I can’t remember the last time I wrote about John.  Just him, as my husband, as a man.  Keeping our parenthood seperate from our spouseness is something we haven’t totally gotten a handle on.  Hank, until a bigger apartment comes along, lives in our bedroom for the moment.  She sleeps in her own crib, but it is four feet from the bed on my side.  Her changing table is wedged between the window and John’s nightstand.  Her clothes are in our closet.  She goes to bed before seven each night and we are forced to spend our time in the living room.  All of this makes it difficult to be together.  As spouses.  As people.

We have absolutely no privacy.  We have no space of our own in which to just lay around with lights dim, curled and cuddled together while watching bad t.v.  We have nowhere to rest and read by lamplight instead of on the iPhone.  There is nowhere to laugh ourselves to sleep or talk above a whisper.  Nowhere to marvel over how lovely a life we live.  We’re displaced.

Two weeks ago (was it a month ago?), we went on our first date in a year (maybe longer?).  We went to a movie and out to a really nice dinner and just talked and felt like grown-ups for a few hours.  I looked at my husband across the table while he ate his dinner and talked about the tragectory of his career and I thought: how the fuck did I get this lucky?! My husband, my man, JOHN, is beautiful and brilliant and patient and kind.  He is loving and supportive and funny and dear.  He is generous and open-hearted and stalwart and soft.  What John is, surpasses any notion of absolutely right I’d ever had in my life.

I know that for him, from me, it is the same.  Each morning I see him off to work with the comfortable certainty that there is no one on this planet who is better suited to be with either of us.  I say this knowing full well that we are each, in our own spectacular way, a challenge and a handful.  But knowing too, that we have each of us, in our own way, thrived and capitalized on those idiosyncrasies.  We are just absolutely right together.  Period.

And so I miss him.  I miss getting into bed early in the evening and just being there together.  I miss the wind down at the end of the day that is playful and silly and essential to our couplehood.  I miss our terrible jokes and sweet murmurings as we drift off.  I miss my marriage.  I want to go out on a date, have some wine, come home and get busy.  (P.S.: we got home from our date and cuddled with Hank.)

This October we will celebrate five years of sharing our lives.  Nearly five years ago, a girl met a boy and they made one another laugh.  They fell in love and decided to live together within five months of that meeting.  Together they raised an amazing daughter and in turn each grew into the man and woman he and she were supposed to be.  John and I found one another just when we’d given up looking.  Which is terribly cliche, but truthful.  We found each other and we grew together.  We have changed behaviors for one another and sometimes hated the process, but have always loved and been in love.

I look at John each day and feel a clenching in my core.  I look at John with wonderment.  With absolute amazement that he isn’t a dream.  That he’s still there each morning and that each night he’s back again.  I view my husband as a precious fantasy come real.  Like a beloved and cherished gift.  I look at John and I am in love.  Still.  I look at John, at our life, at our girls and my brain clouds at trying to understand how so much fabulousness could exist in one place.

Last night, in the dark silence of Hank’s bedroom, John turned to me and whispered: this whole being married for the rest of our lives thing is pretty awesome.

Indeed.

I’ve finally printed photos for Hank’s WHO LOVES BABY? book, which has remained empty for the last eight plus months.  No longer will I look at the cover of that puffy little album and think: NOBODY, I GUESS.

While editing and printing photos of us, I couldn’t help getting caught up in our little journey.  Hank has been here in our lives nearly as long as it took her to get here.  And though I live this baby, this family, this life every day, I still can’t wrap my mind around how it can possibly be.

First, there was this:

Not three hours later, there was this:

And this:

And this:

What?

Then, we brought her home and she met her sister:

Suddenly there were four of us.  Suddenly we were this other family.  These other people.  Hank has done changed us all.

I sat here for over an hour, looking through photos, marveling that time enough has passed to make my baby almost unrecognizable now.  So much time, moving so quickly.  How?  When I still catch my breath if she turns her face to look at me.

