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say yes

If your nomadic sister* invites you to spend a week on a Caribbean island in the middle of a global pandemic, say yes.

Say yes in spite of the pandemic. Say yes because of the pandemic! Say yes to show that prickly crowned virus that it can steal your job and your social life and your ability to taste and smell and a year of your children’s education but it cannot take your will to live!!!!**

Say yes, even though your kids’ passports are expired, even though the four year old still sneaks into your bed every night, even though you don’t own a proper swimsuit. Say yes because the dollar is strong and your capacity to remain dutifully at home is getting weak. Say yes because you fear that a year of quarantine has made your perspective terrifyingly narrow. Say yes because it snowed 8 inches last week and you can’t remember the last time you had a pina colada. (February 2019.)

You won’t regret your yes, even if you are scammed by the rental car company and stopped by police 4 minutes after leaving the airport, even if the showers are cold and the mosquitos are the size of your thumb. You won’t remember the flat tires and the vague humiliation of being the only gringo in the grocery store, sunburnt and squinting at unfamiliar food packaging; you’ll only remember the way you gasped when you saw the beach, the mountainous jungle merging with sand in a landscape so picturesque you actually consider rejoining Instagram.

Say yes to the 45 ft humpbacks, the passionfruit, the lullaby rainstorms. Say yes to spontaneous spelunking, to yucca fritters, to a rooftop balcony perfectly suited to some sweaty bodyweight workouts. Say yes because life is short and the world is big and a week in paradise might reveal an undiscovered talent for open water swimming! (It doesn’t; that shit is really hard.)

Say yes because after a year saying no, you’ve forgotten what yes feels like: the sand in your toes, the wind in your hair, the unprecedented beauty and endless gratitude, the newfound conviction that everything is going to be just fine.

*If you don’t have a nomadic sister I’m happy to share mine with you, as soon as she’s vaccinated.

**Don’t worry, haters... I had Covid in January and was cleared by a doctor for international travel. 😛

you know what they say about hindsight...

It’s 2020! Time for a little looking back, then?

2019 was a lot of this...

With a little of this...

And not nearly enough of this:

It required some bravery:

Some grit:

Some translation:

(”I am thankful for books because I get to learn. I am thankful for food because it keeps me livin’. I am thankful for my dad because he taught me how to cook.”)

Some caffeine....

....And approximately one million dollars in plane tickets.

#worthit

Not required, but very much helpful:

ice cream!!!

Some of us preferred the amusement park:

Others delighted in natural beauty:

All of us were down for this:

and this

and... this?

We found meaning in art:

and in wilderness:

...and in random yard signs.

We biked, we climbed, we jumped, we floated!

We hiked, we learned, we ate & got bloated:

We were intentional:

Adorable:

Curious:

and kind.

(most of the time)

We set things on fire!

We peed in the woods!

Though the weather was memorable...

We were prepared!!

Some creatures we cared for:

While others we murdered ruthlessly:

Some things were fun:

And others were terrifying.

But with the help our of friends:

and family:

and neighbors:

we made it through!

...and we’re ready to do it again next year.

well well well

Well well well, what have we here?

...a first grader, a preschooler, and a very special birthday girl!

...a green bean name, a floating hot tub, and some candy-ready kids!

... a tired dad, a missing tooth, and a “restaurant for rock stars”!

....a poncho selfie, a future World of Dance competitor showing off his skills, and the last brick wall portrait of 2018.

Wishing you all a healthy and happy year to come!

how to have a great summer

1. Sometime in May, realize that you’ve grown accustomed to leisurely mornings with the big kids in school. Start imagining long days as the sole adult responsible for 3 daring, willful, uncoordinated kids. Realize that those days are coming, nearly a hundred of them in row: hour after hour of “make her stop!!” and cleaning up one snack/project/game only to be immediately asked for another. Prepare to say goodbye to the drop offs that anchor your days and those angels disguised as teachers who take such wonderful care of your offspring. Remember that you have no air conditioning, that every time it gets over 85F you start picking fights with your husband. Panic.

2. Take some hot pink post it notes and write down what it would take to feel your summer feel meaningful: a destination, a relationship, an activity, a project or skill. Take a piece of poster board and spend much longer than you should turning it into a 12 week summer calendar. Start putting the post it notes on the calendar. Draft an ad for a babysitter and love the first person you interview. As you look for over the tentative plan for the months to come, stop panicking! This is going to be fine.

