aura tickles

Beautiful little Boo Diin. I did a spontaneous series of aura sweeps and he loved it - started giggling and saying 'maw...' (which of course means more), again and again.

Did you know you can tickle your child without even touching them?

born artists

after nature center class

(This post has been stuck in draft for TWO years!  SO much has changed since then, including the addition of the third artist child, Takoda Diin!  Publishing this as-is, with a to-be-continued... ;)

My children are born artists. It's really amazing to witness. I'm not just saying that or pushing it on them because I'm an artist, it's just totally natural to each of them in their own ways, part of the fabric of their being. I'm sharing this story as an example of what happens when you follow your kids' lead, from as early as possible, observe, see what they're into, let go of convention, and really give them time and space to go with it and explore themselves and their world. I think some of my biggest lessons as a parent have been letting go of control - you have to pick your battles, and so many are just not worth it; learning to say 'no' (I was never very good at that - sometimes it's necessary); and learning when not to say no, to say yes as much as possible.


Phoenix (my 3-yo son) has always had such an interesting spatial relationship with his world. When he was a baby, if he got in a fussy mood (which was not often, except for one period of about a month when he was cutting teeth and was inconsolable in the middle of the night), accidentally we discovered that he love to be upside down. He was fussing, crying, carrying on, and his Baba held him upside down like a bat, and he was happy. He stopped and was quiet. He loved it.

Then, he didn't crawl much; he would scoot around on his butt, backwards especially, usually with one leg out rather than on hands and knees. Once he could stand well he would climb to the highest point in the room, as often as he could. He walked a good 15 steps one day around 11 mos. when we were at the TaeKwonDo school and then wouldn't do it again for a month. He learned to walk just after his 1st birth day when my mom was visiting and she said, "C'mon Phoenix, walk! You just do this, waddle like a penguin." And he just took off after her, waddling like the little grandson penguin.

my painted boy balancing blocks at the American History Museum

He went through a phase where he was constantly a painted boy. Marker on his face, kinda like a warrior, and he always had to do his nipples and his belly button and his arms too. Or he would draw all over his chest. He had to have the Aang arrow (Avatar The Last Airbender) on his forehead for a few months straight. And when his hair was short, he had to have the arrow extend up over his head and down his back, and had to have the arrows on his hands and feet too. Attention to detail. Convention would say "No, don't let him do that. He can't go out in public like that!" Why not? Who really cares? He's a little boy that wants to decorate himself. It's not hurting anyone, including him! What would hurt him is if I made him feel bad, guilty, or like he did something wrong.

doesn't want to come down!

Then, as he's gotten older, he still loves to climb, and is quite good at it - I'm very confident in his climbing skills. He can scale a fence up 9 feet at least, and would go higher if the fence is tall enough and someone would follow him up there (because of the adults' fear, not his). Definitely no fear of heights. He does things when we're out and about that make people cringe sometimes, like "He's 3! Aren't you afraid he's going to hurt himself?!" But I just watch him calmly, knowing that he has the situation under control. He's not reckless, but brave and assured.

nakey boy wrestlin' with papa in the backyard

He love love loves to wrestle and 'fight' with his dad, and anyone else that will humor him. His dad is his favorite because he can really test his strength and go at it as hard as he wants, knowing that Daddy's Tough and he can't hurt him. He knows when to be gentle and make it a lot of show with little impact. He goes at it in total fun and is so conscious most of the time of who's on the receiving end. He's smiling, laughing, and squealing in delight. He is my peaceful warrior, usually. He most certainly has a temper which flares from time to time though. Then, look out. I'd say his 9-yo sister, unfortunately, is the most frequent recipient of that type of outburst.

He's developed an interesting relationship with objects. He shows a very natural knack for sculpture without any prodding or suggestions from me whatsoever. He just does it instinctively.

When we are at the river (any river - we're river people) he will collect and arrange sticks in a fashion somewhat reminscent of an Andy Goldsworthy installation. He might stick them in the ground in two parallel lines, making what appears to be an old abandoned ribcage of an animal beached in the mud. (If you're unfamiliar with Andy Goldsworthy, he's an amazing 'earth artist' who creates mostly ephemeral land art. If you have Netflix, his movie "Rivers and Tides" is available for instant play, here. Check him out!)

