Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘kids’

Sep 9

5 Comments

Cathy: Pleasant surprises

 

As I write this, it is Sunday evening. This morning I made another rare go of getting myself, one son and the baby off to church. This will not be a religious blog, I swear. One reason it is tough for me to attend church regularly is my son S’s autism. He’s high-functioning, most likely Asperger’s, but as is often the case, his diagnosis is a general one, and the fight for a specific one is exhausting and expensive. His behavior in public places can be very disruptive, especially when the expectation of quiet and stillness reigns, such as church. So, this morning, I went, I warned, and I will attempt to take him next week. If you didn’t notice, my tone is very dry here, as it often is when discussing S, who brings more spontaneous joy, and more challenges, headaches and avoidance of many social situations than any kid I’ve ever known, and I’ve known a lot more than most people. We have a small circle of friends, it is very small, and mostly where we used to live. If he is not directly responsible for this, he is indirectly, as challenges with him are probably my most visited topic of conversation. I love him dearly. It’s a tough kind of love.

So I came home, and he was still sitting in front of the TV, Honey was bemoaning that he wouldn’t listen when asked to turn it off, S and K almost immediately got into a back and forth, which escalates his voice in pitch and volume to a decimal level unlike any other human utterance. Oh boy. I’m not feeling great about him today. There have been many challenges all week with the transition back to school, and I hate to say it, but I’m kind of ‘over it’ already. K’s friend came over, and I basically forced them to include S, just so I wouldn’t hear another screech and have to deal with it. I will add now, I am incredibly sleep deprived from exclusively nursing Baby C until the six month mark (three weeks from now), when I will jump for joy when she eats her first cereal, because it won’t be me.

The guys wandered out of K’s room a while later quite noisily, and I’d just nursed Baby C to nap. I kicked them out to fresh air. K and friend exited the front door, S the back, left to wander the backyard on his own. I began to dread what would happen next, assuming he would come back in whining that K and friend wouldn’t let him play with them. Instead, he came in announcing I needed to get rid of the caterpillars all over my garden. I was only half-listening, which, I hate to say is often the case because he says everything with such urgency. So he repeated it several times until his message got through and he had my full attention. “They look like monarch caterpillars! I’m throwing dirt on them so they’ll go away. They have these orange things they stick out when I throw it at them.”

“Please leave the caterpillars alone. They aren’t hurting anything, you don’t need to torment them with dirt.”

“But MO-om, they’re eating up your garden! Get some pesticide!”

“Did you say monarchs?! Show me!”

He lead me out to the garden, and there they were: six monarch caterpillars all over my nearly leafless carrot stems.

Now, you may be asking what all this has to do with creativity. One: my son inspired me out of my funk and to love him a little more once again. And two: It’s monarch chrysalis season! Is there anything more inspiring than that?

I really hope they stay to build, transform and emerge with their wet wings flapping right there on my naked little carrot stems. I am so happy to sacrifice those carrots, even if I’ve worked very hard on my little vegetable garden, which has been largely decimated by rabbits through the hole in the fence, squash bug invasions, and other critters this year. If they do stay, I will gladly share more pictures with, hopefully, some spinning, some butterfly brewing stillness, some wet wings flapping and flying away dry, royal, orange and black. I wonder if the storm that turned out to be not much of a storm blew them in?

Sep 4

20 Comments

Cathy: School days, school days, dear old….

Woe is me...first day of fourth grade

Woe is me...first day of fourth grade

I’m going to sound hypocritical here, but I’m humming the old tune as I practically push my boys out the door on their first day of school. I know I bemoaned their being out of the house when they were away at their father’s this summer, but this is different. They will be home by 2:45 and 3:45, respectively. So, I get to hum a little old fashioned tune if I want to.

September through October has always been my favorite time of year. It was even better over a lifetime in New England, because the weather matched the sense of the year for me. The breeze’s coolness crisped the air. It may seem backwards as the leaves are falling — a sense of death and inward withdrawal should be the prevailing sentiment; but for me, this time of year always represented a chance to start anew and the promise of rebirth. This is the beginning of Mother Nature’s gestation. This time last year was when I retreated to bedrest in my gestation of Baby C, who was born this past spring. I have two April babies out of three and it was those two pregnancies that put me to bed for the winter, for similar complications. So I feel a special kinship with Mother Nature as she folds into herself for her cycle of creation.

