Tag Archives: pictures

Motherhood

Word Sponge

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Cheese
Originally uploaded by tzt.

Lately, Declan has been swabbing up new words and concepts like a syntactic barnacle suckered onto a chubby unabridged dictionary. He began to request “more” of everything, from avocado and blueberries to images of nebulae and planets in the opening sequence of “Star Trek: Voyager” reruns well before Christmas. (To this day, if I don’t capture video of intergalactic travel on the DVR for multiple replay, there can be hell to pay.)

Then, suddenly, he could no longer restrain himself from singing along with the lullabies he’d made me repeat several times a day. He chimes in a word at the end of each phrase, adding new ones as they make sense to him. When his Giga (his name for my mother) gave him a book called “That’s dangerous!” for Christmas, he happily mastered the three-syllable word, sing-songing “Mommy, mommy, DAN-GER-OUS” as he sashayed through the house. Whenever my husband watches taped David Letterman shows during the day, Declan runs up to the screen during the “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches,” and chimes in along with FDR’s “fear” and points his finger determinedly while saying “ASK NOT…” along with JFK.

Now, I’m amazed by his sudden ability to recognize and name shapes and colors as well as several letters and numbers. Yesterday, he wiggled around the bathtub with a foam orange 4 displayed proudly on his belly, chanting “number 4, number four,” before sticking it up into the faucet, so that it looks like we’ll be taking Dali-esque baths filled with numbers and letters in the future:

fourwater

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Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2007.

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Motherhood

The dream diet

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Lynds
Originally uploaded by tzt.

Ever since I first found out that I was going to have a May baby, I dreamed of planting a vegetable garden every year around his or her birthday. It took me until my 30s to realize the rewards of eating homegrown food, let alone planting and nourishing anything, then watching it flourish.

In my pregnant daydreams, this child and I would play with plants in the dirt, then water and watch things grow together. On the languid evenings between late July and the early fall, we would happily eat our homegrown “birthday” tomatoes and cucumbers in celebration of his or her life and good food. I just had to keep my fingers crossed that this child would actually enjoy vegetables.

Now 14 months, Declan screams for bananas and berries in the grocery store aisles, so far mostly unaware of the sugary pleasures of things like chocolate and cookies. The other day he reached out his hand and cried as a bag of avocados rode past him on the conveyor belt in the checkout line, oblivious to a quart of ice cream. “Aha, you have one of those fruit and vegetable babies there, don’t you?” the woman bagging the groceries said.

Last night we stopped for sweet corn at Lynd’s Fruit Farm and walked past a table of tomatoes. Declan started to grab one, which would have caused an avalanche, so I redirected him to walk toward his father. There was another table of beefsteaks on the path, and before either of us could do anything about it, he had one in his hand and took a bite out of it like an apple. Customers and the owners all laughed as they watched him chow down as though his life depended on it, juice and seeds seeping down his chin.

Granted, a few more tastes of confections could change his tastes completely in the next couple of years, but so far, the gardening assistant of my daydreams lives on.

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Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.

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Motherhood, Under the Whale, Zeitgeist

Daddy mogul, baby critic

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Daddy mogul
Originally uploaded by tzt.

Due to his father’s strange adventure on the Judge Judy show and a visit to my father’s house for Thanksgiving, Declan has made his way to Los Angeles and Manhattan at the grand old age of six months.

He’s wandered through the Getty Center, MOMA and even The Aldrich in Connecticut.

Suffice to say, he has an appreciation for minimalist and abstract painting that his father and I may never develop.

He shrieks with joy when he sees bright orange or yellow.

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Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.

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Motherhood

Not your usual heirloom

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Piano man
Originally uploaded by tzt.

Believe it or not, this is Declan’s great grandfather’s Casio keyboard.

He loves to play it.

My grandfather was prone to try and learn to do new things right up until he died, at 89, in 1999.

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Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.

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Motherhood

The tomato hat factor

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Saucy hat
Originally uploaded by tzt.

As Declan becomes more and more animated, more prone to smiling and showing off all of his newfound skills, I feel more and more like a 35-year-old puff of smoke that simply transports him from place to place. I’ve only recently been able to fit back into my pre-baby clothes, so mommy-induced invisibility has been a sort of convenient body camouflage.

But put him in something extra-terrestrially cute like this tomato hat, knitted for him by a friend, and even his father disappears from the world at large. With the cold weather just swinging in, he’s been wearing it out a lot lately, and it prompts total strangers to start talking to him directly, as though he’s trolling around town all alone.

The other night, we were out at a bland restaurant Downtown and decided to get ice cream afterwards. As we walked across a public square, a group of people spilled out of another restaurant and started to crow: “look at the baby with the tomato head! Omygosh what a cute baby!”

I turned around with Declan in my arms so that they could see him properly. The most excited person in the bunch was a tall, muscular blond guy who yelled excitedly: “Hi little baby! I love your tomato hat, baby! You are such a cute baby!”

Declan is generous with his smiles, so he gave the man one as we started to move on.

“He smiled at me! Thanks baby!”

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Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.

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Notes of a She-Hack, Oh My Ohio

The ghost of Frankie Avalon

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Arrow
Originally uploaded by tzt.

