Yeah, Write

The ABC's of Keira: B

Until the last few months, when Keira really started experimenting with sounds and language, I didn't realize how important the letter B is to a baby. And since it's such a simple sound to make, I wonder if that's how babies came to be called babies in the first place.

Our blond and blue-eyed darling now says a handful of words, that all sound the same ("buh-buh" or "bah-bah"), but I can distinguish between them fairly easily by context.

She says:

baby (referring to herself, to her Baby Stella doll, and to random babies she sees in pictures)
bye-bye
bellybutton (sounds a bit more like "bey-buhhh")
bottle
binkie (sounds like bi-bi)
booby*

*Being a bottle-fed baby from the start, Keira never had a real need to be fully acquainted with this word, but one day a bit of mom's cleavage was escaping the confines of her clothing, and Keira poked it and made her signature inquiring "uh?" sound. Since we spend all day pointing at and identifying things, mom (aka me) replied "booby," quite absentmindedly. She plucked out her binkie and repeated "buh-buh." And, unlike the many other words we say all day long, this one has stuck. It's time to be careful what I say around the little sponge. She now also pokes other people's boobies and says "buh-buh" without prompting. I just grin and shrug.

In other B news, Keira's adoring grandma Beverly keeps her dressed beautifully in fashionable duds. Keira has an aunt Becky, who adores her too, and cousins named Breanna and Brock. And she has a favorite bear that she cuddles during naptime. Her birthmom, Anneliese, has a larger bear just like this one, and we took pictures of Keira with her baby bear every month until her first birthday.

The ABC's of Keira: A

A is a very important letter in Keira's little life.

First of all, she was adopted at just 2 days old. The gift of adoption has blessed more lives than she, or her birth parents, may ever know.

Her mother's name is Angie and her birthmom (or "tummy mommy" which might be the term we'll use until she's old enough to understand this in more depth) is Anneliese. She has seven aunts who love her more than words can say.

And of course the word adorable has to make it onto my list. Her perfect little features, so unique to my little girl, strike me daily with wonder. And yes, I even think it's cute when she screeches like a baby pterodactyl all day long. Annoying? Yes, but adorable too.

All in all, I am in awe at the blessings and challenges of motherhood. Perhaps it is because I had to wait for so long, but this journey, though difficult, has been immensely rewarding. And I look forward to what the future brings.

 

Tiny baby Keira, with her aunt Alli, wearing a little knit hat from her aunt Karste.

About the A illustration
A while back, I found a cool old children's book at a thrift store (D.I. for you locals) called Peppermint Fence, which I promptly tore apart to make a notebook. But I had to save this cute alphabet section, "Nonsense Alphabet," in the back of the book for some future project. When I recently stumbled across the torn-out pages, I had the idea to write about Keira's life, one letter at a time.

I'll post a few new letters per month until I complete all 26. Feel free to join me in this journaling project, and post links to your own letter-by-letter ruminations in the comments section!

The Truth About Babies

I have 10 nieces and nephews, ranging in age from 12 years to 2 months, so I knew this before, as everyone does and mentions a million times a day, all over the world.

But now that I have a 14-month-old toddling around my house (who is, at the moment, emptying my purse onto the floor and exploring every compartment, object, and zipper), I know this personally, viscerally, completely.

The truth is, babies grow SO fast.

Yeah, I knew that. Everyone knows that. But then I see a picture like this one, taken just a year ago, and I'm halted in my tracks.

This photo captures my every sense. I'm stunned at the sight of her tiny fist next to my grandpa's thumb—how his massive welder's hands cradle her little pajama-clad body.

I look at this picture, and I am instantly enveloped (as Keira must have been) in that familiar, musky scent that always clings to grandpa's plaid cowboy shirts: a combination of Old Spice, horses, and that sandpaper-like soap he keeps in his downstairs bathroom. He smells like love and comfort and dependability.

At the same time, I'm drinking in the fresh newness of Keira, all slathered in baby lotion, with her whisper-soft cotton clothes carrying traces of Dreft baby detergent. She smells like hope and miracles and the future.

I want to live in this picture, basking in the light from the window that is filtered through the branches of my mom's Christmas tree, newly in love with my new baby daughter, remembering the hours I spent cocooned on grandpa's lap when I was little.

This is nostalgia. This is the power of a photo.

Journaling Prompt
Find a photo that causes an emotional response in you and write about what you see or hear or smell as you imagine yourself inside that photo. Describing what something smells like is not an easy thing to do, and almost whatever you write will feel inadequate to you, but it is a wonderful exercise for helping you connect very deeply to a memory. Try it! And share it on your blog, in your journal, or on a scrapbook page.