'drawing' with blocks

He will use objects including various shaped building blocks to make lines on the ground, and he likes to build very tall lego block towers just so that he can knock them down. Convention might say, "But wait, you just built it! Why would you knock it down?!"

When I started getting Play-Doh for him, his first instinctive use for it was to wrap his "guys" (the super heroes and other characters) in it. He completely covers them with the Play-Doh, bit by bit, often using his body to smush it onto them well by standing in his chair and leaning on the guy with all his weight, pressing his belly against it to make sure that it's really well stuck. And then, after a while, he'll take it off, and it can go back into the container. He also pretty quickly manages to mix most of the colors together. Convention would have him trying to make a cat or a dog or something, and of course, you mustn't mix the colors all together! God forbid!

a Batman Masterpiece who's missing at the moment :(

When I offer him paint to use, he's not really interested in painting on paper. About a year ago when he was 2 and a half was probably the first time paint was offered to him and he wanted to paint one of his brand-new Batmans. Convention would say "No! You can't paint on that! It's brand new! If you paint on him, it's not going to come off. You're going to 'ruin' him." But hey, what the heck? Who cares? He wants to enhance Batman's appearance. And does so quite well. Now the "guys" have become real works of art. Some of them look soooo cool, they have so much character, with this kind of weathered look. What he likes to do is paint them, and then wash the paint off, sometimes almost immediately after. Now, sometimes he leaves the paint on. And guess what, he uses my (gasp) expensive paints - my acrylics and nice gouache (high-quality watercolors), or the window art paint, which dries like colored translucent plastic. At first, I struggled with "Oh Phoenix, but you're wasting it!" Especially since he would slather it on and then sometimes just wash or peel it off right away. There it goes. Down the drain. But then I thought, Well, small price to pay for his fun, joy, happiness, learning, exploration, and freedom. Big deal. I'll buy more.

Now, there's Adobe. My first born. My thesis project. And my only girl.  Also a true artist.  And considering that two years has passed since I started this post, and this is where I had left off, there's so much more to tell now, so I'll have to dedicate a whole 'nother post to her, soon. To be continued...

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

"Homeschooling Joins the Mainstream"

A little after the fact, but thanks to the internet and podcasts, none-the-matter - you can still check it out, and it's still relevant. 

Kojo Nnamdi, one of my favorite radio hosts, featured this topic last week - "Homeschooling Joins the Mainstream."  Here is a link to the podcast.  For those of you who wonder why we do it, and how it works, this is a great segment which may answer some questions.  It amazes me still how many misconceptions there are about 'homeschooling', one of them being the big question of 'socialization'.  As the guest speaker reveals, one of the 'dirty little secrets' about homeschooling is that we're rarely home.  Although we don't necessarily deal with the daily scramble to rush out the door at some ungodly hour, we have our morning routine, which looks different in different houses, and then, most days, we are out in the real world, with or without friends, interacting with people of all ages, and usually having a dang good time.

Phoenix at Cox Farms, psyched after coming down the huge slide.

Adobe pulls a surfer move as she speeds down the slide.

"Home education works.  Children who are homeschooled score, on average, 20 to 30 points higher on measures of academic achievement - these are standardized tests...."

making baby

Wow.  Talk about 'where does the time go?'... and two, almost three more months have flown right on by...

Where have I been?  The garden pic from my last post looks so cute and demure compared to the jungle that is out there right now.  Mother Nature truly is amazing.  Yes, there's been lots of growth going on, outside and in.  And that's where I've been.  Making baby.  I'm preggo with number three!  I'm still in a bit of shock hearing myself say this.  I always knew I would have two, and I guess occasionally I entertained the idea that I might have one more than that, if things were going really well.  After Phoenix was born, I was pretty adamant that there would be no more.  But Atom and Adobe both worked on me for awhile, and eventually, especially as Phoenix works his way out of babyhood, the idea of doing it just one more time started to sound appealing.  And here we are.  I have to admit, I'm a little overwhelmed at the prospect of being a mother of three - already, two is quite a job.  But, I figure that a woman who can manage three children has a different command of the world.

This was the roughest first trimester yet.  I have been exhausted.  And puky feeling.  And generally feeling like a zombie.  Luckily, I have not actually thrown up once.  Now I am starting to see the light of day, although I must admit I'm still pretty worthless if I don't have coffee in my system by about 2 in the afternoon.  I've been totally off my routine.  But I feel so fortunate to be able to just be, go with the flow, and allow myself all the extra rest my body has needed, and really experience what my body is going through.

