Least prolific blogger award

forgot i have a blog.

visited it today - nice to reminisce and see how much has changed over time, and how little has changed.

littlebean sits through meals now but still makes a nightly move to mommy & daddy's bed.  still burrows & cuddles as much as she can.

bean is practically grown up at 7 but we have to keep reminding ourselves that despite her composure, maturity and self-restraint, she's still a kid.  a smart, wise, patient & lovely kid but still a kid nonetheless, membership in the club of childhood still intact.

beanmom now sings in a small touring opera company; will be in her first short film (student production) and her first feature-length indie film is set to shoot this summer.  i'm embroiled in the same boring mental struggle as every actor before me (do i join the union?  now?  wait a bit?  am i ready?  will all the work go away?  is it time to change agents?  stay put?)  

just grateful that everyone is healthy at the moment. we are all finding things to do that we enjoy each day and spending time together every day in some way.  i'm liking who the beans are turning out to be and hoping that these days of wonder last and last and last.

quick catch-up

bean is 5 years big... so lovely, getting braver, still enthralled with the colour pink.
littlebean is 20 months old and tall and lovely. she's pretty quiet, especially when compared to her verbally precocious older sis, but has her chosen words and uses them with force and conviction (i.e., MINE!! MOMMY!! MAMA!! NO!! - the toddler standards...)

funnily enough, reading the older posts on this blog, she is still the very physically close little cuddler... halfway through each meal at home, she pushes her plates and cup closer to mine and migrates to my lap to finish my food as well as hers... each and every meal ends with littlebean on my lap - not sure how the end to that will come about, but i'm sure it will. i won't be eating with a 30-year-old balanced on me so i'm not going to force this issue.

as for me, i've just had my first teeny solo with an orchestra, i'm about to go on a job interview to be "eligible to hire" as a music supply teacher and i'm trying to prepare the house for christmas and the bean for surgery (also on tuesday). and in a minute, i'm going to put on some make-up for an audition for a garbage bag commercial. my hair is still a bit damp on the ends from swimming with the bean's class at school so i might have to fuss with that, too. dinner's in the slow cooker waiting for the beans to come back from gymnastics with their grandparents and then we'll be together until i go off to church choir rehearsal while daddy does bedtime.

all in a day's work... and i do love it.

how time flies

so the bean is now sharing her pod with littlebean. the past 6 months have been, in a nutshell: challenging, life-altering, joyous, heart-breaking & taxing. i think that about covers it.

littlebean is a delight - so lovely, sweet-tempered, mesmerizingly beautiful. i would say "easy" except that she's not always. she HATED her infant car seat/bucket thus also the car and doesn't relish being in her own space (i.e., insists on being held 87.5% of the time). she has turned us (somewhat reluctantly) into co-sleeping parents, although now that it's happening i must admit that i do treasure the closeness. she is likely our last baby and i am drinking her in as much as i can and bemoaning her rapid, rapid growth.

bean amazes me with her readiness to love, love, love her sister even though she's a long way off from being a proper playmate. she offers her own baby toys (though not the Melissa & Doug soft tool box from Auntie Jayne - "I'm not done with that yet! I still play with it!"; gives the gentlest of kisses; patiently tolerates (soooo much) crying in the car, even empathizing with littlebean: "I feel sad for" her.

the cliche about life being a balancing act becomes a glaring truth when you have your second child. how do you balance the needs of one with the demands of the other? i've learned that it can only be done with a LOT of patience (often more than one can muster) and forgiving yourself for not being perfect and just allowing yourself to do the best you can in the moment that you have. i thought i had shaken loose of the grip of that evil perfectionism - littlebean has taught me that that is not yet true...

photo credit: photo © Darren Hester for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-NonCommercial

second time around

this is my inaugural post! i should be writing christmas cards (less than a week to go!) but i really wanted to get this started...

we're expecting our second child - a sister for our first daughter, the bean. when i stop to think about it, it is very exciting, but mostly i'm just feeling tired. and i'm tired of saying that i'm tired. i remember feeling awesome when i was at this point in my pregnancy with the bean (2nd trimester), but that surge of energy and feeling normal again has eluded me to this point. still, feeling very grateful not to have had morning-sickness with either pregnancy.

what's a bit troublesome with this one, though, is that my voice has been affected. i'm a singer and the last time, i could sing just fine throughout the whole pregnancy. my singing is okay, but i've had quite a bit of pain in my vocal cords when speaking and sometime when singing if i don't concentrate on my technique. HUGE relief, though, the other day when an ENT checked & said that my cords were "pristine" - the pain is from a lack of support when speaking/incomplete vocal fold closure and apparently there's nothing to be done, except to birth the child. 2 1/2 months to go...

so now that i've started my blog, it's time to stop for now. do wish to scribble a few notes before heading out to a christmas party with the family. really looking forward to the party - friends have arranged a horse-drawn wagon to take a big group of us around the neighbourhood while singing carols. how christmasy & awesome is that?

much more - and baby - to come...