3. Do all the things. Cry at the preschool graduation! Feed yaks out the car window! Stand in line 3 hours waiting for vegan BBQ! Explore abandoned military buildings and float through lilypads on a 10 person raft. Eat strawberries. Eat raspberries. Eat peaches. Eat everything! Get to the children’s museum when it opens. Leave when it closes. Swim in the wading pool. Swim in the lake. Swim in the decorative fountain at your Airbnb! Throw the world’s most disorganized birthday party. You’re doing great!

4. Chipmunks chew a hole in the cooler on a camping trip? Toddler needs three stitches on her forehead? Pedal breaks on the preschooler’s bike 10 miles from home? Poop in the car seat? Poop in the bath? Just roll with it. The greatest inconveniences often make for the best stories. We’ll be talking about this summer all year long...

live from isla

We’re live from Isla Mujeres, QR! Jason and I are here alone, which means that instead of spending all our time taking care of the kids, we’re spending all of our time talking about them, #parents. This was my first time leaving Vera overnight, so I warned Jason that I would probably cry on the plane then surprised him by crying the night before instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh, Vera... I love all my children equally, but I experience my love for them so viscerally when they are little. I look at my daughter, and I want to put her whole body in my mouth. The last time I blogged, I probably wrote something about how sweet she is, and if I can find those words I may have to eat them. Our girl is turning out to be a bit.. well, forceful. I find myself simultaneously bewildered by her unfriendliness and in awe of it. The mother in me wants her to smile at strangers, but feminist in me knows she owes them nothing. Vera has so many words and so many passions; I couldn’t be prouder.

I try to maintain my laid-back parent persona by pretending to forget her age in months (16.8!) but the truth is that days with her are precious, and I am counting them all. Let’s get you caught up now, shall we?

Q: Wait, don’t you have other children? Please tell us more!

Well, if you insist...

Porter turned 4 in January which is crazy because he’s one of those kids who’s been 4 since he was 2. He’s funny and dramatic and our most affectionate kid by a long shot. He recently used his own money to buy his first pack of gum, and less than 4 hours after agreeing to a 1 piece limit, the whole thing was gone. <Insert gum control joke here> Just before we left for Mexico, Porter surprised us by hopping on a bike and riding it with no help. He tries so hard to keep up with Simon that I would not be surprised if dude breaks a bone this summer.

Simon is easy-going, collected, and friends with everyone. (Enneagram 9?) He makes prolific amounts of art and can find a way to turn any conversation to Pokemon. His big trick is doing what he calls “sonic booms” which from his demonstrations I gather is pumping your arms while running? Fearless and resilient at the skate park, genuinely amused by Vera, starting to read well. and aaaalmost grown out of his blond hair...

I can’t wait to hug them all!! Unless, of course, the waiting involves tropical weather, colorful cocktails, Sudoku, heaping platefuls of ceviche, snorkeling, uninterrupted Jason time (!!) and cruising around the island in this adorable “Ladybug”...

... in which case I think I can make it to Thursday. ;-) One million hugs to the grandparents who are keeping our babies, and a special thanks Scooter and Abuela, for their wild generosity in sharing their house here. We love you!

2017

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I have novel for you...

The summer dragged on forever: housemate drama, construction flops by bad craigslist labor, and swim lessons that ended with Porter trying to scratch the teacher’s eyes out. Nothing felt right in the new house, and with Jason being pulled in multiple directions professionally, I was left to figure it all out on my own. I thought, “I cannot take it anymore” then looked at the calendar and discovered I didn’t have to - school was about to start!

All in the same week, the backordered sofa arrived and the boys were finally out of my hair and my in laws arrived to hang mirrors and hold the baby. Even thinking about it now I feel like crying with gratitude.

And then, slowly- sleep training success, personal records at the gym, learning the names of the other parents at drop off and really settling in the new place. Fall used to feel like winding down, but this year it was all commencement: sight words and field trips and show & tell! Simon was surprised to learn that all the teachers at his new school had the same first name - “Miss.” Ha!

Of course we did the trick or treating and the turkey feast, but the real celebration was on November 16th when our bright little light turned one. Vera! So fierce! So funny! I’d hoped she’d start walking during our holiday trip to TN, and sweet girl did not let me down, drunken little steps all over our parent’s hardwoods. She made this Christmas our merriest yet.

And finally, the real reason for this post... a chance to share this miraculous photo in which all 5 of us are present and none of us are crying!!

