New Project

I'm pretty excited about my new knitting project: http://chicknits.com/catalog/ariann.html
It's going to be in this yarn in lime: http://cache.lionbrand.com//yarns/newcottonease.html
I haven 't knitted at all since Lily was born, so I am pretty stoked.

I’m having a hard time now with, "But what about my life? What am I going to do with my life?" I feel like my thoughts and dreams for myself are these illusive grains of sand sipping though my fingers, falling through the hourglass faster than I can even watch (oh, good grief, how will I feel when I am ninety? Sheesh. Writing it out sounds a bit melodramatic). What will I do about these aspirations? These things I hope for myself? I like to muck around in this crazy selfish pit of mine.

Then Lily and I catch each other’s eyes.

She instantly brightens, her smile flashes, her cheeks round up causing her eyes to become beaming crescent moons, and she giggles, kicking her feet. Then I realize that I shouldn’t spend my time mooning over falling sand, but on the treasures I’ve got here at my feet.

First Karate Class

O.J. watched Lily so that I could join Tiger for a Karate class over the noon hour. It really was fun to get to see him in the middle of a work day, and to be able to share an activity together, just us. The class was very small, which is nice, because the instructor was able to be highly attentive and correct things as we went--I am sure I have many old, bad habits that were never attended to when I took Tae Kwon Do twelve years ago. Our instructor, who is in his 70s and is in better shape than most of the people my age, is leaving for some advanced instruction from his sensei , which he has done every year for the past 30 years. He's been doing Karate for 50 years. I think he just might know what he's talking about.

Mom found my old gi and brought it to me this weekend. I had a difficult time getting my old club's patches off (good sewing job there, mom!) and ended up making some holes in the gi trying to cut it off. Sheesh. I did my best to darn them, but I haven't much practice at darning things. I think it turned out okay. I was also hoping that she would find my white belt with the rest of the stuff but no go, only my red and red/black, so I felt a bit foolish showing up to my first class with a red belt. Fortunately, there was an extra white belt hanging around, but it was a kid's, so I had to improvise a bit. I was surprised that I remembered how to tie them correctly.

There were only three students at the session, which is awesome. We worked on fine-tuning punches and stances, which I am embarassed to say I needed badly. We worked on were some side kicks at the end of the class, and due to the small class size, I got the insturuction I needed to not continually practice something wrong. I could feel myself improving. A fantastic feeling. I hope we can find someone to watch Lily so that I can meet Tiger for one lunch session a week. Going only one night a week simply will not cut it for me.

More on Karate

I think I will give it a whirl. At first I was only going to do it to have an activity that Tiger and I do together, but I have started to psyche myself up for it. If I am going to do it, I want to do it with style, and really kick butt.

Karate Grown-ups

Tiger desperately wants to take Karate. He really wants me to take it too. The only problem is that I have absolutely no desire to take Karate at all. I've already done Tae Kwon Do and it was nothing to capture my heart.

I called up Julia at 3:40, thinking it was pretty jerky of me to ask her to come over to watch Lily on such short notice, but she practically flew out the door in a wave of glee the second I asked her to, and showed up by 4:30 thrilled to death, practically pushing us out the door. She later volunteered to oblige us with her services every Monday night.

Anyway...So we went with J&O to go and check out this dojo (or however you spell it). We had the wrong location at first, so we arrived for the beginning class a bit late. The sensei seemed nice and all, but I still wasn't convinced. Tiger immediately threw his money at the guy and signed up and bought a gi and everything. I couldn't believe that he did that without even observing one full class period, but he is much more decisive than I can ever hope to be, and, well, I'll just say that I'm sure he found a way to do some through Internet research in the last few days. We ended up staying to watch a blackbelt class, and that was pretty cool. One good thing that he pointed out is that there were a lot more people in the advanced class than the beginning, which is a good sign as there are usually a ton of people who start and think it is cool but then drop out before they are anywhere near advanced, so the fact that there are all sorts of really skilled and accomplished people in the club is a good sign to be sure. In all honesty, I've got this idea that a lot of martial arts gigs are a bunch of nerdy teenage boys that are attempting to be cool and failing miserably, but this one didn't seem to be like that at all. In fact, there were several female blackbelts who looked like they meant serious business, and I am always won over by chicks who can kick ass in whatever they are doing.

