It is Finished....For Now.

Last night (or this morning, depending on who was in which phase of sleep) Nate handed in the last paper he had pending for the quarter, thus the school year. I'm so proud of him, completing this first year of graduate school with some outstanding work and success. I used to think graduate school was just 30-somethings writing papers and having more difficulty because they had been out of practice, but was I wrong. Nate's class of 9 students is by no means a microcosm of all graduate departments, but the work load was grueling for everyone. For us, the only family with a child (and one on the way), it was a team effort: we all shouldered part of the burden. I am amazed at what is expected of students above and beyond class, homework and work schedules. Conferences, meetings, and department-wide participation in other students' events are recommended with a knowing look that communicates much more than "your presence is requested...". Nate made herculean efforts to be known by various faculty in the history department, foresight that I find extraordinary when he was so bogged down with the daily details of student life. Because he plans on applying this fall for various PhD programs in 2010, these connections were necessary.
Our family only has one week's rest before our next journey into uncharted territory: Nate's departure for three weeks to Bolivia to do archival research. Research-wise it is hardly any time at all. Family-wise it feels like an eternity to be apart. With the hands-on help of both Natalie's grandmas we will have some great visitors and help while I keep my work schedule on the weekends. It is also a momentous occasion because he will be returning to a land we both called home, and visiting people who became our family while we lived in Bolivia. I'm sad not to make this journey with him. His return to the US will coincide with the advent of our birth month (the two weeks before and after the proposed due date of July 29), another journey into uncharted territory. The two months before classes start next fall will be a special time for all of us, an insular time as we get used to the new shape of our family. Thank you all for taking this journey with us--we will need you on the road ahead.

Honesty

Natalie, after having most of her breakfast sees Nate getting our breakfast together, which she will share with us.
Natalie: "Bag-o!" (bagel)
Nate: "Well, how about some egg?"
Natalie: "Eeek!" (egg)
Nate sits down, gives Natalie some egg.
Natalie: "Bag-o!"
She gets a piece of bagel with jelly on it, delightedly licks of the jelly then eats the bagel piece.
Natalie: "Mo? Mo bag-o?"
I said, "Don't you mean more jelly with bagel?"
Natalie, to Nate: "Mo? Mo chuh-wee (jelly)?"

Conversations with Natalie

I'm taking some inspiration from friend and fellow blogger Melissa to start documenting conversations with our daughter that seem particularly memorable. Though she is just at the cusp of putting words together to form verbal ideas and sentences, we found out this morning that they aren't necessary when needing to get her point across. This was before breakfast this morning:
Natalie (sort of fussy) to Nate: "Up? Up?"
Nate picks her up.
Natalie, a bit authoritatively points to the refrigerator, "Open?"
Nate opens the 'fridge.
With a big smile, Natalie says, "Boo-babies?" (blueberries)

What Wondrous Love Is This

For all the reasons this pregnancy is different from the first, we are thankful. Though we wish our concentrated efforts to document the pregnancy were more fruitful, we still try to get pictures of Baby BG while he's still in the belly. Here is the most recent.
As Natalie learns more and more words it seems that some days she wakes up and simply experiments with her own thoughts and dreams. The juxtaposition of little baby and little girl brings so much joy to us. This video was from breakfast the other day.




Dad has been on my mind a lot lately. The song, Wondrous Love, reminds me so much of him because of the a cappella, bluegrass style, but also for the lines, "And when from death I'm free I'll sing on...and through eternity I'll sing on." And we have no doubt that he is.

Pregnancy, Pressure and Parking

Pardon the alliteration. It's my attempt at being clever and witty. You see, I have pregnancy brain and it has rendered out my creativity to a thin myelin on my general humor. Mommy medulla, if you will. I'm 26 weeks along and look 35 weeks. The nose dive in attention given to consecutive pregnancies has not been lost on our family. Journals, pictures, sound diet, and general contemplation are all fond memories of a time and place called Pregnancyland. Though my brain seems to have gone there on holiday, I'm living in Toddleropolis and it's quite a disparate existence. Our little guy is healthy in all the ways we can tell from prenatal tests (thanks, state of Cali) and general mommy well-being. We call him Baby BG and, when the few moments of contemplation come, we wonder wonder wonder about him.
Nate is well into his third quarter of school in the Latin American Studies department. His prospectus to an all-Grad symposium was accepted, so he'll be giving a talk this Thursday that will connect an area of his research on a community from the area of Bolivia we lived to the symposium's key focus topic, memory. Nate is also waiting for word, more like an official verification, of a research grant he applied for to study in Bolivia. He is working again at 50% time, still as a graduate student researcher, and as the primary translator for a book written in Spanish, authored by a visiting scholar from Peru. Prioritizing all of that with being a dad and husband has required a herculean effort, not without its drawbacks. The pressure is tremendous.
Speaking of. We have used a pressure cooker on a weekly basis for almost a decade, but two weeks ago as I was just about to turn down the heat after the cooker reached full steam the overpressure plug completely blew out. Our wall is now stained a pale blue and I just paid $2 s/h for a $3 replacement part. It was also very loud.
I think parking is going to be an issue for me, here in California. Not for lack of it, but for the tiny, parallel spaces provided. In most parking situations, I can't open Natalie's door all the way so, while trying not to scratch the neighbor car, squeeze one arm inside to unbuckle (or buckle) and pull her out. A one-armed pull is much easier than the replacement scenario. There are more than a few reasons for moms not leaving the house with the kiddos.

13-Month Party

I used to be one of those people that rolled her eyes every time a parent, when asked how old their child was, would give the child's age in months. If it wasn't divisible by 2, I had no idea how old the kid really was, but honestly didn't care. It was a question for the sake of conversation. Now, I find myself as one of the Ones Whom I Scorned. I rationalize it by saying, "Well, 13 months is very different from 12 and 14, don't you see?" And, for the most part, it's true. On Natalie's first birthday she took her first step. Since then, her mobility, verbalization, continual grasp of cause and effect, dexterity and nighttime sleep habits have changed exponentially. Now she's 13 months (just over 1 year) and we're wondering how much more 'little girl' she'll become before next month's birthday.
We had a little party (a bit late) on the 20th (her 13th month was January 17th). Ethan came up and made us a stellar batch of blueberry scones, and accompanied by eggs and coffee we had a great mid-week celebration.
Oh, the new president's inauguration just happened to be on the same day and at the same time we were celebrating with Natalie.

Winterness

I've been musing about winter lately. Understandable, as San Diego's seems the antithesis of Minnesota's, something for which I'm told daily I should thank my lucky snowshoes. Sure, I'm a Minnesotan who has grown tired of the long winters, it seems, the older I get. It was less about snow days and holidays and more about slipping on ice, gaining weight and long-night burnout. And the cold got to me, made me a little grouchier at the Target clerk or the driver ahead of me. But, these should not be the things of native-deep sentiment, right?
I found some parallels in these musings, strangely enough (strange as in the way thoughts come to you just before going to sleep or waking up), in some syntactical characteristics of the Quechua language. (Bear with me, it will be beautiful.) Quechua is one of three official indigenous languages spoken in Bolivia, in addition to Spanish, and is spoken throughout the Andean region of South America. Nate took a keen interest in the study of Quechua, something he's still pursuing in his graduate studies, from its influence on the Spanish we learned while living in Bolivia. In Quechua, when a word appears singularly, its definition, as I assume it is in most languages, is simply that of its own meaning: nina = fire, for example. If the word appears twice, it doesn't mean its plural but almost the quintessence of the singular definition; the essence of the thing. Again: nina nina = fiery. Or firey. Very fire, if we could.
So it was a deep nostalgia that a poem by Cristina Rosetti stirred up in me, written as a Christmas poem. It is also the basis for one of my favorite books of Natalie's, one from which I will momentarily borrow. The poem is called In the Bleak Midwinter. My favorite passage follows:

"In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago."

For San Diegans this would conjure up images of a gulag labor camp. But for me, Minnesotan as winter wheat, and with a shred of knowledge of a language spoken in a different celestial hemisphere that yields a moment of poetic license, it made me miss winterness. Not so much the snow, but the snow on snow, snow on snow. What big flakes, shovelling and weather reports all mean together. The essence of winter, cultivated from a lifetime of seeking comfort from the bleakness and the stone-hard winter blues. What winter tires, rosy cheeks and wearing boots to church mean. The heaviness of the clothes on clothes, blankets on blankets. I miss the collective, cultural descent from the high heat of the summer with its mad rush to get a year's worth of outsideness done in three months, through the gradual slowing of time and changing of leaves, to the viscous pace of the winter. It was rhythmic and dependable. It was living the paradox of being rooted yet in perpetual expectation, because it never lasted forever.
For now, I'm happy to do without the street-side parking chaos for plowing, bluer office lights and atmospheric treachery lurking in the darkness. I won't be quick, though, to mindlessly forget it simply because I live in sunny California. They were the things of winter that made me more glad to always be going home home.