A very happy new year to you and yours, and thanks as always for following along. :-)

an open home

It’s been two years now since I first laid eyes on our house at NE 85th St. We’d been hunting for a Seattle rental for nearly 9 months, fruitlessly searching for a space large enough and landlord crazy enough to support our 7 person household. One Saturday morning in late May, we found both those things in a split-level ranch owned by a misogynistic Greek man who thought paperwork was “a man’s business” and made the women wait outside with kids while our husbands signed the lease.

The previous tenants stayed to meet us. They were church planters with whom we had so much in common that replacing them felt ordained. Inheriting all the goodwill they’d sown into the community, we embarked on our adventure in cohousing.

At the time I promised a blog post about what it’s like to live with another family. I never wrote it because it felt like there wasn’t enough to say. Of course there were some hiccups, but for the most part the sharing of domestic duties was worked out with grace and good cheer. After living alone as a nuclear family, our first few weeks in the house felt like a party. Adult conversations every night! Free live-in childcare! We made the most of our humble but functional house, arranging and rearranging, hosting a hundred community dinners, learning the names of all the neighborhood kids who came to jump on the trampoline. Somewhere along the way, Clementine went from round little baby to a lively playmate for our boys. We were too loud and they were too messy, but all of us were grateful.

Reactions to our living arrangement ranged from envy to confusion. When Jason and Caleb took the kids around to meet the neighbors, everyone thought they were a gay couple with three kids. Out with housemates, I got used to saying, “We’re married, but not to each other.”

Just before Vera was born, over a childless thali dinner at Poppy, they broke the news: Deanna was pregnant! The baby girl inside her was the child we’d all prayed for, and we were all excited to meet her. But as they prepared to welcome Marigold, our big ‘ole house started to feel not-so-big. The babies were coming, and we had nowhere to put them.

We’d have made it work, of course, but in the end we didn’t have to. Remember the church planters who’d entrusted the house to us? They’d bought a place nearby and were planning to sell it before relocating to Portland. They offered us first refusal at a price we could not refuse. At the time we were in Nashville visiting family, so we did a brief video tour of the house and signed the purchase and sale agreement sight unseen.

If living together had been surprisingly easy, buying together was surprisingly hard. There were tense conversations about the division of equity and shed storage space. I cried when I saw the size of the bathroom. My phone buzzed with endless group texts about the pros and the cons and the paint color options. An un-permited remodel nearly thwarted the whole deal, but the appraisal came through and by the time Marigold was born, the house was officially ours. The weekend we moved there wasn’t a single moving truck available within 100 miles, but the grandmothers came to watch the kids, and our whole church turned up to help box and haul and clean. We were moved. Open home, indeed.

Both families are in real estate, so this is the 13th house we’ve invested in between us. Number 13 is lucky or maybe unlucky, but who needs luck when you’ve got turquoise ceilings and a 1 mile walk to the beach? We’re settling in at a snail’s pace and pictures will come eventually, but for now here’s a photo recap of our last couple months in the old house...

how we’re doing

We're doing great, thanks for asking!

First off, let’s talk about the baby. You guys! She's the best. She’s smart and plump and has the most radiant star smiles. At nearly three months old her accomplishments are pretty humble (cooing! rolling! eye contact!) but it's safe to say we think the world of this girl. When I catch myself longing for the next phase, where she can crawl or talk or be held my someone other than me, I just say to myself "this could be your last one." Those are pretty much the magic words as far as an attitude change. Babies don’t keep.

I'm not sure if it's her or me, but infant care feels easy this time. Everything else is a bit nuts, though. Our orbit around the city has shrunk significantly and my living room always looks something like this...

...but on the bright side I'm finally mastering the art of lower domestic expectations. Perfectionism dies hard, y’all. My energy level is actually pretty decent, but a couple times a week I do something really dumb like burn a hole in the kitchen counter or send an important package to the wrong address and those mistakes serve as painful reminders of the very real effects of sleep deprivation. The month after my family left, dinner felt so unachievable that we ate almost exclusively takeout and Trader Joe's frozen food. For some reason I always get crazy sugar cravings during the first few months of exclusive breastfeeding, and it can be so hard to strike a balance between self care and total lack of discipline. In January I started doing crossfit at Jason's gym, and it's been very life-giving to kiss the baby goodbye and break a sweat for an hour.

What else? This happened...