This is my golden time for creative endeavors. Almost every new project has come at this time of year. My ideas start hopping, and popping like my mother’s old percolator on the counter, and my rice krispies when it was my first day of fourth grade. Now it is my son S’s first day of fourth grade. But his sense is more of a woe is me. Here’s the picture to prove it. But I believe deep down he loves school as much as I did and denied it, as much as his eighth-grade brother K does the same. I know with his social difficulties because of his autism, that a school day is much more difficult for him than for most. The early days are the hardest because of the transition. However, he was outside to meet the bus twenty minutes before it was due to arrive. That says something, don’t you think?

Anyway, I am taking the precious time they are in school and while Baby C naps, to really commit to knocking out this manuscript. I started this project in the fall of 2004, it’s about time. I’ve yet to let it go as so many others, so I really should finish what I started. This one feels like a baby, too. So it’s time I start growing and feeding it well: give it a daily dose of work and play. It’s time for me to get back to the excitement of the first day of school, start fresh while the ideas are hopping. Since I’m in Southeastern Virginia now, I’ll metaphorically kick up a pile of leaves, since I won’t see real ones until a bit closer to Thanksgiving. Wish me luck!

Aug 28

14 Comments

Cathy: More on multi-tasking moms

Baby C has a new trick. When she is nursing herself to sleep as I type, she now kicks my one typing hand over to where she can hang onto it with a foot and a hand. Now I can’t type at all. But is that really such a bad thing? After all, I should be using this precious time to bond with my little infant, right? But I really want to answer that email/add to the manuscript/compose a blog. So maybe she’ll grow up with an unnatural attachment to PCs. Apparently I have developed one, is that so bad?

Today (Tuesday as I write this to be posted later) is my son S’s tenth birthday. I wrapped his presents, while considering that I am missing half the cake ingredients, our bank accounts are drained from last week’s travels—gas alone was unmentionable—and honey gets paid tomorrow. I had K go out to the van to get the play yard (really, baby holding pen, let’s call a spade a spade). However, two sides refuse to go rigid for us. We tried everything—quite comically. So I put her in it anyway, and just wrapped away, on the floor right next to the pending crisis of collapse, while on the phone with a possible new client; and frantically waving S around to the front door so he can’t see what I’m wrapping by coming in through the slider in the office. Why am I trying so hard to hide these from him now, when he already found them? Because I can, I must. Maybe he didn’t see everything.

My mother-in-law just came back from her morning exercise. She has agreed to go to store for confectioner’s sugar and butter. Phew, one thing down. I don’t have to go to the grocery store and risk overdrawing my humble account. There will be chocolate frosting for the cake. And butter in the cake itself. Now, I just have to make both; switch the laundry from baby C’s pee accident on my bed this a.m., where she thoroughly soaked through every layer from comforter to the mattress pad; make that bed after two rounds each for two loads in the dryer because the sheets and comforter and mattress pad always twist up in knots around themselves and don’t dry on the first round. And there are still the two baskets of yesterday’s clothes unfolded, wrinkling for first week of school.

In the meantime, I’m still thinking about what I’m going to charge this woman for a curriculum consultation for her home-schooled child with special needs; trying to consider lunch and dinner options from what’s in pantry without over–pasta-ing the day, and it’s already 11:49; and I’m pinned nursing again, typing and fending off kicks, while also staring at the box of baby hand-me-downs taking up precious space waiting to be wrapped and sent off to friends expecting a girl any minute now, several states away. K has disappeared behind his locked bedroom door for the fourteenth time today already, completely sealing himself off with his MP3, so I can’t holler up to ask him for help again. S is wandering the house, humming and wanting a little attention and something to do. He wants to ‘sacrifice popcorn’ to the dog, because it’s fun to line up popped kernels on the couch and watch her lick up the row one by one with her long, fast, curly tongue.

I won’t even mention that box of papers that still need to be organized. Oops, too late! Now, baby C is asleep on me, I pray I can put her down without her waking up in the collapsing pen, so I can get started on that cake. Now what’s all that nonsense about scheduling and prioritizing, again?

Aug 21

5 Comments

Cathy: The boys are back in town

My two sons, K and S have been away at their father’s for a solid month. This is the longest I’ve been away from them since, to be honest, FOREVER. I spent most of that time gardening, enjoying baby C and long relaxed walks with the dog, reading or writing by the lake, and sitting in front of my pc writing in my manuscript and ok, I admit it, surfing the web. Without having to constantly break up spats or redirect from tv, videos, video games, I was free to be lazy. I was good at it, too. If I absolutely didn’t have to get out of my chair, I didn’t. If the only interruptions I had were baby interruptions, that’s less than a third of the interruptions I usually have. It sure was quiet around here, too. Even my mother-in-law began to think it was too quiet. My boys make a lot of noise, especially S. An old friend of mine referred to him a number of years ago as ‘the wall of noise’ and she promptly stopped hanging out with us. I guess she didn’t want her kids to learn any new tricks.

