I hug him tight. He kisses me on the side of my nose.
“Thanks, mom,” he says, rolling over and heaving a sigh. “Good night.”
This is how he falls asleep lately. I’m not sure why I’m getting thanked, but I’m not complaining.
Tonight he paused a beat. Then took a breath.
“Sidewalks can just take you everywhere… right mom?”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
I’ve been blogging less and working a lot more lately, which is turning into quite a juggling act.
Happily, somebody noticed. A few weeks back, I found out that my colleagues at KnowledgeWorks and I won a national award for our storytelling project about urban high school reform. Yay us!
Incidentally, our editor’s very first children’s book is out today! Find it at your local independent bookstore. Yay Linda!
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
I watched the news move in waves through Twitter and blog feeds last night and this morning, that this spirited little girl with wide, silent movie star eyes didn’t make it through yesterday. And with every word of condolence, every prayer, every request for a donation in her name, I can’t escape the feeling that nothing can possibly be enough.
Rest in peace Madeline Alice Spohr. Although, like so many of us, connected through cyberspace, I only knew you in pixels as a visitor of your mother’s blog, your short life was clearly celebrated tenderly, daily by your loving family.
The family is asking for donations to the March of Dimes in her name. There is also a Paypal account set up for the family for any further expenses. Visit here to find out more.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
I started this month with the best of intentions to post here daily, and, despite a late start, keep up with the Shredheads. I did seven straight days with Jillian Michaels and I felt stronger, leaner, more energetic and awake. Then my knees started buckling. I sputtered in and out of the workout, missing days, then stopped completely for three or four because going down the steps was beginning to hurt. A lot.
But not exercising made me cranky and unpleasant to live with. So, I’m back at it after doing some research about how to avoid knee injuries, strengthening my knees with other small exercises throughout the day, making sure I drink plenty of water just before and after the shred, getting back on glucosomine supplements and deciding that if I repeat butt kicks in lieu of jumping rope (which is one of the things that really hurts) I’m still getting my cardio. I’ve also yanked out several other lower-impact yoga videos I own to do if my knees need a break for a day. (I’ve found that gentle 20-minute yoga in the morning still gives me extra energy.) I’m going to stick with level one for a couple more days, so I can just watch level two and think ahead if about any additional modifications I may need to make. (Reading the other Shredheads‘ reports definitely has me worried.)
One thing is certain, though. My mind has been permanently changed when it comes to the direct benefits of higher intensity exercise and my ability to get it without a gym membership or a bunch of expensive equipment (Granted, I still long for my own elliptical trainer and a Wii, especially since I found out that Jillian Michaels has a Wii program). I drink more water, eat healthier food and sleep better on the days I do the workout. I don’t sit down as much. I walk more. I just feel better.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
A few weeks ago, he met a little girl named Lucy on the playground. He looked at her wide-eyed, then leaned over to me and asked:
“Mommy… she’s not the one in the sky with diamonds, is she?”
(He loves Sgt. Pepper. He used to ask me to sit and cuddle him while he listened to “She’s Leaving Home.” He’d hang his head sadly and say “Mommy, the baby is gone!”)
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
As promised, here are some of the photos that Declan took at his dad’s gig the other evening:
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Had a fabulous time at a creativity workshop with Amy yesterday, and met her two beautiful boys along with a handful of other local bloggers (though I didn’t get much chance to visit because Dec was feeling uncharacteristically shy). We came home with a poem, a cool art smock, two bags of green slime, a garbage bag crab and a belly full of Starburst candies. He kept the third eye she had him make to help him peer into his own imagination for about an hour after we’d left. He said he could see Jupiter with it in the late daylight. He told lots of his friends about her at preschool today. About her and art and poetry. And candy.
The workshop was the focal point of a mother-son day. He and I ate lunch together and laughed at squeaky straws and talked about solar flares and prominences. After the workshop, we had some time to kill before we went to see his dad and Megan Palmer play a set at Lost Weekend Records, so we went out and visited a few satellite dishes. We drove past a big cluster on campus, then found this inactive one that we could take a closer look at. He was thrilled to touch something that communicates with space.
He was quite the photojournalist at Lost Weekend. I’ll post some of those pictures another day.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Most of my eating habits are pretty good. I never ate much fried food, and I gave it up completely (along with most sweetened beverages) in the last year or so, hoping that through modest diet and lifestyle changes I would shed some of my post-baby weight, which is about to become four years post-baby weight. I eat oatmeal for breakfast. I snack on carrots, cauliflower and cucumber slices. I’m usually good about drinking water. I don’t make a major effort to get the closest parking space, and I don’t eat much refined sugar (admittedly, I can get a bit weak in the face of ice cream and cinnamon rolls, though). Still, I’m the heaviest I’ve been in my life, frustrated by my body’s refusal to budge and I’ve managed to get sick three times over the winter.
I decided to have aspirations instead of resolutions this year, because I want my life changes to be slow and enduring, not rash and readily discarded. Besides reading more (which I’m doing), I’ve been trying to be more consistently physically active. Like finding space to read and write, that can be harder than it looks. I’ve been quasi-faithful to yoga practice for several years, but since I don’t do it in hot rooms or jump from posture to posture, it hasn’t been much help with weight loss.
There’s been a lot of talk on Twitter for months about Jillian Michaels‘ 30-day shred video, I think because it promises results if you let her slay your body for a highly manageable 20 minutes a day. This month, Kristen Chase of Motherhood Uncensored formed an online sisterhood of shredders to support each other. Up until this point, I’ve just been reading, not sharing, because I didn’t want to announce to the world that I was going to do this until I found out that I really could do it. And so far I am.
Today was day four for me. I was miserably sore on day two. I’ve felt better one place or another, but I’m kind of startled by how much nicer exercise pain is than the aches I get when my life gets too sedentary. That extra energy everyone promises that exercise will yield is kicking in and while I doubt the scale has budged, I feel heaps better. I don’t expect that this is going to take me exactly where I want to go, but like the decision to join NaBloPoMo for March, this feels motivating – like it’s the groundwork for a revitalized approach .
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