^Jumping because that's a new-to-us car! Some backstory: ten years ago, my dad made a deal with me. If I stayed in public school and saved him money on tuition, he'd buy me a car. The vehicle in question was a 2006 Honda Civic and way too cool to pass up. I drove that car all around town, and later shipped her out to WA state. When I got pregnant with V, we debated getting something bigger but ultimately decided to stick with my beloved Honda. Then, on my first trip to the grocery store with all three kids, the power steering went out. It turned out to be issues with the hybrid battery that are totally fixable but too inconvenient for our current situation. Simon wanted to replace the car with a snowmobile, but instead we found a great deal on a used Mazda 5 and drove down to Olympia to buy it. It's the miniest minivan on the US market- roomy enough that we can bring my sister along when we go the beach but compact enough that we can still parallel park in our urban neighborhood. I've never named a car before, but we're talking about calling this one Goldilocks since she's not too big and not too small, but juuuust right.

Sunday was our sixth wedding anniversary, and we celebrated very romantically by going over our annual budget and making shrinky dinks with the kids. ;-) We'll do some more extravagant celebrating next month in Mexico, but for now I'll just say this: I really, really love being married to Jason.

I could keep prattling on about how we are doing, but instead I'm gonna throw down a few months worth of Keil children photo spam, because this is my blog and it’s what I do here!

twenty eight

Yesterday I turned 28.

Today I sat down today to write some kind of reflective piece on how I’ve grown this year. But when I tried to think back on the year, I realized the first 10 and half months already feel like a dream.

Birth does this to us, I think. My babies have each changed me so quickly and so thoroughly that a week later it seems impossible that I was ever pregnant. I think about the girl I was at 39 weeks, waddling around town collecting birth supplies and baby clothes, and this girl seems so sweet and sincere and somehow totally unrecognizable as me.

A less polite way of describing this phenomenon is to say "wtf just happened!?" And I'm thankful for this blog because some of it, at least, is recorded here. But so much is missing! The toys I picked up, the books I read, the seven-minute workouts, the hours we spent deliberating whether or not to buy a mini-van. In some ways 27 was about embracing my femininity. For the first time in my life I wore makeup almost every day. I bought a curling wand! I got eyelash extensions! In other ways, 27 was about friendship, about finally finding my people in this crazy city. I spent most of the year in pregnancy-imposed sobriety, which turned out to be a surprisingly rewarding discipline.

Our church plant shrank, and then it grew. Our house became the best kind of temple, Sunday nights loud and lively. I cooked and cleaned for these beautiful people; I complained about the cooking and cleaning. I sometimes said or did the right thing at the right time, but mostly I just showed up.

Just before Vera was born, Jason made space for me to have a personal retreat in a secluded yurt on Bainbridge Island. The place seemed quirky and quaint online, but turned out to be filthy and freezing, decorated with creepy new age statues and reeking of bodies despite the whole hippie compound being totally deserted. I had to walk across a wet, dark field to access a bathroom, which wouldn’t have been a big deal but for the full-term baby sitting on my bladder. While I was there, the logic board on my computer went out and my phone had no service. The solitude I’d craved turned out to be depressing rather than rejuvenating. Walking back through our front door after that misadventure, I was struck with a profound sense of gratitude for my home and my family.

Being pregnant forced me to rely heavily on Jason this year, and I could not be more thankful to have him as a partner. He has pampered and challenged me in exactly the right ratio. There is no one I'd rather do this with than him.

So here’s the 28, to self discovery and the cultivation of good habits, to marriage and motherhood and ministry whatever else is in store for me.

Thanks for tagging along. xo

the birth of vera bea

It was early Wednesday morning, and I couldn’t sleep. Being 9 months pregnant, I was no stranger to middle-of-the-night restlessness, but this time it was different. My back was hurting in a precise kind of way I recognized as contractions. I never have noticeable contractions until I’m in labor, so even though the backaches were not intense, I figured it was probably our baby’s birthday.

I got out of bed around 4:30 and felt a burst of energy. I put away all the dishes and laundry, tidied the fridge, took out the compost, and started cleaning the inside of the recycle bin and trash can- something I literally had not done since moving into this house a year ago. At one point I was even cleaning the railing of the sliding pantry door with a q-tip. I tried to move the washing machine so I could clean behind it, and all the banging around woke up my mother-in-law. She claims she discovered me with a huge grin on my face “like Christmas morning.” The contractions were consistent and slowly getting stronger, but I was trying to wait until a reasonable hour to contact my doula and my midwife.