Note: as you try to describe what something or someone smells like, you are bound to discover the woeful lack of adequate synonyms for the word "smell." After checking my favorite online Thesaurus, I even Googled the phrase "other words for smell" and came across a new-to-me website, the "Super Thesaurus," that clearly does NOT know what a verb is. Here's a screen capture:

Watch Me on Internet TV

MyCraftChannel.com launched yesterday, and my new show with Wendy Smedley, Books & Crafts, debuts today. Exciting!

Check us out as we talk about journaling in lists and share the List It! products from Ella Publishing Co. Oh, and we'll also tell you exactly how to solve all your communication problems with your teen (wink).

To celebrate, visit the Ella blog today, too, for a 10 percent coupon code off of any of our seven List It! products.

Also, in every week's episode, we share our book pick of the week. Here are this week's picks, conveniently linked up just for you.

  

It's All About Perspective

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Ina's 1969

The view from my back yard. That hideous tangle of power lines gives me a jolt of annoyance every time I look out my back window. Or it used to.

Enter a houseguest, visiting from one of the flatter states. She and I were standing on my back patio, and just as I had opened my mouth to apologize for living in an old neighborhood with ugly, exposed power lines (when so many of the surrounding neighborhoods have buried lines), she said:

"Look at that view! I'd love to have such gorgeous mountains right in my back yard. You are so lucky."

My mouth snapped shut.

Of course. It really is a stunning view. My focus has been all wrong.

It's my choice to look past the ugly and drink in the beauty just beyond, rising majestically in the distance.

Journaling Prompt
What areas of your life could use a new view? Have you had a recent epiphany that changed your perspective about the blessings in your life? What ugly scenes, memories, and moments have hidden beauty looming behind them, if you'd only open your eyes and see? Take a moment to write about it.

Baby Photos: 7 Months Old

Welcome to "Old News Weekend." Or, in honor of the vintage craze, let's call the next few posts "Vintage News." I'm trying to keep up with everything folks, I really am. And better late than never is a motto I live by.

In any case, Keira Jane Lucas turned 7 months old on May 2, 2011, which means it's almost time to take her 8 month photos! Here's how cute she was 3 weeks ago.

"I'm not very good at the numbers thing yet, but this is a pretty big one. I'm 7 months? Already?"

"Let me check the belly sticker package...yep, that's right! It says right here...7 months old."

"I've got an idea! Hand me your camera lens cover, mommy, and I promise not to cry. Now if you take it away from me, I WILL cry, I'm just warning you. But as long as I have it in my hand, I'll look at the camera and cooperate. Deal?"

"You didn't think I was serious, did you? This shows you just how serious I am. (And by the way, do you like my teeth?)"

"I've got the lens cap, but I'm still a little but upset. Give me a second while I collect myself."

"There. How's this? This is me, pontificating. I've got big plans and dreams on my mind right now. This lens cap really helps me think. Thanks for understanding."

"There. And here's my sweet-as-an-angel sidelong glance, with my hand raised in perfect, delicate, baby chubbiness. Also, I've decided Nikon doesn't need quite so much free press."

Journaling Prompt
Try the technique above with photos of your own! Choose a set of photos and study them for a second to imagine what the subject would say if he, she, or it could talk. It's especially fun with baby or pet photos, but it can also be quite rewarding with photos of one's spouse who may or may not be very comfortable sharing "feelings" or whatever—just share them for him!

Disaster Disclaimer
I always feel awkward blogging about happy things when there are people suffering so much—both close to home and far away. I don't know about you, but it is a constant struggle for me to empathise truly and sincerely without dissolving into a quivering heap of sadness when I think of all the misery in the world.

Today, I spent the afternoon with a 7-year-old little girl whose needs just broke my heart. I have an extended family member who's in extreme distress. I got an email from a friend of a friend of a friend living near Joplin, Missouri, that made me want to hop in my car immediately and help in the rescue and clean-up efforts. And my chest tightens whenever I think of the devastation in Japan.

Yes, sometimes I feel the weight of the world so acutely.

So I remind myself that saving the world at large is not my job. But there are certain people at certain times who are my job, and I pray I'll always know who they are and be able (and willing) to help. Right now, I have a baby and a stepson (now living with us full time) who have very real needs, and I'm humbled and honored that I have the calling and the capacity to meet those needs daily. So I serve them with all my heart, and I do what I can in my own little corner of the world. Then, with what's left over, I reach out when and where I can.