Making a baby is alot of work!  It is truly amazing if you think about what is taking place in a woman's body during this time.  We all begin, every single one of us (our current physical selves, anyway), from a single cell!  Yes, we all learn about this at some point in biology, but how many times in your life have you really stopped to consider this fact and marvel at how miraculous that is? 

And then, the being grows, and grows, and grows.  As a mother, this is a truly surreal experience.  First there are the symptoms and first signs of change happening with your body.  Then, you start to feel little flutters of undeniable evidence that there is indeed another being coming alive inside of you.  The bump begins to grow, and grow, and grow.  Next thing you know, you have this 'alien life form' completely taking over your body.   I am especially fascinated by imagining (having experienced it twice now) what the displacement of all my organs looks like.  Because, believe me, they move.  Muscle memory is amazing.  I can feel all my womb's fellow internals preparing already, which is much earlier than with the other two.  The body remembers; it has been through this before and recognizes the current state of affairs, and it knows full well what is to come.  I can feel things shifting already. 

From Lennart Nilsson's A Child Is Born

Now, I'm at about 17 weeks.  This is probably a good estimate of what my baby looks like right about now.  I've been able to feel it move a few times.  It's quite exciting.  Last night, the kids and I were playing with the stethoscope to see if we could hear anything.  We heard some sounds, but weren't sure if they were the baby or my own body.

I feel so thankful to be able to take time to connect, with my own body, and with the little spirit who is taking form in me now.  And indeed, I feel thankful to do it one more time.  It is a truly miraculous experience, all of it, the pregnancy, the labor, the birth, and birthing of oneself as a mother, even when it's not the first time. 

When I was pregnant with Adobe, there was so much going on, I was so busy, that I don't feel like I really was able to take much time to connect with myself and the little baby inside of me.  I was finishing my Fine Arts degree at the Corcoran, teaching tap 6 days a week and running my performance company, dcArtistry:tap&drum - basically running non-stop like a chicken with my head cut off.  Plus, there was a lot of turmoil in my personal life.  With Phoenix, things were much more stable, and a bit calmer, but I still don't feel like I really took the time to connect with my self and my baby the way I could have.

Fortunately, with both of them, the labor and birth, despite being quite long, were awesome.  Home birth with both, over two weeks 'past due date' with both, over 24 hours labor with both after a month of practice contractions, and Phoenix was born in water.  All quite hard work, and exhausting, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.  I'm planning another water birth at home and drawing on some new inner resources this time.  It would be nice if things move along a little quicker this time.  You know what they say, "third time's a charm."

Another thing that will bring me a special connection this time around:  I've decided, with enthusiastic encouragement from local midwife Tammi McKinley, to offer childbirth classes specifically geared toward women/couples who plan to birth either at home or a birth center.  The classes will incorporate body-mind connection, visualization, art, spirituality, and ceremony/ritual, with influences from various resources, as well as my own research and experiences.  I'm developing my curriculum now, and plan to launch this fall.  (See boundlessbirth.com ).  I will continue to offer my photography services, as well as Reiki for women & babies, and individualized art sessions.  More on all that to come. 

8 years ago today...

As of 4:56 a.m., 8 years ago today, I birthed my baby Adobe.  Ah, what a wild ride it's been!  If only I knew then what I know now :)  How life has changed, in so many ways...

Well, for one, I was still under the impression that my father gave me, and had been professing to people while I was pregnant - "Oh, everyone thinks that your whole life has to stop when you have kids, that everything has to change.  That's not true!  You go on with life, you have a child with you now, but you just clothe it, feed it, give it love, & it's all good!"  Hah!

I guess that approach worked for him - he was a single father, and that's how he did it, pretty much.  And I turned out fine.  I think overall he did a really great job of being both papa and mama, and he raised me to be very independent.  But, we often don't do things the way our parents did them, do we?  The idea is to continually improve upon the situation.  All any of us can do as parents is strive to find balance in our lives with our children.  As we reflect upon what was 'done' to us by our parents or whoever raised us - discover what was great & not-so-great, or in some cases, plain terrible - the best thing we can do is to release the wrongs and repeat the rights, and forge ahead with new ways of our own.  As I look around and see how people are raising their children, I am continually struck by how each generation is reacting to the one before.  I'll write a whole 'nother post at some point about this - the days of the house wife, the role of Women's Lib, the nuclear family, the explosion of single parenthood, and so on...