I finally sent them both texts around 6am, finished responding to a bunch of craigslist ads for our rental houses, and tried to spend some quality time with my older kids. We had breakfast and played for a while before Simon had to leave for school. I started to feel really tired when he left, so I left Porter with his grandmother and tried to sleep between contractions. After an hour or so Jason came in to check on me, and I started crying. The excitement was wearing off, and I was remembering what hard work it is birthing a baby. I’d looked forward to my other labors, but having had two natural (read: excruciating) births before, this time I felt I had nothing prove. My attitude about labor was a kind of grim resolve. I tried to focus on anticipating the first few hours postpartum, when I would get to hold our daughter and eat donuts.

My mood lifted when my mom and sisters showed up. My sister Marion suggested we go for a walk, so she and I set off with Jason and my sister Rosie. When we left I was feeling totally confident, but by the time we got a 1/4 mile from our house the contractions were coming faster and stronger- sometimes less than 2 minutes between them. We took a break and made a massage train in the middle of the park near our house, joking about how funny we probably looked and whether we could get a stranger to jump in at the end of our massage train.

We started walking again, and suddenly nothing seemed funny anymore. I realized going so far was entirely overambitious- the contractions were so painful at this point that I was literally on my knees whimpering on the sidewalk near Simon’s school. This would have awkward under normal circumstances, but it became totally mortifying when I realized that Simon’s preschool was getting out a half hour early, and all the moms I know from school started walking by with their kids. I tried to look ‘normal’ but it was pretty obvious what was happening.

Jason ran off to get the car and drove us one block home. I made it inside and collapsed on our bed. I was stayed there on my side silently until my dear friend and doula/photographer Ciara showed up. We called the midwife and agreed that maybe the walk had temporarily worsened my labor and decided to check in again in half an hour to see if things would slow down at all.

Things did not slow down. The contractions were really hurting, and I was screaming through them until Ciara coached me to breath or make low moans. The big kids would pop in the door periodically, and I was so happy to see them. I could clearly feel the baby descending which I’d never felt before. I felt the urge to push and starting yelling, “Where the fuck is the midwife?!” Jason called her, and she rushed over to our house - thankfully her office is only a few blocks from our house. I asked if she wanted to check my dilation before I got in the birthing tub and she said sternly, “I don’t have time to check you because you are about to have a baby and I need get set up here.”

She was right- our girl was born in the water only an hour later. But it was a looooong hour for me. I was feeling super impatient and saying the things I always say during labor like, “why isn’t she here yet” and “what’s taking so long?” The birth assistant showed up (an emergency room nurse at her first ever home birth!) and checked the baby’s heartbeat, which was reassuring. My mom, mother-in-law, sisters, and Jason were all in the room and they were so affirming and helpful. Everyone kept saying how powerful I was, how well I was doing, and how great I looked - ha! Meanwhile I was thinking, “I hate giving birth” and saying “no no no no” every time I had a contraction - to which the rest of the room kept replying, “yes yes yes!”

My bag of waters was still intact. My midwife offered to break it, but I decided to wait and see if she would be born in the sac. The burning, the tearing, the unsatisfying work of pushing, the popping of my water... and then out came her head! I didn’t bother to look or feel for her head; I was so focused on finishing the damn thing. I pushed her body out and they put her in my arms at 2:26 pm. Relief!

Ciara took many beautiful photos, but this first one best depicts how I remember it...

...until...

I wasn’t totally convinced she was a girl until I saw it for myself. She looked exactly like her brothers, only a little smaller, and I loved her instantly. I got a shot of pitocin, delivered the afterbirth, and was still in the tub with her when the boys came in to meet her. They even got to see their dad cut the “food cord” and examine the placenta, which they’d learned about while I was pregnant. The midwives helped me move to the bed, then everyone filed out to eat some Cuban sandwiches. Jason and I laid on the bed together, looking at our daughter and talking about how perfect she was and whether the name we’d chosen for her fit.

Vera means faith, and Jason had discerned the name for her at sunset on top of Mt Pilchuck this summer. (To mark the occasion, he built the cairn in the photo below.) There were a few contenders for middle names, but looking at her we settled on Bea, which means “bringer of joy.”

Today our Vera Bea is one week old, and already she’s living up to her names, restoring our faith and filling our home with happiness. We are so, so blessed.

Without further ado...

A huge thank you to our families, friends, and midwives who have been so kind and supportive this week. You have made our first days as a family of five so sweet!

Welcome to the world, Vera Bea. We love you already!

third time’s a charm

A lot of people have asked me how this pregnancy has been different from my first two. Despite the fact that I’ve been a little more uncomfortable, overall I’ve found that I’m enjoying this pregnancy more.