Anyway. I missed them terribly, and I got used to the quiet. I wrote, and I enjoyed the freedom to do so. I almost felt like the post-collegiate promise of a writer I felt, well, post-collegiately.

The Coley Clan

The Coley Clan

We spent this weekend visiting my family in Connecticut, showing off the baby, getting grandparents and uncles and cousins time in with the boys, and we all had a great time once the boys were back in my domain. Here’s the whole Coley Clan. My parents, my two brothers and their gangs, and us.

Now we’re home. The house is turned upside down from paint job. All the furniture is in the garage, all the gewgaws, too. The walls and ceiling are beautiful, but boy do we have a lot of work. It’s like moving in all over again. Just two years ago, we moved twice. Once, into the area, then three months later, we moved into this house, and moved my mother-in-law into the house, too. Moving furniture and setting everything up again is not my idea of fun. Not this week, after Friday and Monday were spent, for about 12 hours average each, in the van.

Now we’re home, and the boys were so good while we stayed at my brother’s house. One of the first things that happened here was The Scream From Upstairs. The one that happens several times a day when K won’t let S into his room for some brother time or a lego raid. The one where S is just going to die if K won’t let him in. The one which if I’m being a good mom, I haul my butt out of my chair and go play field manager, break it up, find out how we can best go from here, resolve the conflict and redirect. The one which if I’m being a bad mom, or I’m nursing, I holler up the stairs for quiet, and when they come down, each pleading their case before me re: who started it, whose fault it is, etc, and I say, I don’t care, get away from me, if you can’t work it out, go to your rooms. And they stomp away whining a chorus of ‘it’s not fair’.

Then this afternoon, it took us awhile but we got out the door and went out to the neighborhood pool. I didn’t bring baby C there the whole time they were gone. She loves the water. The boys do, too. After all, they all take after their mother. Boy did we have fun, and it was relaxing. I didn’t write. Until now. Thank goodness baby C slept after the pool. By the way, S came over about six times to interrupt while I wrote this. K did so twice. Or was it three times? I’m so glad they’re home.

Aug 19

6 Comments

Kate: De-funking

[Editor’s note: When I read the post below at Kate’s blog yesterday, I knew it belonged here too. Kate graciously agreed to cross-post at Creative Construction, and she’s going to post here next week to update us on her new writing routine. Brava, Kate! And if you haven’t met Kate yet, it’s never too late for Breakfast.]

I’ve been in such a funk this summer, which is unlike me because I love summer. I love the green and the heat (within reason) and the long days. But the days have been so very long with the two girls, and I’m always scrambling to squeeze in one more thing. I have been taking Zoë with me to work for a couple of months now, and frankly, it doesn’t work. She usually falls asleep in the car on the way there, but she wakes up after about ½ hour, and then I nurse her and put her on the floor next to my desk or hold her as I type. I share the office, which is slightly larger than a broom closet, with two other people, and while they are gracious about my crying and fussy baby, I know that they must want to wring my neck or Zoë’s neck or both of our necks. So, after another ½ hour, I pack up my things and the baby and head home. Zoë sometimes falls asleep again on the way home, only to wake up as I pull up in front of our house. By the time I nurse her again and bounce her and get her ready to fall asleep for real (whatever that means), it’s time to go pick up Stella from whatever camp I’ve enrolled her in for the week. Sometimes Zoë falls asleep for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, during which I work a little and play with Stella. Later, we have dinner, Stella showers (she has declared herself too old for baths) and we read books before bed. All of these things are accompanied by Zoë’s fussing and crying and Stella’s late-afternoon whining. (Sometimes Zoë cries so much while I’m reading to Stella that I just put her in her crib in the other room and let her wail as we make our way through the three books of the night.) When I finally get them both to sleep (about 8:30), I pour myself a glass of wine and sit on the porch and stare out at the street, semi-comatose. This is when D usually gets home. We talk for a bit and often watch an episode of The Wire, which is fabulous and heartbreaking. Then I go to bed, wake up three times to nurse Zoë, then begin the day all over again.

Things will be easier in a couple of weeks because D won’t have to coach in the evenings anymore, so he’ll be home to help with dinner and kids and bedtime. Also, I’ll be done with my job in two weeks, and that will be a relief.

But the thing I can do in order to de-funk myself is to carve out serious writing time, and I’m determined to do this. D has agreed to go into work a little late so that I can write everyday from 7-9 a.m. It’s the only way I will make progress on the essay I’ve begun. I also need to dive back into my book because I finally figured out what it is really about. If I were one of my students, I would have pressured myself into this discovery about, um, a year ago, when I finished the damn thing. In workshops I always ask them to identify for the author what the piece is really about. But I failed to heed my own advice, failed to answer my own questions. (I hate when I do this.)

