my dear ramona,
fun is with you. fun is on the floor making animal noises and reading book after book and pretending the sheep puppet is talking to you. fun is the laugh you give when papa swings you around and when mama tickles your belly. fun is you dancing to the record player and us trying to sneak a video of it. fun is morning snuggles and trying on mama’s jewelry and putting ponytails in your hair. fun is the noise you make when you see the box of cheerios when we walk through the kitchen. fun is petting violet and lacy and your fearlessness w animals. fun is letting you roam free around the yard, watching you learn how to climb rocks and pick flowers and splash in water.
fun is you with our friends. fun is your charisma and inclusiveness. fun is the smile you get when you see nona or diri or lashley or kimmy or miss tara or uncle ko or aunt beth. fun is your love for and excitement for others. fun is knowing you are so loved by them.
fun is celebrating. fun is knowing how to party. fun is throwing parties for no reason. fun is certainly throwing parties for birthdays. fun is good food, homemade desserts (ok, ok: your cake was from a box), bright red lips, unnecessary decorations, lots of different people, tasty drinks (drinking responsibly of course), and a mixture of silly and thoughtful conversation.
girl, has it been fun.
i love you. love, mama.
read other letters to ramona from the sling diaries series: love, style, exploration, communication, and history.
this post is done in collaboration with sakura bloom. the sling i am wearing is the simple linen in twilight. the beautiful photos are by the unschooled (that’s for you, leigh 😉 ), teenage photographer phenom, luca venter. they were taken in our backyard during ramona’s first birthday party. special thanks to hey! party collective for making it all look so snazzy.
photo by Tessa Richardson
aahhhh, mondays. these are my intentional stay-at-home-and-do-absolutely-nothing days. the powerdriver family usually has lots going on over the weekend and max is transitioning back to spending his days with us (for the record: i have one baby but nanny another one during the work week). so i make sure monday is reserved for catching up on sleep (naptimes are often missed over the weekend) and getting the three of us back on the same page and in the same groove. i stay in my pajamas and rarely do my hair. we do not leave the front gate. today, for example, except for playing with the water table, we have not left the living room. it’s been spectacular.
our typical stay-at-home-and-chill-out schedule
- 6:45 ramona starts stirring. jp and i keep sleeping
- 7:15 jp gets ramona and brings her back to bed. i nurse her while jp and i chat about the upcoming day’s plans
- 7:30 it’s up an at ’em. jp is making breakfast and getting ready to milk the goat. i’m dressing mo and making myself somewhat presentable (“somewhat” being a loosely used term around these parts)
- 7:45 the three of us are usually eating breakfast and drinking coffee (mo doesn’t drink coffee but she tries to) when max is dropped off.
- 8:00 max and mo toddle around the first floor and front yard playing with toys and bringing me books and saying hello to each other
- 8:20 i feed max and mo breakfast
- 8:40 change diapers!
- 9:00 by this time both babes are in bed.
- 9:00 until whenever they wake up i catch up on various interweb things, clean whatever’s on my daily cleaning schedule, return emails, change the goats’ water, feed the chickens, tweet and pin, and package up any etsy sales and/or make any needed updates to the store. this is, hands down, my most productive time of the day.
- 11:00(ish) the kids are awake and we eat a snack (or sometimes it’s lunch) and then let them get some post-nap wiggles out. we read books, play with a very obnoxious tractor, and practice our animal sounds. we do this some more. we might head out to the water table, or go give scraps to the animals, or hop in the pool in the backyard, or climb through the vinyl tunnel, or ride the scramble bug, or climb the rocks. we just play play play. sometimes i’ll do something a little more structured but not always. it’s lots of just hanging out with them. snacks are involved. and getting them to do tricks for me (animal noises, responding to questions, pointing to body parts, generally showing off how smart they are 😉 ).
- 2:00 second nap. ramona usually will take hers. this is becoming just some quiet time for max as he doesn’t always fall asleep but will babble happily in his crib. i do, i don’t know what i do. write blog posts like i’m doing now. check google reader (again!). wash dishes. sit on my arse.
