Gratitude.

Merry Christmas Eve. 

Here I sit, snug in our home on Christmas  Eve, curled up on our tiny couch, with my sweet sleepy girl, & snoozing kitten. 

We are cooking Christmas Eve dinner at home this year. 

Goose just came out of the oven, 

potatoes are boiling, Christmas music is playing, presents are wrapped, tree is lit. 

The house is reasonably clean, we did nothing today but be at home & be a family & walk the dog in the woods. 

It's our first Christmas with our wonderful Iris. It's the first time I've ever eaten a goose. It's the first time we've ever just spent Christmas at home. It's so lovely to be here, & not on the road driving, or just finished driving, or about to drive. 

I'm just so grateful for this small sleeping girl. This is the best moment, Iris here in my arms by the Christmas tree on a crisp dark December night in Massachusetts.

These are the things that I try to hold on my heart & remember always. 

Merry Christmas, everyone! 

Night thoughts.

I'm currently lying in bed between my snoring husband & our not quite sleeping but drowsy nursing baby. Our determinedly sleep resisting baby. 

I feel like I've spent the last four hours trying to get Iris to sleep. 

Look how sleepy she is. 

I think I have. I have had almost no me time today. One of those days where Owen came home from work & Iris immediately began needing me & only me & so the evening went. 

I struggle in my heart at these times, because she's so wonderful & just when I'm getting the most annoyed at being stuck lying next to her in bed endlessly nursing, she's just so sweet & it's amazing really that she wants & needs me like this. 

It's wonderful, it's the most amazing thing I've ever done. Still sometimes I struggle with the patience to resist my desire to just go into the kitchen & drink some wine & listen to music & cook dinner the way I used to. 

Sigh. It was again one of those nights. Still trying out the early bedtime, so it was  just a long cycle of nurse for an hour, sleep for 20 minutes, wake up & scream, repeat. I wish her dad could console her, but he really can't. 

We had an excellent day until evening. Fun boob group, successful downtown trip to buy stamps at the post office, & duck pants & striped overalls for Iris at the Salvation Army,  & an overpriced hot chocolate at Greenfield Coffee for me. And a nice walk with the hound at home after. It was in the high 40s today, not bad for Western Mass in December. We got out of the house, we accomplished things, we hung out with cool mamas.

But I had high productivity hopes for the evening that sure didn't pan out. 

The positives: I took a lovely shower during Iris' first short nap. I started to cook dinner during her second. 

During the nursing her to sleep stretches I've been rereading "The Time Traveler's Wife", which is one of my very favorite books & why Iris was almost named Clare ( don't tell). 

I find it's difficult for me to read when I'm also tending to Iris, but I can reread my favorite books, they are like old friends. So rereading Time Traveler's Wife for the hundredth time is nice. 

I did make dinner, I made a turkey & Brussel sprouts curry from the endless pile of Thanksgiving leftovers, served over wild rice blend made with turkey stock & sour cream & sriracha.

Owen just ate leftover pizza from last nights' creative use of Thanksgiving leftovers,

but despite the baby related time constraints, I actually felt like cooking. I needed to. 

(Isn't this still a food blog?)

So by reading & cooking I got to feel like myself a tiny bit, I guess that's the moral of this story? 

And my sweet girl is now asleep & my husband is snoring loudly in my ear. 

Now Owen is talking in his sleep about beer prices. Iris seems totally out, except most likely not if I leave the bed. I am of course totally wide awake.

Hello world. 

What the hell do I do all day, anyway?

Classic question of the stay-at-home mom: what do you do all day? Six months in & I'm still not sure. Let's see. 

Today, Tuesday, December 6, 2013, a fairly typical stay at home day with my almost six month old girl. 

(Some days we get out & about, but at least a couple days a week we have no car & we stay home. Today was one of those days). 

6am-7am: wake up & nurse, go back to sleep. 

7am: repeat step one, dad leaves around 7:30. 

8am-9am: Iris actually sleeps, while I lay in bed next to her & wish I could go back to sleep, since she's sleeping, which is so very rare lately. But I can't, of course. 

9am: Iris wakes up. She nurses. We hang out snugging in bed for a while (one of my favorite times of the day-she's always in an awesome mood when she first wakes up). 