When I found out I was pregnant with my first child (surprise!) I was excited, but I also felt guilty. I was embarrassed that we had been married for such a short time before our inadvertant foray into parenthood. I wanted to buy some cute baby clothes and decorate a nursery, but part of me felt like I didn’t deserve to do those things because the whole pregnancy was just one big accident. A wonderful friend threw me the loveliest baby shower, and instead of feeling loved and pampered, I felt sheepish and uneasy. I distinctly remember thinking that she should saved the nice party for someone who was not 22 and terrible at counting her fertile days.

Kids are great at celebrating, but we adults are always trying to be cool. We try to not cry at weddings, even though we’re in the presence of something enormously transcendent and beautiful. And by acting ambivalent, we become ambivalent- we forget how to delight.

When I tried not appear too enthusiastic about having a baby, I ended up feeling resentful of all the people on the internet posting unashamedly about prenatal vitamins and sharing their professional maternity photos. I said things like “who would spend all that money on a photo shoot” while secretly wishing I had pictures of my own pregnant self, half-naked in a stream.

Last year in a mom’s program at church, I watched a video about the idea of Biblical feasting. The gist of it was this: there’s a time and place when we get to embrace extravagance and surrender to delight. For me, this meant admitting that it’s exhilarating to be having a baby, even if other people see it as irresponsible or pedestrian. “Let yourself be giddy,” the video advised, “because the giddiness will get you through the hard stuff.”

And my goodness, does the hard stuff come. The ability to enjoy your children is key to surviving the early days, and we get to practice that in pregnancy. We get to practice paying attention to our children and marveling at the miracle of their existence, but without the inconveniences of being cried at and pooped on!

I’ve spent the last 5 years coming to terms with my role as a mom, and I’m owning it now. I’m not apologizing for being pregnant this time. Instead of feeling self-conscious about my small children and my big belly, I’m relishing this season of being so round and hopeful.

Last weekend, two of my most favorite people threw me a baby/mama blessing to celebrate the impending arrival of our girl. There were friends and prayer flags and henna and large quantities of cheese and chocolate. In other words, it was perfect. As I prepare to give birth, it was really good to take some time to focus on this baby and to be reminded that there are other women out there rooting for me.

Third time’s a charm!

meanwhile

There’s nothing like Tennessee in July. I hadn’t been home in the summer for nearly a decade, so I’d forgotten about the fireflies, the thunderstorms, the waterfall swims. Apparently I also forgot about reapplying sunscreen, since I was red and freckled by our second day there. Skin peeling and sweating dripping, we explored: cocktails in an old laundromat, albino crawfish in a limestone cave, puppet shows and rooftop sushi. Tied up outside a coffeeshop in Nashville we found a goat in a sequined baseball cap. Old friends, new babies, a family farm wedding and another glass of sweet tea.

Back at home, our friend Jonathan showed up with a twin bed and deep fryer and stayed for three months. (He’d later call the experience “an internship in fatherhood.”) We took a quick trip to Oregon for cheese tasting and creekside camping in the Tillamook forest. In Portland we hit up our favorite brunch spot and the world’s first nonprofit pub, because we believe in drinking beer giving back.

August: kombucha tasting flights and yard games and stop throwing sand at your brother! The month was practically a parade of islands: Whibey, Jetty, and Green Lake’s infamous (apparently off-limits, as we later found out) Duck Island. We finally made it up to McMenamin’s art-deco school turned adult funhouse, where we spent too long floating in the heated pool and had to bike 10 miles home in pitch darkness.

In deference to the calendar, temperatures dropped 20 degrees and preschool started right on September 1st. It was our first-ever first day and no one cried except the little brother who wanted to tag along. That same afternoon my dad came to town - ostensibly for work but really for ramen and Cuban sandwiches and hopelessly devoted grandchildren. He got us backstage at the Washington State Fair, where the kids rode every dang ride in the place and ate onion rings the size of their heads. The sign said the roller coasters were not recommended for people “with pregnancy or other disorders” so I decided not to risk it, only to suffer a painful and embarrassing fall off a 2-ft platform while waiting in line with the kids. C’est la pregnancie, right?

We made it through last week’s grandparent withdrawal and celebrated with a loop around the state. Highlights: an early morning hike up the Chelan butte with the whole family still in pajamas, a blissfully sunny day swimming in one of the deepest lakes in the country, and an overnight trip to our friend’s yurt in the desert. We scrambled up the sagebrush at bedtime for an astonishing view of the Cascades and stopped for lunch the next day at alpine lake dyed green by glacial-powdered rocks.

