Paying Attention to the Middle

J turned 9 last week, in case you missed it on my social media.  I’m sorry. I realized a while ago that Matt and I are those people who post too many pictures of their vacation and their kids. I’ve cut back a bit, but I’m not going to stop all the way because a) I figure if people don’t want to see it, they can always block it b) we’re not as bad as a lot of my FB friends, which I feel gives me permission to continue status quo. 

Back to J….My parents sent over an envelope of some older pictures they found.  In it, was this picture. 

Excuse the quality of the picture of the picture. My hair makes up for it.

I spent a lot of time looking at it.  For one, my hair looks really good (that’s the short-lived glory of post pregnancy hair). But the other reason that I gazed at this picture for so long is that I do not remember J at this age- at all.  He’s two in this picture, but when looking at it, I feel an odd kind of detachment; Oh, that must be Jake when he was two, and I wait for memories to accompany the thought, but none come. I took the picture to 9, who’s visiting home for a few weeks, and he says he doesn’t remember J looking like this either.  I showed the girls, which included my niece who was over to play, and they all said “ That’s J?” They couldn’t believe it.  Even Roo said “When did J look like this?” And I answered, “When you were three months old, baby. Don’t worry if you can’t remember.”

Me and Roo the same day the other pic was taken. (Really just posting this pic so you can have another look at how awesome my hair was.)

Nobody in this household remembers this phantom child. My poor J. Thinking back to that time period, 9’s mom was still with him, so he spent half his time with her, which means that for half of the time in our house, it was the three littles.  PG was a grown-up preschooler, Roo was a brand new baby, and there was J, stuck in the middle.

I never gave much thought to supposed “middle child syndrome” (I always thought it was something my little sister made up to get attention. Ha!), but I suppose there’s merit to it.  I remember PG as a toddler, because she was my only child at the time.  I remember Roo as a toddler, because she was my last baby.  But J’s toddlerhood was sandwiched between a very colicky infancy and the birth of a new sister, with the time in between being very short. I can’t remember so much as his favorite toy. Is that why my boy forever switches off between two basic moods, “happy” and “pissed off”? Is he aware that early in life he was mostly overshadowed by his big sister’s accomplishments and his little sister’s role as baby of the family?

The thing is, while you may be thinking how awfully sad this is, I don't beat myself up about it. I mean... I do feel guilt, but I don’t give it much leeway because any family who has three kids in four years is just doing the best it can through the insanity. And it is insanity.  I’m glad it is over. I’m a much better mom to older children than I am to younger ones.(Some moms can handle the overwhelming avalanche of needs that multiple small children have without  feeling like Mommy Dearest most days. I am not one of them. I do better now because my house no longer feels like a funny farm.)
  
It’s just that it went by and I forgot-we all forgot- to pay much attention to the kid in the middle, the one who wasn’t learning to read or needing bottles. I didn’t know then, to take the time and tell myself to remember conversations with him, or books we read, or times he made us laugh.  That stuff all happened, but it’s not in my long-term. I have to sit at the computer and dig through picture files to find the memories. 

He looks happy though, right? He doesn’t look too neglected? 

I wish I could remember.   

Now that he’s older- they’re all older, of course, but especially now him- I am much better about paying attention. I’m taking mental pictures- him grinning at me from under his baseball cap with sweat dripping down the sides of his face, after hours playing his favorite game in the hot sun.  Or, he and his sisters playing Legos together in their pajamas, his skinny legs wrapped in his red and green striped elf pajamas that he begged us for last Christmas. And him again, catching my eye, making sure that I’m watching when he cannonballs into our pool. 

And this time, I am. 

I’m paying attention.

Greatest Show on Earth

We’ve been back from vacation a exactly a week. And in that week, I’ve done lots of laundry.  So much laundry. Mountains of laundry. I weep from the amounts of laundry I have done. 

But do you care? No. Nor should you.  My laundry is my business, and I shouldn’t use this space to complain about it so much. So I will move on. 

But it really was a medal-worthy amount of laundry.

Ahem. 

Last post, I told you that I would write about the skies in Utah.  We were there to look at geological things (snort-snort, nerdy), but the skies are what captivated me.  They were beautiful and LARGE and filled with clouds of multiple shades that stretched themselves across the entire horizon.  I made a few enemies on Facebook when I commented that I didn’t understand why Montana was considered The Big Sky State. I mean, I’ve been to Montana, and though it was it was a while ago-like, when I was 10- I don’t remember their skies being all that great. As a ten year old, I’m sure, that I was, you know, an expert on the subject. 

(Do I need to clarify that that was sarcasm? I hope not.)

But getting back to the Utah skies, there was one night when the sky put on a fantastic show for us.  Truly... that’s exactly what it was- Mother Nature treating us to some jaw-dropping beauty.  It was the first time that I felt (and I’m going to go ahead and turn on the corn full blast here)…lucky that nature shared something so spectacular with me. 

