Babywearing selfies of NYC

What is the point of having a blog if you can't have a dedicated post for pictures with your little cuddles boy? Though to be fair, I needed him close by and I only took pictures of his mellow moments. If I wasn't carrying him, I was chasing him.

We walked 20 miles in three days with the brown carrier, which is more riding and less walking than Max prefers. He got so frustrated he would try to bite me, like wearing a little shark on your front.

On the train from Lancaster to Penn Station

A brief stopover at Times Square

Riverside Park snoozie

High Line snoozie

Central Park reverie

Our friends in PA and NY

Max and I cut out of town last week to visit my friends in Pennsylvania and New York. We got to stay with Mary - my old friend from Nantucket - and Ernie, and see all of my former colleague Glen's family in Lancaster. They have held a bike ride in his honor for the past five years and we got to walk in the Ultra Non-Competitive 5K on Saturday. Two friends/colleagues from the UK, Chris and Ann, timed their visit to the US to join the event, and another former colleague Mats saw my post on Facebook that we'd be visiting and came over from Manhattan with his friend from Kabul, Abigail.

We also got to see Abby's best friends Ashley and Lucas and baby L near Harrisburg.

Then onto New York City where we stayed with another friend of mine from Kabul. Once upon a time four years ago, just I stayed with her and her husband. Then Tom and me. Then she had a baby, then I had a baby, then she had another baby. And there were six souls in her 1000 ft2 apartment on the second week of her PhD program. But it was sweet to navigate the new life with them.

For this trip duration, Tom was working in Omaha. I did miss him and the sweet memories of having been there together before, but we'll make more memories after we're settled in our new home.

Our recreation was geared largely to the 1-and-under age group, walking in Central Park, walking the High Line, the Children's Museum of the Arts, the dinosaur bones at the Natural History museum. But the 33+ crowd got to meet two other special friends, Ali of college housemate fame and Ann of MSF colleague fame. Mats extended us an invitation to visit him at the United Nations where he is a military attaché for Sweden. That was more Hannah-paced, and I told Mats it would now be an act of God if I ever work for the UN, but sent my dad a postcard out of their stamp shop signed by "Your future Secretary General, Max." A momma can dream.

The visit was a lot of work for me and my boy; there is such a thing as too much time in the brown carrier. But it was so refreshing to see my old friends and change scenery from the renovation project that drags on (almost completely not referenced on this blog). My in-laws, our hosts of almost a year as we fix up our new house for five months, and recovered from Tom's injury before that, got the week off and escaped to Jackson Hole. And now we're back and renewed for a final push into our house.

 Max and Lucas!

 Mary and Ernie, our doting hosts

 Ann, she offered to take Max out of the restaurant

for 10 minutes while I ordered, the biggest grace of the trip

 Three-year-old J takes the dinos seriously,

Max runs yelling through the exhibit

This is my wonderful boy,

I loved taking him on an adventure

Max's first birthday - two weeks ago

I remember my childhood birthdays fondly (Peter Rabbit theme perhaps the apex, age 7), and throughout life, always having felt celebrated on my birthday. So, I looked forward to celebrating Max, and even more so into the future when these days take on a magical quality for a child. He didn't have a lot of agency in planning this year, so I went with Where the Wild Things Are theme as a play on his name. 

In the weeks leading up to his birthday, this year, I enjoyed my sweet memories of this time last year. It was the joy for a lifetime to get ready for him and then meet him after a lot of hard work. It was even better than beating Albin at Regionals when I was a sophomore to qualify for the state basketball tournament (Haha, that's for you, Anduin). 

The invitation email

We had the party on the porch of our new house, 

Uncle Charlie gave a smash cake as part of his gift, 

Grammy Lynn made caramel pretzel brownies for 

the grown-ups and brought flowers from her garden,

Grandma Joy furnished us with her famous enchiladas

 Airplane!

 Daddy

 Uncle Ben came from Denver

Between being a reluctant eater

and the crowd, this was as far as he got 

Pressies! He made out like a bandit.

 I'm obsessed with how cute he is in his helmet

Photo thanks to my mother a.k.a. Grammy Lynn.

Ten months tonight

Thanks be to God for our wonderful boy

The part of privilege I do feel qualified to discuss

While my cross-racial experiences at home have been limited, I was thinking about an African colleague I had in Kyrgyzstan. She was a nurse from Zimbabwe. By whatever combination of personality or culture, we were ships passing in the night. Someday when everything is made right, I hope to understand each other. Her six-month experience was miserable among other reasons because of unwanted attention she attracted as a black woman. I attracted attention too, but it wasn't an oppressive, negative, sometimes mean attention.

It made me think of American/white (not that those are necessarily synonyms) privilege abroad. I remember meeting another plain-looking American lady once in Lebanon or India or somewhere and having her bemoan tongue-in-cheek that when she returns home, no one treats her like a princess. I've written about this before (2009), but it is easy to think you're someone really special when you travel or work in the developing world. 

You can go where others can't or get visas on arrival, people carry your bags, you get served first, or the best spot on the minibus instead of the local mom who might actually need it, you get to have dinner with the American ambassador to Malawi. There can be an underbelly, it's not always borne of sincere admiration or beautiful hospitality, but some of it is unwarranted privilege. (The discussions about gender expectations or America's role in the world will not be discussed here, but hopefully around the dinner table sometime.)

This must not be dissimilar to having all they systems work for me in the U.S., but it is exacerbated. Maybe because of the exaggeration, it's easier to recognize abroad than at home.

As I contemplate my return "home," 45 miles from where I grew up after 15 years away, I wonder how me extending welcome to the stranger (I still gravitate cross-culturally) will look? And how will I move across racial lines in this mostly-homogeneous city? 

Privilige

Some big-deal blogger said lately, and I paraphrase, if you don't know what to say about race, defer to a guest-writing colleague or friend who does. I don't have someone like that in my life right now.

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My roommate in college was from Nicaragua. She studied in an East German school growing up. Her heritage was indigenous, Spanish, Afro-Nicaraguan, and Irish.

One night we were eating dinner at the cafeteria and her then-boyfriend, a son of Jamaican parents who had grown up in Bolivia, came in upset. He'd been pulled over by the local police of the white southern town of 10,000 effectively for being black. There was not another reason.

Though we were good friends at the time, they are the closest friends I've had who were black people in America. They both still live in the U.S., but their experience is unique from African Americans because they grew up in Latin countries.

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At my two-week Mennonite Central Committee orientation seven years ago, we used a tool ranking different aspects of family of origin. Points were assigned for race, education, and land ownership among others. The outcome gave some sense of inherited privilege. On both sides of my family were immigrants who became landowners through the Homestead Acts around the turn of the 20th century. Fifty years before back through time immemorial, that land was inhabited by nomadic tribes and bison. (And to be fair, I have old-American ancestors who fought some for the north and some for the south in the Civil War). So in this MCC tool, I had a very high score, being of western European descent, having had all four grandparents at least attend college, my families owning land. It was the first time I was exposed to the idea of white privilege.

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Yesterday I was reading back through a series of Facebook messages with one of my Afghan colleagues, N. He lives in Kandahar, the heart of Pashtunistan. That is, the geographic area where the major concentration of Pashtuns live. Looking at a map, you would note an international border running through the middle of Pashtunistan, half Afghanistan, half Pakistan, as imagined by one Sir Mortimer Durand in 1893. 

Pashtuns are not a majority in Afghanistan, but they comprise the largest ethnic population. On your ID card, you can be "Afghan" (Pashtun) or you can be Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, etc. They hold the majority of federal government positions. Pashto and Dari are the national languages, but Pashto is used more formally.

N had been at the periphery of a debate with our other colleague G, who lived in Kabul. Apparently G was advocating the word for "university" be changed from the Pashto "Pohantoon" to the Iranian "Danishga." N was frustrated that G would care about it at all. Instead of engaging in a Facebook fight, N told G to "'get a job...' Was I too harsh?"

It was precious to me that I was consulted at all. I was a bit amused by my reply, from two years ago, trying to write understandably for a second-language English speaker,

I don't know enough say if you were too harsh because I don't fully understand the passions of people sharing a country but not necessarily a language and the one who is more often in power....I do remember taking a training that discussed issues for minority people in the USA. I thought, "These problems are not real problems," such as getting pulled over in your car by the police without a reason. But then the facilitator said, "You think they are not problems because your life goes easily. You don't get pulled over in your car by the police unless you drive too fast, but black people do very often for no reason. Some things are broken, but not for you." Even though I cannot understand everyone's experience as if it was my own, I try to appreciate that some people have more difficult lives because the systems are not built to favor them.   

I don't know if my writing was meaningful to N or not. Our next correspondence was a YouTube of a British guy doing 60 character voices in five minutes.

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My experience is fairly limited in the U.S., besides what systems have worked for me in places with few minorities. I lived in a diverse urban setting in Vancouver, Canada, one summer, 14 years ago. Other nation's problems come into greater focus, but isn't that always the way?

I continue to read good blogs and essays and articles that my mostly-white, mostly college-educated friends link to on Facebook. Fox News is frequently on mute on my in-laws' television. Fox has black correspondents, but that's hardly having one's finger on the pulse.

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One of the most helpful things I've read lately was a dialogue between two Christian colleagues from Saint Louis, one white and one black: A Conversation About Ferguson (Luke Bobo and Greg Pitchford), found in this Critique PDF.

The program for appropriating found objects as toys

Something fun for me has been getting Max things with which to play. After our visit to Montessori Mick (my brother) in Austin in December, I've wanted to help Max expand his imagination.

I found this article and it resonated, The Best Toys for Babies Don't Do Anything. Since then I've scoured everywhere from the Dollar Store to Michael Olaf for stainless steel bowls, salsa bowls, colanders, wiffle balls and a cat jingle toy, plastic chains, wooden toys, instruments, a silicone potholder, hair curlers, magnets. In his room we can play toys or music or read; there is a Costco gel foam bathmat especially for earlier infant Max to lay on, and a beautiful butterfly mobile and cloud mobile from Spain (Aunt Abby).

We do play with these toys when we're home. He's getting better at entertaining himself, though it's imperative he's not in a room by himself (for the loneliness). But I have been surprised, thought I shouldn't be, at how much he wants to play with "real" things.

He wants spoons and knives and forks, his teething gel box, his diaper cream, his grandma's fingernail brush, plates, pill boxes, dog dishes, remote controls, lids. I got him a sheepskin teddy bear from Australia for Christmas and the first time he's ever shown any inclination was yesterday when I put it in his hands. But oh, how he would love to touch the humidifier. Hairbrushes, hot sauce bottles, coasters, keys. The louder you can bang it on the table, the better!

I've tracked the little master at his craft and here he is, imagining alright.

 The whisk and a teaspoon and an Easter egg

 Humidifier spout and sunglasses,

puddle of water preferred

 Hello magazines sitting next to 

the basket of board books

It is no exaggeration that tonight,

he crawled past all these toys to 

play with the white noise machine

The Golden Period

For the last 20 years, I have been a People-watcher. My school librarian took the magazine and I read it cover-to-cover every week. I still wish for the pair of Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow, for Johnny Depp and Kate Moss.

The 2000s were a bit of a bore with the advent of reality TV and celebrities for celebrity sake a la Paris Hilton/Kardashians. I favor movie stars and their new movies.

My dad and I share this fondness for People, and he recently got 12 weeks free through his alumni association. He brought me the new Princess Charlotte! Inside Her First Days at Home edition.

Prince William has always been of interest in my celebrity sphere; we were born the same year. His stock was highest when he used to have hair and wasn't yet shacking up with his princess-to-be. "Wills," Sarah Ellis and I called him. Back then there was still hope he might pick a girl from Wyoming. That has given over the the charm and awe of he and Kate's wedding in 2011, the year I also married, and their subsequent parenthood and accessible royal celebrity in general.

The royal wedding, four years ago

Though I find People in relatively good taste (I never read the lesser rags unless I'm at a doctor's office), I thought their coverage of Charlotte's birth was particularly sweet.

The Palace tweeted, "Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a daughter at 8.34am." Like many others, I was almost incredulous at Kate's stunningness 10 hours after giving birth to her second child, and chuckled when I read the Russian press said she had to have given birth three days prior.

But to the sweetness, "Kate told friends she planned to take a longer break from her duties than the eight weeks she had off following George's birth. 'She wants to have that mother time,' says a royal source, 'and enjoy it with George and the new baby.' She and William are eager to settle into the 'golden' period of their lives, says the pal."

The royal family this month

The Golden Period. I remember my Grandpa Ken saying his thirties were his best decade because he had accumulated some life experience and they were raising their boys. Now admittedly, being a new mother and having a golden time is enhanced by having a nanny and cooks and houses full of staff. But I thought of myself and my little family, tracking along with our own little golden period. We don't need Scottish estates to enjoy our Max boy and living among our family and friends. 

Shoes I have loved

This is a light post, but tonight I thought of two pairs of shoes that I dearly wanted in years past. They are:

1998

2003

I can't say why I never got them, and now the admiration has faded. I wonder if that would generally happen if I/we were to always deny ourselves for long enough?

And then lately I did get two new pairs of shoes. One is my beloved Birkenstock Gizeh. They come in narrow sizes and I can literally wear them every day for all summer months. It's my fifth pair because the cork doesn't last forever. Will my style hold for another decade?

I'm a little bit proud that I bargained with a shopkeeper in Steamboat, and not on a bazaar, for their last pair of blue Oxfords. Apropos, I had wanted a pair of Oxford shoes since 2011, when I saw a grey pair at Nordstroms.

 (2004, 2008, 2010, 2012) 2015

2015

Steamboat Springs family trip

Tom grandfathered a time share into our marriage. I wasn't so familiar before, but you purchase the time share for annual use and then continue to pay an annual fee for the rest of your life or they sue you.

Given the truly great thrill I get from planning travel and finding the best spot for the best value, I feel a little ungrateful to be part of a club where all the good places (i.e. Hawaii, Santa Fe) have to be booked a year in advanced and the ones that always have openings are on Grand Lake in Oklahoma.

But Tom argues that the best use is renting a multi-room condo somewhere in Colorado and inviting family or friends. So this year, we canceled our April reservation in Vancouver during the cherry blossom season and booked a two-room penthouse in Steamboat Springs. I was genuinely open-minded about trying it Tom's way and given that we purchased a house in March and have a wee boy, there was sense in staying close.

It was the last week of ski season at the legendary resort and we bought "Springalicious" ski passes. Tom loves to ski but had to take it slow with his healing ankle, I don't love to ski but was going to be a sport on the bunny slope. In the end there wasn't much snow and it was icy/slushy, so the highlight was riding the gondolas with Max. We also established that I don't ever have to go downhill skiing again. For the win.

Our guests were our respective parents, Tom's during the week and mine on the weekend. We had a great time with all of them adjusted for their interests and paces. The condo was nice, parking and proximity were good, and I bought a bunch of food at Costco for dinners. Max did take that week to descend into a thrice/night waking schedule including a preferred playtime of 5 am, but the grandparents were gracious. I don't know what the future holds with this timeshare, but fun was had by all.

 The very pretty drive out

through rural Colorado

Baby and Grandma Joy napping

 Jesus glorified in Colorado

as imagined at the new Catholic church

We bought discount ski passes,

which is a good thing

Gondola baby #1

Gondola baby #2

Gondola baby #3

loves stealing him some glasses

At Strawberry Park Hot Springs

with my parents and the seven 

month glorious baby Max.

A lady commented how bohemian the springs were 

and Dad said, "That's my middle name." Which is funny.

His sunscreen was "coral safe,"

but in the end, not actually waterproof

 Tom in his natural element

Kyrgyzstan 2013

Two Marches ago, I went on a ski trip in Kyrgyzstan. My colleague/friend Hélen Neyrand took these pictures as we traveled across the country in a minibus. I've wanted to publish them ever since. So here before the month gets away, are the evocative pictures of rural Kyrgyzstan. It was barren but I loved the simple details added for beauty's sake.

And two years later, I still often thank Tom for giving me his blessing to go. I'm so glad I did, even as I cuddle little Max to sleep as he's gone from sleeping through the night to waking up once to waking up twice a night. None of these moments last forever.