- 3:45 they’re usually both up by now and it’s time for max to be picked up! again, we’re playing in the living room. it is low-key, for reals. i know, you can barely contain your excitement for my mondays.
i should point out this monday looked absolutely nothing like what you see above. max still has not slept one wink (it’s 3:00) and ramona was a little grouch butt who only slept for one hour for her first nap and still, like her mother, has not gotten proper clothes on today. also, oddly enough, the schedule we seem to follow now seems weirdly similar and low-key to what was going on october when i first started looking after max and when the babes were much younger. except we go far fewer places as i am a slave to nap time (and you will be too once your child gets on some sort of cycle or schedule!).
what does your typical monday look like? any different than your other weekdays?
this week was a nice and full one. amanda and i were invited to GroundFloor Media’s Foodie Smartphone Academy sponsored by Qdoba at the Justice League of Street Food (thanks, GFM!). then from there we kept ramona up way past her bedtime for Novo’s 10th anniversary party. the rest of the week involved hangs with the goats, popsicle treats at the park, and a very messy house.
elsewhere there’s some stuff going on!
- not sure where all the dirty, loveable hipsters come from, but i love that they start each tuesday night at crema for their loops ride.
- have you seen the sneak peek of jp’s new place, the populist? we’re getting very excited!
- on sunday, you can find jp, ramona, and i at the denver county fair
- i was very inspired by the “problem” this wealthy man has.
that’s all. like i said, it was a pretty mellow week! have a good weekend.
as i’ve become more and more comfortable with being away from ramona and having other people besides jp watch her, i have come to realize something quite significant about her personality. little miss ramona bean — my social, charismatic, and engaging child — is an introvert.
i started to notice this when we began to put stuffed animals in her crib. there’s a giraffe and a little doll (i’ve named it beatrice, or bea bea) that sleep with her. when she goes to sleep, she puts her arm around bea bea and falls asleep. and when she wakes up, she sits there and babbles to the both of them. on the days where i get her immediately upon waking up from her nap, i have a grumpy monster on my hands. when i give her time to sit there quietly with the dolls and talk with them and giggle, i find she is much happier and rested after she has had that alone time (not just the sleeping time).
so, from this first observation, i learned to let her be until she called for me after a nap. and then another thing started happening: as i mentioned before, we’ve been leaving her with other people for periods of time at least once a week. being away from her for more than two hours, and not just after bedtime, is relatively new to us. it became apparent that when she was dropped off or we picked her up or got home from being away this girl 1) cuddles like never before. she just sits quietly in my lap and soaks in “home base.” and 2) shows signs of desperately needing a nap (even if she just may have had one while we weren’t there). so i put her down in her crib and she sits there and talks with her dolls for a good half hour. this is her requested alone time. and then, when she’s had enough, she calls for me and is ready to interact again.
it’s precious, really. somehow, this one year old knows nothing of the annoying distinctions we (including myself!) try to label and project onto people to try and figure them out (introvert/extrovert. personality types, etc) but she does know that she needs alone time. and all i can do is make sure i’m reading her cues and allowing her the space and volume and interaction levels she needs (or doesn’t!).
this is not bea bea. this is the doll my mother made for ramona for her first birthday. ramona’s very first doll made just for her. it hasn’t been named yet and it’s about as tall as ramona so it’s pretty wonderful to see her try and lug it around. she’ll grow into it. 😉
what have you learned recently about your little one?
this was a busy week for the powerdriver clan. here’s what we were up to…
- we spent last weekend in breckenridge at the gondola house. we went on a bike ride, drank tasty beer, got caught in the rain, and lounged about watching the olympics. wow. did we need this mini-vacation.
- met melanie and baby beck at the denver zoo. there were spurts of great conversation in between wrangling three babies.
- ran into a long lost (she was at my kindergarten bday party, for crying out loud) friend from my hometown at linger. got to know, rachel, the mastermind behind glotalot.
- surprise tickets (fifth freaking row!) to counting crows at red rocks. i danced my ass off like a crazy lady.
Elsewhere
- hey! party collective has their website up and running. check them out!
- i pretty much love you too, denver.
- i may be late on this train but cookie monster always cracks me up
- look at this cute gal pal weekend. this puts palm springs even higher on my places-to-visit list.
- i’m going to remember this list for when my half a dozen pregnant friends give birth in the upcoming months.
- that some people still fight against equal rights boggles my mind. this letter here pretty much sums up the ridiculousness of it all.
welcome