It started around 8 o’clock. PG and I were doing dishes and we noticed that the light was strange….. so we walked out to the front of our campsite to look up and see what was going on in the sky.  We noticed a storm brewing over the bluffs.

It kept getting darker,

and darker.

Meanwhile, to my right, the sunset was making all the rocks glow red.

Then, all of a sudden, this vertical prism appeared.

And the light kept changing....

and changing. 

The rainbow disappeared and was replaced by rolls of thunder. 

Then the cloud burst, and you could see the rain fall off in the distance.

(I love that little piece of gold cloud on the left side.) 

It rained for a while with thunder and lightening. Matt, PG and I were all out on the road, taking pictures.  We competed for shots of lightening bolts. I missed it here.

And here.

But I got it here!

Here's one of Matt's shots. He hasn't edited it yet, but he let me use it anyway. I like how you can see the bolt of lightening travel all the way down through the clouds.  

Beautiful. Also, weird that we were standing 3 feet apart, yet our pictures look so different.

I had a friend who once, long ago, told me that she didn't understand why photography was considered an art when all you have to do is look through a camera and push a button.  I think the above examples clearly show the difference between someone who's just looking through a lens and pushing a button and one who knows about aperture, light, settings, lenses, and composition. 

Don't be a dummy. It's art, although I'd have to say that the best artist out there the night of that storm was the one who put on that beautiful display for us. 

It was something I'll never forget. 

And All the Bumper Stickers Said "Utah Rocks!'

Yesterday we returned home from our trip around the Grand Circle in Utah.  To be honest, I didn’t know that the “Grand Circle” was a thing until I saw Matt using it as a hashtag on Instagram. It makes sense though, because it did feel like we drove in circles. We drove in and out of three of the four corner states so many times that our phones no longer knew what was up and kept displaying the wrong times.  We arrived for our anniversary dinner at The Grand Canyon Lodge a full hour ahead of our reservations having no idea that we were in the wrong time zone. It didn’t help that it gets dark in Utah almost two full hours later than at home.  We were like little disoriented mole rats, wandering around in the daylight, squinting, bumping into each other and scratching our heads. Where are we? What time is it? 

We had fun though.  The kids did great in the car. We only had to tell them to shut up or stop fighting around twenty times throughout the whole trip. If you’re a parent, you know that’s a low number when you’re talking about several 5-6 hour drives, so we’re grateful.  If you’re not a parent and you just read those lines, I’m pretty sure I just provided plenty of motivation for you to use birth control. 

I only have one complaint about the trip. Matt isn't going to enjoy reading this because he's the one who plans these things and makes out agenda, but I can’t pretend to feel something that I don’t feel, and I'm sorry to say, I don't hold affection for Utah. I do not have any desire to go back to her anytime soon. If you love Utah, I think that’s fantastic. I can even say that I'd see why, because she has some breathtaking qualities. We saw a lot of pretty things, but most of the pretty things we saw were.....rocks.

Big Rocks

Balanced rocks. 

Weeping rocks.

Rocks with holes in them. 

Arched rocks. 

Monumental rocks. 

 Rocks with ancient writing on them.

Inverted rock, also known as canyonlands

Vast amounts of inverted rock, also known as The Grand Canyon

You’ll notice that that’s a lot of rock. At one point I said to Matt, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but is there any part of this trip that does not involve taking pictures of rocks?” And he shook his head and told me to wait for Vegas. 

Rocks do not inspire me. 

We did this trip when I was a kid, and I remember feeling the same way.  Give me an ocean, give me a green forest, give me a huge oak tree with swags of Spanish Moss dripping from it's branches, give me anything but red and orange rocks on a martian landscape.  I do not love it. They do not fulfill me, motivate me, refresh me. In fact, in a weird way, they make me feel empty and a little uneasy. (Although that could be chalked up to the fact that my kids were always climbing high up on the arches and cliff edges.)

If you look close, you'll see the teeny tiny figures of my kids and Matt way up there. There's a cliff behind them with a sheer drop. Whenever they did this, I usually stayed on the ground and tried not to look at how high up they were. And that friends, is how I survived their climbing shenanigans all 12 days of this trip. It was my smart and savvy way of avoiding heart and panic attacks. 

All that is not to say that I didn't enjoy our vacation.  I repeat, I liked our vacation. It was much better camping in a trailer instead of a tent. Like I said, the kids had a great time climbing around on everything in sight.  We saw some amazing skies that I’ll talk about later in the week.  It became a thing to take pictures of J meditating in different spaces, and that was fun. Also, despite the trailer, I did the roughest camping of my life on this trip, which I’ll talk about soon.  But for now, I'm done with rocks. If you see me in the next few weeks, please refrain from using the words "sandstone", "erosion", or "geologic time" when you're around me.  I've had my fill. 

