Jess's Mom-iversary

I guess it never really occurred to me before, but now that I'm a mom myself, I kind of understand how parents can go so nuts over their kids' birthday parties before they can really even remember any of it: birth is a crazy transformative experience, and a child's birthday is as much a celebration of the parents' memory of that occasion as it is a chance for the kid to celebrate his or her own existence.

I was so fortunate to be a part of Jhonen's birth one year ago today, and as much fun as it was to find fun presents for Jhonen's birthday (2 AWESOME Yo Gabba Gabba toys and a set of "Big Boy" PJ's), I really wanted to do something special for Jess on the anniversary of one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed. Not only was Jhonen's birth significant, but the year since has been an amazingly fast, hard rollercoaster.

He is HUGE, and has been since the start, and poor Jess's body has been abused heartily by his - albeit sweet - clingy nature. Try lugging around a 30 pound boy who NEVER wants to ride in his stroller! And since he's been able to get around on his own, crawling and walking, a 30 pound boy who doesn't want to ride in his stroller, but DOES want to be put down - regardless of whether it's an appropriate safe place, of course. The only thing worse than a 30 pound sack of potatoes in your arms is a 30 pound sack of potatoes trying desperately to get OUT of your arms.

She is one tough mama. But, I guess we've always known that. :)

Anyway, I wanted to do something nice for her, to celebrate getting through birth itself as well as making it to the end of a very fast but very exhausting first year of momhood, so gramma and I rode out to the Winter Park farmers market this morning before the party and picked out an awesome bucket of mixed plants, a huge mixed herb pot, and a pot of gerber daisies (her fave), and a hazelnut coffee cooler from Barnie's.

[We incidentally discovered that A) the Winter Park Farmers Market is AWESOME and B) that they had a paramedic station with mercury-free flu shots. Trying desperately to NOT get the bug I had last year. Ick.]

So, it was a nice surprise. Like I said, I never really thought about it before, but... It's hard to see this milestone come and go. Calina's about to hit 6 months and I just cannot-belive-it. I guess as a parent your job is to just make sure that every day you appreciate what you have, enjoy each moment, and make sure that the day was as good for that little one as it could have been. Now that my little girl is really starting to "enjoy" doing things, I think we're going to make it a point to start doing more things. Playing at home is awesome, but I can already tell that she gets a little bored and stir crazy with the same toys every day. She loves morning outings when she can get them. She loved the farmers market this morning. She had a good-ish, if a little overstimulating, time at the party today. And her day, really, is only from 7 or 8am to 5pm or so when we start winding down for bedtime.

We're off to Oregon on Wednesday, gramma and Calina and I will be staying out there for 2 weeks, and Colin will come home after the first week. (One whole week away without daddy. Yikes!) Sooooo looking forward to it, though!

Starting Over

After living here for 3 years, I think we've finally decided to move in.

You know how sometimes, after living in a place for a while, you start to really get annoyed at the way things are... and just HAVE to fix them? We're totally there. So I'll probably be writing a lot over the coming weeks about the stuff we're doing to rearrange the house to make it more enjoyable for all of us to live here.

Part of the issue, of course, is that there are babies to worry about now... And the house is absolutely not baby proofed in the least. It's an outright danger zone! So, step #1 is creating a design around safer, more organized, more kid-friendly ideals. Step #2, unfortunately, is reorganizing all our s-t-u-f-f, and probably selling a ton of it. (Thank goodness for Craigslist, right?)

Today's project was the garage: we still have piles of stuff lying around from the gelato shop we just closed out (because we weren't sure what our successor would want of our stash exactly). So we finally just gave up and piled a bazillion plastic gelato cups in the recycling pile. So sad, but... There's really no one who will take them off our hands, and I'm not willing to spend money on shipping them somewhere.

Our garage is also filled with things that my gramma insists upon keeping even though there is no way in the world anyone in their right minds would want any of these things. Like a box of rocks. Literally. Or broken picture frames. Or a collection of old dental tools she might someday use to make wax moulds for casting jewelry. Or a "thing that pilots use," she told me when I held up some sort of unidentifyable mathematical tool. And about a million woven baskets of every shape and size (many with handles, so they don't even stack). And, of course, her giant collection of hundreds upon hundreds of seashells in tupperware stacked to the ceiling. And still, she really, truly, thinks that she's brutally whittled her stockpile of junk. These things are just "the essentials". And she can't understand how Colin could refuse to get rid of 2 of the 4 pieces of furniture that he owns. "But that dresser is so hideous." Hilarious. I love her, but she needs a serious intervention.

Can we get the Clean House TV show to come fix her? I don't think they'd do it. Our mess wouldn't make for good TV; her packrat-ism is too sneaky, because she's really good at hiding things. Like, filling up the entire garage, for example. Or the floor of her closet. Or filling all her dresser drawers -- rather than with clothing -- with her mother's old dolls, a "real indian papoose,"dozens of silk scarves and hankies, or a box of trilobites.

I'm not sure our house redo will actually even address a third of her stuff (it's so well hidden away I'm not sure I could even find it), and 80% of the third we find, she'll fight for. In the meantime, we can pretty easily address the mess we can see: the collection of video game boxes and action figures filling the top 2 feet of our game room; the random collection of not-particularly-attractive knick-knacks filling our foyer's bookcase, and by selling off all of the furniture that we hate (and replacing it with fewer, nicer pieces).

By Any Other Name

I'm officially Melanie Campbell, finally.

I've been Melanie Light for far too long. While I love the name itself, it has an unfortunate relationship to my adoptive father. It ties me to a family of which I have not been a part, even as long as I have had the name. I remember, as young as 4 years old, a sense of injustice when it came to my dad. And later, his absolute disregard for logic whenever any situation was emotionally-charged.

I can move beyond everything I know of him now, and everything my family has been through because of him and his brothers, his parents, and indeed everyone who ever had the name Light; because I am now creating a meaning for my own name, together with Colin and Calina Campbell -- a new namesake that will carry with it a different type of love.

The Beginning

Hello, and happy birthday to America. As befits the occasion, I've decided to spawn a little something new of my own. My daily pursuit of blogalicious happiness has outgrown the confines of the rigid pregnancy and mommy blog of yesterday; I now require a realm of freedom.

This page is representative of my desire to do something - anything - each and every day. Something that's significant enough to write about.

I will continue, when it is pertinent, to update the mommyblog (http://www.myeggoispreggo.net - until August 2 - then it'll move here: http://eggoispreggo.blogspot.com), but mostly, I'll be reporting my daily doings here.

But, Mel. This doesn't seem like much of a concept for a blog. To have any significance at all, you will have to pare it down. You will have to speak to a specific audience. You will have to have a clear message and purpose.

Well, naysayers. I think we'll get to that eventually. Kinda depends on what I end up doing, doesn't it?

This might end up being a crafting blog. Or a writing blog. Or a parenting blog. Or a blog about games or relationships or dreaming or weddings or gardening or art or home improvement or stupid annoying crap. Or maybe it'll be all of those things.

The important bit is having a responsibility to myself, and now to this page, that I will do a thing a day - every day.

Starting with today. Except that it's 1:30am today, and it's technically yesterday still. Guess I'll do a thing tomorrow and report on it today.

So, welcome.