Photos 1500–1588*

It turns out that very few unusual things happened over the course of pictures 1500–1588. 

 Coriel eating her dinner (actually, that’s not all that usual).**

Coriel painting my toenails.

And treating her unicorn like the family pet (and yes, in case those of you who read my Facebook post are wondering, this is the unicorn that apparently has been cooking Coriel her dinner).  

Addra playing in a very organizational manner. She has a pretty amazing cleaning streak that must have come from some seriously mutated genes.

Singing and dancing awesomeness.

And of course, amazing accessories. No day at the Stay household is complete without accessories. The more, the better.

Pretty much the only thing out of the ordinary was the making of some fabulous peach melba—poached peaches and raspberry ice cream (usually it’s vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce, but we decided to take a walk on the wild side). You are now permitted to be jealous. 

*Can I mention that I am jazzed that I got my blog to do an en dash?

**(It should also be mentioned that she doesn’t always show it off to us in such a charming fashion.)

Photos 1200-1300. Woot.

Well, I have reached a new, random point in trying to post photos. Since I never ever remember to do it and am completely daunted every time I even think about it, I’ve decided to take a random chunk of file numbers and post the good ones from that time period. So it may take months before I ever post any pics of my awesome bro and his wife and son coming to visit from New Zealand. Or pics from our trip to New York a couple months back. Or our fish party. Or the time Brice’s brother came to visit before he headed off to grad school. Or our trip to Myrtle Beach. Or anything else we’ve done lately that makes us seem really, really, really (did I mention really?) cool and exciting and fabulous.

Instead you’re going to get the best of images 1200 to 1300. Whatever they happen to be. And probably minus most of my usual sparkling brilliance. I know, you may not survive. But if you do, you’ll get to look forward to the best of some other random set of photos again soon. So enjoy (or at least survive, please).

Here you get to witness scenes from the Stay family dance party and movie night. Part of Coriel's requirements for a party is that it be fancy--hence Brice wearing a necklace.

Addra loves to wear jackets, but she gets very upset when she discovers that the jacket she's wearing doesn't have a hood. This works relatively well, though, in cases where she's wearing my jacket and I can just pull it up over her head for her.

On this particular super-cool day we found a spider in a spiderweb outside. Then we brought an ant over and fed it to the spider. This was actually really pretty cool. We dropped the ant in the web, and the spider was over there--zoom!--so fast, wrapping it up and making sure it couldn't get away. We thought it was so nifty that when we went inside we looked up the different types of spiderwebs and decided to build some. Here's Coriel in the middle of our tangle spiderweb.

Here's an orb (or spiral) spiderweb. If you look close, you can see our yellow and white spider in the middle and a wrapped-up toy cookie hanging at the bottom. A spider's got to have something to eat, you know. Also, I think it only fair to add a dose of realism to this post before you start thinking, "Wow, that Jeanna--she's so awesome, doing all that stuff with her kids." You know what we did the day before this? Sat around pretty much all day. We may have even eaten fast food. And the day after? Probably about the same.

This is really how I caught my husband.

Just cute.

Doing one of her best movie star dance moves.

Dressed up as a pirate and Toph.

*Love.*

Meaning and the Post-It Note, part 2*

A post-it note has been following me around my house. I’ll think I’ve set it somewhere to scan and save for later, and then I find it somewhere else. I completely forget about it, and then it pops up. Even though I’ve finally found a place for it and kept it in its place, it still pops up in my mind occasionally. I am grateful that it keeps reappearing. Its message was important for me when it was written, and I think it is perhaps even more vital now.

What is this piece of paper, you ask?** It contains Brice’s scrawled record of my contractions during the last couple hours of labor when I gave birth to Addra.*** I see you scratching your head. I hear you thinking, This was your all-important post-it? I thought for sure it held your checking account number or your safety deposit box lock code or at least your childhood shot record. Nope. Just a list of times and durations of contractions.

So why its importance? I shall tell you. For those of you who don’t know, labor with Coriel was… hard. (Har har, hard labor, har har.) But truly, it was difficult and painful and I struggled to make meaning of it. I felt like I had made the right decision for our family (birth center, no medication, la di da), but I lingered over it. I felt like I had failed at something that was immensely important to me. It wasn’t the labor or the pain—it was how I had dealt with it that made me unsatisfied. So when it came to Addra’s birth, I was trying to do everything I could to make this experience different.

Bottom line: My emotional memory of my first labor was essentially unending pain, and that was the story that my heart told the rest of me.

