movements...adjustments

my.goodness. it has been quite a while since i wrote a post. the move (ahem, the entire summer) turned into quite an odd season, and i only recently got internet hooked up at our new house. 

moving out into our own space brought a huge, unexpected, adjustment for me and my 2 year old. he had friends to play with all day, every day, for 10 months. it didn't even occur to me the problem that it would create for later.....namely, that he now needs someone to play with at all times. he used to be wonderful at playing alone, but he seems to have forgotten that skill. instead, he wants me to sit and play with him all. day. long. and while i do absolutely adore playing with him, teaching him, watching him explore his imagination, i simply cannot  do that every minute of the day. what mother can? not only do i have a house to keep up with, laundry and dishes, but i now also have another child to take care of. and let's not forget that we have to eat meals, which means i do need to spend a few minutes in the kitchen 3 times a day. these are things that little man firmly objects to. he's learned (God knows where) to say things like (imagine the sweetest voice in the world)  "don't you wanna play with me?" and "I thought you wanted to play cars with me?" and just the other day, after saying my name about 29 times without me responding to him, he told me that i was "making him sad." *sigh* melts my heart.

and then there's my adjustment. of going from having a best friend near me all day to talk to whenever i wanted, unable to get lonely even if i wanted to....to being in a house all day alone with two small children. 

so, communal living does come with so many advantages, but there's also many little things that are hard. like saying goodbye. 

and i haven't even gotten to the part about how i just had a baby 4 months ago. i'm going through the time that every mother of multiples goes through--learning to adjust to life with two instead of one. it was easy as pie for about 2 1/2 months. and then it hit me. 

i cried. 

i was ugly to my husband.

 and then i calmed down and we had a team huddle, and discussed how we were going to manage. things have been much better since then, but i still don't feel like i've found that 'normalcy.' and i'm still waiting for my creativity to show back up, and to find time to fit into my week projects, and creating and reading....and blogging.

good gracious, does this get easier?

i think it does, 

i hope it does. 

well, of course it does! after all, i do have friends with 4, 5, 7 children!!....(right?!)

so i am waiting. in the meantime, i'm going to try to be more deliberate about posting. maybe it will help me make some sense of things (so excuse me as i think out loud)

here's what we do a lot of these summer days...

 learning the alphabet letters

 art, art and more art

 his first painting placing the colors in the right spot (notice the yellow sun and the blue airplane?) he's always been a bit behind in the art department, so this was a big deal:)

 sweet pea just works on getting more beautiful every day

pool days--whenever and wherever we are invited!

(otherwise you can find me inside, doing the things shown above. August is no time for a Southerner to be outdoors)

oh, and lots of evening family walks/bike rides through our fabulous new neighborhood in the city! (more on that, to come)

city mouse

our season living with our friends (a family with 3 kids) has sadly come to an end. i cannot believe what a special time that it was, and we will forever treasure those memories of living in community.
and since we have only lived alone as a couple for 6 months of our entire 4 year marriage, we have agreed that this next season will just be the four of us. just our family. we need this time to be a family.
because my husband and i couldn't seem to figure out exactly what we wanted in our next living situation, we moved all of our belongings out of our house and into a storage unit. i headed to los angeles for a week and then we flew back only to stay in more hotels. one night we stayed in the downtown area of our city, and we walked the city that night, the way we have always loved to do. we walked through an area of downtown that is mostly residential, yet only a few blocks from all the sky scrapers. it is an area filled with trees and parks and adorable porches and balconies and you almost forget where you are. we realized how much we would enjoy, as a family, living in that area, and finally decided on what the 'desire of our hearts' was for our next place. something small and simple, easily manageable with our mobile lifestyle, and completely urban.
so i went to atlanta for a week to stay with family while my man stayed back with the goal of finding our family a home. he did just that, and now we are moving into our new home.
goodbye suburbs, hello center city!

