RIGHT NOW.

1/  waiting on big brother to wake (21 weeks!)

2/  the way he comes in, asks me what we are up to, then kneels down and kisses my belly

3/  a stolen mid week lunch date for fresh lemonade, deviled eggs + fancy grilled cheese sandy's

4/  neighbor's plum tree cascading into our yard + a toddler necklace from target gus calls "so pitty"

5/  tuesday evening ice cream: loganberry for gus, vanilla for papa, coconut chunk for mama

6/  upon waking

7/  a thrift store find and a new favorite summer toy

8/  making lavender ice cubes + a sweet interruption

9/  sparkling h2o + bath + piano documentaries = sexy happy husband

10/ waiting for dinner to cook on the grill

11/  homemade pizza night, a favorite of our (very proud) baby boy's

12/  stopping to forage and smell the wild orchid-looking sweetpeas

13/  painting .99 cent birdhouses from craft store = hours of fun

14/  while he prefers building to art, painting his birdhouse was a huge hit!

15/  sending me late night selfies since 2009 :)

16/  steve ordered a soft tub on amazon, and now it's all this little boy EVER wants to do

i can hear the dryer in the background moving my nighties and pillowcases while our teething babe is snoozing deeply on our bed, pants-less, shirt-less, with a face stained from berries and dirty nails filled with the un-earthings of gopher dirt piles. my husband is off on a mid day bike ride, and just informed me he's coming home with red licorice and chocolate squares. the bottoms of my feet are incredibly dirty because our hardwood floors need to be mopped and i hate wearing shoes inside and i never wore shoes as a child and i really do need to work on that. my white button down skirt is smeared with purple yogurt and gopher dirt and my hair needs to be washed. 

there are cheezits smashed into the windowsill and there is half a roll of toilet paper lodged in the toilet due to one little boy with coarse curly hair. the rosemary and oregano plants from trader joes sit in two white coffee mugs on my kitchen sink, and watering them each day has proven their contentment. if i look behind me, my husband's piano is sitting with the last piece he played - franz lizst's "forest murmurs." the house is quiet and the two o'clock sun is like an old friend waving at me in the distance. 

when i look out the window in our living room, i can see our hydrangeas bobbling in the wind like a family of birds gliding inside the wind, taking in that ancient air. their leaves are beginning to shrivel due to their positioning under the sun and if i think about it too long, i can hear parts of my heart break off. how deeply i wait for the arrival of the hydrangeas; how much i rely on their cotton candy puffiness for a certain happiness only they can wake in me. our rosebushes have lost much of their petals, but our ferns are lush and the plum trees that have made their way into our yard from the neighbor's are speckled with bright red round fruit. i wait for the doves to fly into their highest point in our redwood trees and i love the stillness of knowing what is right outside our window. i love noticing the right now. it's where i can see where i am and where i am happiest to be.

at twenty-two weeks pregnant, time has been moving through me, rather than with me. i feel like that scene in casper when she tries to touch his face and only her hands move through him, as though there was nothing there in the first place. like reaching out and catching the wing of hummingbird. i can't ever seem to get a grasp, it just seems to be slipping right through me, and trying to enjoy each moment feels so much like trying to enjoy an ice cream cone in the desert. i try to hold on and i try to let each day linger, to feel her (or his) kicks and just pause. 

breathe it in. be all there. 

but it's hard. because there is so much around me. a house that needs cleaning. a dinner that needs making. a toddler who needs bathing and feeding and cuddling. a husband who needs advice and arms to hold and a shop that needs its shop owner. and in between much of that, there is this deep desire to document it. and photograph it. and not get frustrated and beat myself up and down when i can't capture it all how i, you know, should. and then instagram. responding to people so i don't look rude, which is basically, all the time. and trying to stick with the theme and feel of my feed which is so deeply silly in hindsight, but so unrealistically essential in that online world. how dare i post a photo of anything that doesn't fit the theme. the madness in this actually drives me crazy and i wonder how long i will pressure myself to maintain it.

but then i laugh. and text my best friend using the f word multiple times. and send her an upclose photo of my unkept eyebrows or a video of gus throwing a fit. and then i eat a bowl of cap'n crunch at midnight watching one tree hill in bed with a biore strip on my nose and find a perfectly soft dark blue shirt for gus at the thrift store and find myself ordering a milkshake at inn n' out and i realize how good it feels to be myself, truly myself, without an instagram caption or a filter. i like to be so many things, but mostly, i just really enjoy being where i am, in the middle of it all. 

i like being right here. i like feeling scared at the unknown and afraid of all that i've done and have yet to do. i love being steven moon's wife and augustus george's mom. i love having my morning coffee poured for me and my feet rubbed at night while watching a documentary on netflix. i love waking up to our boy sprawled in between us and being extra kind to people in the service industry and even kinder to the elderly. i like making something out of nothing, whether it's a bouquet of flowers i strung together on a walk or an overlooked dress with too many sequins at a thrift store or a tree full of meyer lemons that are waiting to be zested into a cake. i like hanging our laundry outside and asking my husband if the tortilla soup i'm making has enough salt. i like scooping up my baby boy when he's blowing dandelions and i like turning to my mom for everything. 

right here, wherever it is, however it is, is really good. it's not perfect, it's not exciting. 

but it's mine. and it's enough. and it's really really wonderful.

IT WILL BE THERE - SPRING AT HOME.

 

there is a family of crows, doves, bluejays and hummingbirds that seem to have made their home in many of our trees, especially the tall redwoods and the one giant sycamore whose roots are uplifting our grass. each day, usually around eleven and then again at around four, we go out and call to them. "birdies, hey birdies," we say, as we throw bits of bread and peanuts for the big guys, and more homemade nectar for our hummingbirds.

gus lives for this, almost as much as i do. i usually grab a small blanket and move to a small patch of grass that is outside our kitchen window and i will sit and wait for them, watching them slide in the sky, watching gus chase after them, though they appear miles above his tiny body. i'll bring snacks and drinks and position myself where i can see it all.

while waiting, i will usually hang our clothes to dry on the clothesline, something i have grown to love. it settles my soul in a way that picking up a guitar must feel like to a guitarist.  it's simple and good and true. it's everything that i love to be: a mother and a wife, taking care of my people, my family, in every way i can. being outside with the sun, opening the wooden clips and closing them onto our wet, freshly laundered clothes. it's not so much that i love to clean, because i don't, but it means that i get another day to care for the loves of my life. another day to love them out loud. i love hanging gussies little onesies and leggings. i love hanging my husband's collared shirts and my light cotton dresses. i love looking up and seeing the hummingbirds an arm's reach away, while gus is talking to his piles of sand and tow trucks and my cat is brushing up against my bare ankles.

i told my husband just this morning while we were outside, that this will probably be the place i need to go to when i am in the depths of labor. with augustus, my husband spoke to me a scene that we both loved, one that was peaceful and beautiful and vivid and lived. it was in our old backyard, near our pond which had a giant jasmine bush that acted like a backdrop in some cheesy french movie. he would go through each inch of that memory, explaining each flower that he could remember, what it felt like to have the sun beating our face.

this time, it will be different, but only slightly. it will be in our new backyard. alongside our birds. right next to my clothesline which is above the strawberry patch and nasturtium. a glance away from my milky skinned baby boy with dark blonde curls and an overbite that brings me to my knees.
it will be there, where my husband drinks his cabernet while he grills the asparagus and fixes the swing and talks about grand ideas that i've never considered.

yes, it will be here.