But this morning while I was changing Zoë’s diaper (after waking many nights feeling despondent about my “this is no market for this” book), I realized that the book is really about learning to live with uncertainty. Having a preemie is the situation, of course, but the real story is about uncertainty, control, and having faith that I will be able to handle the unexpected. (If you haven’t read Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story, you should—she’s the one who makes the distinction between a memoir’s situation and its real story.) Knowing what the book is about won’t change the perception of my book as a preemie book, of course, but it will make the book better, and this makes me feel hopeful again.

The other thing that makes me feel hopeful is that D will be back tonight (he’s been gone all weekend), and tomorrow I’ll start my morning writing. It will help snap me out of my funk. I’m sure of that.

Jul 7

3 Comments

Kelly: Happy to be here!

Hello everyone! First off, let me say thanks to Miranda for inviting me to be a part of this wonderful blog. I’ve read through many entries and surfed your blogs, and this is truly an amazing, inspiring, delightful, creative group of women. So who am I? I’m a mom foremost, yet that’s a title I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to say. I guess I knew I always wanted to be a mom, but when I met my DH (“darling” or “damn” husband, depending on the day 🙂 ), he told me fairly early on that his chances of giving me a child were pretty slim; of course, he waited until he already had me hooked to tell me that. I was 26 at the time, and that biological clock hadn’t really started ticking too quickly yet; we married three years later. And by the grace of God, eight years, several attempts at IVF and a miscarriage later, we welcomed our beautiful red-headed twin girls, Sarah and Olivia, in 2005.

As far as creativity, I welcome and attempt just about all kinds. With a bachelor’s degree in Communications and a master’s degree in English, I’ve held a variety of professional positions that have utilized my writing and public relations skills: assistant sports information director at Florida State University, account executive for a travel and tourism related public relations firm, and as an adjunct college English instructor; I’ve been teaching college English off and on for nearly 20 years now. For the past 14 years, I’ve served as the Director of Student Life and Leadership Development for a very large community college here in Florida, a position that really doesn’t utilize my writing skills much but does require a lot of creativity in time management, planning and marketing. My blog has been a way for me to exercise those writing bones a bit more. Art wise, my creative passions include artisan jewelry and handbag design, photography, and mixed media collage, something I just started dabbling in this year. My primary art “business” is my jewelry, which you can see here.

Lastly, I get quite a few comments on that silly avatar of mine [which you’ll find under comments], so I guess I’ll explain. My girls did my hair that day and wanted me to take a picture (you can see the large version and a couple others from that day here.) I’ve always felt that if you can’t laugh at yourself, you have no right to laugh at anyone else, and we try to laugh a lot around the little happy shack we call home. My family and I live by this saying, coined by my DH: “Life is far too important to be taken too seriously.” I look forward to sharing my life with you all while I learn more about each of you!

Jul 7

3 Comments

In defense of parenthood

childhood

Over the weekend, Australian newspaper The Age published a strong and concise personal essay by Damon Young on how parenthood can actually enhance creativity, rather than serve a fatal blow:

Children are valuable, not simply for their own sake (even if this is the most important reason), but for their contribution to art. Parenthood affords insights and skills for the creative life – it’s not a distraction, but an inspiration and education.

For example, as the parent of a verbose, energetic little toddler, I’m more productive than when I was single. The reason for this is simple: I’ve learned to work with less. Dealing for months on end with sporadic working hours and flagging energy, I became accustomed to opportunistic work: getting pen to paper, whenever or wherever I had the opportunity. He’s asleep in a cafe? Great, time to finish off that chapter! He’s absorbed in Lego? Brilliant, I can catch up on important emails! Put simply, parenthood has disciplined me….Parenthood is also a font of extraordinary, lingering memories. In watching my son mature, I’m constantly faced with my own childhood, and the recollections of my parents. This is an incredible resource for a writer; a continuing, shifting pageant of impression and emotion. This can be confronting, no doubt – but it’s an extraordinary creative cache.

It’s a nice confidence booster. Read the full piece here.

(That’s a photo of mine. I’m a complete amateur, but I find that digital photography is a rewarding way to blend motherhood and creativity. For more on how a pro does just that, read Bec Thomas’s interview below. And many thanks to my dear friend Toni Small, who visited recently and gave me a long-anticipated mini workshop on photographic prinicples and training the eye.)

