Life With Lilybird

How do moms without help do it?

That’s the question Charlotte asks Miranda in my favorite scene in the new Sex and the City movie. CharlotteOut for a fabulous night with the girls (even after a not-so-fabulous time trying to get ready home alone with the Lilybird). and Miranda, the two moms of the fabulous four, create a drinking game of sorts as they confess to each other the hard things about motherhood that they feel ashamed actually thinking much less articulating. Charlotte, who fans of the show will remember had been desperately hoping for a family since her first marriage, feels deeply guilty about how effectively her two daughters are driving her crazy. Miranda, who has quit her law firm, admits that as much as she loves her son, being at home with him isn’t enough. She misses her job.

They both admit that being a mom is just hard. Full stop.

Of course you love your children more than you can even put into words. Of course your heart has grown in ways you never thought possible. But it’s hard work. And then Charlotte says what I had been thinking, “And I have help! How do moms without help do it”

Miranda exclaims, “I have no [insert a well-deserved profanity] idea.” And they drink to all of the mothers who don’t have nannies and housekeepers.

There was a distinct smattering of applause in the theater.

Maybe there were more moms like me in the theater that night who had barely made it out the door for a rare night on the town with their girlfriends (my friend’s company threw a fabulous screening).

First Lily insisted on coming into the shower with me. (For non-toddler mothers read: shrieking loudly, wailing, banging violently on the shower door.) Then after I managed to get us both reasonably dried off and partially clothed, she suddenly got freaked out—I mean almost hyperventilating scared—when I turned on the blow dryer (obviously I don’t do this often!). I had to bring the ever-patient pooch, Pali, in for a tummy blow-dry demonstration (crazy dog loves blow dryers) to show her that it was okay. Then, the fuse blew in our apartment because the ancient wiring in a lot of city places can’t handle blow dryers easily. And the fuse box is down two flights of stairs on the outside of the building. Guess how easy it is to get to this while half-dressed home alone with a toddler who wants to walk down and then up every stair herself? Oh—and I was trying to still manage to feed Lily a decently healthy supper that included something other than cheese sticks so she’d be ready for a bath and bed when Stephen got home.

Whew! Sound tiring? It was.

So, how do we moms without nannies and maids do it? Sometimes, I also have no [insert well-deserved profanity here] idea. 

Occasionally I manage to impress myself with how I’m managing to still produce a film in between moments of toddler chaos (I did manage a three-month production road trip, after all). Sometimes it’s even fun to realize what I’m capable of. 

Example: Three weeks ago we needed to shoot an interview with one of our subjects way out in the East Bay. The shoot would take most of the day, and while we used to wear Lily around in an Ergo while filming, she’s way past the age when that can happen now. She needs to be out of earshot. But she’s still nursing, and leaving her at home for 8-10 hours with a sitter seems like more than either of us can handle. So, we brought her and a babysitter with us. We also brought our dog, thanks to the prompting of our interviewee who reminded us that he has a big yard.

I wish I had a picture of our caravan heading out over the Bay Bridge. Husband and me in the front seat, reviewing our filming priorities for the day. Sitter and Lily in the back seat, eating snacks and reading books. Camera, sound equipment, gear loaded in the back. Wait—make that Husband and me with our dog on my lap in the front seat—no room elsewhere for the pooch!

I was able to put Lily down for a nap in an upstairs bedroom while we set up (seriously glad to be nursing still at times like this), and after she awoke, the sitter took her on a long walk to a park while we shot. It wasn’t always pretty, and sometimes it was downright nuts, but we did it. At the end of the day we had a great interview, our daughter had had a fun field trip, and I felt like I was still managing—even if just barely—to contribute something valuable to the world we'd brought Lily into.

That was one of the good days. 

One of the downsides to spending my meager babysitting funds to hire a sitter while we work is that there is almost no babysitting money for what I’m increasingly realizing is the all-important Time Off for Mommy. This lack of regular alone time leads rather rapidly to the Exhausted Place, a place very accurately described in two posts (part 1, follow-up) by Lauren Miller, a work-at-home mom and writer. As she writes, “This Exhausted Place is not a happy place.  It is a decidedly un-rosy place.  A place of half-empty glasses and partly cloudy skies.  A place where energetic, optimistic people become grouchy slugs.  Panic percolates.  Resentment builds. Unease settles in…”

And she’s spot on that it’s more than just lack of sleep that causes this.

Sure, insufficient sleep is part of it.  But that I’m-so-tired-I-can’t-think feeling comes from more than a mere sleep deficit.  It happens when we feel overextended, underappreciated and out of control.  It sneaks in when we’ve tried to do too much, when we can no longer see the trees for the forest (not the same as not seeing the forest for the trees).  It’s the consequence of a life lived to the edge of the page, without any margin.  Without any space between.

For me, part of the Exhausted Place comes from a feeling of doing this mostly alone. I should point out that I have probably one of the most-involved husbands around. He’s made choices so that he can primarily work at home, which means that I not only have much more help than other moms I know, but I also often have another adult to converse with over meals. If you’ve never spent 10-12 hours home alone with an infant, you likely don’t understand how quickly one starts to go more than a little bit nuts without someone around who can appreciate how frustrating it is to clean applesauce off of every surface (including the ceiling) of the kitchen.

No, by “alone,” I’m really talking about how isolated families are in our culture. We’re overwhelmed, sleep-deprived, and going crazy in unison, but we’re doing it in our own private homes, fiercely independent. By the way, I should point out that I don't think this is something that even moms with paid help are immune to; they just also have to juggle more paid work responsibilities likely with guilt over childcare realities. We're all over-extended and really, really tired.

