Happiness is . . .

• Maia's just-up-from-nap breath.
• Seeing five plants full of tomatoes out my dining room window.
• The beep of the coffee machine, first thing in the morning.
• Stepping off the treadmill after a 75 minute run.
• The pure physical power of a woman pushing her baby into the world.
• Being halfway through a wonderful novel--so much beauty already, but so much left to go.
• A just-opened bottle of wine, a bowl of olives, and treasured time my loved ones as we sit around a table together.
• Maia going down the list of all the people she loves, and ending with "And I love all the people in the world."
• The heaviness of a dog sleeping on my feet on the couch.
• Farmer's market blueberries.
  

New thoughts on this blog

So here's the problem: I've been bored with writing this blog this summer. I have occasional desires to write "update" posts about what's up with Maia, but the energy and the momentum to do it just isn't there. As Maia continues to get smarter and bigger and more independent, her presence is more intertwined with other aspects of our lives, rather than feeling like somewhat of a separate category of life. During her babyhood, caring for her felt like a more distinct and sometimes incongruous life task; now, she and I go about our days together, and her needs/wants and mine are often indistinguishable (at least upon first examination).

If we go get coffee and bagels out on Zingerman's patio, we both sit down at a table to eat; I flip through a newspaper or book while she writes and draws in her notebook. We tend not to use high chairs or booster seats anymore, so she sits in the regular chair and wiggles around until she finds a comfortable spot. We converse about what we see (sparrows, dogs, other people), and we really do hang out together rather than me bringing her along on errands and tasks. It's quite lovely, really. Of course, being a two-year-old, Maia tends to dominate conversation, but that's okay. :) I'm not expecting to discuss health care reform with her just yet.

Maia and Brian cook dinner together now, and she even used the sharp chopping knife for the first time last week (with my help, of course) to roughly chop arugula for a salad. She cleans up her toys on her own--with parental reminders--and climbs in and out of the car and her carseat independently.

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I just took a break from writing for a while to go assist Maia with her "Good Morning Time," as we call it. She's awake now, but here's what she told me about her needs: "I don't want to sit down and eat breakfast. I want time to be by myself." So, at this moment, she's playing on her own in her play area, wearing just a pull-up, with her glorious bed-head curls, and I know she'll tell me when she's done with her alone time. Our conversation about her wish for independent time was very similar to something I might talk about with an adult, except us grown-ups would probably be more dodgy and less direct about expressing desires to be left alone for a bit. :)

So, where do I envision my blogging going from here? I imagine that I'll be writing more frequently about my work (up to a point--HIPAA intrudes on blogging details in the life of a doula, naturally) and about what I'm reading. Maybe there will be book reviews, maybe not. I'll definitely be writing about politics and policy--the debate over health care reform has me very frustrated at the moment, and reading about it is a regular aspect of my daily news consumption. I'll be writing about food and health and exercise, and my continued efforts to get myself ready to run 13 miles in mid-October.

But, in the midst of all this, I've felt a desire lately to unplug and to pull away somewhat from some of my online pursuits. I haven't found Facebook to be particularly enriching lately, for example, just as I've struggled with what to do with this blog. Both of these sites are ways for me to stay in touch with other people, but I've found them to be more distracting than helpful over the course of this summer. So, I'm streamlining--I guess you could call it "selfish," but I'm on a continuous campaign to embrace that word and to re-define it a more positive light.

Brian might share some of these thoughts and opinions, but I don't know. About 80-90% of the posts on this blog come from me, though, so my perspective on what to do with it will largely dictate the path that this blog follows. So, come along for the ride or not. We'll see where it goes!

Holding Pattern

I've been circling around this blog for several weeks now, thinking about posting, not posting, thinking about it again . . . and I think that I, for one, am going to change up how I use this blog a bit. Brian might not, I don't know. But I think I'm going to.

Before things move in the new blog direction (whatever that might be), here are a few vital statistics about the Family G these days:

1. Episodes that Brian and I have left before we've finished watching The Wire: 1
2. Miles I've run on my longest single run to date: 6
3. Number of piggies Maia had in her hair today: 2
4. Number of days until I turn thirty-three: 7
5. Books I'm currently reading: The Feminine Mystique, The Conscience of a Liberal, and Animal Dreams
6. Book that Brian is currently reading to Maia each night: Beezus and Ramona
7. Number of ripe tomatoes I picked off of our plants today: 16
8. Time my alarm will go off tomorrow morning for my 30-minute (approx. 3 mile) run: 5:30 AM
9. Number of days before Auntie Jo Jo flies back to NYC (bummer): 7
10. Number up to which Maia successfully counts out loud: 16
11. Brian's professional blog: http://www.houseofbilz.com/
12. My professional websites: http://www.lamazefamilycenter.org/ and http://www.annarbordoulas.com/
13. Number of babies whose births I'll attend in the next four months: 3
14. Favorite sentence uttered by Maia this past week: "Dude! Let us get into that parking spot!" (While we were waiting for a SUV to pull out of a spot on State Street.)