Jun 26

5 Comments

Cathy: Mothering & creativity put to test

After dropping 9.75-year-old S off at taekwondo camp, I got 13-year-old K into a salon to get the cockeyed layers fixed in his long hair. Warning to other moms: if your son wants long hair, stop taking him to the barber shop, take him to the salon at a few more dollars. Barbers don’t know how to deal with long hair. He’s still pretty, even after haircut. 😉 That’s what I was trying to fix. You know how baby boomers’ parents complained their hippie boys looked like girls? Well, mine really does. Mind you, it took 2 weeks to convince him, after I blurted out at last barber visit, “either grow it for Locks of Love over the summer or chop it off now.” Evidently, that was not my best parenting moment. Thank goodness, baby C slept through this morning’s ordeal after the talk down. I swear K gets suicidal over a haircut. Anyway, mission accomplished, his hair is more skater than girlie now.

I should have eaten more breakfast: by the time we got home, I had a blood sugar crash and nearly passed out. Had the shakes while heating up frozen burritos for a protein boost lunch. Earlier, I took K out to Starbucks (how I wish there were non chain cafes here). We had some good conversation, finally, over coffeecake. As a breakfast, not great, but I really need to make special separate time with him from S on a more regular basis. We had a very interesting discussion about OPEC, supply and demand vs spec issues; and world economies, particularly the rise of a middle class in India and China and how that’s affecting the oil prices, and the fact that the Middle East’s oil supply won’t last forever, as well as oil drilling’s destruction of the Delta in Gulf of Mexico as a contribution to Katrina damages, etc. He’s really a neat guy. If he weren’t so shy about public speaking, I can totally see him run for president. He sure has strong opinions about the one that “ruined his childhood.”

I pass along evidence that they don’t stay little forever. Sigh. Oh wait, thank goodness!

So, the creativity came to play in the above: 1. finding the words and approach to talk him into neatening the mane with scissors. 2. discussion of world economics with intelligent and concerned young citizen on less than 3 hours of consecutive sleep from nursing baby C last night.

Oh, and 3. the inspiration to find the words again, to write down everything that happened for this blog. Hey, it may not be great literature, but it’s a start, and keeps me dipping into the writing well. Besides, finding the right or best words is my business, whether writing them or speaking them. It is especially important, as a parent, to find them, since each kid we have has their own best mode of communication, and we have to be available to their way, not always ours alone. K has always been like speaking with another adult, even when he was 2. With his brother S, I have to be very particular about how I say what needs to be conveyed, and with their sister, baby C, there’s a whole lot of pattycake going on.

Whether I am conscious of it happening or not at the time, I can see how my creative side is more active than I may initially have been aware.

Jun 17

3 Comments

Miranda: Creativity and a bit of green grass

Yesterday was one of those days.

My hair looked such a disaster that “bad hair day” didn’t quite cover it. “Finger in electrical socket” would have been a more accurate description. The rest of me wasn’t going to win any beauty prizes either, but I checked my ego and made it to the grocery store with my 3-year-old and 5-week old boys. While I was tanking up the little one in the parking lot, the mother of one of my daughter’s friends pulled in to the spot next to us in her black BMW. Perfectly coifed, dressed, and made up, I hoped feverently that she wouldn’t notice me. But she did, sticking her perfectly highlighted head into the passenger side window to say hello. I hope I only imagined the pity in her eyes.

Despite having nursed, the baby was unhappy while we shopped. I had to perch the infant car seat across the shopping cart so that the baby could suck on my pinky knuckle while I pulled the boys through the store at top speed. Unfortunately, the large “transition” capris I was wearing were too loose around the waist and kept falling down. I’m sure I exposed more post-partum midriff chub than anyone in the store had ever hoped to see.

Then, naturally, we got the SLOWEST cashier available—she was busy talking to another cashier and chewing her gum while I frantically threw my items onto the belt, rocking the car seat with one foot. The baby was getting frenetic, as was I. The cashier turned to me. “Aw,” she said, slowly zapping each of my 13 Balance Bars one by one, “How old is your baby?” “Well,” I wanted to say, “He’s five freaking weeks old, obviously in distress, and if you could speed it up JUST A LITTLE BIT I might be able to get out of here before I let down all over your scanner!”

We made it out to the car, loaded it up, and I fed the baby (again), even though we live .6 miles from the store. On the way home, the SUV behind us honked hard at me for no reason (he didn’t like the fact that I was turning left while using my signal?) which rattled me more than it should have. (Note to self: do not honk back and use the F word while three-year-old is in phase known as repeat-everything-Mommy-says-and-relate-story-to-Daddy-later.)

I pulled into my driveway to discover the well repair guys and their large truck; in my sleep-deprived haze I’d managed to forget the 10-12 window I’d scheduled to assess my broken sprinkler system. Luckily they had already assessed; unluckily I learned that the irrigation pump was broken but could be replaced. For $2,100.