Meanwhile, she grew...

People love to tell me I don’t look 7 months pregnant but that’s impossible because I am 7 months pregnant, and therefore this is what 7 months pregnant looks like. Baby girl’s already got a name and dresser full of hand-me-downs and an apparent affinity for key lime pie. I love her.

A summer of adventure has brought us here. We’re slipping back into routine and gathering momentum for our growing Christian community. The praises go up; the blessings come down.

Thanks, as always, for following along.

our november child

Pink balloon for our sweet November girl. :-)

Are you surprised? We were!! To find out, my sister led us on a scavenger hunt around her neighborhood, complete with strawberry watermelon ginger beer and a Chuck Palahniuk sighting. At the end of our adventure, we were presented with a beautiful gold box. Inside the box we found this hand-painted card...

to which Jason and I responded with total disbelief. I think my first word was actually, “No!” I felt so entrenched in my role as a mom of boys that I hadn’t dared to hope for a girl, even though I’ve always wanted a daughter.

Needless to say, our family is thrilled to welcome the little lady in a couple of months!

the last summer

Years from now, I’m sure we’ll refer to this summer as “the summer before xyz baby was born.”

But right now, pregnancy is easy and the baby seems distant. So far, this summer feels more like “that summer we discovered the joys of car camping.”

After years of being avid light-weight backpackers, buying a big Coleman tent and air mattress felt a little like selling out. But our weekends at Kalaloch and Mt St Helens have affirmed the wisdom of those purchases a hundred times over. How happily our kids unroll their own sleeping bags and pee in the trees! How carefully they search for their special rocks and balance their veggie dogs over the flames! Saturday morning we awoke to birdsongs and boy-giggles, and soon the woods was filled with the nostalgic smell of scrambled pancakes cooked over a fire.

Although our parents sent us to summer camp and boy scouts, neither Jason nor I grew up camping with our families, so sleeping outside with our kids feels oddly like an act of rebellion. Around the campfire, we are writing their stories: these are children who go camping.

The irony of parenting is this: the older our kids get, the more important it feels to curate their experiences and thereby shape their values. And yet the older they get, the less control we have. Simon starts preschool in two months, and we’re both ready for that step. But I’m sad, too- the slow relinquishing of hours and influence.

Being home with young kids can be tedious and exhausting. But it’s also been incredibly freeing not having to report to work or school. The long days of intoxicating possibility: what’ll it be, the park or the beach? There’s a sense in which it’s felt like summer ever since I quit my job. September means back to school not just for Simon, but for our whole family. Perhaps this summer will be remembered as the last summer in the four years of summer I’ve had at home with my oldest.

I know- “the last summer” sounds dramatic, even to my 4.5-months-pregnant self. Whatever we will call it, the summer of 2016 promises to be a summer of lake swims and cold brew and spontaneous travel; of lengthy bike rides and farmer’s market berries and waddling pilgrimage to the midwife around the corner.

Let’s do this.

P.S. Tomorrow we get to see our baby via ultrasound, and even though I think gender is something more complicated than can be revealed in a grainy sonogram photo... Jason and I are excited to learn to the baby’s sex and start imagining our family with him or her. We’ll share that here within a few days for the curious!

catching up

Where did I leave off here? Oh, right. January! We were home! But only for a week. Then we were back on a plane, thanks to a Southwest sale and the overwhelming generosity of my aunt and uncle in Orange County, who let us eat their snacks, overflow their toilet, and play naked in their landscaping...

We also went paddle boarding, crashed a neighbor’s birthday party, and ate the most memorable mushroom lasagna on our 5th wedding anniversary. Seashells and boardwalks and a certain Fantasyland where we chanced to meet this cowboy...

And then we were back in Washington again, just in time to redeem our Groupon for an indoor waterpark. We were a little creeped out by the faux Native American animatronics show, but as far as the kids were concerned, the Great Wolf Lodge was right on par with Disneyland.

While I was being tossed and twisted down a 6-story waterslide called the “Howlin’ Tornado,” something was was taking root in me. A proverbial mustard seed - a tiny thing, yet already making its mark. Two marks, in fact: two neat red lines, appearing immediately on a pregnancy test.

A baby!

Seeing the test, I felt a slight sense of “what have we done” - even though we’d been trying diligently. We were thrilled but nervous to the point of mild nausea. For Jason, the stomachache would last only a minute. I’d be feeling sick for the next two months.