I almost want to end this with a rock pun, like “You guys rock!” or “Rock on”, or, “You can take it for GRANITE that I’ll be back soon”, but I won’t. 

You’re welcome.

P.S- I think it's pretty obvious that the picture of the Grand Canyon isn't mine. It's Matt's.  He's a good photographer. Follow him on Instagram @mcauthron. 

A Little of This, A Little of That

Today we bought a pop-up camper.  And because that is my opening line, you may be thinking that I'm going to make that the focus of my post, but you'd be mistaken.  Today has been one of those days where I've gotten a ton of stuff done and now I'm tired, so all I'm going to say about the trailer is that I am beyond excited to have a real-life kitchen to use while camping. And I'm not complaining about the king-sized mattresses, either.

She'll look better when Matt takes a picture of her.

I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about the trailer another day- another day when my brain isn't fried from dealing with insurance and financing and hitches, with laundry, cleaning and baking thrown in.

I just have a couple of things I've been meaning to write about, even though they have nothing to do with each other. I'm going to go ahead and stitch these random ideas together and call it a night.

First, last week, we surprised the kids with a trip to Disneyland.  Matt was staying at the Paradise Pier for a creativity conference, so the kids thought we were just going out to see him and hang out at Downtown Disney. Instead, that night, our room had a view of the World of Magic show at California Adventure and while they were watching it, we gave them their tickets for the next day.  They were totally surprised, but probably not as much as I was at myself for not blowing it.  I kept that secret for an unprecedented month and a half, and I can't even count the number of times I almost let it slip.  Now I totally feel qualified for a job in the secret service. Or maybe I could be the person who puts the winning Oscar titles into the envelopes.  That'd be fun.

Anyway, it's been a while since I felt the "magic" at Disneyland. But this last visit- it was perfect.  We took our time, and while we got to all the rides we wanted to go on, we also took our time going through the park and stopped to have a lot of experiences, too.  Jake got to fight Darth Maul in Tomorrowland, I had my first Dolewhip, we had lunch inside The Golden Horseshoe and watched the show, (which we had never done before), and we rafted over to Tom Sawyers Island Pirates Lair to spend a good time.  My favorite part of the day was when Roo, who upon entering Toon Town for her very first time, gasped and said, "I LOVE it! It looks so FAKE!" Which is probably exactly what the Imagineers want you to feel when you are there.  Also, is there any other place to be at dusk than in New Orleans Square with the Jazz band playing? Disney Magic, man.  It was there on that day, in full force.

Here's the other thing I wanted to mention: at the beginning of June I made a pact with myself to read only non-fiction books this summer.  I'm not in love with that decision, mainly because I didn't realize how much I rely on fiction stories to relax.  Non-Fiction stories require a lot more thinking, and to be honest, I've already cheated on my pact.  I miss escaping into my stories.

Anyway, because I know you want to see it, here is my nightstand with all the books I've been reading this summer.  There's some fiction in there, but please notice, it's heavily outnumbered by the non.  I'm only one-third cheating.

I was going to give y'all a summary of each book, but I'm practically asleep already, so how could I expect you to stay awake through all that? I may come back later and talk to you guys about them, but for now I'll just say that the one I'm currently reading is the one on top; In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote.  I'm really liking it, even though a few nights ago I was reading it during a lightning storm and because I was right in the middle of the part where the Clutter family was found bound and murdered in their beds, I mistook the lightning for flashlights outside my bedroom slider.  I almost woke Matt up, but fortunately freezing in fear while my blood ran cold gave me enough time to come to my senses.

Anyway, I've never read anything by Capote before and he really is an outstanding writer.  What is confusing is that on the first page of the book he states that "All the material in this book not derived from my own observation is either taken from official records or is the result of interviews with the person directly involved." However, his writing, like I said, is so well-done and thoroughly detailed that he is telling this tale, not like a journalist, but like a story teller.  I kept wondering, "Well, how does he know what bird Perry Smith (One of the killers) was watching while out on a boat in Mexico after the murders?" I know Capote spent huge amounts of time speaking to all the people involved in the case, including the accused- but I can't imagine that something so obscure and minute would even come up in conversation. He had to have colored in some of the detail.

At any rate, all of that is just nitpicking.  It's a great story, and my most enjoyable read of any non-fiction stories so far this summer. That's probably because it reads like fiction, (it's only creepy when you stop think about the fact that it's not).

And that's it.  That's all the stuff that was floating around that in my head I wanted to talk to you about.  Matt is watching SuperMensh: The Legend of Shep Gordon, which is a much better documentary than I thought it would be.  (Initially, the title made me think that it was a Will Farrell movie.)  I think I'll turn my computer off and join him.

Happy Fourth of July, and have a good night!