2/52

A photo of my boo, every week, in the year 2015.  See more here.

You love to be out in the air.  Winter walks are some of my favorites.  
The grey can get so heavy living in the northwest, 
it really helps to get out and notice that the world is still very alive. 
 You love to watch Hank run and tear sticks apart.  
I can't get you to laugh as easily as Hank can.

1/52

A photo of my boo, every week, in the year 2015.  See more here.

This first week of 2015 you turned one year old!  So big and so small.
We are introducing you to our new years traditions with eating hop'n-johns
and making paper boats to set off on fire into the sea with wishes for the new year and letting go of the past.
You are standing on your own and taking your first steps.  

Through and True: This is January

Inspired by my dad and by a new friend, I am going to give sourdough bread making another go. I've never had regular success and I think this is because I'm typically inconsistent.  To be honest, I'm a little haphazard in the kitchen. (And elsewhere in my life.) I'd like to think I am a wise old grandma, the kind who never measures, makes things on a whim, laughing and with one eye shut. And that somehow it always turns out.

"How do you do it, make-believe-grandma?"
"Well, I've been alive for 85 years, that's how."
"Oh, I've only been here 30."
"You got some time, kid."
"Ya, guess your right."

Deschutes Falls.  You know how you never do the touristy things in your town until someone comes to visit.  And then you think, man, why don't I always come here.  That is how I felt about Deschutes Falls.  The river was roaring and we were all mesmerized by the rushing water.  It felt so wild through all the manmade (people-made) constructions.  There is a nice little native plant garden and all the plants are labeled.  I love that kind of thing.  Little magical pools of water cascade down an embankment surrounded by delicate and perfectly secured ferns.  Sawyer liked to run his hand against their dewy tips.  The sun was beaming and the mossy dripping world felt bright and new.

January is a special birthday month.  Sawyer and Felix and Olivia.  Three very good names and three very important people to me.  Happy Birthday, you guys.

Priest Point Park.  Second home these days.  Damp woods and lime green moss, barnacle heavy beach lined with Madrones reaching branches to the sound. Fill our lungs with clean air.

You Don't Know Until You Know

Buckwheat noodles and steamed kale.

Chapter title in my life book.

Paper chains for days.

Because I am one year old.

 

 I forced my family into a new tamale tradition on winter solstice.  I think they are ok with it.

 Sawyer and Papi in the light.

 A dinner of Pirogies, a wall of family.

A cold Calliope Farm on Christmas Eve.  

Fingernail moon and a cozy Polish dinner with 

one brand new baby and also some older babies.

cold, cold, cold

I can’t believe it’s december.  No, I can.  Life is so surprising and then really not at all. 

The days have been busy and they last forever.  It’s like this and that.  Everything and then nothing. Moments of full fledged joy bursting from within and then despair, our spirits dragging behind.  

Perseverance and gumption.

Almost daily we go for a walk in Priest Point Park.  Dog parks are scarce in this town and this is the new meeting place. Hank is bananas for a romp in the woods.  He gallops like a horse up and down the trail and deep belly laughs fly over my shoulder from Sawyer on my back.  He pretty much thinks Hank is the funniest guy around. Hank is his Tig Notaro.  A little kiss behind the ear? Forget it. Cackling like he's never heard a better joke. 

Once while we were walking in the woods we ran into a dog Hank used to play with at the dog park across from our old house. They hadn't met for a couple of years and I swear they remembered each other.  They frolicked up a storm and were, what I perceived to be as, smiling.

This week I braved our weekly grocery shop alone with baby. Something I’ve only done a handful of times and it’s always a little hairy. He melts down, I get flustered, accidentally go when I’m hungry, or decide not to get a cart and wind up looking like a total nut. This week, I put him in the kids seat in the cart and gave him a carrot to gnaw on.  He was so content. Sure, I got distracted and poured out a few extra pounds of sunflower seeds, but we did it.  I was triumphant and felt like clapping and laughing. Plus the citrus is making its debut and that is worthy of applause.

Mclane Nature Trail

Fading Flowers

Darkness is creeping quick onto the days. Everyone is talking about it and I'm that jerk that secretly likes it.  Maybe it comes with being rooted in the Northwest. Yeah yeah yeah, I'm so happy when the sun is out and the feeling is glowy. Sure, I dream of drifting on a sandy cloud with a river running thru and a sunhat the size of a pizza. But I think there is a fulfillment for me to having dark times. If it's not a need, at least I feel at home in it. The short days to crawl back into bed, walk thru dark damp woods, forlorn music, grey, muted colors. I've been told my clothes are washed in clay. I guess this is why hot pink sweaters and turquoise socks have snuck into my closet lately and why Dean puts this record on. They force the light in. I need that force sometimes; superficial or not. Getting stuck in the dark is no place to be.

 I can't get enough of the fading flowers. They peer thru the dim light; a nod to summer, a bow to winter.

Halloween happened. We carved pumpkins after Sawyer went to sleep. We weren't going to because of being lazy but a hacked up kitty face quickly found it's way on our porch. It was a quick and dirty job; the two of us carving simultaneously on a big pumpkin head, unstoppable laughter. We didn't win any carving contests but a dim and toothy glow, unintentionally frightful, greeted the deluge of treaters tromping up to our house.

Typical Halloween sky.  Typical baby pumpkin.