The truth of the matter is, I want to blog. But my MacAir has been on life support for two months and I can’t stand finding my way around Michael’s PC where only a smattering of my files live on the desktop. Fingers crossed that the geniuses at the Apple store can sort things out this week and I’ll be up and at ‘er soon.

This week Madeleine and I baked a big batch of ooey gooey oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for our neighbours and grandma and grandpa, who are coming to visit at the end of this week. While the rain continued to pour outside, we decided to also whip up a batch of play dough. Turns out it’s easy as pie. Easier, actually.

Play dough (recipe from Tracy at Bowen Island Family Place)

Mix: 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup salt and 2 teaspoons cream of tartar

Mix: 1 1/2 cups boiling water, food colouring and 2 tablespoons oil

Mix liquid into dry ingredients. Microwave on high for 30 seconds, let cool for 1 minute and then knead. Repeat microwave and knead. Keep in a plastic bag when not in use.

Red and yellow make orange. Madeleine’s pick. Her favourite thing is making playdough snowmen. Good thing too. We’ll have nothing but snow in a few short months…

I am looking forward to the launch of Kate Payne’s new book THE HIP GIRL’S GUIDE TO HOMEMAKING.

Monday, September 19, 7 – 9pm. The Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen Street West, Toronto. Hosted by Type Books.

In her own words:

“I’m a grant writer, half-assed domestic goddess, occasional nanny, after-hours poet, committed doodler, trash collector, big-time procrastinator, tea and toast and jam obsessed Austinite. I come from Swedish, German, Irish and British great grandparents. I collect old typewriters; some of them still work. I studied anthropology and sociology in the Sonoran Desert. I worked on an organic tomato farm once. I paper mached gigantic thumbs once, too.”

This is the kind of domestic I can get behind.

The days with a new son are blurring into one.

First, his birth: marvel, a rush, completely bowled me over. His face, an orbit, encircling us with new love. Then, his sister’s midnight scare. Stopped breath. Gasping: “Mommy, help. Mommy, help me.” Me a mess of tears, fears. Nursing to health a child drenched in sweat, her airway betraying her, mere days after her brother’s birth. Me, sitting on the couch nursing newborn as my husband braves the ambulance ride with our first baby. Sobbing for what might have happened had I not heard her: had the air conditioners been on, the doors closed, muffling her cries from bedroom next door. I’d woken to nurse babe and heard the stirrings I’d otherwise miss. This is our miracle.

Now, two children roaming these wooden floors, healthy. And me, sent to rest week after week. The bleeding keeps coming. Cabbing to emergency, waiting in rooms with a woman swallowing needles, man cursing at children. Full moon, they said. Husband at home laying toddler to bed, feeding infant by bottle. Slowly now, it is subsiding, but my world circles round a room, a house, a three block radius. I can’t walk further for the pain of it. And I am tears and laughter and more tears as I struggle to find moments with my sweet girl, my devoted man. And I hold a babe in arm all the day.

And today we had a party in our front yard to celebrate two years of life, of memory, of firsts — steps in the Bowen House, ice cream cone with Grandma, words, airplane rides — and over plates of cupcakes and gummy bears spilling on grass, the pain of it all slips away.

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Joining with Emily, at imperfect prose, today.

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I feel I should explain exactly what happened. Madeleine caught croup and a spiked fever in the middle of the night had her gasping for air. That was the cause of the 9-1-1 call and our midnight scare. I had complications with bleeding after Thomas’ birth and had to be on bed rest for a couple of weeks. In the end everything checked out and I didn’t need any surgery, thank God.

photo by Grace Groot. Madeleine and I (9 months pregnant).

Balance has always been a word that made my skin crawl. A kind of hokey, mumbo-jumbo approach to life lacking any root or grounding. When I would find myself drowning in a sea of school/work/relationships/sports, my mom would tell me I lacked balance. And it made me want to sock her in the nose. (I really do love her heaps and heaps.)

I know she meant well. She still does. But balance just isn’t my word. I’ve always loved to throw myself into things full tilt. Rowing. Boyfriends. Jesus. Faith. And it has often served me well.

Often. Not always.

And now I am a mother. And I have hit thirty. And I am coming around to this seven-letter-word. B-A-L-A-N-C-E.

For everything there is a season (Ecclesiastes.) And, like my dad said last week, “we need a balance of work, family and service (to the Church.)”

My awesome friend Meg tipped me off to a series on Balancing Work, Life and Motherhood. Though some of these women employ full-time nannies, many of them are quite normal — all pursuing creative work with children in tow.

I have stubby thumbs. They’re quite comical, really. Apparently the actress Megan Fox has the same ones but she, unlike me, gets a thumb double.

Anyways, these fat suckers have kept me from being very crafty because I have little-to-no patience for handling finicky things. So it was a big step for me to sign up for a sewing class because I would have to feed the thread through the needle hole, and fill a bobbin, and handle all of those little itty bitty teensy weensy things. And though my thumbs hung me out to dry a couple of times, I had a really good time. I took the Sewing Essentials class at The Workroom on Queen Street which is basically a get-to-know-your-sewing-machine class.

