New Beginnings

I began my blog two years ago as a way to document my journey into motherhood, and the venture of remodeling a house into a home for my children. Raising two girls and remodeling a sixteenth century farmhouse quickly got in the way of any spare time intended for blogging. That, and the general busyness of life and my ever present attempt to be present, instead of writing or photographing for later refection. My husband and I have since completed the last of the remodeling projects, and have only a few cosmetic updates, and an outdoor deck and landscaping in the pike. Hardly a voyage worth documenting at this point. I must admit I’m disappointed I wasn’t more diligent with capturing each brick and stud’s integration, but alas here we are. Present, but with too many subtleties already lost. Eight years later and all 14 spaces in our home have been gutted to the studs and rejuvenated, refurbished and rebuilt. It’s time my blog takes me on a new journey, one I had never planned on. One I did not plan for. I will blog about growing two of the most creative, spectacular, loving, smart, beautiful little humans: my two very, very special daughters. Both who have special needs. And that's certainly something worth documenting.

What a Mess

My preschooler is a slob.  Liv throws herself into every activity with such wild abandon that she neglects the precision needed to get the task done without coming out covered in debris. She's the only one in her class that requires a smock for meals (not a bib, a smock), and she comes home each night covered in the day's art projects. She flings  toys around the room in the most incredible, imaginative play, and reprimands me for "breaking her campout," when I put the piles of things she's heaped in the middle of the living room away. Being as Type A as I am, I'm often struggling to bite my tongue and let her be a kid. I worry that my child will inherit my anxieties about life needing such structure, and that I'll stifle that magical sprit and whirling dervish she has in her. 

In an effort to finish some tasks around the house the other day, I set Olivia up in the kitchen with a sheet of paper, a paper plate with three small blobs of color, and a paintbrush. I walked away. In coming back to see how she was doing, I found my girl: handfuls of blue paint running up and down her arms, a trail of blue paint on her nose, and polka dots dabbed on her cheeks and forehead. My first inclination was to run for the Spray-n-Wash, but instead I started to laugh, and called all willing parties to come observe the splendor. "Look Mom, it's my magical gloves!" she exclaimed with such pride I couldn't help but be proud, too.  I put more paint on her plate.

In reality, my daughter is helping me learn to find child-like pleasures in the messes that she creates: the pile of toys she stacks with her own sense of precision to build a city, the way she empties her stuffed animal bin, lying each facedown and tucking them in for a rest with EVERY blanket torn from her color and texture coordinated closet. There is magic in that, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Really?

I’ve lived with several roommates in my young adulthood.  In college I lived with two of my very best friends, and after a year with each we were arduously struggling to maintain tolerance in a fruitless effort to preserve a friendship. Marriage does not come with the option of a different lease agreement. Having lived with my husband for six years, I’m often left scratching my head, mulling over an internal dialogue of, “Really?” Is he REALLY doing this again, is he REALLY leaving his socks lumped on the floor… again. Really? And so, I’ve created a list of those head scratching moments that make me question how I’ll ever survive living with an eternal roommate.

Things that I abhor about sharing my space:

1.       When, after having spent hours scouring the house and leaving a mass of gleaming façades, I find coffee rings in the kitchen, in the office and on the bathroom counter.

2.       Finding his suits, belts, ties, and dress shoes strew around as though some phantom hurricane ripped them from his body.

3.       Constant reminders that emptying his pockets at will on any available surface is purely unacceptable.

4.       Having to repeat (on a daily basis) that beard shavings should be washed DOWN the sink, and not simply splashed around in a pitiful attempt to rinse the basin.

5.       The perpetual search for the toothpaste cap which, by-the-way, belongs ON the tube.

6.       Reminders that his soaked gym clothing should NOT be put in MY lovely linen laundry hamper in the bedroom, but rather should be hung to dry on the plastic hamper downstairs… before I wash them for him.

7.       The horror of finding that, in an attempt to “do something nice”, he’s washed my white blouses with his greasy, mud-stained jeans… and has thrown them all in the dryer.

8.       Explaining, again, that he’s NEVER to touch my laundry… or the girls’ laundry. Ever.

9.       The perpetual debate that throwing dishes into kitchen sink just isn’t quite the same as rinsing them and throwing them into the dishwasher.

10.   The perpetual debate over my perceived importance of “processing” items one through nine.

And, here is a list of the heartwarming ones that make me eternally grateful for my eternal roommate.

Things that I adore about sharing my space:

1.       When, after a long or demanding day, I have a partner in crime to help heard our whirling dervishes to the dinner table.