I’m convinced that part of this exhaustion stems from the whole Western (and quite modern) idea of nuclear families living independently, all by themselves, often far from other family-support systems. These leads directly to lives lived on the very edge of the margin, and I don’t think it’s actually working very well.

Whatever we are—SAHM, WAHM, work-outside-the-home moms—we’re often too isolated, and the work is just too much to bear a lot of the time. We have play dates and lots of activities to distract us and help pass time in a way that we hope is educational and fun for our children, but that's not enough. We need so much more support (and I'm talking about political processes here too--my Swedish friend with 18-months of maternity leave at 80% pay with great, subsidized childcare programs shakes her head at what we consider "family values.")  I’m convinced this state of near-constant exhaustion is why cry-it-out ever became an acceptable parenting model. Of course it doesn’t make sense, and of course it completely grates against every maternal instinct we have, but without the extended family around to either comfort the baby or help with running the home so the mama can rest more, it’s just a way of coping and staying sane, even if barely. In many ways our affluence and the fact that we can afford to maintain separate residences for each nuclear family contributes to our isolation.

I just had a great chat with a sleep consultant yesterday (getting some advice on night weaning Lily), and we talked about how utterly exhausting modern parenting is for both parents, but especially mothers. We have added many roles in the past few decades, but we haven’t given anything up. By and large, we still carry the mental weight of running the home and social worlds in addition to whatever else we were doing prior to becoming moms. I can get really resentful when I realize that I’m the one who reads the parenting/developmental books, connects with other families, makes all the doctors appointments, buys/sells the clothes and toys, packs the snack bag, keeps an eye on the diaper supply, know about the recent infant tylenol/motrin recall, schedules the occasional sitter, etc., etc..

It really is a lot of balls to keep in the air, and I often cringe as I feel one or more falling. (Luckily Lily likes balls and would prefer them on the ground where she can play with them.) Changing my perspective on priorities, lowering my standards on house-keeping, and deciding that showers are optional when sleep can be gotten has a lot to do with how I'm staying (mostly) sane these days.

And, there's always love. As a mom friend said after commiserating about the challenges, "Love somehow provides that last bit of energy I need." 

Example #2: I started this post the day after watching the new Sex and the City movie, on May 27. It’s been 16 days since I’ve had a chance to finish it. 

That’s how moms without help do it.

I had no idea that toddlers were so much fun! Yes we've started having a few episodes of "mine" and "all mine," but Stephen and I have many moments throughout the day now when we look at each other, smile big grins, and mouth, "Sooooo cute!" A few examples:

1) Because I must always answer, “Okay” when she asks for things, she’s has now started adding that to the end of her answers. For example:

Lily: “Doggie tweet”–pointing to Pali’s cookie jar.
Me: “You want to give Pali a treat?”
Lily: “Yeah, O-tay.” Only you have to imagine the “yeah” as a very enthusiastic, almost gutteral sound. She is so excited when we understand her request be it for a spoon, nummies, or really anything.

2) She has taken to giving me a kiss right before she rolls over to go to sleep. I lay in the bed with her nursing, and she nurses for a bit, then she rolls over onto her tummy in stink-bug pose, holding her blanket tightly. Then she pops up, lurches towards me all puckered up, and gives me a big kiss. It’s so cute. Sometimes (if she’s not all that tired yet), she’ll get super carried away giving me and her blanket a shower of kisses.

3) I've got this very uncomfortable clogged milk duct thing going on (my first episode with something like this and likely due to a poor-timed adventure in night-weaning while starting a new exercise class), and she saw me trying to doctor it up today. She looked at me and said,

"Mama. Nummies. Owie." I told her yes, Mama's nummies had an owie. So she gave them a kiss! So sweet. And, now that I think about it, that's really kind of an actual sentence!

4) She's taken to clearly telling Stephen that she knows he's not needed for "night-night" time because he doesn't have the "nummies" (her self-picked word for breastfeeding). She'll start saying, "Mama, nummies." And to Stephen she waves and tells him "bye-bye." Tonight she also gave him a huge kiss. As we met eyes over her head, Stephen summed up my thoughts nicely, “I had no idea it got so good so soon. I thought you had to wait until three or four for this sort of stuff.”

Update on Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 12:52AM by Daneen Akers

Oh, and the cutest phrase she's added consistently lately is a very sweet, "Tank-you" whenever we give her something! Sometimes she still does the sign, and occasionally both. I never realized how charming good manners were! (Of course, we're still working on the please-don't-fling-food-from-the-table side of good manners.)

The idea of being “selfish” isn’t exactly something I usually aspire to. In fact, I don’t know anyone who does.

Nobody wants to raise a selfish child, and it’s doubtful that “selfishness” will make anyone’s list of ideal virtues. The reason why I’ve fallen in love with the Harry Potter books and wish that every child could read them is because J.K. Rowling so brilliantly wrote a series about the immense, ultimately triumphant, power of self-sacrificing love. Selfishness is usually reserved for the villains, not the protagonists.

But being a mom has made me realize that we might need a bigger vocabulary when it comes to this topic. A few months ago, we talked in our little church community about the idea of two different kinds of “selfishness.”

Apparently the Chinese have a better sense of this and have two words for our “selfish.” One word connotes the typical sense of being greedy and self-absorbed to the detriment of others. The other one is a word that we don’t really have though. It’s about self-care, about filling your well so you have water to share with other thirsty travelers.