9:30am-10am: we get up.  Diaper change. I put Iris in her bassinet in the kitchen & I tend to the fire in the wood stove & make coffee & clean up the kitchen & do the previous night's dishes. I also really enjoy this part of the morning. 

10am-11am: we sit down with my coffee & Iris sits on my lap & has a snack. I look at Facebook. I read her some books. 

11am-11:30am: Iris starts to get cranky. We attempt to both get dressed. 

11:30am-12pm: Iris continues to be very cranky, & I attempt to nurse her to sleep. She briefly sleeps next to me. I get to read for a few minutes. 

12-12:30pm: Iris wakes up. We feed the dog & cat & chickens & take the dog outside for a short walk up the hill. 

12:30-1pm: we come back inside, & Iris nurses some more. We attempt tummy time, but Iris just rolls over immediately so I give up. 

1-1:30pm: Iris goes back in the bassinet in the kitchen & I tend to the wood stove again & clean some more & make myself a cheese & mayo & sriracha sandwich. 

1:30-2pm: I try to get Iris to hang out in her crib so I can do laundry. There is plenty of fussing, but I get the laundry into the machine somehow. I also manage to throw the chickens some bread leftover from Thanksgiving & do some random tidying up. 

2-3:30pm: we take the dog for a walk in the woods. It's lovely. It's a gorgeous day. 

3:30-4pm: we return the dog to the house, & go check the mail. Then we watch the chickens for a while, & take some pictures on my iPhone in the yard. 

4-4:30pm: we sit on the couch & nurse & listen to NPR.

4:30-5pm: I attempt to deal with the laundry some more. 

5-5:30pm: Iris by some miracle sits in her chair car thing & I address some holiday cards. 

5:30-6pm: dad comes home, because he is awesome he starts a pizza crust for dinner while I hold Iris & let her watch him. 

6-6:30pm: we hang our with dad. 

6:30-7pm: I feed the animals their dinner. Then I give Iris a bath, put on her jammies, & read her a book (the Olivia Christmas book). I nurse her to sleep.

7-7:30pm: Iris sleeps! I continue to work on holiday cards.

7:30-8pm: Iris wakes up. I go back to nursing her to sleep. Dad makes a pizza.

And now we come to the present. I am writing this while attempting to nurse Iris 

back to sleep. Fingers crossed that this works & dad & I can actually eat that pizza. 

Maybe as some big excitement we will watch some tv on the internet & I'll get to take a shower. 

Now: 

Others mamas reading this-what do your days look like? This is all so crazy to me, sometimes, our days together. How do I get so little done? How does the time pass so quickly & so slowly at the same time? Does anyone know? 

Lost Garden Post.

Text of an unfinished post from July 28th of this year:

 "Red Russian Kale, Collards, Rainbow Chard, Lacinto Kale, Totsoi, Leeks, Shallots, Zucchini, Habanero, Jalapeño, & Cubanelle Peppers, Red Russian Garlic, Purple Hardneck Garlic, Assorted Heirloom Tomato Varieties, including Paul Robeson, Pink Brandywine, Green Zebra, Sungold, Black Cherry, Cherokee Purple, in the vegetable garden now. Planting basil & Napa Cabbage & Romanesco Broccoli today.
Rosemary, Lavender, Parsley, Sage, Thyme, Tarragon, in the herb garden.
Narstirscums, Zinnias, Purple Coneflower, Snapdragons in the flower garden.
I like to recite that list in my head, it's a poem."

Iris was just over a month old. I was still thinking that I might go back to work at the end of August. 

That all seems like a very long time ago. 

The garden was totally half assed this year. Back in May & early June when I was very pregnant (Iris was born June 14th), we bought some veggie starts at the Greenfield Farmers coop & somehow got them in the ground. So what that we usually grow our own veggie starts inside in the winter & buying them felt like cheating? So what that although I was on maternity leave for three weeks during prime gardening season before Iris was actually born, I managed to accomplish nothing more than planting small flower & herb gardens near the house, since the weed jungle in the field were the vegetable garden is was too overwhelming. 

One thing I wish I could tell my pregnant self is that getting stuff done when pregnant is way easier than getting stuff done with an infant. 