For everyone else, I'm grateful for prayer and miracles, hope and helping hands. May they find their way to those in the greatest need tonight.

Click one of the logos to donate

Happy Birth Mother's Day

photo by Elisha Snow

Tomorrow is Mother's Day.

But in adoption circles (particularly in open adoption circles), the Saturday before is designated as Birth Mother's Day.

The first time I heard about this holiday-before-the-holiday, I selfishly thought "but...I don't want to share!" This is the same thought I had the very first time I heard about open adoption itself.

But throughout this process, and after meeting Keira's birthmom, I learned something profound. The only reason I have a little darling in owl pajamas snuggled into the crook of my arm right now is because someone else was willing to share with me. So who am I to say "mine, mine, mine"?

None of us has sole "ownership" of any baby--ours to do whatever we please with. No. I believe that all children are first and foremost God's children, and they are entrusted to us for a time to love and nurture, to teach and be taught by.

I honor birthmothers everywhere today. Every time I meet a woman who has placed her own tiny baby in another woman's arms or discover that someone I've known for years was a birthmom long ago, I feel love, compassion, and admiration for her. And gratitude.

And with the sure knowledge that I am Keira's mother, the mother who will be with her for all of life's milestones, big and small, the mother who has the responsibility for her health and happiness every day, it is no sacrifice at all to share this holiday weekend.

Anneliese was her first mother. I find it very appropriate to honor her first, the day before I can enjoy the honor of my first Mother's Day.

Journaling Prompt
If you're a mother, write in your journal about the journey (whether physical, legal, emotional, or spirtual) you went through to bring each of your children into your life.

If you're hoping and praying to be a mother, write about the journey you're on right now. What are your hopes? What are your fears? How do you feel?

If you don't expect to become a mother at all, write about your own journey into your mother's arms. If you don't know enough of the details, take the time tomorrow to ask her or someone else who knows the story.

Happiness in Hindsight

I have tons to do today (who doesn't?) but I had to pause and capture some thoughts that have been coursing through my head.

I've always been puzzled by the quote: "Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember." ~Oscar Levant

I wasn't always sure I agreed with that. I know I've experienced happiness, joy, or delight and recognized the feeling at the time. But the truth of this phrase is becoming more and more clear to me.

Recently, after a 6-mile training run for an upcoming half-marathon, I included the following as my Facebook update: "It's all coming back to me now: long runs are only fun in hindsight."

Because, once the run is over, the side aches and swollen fingers and mind games (just run to that red car, okay you can make it to that tall tree, okay now just one more block...) melt completely away, and I'm left with the distance my legs carried me. And feelings of power and pride. Looking back, that run was a good time.

And that somehow reminds me of that Baz Luhrman "talk-song" from the '90s, which was based on a graduation speech by Mary Schmich. It started, "Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth."

I loved that. I'd turn it up and soak it in whenever it played on the radio of my gold Mazda 626. And I made this phrase my mantra. I said to myself again and again, "Enjoy this. Appreciate this." But how?

Part of me wanted to prove wrong the next part of the song: "Oh, nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked."

And now that the years have passed, I get it. I'm hardly old and decrepit. I'm not quite ready for the rest home. But I get it. It's true.

I couldn't appreciate the power and beauty of youth, not really, not until after the fact. (Which is something I try to tell my 24-year-old sister all the time.) Because along with the power and beauty, there was angst, there was insecurity and uncertainty, there were heartbreaks and hurdles.

But, oh, I tried to appreciate being young. I'd look in the mirror and tell myself to be happy about my lack of wrinkles, the youthful glow of my skin. And I was as happy as I could be about it. But without the context of age and experience, how could I appreciate it, really? At the moment, I was who I was and couldn't imagine being anyone else.

"The question before me...is how to be alive,...as this mere singing wren, who thinks he's alive forever, this instant, and may be." ~Wendell Barry

And all that looking in the mirror would do was make me afraid for the time when those things would no longer be true. If I love my smooth, clear skin now (which, let's face it, was never as clear and smooth as I'm now remembering it), won't I hate it when the dreaded crow's feet and smile lines carve their way into my features? Won't I be desperate to go back?

This has all arisen because of an inescapable fact: babies accelerate time. They do. And this is coming from a person who is NOT unacquainted with the phrase "they grow up too fast." I have a 6 ft. 3 in. guitar-playing teenager living in my house who was a 7-year-old, blond, Harry Potter lookalike just moments ago. (He looked like the original book cover art, not Daniel Radcliffe, mind you.)

So now, with Keira Jane playing at my feet while I type, I tell myself, "this goes so fast, enjoy every moment."And I do focus a lot of energy on watching, listening, cuddling, and trying to memorize everything about her. Remember this, remember this, remember this.

But try as I may, there's no way I can appreciate her enough right now. I'll only be able to see her clearly when I look back. And appreciating her now will not keep her small. The more I tell myself "appreciate, appreciate, appreciate," the more I feel like I'm just watching sand slither through an hourglass.

When I hold my friend's sweet baby, Audrey Claire, almost three months younger than Keira Jane, I find I've already forgotten what it feels like to hold an infant so delicate. My little one has five months of baby chub, dimpled fists that can grab necklaces and hair, fingers that have found their way into her mouth. She's alert and exploring her world, no longer sleeping off the disorienting ordeal of birth. And I'm stunned at how quickly I've forgotten how it feels to hold one so young.

When Keira was teeny tiny, almost every visitor who came to hold her would say, "Oh, I can't remember how to hold them when they're this small." They'd reach out so gingerly, afraid they'd shatter her. "Oh, come on. Here," I'd say and just hand her over. I got used to her tininess so quickly. Yes, she was delicate, but she was strong, hardy, not as breakable as we think.

But that moment of being an experienced mother of a 2-week-old baby is already gone. Now I know how to hold a 4 1/2 month old. And soon, that will be a memory, too.

So I take photos. And I write things down the moment I feel them--doing my best to hang on to things that are so very fleeting. And I'm already grateful that I'm trying to stem the tide of time, that impossible task.

On Sunday, January 23, 2011, at 5:09 a.m., I wrote this in my iPhone Momento app:
"I want to memorize the smell, the feel of her cheek, perfect, plump and smooth, when she's heavy with sleep. I nuzzle the folds of her neck and drink her in."

And then it comes back to me.

Cool Giveaway for My Fellow Procastinators

If you tend to leave things until the very last minute, as I so dearly love to do, this is one time you'll be rewarded for your procastination!

Today, I'm giving away two 2011 planners to two lucky winners! And these aren't just any planners, they're customizable PHOTO planners from Per Annum. I have one 6 x 8 and one 4 x 6 version to offer to two lucky readers. Here's hoping there are at least two of you out there who don't have their planning system for 2011 quite figured out yet.

But here's another tip: You could easily use this as a journal! Write just one meaningful memory, thought, experience, or tidbit every single day in 2011. It's a great way to get into a regular journaling habit, and the small space on the week-at-a-glance pages takes the pressure off of needing to write very much. (I've done the daily journaling thing a couple of times, as you can see in this article, and it's incredibly worthwhile.)

Here's what I've done with mine:

I decorated the cover and punched tabs (using my McGill label punch) for each month out of patterned paper.

I included my guiding word for 2011 on the cover. (It's a little thing Ali Edwards started a few years ago. Choose one word to live by for the year. My word is "purpose." I want to be purposeful with all my daily decisions live a life that's infused with meaning and intention.)

I decorated the inside cover as well and covered up the title page with labels and rub-ons that match my overall look. I included a list of things that I think are important to aim for every single day, and I've made these things additional goals.

There's a photo sleeve that starts off each month of the year, and I plan to create a new one each month as the year progresses. This is the January sleeve, and it includes two favorite pictures from 2010. On the reverse side of this page, I'll include a favorite photo or two from January 2011 at the end of the month, and also create February's page, featuring favorite photos from last February.

Here's the January month-at-a-glance page. Not much happening yet, but it's sure to fill up faster than I want it to.

Incidentally, this is my first venture away from the FranklinCovey planning system, which I've used since 2001, when I worked as an editor in FranklinCovey's planner division. (Did you know I used to be the girl who selected the quotes for the daily planners? Fun job for a girl fresh out of college!) I'm looking forward to trying something new. I really had a blast customizing this and playing with my supplies.

So, would you like to win one?

Leave me a comment sharing what planning system you use, and how you'd use this if you won it. I'll choose winners on January 3rd and mail the prizes that same day, so you'll have it in your hot little hands before the first week of January is over!

Procrastinators, unite.

Happy New Year's Eve!

 

One Writing Tip for the Holidays

Hop on over to Rebecca Cooper's blog today, where I wax philosophical about "in the moment journaling" and explain the significance of the dorky picture above.

Also, there's a giveaway there, too! You could win either of my eBooks, Quick & Creative Quizzes or Journaling That Matters.

Off to finish up last-minute holiday gifts!

Lucas out.