The more I think of it, the more I like the well analogy. I haven’t encountered anything else as demanding as mothering. My mama well is constantly being dipped into—and at this age, there is often nobody else who can satisfy Lily’s needs in the same way (I am still nursing her, after all!).

If I’m not careful, I let everyone dip, dip, dip their buckets into those cool, comforting depths all day and all night without checking to see where my water line is. Typically, I don’t stop to replenish my own water source until the well is totally dry and alarm bells are blaring loudly. (This usually comes in the form of a dramatic meltdown of some sort and a subtle but distinct shrill edge to my voice that my husband is exquisitely sensitive to.)

I know I’m not the only woman—mom or not—with this problem. Our culture values productivity and busyness. Microsoft’s new Hotmail campaign is actually called “The New Busy,” and, according to the ad campaign’s creator, it’s about rethinking busy, embracing it. It features lines like, "The New Busy think that 9 to 5 is a cute idea," "The New Busy like to play Fill the Calendar," and "The New Busy would be open to taking a class in their sleep."

The TimesOnline says that the “’New busy’ make beavers look lazy. When you can take your desk with you, the world is your workspace. Perpetual busyness is becoming a badge of pride.” I gotta admit that this formal hero-worship of busyness and The Very Busy makes me uneasy.

I think mothers (dads too, but especially moms) are vulnerable to succumbing to the idea that our self-worth and value comes from a long, never-ending to-do list because we don’t see monetary compensation for our efforts. Of course we know deep down that our work is hugely important—we’re growing an entire human being, after all—but it’s slow, often invisible work. And, if my daughter is anything like me, she probably won’t start really appreciating what I’m doing until she has her own children. Like I said, it’s a long-term project!

On this Mother’s Day, I leaned into the idea of being “selfish” in the Chinese, self-care sense of the word. We were supposed to drive to St. Helena for a big family gathering. But I woke up exhausted and with a touch of a cold. Stephen, beautiful man, convinced me that I should stay home (and this was after letting me sleep and making me breakfast in bed).

And so I did. The vision of a full day in my own house all by myself was completely seductive and irresistible. 

I packed Lily up with lots of snacks, toys, and kisses, and then I said good-bye and closed the door.

I turned off my phone.

I sipped a cup of tea very slowly.

I read a chapter in a book about the revolutionary idea of Sabbathing and saying “no,” (and I didn’t even hunt for this—it was the next chapter in Barbara Brown Taylor’s incredible An Altar in the World).

I took a three-hour nap!

I ate an avocado sandwich at my favorite neighborhood café.

I took Pali on a long walk.

I watched the clouds drift overhead from my favorite bench in the Presidio forest.

I resisted the urge to do any housework.

I was still. And in that stillness I felt my well start to fill. 

Now, I get that this can't happen every day. Modern life is demanding; it is busy. Just basic survival takes a lot of time and energy. And I have things I want to do to enrich our lives beyond survival—for me, for Lily, for our family, for those around us. I will continue to strive to instill in Lily the belief that unselfish love is the most powerful force in the universe.

But in order to do all of those good things, all of those unselfish things, I need to find a way to regularly practice selfishness like I did today. It was a very good Mother's day.

In Barbara Brown Taylor’s latest book, An Altar in the World, she writes about various practices and ideas that,Out walking in the Presidio, our "backyard" and an "altar" as Taylor defines one. as she puts it, are “saving her life right now.” These might not be the things that saved her life last year, and they might not sustain her next year. But right now, these things are worth sharing. 

After 15 months of practice, life with Lilybird is getting, not easier, per se—I still feel harried and behind a lot—but ever more delightful by the day. It must be partly due to the great fun of this age. I had no idea that young toddlers were this fun. She talks non-stop, verbally and with her rather large sign vocabulary, and she is quick to laugh and even quicker to imitate, often to hilarious extremes. This morning when she pushed a book into her favorite hiding place between the mattress and the headboard of our bed, she raised her arms, palms up, and shrugged her shoulders in a familiar (adult) expression of “what happened?” and said, dramatically, “Uh-oh.” Stephen and I dissolved in laughter, which is probably why she repeated this gesture several more times today.

On a rare dinner out together last night (thanks to a new babysitting swap with a friend), Stephen and I talkedPlaying in the bath tops her list of wonder-ful things. about how happy Lily has been lately, even with two new teeth coming in. I realized that after a horrible winter of illness (that’s one big reason why it’s been so long since my last post), she is finally well. My doctor assures us that a lot of sickness is normal for this age, especially in the wintertime, but we had a series of sickness that just made moving, re-settling into a routine, and facing daily life overwhelming for much of the past three months. If it wasn’t the horrible stomach virus that wouldn’t go away, it was croup, or pink eye, or a nasty cold, or the forebodingly-named, hand, foot and mouth disease (hard to know if you call your pediatrician or your vet!). Needless to say, Stephen and I also came down with our share of these bugs (toddlers really are little Petri dishes!), and I’m very grateful for the return of health (may it feel welcome here and never leave again).

When I allow myself to let go of my worries for the future (and there are a host of them at the moment) and really settle into the present moment, Lily’s fascination and wonder at everything in the world is what’s saving my life right now. Everything, especially every living thing, captures her full attention and appreciation.

