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DanAeRi
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Name: Danielle
Birthday: 9/16/1984
Gender: Female
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
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
11/5/2003
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| I know I'm going to miss this time of life. I've kind of been having a hard time regaining a sense of equilibrium as a mom but no matter how tired I am or at my wits end I feel, I'm trying to stay aware of the present and how precious it is. The warm giggle and ever-loyal cuddles of Dante just melt my heart, day after day, even when the day is really crappy or just plain ol' melancholy and when my arm seriously feels like it's going to fall off. (Have you ever heard of going to physical therapy because of carrying around a gigantic infant?) He is truly such an amiable, happy kid and makes me laugh so much. Although he doesn't have his Uncle Mike's middle name - Zawadi (gift) - it would be appropriate. Like Mike, Dante was unexpected, and a gift. Seems like the best gifts are unexpected.
During my pregnancy, I didn't especially love or hate it. I thought it was weird, cool, had a pretty easy time of it, but I wasn't one of the "this is the most amazing awesome experience, I want to be terminally preggers" type. But now, just six months on the other side of it, I get a little emotional when I see other people's pregnant pics and remember what that was like, or when I feel my friends' little unborn babies move. I wasn't one that basked in the glory of pregnancy but there is a wonder to it that I don't think anyone who's been pregnant or close to someone pregnant gets over completely.
After going through labor, followed by a pretty violent/awful recovery, it seemed crazy to me to think about another such visit to the hospital and the ensuing gore. The other day, though, I was looking at the hospital photos of one of my friends who just gave birth -- the gown, the artificial lights, the brave/good-sport smile -- and I had some sort of nostalgic/longing/crazy feeling about that day in my life... and the potential for another one not too unlike it. With adoption being such a real method of growing a family in my experience, the whole biological process of pregnancy/giving birth lost some awesomeness in a way because, in my life, adoption has been so awesome (and a heck of a lot less, er, messy). I guess I could be extra awed/wooed by the experience for the same reason. Anywho, it was just surprising for me to kind of get excited about the prospect of bearing another child in the conventional, physically painful way.
Some of you are really thinking I'm crazy at this point and some of you are scared that I'm about to announce that I'm pregnant (M.M....) but don't worry, I'm not. I'm just typing, processing, jabbering. Once I get a piano or more space to do creative things (see Mom, I listen...) you might read less about the inner mind of Danielle. Ryan and I are still in a debate about when we'd prefer to expect another baby anyway, although obviously we don't determine our steps and had little say in our #1 pipsqueak Dante. All testimonials about why it's better to have siblings closer in age can be e-mailed to me... actually, just send them straight to Ryan.
But I digress...
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| Ryan: I'm thankful for our baby.
Me: [smile] Me too.
[Pause.]
Ryan: Oh, I was talking about our Taurus. I'm thankful for Dante, too, but I was talking about the car.
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