Living the moments

From October 8

"Each moment missed is a moment unlived." -- Jon Kabat-Zinn

That sentence is nestled into a book on mindfulness meditation that I'm reading right now, and this type of thinking is the heart of why we're keeping this blog: we want to capture some of our ordinary life moments in writing. This desire to write things down serves two purposes, for me at least: 1) it helps me to see my daily life experience as worthy of attention and reflection, and 2) it's something we'll be able to re-read and treasure in the years after it's all passed. Because we're making this blog into books, we'll have collections of words and photos that we'll be able to read when Maia is out of the house and in college (and beyond)!

I haven't blogged in a week (an unusual gap for me) because I've been re-examining and reflecting upon the purpose of all of this. Reflection is almost always useful, and it's been a very useful week. I've realized a few things about what it means to me to keep a public blog:

• I don't want to write a blog that doesn't interest me. What that translates into is that my opinions will be here. (And God knows that I have strong opinions!) This isn't just going to be a "Here's what Maia did today . . . here's how much she weighs . . . here's what she's eating . . . zzzzz." That blog would put me to sleep as I was writing it, and I'm sure that our readers would be nodding off, too.
• I want to write this blog in such a way that I capture as much of the "flavor" of our lives as I can. That's my overarching purpose. Readers, please know that we deeply appreciate your interest in how we're doing, but ultimately this blog is not for you (I don't mean that to sound cold . . . but there it is). If push came to shove and I made this blog completely private, I would still keep writing. I want to capture these moments in our lives for us, for our three-person family's sake, and that's the heart of why I'm writing here.

So, there's the heart of it. That's why I'm writing, and that's the understanding of this blog that I'm bringing to this keyboard and screen when I sit down and write. The "I" that sits down here to write is a particular person, too, and I bring my own lovely set of baggage to the enterprise of writing. I am:

• A stay-at-home during the day, part-time employed mother who is pretty darn happy with this state of being about 85% of the time. The other 15%? Well, we all have our moments! :)
• A person who is reflective and critical (in the analytical sense of the word), sometimes to a fault. I have a very hard time just letting things be, and I am generally quite content with living an examined life. It's who I am.
  
• The sort of person whose "rules" on parenting and child-related life might seem constrictive, unusual, or limiting sometimes. For example: we are one of those families who, almost without exception, has the television off when our child is awake. This isn't the norm, and we know that, but we're doing it for a reason, and it feels right to us.

We've added dozens of new photos to our usual Picasa site over the last few days; I've been a bit camera-happy lately, and you can see the results of that online. October is my very favorite month of the year, and I always seem to have this impulse to capture images of it and try to hold on to these beautiful fall days.