We went to the San Diego Zoo last week while visiting my family, and it was revealing to realize that while She loved the feel of the ocean water as her heels sunk into the sand.the big, exotic gorillas were exciting to her, she didn’t know not to be as excited by the common (not zoo-owned) birds or the interesting bushes growing along the path to the gorilla exhibit. She liked the fish in the hippo pool as much as the hippos (and trust me, these were very plain fish). For Lily, the world is an interesting place. Period. Although, the brightly colored, raucous macaws did merit an extra bit of Lilybird attention (expressed as frantic signing of “birdie” and exuberant clapping). But, I mean, who doesn’t appreciate a flash of extravagant color? (Fun trivia tidbit: Did you know macaws mate for life?)

An Altar in this World opens with a chapter on awakening to God. As a child Taylor loved the world and everything in it. She grew up riding horses, lying in meadows looking at trees, and savoring the wind on her lips. The world was her portal to the divine. As she gradually became more “churched”—and she had a true seeker’s heart, even as a teenager—she was taught that the world wasn’t good, flesh and blood weren’t trustworthy. Only spirit and things not of this world were holy. But, as Taylor points out, at least for the here and now, this world, this em-bodied experience is what we have. It’s how we know anything. I love how she puts this:

To gain wisdom, you need flesh and blood, because wisdom involves bodies—and not just human bodies, but bird bodies, tree bodies, water bodies, and celestial bodies. According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, “Grow, grow.

And a few paragraphs later:

Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two. Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.

Lily seems to still be able to hear those angelic voices whispering to every living thing. And if I let her translateUnpacking the CSA box. A pomelo truly is a thing of wonder! for me, I get to re-see the world as a magical place, a place of wonder where even the plain little brown birds in the park (or, harder to realize still) the crow in the tree in the backyard is a glorious creature whose profile in flight lifts my spirits and reminds me that my heart was meant to soar.

That’s what’s saving my life right now. Well, that and the really good glass of local wine Stephen and I shared last night over wood-fired pizza topped with wild arugula and mascarpone. 

We just watched Away We Go, a beautiful and hilarious film about a couple expecting their first child and theirI love the love in this film. quest to find the right place to settle down. It precisely captured how I still feel about trying to figure out where I want our future to happen. Where do I want Lily to grow up? Where are we most nourished? Where do we do the most good? And--most importantly--why do I still feel like I barely have it together?

In one brilliantly touching scene at a pancake house, friends in Montreal who have a vibrant, loving family with several adopted children try to explain how they hold it together. They talk about having to get up at 5:30 in the morning after a night with a sick child throwing up, knowing that you’re going to be exhausted for the whole day, for the whole week, for the rest of your foreseeable life. But somehow still doing it. Being a better person than you know you are.

And then they illustrate the love that has to flow from the parents to cover the house, the children, the tiredness--all of it--with syrup over a pancake. “You have to use it all,” the husband says, as he drenches his pancake and empties the maple syrup bottle. The syrup runs over the pancakes, starts pooling at the edge of the plate, and begins to dribble over the side. It’s probably the most beautiful philosophy of love and parenting that I’ve encountered.

I’m not doing the scene justice, but it made me cry, probably because we were in the midst of our own parenting crisis. We were watching the film while being interrupted every hour or so to care for Lily, who came down with a really nasty stomach bug and was throwing up every few hours. I was in the midst of being called to be that better person, and I wasn’t answering in the affirmative.

I'm afraid that throughout Lily’s sickness, I wasn’t a vision of nurturing love and tireless comfort. In addition to taking care of Lily and being really the only source of her nutrition and comfort (breast milk was all that she could keep down), Stephen got sick too, likely with the same stomach virus. Somehow I found myself resentful and incredibly annoyed at  Stephen for getting sick. It was more than I could handle.

I felt abandoned and betrayed. Oh--and did I mention annoyed? I think I was so tired, so overwhelmed with the move and then a sick baby to take care of that I just couldn’t bring myself to care for a sick husband as well. I managed a few cups of tea for him and a lot of grumpy, “Are you doing all you can to get better? I don’t see you gargling” types of accusatory comments. 

A mom friend from an email group that I’m a part of wrote me with some homeopathic suggestions to try (she’s a practicing homeopath) for Lily and Stephen, and I wrote back asking if there was a remedy for “feeling put upon.” If there was one, I was in dire need of it in copious amounts.

Her honest reply about how hard it is to care of others during times of crisis made me smile. “I think the remedy for that is fantasies of running away from home.”

In the Away We Go making of featurette, the main actor, John Krasinski, talks about how he views the relationship of the expectant couple, who are clearly deeply in love with a realistic view of each other. I’m paraphrasing here, but he says that his character, Burt, is an idealistic romantic (he wants to raise their daughter in a Huck-finnish world with a love of “woodcrafts” and “the lore of the Mississippi”). His partner, Maya, he says, “is like the bumpers in a bowling alley.” So even if his throw is wildly off, his ball will never go into the gutter because she’s there. He might not get a strike, but she's there helping to guard the edges (h/t to CB for that great idea of "guarding the edges").

That view of a relationship just floored me. I so want to be that partner. I want to find that selflessness within me to be the bumpers in the bowling alley for Stephen. That's probably one of the best gifts we can give our children.

One of the main reasons why I’m an advocate for marriage equality is that marriage, like nothing else in life, calls us to live for more than ourselves. It’s a lifelong process of learning to truly be selfless--and something that I’m still a novice at, obviously. Adding children to this equation, even on healthy days, takes this lesson in learning to love selflessly to an entirely new level of rubber meets the road. 

It’s just plain hard, hard work. 

That’s it. No big insights or epiphanies. Just a realization that doing this well, with love enough to run over and dribble onto the table, takes a lot of hard work. 