But let’s have a reality check here. There were periods through which I dozed. Hours, even. There was a time sitting in a tub with Brice reading Ella Enchanted to me (nice, light labor reading, by the way) that I can barely remember because I was mostly or completely asleep. There was at least a minute or two break between contractions for almost the entire labor. This was not 16 hours of ongoing pain. You don’t sleep or rest through 16 hours of pain.

So while intellectually I knew that I had really experienced small bouts of difficulty with at least equal bouts of rest, all I could see was the pain.

Fast forward: I didn’t want to look back on my second labor the same way. I wanted pain to take its proper place in the experience (present but not all encompassing). So I told Brice that one of his most important jobs was to keep a log of my contractions that I could look back on and see that they were really just small moments.

When Addra was born, something miraculous happened to me. I remembered the pain, but I also remembered that it wasn’t always there. In the end I didn’t actually need the record (although it was fun to look back at, and I think that requesting it was an important part of the process for me). And most amazing of all was that the pain of the previous labor was washed away. I knew that I had been miserable about it, but I didn’t feel it anymore. It was gone.

And now this post-it note reminds me that between periods of pain or sadness or ugliness, there are plenty of times of joy and laughter and goodness. No, this is not exactly a new sentiment, but the bad stuff really is pretty small most of the time. But when you only focus on the contractions, all you see is pain. When you only see the things you’ve done wrong or the suffering you’ve endured, the meaning of life is suffering. But when you see something else, when you see the in-between times, the meaning of life is joy.****

*I bet you thought I’d completely forgotten to follow up on part 1, huh?

**Incidentally, I’m always trying to decide how to punctuate that particular type of sentence. “What is this piece of paper? you ask.” “What is this piece of paper, you ask?” “What is this piece of paper, you ask.” I’m sure my Chicago Manual of Style would tell me, but I’d have to drag it down from the attic to find out. So I’ll have to continue angsting over it instead.

***Please note: Despite my obsession with mentioning pregnancy and labor (and despite the tiny bladder of the previous post), no, I am really not pregnant.

****(Or, okay, let’s be honest—it’s at least a lot better than constant suffering, even if it’s not always joy.)

Road Trip

I’m not sure why, but the moment I get in a car for a long trip, my bladder becomes the size of a teaspoon.

We have stopped for more bathroom trips for me than for Coriel (only two so far, but I’m sure there will be more). Just now, in fact, we stopped in a very nice pharmacy somewhere in North Carolina with a lovely bathroom. (I have long and boring thoughts on the subject of different grades of rest stop bathrooms; suffice it to say this was the kind that doesn’t make you wish for a hazmat suit.) The décor in the bathroom was interesting. Framed artwork featuring… medication. (I would really like to post a pic, but since I took the pic from my phone and I am completely inept at using that technology, I cannot figure out how to get it from phone to compy to blog. I am sure you will survive your devastation at missing this fine artwork.)

We’re on the road again, and we just passed a gas station called the “Three-Way Food Mart.” We couldn’t help but wonder: Three ways of what? My theory was there were three ways their food could enter or exit your body. Brice suggested maybe it was served three ways. Hot, cold, and in a wrap? Canned, boxed, or bagged? Alas, we have long since passed it (by now, since I’ve been typing for a couple minutes), and we shall never know.

We also stopped for breakfast in the city of Emporia. We did not, however, witness a large number of variety stores.

We shall have to see what happens next...

(12:20 p.m.)

Did I mention that at our first stop, I had to pee twice?

Now lunch has come and gone, and so has pee #5.* At what point have you talked too much about peeing in one blog post?** We might find out today.

Were you aware that you can now order avocado at Subway? Avocado! What a wonderful world we live in.

Other notable towns we’ve passed through on this trip: Micro and Gore.

Happily, Addra is napping again and Coriel is occupied by movie #3 (hey, don’t judge; portable DVD players are a boon of modern society). And just now, Brice pointed out the window to the right and said, “I believe that those are tobacco plants.” And I said, “Neat.” And the miles keep rolling by…

(2:53 p.m.)

Ooh, I just remembered! There was this exciting moment earlier when we had stopped because Addra was having a screaming fit. Brice got out of the car with her, and I opened my door a bit. Then when they came back and we started going again, pealing out of this empty parking lot in a nice tight u-turn, my door flew open and my Kindle jumped out. Fortunately neither the computer in my lap nor I jumped out with it.

(2:59, although the incident was sort of around 10:30ish)

Brice is sitting beside me with an unopened stick of Orbit gum hanging out of his mouth like he’s a lawless tough from some surrealist spaghetti western. He has just informed our GPS, “I’ll never follow your instructions, tyrant!”

We’re almost there.

(3:27 p.m.)

We made it. Stay tuned someday for more about our trip!

