family pics

I don’t think I ever blogged about this…have I? My sister did a photo shoot for us back in June, when E was 5 months old.

http://kelseysphotographs.blogspot.com/2009/06/barker-family-shoot.html

This one is more recent and not quite as flattering. :) (You just can’t beat natural light and Kelsey’s artistic eye!)

the backyard

My favorite tree. It nearly stretches to our back stoop, and its bottom-most leaves are shoulder-level.

As E and I like to sit under it occasionally, I have been praying its root system is much stronger than that of its neighbor’s.

The path, late May.

The path, early September.

Last night, when I was picking up some fixins for jambalaya, Marshall spotted a red-tailed hawk flying past our windows. He approached the back room slowly with the camera, and sure enough, it was perched on the railing. It looked straight at him through the back door.

But didn’t seem to care much.

three years today

We’ve lived in four places. We’ve had five different jobs. We’ve been to fourteen weddings (at least). We’ve made one baby.

We are giving, creative people, and going on three years, those abilities are put to the test. We are constantly needed by our child, so we adjust and readjust how we communicate with each other in creative ways, so that we still have something to give to each other at the end of the day. Some nights, as Everett plays on the floor, Marshall relaxes on one couch and I on the other. I can’t help but see slender ribbons stretching from my body to Everett’s, from M’s body to Everett’s…

I fell in love with Jane Eyre in early high school, the sweeping, unexpected romance. I remember my heart swelling when Mr. Rochester tells Jane that if she leaves, his heartstrings will be stretched until they are broken. Someone in college once told me they thought Jane Eyre was cheesy—something they would’ve liked as a teen, but not now, as they’re reading it for class. I shrugged and reconsidered my emotions and decided that they were valid. Especially now as I see our boy between us, the slender heartstrings stretched between the three of us. I am still in disbelief that we created a human. I’m still amazed that my heartstrings laced to Marshall are able to expand and be linked to another person, so tiny, in another relationship of a completely different kind.

Speaking of giving and creativity, or creative giving, if you will, I wanted to share the HOOPS story. Late December last year, when Everett was with us but hidden in my enormous uterus, we went out on a big date. I wore my wedding earrings, pretty little sparkly things, but M thought my hoops would look better with my outfit. So I went to the bathroom and slid the five-dollar slender pair from Claire’s in and off we went. In the middle of dinner, M tossed a jewelry box on the table and said, “Happy pushing gift!” I openedup the box, thrilled that I had gotten the white gold hoops I had hinted about, and then he pointed to my ears. “You’ve already been wearing your gift for awhile now, actually,” he said. He had swapped my cheapo earrings with the nice ones back at home and I hadn’t even noticed.

I wore them through the entire 17-hour labor. I wanted to rip everything off me by the end—the IV, the epidural stuff, the monitors and the itchy tube top that held them in place, the cuff, the gown—but the hoops didn’t bother me one bit.

(I’ve posted these elsewhere before…but they’re HOOPS proof!)

Here’s to many more years of creativity, of hard work, of giving, of pushing through to the end.

our charming kid

ol’ blue eyes

arriving August 1, 2009

I designed the interior for this book. I haven’t read it yet, except for snippets here and there while typesetting. The bits I’ve read are funny and wise. The cream paper is soft under your fingertips and the hardcover binding is secure in your palms. So set down your Kindle and get this collection of stories from Augsburg Fortress or Amazon.
Even if you’re not Lutheran, I think you will like it.

5 months old!

Has it really been five months already?

………………………………….

update

Hmmm…I’m not keeping up with the blogging-every-Monday thing. Sorry. Life is happening…

I read this today: At about 4 to 5 months, your baby can tell that two shades of blue are more alike than a blue and a green, even without knowing their names.

Cool, huh?

E is 4.5 months old. Here’s a belated update on his stats:

weight: 17 lbs. 4 oz. (90%)
length: 26 in. (91%)
head size: 42.5 cm (60%)

And although he loves to stand up on our lap, all the time, he is not really walking. Marshall’s just really good at snapping his hands out of the frame and back in again before E falls over.

milestones

I know it’s Thursday, not Monday…baby got a cold and mama got the flu, hence no spare moment for blogging.

Plus, we’ve been pretty busy around here with new developments.

I was at the computer the other day while E was content on his floor gym—until I heard him making some weird grunting noises. I walked over and, sure enough, he was body surfing. Rolled over while no one was watching.

I was really excited. Like, really really excited. Maybe this means I’m truly a mom now, to get thrilled over a little person flipping himself over.

So, after he’s had enough and starts whimpering, I flip him on his back. I go back to work. I go to the kitchen for a snack. I hear grunts again.

As my grandma reminded me via text, he is now on to CAPTURE THE WORLD. Two days later: the little bugger started scootin’ around on his own two feet!

questions.

I read a Postsecret yesterday that said its sender thinks in Facebook status. I realized today that I often think in question format. Maybe that’s why I like using Yahoo Answers, even though most of the time the answers aren’t actually that much of a help.

I realized today that it’s New Blog Post Monday, and couldn’t think of anything particularly bloggable, so I figured I’d just write down a bunch of the questions that flashed today. It’s an interesting (to me at least) experiment. The brain’s a veritable lightning storm…

Why did it drop ten degrees from this morning to this afternoon? Why does it take so long to get ready for the day? Why is the detergent bottle leaking on the basement floor? Why do I have so many hang-dry-only clothes? Why is their a gigantic charter bus in the Epic parking lot? Why am I hungry an hour after a healthy lunch? How did I not notice that Everett pooped up his back? Who owns Visa and Mastercard and how filthy rich are they? How many times have I typed my credit card number online and how vulnerable is it? What are Everett’s bad dreams about? How would I react if my iMac crashed? How can I do more? How does the shit room get filled with shit so quickly after cleaning it?* Who are those blog visitors from Europe and Canada? Where will I travel to next? What is the difference between rich black and pure black? How transparent should I make that text? How is Marshall’s brokerage class going? Why is Facebook so addicting? When can I get to the bank to deposit those checks? Where can I find a better bathtub for E? Where can I find socks that won’t dig into E’s cankles? How much does he weigh now, anyway?

*this is in reference to our second bedroom/den/guestroom/future room for E, not the loo.