We made a pillow case. Here’s how mine turned out. I’m pretty darn happy about it.

Next project: hemming curtains.

when

you

love

somebody

THIS MUCH

words

don’t

do you

justice

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I am cherishing these last days as just the two of us, being mindful of how our world will change when another little one makes his way into our world. There are new days ahead.

Our house is chaos, but we love it.

We love the stained glass, the hardwood floors, Madeleine’s aubergine room, and the piano room with the view of our winter-ravaged backyard. We love our neighbours who have lent us heaters and a hand while we went without heat our first week here (turned out all it was a dead battery in the thermostat, oops.) We love that the next door neighbours have teens keen to babysit and that I met a lovely lady named Reve whose sister wants to nanny part-time. I love that my midwife group is only a five minute drive away. I love that the kids go fishing in High Park and that there are fall fish runs in the nearby Humber River. I love that a hippy-(read: Vancouver)-looking mama told me that.

I am making lists, taking names. We bought a used Subaru and a sweet marigold couch straight out of the seventies for our little reading nook, for $40.

We are piecing it together, together.

(House-in-progress pictures to follow)

A friend, my counselor Anne, recently helped me see that growing up I couldn’t really rely on family markers so I have grown to rely on the specific markers of a city to create a sense of self, a sense of place. When I move I lose my markers and, in a sense, myself. So it’s important to stake out my daily routines in Toronto right away.

I have never been so thankful for the necessity of food. When we arrive we’ll have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We’ll also need to go outside so Madeleine and I don’t go stir crazy swimming in a sea of unpacked boxes. So, we’ll walk. We’ll stake out the neighbourhood. Find our coffee shop. Befriend our neighbours. Start looking for a church. We’ll find the fruit and veggie shop. But we’ll do it slowly.

I’ll set small goals: one thing in the house, and one thing outside, a day. And piece by piece we will build a new life.

And yet, our hearts will stay rooted to our loved ones at home. My sweet stepmother who yesterday, on my birthday, stood at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes a swell of tears, as she swung Madeleine in her arms. And my dad, a tower of wisdom, honesty, love. And my mother and stepfather, ever-givers. And my grandmother who, every time she calls, leaves me with a doxology: “May the Lord bless you and keep you.” And my brothers and their lovely wives, and their sweet children who I desperately want to know and be known by. And my amazing sister-in-law Brittany, aka May-May, our housemate who Madeleine runs to as she speeds up on her motorbike at supper hour. And my friends, so many of whom have made the journey to Bowen and rejoiced in this sweet gift of a home, and helped me talk through the fears, and who are never more than a phone call away.

And they still will be. And we have skype. And we have airplanes. And we have a guest room. And we will work at it. And, as my Dad reminded me yesterday (as we swung Madeleine round their gardens – One, two, three, oopsie-daisies — like he did me when I was little) that it will be hard and lonely but that God’s grace is sufficient for us. And I cling to this truth as I type this on a final Pacific morning.

And the things I am looking forward to in Toronto (all tidily tucked away in a file folder I have titled HOPE) are:

• walks along the Humber River
• creating a home in our house
• coffee dates with Annie and Miles
• going to Lil’ Bean and Green Cafe
• exploring U of T
• an incredible retreat/writing assignment in P.E.I. in May
• making new friends
• finding our church
• exploring the St. Lawrence Market
• day trips to the Toronto Islands
• new seasons, new colours
• hanging laundry in our backyard while Madeleine plays in the sandbox
• getting a bike
• the Distillery District
• setting up my space — a room of one’s own — a creative studio/workspace on the main floor
• visitors
• connecting with my Aunt Astrid
• work that keeps me connected to B.C. — www.art-bc.com, sheloves, the light
• flea market /antique store finds
• hanging our art
• voting for Gerard Kennedy
• Toronto Fashion Week, Luminato, IMAGE and Comment journal events, One of a Kind show
• hosting our house-warming party

madeleine and her adorable cousin sloane

sometimes.

the enormity of my mama-role swallows my pea-mind whole and falls me to tears and I think of all the babies in the world who have never known their womb mothers, never seen their seed fathers, seen their faces a thousand times and never swam in the tsunami of their love. and I find myself ebbing salt streams, biting lower lip, peering at my daughter, whispering a gratitude so deep it’s like a chisel having its way with my ribcage. and i think of the other, the 19-week son/daughter swimming through his/her childhood and beg Heaven to show me how to bathe them in the world’s good Truth.

and today Nicole showed me that…

“since i’m here, committed to the death, it’s best if i distill the job down to essentials: my main goal as a parent is to help my kids make much of God. it’s as simple and impossible as that. college scholarships and trombone lessons and starting midfield are all icing on the cake, buttery but optional. if i can knead their hearts soft toward Him, i will have mothered well.”

Crayons at breakfast, Nita Lake Lodge Whistler