*I should also point out, definitively, to those of you who are wondering: No, I am not pregnant.

**If you are sister K or my Dad you already think I have talked about it too much. But I think we still have a while to go.

Manna from Heaven (AKA Oatmeal Waffles)

Okay, I am not usually one who posts recipes (probably because I don’t cook much, but that’s a whole different issue). But yesterday I decided we needed some waffles, so I tried out a waffle recipe with oatmeal in it. (Exhibit A for How Rarely I Cook: In the almost two years we’ve lived here, this was the first time I used the waffle maker.)

Yum.

I know if I’ll ever want to make a different kind of waffle again. And suddenly I think our waffle maker may get a lot more use.

Oatmeal Waffles*

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 4 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

In large mixing bowl, stir together flour, oats, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt; set aside. In small mixing bowl, stir together eggs, milk, butter, brown sugar, and vanilla. Add to flour mixture; stir until blended. Pour batter on to grids of preheated, lightly greased waffle iron (amount will vary with size of waffle iron). Close lid quickly; do not open during baking. Use fork to remove baked waffle. Top with fresh fruit and yogurt.

*Recipe slightly modified from the version on allrecipes.

25(ish) Dresses

 

May is long since over, and so is the Dress Challenge. Did I do it? Sort of. I started on 7 May and finished on 1 June. I considered going for a full month instead of just for the rest of May, but by the end of the month, I was so ready to be done.

What did I think about it or learn?

Why did I do it? Mostly because I thought it would be fun. Not for some deep philosophical reason or to explore gender dynamics or religion or anything. I thought it would be fun, and I thought I might enjoy dressing up a little more. Plus, maybe it would give me an excuse to buy a few new clothes (it did).

I’ve never been a big subscriber to the idea that you have to wear makeup and dresses and be froofy to be feminine and honor womanhood, so I wasn’t particularly concerned with that. But I did think it would be interesting to see if I felt any different while doing it.

Did I feel more feminine? The first few days, I noticed that I tried a little harder to actually look cute—you know, doing my hair, accessorizing, etc. I did feel a little more feminine, prettier. I pranced a little more, danced a little more. But then, by the end of the month, it was all old hat. The novelty effect had worn off and I was just left with, “Ugh. I already wore that three times this month. It’s just not that cute anymore.” So sometimes I felt more feminine, but not entirely.

Of course, I also shaved my legs a lot more too, so that helped.

Will I wear skirts more often? I think so. I always get to summer and think, “It’s so hot. If only I had cute skirts to wear so that I wasn’t so stinking hot.” Well, now I do. So yes, maybe a couple days a week.

Did people treat me differently? Nope, not really. That may just be because I’m such a cave troll that I didn’t see enough people to get a good sampling…

Any other side effects? Yes. My sweet Coriel, who was already obsessed with wearing dresses and makeup and dressing up (where did she get that? I would think she got switched at birth except that she was the only baby at the birth center that day!), got even more so. And my delightful Addra, who seems far too young to be expressing such strong clothing preferences, adamantly demanded (nonverbally, of course) to be put in a dress on multiple days.

And now I shall regale you with the photographic evidence.

Yes, this is a rerun.

Another rerun.

More reruns. This is the day, though, that I decided gardening in a skirt wasn't worth it.

With a vase of poppies from our garden.

Are our crowns not magnificent? Aunt Dawn made Coriel's and Brice's. Coriel made mine and Addra's.

This is one of those awesome spinny skirts. It should also be noted that when I told Brice I didn't have enough skirts to wear for an entire month, he said, "I guess we'll just have to buy you some more." And then he did. You just wish your hubby was this awesome.

I can't actually remember what this was supposed to be, but Coriel made it and was very pleased with the product.

Yes, that is a giant play sandwich on my head.

Please note that Addra was so enthusiastic about joining the dress challenge that she is wearing two dresses. At the same time.

Yes, I know that there's already one of this day, but I couldn't resist sharing the expression. I realize I'm supposed to be a buff Viking here, but I really feel like what this picture needs is a good, "Arrrrrr."

Post Warrior Dash. Complete with caked-on face paint. (On Brice, not on me.)

You only wish you could be cool enough to have purple and black striped tights. I have owned these tights foreeeeever, and I have been dying for just the right moment to wear them. When I finally realized the right moment would never come on its own, I decided to make that moment. What's really amazing about it is that I wore these tights in public. Seriously. And now that I've done it, I will never do it again.

Please note that both the girls are wearing dresses, as is the doll. This was not my doing. Every day Coriel picks a dress to wear. We might as well toss out all her jeans.

Luxuriating on our newly cleaned carpet. I was so jazzed about it that I had to commemorate it with a pic.

