Love Chat

When I come home from an evening out, my girl holds my face in her warm little hands and says, "I'm happy to see you, mama." My two-year-old wiggle puppy says, "I love you, mama," and then, "I'm proud of you, mama." Her words are half purr, half coo. I reply in kind to each of her pronouncements, with a squeeze for emphasis, which makes my girl giggle and squeal with delight.

These little love fests are becoming more and more frequent lately. I'm basking in them.

And what cheers me most is realizing that my daughter is reflecting what I give her right back at me. She gets these phrases from me, and she might not even know what "I'm proud of you" means but she absorbs the feeling in the words and returns it to me a thousandfold.

How extraordinary to see myself reflected in a mirror like this. It makes me proud of my girl and even a little proud of me, too. Maybe I'm not half bad at this motherhood thing?

I might have another story to tell when Amelie hits her teen years. But for now, I'll gladly take what I have. And bask in it.

Postcards from Abroad

As soon as I pronounce to the world that I'm ready to blog again, wouldn't you know it, I get swamped with freelance work, so swamped that I work all weekend until my butt is sore and I'm practically cross-eyed. And I'm not even out of the hole yet. Still digging.

At least my work takes me to some nice places. I explored the colonial cities of Mexico on Saturday, haunted the luxury hotels of Europe on Sunday, and spent yesterday in exotic Asia. Have I mentioned that I'm an armchair travel writer? My job gives me wanderlust in the worst way.

I always take solace in the fact that if we go forward with our plan to homeschool Amelie we will be free to globe-trot. We can learn Spanish together as we hop from San Miguel de Allende to Guadalajara. We can show Amelie where millions of Monarch butterflies winter over each year in Michoacan. Then we'll backpack across China, walk the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai, and come face to face with the Terra-Cotta Warriors of Xi'an.

Okay, I'm definitely past the backpacking stage of my life (so twenties!), but let me have my little dream. We all need our Walter Mitty moments, don't we?

I leave you with this happy snap of Amelie. It's time to get back to work. Sydney is on the itinerary. Bon voyage.

Alive and Kicking

I was planning on calling this post "Back from the Dead," but I thought that might be too much of a downer. And it wouldn't mesh well with this cheery pic of Amelie painting at her easel. It's a "glass half full or half empty" kind of thing. Half full, it seems, is our winner tonight.

This blog is once again a living, thriving, pixilated, virtual organism. I am breathing life back into it. Voila.

What happened? Like the rest of the world, I got busy over the holidays. And despite all the hoopla and rioting in the streets from my ardent fans, demanding that I resume blogging again, I resisted. I deferred. I demurred. Until now.

But really, I missed writing here. I missed having something that was mine in writing. I missed marking the time in my daughter's small life. Catching it, cupping it in my hands, honoring it.

Here is a conversation that Amelie and I had recently. Almost as it was happening, I thought, I must encase this in amber. Or at least blog it. So here goes. I should preface it by explaining that Amelie calls me "Deer" sometimes because of a character that I created in a bedtime story for her (a deer that she befriends and that takes her for rides on its back).

Amelie: Deer, can you fly?

Mama: No. Butterflies and birds can fly, but I can't. I don't have wings.

Amelie: I have wings to fly!

Mama: You do? Show me your wings.

(Amelie shoots her two little sausage arms into the air exuberantly.)

Mama: Those are great wings! Do you want to fly? Let's fly!

(Mama starts flapping her arms and running around the room. Sure, it looks ridiculous, but my girl is only two, right?)

Amelie (outraged): MAMA! YOU CAN'T FLY!

(Mama stops, listens.)

Amelie: You're too big!

Well, there you have it: "Playing Hooky" is alive and trying, perhaps futilely, to fly again. With any luck, this blog will grow its wings back.