5

Five Things I was doing 10 years ago:

• Working at a library
• Checking the real estate section of the Austin American Statesman daily
• Driving my green, 1974 BMW 2002 all over Austin
• Getting facials every two weeks
• Obsessed with Italy

Five things on my To-Do List today:

• Hang out with my family
• Make a grocery list for the week
• Watch a movie
• See if I can get a good haircut around here: Yelp
• Maybe buy thread to crochet: Have to commit to trying when Augst is asleep

Five things I would do if I were a millionaire:

• Move to New Mexico
• Buy a house and furnish it with dreamy things
• Travel to Europe
• Buy land and cultivate it: garden, chickens, goats, field of lavender
• Get weekly facials and do pilates with a personal trainer

Five things I'll never wear again:

• Push-Up bras
• Baggy denim shorts-1988
• V-Neck sweaters-Was never really me
• Daisy Duke's, hot pants, short shorts
• Beautiful vintage clothing- Can't afford it, hard to find

Five favorite toys:

• Laptop
• IPhone
• Lomo Diana Camera with instant photo adapter
• Champion Juicer
• Little, red Canon pocket camera

There is this thing I think I see,
When I move, it moves, just like me.
I wave, it waves, but with my smiles...
I see nothing there, and that beguiles.
~by Mommy

Days of toothless smiles and milky breath

August has learned to give kisses. She hugs, rests her head on me and will suddenly open her toothless, lil mouth and plant a big kiss on my cheek, or eye or knee... We are nearing the last months of year one. It feels like it has been longer than a year, from here. I love her sweet, milky, baby breath.

She walks now. It is funny what you expect to do as a parents then your child goes and changes it all up. Last year I pictured myself one day, stooped over, holding tiny hands, patiently and vigilantly helping my baby learn to walk and I imagined this would happen around the 11th or 12th month. August surprised us all by standing one day and then attempted steps. Soon after that, more and more tiny steps, not holding on to a thing. This past week she just started toddling around her room. She didn't skip crawling, there was some crawling about but not for long.

My favorite thing ever is when she walks over with her favorite book in hand and puts it on my lap. Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown. Her 2nd favorite book is one called Mi Libro de las Caras , a board book with pictures of babies making different faces and their expressions captioned in English and Spanish. That one started to get walked over today, almost all day.

Those beautiful, toothless laughs and smiles I love so much will sprout tiny teeth soon enough. Changes are daily, big ones around the corner, being slow to get there is fine. She'll start eating only solid food and all that is babyhood will nearly be done. For now we do a lot of gazing into each other's eyes, much singing, hugging, laughing at each other.  There is picture taking time, nap time (online time for mommy) but even then, I miss her and watch her sleep.

August is active but not as active as she is going to be so I do stop everything and take it all in. Nothing is more important, everything can wait.  When I slow down for August and enter her world, refusing to get caught up with housework,  time sits next to me and just stops. I've stumbled upon something.

Take a Picture

Playing with my new camera that is also a phone... My husband got me an iPhone for Christmas and I have been enjoying it completely. My friend Claudia got me the Diana Instant Back for my Diana camera. It uses instant Fuji instant film to create mini, instant photos! Once I get the scanner set up, I will be able to post them. I could take pictures of August all day, and I think I have.

Tonight, we dine...

My husband knows a lot about food, he knows how to wine and dine. One of our first evenings out together was to Parkside, a wonderful restaurant in Austin, TX, where the charged and stirring conversation that comes with the beginning of romance and courtship was amplified with the rousing flavors and textures of sensual foods. That entire afternoon was a slow dance with time, the present, the future... It was his last day in town and we didn't know when we'd see each other again or where everything was going, just that it was dreamy.

Dinner had been an exquisite combination of steak tartare, marrow bones with herb salad and oysters, oysters, oysters... One of the many thoughts at that meal was to hurry up and re-read M.F.K. Fisher first chance I got.  I did take her book off my shelf but don't remember if I read. Tonight, I wish I had the collection of her writing with me.

Today we headed out to Oklahoma City, as always, off without plans, prepared and open to anything. When I was pregnant I missed soft cheeses but more than that, I missed sushi. This evening I got my fill of sushi and more. I left the ordering to Jacob, for as much as I love sushi, I have always  lacked the patience to really learn about it become familiar with the names of the various pieces.  He did not disappoint. He surprised me by ordering special treats I have never had like an uni shooter with ponzu sauce and fatty tuna... Lately, having truly sybaritic food for the first time makes the song I've Got the World on a String play in my head. 

I have often heard that Uchi, in Austin, TX is one of the finest sushi restaurants {in all the land}. However, I have yet to experience Uchi, so, the sushi tonight is the best in all the land. 

Jacob's workday was rained out and became, what we call, a family day instead. We sat in a generous booth with room for August to sit safely and where she played quietly, checking in to see what we were eating now and then. A stolen day, a lucky lead on a sushi place, new memory made.

12th Day of Christmas

It's the twelfth day of Christmas. Six days into 2013. One last photo with August's tree. I am wondering what is in store for us this year. I mail ordered our Rosca de Reyes.  It is the smallest I have ever seen.  It sits waiting patiently for us to cut into it. Who will get the Baby Jesus?

All day long my mind has gone to a forest jungle. This place of pine trees mixed with tropical fronds, waterfalls, ponds, moss, tall trees, tropical flowers, all living there. It was where my feverish dream took place last night. I'd wake up and fall back into it, over and over. I would be hot then cold, it was unpleasant, however, the sights were beautiful. In my dream I wondered if I was walking about the future as if the future was a definite place. I woke up with things on my mind.

What makes the future? Is it our choices built upon choices or is it all a lifetime's accumulation of bad luck and good luck? Is it fate? Everything predestined, synchronicity, serendipity? How much control do we have over the future, our future?

Fortunetellers, horoscopes, astrologist, numerologist.

What about ourselves? What makes us? Has it been choices built upon choices that created who we are at this very moment? What you think of, at any given moment, those fleeting thoughts...are they wholly your own or are they all stemming from a lifetime's accumulation of bad luck and good luck?

Perceptions, experiences, optimists, pessimists.

What role do dreams play in all of this? Those dreams we have while asleep, the ones we have wide awake, the ones we think we are in, the one we chase, the ones we hold close like secrets, the ones we let the whole world in on so they can cheer us on...2013, us, dreams, futures, who we can't help but be.