The main thing to say here, is that I wanted that baby so badly - the maternal urge was so strong - and I'm so glad that she was born.  Those of you who were in my life at the time, which was mostly my Corcoran crew, saw what a crazy ride I was on, with school full-time, Adobe born in my thesis semester (art school - Corcoran College of Art + Design), working almost every day of the week (teaching tap & running a performing company), and strappin' that sweet baby on me everywhere I went.  I wish that I'd gotten the partner part right from the get-go, but alas, I'm one of those people who has had to learn some lessons the hard way.  I really wanted to believe it was right, that it was going to work out, but I knew somewhere deep down that it was not meant to be. And I stuck it out as long as I could.  I'm sure I was not the easiest partner at that time either.  Life is real, and we all gotta do what we gotta do.

So, on this 8th anniversary of my sweet girl's birth, I give thanks, and I reflect upon all the changes over the past several years.  Now I can just say that I am so glad to have a real, beautiful, awesome family.  Here they are, acting silly on the Photo Booth.  For awhile I thought it would just be Adobe & I for the rest of the ride, but often, just when you're about to give up, the unexpected happens.  I reconnected with my old friend Atom, aka Adam, aka Slahmed, and together, we will continue to make history...

Thank you Adobe, for being born, for being my grounding, for being such a fireball, such a great big sister, and such a sweetheart.  Thank you Atom, for all you do, for being such a great father and partner, for supporting us in so many ways, and for enabling me to learn what a real family is like, since I didn't exactly learn that as a child.
I love you guys.

My girl got to have ice cream for breakfast - Blueberry Cheesecake Custard - from the Dairy Godmother.  Yum!  Happiness is an important component of health.  Happy Birth Day Darling!

today was a good day

Beautiful Adobe woke up wart-free this morning.  Our beautiful girl developed a wart on her chin some months ago.  First it appeared as a tiny little bump, and then it grew, and grew, and grew.  Atom teased her that she got it from being mean to her parents.  She was very self-conscious about it.  So, last night Atom proved his skills as family surgeon.  He very carefully cut it off with an Exacto blade.  Yes.  I know it sounds crazy, but it barely hurt her at all, and it seems to have worked like a charm.  So that was great, because it made her so happy that it was gone.
   I've been in a bit of a funk recently - I think partly that the suffering of the world has been weighing heavily on my heart.  But today was a pretty good day.  Trying to stay in the moment helps me so much.  Phoenix and I went to visit with our mama friend Jeneen and our two smaller friends Haiku & Rilke.  It was kind of a surreal morning somehow.  We haven't seen them in over a year, and it was very grounding.  On the way there, I was listening to WPFW & they happened to have a show which was addressing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  Atom & I have been talking about that recently, & I've realized that I know very little about what is at the heart of the conflict.  So I turn on the radio, & there was a program that helped make the whole picture a bit clearer to me.  Then, I was very moved by something the hostess said at the end of the broadcast, which is that the people have Haiti have paid a great sacrifice - the souls who gave their lives in this catastrophe have brought people together, united the human family in compassionate acts to help our fellow brothers and sisters, whether we send them food, money, doctors, or our love & prayers.  And that is exactly what humanity needs right now, solidarity, compassion, empathy, love, and peace and justice, which are much harder to obtain.
   So I really appreciated what she had to say, & then we had a wonderful morning with the munchkins, playing at their house, snacking, chatting, strolling, & exploring down by the creek... For a little while, it was raining little ice balls & then started to snow, big fat wet clusters gently floating down through the sky.  Wish I'd gotten a picture dangit!  It was captivating.     
   Then we had some lunch together, Phoenix and I came home (he was screaming & crying - he did not want to leave, but passed out within 5 minutes of being in the car), I did some work, picked up Adobe from the bus stop, invited one of Adobe's newer best friends Katy over, all went for a treat at the local coffee shop.... Then we came back here, the kids got to play, Atom & I hung out in the studio for a long while diggin' deep in conversation while he tidied up & worked on a xylophone he's making from wrenches, ordered some Thai food, and little Miss Adobe got to have Katy spend the night.
  Yeah.  It was a good day.  And now, I'm exhausted.  Time to fold up.