Last night, we went to bed to the sound of cries of “Oh my God, Oh my God! I can’t believe we fucking LOST!” all over the neighborhood. The neighborhood being on the perimeter of the Ohio State University campus and the timing being moments after the Buckeyes crashed in the ballyhooed football game against Texas.

Our neighbors change year-to-year, and sometimes quarter-to-quarter. The apartment building full of yutzes behind us has been transformed into a tolerable mix of quiet, foreign grad student families and one annoying hosebag who likes to ride around the parking lot on one of those pocket bikes nightly. (Look at me! I am a GIANT!)

The houses around us largely contain working folks, but there is one place where the highest form of humor is clearly Budwesier commercials. You know you’re in trouble when a house full of undergrads turns on a red and blue neon “Open” sign in its picture window every weekend night and has a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker stuck to a board that’s been nailed to a tree about 12 feet above the pavement.

But last night, they were mostly quieted by the outcome of the game, where the most hilarious sign in the crowd simply said “Austin is better than Columbus.” Riots only bust out when OSU wins.

Meanwhile, our year and a half old puppy, Arrow, barked incessantly in the living room as we were trying to fall asleep. I thought it was the endless parade of hangdog drunks who were stumbling down the street muttering “Why, God, WHY!?” that were bothering him. But my husband went to investigate and found that the arch-enemy of peace in our home was a Dora the Explorer beach ball that I roll Declan around on when he’s having gas pains. The inflatable toy was eerily moving in circles on the hardwood floor in the living room, spun by wind from a fan.

Here I was, still annoyed at him for eating a half a stick of butter off of the kitchen counter the night before – mainly because it transformed him into a butter-obsessed beggar. But incidents like that one mostly serve remind me that I live with two babies.

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Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2005.

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The story of my son

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This is part of what I wrote for my son for his welcoming ceremony last weekend. I believe all children should be raised with their own mythology:

I want to give you something that my mother gave to me: the first of what I’m sure will be many larger-than-life tales about the wonderfulness of you. Someday I’m sure you’ll hear that I read at a very young age, that I was practically born to tell stories. Or that a psychic said, when your Uncle Andy was born, that he would be a leader and a great man that people were drawn to.

Both of my parents taught me, each in their own ways, that it’s important that every child knows that somebody believes they are remarkable and able to achieve whatever they set their mind to. And as much as your gentle nature, sense of humor and easy happiness amaze us more each day, you were also remarkable before you were even born.

Before we knew you were going to enter our lives, we went to Greece to see your Uncle Lowry and Aunt Sara get married. While we were there, your daddy, grandma and I visited the ancient city of Delphi on Mount Parnassus, which the Greek God Zeus said was the bellybutton of the universe.

Daddy and I drank from the Castilian Spring, where Apollo, the God of Poetry and Music dwelled with the muses. It is supposed to be a source for inspiration and learning for those who drink deeply from it. Daddy filled a cup for me and I drank deeply from it, so it was one of the very first waters that nourished you.

On this mountain thousands of years ago, there was also an oracle called the pythia. She inhaled vapors from a crack in the earth at the Temple of Apollo and told her visitors what was in their future. Since I don’t get the chance to visit the navel of all existence very often, I got as close as I could to the place where the oracle once stood and whispered what I thought was a very practical question, just: “what do I need to know?”

When we got back to the states and confirmed that you would be joining our lives in the spring, I knew that the answer to my question – the person who would teach me things I couldn’t have imagined, things I need to know – was you.

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Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2005.

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Welcome Wagon

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Welcome Wagon
Originally uploaded by tzt.

Haven’t had much time for blogging since we held a Welcoming Ceremony for Declan this past weekend.

“What the hell is a Welcoming Ceremony?” you might be asking. And you wouldn’t be alone.

Basically, we felt that it was important to have a ritual rite of passage – a day when people gathered just to honor the birth of our son. So we enlisted the help of interfaith minister Joseph Hambor to help us design something and asked a few family members to share a little of their own wisdom.

It turned out to be a tender event, in spite of the fact that it was a million degrees and humid. Declan’s three cousins made him a welcoming sign, his dad wrote him a poem and I wrote a story about him. Joseph called in the four directions, performed the ritual of the four tastes and anointed him with a special oil to welcome him into a wider community of family and friends.

One grandma said the Hail Mary, the other shared a family story about honesty and his grandfather read one of his favorite poems.”Nature Boy” was performed by local singer Nikki Wonder and pianist Jim Maneri. We chose nine guides to help him throughout his life – and remain participants in ours – who each got a chance to hold or touch him.

Declan, of course, slept through most of it because of the heat, but he remained good natured as people kissed and held him throughout the day.

Some people seemed to feel stymied by the concept of a ceremony being “interfaith.” The fact is, Declan’s father and I are, I believe, very moral and ethical people who aren’t practicing in any particular religion but still value spirituality. Neither of us wants to impose a particular organized religion on our son as we both feel that the institutions of religions – not the faiths themselves – are the source of many of the world’s problems.

Our son will know what faiths he belongs to culturally, just by virtue of birth. But we will also expose him to many others and let him make his own decisions about how and if he wants to participate in religion.

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Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2005.

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