned and is now modeling about human / maternal love.  I am amazed and feel so lucky that this wonderful sweet child is in my life every day.

Long time no blog.  It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks.  A week ago yesterday I met with a group called Mother Artists at Work, which is a very inspiring group.  It's so cool being around so many strong, smart women.  All the ladies there were working on projects for the Bike + Art = Show in Columbus tomorrow (5/17).  I left there feeling 1) understood, 2) supported, and 3) inspired.  So I went home and got to work on an ink drawing, which I finished Monday night.  I mounted it Tuesday and have been anxiously awaiting the show tomorrow.  The first time anyone else saw it was Tuesday, and I was sort of freaking out about it.  It's the first thing I've created in about a decade and a half, so I was feeling pretty insecure.  That said, I didn't make it so much for other people as I did for myself.  It's a victory just to have set out to make it, to have actually started it, and to have completed it given all the stuff in my life right now.  I had a lot of fun doing it, even though I'm not sure I love it now that it's done.  From conversations with other Mama Artists, that's a common feeling.  I am just happy to have the courage to put it out there in the world, and it is what it is.

Interestingly, now that I drew one picture, I feel like the creative faucet has been turned on in my brain.  I keep thinking of lots of interesting ideas to try.  I bought some stuff at Lowe's for my next project and plan to start it this weekend.  I had a really profound conversation about the theme of my art with Mike, a great friend of mine.  I feel so clear about what I want to express, and it's amazing, particularly when you consider that before Agora a few weeks ago I wasn't even in this conversation.

Punkin' Pie is fitting in with all this art pretty well, and she tries to "help" me draw.  When that happens, it's pretty much time to put the pen down and play.  Her first tooth cut through her gum last night, which was really exciting for us.  She's almost a year old and finally has a chopper!  I still think we're going to need to puree her first birthday cake though, since she doesn't seem to have the aptitude and/or interest in even gumming solid foods.  She even gagged last week on cottage cheese.  (My husband hates cottage cheese and assumed Punkin's got the same tastes as him.  However, she loved it once I pureed it so clearly it was a texture problem.)  When she gags, she pukes, so we generally try to avoid any food with texture.  I'm excited for teeth so we can start trying all the foods she eats nearer to their natural state, instead of babyfoodified.  She's a great eater and puts down everything from tofu to spinach to mango to avocado to couscous, but it's gotta be smoooooooooth.

Love that kid so much!

First blog entry eeeeeeeeever...  Big step.  Feels pretty significant and like I ought to come up with something very meaningful.  I started this blog at the suggestion of a new friend.  I have ten million things to do each day and stting down optionally to write more stuff doesn't really seem like it would be too smart.  But somehow it still seemed like a good idea.

The most imporant people in my life are family:  my husband and sweet daughter, Punkin' Pie.  Punkin's almost 11 months old and cute as baby girls get.  She crawls at normal baby speed when I'm watching her and seemingly at light speed when my back is turned.  She is a really happy kid so it's easy to be her mom.  She's funny and smart and she really amazes me every day.  Being her favorite person in the world is a humbling role.  Most days I feel up to the task but sometimes I ask myself what I could have been thinking feeling qualified to parent a little human.

Relatively recently I realized that to be a good mom I need to be a good not-mom.  By that I mean that I have to maintain some sense of self outside of Punkin' Pie and her basic and not-so-basic needs.  To that end, I just went to Seattle to visit a friend.  (Punkin' stayed with Daddy.)  It was a great time.  My friend and I ran a 5K Saturday morning and kayaked a couple of miles around Lake Union Saturday afternoon.  Saturday night I went to my first Roller Derby bout.  (I had no idea what that was.  I had a blast.)  Sunday we went on an all day bike ride until we got rained out and had to put our bikes (no kidding) on the bike rack on the front of the public bus.  (BTW, how cool is Seattle that they are so set up for people on bikes that the public buses have bike racks?!)  It was such a great weekend away.  It was weird to go out to dinner with my girlfriend and not have to bend over 36 times to pick up stuff my daughter throws on the floor.  I missed her a lot of course, and I was thrilled to see her and hold her until she squirmed to get down and put some random stuff in her mouth.  Man, I love that kid.

Last night I had dinner with my Uraguayan friend Ana and her mom.  We talked nothing but Spanish all night which was fine except when we kept talking to the servers in Spanish.  (It was an Indian restaurant.)  Very cool night.

I guess this was a decent start to the blog.  Not sure since I really haven't even read many blogs, but this is what's on my mind.