2.       The way Alexa shakes with pure, unparalled glee when he jumps from behind the couch to startle her.

3.       How he will, without hesitation, allow Olivia to paint his nails and prance around with a fairy tutu on his head.

4.       The fact that Liv has a ride upstairs to bed.  Every night.  Without fail.

5.       The fact that he would give me a ride, too, if I asked.

6.       His ability to make me feel safe, and how he would never allow me to walk on the outside of the road shoulder.

7.       His amazing ability to fix nearly everything, and the incredible efforts he’s put into learning how to fix the things that he can’t.

8.       The way he will pose with a forced smile for ONE MORE photo, though it’s fundamentally unimportant to him, just because he knows it’s fundamentally important to me.

9.       That he will give me control of the remote, nearly every day, without complaining.

10.   The way he stills looks at me, as though I’m the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, despite my frazzled hair, oversized sweatpants and the baby on my hip. And when I ask him, “Will you love me forever, really?”, he says “Yes, really.” Every time.

A House is a Home

I hear rumor that homes built in the “good old days” were made to last. While the range of time considered “old” is certainly questionable, my home’s qualification isn’t. I live in a 16^th century farmhouse, nestled on a few gingerly managed acres of property. My children are the fourth generation of Hartes to inhabit our home.  I moved into the house after knowing Ryan for only three months; along with my boxes and bags, I carried a grand idea of what the rooms could become. I didn’t realize at the time how much blood, sweat and tears (literally) would be poured into making this house a home. My grandmother wrote in her book about building be home from the ground up, using explosives to uproot the boulder interfering with her home’s foundation. We haven’t had need for dynamite, but we’ve pummeled through walls with sledge hammers, hacked down the tree trunks cut by hand to form ceiling joists hundreds of years ago, and Sawzalled door and window frames. We’ve gutted thousands of pounds of plaster and lathe, restudded walls, ceilings and floors, framed new hallways, installed electric and lighting, and recreated ten new spaces from their bare bones.  

I came home from work last night to find my husband as I’ve found him dozens of times before: covered in sheetrock dust and blue chalk line chalk, a tattered nail apron hanging off his waist and a seasoned power drill in hand.  The sight brought moisture to my eyes. This room- “The Mystery Room”- is one of the last “big” projects that the house will see. As I left that morning, the room was nothing more than new two-by-fours screwed between the existing tree-trunk wall studs, and strapping laced across the ceiling insulation. Coming home I found a new stairwell, new ceiling, new support beams boxed in with strips of sheetrock, and four new walls. Beautiful, unfinished, new walls. There has always been a satisfying sense of progress as each layer is completed, and then the looming wash of anxiety when calculating which huge project to tackle next comes. But, now they are nearly none…  I’m feeling conflicted about it.

A piece of our lives- our love/hate relationship with our fixer-upper- is coming to an end. I wish that I had chronicled this adventure more diligently.  It’s been an incredible one. Inscribed inside the neutral colored walls and under the hanging light fixtures, are love notes written from Ryan to me and from me to him. There are stick figure families scribbled in jest. We stapled photos and dollar bills to sturdy bark and hid them behind Pink Panther R-13. Ryan has, on more than one occasion, written “BURN IT!” in carpenter’s pencil across a misguided, misaligned, or misfitted  shim. Hammers have been thrown across rooms, and swear words have danced in the air with the mud dust. But, we’ve survived. We’ve had an experience that most young couples forgo intentionally or never have occasion to be a part of. We’ve learned about the inner workings of a living space, and we’ve learned about ourselves. Our home is built to last. And it will.