The morning I woke up in early labor I woke up very early, & was very inspired to garden. Of course it poured rain all that day. 

But I lay in bed in the early dawn that Thursday morning & planned out all the plants I was going to buy on that Saturday's farmers market & how I was going to garden all weekend, so what if I was 41 weeks pregnant. 

Of course I woke up that Saturday in the hospital next to a one day old baby girl. 

I guess that garden inspiration was my form of nesting. 

The garden on November 14, 2013, Iris' five month birthday, around 10:30am. 

The garden on November 21, 2013, one week later, around 4:15pm, as the sun was starting to set. 

We still have Red Russian Kale, Lacinato Kale, Rainbow Chard, Collards, Leeks, & Totsoi going strong here on November 22nd.

I am proud to say that even at almost Thanksgiving in Western Massachusetts, 

I could go outside & gather the elements to make a meal from the chickens & the garden. 

It's a quite dreary damp day here today, it's around 11am & I am lying in bed next to Iris who is enjoying her late morning nap. This nap sometimes either never happens or lasts five minutes, so I am savoring the fact that it has already lasted  fifteen. 

As I typed that I glanced over & her eyes were open. 

Ah babies. 

OMG A Food Post, Finally. A Wednesday Night Dinner.

Blah blah blah this used to be a food blog & then I got pregnant & the food stopped, etc. 

I'm tried to remedy that. So here's what we ate tonight. 

Wild rice, sausages, Brussels sprouts, duck stock, shallots, dried Thai chilis from the garden the year before last. 

This is a pretty typical weeknight dinner for us, chipotle chicken sausages that Owen brought home from Fosters, some Brussels sprouts that needed to be used up, duck stock we made & froze when we had a duck last week. 

Some shallots, garlic, white wine, & butter aka the perfect way to cook almost anything. 

Wild rice & brown rice blend because I always get on a wild rice kick on the fall. 

All ingredients into one cast iron skillet. 

Bam. Dinner. 

Eaten in a bowl in bed because I either have to eat with Iris on my lap or laying down in bed next to me. 

Despite the fact that writing about food used to be my favorite thing I'm feeling strangely ambivalent about writing this. Last night I stopped writing to simply mess around on the internet & watch True Blood, & now with Iris napping on my lap I keep picking up my book or gazing out the window or going back to Facebook. 

That's what DustyRose is up to right now. Good old fashioned cat in a patch of sun. 

I don't know why this post is being difficult to write. This day makes no sense. Iris & I got up at 7:30 & it's now almost 2, & yet we just got dressed & still haven't taken the dog for a walk. It's starting to get less sunny & we should really head outside. I sort of feel like I've entered into the mama void today, the haze of the cycle of nursing & diapers & tummy time & books & playing & walking around in circles attempting to entertain the fussy child. If we have a plan we can get out of the house with relatively few problems, but on these days that we are home alone & Owen has the car, sometimes absolutely nothing happens & we have trouble even going for a walk before dark. It doesn't help that when I finally pulled myself together Iris just now fell asleep, on my lap, because I decided to nurse her one more time before going on a walk. When will I ever learn? 

So here we are, Iris napping while I fail to write a post about sausages, & fail to eat lunch today because I keep not planning well when Iris does let me put her down.

Ah well. I've kept a good fire going in the wood stove. We both are dressed. I brushed my teeth. I dashed out to feed the chickens & gather three eggs, two brown, one green. I started a load of laundry. I wrote this. 

And last nights sausages were pretty excellent. 

Ah she woke up. Let's try this walk business again. My goal is to keep it up with the food posts. Thanksgiving is next week, one of my favorite holidays because it is all about a big awesome meal, maybe I'll get inspired. 

Art & Motherhood (& Sandwiches).

Yeah, so today I was reading Alison Bechdel's "Are You My Mother?" while I was eating my fried egg & Brussels sprout sandwich for lunch (take "today" loosely because I am am currently post bath nursing Iris & can't imagine that I will actually finish this tonight). Anyway.

Set the scene. Iris is napping. I'm at the kitchen table by the window & the poetry books. 

Nice November light today. Bare trees, pale sunlight. 

Sandwich. Fried eggs, two of them, sliced bread, cheddar cheese, last night's leftover battered deep fried Brussels sprouts...there they are.