Maybe I need to take a cue from Lily. We’ve gone back to a family bed with her illness, and we’re kind of enjoying it even though she’s fully recovered now. She wakes up in the morning, usually with an easy smile, and then takes stock of the most important things in her life.

“Mama!” 

“Yes, baby,” I try to sound happy to be awake.

“Dada!”

“Hmmm, good morning sweet baby bird,” Stephen says, as he rolls over.

“Woof-woof,” she says as she does the sign for dog and looks around for Pali.

Then she signs for her favorite lovee blanket. I hand it to her, and she buries her face in it happily with a loud sigh of satisfaction.

And then, always then, another “Mama” as she looks at me and makes the sign for “milkies.” 

She's got her priorities straight. And they're pretty simple. Her love flows over. 

Update on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 02:22PM by Daneen Akers

I told Stephen I want to see the sequel of this couple after a year of baby bliss and extreme sleep-deprivation. Maybe that's the project I need to write next!

We're back home in San Francisco in a new flat only eight blocks from our old home. There's nothing like traveling the country for three months and realizing that you're already home. I feel a bit like Coehlo's protagonist in The Alchemist who has to go on a long and difficult journey only to learn that the treasure he sought was always right under him. I feel so much more like me here.

The only downside is that I'm surrounded by boxes again. I swear we didn't have this much stuff four months ago. I imagine myself as someone who travels light--I mean, we lived in a 19-foot travel trailer this fall! But the maze of boxes in our new living room tells a different story. If moving with a six-month old was hard, moving with an almost 13-month old is so much harder! She can move! I don't get anything done while she's awake, which is why Stephen and I tag-teamed to unpack the kitchen last night: I slept from 9 p.m. - 1 a.m. while he unpacked the boxes, and then he slept while I organized. So, although I'm trying very hard to practice gratitude for our good luck in finding a new place that we like in the neighborhood that we love, I'm just really tired and feeling generally grouchy while we slowly, slowly unpack. 

Lily helped me lean back into contentment tonight though.

I ran some errands this afternoon and left Lily with Stephen. He made her a supper of tofu, cottage cheese, and steamed carrots. Not bad for a guy who has sworn to me he'd live off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches if he were a bachelor. 

Apparently Lily hadn't been impressed.

"She doesn't like carrots," he'd texted me. "Or at least not my carrots." 

When I got home, I was ravenous and started in on her leftovers.

"These carrots are yummy," I said. I wasn't trying to change Lily's mind--they really were tasty little carrots. He'd cut them up into very small chunks and steamed them with butter. 

Lily held out her arms to me and then signed "more", which is often how she says "I want" also. I took her from Stephen and then leaned against the kitchen sink with her on my hip, scooping out carrot morsels with my free bare hand. 

"Harr-umm," Lily growled enthusiastically and squirmed towards the bowl. She has this delightful new habit of cheerfully "growling" when she is happy, or when we're meeting a request, especially when we've understood a sign and are responding appropriately.

She thrust her hand into the bowl and grabbed several carrot chunks too. Then she started feeding me carrots. It was the classic, one for you, two for me game, only this tended to be handfuls of carrots rather than individual bites. The only danger was that she occasionally got overly eager to feel my molars in between bites (she's been very into teeth lately). Soon she tipped the bowl back and was eating straight out of it, carrots dribbling down her pajamas.

"I guess we found out how to get her to eat carrots," I told Stephen, as she grunted and squealed with pleasure.

She took such delight in feeding me. I had a moment of realizing just how much she has grown this past year. And how much we've grown. This was a scene I could never have imagined when I tried to picture what it would be like to be a mother. Standing in the half-unpacked kitchen with my baby on my hip, eating carrots together straight out of the bowl. 

Update on Friday, January 15, 2010 at 05:09AM by Daneen Akers

Another thing helped me feel grateful--we found our TV and plugged it in. I am overwhelmed by the suffering in Haiti tonight. The NY Times has a photo of a man who just found his 10-month old daughter's body outside the morgue. Her small, broken body is laying on top of a pile of other bodies. I really don't have words to even attempt to understand what that must be like. It's times like this that I really hope there's a point to all of this.

We're back from our travels with many tales to tell. It feels surreal to arrive back home having seen so much,What could be more fun than a makeshift swing on a cold Montana morning? done so much, and met so many people--it's especially surreal because San Diego hardly changes. The weather was sunny and warm when we left in September; ditto for mid-December. If I squint hard enough, some of the trees have a yellowish tint. I am feeling deep gratitude for my parent's home to return to as well as a restlessness to find our way back north soon. After visiting so many places, I have a deeper appreciation for the connection I feel to the Bay Area. There is a special kind of magic that happens when you find the places that help you come alive. (If only I could kidnap my family! It is especially fun after our trip to see Lily delight in her doting grandparents--she's especially loyal to her Oma.)

If this trip taught me one thing, it's the truth of a magnet that my friend Heather in Portland has on her refrigerator: Joy Is an Inside Job. This year has been filled with much change--much more change than I would have ordered up in The Year of the Child. But, all that un-rootedness taught me that I have to look inward for joy. It doesn't come other packages, however shiny and bright.

Of course Lily is the best teacher of this truism. I was unsure how well she'd do with a three-month production road trip with new places and new people. But she did swimmingly. She did a lot better than I did, actually. Even though I loved the opportunity to work on this project and see parts of the country I'd never visited before, I was aware of the miles, the small space, and the desperate feeling of never-ending to-do list. As my sister, who has backpacked with me and been the initiator of many of the harder physical feats I've accomplished, likes to say, I'm not a silent sufferer. Lily seemed unaware that any suffering was involved (unless we tore her aware from a new friend she was in the midst of charming).At Walden Pond

One of the gifts babies bring is the utter inability to do anything but live fully in the moment. Her joy bubbled through at every new face, every new park, every new truck stop. She didn't seem to mind at all that fully a fourth of her short life was nomadic, spent in a truly itty-bitty-living space.