(and so because i have been essentially "homeless" for 2 weeks, i have had no internet and have not been able to blog. i aim to get back in the swing of things in a couple of weeks, after some much needed time at the beach! ahhhhhh...)

the last time that we moved, 5 birds came to our porch to sleep at night for the entire last week of our living there. they would cuddle close together up in the corner and it was the strangest thing i had ever seen. since the meaning of 5 is 'grace', we took it as a sign that we were entering into a new season of grace.
and did we ever.

amazingly, the last month in our house this time, some birds built a nest behind the light on our porch. it was the  most beautiful nest i have ever seen, made from such unique objects. very anthropologie-esq :)

when we looked in the nest we found 5 eggs. and the week before we moved those 5 eggs hatched. i climbed a small ladder almost every day to look at those cute little babies, as the mama and daddy sat perched close by, watching me. and so we are grateful to be entering into yet another new season of grace. thanks to our Father! i SO love joel osteen, and just started getting his "word of the day" emails. i woke up this morning (moving day) and the title of the email was "Get Excited About Your Future!"
:) love that

tiny little eggs in their anthro pad

hatched!

new addition, new season

ok, so here's where this blog actually begins. all previous posts were some that i pulled in from my other blog, which is private...so most pictures and all names have been removed. i wanted to have all the highlights of our family life of traveling over the past 2 years. this past year, however, has been the hardest. because of a miscarriage and a pregnancy following that, plus a few months when the band did radio promotions and traveled by plane instead of bus (meaning we couldn't go--too expensive), i have been not touring for an entire year! (besides a one week tour in florida last december) this is very unusual for us, and not in a good way. i learned back in feb 2010 that  it was too hard to be apart from my music man for more than 10 days...but the circumstances of this past year just made it impossible to travel. and so we have looooong awaited the birth of our daughter, our second child, because it meant that we could get back to normalcy---traveling together as a family.

now that my sweet baby girl is here safely, we hope to get back on the road as soon as the band is back on tour.

right now they are songwriting for a second album, and trying to write a radio single to follow up their last one for pop radio. songwriting season is a fav of mine--every time he brings home a new song for me to hear i get super excited and we dream about all it's potential....i can't explain how insanely talented my hubs is. songwriting season also means that music man gets to be home more often. he took a month off for the birth of our daughter (2 weeks before, 2 weeks after) and i am spoiled now to the max. he just left for 3 days to do some shows up north, and so i am alone with my two kids for the first time. maybe God is just being super gracious to me, but it is going so well that i am actually having fun!

now he'll be traveling to NY, LA, etc to song-write with other artists....and i am oh-so-hoping to get to travel a bit too! first he'll go to NYC next week, during our 4 year anniversary, and so we are going to see if i can get up there too. ahhh, to dream. i will try not to get my hopes up too high. 

now that i'm 2 1/2 weeks in to life with 2 kids, i feel confident that i am capable of traveling with them. she is a dream and he is being so good (of course, he has his toddler moments, but for the most part, he's my angel). 

maybe that seems ambitious of  me, but that is the life that i am used to, and the life that we are committed to as a family.

another change that is coming to our family is that we have to move in the next month. we have had the joy of living with our friends for the past 9 months. 4 adults + 5 kids under 6 in the house. it was such a special season that we will all cherish forever. the other family is most likely moving to europe (oh the tears) and we will be living alone again. if you can believe it, we have only lived alone for the first 6 months of our marriage. plus, when we are on tour we live in a bus with 12 people packed in....needless to say, we are looking forward to this coming season of family time. i am anxious to find out what house God has in store for us. He always blesses us immensely! 

out at the park--just the 3 of us

happy summer!

my baby girl shower

last weekend journee and beth threw me a baby shower. they made every detail a secret, so when i arrived home after church in time for the party, our house was transformed into a sweet "green" themed shower for me. the invitations were even hand-made with recycled materials (so cute!) here's some other details...

"garden" cupcakes! peas, carrots, lettuce and radishes

we have a juicer at home and we make fresh juice every day (can't get much healthier than juicing!), and so all the drinks were fresh juiced-- apple/carrot/cucumber, watermelon/pineapple/blueberry, and watermelon juice. so delicious!

fresh, homemade vegetable Borsh--YUM!

homemade whole wheat rolls

lovely flowers

a garland i will most surely use for all of this baby girl's birthdays (made with the left-over fabric scraps that were used for the invitations)

it was a blessing, and and i am thankful for the sweet women that i have in my life here. someone commented after the shower that i just have the nicest group of friends:)
and i feel like i have just about everything that i need for this baby now. i even had my first dream about birthing her the other night and she was so beautiful, so now, i just can't wait to hold her for real!

plastic yuckiness

the sneaking suspicion that plastic might not be very good for us has only just begun. we all try to buy BPA free now, right? well now they are saying you should also search for EPA free. and now studies are confirming that ALL plastics (including our beloved BPA-free plastics) leak hormones that mimic estrogen. the list of harmful chemicals in this substance that we've sadly grown far too dependent on, probably goes on and on....

