About a week ago I spent some time looking through pictures of Sagan on flickr from the beginning til now. It was a powerful experience because it really brought home how far we've come and how amazing the ride has been - and also how fucking hard it was in the beginning. There was so much joy and awe, but the work was constant and I was constantly fighting off waves of anxiety. For the first six months, he spit up SO MUCH and I was ALWAYS worrying about what I was eating and whether it was causing his problems. He needed physical contact to sleep and almost always fussed when I put him down, so I NEVER had my body to myself unless someone else was holding him. My back was completely destroyed from nursing all the way through the night.

As he got more mobile, he got a lot happier, and he almost never spits up anymore. Even though we still haven't slept through a night and we've actually had some of our worst nights ever in the last week (teething pain, I think), it really has gotten easier overall. It's still constant, but we've got a good routine, he takes naps on his own, he sleeps part of the night on his own, and more and more often he wakes up happy instead of freaked out. The best part is that every day he becomes more of his own person, more someone I'm excited to get to know, someone fun and funny and unbelievably smart and charismatic. Also, I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of things. I had pretty good natural mama instincts to begin with, but I'm much more confident in the role now. I only rarely have moments of feeling like an incompetent or an imposter playing at being a mother. (That feeling was pretty common in the beginning, although I tended to push it away and get defensive if Ben said things to that effect about his own experience of parenthood. I just couldn't handle sitting with how overwhelming it all was. I had to focus on the minute to minute coping.)

Lately I've been coming to terms with the idea that Sagan is probably going to be my only child. Ben's adamant about only wanting one for both personal and environmental/social responsibility reasons. It certainly makes sense from a financial perspective and from the perspective of wanting to give our best to this one child and still be able to travel and have adventures from time to time. So I'm slowly letting go of the idea of having a daughter, the idea of being pregnant again, the idea of giving birth again (painful, yes, but the most powerful experience of my life so far -- I'm almost ready to watch the video now), and the idea of having another wee bundle of baby since this one is turning into a little boy so fast it's making all the cliches seem inadequate. Instead I'm doing my best to enjoy every single moment I can. Some days I get really stressed out about money or work or needing more time for myself, but I keep reminding myself that he's only going to be a baby for such a short time. This time is so precious and amazing and important for the rest of his life and mine. I need to do everything I can to avoid looking back one day and wishing I'd been more present. I am here. I am mama. I know how lucky I am.

Work has picked up recently after a scary slow June, but it's clear that I need to do some serious business development to keep it steady. A lot of my clients are rolling back and new jobs are slim pickings. Step one is giving my freelancing website a major overhaul. It looks like crap and the portfolio is horribly out of date. And the whole journalism section is pointless since I hardly ever do that kind of work anymore.

So as an easy first step I had Ben take some headshots of me last weekend. I realize my appearance is possibly the least important part of my new site, but it's pretty important on Biznik and LinkedIn and such. I want to make the right impression.

Please help me decide: 
Which one of these says Joriel is a smart, interesting person who can write the hell out of some web copy or whitepapers or whatever it is you - or your clients or friends - need?

Signing on the house this afternoon at 4:00! We should almost certainly have keys in our hands by around noon tomorrow. It's really happening!

I should be packing instead of writing this, but I'm taking a quick break to check in with my peeps and order this rug for the new living room (in tarragon) and two of these chairs:



Big dorks that we are, we've decided to go with a "sky and cosmos" theme for the upstairs (blues and whites with some touches of silver and bright orange accents in Sagan's room) and a "earth and water" theme for the main floor (greens, warm wood, and deep blues). The lower level where our office will be is pretty dark, so I'm thinking it's kind of "underground", but I'm not very into browns so I haven't quite figured that out yet. We do have a lot of black and dark wood furniture going down there, so that's probably enough right there to make it feel like a hobbit hole. Maybe some red accents... touches of pale turquoise to keep it from being painfully dim...

I love planning this stuff. And packing and unpacking and putting everything in order. But not the actual moving part. I'm hoping we can get that out of the way fast with plenty of helpers on Saturday.

Also, can I just say, I can't believe I (with tons of help from arielmeow and others) pulled off BenCon!!! What a freaking amazing party that turned out to be. I haven't had a decent night's sleep in ages, but I'm so energized right now. Whee!

it still needs to settle down. right now my hairs are going "holy shit! what happened to gravity!" and they're all kind of standing at attention. but i think i love it. i feel stylish for the first time in a long time. what thinks you?

  

we ended up making an offer on the townhouse yesterday, and the seller has already made a counteroffer. not sure yet how we're going to respond. i'll keep you posted.

I have this livejournal account to visit with friends, but you can come visit me at Ballsy, my blog about natural health, vegan food, sustainability, social justice, crafty recycling, literature, and other things that get me riled up.