At Aunt Dawn's house in the "friendly woods" (as we call them), AKA the middle of nowhere, AKA West Virginia.

Still there.

Forgot to get a picture this day. Fortunately, Coriel decided to take one anyway.

Brice calls this one, "The Writer in Her Natural Habitat."

That's not backlighting, folks. I really just glow like that.

Take a picture of yourself every day for 20ish days and by the end you too will run out of creative poses and start drooping.

Striking a pose. Also having a random wrist ouchy that caused the wearing of the bandage that caused the appearance of being a hip, cool rocker (don't disabuse me of my delusions of coolness, please).

Going All-In

Looks just like me, don't you think? :)

In fifth grade, our class planned to perform Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I was desperate to play Ariel (no, this character is not a mermaid). Auditions began and I didn’t even bother with auditioning for the other characters. Miranda? Puh. I had to be Ariel.

The next day, without even auditioning the part I wanted, the main female characters were cast. I was devastated. I remember going into one of the big empty rooms at the school (why was it empty and why was I allowed access? I don’t remember, but don’t bother me with details) and mourning my loss. I had already started memorizing “my” lines. And I began to perform them, there in that empty room.

Okay, brief interruption for an insertion of reality (or maybe it’s just my memory of reality?). The room was not entirely empty. In it was one of the teachers who had helped cast the play. But where she was sitting, I could pretend that she wasn’t there. Knowing she was there but pretending she wasn’t was part of my devious plot. Here’s what I did next…

I began to perform those lines with all of my soul in them. I flew around them room, calling down tempests and flaming imaginary ships. I was confident, I was strong, I put emotion into that character that I hardly knew existed. In my fifth-grade mind, I was brilliant. Valerie, the girl who was assigned to play Ariel, was gone from school that day, so she hadn’t heard that she’d been cast yet. I think I secretly hoped I could convince the teacher to change the casting once she saw how amazing I was.

And you know what? It worked. I got the part of Ariel.

And you know what? I never performed that part as well as I had that first day, when I pretended that no one was watching. Every rehearsal, every performance was a shadow of that first one.

Let’s fast forward now, shall we? To, say, the year 2012. If you haven’t heard it yet, I would very much like to be a published author some day. (If you haven’t heard it, what dark cave have you been hanging out in?) To that end, one must occasionally write and submit works for publication. So I have been writing and working and trying not to throw the computer out the window occasionally. In May I was working on a story that I wanted to submit a serious (dare I say “literary”?) piece to a contest due at the end of the month.

I finished a first draft of my story and stared at it with dread. I knew it needed an outside perspective, but I didn’t want to show it to anyone. I mean, really really didn’t want to show it to anyone. I finally let Brice read it, and I cringed the entire time. Seriously, people, I hid my head under my pillow. I was sure it was completely hideous.*

Okay, Jeanna, what’s your point? My point is this: The best parts of that story, the parts that felt the most right to me—those were the parts where I was standing in a room dancing, pretending that no one was there. Those were the parts when I went all-in, leaving nothing of myself out. And they were few, but they were good. (I think.)

There is something frightening, I think, about going all-in. Maybe this is just me, but I think it is terrifying to imagine doing something in which you have laid your soul bare and now someone else may critique it and judge it unworthy. What if you fail? What if you get laughed at? What if your whole self just isn’t good enough?

I don’t have answers for any of those questions, but I have begun to notice that sometimes in writing (and also, I think, in life) you will be found wanting if you don’t go all-in. Or maybe your work will be good enough, but it won’t be as good as it should have been. There are times and places where you can’t have your foot in the door, ready to step out at any time.** You have to be all-in. I am reminded of a scripture that has called to me many times: “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. … But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition [destruction/ruin]” (Hebrews 10:35, 39). Don’t draw back. Go all-in.

Notice me not throwing the
computer out the window.

So here I am, working on my novel, trying to be confident and pretend that no one else is in the room. Here I am, trying desperately to go all-in, both in my book and (quite frankly) in my parenting. (Okay, and if we’re being really honest, I’m only trying desperately some of the time.) And still, quite frequently, failing miserably. But at least I’m working on it.

How about you?

*In case you’re wondering, only parts of it were hideous. I think. And anyway, in the end, I submitted it to the contest because at the very least I need the practice of finishing something and trying to get it out there. I also submitted to another contest this month. But don’t ask me about the results for either of them any time soon. I won’t know for up to three months. Three. Months. This is a very special brand of torture.

**One of those places is actually at your door, unless you’re one of those creepy Fiery things from Labyrinth and can detach your foot and leave it outside your door… but I digress.