so in our household we've thrown away ALL of our plastic kids plates, bowls and cups and replaced them with stainless steel (glass and ceramic are too fragile to trust with little hands). we bought every kid this set

and so, i'm the first to admit, this is only the first, tiniest step. i would love to make our lives as plastic free as possible. and yes, i'm still guzzling my 80-100 oz of water a day from my plastic Camelbak. but i do plan to purchase Camelbak's stainless steel version as soon as i can! (yes, for all you Camelbak fans out there, i saw one at the store the other day!)

but the first steps i wanted to take where with my precious little love. the mother in me wants to protect my children as best as i can....i feel much better already:)

some day i would love to....

this is so inspiring! i would love to be able to make this my reality...

dad makes fun happen

that's what a picture frame in our household says, and boy is it true! our music man came home last weekend and this weekend as well, and when he is home, we cherish our time together as a family!

last friday we took him to the movie theatre for the first time. and what movie would it be besides Justin Bieber: Never Say Never!!? yes, this little family does in fact have Bieber Fever. i have to admit i was the last one to catch on--music man gave it to little man when he gave him a Justin Bieber doll for Christmas and started watching youtube videos of him before he was famous. and eventually, little man gave it to me. and now, even at my age, if i met him in person i might go into a screaming/crying fit and pass out....haha, but seriously this kid is SO incredibly talented, and comes from a very strong Christian background (his mom goes to church with some friends of ours in Atlanta and she requested a meeting with music man, so he got to sit down and talk with her one time), and so i am totally rooting for this kid--for him to succeed and for him to succeed with all his morals and values in tact. i used to think he might just be famous for a minute, but after seeing the movie and reading a vanity fair article on him, i decided he might just surprise us, like justin timberlake and usher both did....

so our son is totally obsessed with him. i have to listen to his music (ok so yes i sortof enjoy it) all day while he dances and sings, and he'll even start pretending he IS Justin Bieber....he'll fall down and say "Justin Bieber fell down!" or he'll talk about the 'Justin Bieber coat' that he's wearing or the 'justin bieber shoes' that he's wearing....it's a hoot.

the next night we all went to eat sushi-our favorite meal. they kid-rigged his chopsticks for him, and it worked--he ate with chopsticks for the first time




after that, we made a last-minute decision to go to a professional hockey game! i figured there wouldn't be anyone there, but it was packed! who knew?!

this weekend...it has rained the entire time, plus mama is sooooo tired! we managed to get him to an indoor play place yesterday.

today we went to church and then lounged at home all day (ahhhh). and we get one more day with daddy tomorrow, so who knows what kind of fun we'll get into!

boys and their trucks...

one day, at a very young age, little man woke up obsessed with trucks. obsessed. i had done nothing at all to spark his interest in them, and i had never talked to him about them before. i am, after all, a girl, and i didn't care to 'make' him love trucks. is there something that is just instilled into the dna of boys that causes this? i mean, to watch gender differences at such an early age, is astounding. sure, he loves to put on the girls' pink shoes in the house, and if he had it his way his rainboots would have been pink instead of camo. he doesn't know the gender 'rules' about colors yet. i'm not talking about those gender differences. i'm talking about the fact that he is obsessed with cars and trucks and dinosaurs, not with dressing up, dolls or strawberry shortcake or ballerinas.

this is him just yesterday at our favorite park, working the "excavator"...

today i took him to a parking lot where a company parks their huge work trucks, walking distance from my house. this was seriously a big deal.

before we left, he hugged the bucket of the excavator and said, "bye bye excavator! i love you!"

yes, really.

autumn has arrived

happy fall y'all

our move

right now i'm in atlanta at my dad's getting ready to leave my dog here for the next few months. i know i am going to cry when i leave her. the last (and only) time that i had to live without her in the past 9 years of her life was in college, when she lived with my mom for 2 years. i never thought that i'd have to do this again. but here we are, and it's something that i feel like i need to for the sake of my family. i mean, honestly, we are always traveling. we have basically been paying a whole lot of rent to house our dog and her dogsitter, and it just isn't making sense anymore. so, we are moving to....

the suburbs! what?!

our good friends suggested that we move into their house. they have 3 kids (5, 3, and 1 1/2), who i'm pretty sure i've always loved as my own, and my son adores them. she has grown to be one of my closest friends, and music man actually lived with them before earlier in their marriage.