(See, this is still a food blog!). Lots of mayo & sriracha. I've got a cup of cold coffee from the morning. 

I'm reading. I'm eating fast, because who knows when the tiny human will wake up. 

And I'm reading Alison Bechdel, & she's referencing Adrienne Rich on motherhood, & I'm seated right there by all of Adrienne Rich's books, & I wonder, can you really be an artist & a mother? And do either on properly, the way you really want to? Can I? 

I always believe that you could, but actually being a mother, I don't know. I can't even write this post. 

I personally am so self centered when I make art, & I think I really need to be in that place where I put art first to do it well. 

And now I put Iris first, & can barely complete a thought. 

I feel like having Iris is the most important thing I've ever done & I would rather do this than have my opportunity to be self centered & make art back, but still. Do I want the same thing for her? Or do I want her to be famous & fabulous & everything she could ever possibly want?

Does anyone know?  

I don't know why I had such a moment there. Maybe I should just focus on sandwiches. It was a great sandwich. The eggs were freshly gathered from our chickens & I fried them in butter in a cast iron skillet & melted the cheese on top in the pan. 

And ha, Iris is sleeping on my lap now, so maybe I'll just post this as is. 

Happy Friday night, world, here at the homestead we are having spicy duck soup & homemade biscuits for dinner. 

And listening to Britney Spears. And still contemplating the meaning of motherhood. 

Ode to Naps.

I learned how to nap while I was pregnant. I've never been a napper as an adult, but last year I learned to love it. 

The whole nine months I was pregnant I gave myself permission to accomplish nothing, nothing except doing a good job growing that baby that is. 

In the first trimester, I'd come home from work & just get into bed & read & doze off & daydream about the baby & what she would be like. 

I read so much last winter. Some of my favorite memories of pregnancy are the days I stayed home from work because of snow or a cold or something & just read by the fire & drank hot chocolate & enjoyed feeling the baby move inside the whole day. 

I've never allowed myself to slow down like that before, & it's been a lesson that's certainly been helpful, being home alone with an infant these past months. 

I remember towards the end of the pregnancy really making an effort to savor those pregnant naps, getting into the sanctuary of my bed & feeling Iris inside there with me. Falling asleep feeling Iris move inside me was some of the best sleep I've ever had. 

And now to the present, napping with my five month old. I've learned over these five months that I have been Iris' mama to read her moods a bit better, so although I don't always get this right, on the good days I lie her down on our bed with me & curl up next to her & nurse her to sleep. Those moments together on our bed where she's quietly nursing & holding tight onto my hand with her tiny hand are when I feel like I've done everything right. I try to be really present in those moments, because it's something I feel like I always need to remember. 

Sometimes I take a nap with her. Sometimes I try to accomplish something. I try not to worry if I don't accomplish anything. Sometimes I do this, while she sleeps sweetly beside me. 

This is an amazing day as this is her second real nap. During the first one I ate a fried egg & Brussels sprout sandwich, by myself, at the table, & read a book. I really enjoyed the moment of solitude, but I was happy to see my girl when she woke up. 

There's a lot of things I could be doing, but for right now I'm just going to enjoy the company.

She just opened her eyes real wide, sighed contentedly, & went back to sleep. And then two minutes later, eyes back open, & tears. And then nursed back to sleep. I'm glad that I chose to stay here with her & was here when she woke up. 

Sometimes I feel like I spend my whole life in this bed, but life could definitely be worse. 

Changing My Mindset. Loving the Interruptions.

It's a really interesting experience trying to write with a tiny person attached to my boob. 

Is it ok for my boob to be on Blogger? I hope so...today my boob was out in Marshall's & outside at the tables at both Whole Foods & Panera & in the car at Target & Old Navy. What's the internet compared to that?

There's my girl, with her post-boob snack smile.

And now she's goofing around on my lap while I attempt to write this. And then I decided to get off Blogger & play with my sweet girl. 

That's the change in mindset I need to work on. Because when I write I get very absorbed & don't want to talk & don't want to stop, but I can't be like that, I have to stop. I can't ignore a five month old tugging at my shirt & giggling. 