What she cared about, who she cared about could fit in that itty-bitty-living space. Joy Is an inside job. I wonder at what age I started to forget that? 

Given the length of time that’s passed since my last post, you’d be right to wonder what the heck we’ve beenOur home on wheels up to. Well, we’re five weeks into a three-month production/research trip for our next documentary project, a project we feel is an important social justice topic, traveling over 10,000 miles all around the country, stopping for interviews and scenic sights (and Lilybird play times) along the way.  

There’s a scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when Ron has finally had a taste of the sort of heroic adventure that Harry has been having for years. When Harry recounts all that Ron has done--saved his life, retrieved the sword of Griffindor, and destroyed a horcrux (for non-Potter readers, a very evil and dangerous object)--Ron says, “You make it sound a lot cooler than it really was.” Harry tells him that stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was.

That’s sort of how I feel about the past five weeks. I’m not trying to paint our particular quest in heroic terms, but there is a sort of epic quality to a 10,000 mile production road trip with a 10-month-old. Time flies--she wasn’t quite nine-months-old when we started this trip. Here’s the scoop: We’re pulling a little travel trailer around the country for an initial shoot for our next documentary project, a film about the complex intersection of faith, identify, and sexuality with a focus on the stories of LGBT Adventists.  Our working title is Seventh-gay Adventists: A film about love, sex, and eternal life. Oh yeah, and trying to plan all of this around the nap/meal/sleep/play schedule of a 10-month old.

Enjoying the view in IdahoIt’s been a bit comical as Stephen and I work on our elevator pitch about this film. You know, sex and religion, easy dinner-table (or in our case, camp-fire side) conversation. We’ve gotten some very interesting reactions when say the camp host at a KOA in Missoula, Montana asks why we’re on a road trip in the middle of the earliest snow storm they’ve had in years.

First, why this project? Both Stephen and I were raised in the Adventist church, attended Adventist schools, and ate our share of Haystacks (for the uninitiated, that’s a vegetarian version of taco salad). If you’ve read about why I started this blog, you know that we wrestle mightily with how we’re going to raise Lily and her theoretical siblings. There is much that we love(d) about growing up in a sheltered community. It’s a small world, but there’s a joy and comfort in belonging to that world. I can go almost anywhere in the world and show up at an Adventist church on Sabbath morning to a sincere welcome and likely an invitation to lunch. Within five minutes of playing the “Who do we know in common/two degrees of separation” game, I can likely establish a connection to most any Adventist anywhere. 

While Stephen and I have spent years trying to figure out how we relate to Adventism as adults, we do realizeSelf-portrait under that big Montana sky that the Adventist church is a part of our story. We are who we are and where we are in no small part because of Adventism, sometimes if even just in reaction to it. Three days out of five I tell myself that I’m an Adventist until “they” decide to kick me out. 

And while I’m around, I may as well try to effect some change. I love how Rachel Naomi Remen talks about the concept of embracing our stories, our pasts, even our disabilities because that is the small corner of the world where our lives and our experiences might bring some healing.

With that hope, we’ve started this documentary because we want to bring a measure of empathy and compassion to a conversation that is often abstract and purely theological. Living in San Francisco has changed us because we go to an open and inclusive church. It’s also a small church, so we’ve had an opportunity to really get to know people (and be known in return) by people who might not have ever felt welcome in a traditional church. Some of these individuals are gay. And last election season, when the full ugliness of the fight over Prop 8 (the constitutional amendment that denied same-sex couples the right to marry) was unleashed, I saw the fear-filled ads and read the hate-filled emails through different eyes. 

A lot of the fear drew on religious foundations, and Stephen and I felt, as people of faith, like there was much injustice done in our name. It seemed clear to us that the conversation (which at times could hardly be called a conversation) needed a dose of what only stories can bring. When you’ve looked deeply into someone’s eyes and listened to their pain, you can never think about a situation in quite the same way again.

So, that’s the why of the project. The how involves this crazy, epic trip. The film officially got the green-light from the San Francisco Film Society last spring, and we did some shooting in the late spring/early summer, butFun at a campground in Iowa this is our first round of major production. We’re visiting major Adventist areas around the country, both to get a feel for what the conversation is around this topic outside of California (um, yeah, it’s very different), and to interview LGBT Adventists who want to share their stories as well as scholars, pastors, and other thought-leaders who are willing to talk with us. 

We’ve met some incredible people already, and half of the time I feel deeply inadequate when it comes to the task of telling their stories well. We’ve also met some resistance from the power structures within the denomination, and while this doesn’t surprise me, it disappoints me because despite my angst over my Adventist heritage, I really want the church to do the right thing and have this conversation out in the open, without fear. As a good friend (who does not have an Adventist background even though she’s had her share of haystacks by now) said, “Running into obstacles just shows that you’re doing the right project. There would be no point in doing a documentary if everyone agreed.” I hope so. 

I keep thinking that it’s insane to be attempting production with a baby--one who is still breastfeeding, no less. Most days I feel like Pig-Pen in a Peanuts strip; there is a cloud of chaos that is just part of our life right now. However, the timing felt right both within the church and the country to start this project. I couldn’t imagine dragging Lily through airports, hotels, and rental cars, but I could envision taking things a bit slower and driving around the country. So, we found ourselves the proud owners of a used 19-foot travel trailer. I finally feel justified in driving an SUV! 