basically, it is going to be great. we are going to save money. they are going to save money. i will never be lonely when i'm off-tour without my husband. our days are going to revolve around doing creative activities with the kids, including some Montessori homeschool curriculum. the only real bummer is that we are moving out of our favorite neighborhood- the one that we've always lived in as a married couple. we are officially moving to the suburbs. and south carolina at that! but even that has a redemptive side--all of my mom friends and their kids live there. in fact, i don't think i have any friends left who still live in the city. they've all migrated south. so that's a plus.

and that's the scoop on our move. we'll be out of our home--the home that we brought our first son home to:(--in a few days, and moving into a new season. but praise God for new seasons, right!? the best is yet to come! :)

#2

my excuse for being absent for so darn long is simple: mommydom

little man has entered a new stage in his childhood: bonafide toddler. and toddlers require lots of attention. especially in early toddler-hood when you just don't know what they might try to do when you aren't looking. i think the older they get the more trust you can bestow on them. but it's been months since i made something with my hands, or finished a book, or blogged...i've been quite unproductive, yet in the busy-ness i honestly haven't noticed.

so i have my mind set to get back into my old habits, and be better about creating 'me' time. until then, i have one big piece of news,

we're having baby #2 in early december! yes, another december baby, which i can honestly say was an accident. i mean, who tries to have a baby in december? i was born 2 days after christmas and vowed my entire life that i would never have Christmas babies. but after much thought, i've realized all the perks of God's perfect timing.

#1: it's early december, not late. thank you Lord. little toddler man will turn 2 just a week or 2 after the baby is born. i think the age difference is perfect, and i want to plan a huge birthday for him so that he feels extra special! 

#2: same timing as last baby means that all my pregnancy clothes will fit me at just the right times!

#3: the longest (well, only) break we get in the music industry is Christmas time. and thanksgiving is right before. it makes it easier for music man to be around and for us all to be together and for me to rest!

#4: i love winter babies. their first summertime they can sit up in the sand. second summertime they are walking. and they usually learn to walk during the winter (ie. falling down on carpet is much better than concrete) plus mama has enough time to get that butt and tummy ready for bathing suit season (with the help of breastfeeding and P90X)

i'm so excited to watch my little man become a big brother. I have to admit that it's hard for me to imagine another baby in the picture. i'm so obsessed with my son and focused on him 24/7 that some days i forget i'm even pregnant. but i've heard about the miracle of your heart growing as soon as the baby is born and suddenly you have enough love for both. i know i will adore this new little one, and i know little man will too. he loves babies. don't get me wrong, he is all-boy and very intense most of the time, but he has this soft side to him that makes him love to hug and kiss his mama and daddy, and kiss his toys and stuffed animals...and babies. so i'm hoping that this transition will be a smooth one.

speaking of transitions, last week we stayed home from tour so that i could sleep train the little guy. i think that it is my first real Mama-feat. i was so terrified to let him cry and for us to go through it, but he went through it beautifully (ok, so it was really hard the first night) and by night #3 he was falling right to sleep and sleeping 12 hours straight without waking to nurse, and that is how he sleeps now!

oh but the comment about somedays forgetting i'm pregnant--that has been getting progressively harder now that nausea has officially set in. most days i wake up and count the hours i have left until bedtime. it's pretty horrible. i don't know why this is necessary, but at least i know the baby is thriving with all these hormones making me sick all day and crying quite often over nothings. and to make matters worse my son caught a stomach virus this past weekend.

it.was.horrendous.

1st day consisted of 16 hours of vomitting every 10-30 minutes, coupled with diarrhea. somewhere in the middle of that Riley ran away. i was all alone with a vomitting child, worried my dog was about to die, and I had a serious breakdown. i'm talking break.down. i was sobbing so hard i couldn't even talk, but managed to call the hubs, who called his buddy to come help me, who then called my friend. she had already offered to come over earlier that morning, but i told her it wasn't necessary. now it was necessary. riley came back (she always does). and so my friend left her 3 kids with her husband and came over to the friend that i needed that day. it's amazing how things were suddenly 95% better just having her there with me. later we drove him to urgent care, who sent us away to go to the ER, but when we got there he sorta perked up and seemed better so we took him home instead. he stopped vomitting at 7:30pm and he went to sleep and slept all night. next day the vomitting had stopped but he developed a really high fever, and then he laid in my bed without moving for 4 hours. it was so scary to see him like that, that i just had to take him to the ER. when they finally gave us a room, that same friend of mine walked in unannounced. she was worried and wanted to come sit with us. i honestly would never have known how much her gestures could mean to someone. but she knew how i felt. she had been there before. being pregnant makes everything a bigger deal, and she didn't want me to be pregnant with a violently ill child alone. i will be eternally grateful to her for that. and will certainly give the favor to other friends in that position as well.

