A Lot of Misc. Plus Photographing a Birth and Empanadas.

Today in under ten minutes (I know this — because it all occurred between my having set a ten-minute timer on something baking in the oven and that timer having gone off):

*Summer flipped off the kitchen counter. (Literally flipped. I am still trying to understand how it was possible! One minute she was perched up there, and the next? Grabbing nearby Mette’s arm [in a desperate attempt to save herself] as her feet went OVER her head in a fall that was also . . . a feat of impossible acrobatics.)

*Mette spilled a full cup of milk in such a way that it poured into all nearby drawers and cupboards (not when her arm was being grabbed by Summer, as one might assume, just . . . independently, with no apparent explanation, a few minutes afterwards).

*Hans attempted to pull a toy free from a stack of wooden puzzles and magnetix . . . thereby spilling wooden puzzles and magnetix all over the floor of the pantry (doesn’t everyone keep toys in their pantry?).

*And, I accidentally shattered one of the Libbey silver leaf glasses that Mike recently gifted me (the ones that they quit making 40 years ago).

In other news: our baby’s kicks and movements are now VISIBLE! Visible I say! As in you can often see entire portions of my stomach leaping and jutting outward. I don’t know that any of my babies have ever kicked with such determination to be noticed! When I pointed this out during a rather shocking display the other evening, Daisy responded simply with, “That’s kind of creepy.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “It’s just your sibling." (Pause.) "Inside of me.”

Nothing creepy about that.

Moving right along. We are only a week or so into February, but so far it’s threatening to be a much colder month than January ever was, and snow is in the forecast as far as anyone has seen fit to predict. For decades I have faithfully trusted Punxsutawney Phil but this year? I find myself questioning the usually-dependable groundhog.

And here is something: I went to parent teacher conferences for the elementary school kids yesterday and quickly realized that having a baby near the end of the school year (at this phase in our family’s life) . . . was the worst possible time I could ever have chosen to have a baby! 

Beginning a few weeks before baby is due and extending two-plus months afterwards, there is a non-stop stream of activities — a 6th grade graduation and the big 50s-themed 6th grade dance, a million end-of-year field trips requiring early arrival times and planning, choir performances, the 4th grade Utah History program, 6th grade “maturation” for crying out loud!, track meets, and Goldie’s Wizard of Oz play, a graduating senior (!!!), and a million other celebratory end-of-year events. 

Have you all read about babymooning? It’s a beautiful idea all attached to the concept of bonding with your newborn and basking in, well, their fleeting newness -- of spending at least six weeks somewhat shut off from the world and life’s usual frantic pace and continuous demands; of freeing yourself from obligations and major household duties and letting yourself and your newborn simply cuddle and sleep and eat with no pressures or expectations while you both accustom yourselves to the world. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t very well take into account the possibility of that baby having nine siblings who need a mother and whose lives can’t necessarily go on hold for six weeks . . . or even one; and I haven’t even the slightest idea how on earth I’ll manage all this big end-of-year stuff with a newborn and multiple toddlers in tow; so, . . . I’m doing the only reasonable thing I possibly can do and . . . not thinking about it.

But! Since beginning this post, and the several interruptions that have occurred (meaning, technically, Summer flipped off the counter three days ago . . . and Mette has since fallen, inexplicably, from a bar stool, twice), two extra interesting things have occurred. And, while I don’t mean to suggest they match in significance, they did occur at precisely the same time. So here they both are:

1. My niece asked me to photograph the birth of her third child! It was all a very loose, low pressure arrangement. We both knew it simply might not work what with combining the unpredictable timing of labor and birth with my having enough small children around as to make leaving (without plenty of time to plan) impossible. And, in the end, even with my excellent husband coming home early from work (because he knew how excited [and scared] I was to do this), and even with her labor lasting for most of the day, things suddenly went fast enough that I arrived in her hospital room as baby was being born.

I’d been picturing this calm, leisurely space of time to get camera settings ready, capture moments of her labor and waiting, and to determine some perfect spot and angle for photographing the exact moment of birth. As it was, I was frantically and fumblingly pulling out my camera — trying to determine how to handle hospital lighting, trying not to get in the way of grandma, husband and medical staff, and trying to find anywhere to stand at all in what was a very small delivery room full of nurses (they were worried because baby’s heart rate had dropped significantly) as baby was being pushed right into this world. All of which meant I never created the magical image of birth that I had imagined at all!

But! It was still such an amazing thing to be a part of! I have never seen a birth . . . without being the one doing the birthing. And I love this niece of mine so much that being there for her baby’s delivery felt extra meaningful. Also, as our own baby's birth will be in six-ish weeks, it was a gender reveal — which made the moment of birth extra exciting (a boy!). Trying to adjust settings to bright light from the warmer (where they were immediately checking on baby) and back towards my niece, trying to photograph her while maintaining her privacy, and trying not to bump machines and annoy nurses was much more complicated (and rushed) than I’d expected! But it was also thrilling and exciting! It was a birth! An entire new human! And I got to be freezing his first few minutes of life in photos! 

Here is what I wrote about it on Instagram:

Today my niece let me do something I have always wanted to do — be at a birth (that was not for one of my own 😄) taking pictures. There was this tiny moment after, amidst all the celebrating and congratulating, when I looked over and realized my niece’s entire body was shaking. She dismissed it as nothing at all, and her own mother quickly and gently wrapped her in a warm blanket. But, afterwards, that moment kept coming to me and making me feel emotional. Somehow it seemed to symbolize the entirety of the physical, mental and then . . . lifelong sacrifice involved in accepting an entire new soul into your world. And I felt certain that I had only seen the tiniest sliver of the powerfully huge thing Tessa Burningham had just done in bringing this boy here. ❤️

(Looking at these pictures, I feel a little cheated that I can't somehow split myself in two during my upcoming labor and delivery! Obviously I'll be quite intimately involved with the most important part . . . birthing my child. But oh I wish I could follow him or her around with my camera simultaneously! It's not even just the pictures themselves. Mike will capture some. And I could even ask my sister to come. But the process of following baby and parents -- and seeing those fast rushing minutes as a series of individual, frozen moments was such a unique thing that I'd like to be able to experience it with my own!) 

2. You got caught up in that birth business and forgot there were two last things I told you I was going to mention, didn’t you?

Well.

As this birth business was occurring, something else was happening back home. 

Mike was making empanadas! 

They ate them all the time on his mission in Paraguay, but in his twenty-plus years since completing that mission, I don’t think Mike has ever made them. And, while we are at times bakers, seldom if ever in our family are we chefs. Mike doesn’t even typically like interesting food! But lo and behold, during my absence, he’d visited a specialty food market, fried up ground beef, cut up garlic, added cumin, set Goldie to cutting onions and boiling and then chopping up eggs, etc., and he’d fried all of this STUFF expertly in flour shells. I could hardly believe it. 

I was thinking the other day how, as in love as I was with Mike when I married him, I couldn't have known then how much stronger that love would become simply because there were a million things ahead to experience with him that would cause that love to grow. 

And I'm not above admitting that him making empanadas . . . might have been one of those things.