And now she's doing this. Post bath, post PaPa's lap, post post bath boob.

Of course she's on my lap, & not in bed, & dinner is just now ready, so now we are faced with the "do we move the baby & risk waking her or do I just sit here" dilemma. 

So I'm going to write a bit. Which is why I wanted to start blogging again, to give me something to do in these moments besides stare at Facebook. 

And for the hundredth time today, I've written a bunch in my head while doing other things. And forgot what I was doing or thinking & I'm realizing the tenses on these posts will never make sense, but I will never, ever get down a coherent thought without stopping. 

I guess I just have to learn to love the interruptions. 

Everything about being Iris' mama had been about stopping whatever I'm doing & putting her first. Which has been surprisingly easy for me. But it's meant that I haven't even attempted to make art. 

And she woke! And there was the oh so terrible sad face! And now it's much later & who knows what my original thought even was.

Fast forward to the next morning. It's midmorning nap time.

So maybe I will try to finish this up. It is pretty damn peaceful, snuggled up in bed on a November morning next to a sleeping five month old girl. Who even cares what I was originally going to say?

Sonething about art. And interruptions. And getting use to accepting them. Sure I had things I was trying to say that I forgot because Iris woke up & needed me, but then there are her little hands reaching for me & her fabulous smile,  & then I love my life right now. 

Five Months.

Iris Marjorie is five months old today.

This is what she is doing right now. It's about 8am, November 14th, really sunny in that New England late fall chilly all the leaves off the trees & everything brown & frosty but no snow sort of way.

We've been up since 5am. Who knows why, Iris just thought that was a god idea today. The light has been really nice, I find I spend a good deal of time lately noticing the light, sitting & holding a baby & looking out the window. 

I've got coffee (decaf but good decaf) & am still in my lobster pjs & we are cuddled up on our new tiny IKEA couch with Dusty Rose. 

Here's DustyRose. 

It's a beautiful morning. When we were still snuggling in bed earlier as the sun was coming up, I was missing driving to work at 6am this time of year, watching the sun rise, having the temperature be real chilly for the first time of the season, enjoying the feeling of layers of wool & shearling boots & how good it was to have a hot coffee when I finally arrived at work. 

Heaven knows I didn't enjoy it at the time. Waking up in the dark, walking to the freezing car...hell no. 

But now sometimes I miss the urgency of actually needing to be somewhere, anywhere. It's odd to get up day after day with no real agenda besides making sure a tiny person survives the day. 

I've always really wanted to have a child. That has always been one of the things I wanted most. Now here we are.

It still seems rather surreal that she is here, that she is real. 

The holiday season last year it just seemed so unbelievable that in a year, this whole other person that didn't exist yet would be joining us. Even in June when she was born it was hard to believe that come winter she would be a much bigger girl needing a Christmas stocking & wearing snow suits. 

I think it's hard to have what feels like an unattainable goal your whole life & then achieve it. How do you live then? I guess we are still figuring that out. 

I'm writing super fast because Iris is stirring & I think she's about to wake up. 

I use to hate being interrupted writing more than anything, I think that's why I keep not starting, because I'm not sure how to adjust to writing under the potential interruption at any time conditions of being home alone with a baby. 

But here's to trying. 

Happy Five Months in this world, baby girl. I love you more than anything on this earth & you've changed my life more than I thought anything possibly could. 

And now sleepy little eyes are peeking up at me.

A Few Housekeeping Notes.

Hello! Here we go again. Now it's November, I think it was July when I last checked in. I'm still here at home with Iris Marjorie, & I'm still trying to get myself blogging regularly, because I think it will be good for my brain to write something besides a Facebook status.

A few practical notes: I've decided to combine my three previous blogs (Eating & Drawing the painting/food blog, Scraps & Glue the collage blog, & Bizzcuit the diary blog) into one place, & to blog as Scraps & Glue only from now on.

I feel like my life no longer has room for that kind of complexity & compartmentalization. 

I only can manage to find the tiniest scraps of me time right now, so who knows what I will manage to use it for.

I've also realized that I've been blogging in some form or other for about seven years, & I like having all that writing in one place. It's been a strange seven years, & I wouldn't have thought I'd have arrived here. 

I am a very very lucky girl.