Blueberry Picking

We left early in the morning to go blueberry picking at a farm, with Sasha, Mike, and the Kids. The day was already a scorcher by 8am. When we got to the farm, the woman joked that if it weren't for the breeze, she would have to charge for sauna along with the blueberries. Thankfully, the breeze was delicious. The farm is situated on a hill overlooking a lush river valley that stretches 180 degrees around the farm. Flower beds ariot with color, thick deciduous forests, current and blueberry shrubs laughing in the breeze, and the corn, much higher than the knee, bowing in waves, were just some of the picturesque sights at the farm. I overheard a man telling someone that the best way to pick blueberries were to tickle them off the bush. So true. We spent two or three hours in the hot sun tickling berries from bush after bush, with Sasha and I taking the kids for breaks in the pleasantly cool shade of the trees, where there were picnic tables and a rope swing for the kids. They also had a little hut of sorts made out of willow saplings planted in a circle. Very cool. We ended up with eight pounds of blueberries, which means that I will just have to make a few pies :-).

We spent the reset of the day at the Saha's parents farm, which was, as always, lovely. It was a bit less Sasha and Mike oriented than usual, because they ended up writing and signing the purchase agreement for the land across the street from her parent's today rather than Monday. I am very excited (and a bit jealous) about their very-much-potential-probably-very-soon move.... I wish we could move out there, too. The writing that could be done in a place of such peace and beauty! Actually, truth be told, if I wanted to become a famous writer, I would need to move to the Lake District in England.

Tiger is even more convinced that we are still going to France...and it is not that I am not convinced, but, well, I thought my babies would be born in France...We both thought we'd be there by now...and now next week looks far away, let alone another country. I am both completely convinced that it will happen and think that it is highly unlikely all at the same time, which I realize makes little to no sense, but that is where I'm at with it.

Lily's Current Achievements

This morning, while Lily was sitting in her little bouncy seat, sunlight was making thin streams through the cord-holes in the window blind, making a pattern on the cabinet next to her. Lily noticed the pattern and was reaching out to try to touch it. I can’t covey in writing how beautiful this vignette was.

Nor can I convey the somehow adorable snorty-pig sounds she makes when she is hungry, the funny way she scrunches up her nose as she goes to eat, the tiny lilting musical sounds she makes as she nurses, how pretty her tiny mouth is against my breast, her dainty hand resting on my skin, or the satisfied drunkenness when she is full. I hope I will carry these in my mind’s eye always.

On Monday Tiger got into the back seat of the car with her, and she reached out to him, as if she wanted him to pick her up. She’s never done that before. He was absolutely crushed that he couldn’t oblige her request.

Happy 231st Birthday, USA

We got a few invites for the 4^th ourselves, so we decided it would be fun to have all those who invited us to come to our place, and ended up having quite a bash. I ended up making two salads and two blueberry pies in the morning, but need not to have been so domestic as many more deserts were brought. The day was quite warm but not repulsively so, and the baby pool was huge with the under-five crowd. All of our best friends were there, and they got to meet and hang out, which was cool for us. I was a bit apprehensive at first, but everyone got along swimmingly. Grandma Julia was absolutely floored by how attentive and helpful all the dads were with the kids. We do hang out with amazing guys (the ladies are no slouches themselves). Though she seemed to think that Tiger is a great dad because of seeing guys like Andre and Mike parent, which is partially cause and effect, but the truth of the matter that they are great dads and husbands having a lot to do with trying to follow the example of Jesus, and having had the examples of dads who had the same goal as well.

Tiger bought a bunch of fireworks (he says he didn’t want to disappoint Emily) and set them off in the back yard. Some of them were actually quite impressive. It gave the men a great opportunity to be boys :-) A great time was had by all, though I don’t know that Lily was keen on the loud bangs.