Beater in Hand

My grandmother grew up in the depression era.  She could concoct meals from the remnants of their predecessors, whipping up stews and soups with broken bones, meat drippings and vegetable shavings.  She would make cakes and tortes and breads with only a few ingredients. Even now she wastes nothing, saving leftovers for tomorrow’s breakfast. She’s cooked and baked all her life, and so, naturally, my mother mixed and folded along with her. Mama was never one to enjoy making a meal, though she did it with diligence, none the less. Baking has always been her forte. As a young child, I would perch myself- knees firmly planted on the kitchen chair cushion-next to my mother, dipping my hands into the gingerly sifted flour sitting in my grandmother’s bowl. A gentle look from my mother would remind me that I wasn’t to be doing that, and that the entire cloud of grain would need to be resifted.  She would measure with precision, scooping a mound of flour into the measuring cup and using the back a weathered butter knife to tap across the top, making tiny jagged mountains. A second, deliberate swipe would knock the mountains into the bowl underneath. Dry ingredients would be layered together and set aside.  She always let me crack the eggs. In a bowl my very own, I would smash the shell against its side, making a concerted effort to keep the halves intact and pour the raw egg from its home without trails of shell following. I rarely succeeded. “Try to use the shell to pick it out,” she would suggest, though it was too destroyed to be of any use. In a spoon went, chasing the pieces like a cat after a mouse.  She would laugh. Extraction complete, it was time to break the yokes. This was, and continues to be, one of my most favorite tasks, though I have no real inclination of why I enjoy it so much. Measured milk, oil or extract would be added to my bowl and I would whisk it with such vigor that it splashed against the sides and cascaded over the edge. She would laugh. The wet ingredients were added to the dry, and my mother would use an electric beater to whip the batter until it was smooth.  With a quick pull of the cord from the wall, she would release the beaters, and hand one off to her helper: a reward for all my hard work. Olivia, too, has become quite the sous-chef. She is a professional egg cracker, and prides herself in piercing the yellow pillow that’s nested in her Dora bowl.  Toddler fork in hand, she mixes and mixes and mixes with her tiny, sturdy arms, splashing Dora’s mixture onto the kitchen table. “Look Mom!”  Liv beams with pride, declaring her achievement. She makes me laugh. I’ve never employed the precision of my mother, and I don’t sift my drys. I’m resigned to the fact that I’m depriving my own daughters of the sinister pleasure of slipping a hand into that cloudy texture. But, we bake together. We laugh, and we love. We are creating the memories that mirror those from my childhood, and those of my mother and her mother before her. Liv leaves the table with flour in her hair, milk on her apron, and a childish grin on her face. And, she leaves the table with a beater in hand.

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

Technology is raising our children. I won’t let it raise mine. One of my fondest memories of childhood is bringing home a stack of books from the elementary school library, the cardstock record stamped and put to bed in its yellowed back flap. My brother and I would sprawl out on our mother’s quilt, which was a particular treat, given that we were never allowed to enter that private space.  Dr. Seuss. My mother would read Dr. Seuss; her voice would arch with the peaks and valleys necessary to barrel through the tongue twisters. Her face would brighten and darken to sorrow with the night’s story, carrying us on the journeys of Horton, the Lorax, Yertle and the Sneetches. Though Olivia, at only three, doesn’t have the patience to sit through those tales, I’ve recited My Many Colored Days so many times that I can now do it sans book. As I turn the cardboard page, she anticipates how my own voice will change: chipper pink, sullen purple, busy buzzy yellow. Her face furrows into a scowl, growling at the angry black day. The page turns: green. Her fair- almost translucent- eyebrows soften into a gentle smile and her body softens in my lap. The final page comes and she leaps off, scurrying to find another amongst the stacks and stacks of literature strewn around the house. “I wanna read this one!” “Last one, Olivia.” “That’s a great idea, Mom.” Despite the fact the bedtime is steadily approaching, and there are dishes to do and laundry put away, I welcome her back to my lap, two books in hand.

Nowhere in my memory bank do I draw on sentimental images of a plastic book “reading” to me. Nowhere did I use a stylus to tap clusters of letters producing monosyllabic sounds. A book that reads itself cannot interact, cannot emote, cannot connect. It cannot prompt discussion or fuel imagination.  It cannot promise the undivided attentions of someone else. Why, then, is this technology increasingly popular and prevalent?  Paperless books, portable DVD players, videogames for toddlers, cell phone for preschoolers, laptops for kindergarteners, VTechs and LeapFrogs fill our children’s homes and their time.  As a society we have lost the need for, and interest in, human connection.  Are we, as caregivers, too busy to read to our own children?  In this fast paced world, I worry about my future grandchildren.  Will their parents be obsolete in their lives? I certainly hope not, and I intend to give the same gift to my girls that my mother bestowed upon me: her time.

Becoming a Blogger

One of the ladies in my Mom Squad has recently started a blog. I'm inspired by her wit and humor, and so I'm jacking her idea and dappling in blogging myself. What will I blog about? My 86 year old grandmother published her first book a few years back, detailing the parallels of building a home, plank by plank and nail by nail, and raising the family that filled it with challenges and laughter.  While this blog won't have the romantic sentiments of a memoir, I love the idea of chronicling the daily what-have-yous of raising a family and building a home of my own. With the time it takes to mange my career, household, and daughters, Olivia Rian at three years and Alexa Cate at nearly 15 months, snippets of intrigue is as far as I'll ever get on my journey to becoming an author. I hope you enjoy the ride.