Phone calls, one after another. Simon did the announcing: “There’s a baby in my mom’s belly! And my dad helped!”

Pregnancy: the food aversions, the inability to walk past a couch without lying on it, falling asleep in a pile of Duplos and wondering if your 3.5-yr-old is mature enough to walk alone to gas station to buy you some ginger ale. The rallying, the mustering, the sucking it up - and by ‘it’ I mean the grocery, the showings at our rental houses, the weekly community gatherings.

I once cried thinking about how much energy it would take to get the kids dressed. I was sick and tired for weeks, and then one day I was just... wasn’t. By the time Jason turned 30, I was recovered enough to eat three plates of Indian food and dance like a teenager at the 1975 concert.

While I was in my first trimester, everything bloomed. The tree in our front yard shocked us all by sprouting the loveliest cherry blossoms. The weather turned warm, and we got a trampoline and a jungle gym and a bunch of tomato plants. Our kids were blossoming too, in their own way: Simon, flying downhill on his balance bike, hair long enough for a tiny ponytail. And Porter, 2 years old, singing constantly and apparently paying close attention at Sunday school... he pushed his brother off the deck and instead of apologizing insisted, “It’s okay, Simon, Jesus will heal you!”

And their little sibling, swelling noticeably within me, whooshing gloriously on the doppler at the midwife’s office, posing like a gummy bear for family photos...

Simon wants a little sister. Porter wants a little brother. Jason just hopes the baby is “docile.” And me? I’m looking forward to a winter full of newborn snuggles. Come on, November!!

:-)

coming home

Christmas came and it went like it always does: feeling like forever then ending abruptly. For weeks we were settled happily among family, sipping nog and tripping over wrapping paper, and then suddenly we were back home cleaning out the fridge and trying to find a sitter for next week.

We spent three months in Tennessee last year, which I think makes us officially migratory. Every time we visit we wonder if we should move, then every time we return to Washington it seems obvious that we shouldn’t. All that going home and coming home can be a bit disorienting, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Oh!! While we were there I turned 27. Jason got me a massage and concert tickets to see one of my favorite bluegrass singers that night. I thought those were the best gifts ever until Simon made me these...

... which might just have won the day. Then my in-laws offered to take the kids on New Year’s Eve, and Jason and I took full advantage of the free babysitting by falling asleep at 8pm. The first morning of 2016 I awoke to find myself the very well-rested mother of a newly minted two-year-old. We celebrated Porter’s birthday at the local bounce house, where I hid from the attendant and jumped with the kids.

5 days and two plane rides later, I arrived back in Seattle with all my people and none of our bags. When the airline kindly delivered them the next day, it was like a holiday all over watching the kids unpack the generous gifts they’d received from family. Thankfully they were so distracted by the new toys they barely noticed our “tidying up” (read: giving away) half of our old things. We actually unpacked the garage for the first time since moving in, following Marie Kondo’s advice and keeping only the things that spark joy.

It worked, I think, cause we’re over here reaping joy, smiling like idiots, anticipating an awesome year.

it’s beginning to look a lot like mexico

Hi. Just popping in here to say “neener neener” to those of you who did not get to spend last week on a tropical island, floating in a pool while drinking pina coladas.

Pictured: me and my favorite guy, standing at the easternmost point in Mexico, below an ancient Mayan temple honoring their goddess of fertility. Not pictured: our children, BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T THERE.

a$OnsdfkJ$*)$*

We stayed in this house because it’s glorious and also because my dad owns it. (Thanks, Dad!!) The house is located on the southern tip of a small island off the coast of Cancun. There’s white sand beaches to the north and rocky cliffs with crashing waves on Caribbean side. There’s also a lovely downtown area where you can buy colorful marionetas or try a frozen habanero tequila shot. We loved getting around by golf cart, eating fish tacos for every meal, and having long, uninterrupted conversations while basking in the sun.

I really, really treasured having so much quality time with Jason. We snorkeled and played board games and fleshed out our dreams for our family. We’re pretty good about going on dates at home, but there’s a special kind of magic to having so many days with nothing to do except be together. At home I’m often guilty of putting all my attention on the kids, but all throughout our trip I kept looking at Jason thinking, “Hey, it’s you!! I like you!”

Back in Nashville, the magic lingers. There’s a distinct rightness to being back with the kids, even though I totally lost my groove and forgot how exhausting it is to care for them. (Tears of joy emoji!) Our parents and sisters are all here too, and we are hitting hard all the food and lights and concerts the hap, happiest season has to offer.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

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