Collection of thoughts ...

It's Good Friday.  I've been a member of the Catholic church for a year tomorrow.  Last night we took the boys to Holy Thursday mass and they were champs, staying cool for an hour and a half.  It felt so good to be worshiping all together as a family.

Luke and I are about to pull off a dream: traveling together.  The boys are going to have bonding time with the Wagner grandparents while we fly to Indonesia, where Luke will do some Mozilla work and also explore with me.  I am thrilled, excited, amazed ... we leave in the wee hours of Wednesday morning!  I have a lot to say on this adventure, but it's just going to have to wait. 

I uploaded some daily pictures taken on my phone over the past few months.

Mark sleeps, confusing his hands and feet:

Karen and Daniel join us on our 5th trip to the Children's Discovery Museum:

We play in the Monterey Bay while visiting with Karen, Daniel, Ben, and Michelle:

Mark decides he liked his first trip to the ocean!

For the We Live in California file, the tree outside our apartment looks like this:

I'm really into free foot time for Mark and like mismatching socks:

We roll up our little boys (+ loved neighbor) like burritos:

Mark crashes:

Bye bye:

6:30 pm

After pajamas, before bed, we took a walk.  Scott picked dandelions and Mark practiced clapping.

What's been up

Oh you guys.  Life is fun today.  

Scott's into wearing Luke's old T-shirt (MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE) and luh-uh-uuuuuves painting on mustaches and beards.

We sold the pretty Corvette --bye bye beauty -- and bought a rockin' little VW Golf.  It's a diesel engine that gets 52 mpg on the highway.  We. Love. It.

Weather here is beyond perfect and I'm back to hanging out clothes on the line.

While Luke was in Las Vegas for a quick work trip, Scott and I dug and planted the garden.  The city has free compost and mulch for residents and we hauled 2 loads.  Our little French strawberry plants look so pretty coming up out of the Redwood mulch. 

Not-so-photogenic news: we were all various kinds of sick for 2 weeks. Gross.  It was rough.  The only remaining yuck is some kind of poison ivy thing on my arm.  I record this simply to remind my future self that life was not 100% strawberries and babies. 

Future Jenn, there were days when everyone in the house was on antibiotics, when you were sure your brain was mush, when you had very little confidence in your ability to be a mother/woman/scientist.  Fortunately, your husband taught Scott how to swallow pills (which made taking aforementioned antibiotics much easier), you got a subscription to the Health Physics Journal to pour over at bedtime, and you had dinner with your  sister and friend (and their husbands) who reminded you through stimulating conversation that your brain still works just fine. 

Ahhh.

Babies #3, 4, and 5

We totally want more kids.  I'm totally fine foregoing future pregnancy/ies.  Solution?  CLONES!

Mark's younger and so we assumed his cells were closer to totipotency.  It worked great!  Below, the worldwide unveiling of our 3 newest baby boy Wagners.  It was awfully hard to find that many matching elbow-patch outfits, but anything for our little baby professors.

Let's pretend I posted this April 1st.  Then it would be kind of funny, right?

xoxo

Tonight I found a poem that I wrote in December 2008.  It could use an editor, but I like how it feels.  It feels like 2008 felt. 

The Year

This was the year of surprise and fear and determination and joy:

The year of our marriage

The year of our first son’s birth.

In the first month I found out that I was unexpectedly expecting

Praying and shaking and taking a second test in a grocery store bathroom, then going to see you and surprising myself when I did not break down in tears.  It was the beginning of finding strength.

Then there were secret weeks with you and I knowing

And deciding

And planning a future

Being knit together into a family

Then telling our sisters, our families

Then promising

Speaking vows that were – that are – my heart for you

This was the year of laughing and giddiness in our graduate student apartment (which seemed to grow ever smaller as my belly grew larger,

our home and our life full and happy)

Of evenings spent swimming or running or biking or playing games while lying on our stomachs -- until mine got too big to lie on

Then you, returning to work while I slept

Working out your thesis and our future and taking care of me, of us

This was the afternoon when it was time

When you drove me to the hospital and we held our breaths until we heard his little unborn heartbeat

When I tried to be Zen and the Art of Childbirth and I became Jenn and the Art of Epidural

When he was born – quickly, strongly -- amazingly real with his deep dark eyes open and seeing the world for the first time and finding us

When you cut the cord

When you knew his name

When we celebrated, and nursed, and laughed, and did not sleep

And did not sleep

And did not sleep

And sometimes cried, but always laughed

This was the year I became we

Kiva

Kiva's funniest lending group: Women Who Lend to Shirtless Men.  I love it. 

This would feel totally predatory if it were Men Who Lend to Shirtless Women.  Life is weird like that.

Baby pictures

Last weekend, Luke's dad and Oma visited the grand/great-grand boys and somehow I don't have a photo ready to share.  A couple cute stand-ins to tide you over below.

Scott finished his first ice cream cone!

The neighborhood kids think Baby Police Officer is HILARIOUS.  He is.