As I mentioned in my last post, I feel like I'm going to mostly end up blogging using the blogger app on my iPhone, so my posts might look a little different. 

For Eating & Drawing I never published a post that wasn't fully illustrated in color, but that's just not going to happen now. 

Instead, you are going to more often then not get the view from my couch via the iPhone camera, while I write with one hand & Iris naps on my lap.

That's my current view. I could paint it, but then I'd have to move the sleeping baby. 

I've done zero painting since I got pregnant, never mind since Iris was born, which is a real long stretch for me. I have been attempting to draw a little, maybe I will post those here at some point.  

Another note: my posts might not totally make sense as I may start them one day & finish them a month later. Time with a baby is weird. 

The best thing about no longer being pregnant is that my relationship to food is slowly returning, so hopefully I can even come up with a food post here & there. We roasted a duck last night & I hope to do something interesting with the leftovers. 

Plus Thankgiving is coming up, one of my very favorite holidays, & the first one in eight years that I haven't worked in grocery retail. We are cooking here, as it is Iris' first Thanksgiving & is also Hannukah this year. Stay tuned. 

Iris is five months old today, & we have big plans to leave the house & run errands.

Wish us luck, & fingers crossed I manage to keep this writing thing up. 

Eating & Drawing: Now with Baby.

"Here is sort of a thing. Damn it's been since April that I posted! That's terrible! Even given my usual summer garden-related blog slump, that is really bad."

That's a draft I found when I logged into this blog yesterday, written last October. Ha, I thought that was bad, now it's July, & it's been well over a year since I've posted anything. Or drawn anything either, to be honest.

And I'm not really sure where this is going to go-I'm writing this now from my iPhone while breast feeding a five week and four day old baby. 

Yup. I found out that I was pregnant ten days after I started writing that October blog post, & Eating & Drawing kind of flew out the window.

My baby girl Iris Marjorie was born on June 14th at 2:27pm & she's sleeping in my lap right now. 

I was thinking that it would be nice to start this blog up again, as I am home taking care of the baby at the moment, & I spend a lot of time here in my breast feeding chair, with not much else besides my phone to entertain me & I'm getting rather sick of Facebook. 

Not sure how much drawing there will be or how coherent these posts will be, written in little snatches of free time here & there, but writing here is a little like talking to an adult so I'd like to give it a try. 

Should this become a mommy blog though? Wasn't this my art blog? Should I get a new blog, since my life isn't much about eating or drawing any more? Dare I put up posts with no visual content?

I think Iris & I will now go take a walk & think about it. 

And we are back. This was a big day for us-we drove to town to walk on the bike path & that went well so we went to cvs to pick up Iris' birth announcement cards. 

This is the fourth week that Iris & I have been home alone together (she will be six weeks old on Friday) & the first time that we have gone anywhere alone together besides doctor's appointments & our breast feeding support group. 

I'd imagined before Iris was born that we'd be spending the summer taking walks in the woods around home & working in the garden together, & that hasn't really happened. 

It's been very hot & unbelievably mosquito-y here this summer, & this has left us trapped in the house. For really the  first time in my life. 

I really like to walk, I really like to be outside, that is so so important to me, & in the last six weeks I have been inside more than I ever have in my life. 

It's weird. I love this girl so much. I would do anything for her in a way that I have never even felt close too with any other living thing. I am happy to do anything for her, but it is odd to suddenly feel like I can & do exist without what I used to consider my basic needs: art, fresh air, exercise. 

So, yeah, long story short, we did take the damn car ( I hate the car, I hate to drive, & driving with a tiny baby is just that much more terrifying to me) & go out today & that was good. 

And I wrote on this blog again & that was also good. 

I guess I will keep this up. See how it goes. Bear with me-there might not be much or any art for a while, & the only way I can really write is on my phone with one hand with the baby in my lap, so forgive sloppy spelling & grammar for now. 

Will there be any food? We will see, my post-partum feelings about cooking & food are complicated but that's another post. 

Hi y'all. Welcome to the new Eating & Drawing. 

I had a baby! Wild. Who would have thought that would ever happen, back in the Drinking & Drawing days. 

But here we are. And she us definitely the best thing I have ever done in my life. So stay tuned.