So far the trailer has been a great idea. We definitely drive slowly, but it’s forcing us to avoid major interstatesGood eating in the trailer and really experience more of the country. It’s been great to be able to cook our own food (kale quiche and chocolate cookies anyone?), and I don’t feel nearly as guilty about all of the miles Lily sits in a car seat when we can stop every couple of hours and let her play in the trailer while I cook. Not only are we eating much healthier, but we aren’t having to deal with the stress of eating in restaurants with Lily--she is a world-class champion food flinger now! God bless linoleum, I say. 

When we don’t stay with friends, we camp in KOAs or state parks (and every now and then in a Wal-Mart parking lot--there’s a whole other documentary topic there). Tonight we’re the only campers in a lovely campground on a lake outside of Battle Creek, Michigan. Stephen can’t get enough of the brilliant Fall colors, and Lily is loving the sounds of the migrating geese, not to mention the resident swan family.

This is already quite the epistle, so let me summarize how Lilybird is doing:

• She crawls at high speeds now and is close to walking. I keep hoping this trip will delay her rapidly advancing mobility skills, but so far she seems to have far different ambitions.Lily enjoys her makeshift bathtub
  
• She has proven to be amazingly adaptable. I wish I could know if our attachment parenting style, which claims to help babies be secure and resilient had a hand in this, or if we just hit the personality jackpot (probably the latter), but she continues to be incredibly happy, social, and eager to meet new people. We haven’t had any episodes of stranger anxiety yet, although she is still a little suspicious of men with facial hair at first.
• She really doesn't nap well unless I'm around to nurse her to sleep or Stephen can "walk her" to sleep. This means that she doesn't nap well with sitters. Luckily she still stays cheerful, but I feel mighty guilty about this! 
• She looks so much older to me. I’m not sure when they officially start being “toddlers,” but she is looking less like a baby by the day. 
• While I miss the baby phase, there are perks to this new phase--I think I got my first official hug yesterday. She put her arms around me, put her head down on my chest, and just lay there for several minutes. I thought my heart would burst open.

This trip has been hard on me--I don’t do well without sleep, and I’m going on many moons of inadequate rest right now. Part of the problem is that Lily slept with us for the most of October because it was too cold to put her in the pack-n-play (lucky us, we’ve been hitting early winter in most spots--snow all through Montana and South Dakota). It’s only a double bed, and even Lily seems to want more room these days. 

One night we stayed in a hotel with the idea that I would really be able to sleep (had my own bed, etc.), but after Lily got up to nurse at 1 a.m., I was unable to go back to sleep. There’s nothing like lying in bed at 4 a.m., exhausted, telling yourself, “Come on, go to sleep. You’re paying for this!”

This afternoon Stephen took Lily on a daddy date and I got a long nap. Note to self: When feeling incrediblyGorgeous colors depressed and as if life will never be happy again, do whatever is necessary to take a nap! Immediately. I think Stephen was duly impressed with my improved spirits when he returned, so this may become a weekly tradition.

Every time I get too mopey, I think of Sacajawea. Early on, we spent several days through Idaho and Montana essentially following the Lewis and Clark Trail. I’ve been interested in Sacajawea’s story ever since I read a book about her as a kid, and I still find her intriguing. What must it have been like to be the only woman on that trip? Talk about epic. And she did it all with a baby on her back (hurrah for baby wearing). I think I’m having a hard time, but I’m literally hauling around a 3,000 pound suitcase, kitchen sink included.

And, lest I forget amidst my grumbles, we are seeing truly spectacular parts of the country. I haven’t been onLily imagines her place in history a major road trip since grade school when my parents would pack Deeanne and me up for a big trip back east to see our grandparents. Of course, whether we stop to truly take in a sight (e.g. The Badlands or Lake Michigan) depends on whether or not Lily is asleep! I am trying not to be tormented by how irregular Lily’s naps are right now--when I get home we’re going to have to go nowhere for a month so she can remember what a routine feels like again! When she is sleeping, we do to great lengths to keep her asleep (this has involved almost running out of gas in Anita, Iowa because we were loath to stop the car...you parents out there will definitely get this).

Chris Blake, a long-time English professor at Union College, an Adventist college in Lincoln, NE and an author and thought-leader within the Adventist church, told me something that I keep trying to hold on to in the midst of the busyness and stress of this trip. When I wrote him about a possible interview for the film, I mentioned that only time would tell if we were nuts to be taking on this project, especially with a baby. 

He wrote back with this line that I can only hope is prophetic, “BTW, you are nuts to be doing this (especially with a nine-month old)--but it’s the cracked ones that let the light through.”

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn't mention a few sites:

1) Here's an article that the Journal-Star in Lincoln, NE did on the project. It includes pictures of us actually working! (Someone else had a camera this time ;  ) The reporter did a great job of capturing the heart of the project.

2) Here's our Facebook page for the film. We try to post regular updates about our progress.

3) Here's the film website (more coming soon). And, yes, you can make a much-needed, tax-deductible donation to the project here.

4) Here's an interview with us about the film.

Gratitude is one of the harder spiritual disciplines for me. I find that this is related to the challenge of staying in the moment and savoring the here and now for what it is rather than constantly letting the monkey in my brain screech about what I need to be worrying about.

Cultivating gratitude in myself and my children is one of the big goals for me. This is why Stephen and I have decided to keep the practice of saying grace before meals. In fact, I remember reading a parenting article several years back that advised parents to practice mealtime prayer even if they weren’t religious as a way to tangibly model gratitude. I’m afraid I need a lot more practice in gratitude than just mealtime prayers though.

A while back I wrote about a rare moment of gratitude when a quote from Meister Eckhart, the 13^th century Christian mystic, came to mind. “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is 'thank you,' that would suffice.”

I had another one of those moments tonight nursing Lily to sleep. She’d been thrashing about trying to get comfortable—now that she’s discovered the wonders of stomach sleeping, she likes to nurse until almost asleep and then roll over to find a comfy position. Sometimes this means she ends up kneeling, which turns into crawling, which turns into, “Whoa, she’s almost off the bed” panic moments for mama.

After a few rounds of this, I picked her up, cradled her on my lap, and just rocked her gently. She nursed for a few more minutes, her free hand roaming over my chest with a sense of abandon and possession. Then she finally surrendered to sleep.

Sometimes these moments of quiet while I’m waiting for her to fall asleep and then stay asleep turn into very hectic inner moments for me—I suddenly have all of this time to run through to do lists (and “behind” lists) in my head. Inevitably when this happens, I come out of the bedroom stressed and cranky, already behind.

But tonight when the monkey started his chest beating, I was able to tell him to sit down. I felt a deep stillness and peace as I looked at Lily’s sleeping face and felt her breathing gradually settle into slumber. How is it that this human being grew in my body? How is it that just nine months ago she was a tiny newborn who couldn’t even hold up her head? And now she can crawl all over my bed and give me a high five? 

I was reminded of a favorite saying: Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. For just five minutes tonight, I managed to actually appreciate the life I’m living, not just the one I’m planning.

In The Happiest Toddler on the Block, Dr. Harvey Karp points out that nuclear families (just mom and dad raising the offspring) are a very new development in the history of humankind. In fact, they’re still in theThe joy of a backyard with a swing experimental stage from an anthropological perspective and are still rare in much of the world. “Our ancestors always lived in extended families (near grandparents, aunts, cousins, etc.),” he writes. “For thousands of years, parents had the village to help them. In fact, when people from more traditional cultures hear about our spread-out families, they’re usually stunned.”

My sister can attest to this. She and her husband have been trekking in South America this summer, and they spent a week living with a family that was a host to my brother-in-law ten years ago when he taught in Ecuador back in the 90s. They arrived in time for a family wedding, and my sister said the bride and groom just moved in downstairs after their honeymoon. Another sister and her husband and baby live across a courtyard, and several other family members lives there too. The family shares meals together every evening, trading off cooking responsibilities. “They don’t understand why we all live separately,” Deeanne told me last week. “They wonder how we afford to live separately, who looks after you, and who takes care of the children.”

Good points. After almost three weeks of multigenerational living, I think the extended family idea really has merit. Except for the big problem of San Francisco not being outside the front door and our dear friends now living hundreds of miles away, Villa living is working.

My parents have a ranch style home in the suburbs of Oceanside, and we have taken over the entire “East Wing.” I actually think we have more room than we did in our last apartment! Lily loves the huge yard, and my mom continues to come home with more goodies for her to enjoy—a swing, an alligator swimming pool, the latest this or that she found on sale. Lily has never had so much adoration and attention.

It’s not that I leave Lily with my mom much yet—Lily still is veryBathing beauty attached to nursing to sleep for her naps, and she’s quite a handful to have alone these days as she’s turned into a wiggly wonder, but it’s just nice having another adult to help feed her, to watch her while I run to the bathroom, or—heavenly wonders—play with her for a few minutes while I shower. I’m also being frequently reminded that my parents have, you know, done this before. Stephen and I are both finally feeling productive again, like we’ve discovered a new normal to our work patterns.

A long post recently went around on a mom email group that I belong to asking for advice about how to take a shower when home alone with the baby. The advice from the other moms ranged from a) time naps right, b) bring older babies in the shower with you (and switch to paraben-free shower products), and, most importantly, c) let go of the expectation of daily showers. I’m sure somewhere some (well-rested and freshly-bathed) mothers from an indigenous tribe in Papua New Guinea are laughing, saying, “Really—this is called progress?”

It’s also really amazing to watch my parents with Lily—they are silly in a way that I haven’t often seen them, and they delight in finding new ways to make Lily giggle. My mom in particular seems to speak “Liliputian.” Lily lights up when she enters the room, and she is starting to throw a bit of a fit when my mom leaves a room. She has taught Lily to play ball (rolling it back and forth), and—in a decision we might all come to regret—to scream in dramatically increasing decibels at the table. The video that I’ve captured doesn’t come close to capturing the full intensity of this game they play (when Lily sees the camera she gets markedly quieter). We’re either creating a monster or the next Pavarotti.

Of course there are challenges. We have different routines, patterns, approaches. My mom laughs at myLily with her Oma and Leo. organic-buying ways while I vow to convince her that pesticide worrying is for more than liberal San Franciscans.

In some ways, I think it’s a good spiritual practice to live in close proximity to family precisely because we’re going to see some things—from produce practices to spiritual practices—differently.

My parents have always managed to foster an environment where wide-ranging opinions are welcome, and I have never had any doubt that I am unconditionally loved by them, no matter my political, religious, or personal persuasions. I hope to figure out just how they have cultivated that unusual gift while we’re sojourning here; I can’t think of a better family legacy to continue.

I feel a bit like a bird on migration. We’re missing true north, but there’s a reason why we flew south for the winter, er, fall.