When I started breathing again, I choked out an approval of the work order. Our house is on the market and trying to sell it with a broken irrigation system and a lot of dead grass probably wouldn’t be a plus. Not sure where the cash will come from, but that’s what visa cards are for.

I managed to get the perishables put away. While getting my three-year-old ready for his nap, I discovered that the liner bag inside the Diaper Dekor had run out and slipped down inside the bin, which meant that a week of very yucky Pull-Ups had piled up in a disgusting, stinky mess.

By the time I got things cleaned up, the baby was fussing to nurse again but I had to scoop him up and run downstairs to answer the door. It was our new real estate agent, dropping off our listing sheets. She had bad news. All of our septic records indicate that our system was installed for a four-bedroom house, not the five-bedroom house that we bought five years ago. We’re still doing research and exploring options, but the bottom line is that for now we have to market our house with one fewer bedrooms than we paid for.

While we discussed how this discrepancy hadn’t been caught by someone before, and I wondered about the economic wisdom of switching to this by-the-book-agent who had found a problem that our two previous agents had not, my fussy baby spat up over my shoulder and down the back of my shirt. The agent politely ignored the puddle of milk on the floor as she left.

What does all of this have to do with creativity? A lot. Under normal circumstances, a day like yesterday would have been enough to send me to my knees on the kitchen floor, crying while I nursed the baby on the cheap-but-decent-looking new tile we installed to help sell the house. I’m sleep deprived, hormonal, I work part-time from home, and I have five children. Who wouldn’t be crying? But I wasn’t feeling overwhelmed, or even close. Here’s why. Read more

Jun 13

6 Comments

Breakfast with Lisa

Welcome to the second installment of our new weekly series, “Breakfast,” where we get to know an inspiring, creative mother from the blogosphere, and be treated to a visual peek into her creative space. Meet Lisa Leonard, a self-taught jewelry designer, blogger, and mother of two boys, ages 4 and 5. Lisa’s customized jewelry is fresh, inspired, and hard to resist. Hand-stamped sterling? Love it. (Hey, if I order the “tiny squares” necklace I’ve been drooling over, can I write that off as some kind of blog-related business expense?)

CC: Please introduce yourself!Lisa Leonard
LL: I am Lisa, most of all wife and mommy, but also a sister, daughter, and friend. I love to create things that are unique and special, something that will touch your heart.

CC: How did you become a jewelry maker? What else do you enjoy creatively?
LL: I started my jewelry business after my first son was born. Over the last 5+ years it has changed in many ways. It has grown beyond my expectations, which has been so exciting and also a bit scary! My designs have also changed and evolved. I also love to take pictures, do crafts with my boys, and decorate.

CC: What inspired you to launch a blog?
LL: My sister started blogging and it seemed like such a great outlet for creativity and keeping in touch with friends. I have been surprised how many new friends I have made through blogging and what a connection it has been.

lisa_spaceCC: Where do you do your creative work?
LL: I work from home and it is certainly nothing fancy! I started the business so I could be close to my boys, so working from the kitchen table [click on photo for larger image] or kitchen counter make the most sense.

CC: What do you struggle with most?
LL: Balance is always a challenge. I thought working from home would be perfect, but then I starting feeling pulled between the boys and the mountains of work to be done. After a major meltdown I realized I needed help. At first I thought about hiring a sitter, but that meant less time with the boys. So I hired someone to help with the business. It was hard to let go, but it has been great for my sanity and for the business.lisa_leonard_necklace

CC: Where do you find inspiration?
LL: I feel like inspiration hits me all the time! It can come from other artists, such as painters, seamstresses, or poets. It often comes from nature…shells, sand, blue sky, or trees. Sometimes it comes from random things like the light through a window or two colors next to each other.

CC: What are your top 5 favorite blogs?
LL: I love: Tara Whitney, Sarah Markley, SouleMama, Flip Flops and Applesauce, and Bling.

CC: What is your greatest indulgence?
LL: Man, I love a good pedicure. I get a couple every month and it’s my guilty pleasure. I also love time with my girlfriends, watching movies, reading magazines, sitting in the sun, and a gooey chocolate chip cookie.

CC: If you were having coffee with a mother of young children who wanted desperately to fit more creativity into her life, what advice would you offer?
LL: Have fun with it! Start small and let it grow. Find something you love and do it a little every day. Always think of ways to make it more yours and more unique.

CC: Thanks, Lisa!

Jun 9

1 Comment

News Tribune: The art of being a mom

dancing_momThe News Tribune online profiles four Tacoma, WA-based mothers with arts careers (a dancer, a photographer, a pianist, and a director) to explore “what it’s like to juggle two demanding passions: your children and your art. For each, patience and creativity come into play.” Says one mother:

“Being in any of the arts is all-consuming. You’re always trying do things with the music, to think about it. When I became a mother, I didn’t have that luxury to think about it all the time. My daughter was my priority now, and music started to take a back seat – and what I learned was to be more spontaneous. You have to think faster, because you have a performance in a few days and you can’t practice hours and hours anymore! It taught me to have a little more fun, not to worry about every little thing.”

An interesting take on how women in various disciplines manage life and art. You can read the full piece here. (Photo by Janet Jensen, The News Tribune.)

Jun 6

5 Comments

Breakfast with Bethany

Introducing our new weekly series, “Breakfast,” where we get to know an inspiring, creative mother from the blogosphere, and be treated to a visual peek into her creative spaces. Our inaugural mom? Bethany Hiitola, “Mommy by day, writer by night.” Bon appétit! bethany_hiitola

CC: Who are you? Family inventory?
BH: Now if that isn’t a loaded question! The simple (and short) answer—a woman. Though, I know you were looking for something like the long answer. Which is inevitably more complicated. I’m still trying to find that “right” mix being a woman with life ambitions, a day job, a husband, children, pets, a house caretaker…all that stuff and balancing it somehow. Which, at this point, I think is a pipe dream sorta goal. Balance is a fictitious beast. Something always throws life in array. It’s how you react. So, I guess I am working on that. And being a good wife, mother, person. While writing a bestselling novel. I dream big, what can I say?

The hard stats are simple: I am a wife of one (34-year-old husband), mother to two (5-year-old son, 9-month-old daughter), caretaker to our pets (2 cats, 1 dog, and some rotating fish that live in a tank in my son’s room).

bedroom_deskCC: Tell us about your creative self.
BH: I’ll confess this now: I’m not a scrapbooker type person. Can’t get into it, really. Those stamping things, to make the greeting cards? Not me either. Painting? Ha! Really, my son can do better. Especially with the drawing part too. But that part of me that lived in a closet since high school? Ahhh, yes, the stuffing of the dream to write fiction into some locked dungeon. Long story.

I had to go to college and come out after 4 years with a piece of paper and some way to get gainful employment. Through all of that my “fun” writing (fiction) got lost because I was told I’d never make money doing it. Or at least that’s what my impressionable 17-year-old ears absorbed. So, I got a degree, found a gig writing, but it was for technical manuals and computer parts no one ever reads manuals for. Until I became a mom. And then suddenly this need to start doing something I enjoyed came to the forefront.

So, lunch breaks, 15 minutes of baby naptime (I worked from home until my son was 2), the doctor’s office waits—all spent writing. Sometimes in napkins, on scraps of paper, notebooks, my laptop…well, you get the idea. I write whenever and wherever I can. Big dream goal—novels.

But I am also an avid blogger, I love Twitter, I write book reviews, you can find me all over social networking spaces…and quite frankly, if I could find someone to pay me to do all that stuff (for their company or otherwise), I’d do it. Love it. Gets more of my business marketing brain spinning with new ideas, too. And that helps me all around in the whole “getting your name out there.”

CC: What are you working on?
BH: I write novels. I have two in the hopper right now. One I am going to let rest for a while (been through a few rewrites and the story is getting stale) and another new one that I’m just starting to think about. To the point that I’ll have to start writing all the time soon to get it outta my head.

POSTPARTUM EUPHORIA is the first free PDF/e-Book I offer on my website, and I’m working on another! It doesn’t quite have a title yet, but it’s about a mom that uses her magic again. After a really (really) long time, and the little hiccups that go along with it. It’s fun, short, and hopefully a bit of fun to offer regular readers of my blog (and bring new readers to the site). Not to mention show off what I can do.

living_roomLIFE AS GRETA is a serial fiction column I write in conjunction with Hybrid Mom and it is totally fun. Sorta like a choose your own adventure thing–and I add to it weekly/biweekly and readers get to offer opinions about where the story is going. Nothing like writing 500 words a week under pressure! I’ve loved the idea of serial fiction for a long time, I’m just happy I finally found a place online willing to give it a shot!

CC: What inspired you to launch a blog?
BH: I jumped on the bandwagon way back when (dates are fuzzy). And then I dropped it. Then again. And same result. Do that about three times and then I finally stuck with it. About the same time I became serious about my writing again. Purchased my domain and figured, what better way to show the world what I can do—and that’s write. I’ve been at it ever since.

The blog worked a bunch better when I was focused—thus its name: Mommy Writer. I write about being a mom, my kids, my life, writing, reading, publishing, more about my family, and then about small things that interest me online. Mostly, I’d say I’m a mom blogger with a slant to reading and writing. That sums up me. So I’m okay with what it stands for.

Truthfully, it is my warm up writing for the day. Or wind down, depending on how my day went with the kids and job. But I use the blog as a space to exercise the writing muscle. If I don’t get to write in my book, but spent 15 minutes on a blog post, at least I wrote. Some authors would say that is counter-productive, that 15 minutes could have been spent on the novel! But for me…I need to write what is on my mind first, in order to focus on the book. Without blogs, I always journaled before jumping into my latest writing project.

I’d like to think my audience is other mothers or dads, other writers, women in general. But it’s so hard to tell these days. Right now, one of the most searched terms that trigger one of my posts is: reasons not to go to work. So, who really knows who’s reading!

CC: How do you juggle a day job outside the home, two small children, a house, a marriage, AND creativity?
BH: My life is a constant balancing act. Even though I, too, get to work from home part time sometimes. Though lately… not so much. I write a ton at night. And that is when the ideas are flowing. Which, unfortunately, they aren’t right now. During these times, I stuff in a blog post during my day and hope tomorrow I have more to write about.

My husband is supportive. But mostly, if my writing doesn’t interrupt family too much. And that’s because my day job tends to bleed into home life often enough. Don’t get me wrong, someday I hope to write more than my day job. And when that happens, he’ll deal with it. (grin)

kitchenCC: Where do you do your creative work?
BH: Well here’s the low-down on where I write, but you’ll often find me writing WHEREVER I can (including in the car, doctor office, in line at the grocery store, or sending myself voicemails on my cell phone)! Yes, I am one of those…

At home, I am usually writing at my desk–though it never looks that clean. Especially since my daughter was born. I can hear her through the monitor best there. But pre-her birth…and whenever I have the house to myself (ha! Like THAT happens)…you can find me at the kitchen table or on the couch in the living room. As the weather gets ideal in the Midwest, I hope to spend a couple evenings on the back patio with a glass of wine (or three). Well, that is whenever we replace our umbrella that snapped in the last thunderstorm and dress up the table in all that Target Outdoor Life Goodness.

CC: What do your weekends look like?
BH: My weekends are like anyone else, I would imagine. At least if you are a mother. Breakfast making, family get-togethers, soccer games, sleeping late (well past 6 am, I like to hope), family time, etc. Sometimes, on rare occasions, I get to write for uninterrupted time (unlike during the week when I squeeze it in at night or around everyone else’s schedule) and my husband will take the kids. But that is typically if I am under some deadline or I am really in a story and I just “need” the time. But rare that is! My daughter is 9 months old now… I have yet to have one of these breaks (can you give my husband a nudge for me? wink, wink. Nod, nod).

CC: Where do you find inspiration?
BH: My over-extended life. My kids. Really… I write about what it is like to go nuts in love with your kids but have days where you wonder what the hell you did to get where you are NOW in life. Whether that is working a day job with kids, married, suburbia, motherhood, whatever…. it keeps me sane knowing that I am not alone. So I create characters that struggle with the same stuff I do.

CC: What do you struggle with most?
BH: Time. I manage it well (or so I am told). I mean, I guess I would have to in order to keep my family in line, hold a day job, keep a somewhat clean house (just don’t go look in my closet!), and still be able to blog regularly and write novels. But I still crave time. Specifically, uninterrupted time that isn’t at 2 am and can afford me time to write and still sleep a full 6 hours (or 8).

backyardCC: If you were having coffee with a mother of young children who wanted desperately to fit more creativity into her life, what advice would you offer?
BH: Oh boy. This is tough. I mean, as a mother, particularly of young children, there is never a moment of uninterrupted thoughts. They consume you for the first few years. Advice? Just do it. Don’t think about doing it, talk about doing it, or make plans you’ll never keep. Just do it. If it is at 2 am (like me), go ahead. No one is stopping you but yourself. Did that just sound like an infomercial for a self-help book? Wait! Maybe I have missed my calling!

Seriously, there’s no magic to any of this. Just get up and try it out. Don’t like it, try something else. And eventually, you’ll find the fun creative activity you love and you’ll do it. And love it. Even if it is scrapbooking. Or stamping. Or sewing. Or playing the piano. All of which I am terrible at (in fact never touched a piano in my life to actually play a thing)—but would love to actually DO if it were my thing. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I found the “thing” for me—a long time ago—just didn’t go for it til now.

CC: Thanks for talking with us, Bethany! We look forward to hearing more from you soon.

You can learn even more about Bethany by reading her Creative Construction blog posts!

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »