Trick or TrEATING

Trick or treating started early around here today. It's been getting harder and harder to keep Amelia still while changing her diaper, so this morning while I changed her I handed her a fun-size Twix out of the Halloween candy bowl that happened to be within reach. I thought she wouldn't be able to break through the shiny wrapper, but when I took it away from her, I notice that she was chewing thoughtfully.



I had to switch her to Cheerios and milk.



She's going to be a skeleton for Halloween. We are going to the park for a neighborhood costume playdate at 4:00 this afternoon. Then we are invited to a party at 5:00, but we will have to see how fussy Amelia is by then. We might just come home and give out candy, and let Amelia see the older kids in costume before dinner and bed.

Speaking of dinner, here she is in her costume the other night. She has been getting more independent about eating, and as you can see, she was eating her prunes from the jar by herself: first with a spoon (sort of), and then, when the spoon got too bothersome, with her bare hands.



Just for the record, here's Amelia last Halloween, when she was 4 weeks old.

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley

This is the first book in the Academy of American Poetry's list of groundbreaking books, all of which I have decided to read (or reread). I couldn't find the title they actually list, but I found a thin paperback called The Poems of Phillis Wheatley With Letters and a Memoir that contains a reproduction of the book Wheatley published in 1773.

To be honest, these poems didn't do that much for me at first. They gallop along in almost unvarying iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets--but that sort of extremely formal poetry was more typical in 1773 than it is now. Wheatley wrote a lot of poems about death, particularly the death of children, which was creppily interesting. But in my notes I scribbled that I had "more questions than answers." Because Phillis Wheatley was a slave. And her poetry mostly seems rather--or very--oblivious to that fact.

You can read about Wheatley's life here, but basically she was sold into slavery at the age of 7. It became apparent to her mistress that she was very smart, and she was taught to read and allowed, even encouraged, to write. (The memoir notes that she was sometimes "allow[ed] to polish a table or dust an apartment" but she kept writing material nearby in case a line came to her.)

As I read more about Wheatley's life and read her poems, I kept wondering, would any of the poems reveal a slant? As in, would they ever comment on her situation at all? I was also wondering, as I read what the back cover of my book describes as "mostly elegies for the departed and odes to Christian salvation," is this really a groundbreaking book or is it more accurate to say that Phillis Wheatley was a groundbreaking poet? I guess that, being a poet so steeped in the contemporary confessional/lyric tradition, I was hoping for Wheatley's poems to criticize slavery or mourn her kidnapping or somehow otherwise acknowledge her astounding and rather atrocious personal situation. But that kind of personal focus was not particularly common for poems in 1773, and even if it had been, Wheatley's poems wouldn't have been published if she had done those things.

Browsing the Internet, I came across this June Jordan essay that somewhat takes on my questions and concerns. In it, she reimagines Wheatley's life, lingering on the extraordinary set of circumstances that led Wheatley to write at all, and to write the kinds of poems she did. She draws connections between Wheatley and the state of African American poetry (in the 80's, which I think is when she wrote the essay). Although I don't agree with every part of the essay, I love the poem at its end, which to me best states why Wheatley's book was likely chosen by AAP as the first groundbreaking book of American poetry. Here are its closing lines (you can read the whole thing if you follow the link to the essay above):

"They taught you to read but you learned how to write
Begging the universe into your eyes:
They dressed you in light but you dreamed
with the night.
From Africa singing of justice and grace,
Your early verse sweetens the fame of our Race."

In conclusion, I enjoyed learning about this poet. Wheatley's life, which was fascinating enough for its first 19 years, gets even more fascinating (and tragic) after her book was published, and her poems are the kind that you have to take one at a time, line by line. They are, for me, anyway, relatively difficult but satisfying to puzzle out. As I have gone back to them every now and then over the past week or so, I have found more and more lines that surprise me and draw me in. I hope to keep reading more of Wheatley even as I move on down my list.

Practice What You Preach

The counters are crowded with dirty dishes. The beds are unmade; there is laundry to be done. There is a poopy diaper on the stairs, waiting to be taken up and rinsed. But I am sitting at the computer, writing.

This morning I had the luck of a longish phone conversation with a dear friend, one I don't get to talk to nearly as much as I would like. She, also a writer, was frustrated with the business of life, the constant demands of home and job and children and family. She is called to the page but can't find a moment to answer. "Take an hour," I urged her. "Take an hour this week and go somewhere, and write. Even if it's just in your journal about how you are feeling. Even if it's crap. Just write."

Lexicon, 12 and a half months

Ball: a ball; a ball-shaped item such as a pumpkin or a light fixture; a dog; if you are at the zoo, an elephant!

Bye: good-bye; while poking your finger in someone's eye, an eye

Gee (pronounced with a hard g as in ago): Suki; another small animal not established as a ball

Hi: Hello!

Read with me!

A few months ago I started a new blog for reading poetry. I invited some friends I knew from my various poetry programs to read and write about our reading. Long story short--or short story short, really--I just deleted the blog. Despite what I think was true enthusiasm for the project, both from me and my recruits, it never got off the ground.

Why is it so hard, even for poets, to make time to read poetry? Is it just me or do others have this problem too? When I manage to stop myself from using Amelia's naptimes to clean the house, I am much more likely to write than to read, and when I read, it is much more likely to be fiction than poetry...

I want to change this. One of my goals for the fall is to read more poetry. Ideally, I would like to read a book a week. By "read," I don't necessarily mean sit down and read every page from beginning to end, the way one reads a book of fiction, but instead to spend time with the book, a good chunk of time, and read as much of it as I can depending on what else is going on that week and my interest in the volume. And then I would like to write a brief review or comment on the book, here on this blog.

Since I will be using this space to comment on the books I read, I thought I would invite all of you lovely blog readers to join me in the reading. Then you can comment too, if you want.

I found a guiding hand to help me get started, too. Poets.org, a website I really enjoy, has this list of groundbreaking books of poetry. I am going to go down the list. I have read some of these books, not every one, but I am going to reread the ones I have read, and comment on all of them.

So the first one is Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phyllis Wheatley. I have never read this one, and she looks like a very interesting author. Realistically, a book a week might be a lot for me, but to get started, I am going to make a trip to the library to get this book by Monday, and I will write a comment on it sometime the week of October 25. Yikes! Now I am committed. I hope some of you will go find this book in your library or local bookstore too!

P.S. You should explore poets.org. They have great stuff, including a list of poet Halloween costumes.

Mount Bancroft

As you can see, I am still trying to catch up on documenting all of our summer hikes and such. Toward the end of August, we hiked up Mount Bancroft with Jim, Luli, and Opal. After a bumpy ride to the trailhead--oh, wait, there was no actual trailhead. This was a trail-less hike. So we basically walked straight up the side of the mountain. As we got started, Dean's description of this hike changed subtly from "It won't be hard!" to"It won't be that hard!"

As we climbed to the first ridge, we passed all these different parts of an old car: the engine, doors, wires and other assorted weather-beaten plastic and metal pieces. I thought that would make an interesting poem somehow.

After awhile, Dean, Amelia, Luli and Opal left Jim and I behind. Therefore, because the sleeping Amelia was being held hostage from me, Mount Bancroft's summit is the only Rocky Mountain summit I have actually reached so far. Jim could attest that I did it after a fair amount of complaining. But when I got to the top it was definitely worth it. There is a reason people go all the way to the top of tall mountains: it's beautiful up there!

Here are some pictures of my ascent, our rest at the summit, and Amelia sleeping in her backpack.






A note to other parents who might backpack with a baby: Amelia slept for much of her trip up the mountain and the entire descent, probably close to 3 hours, and we found out at the bottom that that was probably too long for her to be still in her backpack. She was cold, and it seemed like her hands and feet were asleep.

The trip down, without a trail with switchbacks, was challenging. But we made it! It was a fun hike with family, certainly one I will remember for awhile.

House Tour: the Long-Awaited Conclusion

This is my and Dean's bedroom:




It's hard to take a picture of the bedroom that's not all bed but the room has lots of slanted walls like Amelia's room.

Here is a shot of the stairway:



Not pictured are the two bathrooms. They look funny in the pictures. But they are nice bathrooms. We like them.

Finally, here is a more recent picture of the stone pathway Dean built this weekend!



It is the first step in the reconstruction of the backyard (thanks to Jim for pulling up the stones and tilling all the grass!). We are planning another backyard garden, featuring an asparagus bed and a sandbox for Amelia. So far we are enjoying the lovely pathway.

The One Year Old

I am officially the mother of a one year old! I got over most of my sadness on Amelia's birthday after writing my letter to her and talking to some friends on the phone. Then Amelia and I met our friends Ali and Anna (who just turned one on Monday) at the Denver Botanical Gardens--their children's garden is my favorite place to take her in Denver. We had fun playing and talking, and then Amelia slipped on a block and got her first big knot on her head. On her birthday! So life goes on.

Amelia had two birthday parties. First she had a party at her Grand-aunt Linda's house. Then Sunday afternoon, we had a little party for her. A few Book Babies friends and neighbors came over for about an hour. We had cupcakes. Sadly, I have pictures of neither party. I have pictures in my email of the first party that I don't know how to download, and I have picture of the second party but not any with Amelia alone, and I don't think I should post pictures of other people's babies on the Internet without asking their mommas. So here are some recent pictures of Amelia in her high chair.







What a funny bear.

Amelia at one is a lot of fun. Dean and I agree that we could keep her at this age.

Oh, she said her first word: Ball! She shouts it. She definitely says it when she sees a ball, so we know it's a real word, but she also says it when she sees a dog, and about 7,000 other times a day. She said it as soon as she woke up this morning. Ball! Ball! We got her a basket of balls for her birthday, so there are plenty of chances to say it.

In other Amelia news, she taking baby steps between pieces of furniture but has yet to venture out on her own two feet. She drops to her knees to crawl if she wants to get somewhere far away.She has learned to play with Suki a little by throwing a ball to her (which also gives her a chance to say Ball!). She still seems to be transitioning from one to two naps. We had a pretty successful one-nap day Monday when she napped from about 11:30-1:15. But since then she has had two naps. She went down this morning at 8:30! Which is how I am able to write this. It seems that if she sleeps till 7, she will have one nap, but if she wakes up earlier, she'll take two. Who knows. Night sleep is okay--she has been waking at 11:30, crying for a just a minute, and sleeping again, then sleeping till 3:30. I have been breaking my 4am rule. We are going out of town again next week, so my new rule is 3:30am till we get back from that trip and can reestablish things. Having a baby is hard.

All right, I want to try to catch up on a few more posts before A wakes up...

Birthday Card

from Bubbles. Amelia shows off her dancing skills...

Amelia's First Birthday Presents

from her Gano and Grand-aunt Susan are the second video. I realized after this posted that I had also included this first video that I tried to take of Amelia making herself laugh by hiccuping...



Here is the birthday present video:

Letter to My Baby

Dear Amelia,

Today you are one year old. The morning started off like most of our mornings, except we think that Suki woke you up meowing. Your daddy got you out of your crib, played with you, and then brought you to me in bed to nurse. You laugh with excitement when you get in the bed. You like to play with us and climb on the pillows and the headboard. It's why we can't bring you there to actually sleep.

After you went down for your morning nap, I checked my email. Every week I get a newsletter from a website called babycenter.com. It is about you. It always says "My Baby This Week" and it tells about the development of a baby your age. Today it says "My Toddler This Week."

I read the title and burst into tears.

I have been excited for you to turn one for a long time! You are so much fun and get more fun every day. We think you know how to say "baby" and "bye" and "hi" and "ball." And possibly "baby shoes." You like to dance when you hear music. You love to make people laugh. You are learning how to walk. So I am not really sad that you are turning into a toddler. But still I have been crying on and off all morning.

I told your daddy about the email and he said, "Don't worry. She's still our baby, and will be for a long time."

There is so much I have wanted to write about you and to you this past year. I have written it in my head on walks and at nighttime but most of it never made it to paper. I wanted to describe each little change in you. I wanted to write all about my hopes for you. I wanted to write everything I remember about your baby year before I forget more than I already have.

But since I have had you, I have to live more in the moment. We play and sing and walk and eat and nurse and climb the stairs. You are not one to sit at the computer unless you can bang on the keys. So much of what I wanted to write has been lost. Even today I know I can't write all that I want to. You are napping but you will wake up soon.

So here are just a few things I will say, on your first birthday:

I remember when the ultrasound technician said "It looks like you are having a little girl!" and being so surprised, and later so happy.

I remember last year on this day, your due date and the day you were born, your daddy walking around saying, "What a punctual baby!"

I remember driving to the hospital listening to The Beastie Boys, watching the fall light on the leaves. I remember giving someone directions at a stoplight, between contractions.

I remember feeling like I was losing something, waiting in the lobby of the hospital to be taken back to a room.

I remember your daddy holding you for 3 hours after you were born, in the middle of the night.

I remember when you got your first teeth.

I remember thinking I would never get to sleep again. (I still think that sometimes.)

I remember when you first liked to read books. Your three favorite books so far have all involved a peek-a-boo surprise.

I remember, just the other day, when you heard music and began to dance.

You are waking up, talking in your crib. When I go in to you you will be standing, talking, holding out your giraffe to me. So quickly, one birthday wish for you:

I have been thinking lately about your future life, and how happy I want you to be. How tempted I am to wish you a life with no trouble, no hardship. But besides the fact that such a life is impossible, I don't think I would wish it for you, because when I think back on my life, it is the hard times and the troubles as much as the happy times and the blessings that have made me the person that I am. I can't imagine what your troubles will be, and I find it heartbreaking that you will have any. But I hope that no matter what happen in your life, that you always know how many people there are in the world who love you. I hope you always know how much I love you and how much your daddy loves you. All of these people will do anything to help you. We see the beautiful, sweet, funny, social, loving baby that you are, and we can't wait to see the person you will become. Happy birthday, Amelia! I have a feeling you will knock our socks off.

All my love,

your momma