Now there is this:

And this:

And this:

The sisters are more like this:

I am this person:

We are this family:

But then, there’s this:

I have:

1. changed our bedsheets
2. made our bed
3. lowered the mattress in Hank’s crib (which required removal of the mattress and bedskirt, changing of sheet, reassembly)
4. done two loads of laundry
5. unpacked our grocery delivery
6. brushed my teeth
7. put Hank down for a nap (since she, and we, have been up since 5:45)
8. drank coffee in a quiet apartment for twenty minutes while both girls sleep on this gray gray morning
9. perused craft blogs

During all of this, John was good enough to change the overnight diaper, give Hank her breakfast and make coffee before getting in the shower and heading out to the office.

Tonight is our first date since October.  Frankly, it’s probably been even longer than that.  And I’m already good and tired.

On my agenda is:

1. waking Sophie and getting her off to school
2. making cupcakes and buttercream (a friend’s daughter turns 1 tomorrow!)
3. making cherry blossoms, piping gel and royal icing for cupcakes
4. dropping off Sophie’s camp medical form to her pediatrician
5. sewing a pouch for the knitted doll I made for the birthday girl tomorrow
6. trying not to knit accompanying small animal of some sort
7. attempting to respond to important emails that deserve and warrant my full (but impossible)  attention
8. coloring roots
9. cutting/manicuring fingernails
10. contemplating, and likely not executing, bikini wax
11. cleaning bathroom
12. taking shower and attempting to transform myself from mother to woman (good luck with that vagina!)
13. meeting all of Hank’s whining demands
14. figuring out what else needs doing

How am I supposed to feel all date-y in 11 hours?

In the last week Hank has cut her first tooth, begun shifting forward onto her hands and knees (where she will rock for a few moments before shifting back down to sitting), shifted forward onto her hands and knees, then scooted one knee forward in pursuit of a wanted play thing, learned to bring her feet beneath her when on her belly in order to sit herself back (in order to correct the loathsome error of winding up on her belly in the first place), and feeding herself out of a sippy cup.

All of our bottles are gone, given away to a friend with a new baby of her own.  And Isabel prefers to handle the cup herself, thank you.

There is prolonged whining, rapid discovery, overwhelming delight, absolute intolerance and erratic napping.  All the while I trawl craigslist in search of a three bedroom apartment.

In my head, there is a steady stream of topics and partially composed recountings and ponderings.  There just isn’t time.  Even as I sit here, trying to steal an unexpected five minutes to write (vent), while Hank takes an extra early nap, Sophie is chattering at me.  There is always a question to answer or seven year old gossip that has to be listened to or ideas to be encouraged.  There is always the whining of teeth coming in and the whining of not-yet-crawling and the whining of almost reaching that book if not for getting wedged in between the couch and coffee table.  There is always something.  Laundry.  Crumbs on the floor from both girls.  Spills to sop and dishes to clean.  Clothes to fold and lunches to pack.  And I’m drowning in it.  I’m not eating right, frequently skipping meals so that I can sew or knit or answer an email.  And I’m feeling it.  The cranky dizziness that comes from not eating enough.  So I force myself to have a sandwich and fruit, to snack on almonds and yogurt.  And then I’m cranky about not getting to use my personal time, a term which here means the time when Hank is napping, for more productive things (see the listing above).

I honestly don’t understand how other mothers do it.  I don’t understand how successful women, with multiple children, manage to get through each day.  Is it just life in New York?  Is it because there is no yard to send Sophie to play in?  No room of my own?  Because I sew and write and eat all in the same space on the same table in the same room that three other people occupy at the same time?

Twenty minutes later…

Sophie is gone with Josh and John just walked out the door.  Isabel is still sleeping for the moment.  The apartment is quiet but for the droning hum of the air conditioner.  The floor is covered in toys and blocks and I’m trying to take a breath or two even as I hear Hank beginning to stir.  I know that she is awake because she waves her pacifier, holding it by the nipple, so that its plastic loop clacks against its base.  She warbles to herself, cooing a loving string of babble to the morning.  I listen and feel like my heart will break because my world is so completely complete.  She is beautiful and funny and perfect.  She is a dream baby.  Restored from her nap she will sit and play on the floor, unloading her giant wicker basket one colorful treasure at a time, while I put away the folded clothes and empty last night’s bath water.  While I cut another pattern and begin to sew.  She will talk to her friends as she removes them from the basket and every few minutes she will look up to find me at my machine and smile like she’s found the one thing she’s wanted all along.  And I will catch my breath and grin back like a fool and think: it’s worth it, this burn out.

Later, Sophie will run to me from the school yard, screaming mommy with the same devotion that fills her sister’s smile.  She will wrap her too thin, too muscular arms around my waist and prattle off the events of the day.  She will fill me in on every detail of every social interaction and recount the steps she took in evolving a painting or writing a story or working through a math problem.  She will talk in her overly articulate and still childish way, breathless and too fast, and I will think: this is why I push on.

She will remember Isabel and practically knock over the stroller in greeting her.

My girls will look at one another and beam.  They will look at me and beam.  And I will remember, for a moment at a time, as I always do, where I belong and why I do what I do.

Things were moving along at an alarming clip here.  I’ve finished six summer dresses, was averaging two a day even, and am three quarters of the way through knitting a baby blanket.  I was geared up to do another two dresses today, as well as make patterns from two favorite dresses that no longer fit quite right.

But for some reason I couldn’t sleep past 4:30 this morning.  And the nap I had with Hank at 8:30 didn’t fix me.  So now I am a slow knitting zombie with a fierce need for a haircut.  Which is totally unrelated, but seems relevant at the moment.

Happy Thursday.

I currently have roughly 300 photos to go through and edit.  Even though the extent of my editing is to saturate here and desaturate there, sharpen and denoise…you know, the best of what iPhoto has to offer…it takes time.  Time I’m using for other things.  Like making dinner.  Or folding laundry.  Or exploring the wonders of summer with Hank.

I’m also in the midst of a creative hullabaloo.  It’s gotten too hot for knitting, or at least too hot to wear anything knitted, so I’m trying to sew for a bit instead.  Mind you, I’m still hitting the yarn and needles in the evening in front of the T.V., but what time I have for craft is spent at my sewing machine.  Which is fine.  And fun.  But much more of a thing than the knitting.  Yarn and needles can be contained in a basket.  In order to sew I have to get out my box of thread, my box of scissors and chalk pencils, the machine, the fabric, the patterns and fasteners….  And all of that has to take up residence on my dining room table.  And the loose strings.  Little bits of thread inevitably find their way into corners and onto clothes and get tracked into other rooms.  It really is a whole thing.  Add to this the fact that I have about sixteen different projects in mind, ranging from summer dresses for me and the girls, linen lounge pants for John, to quilted toys and changing pad covers, and it is a hullabaloo indeed.

I also need sandals.  And Hank needs to grow her some teeth, the process of which is causing her more than a little upset.  And some cooled fried chicken for dinner would be nice.

Oh, and here is the tattoo I got while down in Georgia a week ago, done by my brother-in-law, who is a genius with needle and ink.  The inspiration for the piece comes from this amazing papercut by the artist Elsita.  The stars stand for S-o-p-h-i-e and each one of us has a character in the image, which is a lovely metaphor for our little family.  I’m hoping to have the color work completed next month:

There are so many things to catch up on.  There are so many moments I’ve savored and understandings I’ve reached, and I’d like to get them all down.  I’d like them sealed up like insects in amber so that one day we can look back on these posts and think: look at how beautiful life can become with time and love and patience.  I want my girls to access the happy as easily as the sad that came before.

When everything is good, I feel less compelled to blog.  When everything is working and enjoyable, I am too busy living it to bother recording it.  I worry that the good things are just uninteresting banalities and don’t make for good reading.  But for whom?  For what audience?  I worry that posts about knitting will be tedious to anyone who isn’t interested in fiber arts.  But who cares?  I am interested in fiber arts.  It’s what I do.  And so it should be an organic part of the blog as much as cake once was or anorexia or office work.  This is my life now.  This extraordinary melange of motherhood and yarn and cleaning and laundry and play-dates and friends and…well, life.  This is what my girls should be able to read about.

It’s not enough to know that your mother was once a fucked up, food-depriving, vomiting, miserable, broken woman.  It’s not enough to have access to the details that justify the mood-swings or the emotional distance.  History at its worst is not enough.  The girls need to know that you can fall far far away, deep into the darkest holes, desperate and disconnected, hopeless and afraid, but still see light if you look up and focus; still see a hand reaching in to pull you back.  Strength is not in the ability to ride it out or get up the next day or fake it fake it fake it for the world around you.  Strength is in looking for that light and in taking hold of that hand and in accepting that you deserve to live outside of the holes.  Resilience is in feeling the sunlight and turning your face up, fuller into its warmth.

And so.  This is now a knitting blog.  This is a mommy blog.  This is a blog about the very basic, very special, very undramatic life that I live.  This is a chronicle of the incredible turns my life has taken and to tailor it down for some notion I’ve created of mass consumption is to create complication where none is necessary.  To worry about any readers other than my daughters makes this whole journey less and less about me.  I’d forgotten that for a while.

Apart from the furious knitting which takes up every free moment of my days, I’ve been making sure to get outside whenever the weather is reasonably nice.  Cold though they may be, the bright, sunny days are wonderful for making the time go by.

Isabel is growing and changing so quickly, too quickly, and I find myself savoring every peep she makes and every grasp of her pudgy little hand and every wide-eyed discovery.  I am completely wrapped in her moment and it is difficult to step away and record it all at the risk of missing something.  Anything.

Lately, I’ve been realizing that she may be my last baby.  As impossible as it may seem to never experience all of this again, it is equally compelling that I can’t wait five to seven years before starting the process.  If I am going to have another child, it will have to be at the sacrafice of Hank’s toddlerhood.  To some degree.  And I don’t know if I’m cut out for that.  For changing two sizes of diaper and having two children with constant need to tend to.  Isabel might be my last baby.  And so I relish her babyhood in a way that I couldn’t have known to relish Sophie’s.

Isabel is now five and a half months old.  She loves all foods fed to her on a spoon, but she favors prunes with oatmeal and beef with corn and carrots the most.  At this point she is eating roughly eight ounces of solid food (not including the quarter cup of cereal mixed in with her fruit in the morning) a day.  She can sit up on her own for a few minutes at a time and can grasp and manipulate her toys.  She is absolutely in love with her sister and follows her movements whenever she is in sight.  If Sophie speaks, Hank practically snaps her neck in turning to smile at her.  Sophie was the first person to make her sister laugh.  Sophie is the only person who works her into a cannibalistic frenzy of affection.  And Sophie is, already, the person Isabel most likes to lean on.

Needless to say, that love is mutual.  There is a calm in our home now that they can properly interact.  Now that Hank can sit and play, or stand and play in her exersaucer, and Sophie can dote on her and teach her how to explore her toys.  Sophie has read her books and replaced her pacifier and comforted her when the wide open world has been too much for a little person like Hank.

For the last few days Sophie has been sick.  What started as a random cough became a two day fever, rattling cough, sneezing and sore throat.  We had to insist she not play with her sister and the whole thing has been miserable.  Yesterday, after I was called in to pick her up from school, and the doctor diagnosed her as just sick, I turned to John and said: they’re sisters and they’re going to swap germs.  We can’t keep them apart. Watching Sophie get in as many kisses to the back of Isabel’s head as she can before leaving for school, I understand how wonderful a thing it is for her to have a sibling.  And how strange it is that she may not have had one had the winds of fate been blowing in another direction.

Here are my girls: