Interests:Dreams, family life and memoirs. I hope to be an inviting person and make an inviting home. I am married to a very patient, loving, and humorous man and we had our first baby in April of 09. Every sort of human relationship intrigues me so I study them a lot and try to maintain my own. I wonder about your background and what in your history and your circles are impacting your decisions and perspective. I spent 4.5 years living in Kenya and continuously learn what that means to me. I'm terribly uninterested in movie stars and idiosyncrasies of people's pets. I enjoy blended drinks, chopped salads, mashed potatoes and bottled soda. I like watching people's non-verbal language and am told that I don't smile enough. I'm growing a thicker skin but hopefully not a calloused one. I wish I didn't need sleep because I don't get enough anyway. I try to think collectively. Occupation:Many Industry:Non-profit
[In the bathroom, brushing teeth, staring at the mirror. Danielle explains the phenomenon that's been happening on her forehead... from bangs growing when she was pregnant to all those falling out and a brief normal hairline to the recent 1inch long line of fuzz that refuses to lie down flat.]
Danielle: Isn't that weird? Look at that - look at it!!
Ryan: People thought Simon Birch was weird. And he turned out to be a hero. A hero.
Danielle: Okay, can you at least acknowledge what I'm talking about?
Ryan: He was a hero.
Danielle: This is so weird. Ugh!
Ryan: You're saying you have a mustache but only on your forehead. I get it.
Danielle: [wishes she could object to that description but, after another glance in the mirror, knows she cannot...]
I know there are more things to add to this list (what would you add?) but I thought it'd be fun to get some of these things down... in case you're in a different life stage or if you're in the same and have had some similar revelations. :)
Things to enjoy when you're...
Single: appreciate ability to tell a story to a group of people without being contradicted; enjoy doing your own laundry and no one else’s; enjoy uncertainty; enjoy your last name (if you're female and not going to push for a hyphen or something less traditional)
Married, no kids on the way: enjoy freedom of going out in public and having few to no strangers touch you or your family members and tell you what to do; appreciate eating and drinking whatever with no concern of it directly affecting anyone else’s digestion or development; enjoy packing light, traveling on whims and not measuring things in weeks or months
Pregnant: enjoy late nights, late mornings, days that are truly off, sleep and eating; enjoy your current amount of privacy and the relative lack of the following topics in normal conversation: poop, bleeding, labor, cervix, vomit, breastfeeding—unless you bring them up; enjoy not lifting up your shirt wherever you go to feed anyone; enjoy wearing dresses and bras with no flaps; enjoy the fact that when you forget something in your house, you only have to get you back in there to get it; enjoy that your weary state is obvious and accepted and catered to (once you have a baby you’ll be more tired but, well let’s put it this way—there ain’t no “have an infant” special parking spots)
With newborn: enjoy that carseat that goes in and out of the car and has a handle; enjoy 1-wipe dirty diapers; enjoy that someone was just added to your family forever; enjoy the carpool lane; enjoy the immobilized-ness of your kid; enjoy your baby’s smell and minuscule cute clothes
because it's so hard to see a kid struggle and want.
The Kids' Bedtime (Ayelet Waldman) from Real Simple, November 2009
Of my four children, eight-year-old Rosie loves books and stories the most. She remembers whether Percy the Polar Bear's pal is named Aurora or Andrea; she remembers every twist and turn in the complicated Norse myths. She is the one who can recount with a near compulsive exactitude the plots of every one of the nonsense stories I have made up for her. All she has ever wanted to do is read. And, of course, because fate can be cruel, she is dyslexic. Mildly, true--but, still, reading for Rosie has come very slowly. It has involved tutors and intensive programs, and boxes of sight words and all sorts of things designed to sap all pleasure from books and the written word.
At night, when I curl up next to Rosie and we read from a book, alternating paragraphs, her generally confident trill turned halting and tentative, I ache with both sadness and admiration for this small girl, who will never give up until she can read her own (and perhaps writer her own) stores and books. Those 20 minutes of pain and joy are the highlight of my day.
Rush hour traffic on our street... the green bit you can see in the upper left side is the garbage truck. The line of cars follows due to all the parked cars on the street and all the garbage cans set beside them. Introducing Bryan to the world of Flappy Jacks (and Ryan's beloved cheese blintzes). We went to APU to hear a lecture from Stanley Hauerwas one morning. Dante's first successful day of wearing these overalls without getting poo all over them. Halloween - Ryan is dressed up as our friend, me as a 20s flapper, Dante as a monkey. Me and Aunt Holly at my cousin's wedding. She's holding her grandson, Corbin. The boys took a snooze UNTIL the wedding started.
The other night, World Impact LA had their monthly Gathering - where we all come together, eat dinner, and have a worship service. Tim, our director, led the lesson time and started us off in small groups with the question "Name one small thing you remember about a family member from your childhood." I enjoyed hearing my group's stories of breakfast dates with dad or silly inside jokes. Ryan and I had a good talk afterwards about some of our vibrant childhood memories - those things that, while seemingly insignificant, are cemented in your mind, for better or for worse.
Here are some of my good ones -
Mom and Dad would frequently encourage Adam and I to take a day off of school. We rarely took them up on the offer because make-up work is the worst and we'd usually have after school things we wanted... but it was nice to know we could if we ever wanted to. We did a few times.
In my high school years and Adam's mix of middle school and high school years, while I lived in Kenya, we didn't get any awards from school. Well Adam maybe got one. Every year, we'd sit through this terminally long awards ceremony and not get anything. I don't know if we were feeling bad about it or if Mom and Dad just decided that our school wasn't the only one who could do an awards ceremony but they decided to have their own. It was a total surprise - one day they called us all into the living room and with costumes and corny script, they hosted their own dorky awards ceremony for all five of us kids and I remember thinking they were crazy, but obviously thoughtful. :)
I remember as a little kid picking peaches in an orchard, picking flats of strawberries, and canning peaches forever and stirring gigantic bowls of strawberry jam.
Every year when my dad worked for a local accounting firm, Adam and I would go in and help with a big mailing and felt very grown-up. I don't know what month it was - I don't think it was April... like before people got their taxes ready or something. Anyway, we'd help the secretary (that's what the job was called back then...), Nancy Bridges, and we would get excited when we recognized names on the envelopes. Dad would buy us a treat from the snack box (didn't even have a vending machine) and we would make some big bucks! I bought my first 35mm camera with money from that job. :)
Whenever we went camping, we'd get to drink soda and eat Lucky Charms. That was the life. On some summer nights we'd sleep on the trampoline and all roll towards the middle by 10pm. In December, we'd all sleep "under" the Christmas tree a night or two.
One Christmas, I had this white dress with red polka dots and a red ribbon and I was so gosh darn excited about wearing it that I woke up super early, without an alarm, got that dress on, with tights, probably did my hair and went out into the living room to wait for everyone. It was pitch dark and who knows how early it was... probably like 5am. Dad came out, asked what I was doing, sat there a few minutes with me, and then I think we decided it'd be best to go back to bed for a while. Hahaa.
It's crazy to think that now we're the parents of Dante... and we will be forming these good (and bad) memories, having no idea what random things will get cemented in his mind. Yikes!! It's also crazy to think about the Littles and how my parents are still in the process of all this memory making and that their memories of growing up, my parents, and our family, will be so totally different than Adam and mine are.
