fleeting fall

Fall is, perhaps, my favorite season here in Missoula. Perhaps it's because she's such a tease. She sweeps in outta nowhere, changes everything around, and then takes off, taking all the color and life and energy of vibrant, sunshiny days with her. We mourn her absence with someone we'll call, Winter. We'll talk about him another time.


Anyway, it's been a beautiful weekend. I had Friday off and so it felt extra long and satisfying. Eliana and I didn't do a whole lot of anything in particular. Lots of books and legos and cuddling. Some quality time with some of her little buddies. Lots of practicing her new words like, "bus" and "down" and "snow" (which I think is particularly easy for her because it rhymes with her other favorite word, "no"). Lots of time in the park. She's really into play things these days, particularly slides. She actually seems to spend more time attempting to climb up them. She's like her daddy like that.


Another new development is the fact that she no longer likes to be in her stroller in the park, she, instead, likes to stroll. She managed to walk almost the whole lap of Greenough (about a mile and a half), refusing to be carried, whining when placed back in the stroller. It was a good exercise in being in the moment, trying not to get antsy when she strayed off the path to oogle at yet another leaf, trying to see the world from her eyes, everything totally new and tremendous.

I enjoyed some splendorious time on my favorite mountain, senior Jumbo. Felt pretty darn lucky to have this mountain in my yard. Felt pretty darn lucky about the whole thing - this town, these friends, this man, this girl - the whole, lovely package.

mornings at our house

Eliana is really into giving kisses and hugs, hiding, and cuddling her doggie. Here's an average, super splendid morning at our house.

lunchtime chat with elie

holy seasons!

No one ever said that living in Montana was mild. Or mellow. Or predictable. Or reasonable. Here's an overview of the week we've had with regard to the seasonal changes.

Last weekend at my girlfriends wedding:


Yesterday in the park:


Today, hiking with my friends:


I'm not really feeling like I've had time to adjust.

Meanwhile, my little prize fighter just keeps on keeping on like the brave, grubby, nutty little wildcat she is...

palabritas

Every baby needs her homegirls to chat with...


I caught up with my homey Dr. Sears last night and read about all the amazing things that Eliana's almost 15 month self is going through. He suggested to begin a "word list" to keep track of your 'lil spitfire's burgeoning vocabulary. I got pretty excited about that idea, so here goes:

Eliana's palabritas (aka, little words):
mama
dada
cheese (pronounced "chiz")
cracker
up
breakfast (only said in the mornings - she's truly remarkable)
hot (accompanied with a little hand wave by her mouth, so dear)
nana
pop pop
gran
moana
keys
hi
hey
pasa
baby (or buh buh)
luz (as in lucy, the dog)
woof (said anytime she see's lucy or hears another doggie barking)
bye-bye (the current favorite...not said at the appropriate time exactly, but successive times following a goodbye, when the folks we are saying goodbye to are long gone...except for the other morning when she said, "bah bahyee mama" when I walked out the door to work. Woah.)
no, no, no (another fav - said when she's doing things she's not supposed to do)

She's too much, this girl. Too much.

the new badass

I just found yet another old and fabulous friend through facebook. I love facebook. Anyway, she now has two kids and recently ran the Portland marathon. Now, mind you, the last time I saw this friend I was probably twenty-two. We were probably dancing very late at night to very loud house music. Or we could have been staring at a ceiling fan at four in the morning talking about, "the afro in the sky." Or maybe we were eating some ungodly diner breakfast after a long, hazy night and drinking massive amounts of coffee. Any way you cut it, we weren't exactly pillars of health.

Seeing these tough girl pictures of her lean muscles getting ready to set off for the marathon reminded me of how tremendous women are. Women and their insanely capable bodies. We can grow children. We can birth children. Our stomach muscles completely separate and then come back together again. We can have babies, and then, run marathons.

I teach a yoga class once a week. My average student is in her mid-thirties, super strong, and able to hold some fairly intense poses for sustained periods of time. I always tell the ladies in class how fun they are to teach because, in their toughness, I don't worry about them pushing themselves beyond their limits.

But the other day I had three girls show up who were probably around the above mentioned age. The age of unhealthiness. Granted, they were much further along then I was because they were at a yoga class, not, say, twirling around on some beach in Santa Cruz. But it was so apparent that they were totally out of touch with their bodies. They were shaky and unsure. As much as I adjusted them and helped them throughout the class, they never really met my eyes. There was a deeply rooted insecurity that seems to come with barely being in your twenties, barely having a sense of your body's true potential.

I so don't miss that time. Today after a busy day in the classroom, I decided to take Eliana to do some errands on the bike. After a fairly spontaneous lovefest with our girlfriends in the park, I ended up biking a decent distance to the market and then proceeding to bike home with a cartload of groceries. After getting home, bathing, feeding and putting to bed Eliana, I hit "my wall." I felt a bit shaky and my back was (...still is) on fire. As I was grumbling to Jeff about my exhaustion, he reminded me of that bike ride. He mentioned that I was probably carting about thirty extra pounds. He reminded me that this bike fixation is new and isn't exactly something that I've been practicing for years.

And there's something about that, about this new badass, this post baby badass, that I totally get off on. I love the fact that I think I'm a stronger dancer now than I ever have been. I love the fact that I can hustle up the mountain behind my house way faster now than I ever could before Eliana. Because it wasn't so long ago that I was struggling back into my first dance class. That I couldn't hold plank or navasana and was still not back at ease in my post-baby body. Going through that journey and coming out not just on the other side, but in an even stronger place, is pretty tremendous. Not only that, I have something pretty damn tremendous to show for it all.

gettin' cribby with it

Oh, I just couldn't resist that lil shout out to the ever so charismatic Will Smith. So Eliana and Moana truly are the sweetest little girlfriends ever. Casey and I laughed awfully loud watching them get nuts in Eliana's crib this afternoon. The pics could easily be titled "weird and weirder" or "sweet and sweeter" (for yet another pop culture reference). But really, words can't do them enough justice this time. Here's to technology and this multi-media display: