Melissa Camara Wilkins

First breath

May 24, 2013

Here is the truth: I have never once been tempted to “go running.” I have yet to sign up for a spin class, ever in my entire life. And the last time I played sports, I was being being compelled by a gym teacher with detention slips and a very loud whistle. I seem to lack the gene—or maybe just the discipline—for physical adventure.

But then there is birth.

Giving birth is the most corporeal and also the most metaphorically charged event I’ve ever experienced. There is blood, there is water, and then: new life.

You have to give yourself over to the timing of your body, or your baby, or your God, surrendering yourself to the earthly and the ethereal. It’s not out of control—there is a plan and a purpose to the process—but it’s out of your control, and you can’t know exactly what will happen, or when.

You can choose guides who are skilled and compassionate, but even so, they can’t lead you. This is the journey to your own family. This is the path to your child, and no one has ever walked it before.

My labor with Evelyn was slow, gradual, gentle. I breathed or hummed through contractions until late in the night.

Do you want to rest? My midwives asked. Do you want to try to sleep awhile? But I wasn’t tired yet.

My husband held my hands while I shivered and trembled through a lull between contractions. I’m just going to shake the baby out, I joked, but that baby waited, keeping her own time.

The midwives rubbed my feet, held hot gingered cloths to my skin, shimmied a rebozo across my lower back as the minutes swam past, later and later, until the world grew a little fuzzy around the edges, softening. Still the baby waited.

Maybe I had called everyone at the wrong time, or on the wrong day, or to the wrong event. Maybe I was dreaming the whole thing. Two a.m. disappeared, then three a.m. with it.

The last hour, I was finally tired, I would have slept. Instead, Evelyn pressed into the world: Hello, good morning, I am not a dream, I am here. I caught her myself.

She wore her umbilical cord wrapped around her arm like a shawl, and she seemed surprised to find we had waited up for her. We waited. We kept vigil for you, child, we were here as the sun rose to find this womb empty.

It is a time of transformation, or it can be, whether you are moving from self to parent, or from mother to mother of another.

That baby looks up at you as if to say: Who will you be, now that you are my mama?

Yes, who.

Who?

Ten toddler play ideas

May 20, 2013

Our Eli has been a little bit… at loose ends, of late. It’s not that he’s bored, exactly, it’s just that this is what happens when you are two and you get a brand-new sister and your mama then becomes far less entertaining than usual because her arms are full of baby. We’ve done this before.

I understand that it will pass, but in the meantime, we need Things To Do. Things that do not involve climbing on mama or yelling about how we are not climbing on mama or emptying out every kleenex box we own. For example.

I’m thinking that one new activity per morning and one per afternoon should get us through the week. Here’s what I have planned:

- Make sensory “dirt” out of baking soda, cocoa, and water.

- Freeze Lego figures (or other figures?) in ice cube trays, then play with them as the ice melts.

- Make no-cook, no-salt play-dough.

- Take indoor toys outside. (Maybe the play kitchen?)

- Make a rainbow salt tray. (Or a rice tray, or even a sugar tray, though that might lead to disaster…)

- Float ice boats in the bathtub.

- Play bean bag games. Except we don’t have any bean bags. So… um… make bean bags, THEN play bean bag games.

- Make + eat popsicles.

- Make a garden-themed sensory tub, with dried black beans for dirt. (Except we will use veggies from the play kitchen. I am not up for crafting cardboard veggies.)

- Hang a canopy in the backyard for outside play.

And then there’s all the usual stuff (duplos, trains, outside play, blocks, taking a walk, reading a book or ten, putting a colander on your head and rocketing to the moon). We can still do all that, in between our other creative endeavors.

Together, that ought to result in a cheerfully busy, absolutely positively un-cranky two-year-old all week long. Right?

Well. It could happen, anyway.

I’ve started a board on Pinterest for toddler play ideas, too. Feel free to join me over there.

Fabric flower garland

May 15, 2013

Today seems like a good day for another peek at a crafty little project. (That is code for: I may be awake, but I only slept four hours last night and I cannot figure out how to turn on the part of my brain that makes words.)

This garland is hanging over the nature table right now. The flowers are casual and imperfect, which feels like springtime.

And like all the time.

I started with strips of fabric, 18” by 1.5”. I accordion folded the strips—think like paper dolls—then cut petals on one end, looped thread through the other end, and pulled tight to make the flower’s center.

(For complete and logical instructions, see this pinned tutorial. My flowers are just smaller, about 3” across.)

This whole garland is just seven scrappy flowers, strung together on a length of pearl cotton. It’s one afternoon’s worth of trimming and stitching. (Though, okay, it took me a week because I have special training in short attention span-ness and therefore kept forgetting to work on it.)

Which brings us to this next point: most projects at our house are bite-sized, because otherwise they would never get finished. And I like to finish things. I like to experiment, too, and to learn new skills, etcetera, etcetera. Finishing isn’t the only thing.

But it sure is a nice thing, when it happens.

For more on craft supplies, see the Craft Supply Guide.

For more craft ideas, follow me on Pinterest.

If you have questions, shoot me a comment on Facebook or Twitter.