good to be back

Yes, I'm back!  I have really missed writing here.  Why have I been gone so long?

Well, two reasons: I had a long, drawn-out pregnancy that I really wanted to enjoy, but it was so difficult (a more detailed story of that and the birth, which went fine in the end, later...) that I couldn't really focus on much other than myself, my body, my family, and the little life that was growing in me, more, and more, and more, and more!

laboring away with my enormous melon of a belly and my sweet supportive husband Atom

Tammi checking fetal heart tones

our boy the moment after he was born, when he still had no name...

Takoda Din was born early March 7, at home in a birth tub, almost a full month after his supposed 'due date', after a very long and arduous labor, weighing in at exactly 9.5 pounds.  It was awesome, exhausting, and so incredibly empowering!  My lovely, amazing, and very very patient midwife, Tammi McKinley, was at my house for over 36 hours and never once made me feel pressured in the least.  Atom kept telling me all the right things just when I needed to hear them, when I was totally exhausted and felt like I couldn't go on. 

Reason 2:  So, after I got that over and done with and rebirthed myself yet again, I came to Blogger, and things were all messed up!  They had changed things, and there were some weird bugs going on, and I was so frustrated!  I thought 'What is goin' on here?!  Am I going to have to switch everything over to Word Press?  Or to iWeb where I have much more control of everything visually?'  But, I guess Blogger was having some growing pains too.  But now, today I came here, and everything's more new and pretty fabulous so far!  So I posted something I'd had in draft for months (the Race to Nowhere post).  Thank goodness they got it together, because I really need to write.  And you can tell I'm really excited, because I usually abhor gratuitous use of explanation points!  :)

That's it for now, just wanted to fill you in, in case you've been wondering what happened to me, or happen to notice the huge gap in time here....

'Til next time.... I promise it won't be another 8 months.

And here he is just two weeks ago!  My beautiful angel, baby #3.

sitting up independently for the first time really, at our friend's house <3

geocaching, a bed of nails, the sun, and land art

Last week was another fun one - the title about sums up the variety...
I'm not going to recap the whole week in detail, just some highlights.

This post will be more pictorial - excuse all the scrolling but ... enjoy. :)

As some of you may or may not know, we've started a small collective where we gather with a few other families every Tuesday & Thursday, and often other days as well.  We mulled over what to call it, and I suppose we'll be calling it the Boundless Kids Tribe.  I also have affectionately referred to it in passing as the Free to Be Me Collective, but I think the vote is for the former.  And I guess it makes sense to go with the whole Boundless thing...

Some highlights from last week:
Last Tuesday, the older kids started the new session of the Homeschool Drama Club.  Melanie, Kazha, Phoenix and I picked up some goodies from the fabulous Lebanese Taverna & had a picnic outside on the grass where the older kids joined us when class was over.  Then we all went over to Hayes Park & the kids played for a couple hours.  My little daredevil Phoenix climbed up a chain link fence til his feet were almost as high as my head.  One of the older boys was spotting him.  Then he climbed back down.  All by himself.  Pretty impressive for a 2-year-old.

On Wednesday we went to the Maryland Science Center at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  If you're in this area and haven't taken your kids there, go!  Super awesome!  We met our friends Kristen, Lucca, Marcella, & Kozhin there to check out their exhibit on geocaching & had fun checking out other stuff as well.

 As you can see, there are no strings on this harp - it has light beams!  And you could change the sounds that it made.  Fun.

Phoenix & Marcella were having a little face-off.  :)  They love each other, but as they are both used to being the youngest alot of the time, neither of them likes the other to tell them what to do.

If you don't know what geocaching is, go to geocaching.com for info - but in short, you use your handheld GPS device to discover hidden treasures near or far, whatever you wish!  Sounds really fun for family adventure.  The exhibit - eh.  That's how Kristen & I both felt about it.  It was very informative, but a bit dry for kids, too much reading, not enough hands-on.  I guess the idea is that you check out the exhibit about what it is & how you do it, then you could go on a geocaching adventure in the harbor area, but we didn't know that & didn't plan for it, so.... The kids had fun anyway.

 This is when we still had their attention, at the beginning, before they all went running off thru the maze to break the codes and find caches and figure this all out.

Phoenix got mad at me at one point & ran off.  He was laying on the floor pouting, until Marcella found him and broke that hard shell.

I'm looking at them through a fabric mesh, that's why these two images look strange.  Don't expect professional photo work here from me people.  The lighting conditions in this place were difficult to work with.

From there, on to some other parts of the Center:

Okay, this was definitely one of our favorite parts of the whole place!  There was a sheet of plexi that you first laid down on, with all the holes drilled in it for the nails to pass through.  Then, once you've laid down, the woman pressed a button and the plexi receded, leaving you on the bed of nails.  I tried it out too.  Totally comfortable!  Here is Lucca.

And Adobe...

 Kozhin...

Little Phoe...

  The next thing was pretty cool too.  Did you know that to your brain, cold + warm = hot?  There were metal bars, cold from one side, warm from the other.  When you put your hand in the middle, where you could feel both simultaneously, it felt hot!  Ooooh, trippy!

Optical illusion.... hypnotized!  One down...

And another one bites the dust...

Here are our cuties!

And next - ah yes, payphones!  Remember those?  Also known as Dial-a-Germ.

Phoenix's cave man side shows itself a little...

And this thing simulated your digestive tract.  If you could move that ball through the mesh tube, it made the gurgling sounds that your guts make!  Yeah!  (Sorry for the excessive use of exclamation points throughout the post; I'm just a bit excited...)

Next, of course Phoenix had to get on the Dial-a-Germ.  I had daddy in mind here; I knew he would 'love' this as he's pretty grossed out by germs in public places.

Not sure what he was listening to here, but he looks so darn cute!

Oh lordy, okay, I know it's alot of pictures, but wait, there's more!  I just wish blogger would let me format this differently so I could do a gallery with captions or something.  Wordpress can do that, but alas, I didn't like the interface!  So.... in the future, I'll try to whip up quick slideshows instead.

That's it for Wednesday's adventures.  We left, and the kids came with me to Oxon Hill where I teach tap on Wednesday nights.  Long day.

On Thursday, our little tribe met up at Alcova Heights Park.  The kids played, meandered in the creek, snacked; the moms talked, about all manner of things.

Alcova Heights, aka 'the Creek playground' is one of my favorite spots.  I've been taking Adobe there since before she could walk.

I suggested that today might be a good day to discuss Daylight Saving Time and the Spring Equinox, since one just happened, and one was about to happen.  (Yay Spring!)  What is Daylight Saving?  Why does it happen?  Who 'invented' it?  What exactly is the Spring Equinox?  What are some cultures whose New Year corresponds? etc... We discussed all this over a picnic lunch, and then we made some 'land art' together, inspired by the fabulous Andy Goldsworthy, who Melanie & I both love.  We collected sticks, branches, and leaves to make a sun, in honor of the longer daylight hours bestowed upon us by the Equinox, & Daylight Saving (sort of - well at least it's light later in the day...)

Yes, that's Phoenix sitting in the middle of the sun - Adobe put his hair in piggy tails, and everyone was calling him a 'she' all day.

Skyler is approving the work.

 Beautiful momma Melanie...

Sweet Amman at this point then asks if he can sing a song, which turns out to be, "You Are My Sunshine..." Awesome!  And everyone joins in as they continue working. 

Kazha says 'hmmmm, what else does it need?'....

Placing the final touches... momma Stephanie, and the girls.

At this point, I video'd everyone holding hands and singing the song again - so cute!  Don't have a way to share that here, and haven't uploaded it anywhere...

Here is Melanie in fetal position inside our sun.

That was fun!

Friday, we handled some business at home and then met the tribe and other folks at the park.  Phoenix was so beat that he fell asleep around 6:30ish and slept straight through til the next morning.  Saturday, first day of spring! - it was nice & warm.  We busted out the kiddie pool, the kids played, we did yard work, picked up mulch, I trimmed the rose bushes, and stuff like that.  Sunday, more work outside, making the front and side of the house look all nice.  I rescued our violet tree (or whatever it is) that was being suffocated by ivy - pulled it all off, which was quite a job, and Atom took out two thorny bushes on the side of the house (huge job), and we did a bunch more stuff.  Hard labor.  Fun.  No, seriously, I like it.  I know it's not as fun for Atom since he does hard labor at work all week.  But it's different when it's your home.  Therapeutic.  More pictures to come.

And if you've stuck around til the end, guess I'm not doing too bad, cuz I know this was a long one.  Thanks! 

there is no religion higher than truth

Aah, the New Year.  The first couple of months are always an interesting time of year for me as I move from the struggle to sort out what's meaningful from the holiday chaos/charades/consumerist whirlwind that everyone seems to find themselves sucked into, in one way or another, from the end of October into January.  If I'm in a cynical mood, 'the holidays' could be seen as one excuse after another to buy a bunch of crap that you or someone else doesn't really need, get drunk, eat too much, overindulge, and get caught up in a whirlwind of empty sentimentality & token phrases that don't actually mean anything.  But I can also enjoy certain aspects to a degree - I have to say, I do actually like some of the Christmas music, the decorations, pretty lights, the spirit of celebration; people tend to be a little more friendly to each other, and exchanging gifts can be fun, if you don't go overboard with it.  When I'm in right mind, I know that this time of year, winter time, is simply a time of rest & renewal, a time to appreciate the beauty & wonder of Mother Nature, to pull close the ones we love & tell them "Thank you.  Thank you for being a part of my life.  Thank you for being the beautiful person that you are.  Thank you for helping me to learn & grow in this adventure as a human being.  Thank you for loving me & receiving my love."
   Thus, my relationship with 'the holidays' is kind of like my relationship with organized religion.  It's just not in my make-up, my fabric as a human being.  I knew from kindergarten and first grade in a Catholic school in rural Indiana that it was not for me.  I felt a lack of questioning around me, incongruities, and I was suspicious of the Story of Creation (On the first day, God created.... On the second day...  and On the seventh day he rested....) that was being taught as a literal occurrence.  And, there was Real Life at that point in life - the reason we moved to Indiana.  My grandfather killed himself because my grandmother was becoming mysteriously ill; just when they were ready to settle into retirement in Florida where they had just bought a house, life took a drastic turn in another direction, and he just couldn't bear it.  Shortly afterward, they discovered that my grandmother had 16 brain tumors, from cancer that had started in her lungs and spread.  Within one year, she deteriorated to the state of infancy before my very eyes, and early one morning, she passed away, as I lay close by sleeping.  The relationships were all complicated emotionally - I could write a whole chapter on that alone - and honestly, only now, 30 years later, do I consider how those particular events must have shaped me.  It was the end of a husband & wife, the end of a father & son, the end of a son & his mother.  And I was just at the beginning.
   So, I found myself feeling total rejection of organized religion and Christianity in particular, for many years.  However, I was decidedly not atheist.  This led me to ask alot of questions, read different things, have lengthy conversations with my dad, my mom, and others, and to arrive at some interesting hypotheses.  At some point, perhaps when I was 18, 19, 20, I began to realize that perhaps I was missing something by my general dismissal of organized religion.  I began to read, alot - esoteric teachings especially, and embrace the good things many of the main religions have to offer.  I read up on certain religions, read some of the Bible and the Qu'ran, teachings of the Buddha, and delved deeper into what was at the heart of each of these teachings.  And a pattern emerged.  I began to feel that in many ways, they were each saying the same things - just in different languages.  Some of the details were different, and all, it seemed to me, were diluted or distorted in various ways from the original teachings, for a variety of reasons - probably first & foremost, no separation of church & state, of religion from law, for centuries upon centuries.  That's a topic for a whole 'nother post. 
   The point is, I realized that it's all about what speaks to you, what helps you find meaning in life, what helps you move forward when the burdens of life seem too much to bear.  So, if Jesus is your homeboy, that's great; if it's Allah that you praise, that's great; if it's the Buddha, Krishna, or whatever other name you choose for the Higher Power, or even if you are an existentialist, atheist, whatever, that's great, if it rings true for you.  We are all seeking balance in our lives, reacting to & interacting with our upbringings, our cultures, our surroundings, our peoples' stories, our own personal stories.... Where religion translates to war is when one people try to force their way on another people, when people try to control one another, try to say that their path is the only Path... We are a people of many languages and many ways, but we are family.
   "There is no religion higher than truth."  And there is no Truth higher than Love.  It is written on my soul.