his fever eventually broke and he was sent home. he still has diarrhea and is only just now starting to eat solid foods again, but he is on the mend. i however am not. i am sick as a dog most days, and had to stay back from tour, again. music man left last night amidst my tears and sorrow thinking of how we might not see him for another 2 weeks, and that's if i'm better by then! i hate being away from him, and i hate hate hate hearing little man ask for his daddy all day long. it breaks my heart.

so, let the countdown to 2nd trimester begin! (and prayers are much appreciated)

down on the farm

when i was younger and my parents divorced i spent every other weekend with my dad, my step mom, my step brother (my age) and my step sister (one year younger than me). his wife's parents lived about a half mile away on a farm, in an old historic home that was built around the time of the civil war. i spent as much time there as i could. they had horses, chickens, rabbits, and dogs. we rode the horses as much as possible (i got thrown off a horse for the first time on one of our trail rides), there were kid-sized motorcycles we played with, a zip-line, a barn, acres of woods, the list goes on. but what i mostly remember about my times at the farm is exploring off on my own. i remember getting dirty and no one caring. i remember the feeling of mud and horse manure under my feet. learning the smell of the barn and hay, the horses, the chicken feed, the grass....i can still smell them today. i remember watching how the mama rabbits cared for their newborns, and eagerly waiting for them to turn 6 weeks so i could bring one home to my mom's house. i watched newborn horses grow into adults. i tried to nurse birds back to health after the boys shot them...

i also went to horseback riding summer camps, and later in college i lived on a farm with horses, goats, pigs, chickens and lots of dogs (we trained service dogs for handicapped people). and so i learned how to ride a horse properly, and to care for them. as well as the other animals....and that is the story of how a suburbian kid haphazardly learned how to be a farm girl as well.

that farm i once knew has since been turned into a shiny new neighborhood in Cobb County. a few years ago they sold their land and moved to a different farm. shortly after, my step-mom's father passed away. her mother lives in their new home with a few of her sons on the same property. during my Atlanta visit a couple weeks ago, we went out to visit the place. there are only 3 horses now, and 2 chickens, but the land is beautiful and the house is country and homey, as it always was. little man loved every bit of it and even rode in a battery-powered kids truck with my step niece, sort of like we used to do.

being there with my son reminded me how important the outdoors is for kids. and it reminded me how much i long for him to have the opportunities that i had at being in the great outdoors. i want him to have a chance to gain from the natural earth what i was able to. to love the earth and be grateful for what it gives us, to empathize with animals and be thankful to them for what they give us. i want him to learn the smells and the language of animals, and how to care for them. i want him to feel the power of a horse beneath his saddle. i want him to build forts and throw dirt and gather chicken eggs and run wild in the open fields...all the while going to far far away lands in his imagination.

although we are city folks through and through, and we live on a bus and the world is our home, deep down i know i'll find a way to fit it into my children's lives. it's too important not to.

stuck apart

the bus pulled out of charlotte on february 10th, and i relunctantly chose to stay home for a break, thinking we'd fly out to meet them after a week or so. well a week turned into "oh i should stay home for my Mama's 60th (!!!!) bday on March 2" and then "oh i guess we should wait til the bus comes back through charlotte on march 7-8". and so here we are, our family stuck apart, missing one another terribly. but through it all we have learned a valuable lesson: breaks must only be one week, 10 days max. we can't handle any more than that. i am actually longing to be back on that bus right now, and the look in nile's eyes when he says "daddy" is breaking my heart. i guess God knew this is what we needed.

while home i will have managed to be involved with 4 birthdays that i wouldn't have wanted to miss. my niece turned 9 on Valentine's Day, my brother turned 36 the next day, my little love that i used to nanny turned 4 a few days later, and next week my dear Mama hits 60.

i also chose to spend a few days in Atlanta, where i was desperately overdue for a visit, to see some people that I love and miss dearly. my dad and step-mom and step-siblings and step-niece, my 2 grandmothers, Whitney, Katie and Lucy! i'll spend the weekend with my mom for her bday weekend. my grandmother makes her the same ice cream cake every year (yummy:)

when i get home i have only one more thing to mark off my to-do list and i will have accomplished all of the cleaning out and organizing around the house that i had wanted to do while off tour. and that.feels.good.