Blur

So, the last couple of weeks have been a little bit of a blur. Separating one day from the other in my mind feels like an impossible task. Life has felt fuzzy. Blurry. Or, something like that.
Our little daughter is testing our patience. She has been really fussy.

We feel incompetent as parents, at times. Ruthie cries and there is just nothing that we can do to fix it. Not every moment is like this, though. Early in the morning, she has come to really like to play. I can’t resist, so every day I get up and hour before my alarm is set for and I play with her. She smiles and coos and makes these precious sounds that only a perfect little baby could make. What a great way to start the day. Then, when I come home for lunch, she wants to play again, so I hold her while I eat my lunch and we do the airplane game (this is me holding her with one hand, as high as I can and walk around the kitchen/dining room/living room, whilst her mouth hangs open and her eyebrows are up). Sometimes we do the kissing game too. Though, that’s usually in the mornings around 6:30. That’s where I kiss her on the cheeks and then give her a big smile, occasionally surprising her with a lips kiss. This morning she was being a rascal and she stuck out her tongue when I surprised her with a lips kiss. We had a good laugh. It’s amazing how much Ruthie loves smiles and laughter.

Today I came home from school, walked into the bedroom where Barb was feeding Ruthie and said “Hi buddy” and she gave a big smile to Barb as if to say, “Hey Mom, look, Dad’s home!” You can imagine how good that made me feel. Being a parent is such a strange combination of challenges and rewards. Some days we talk about taking Ruthie back to the hospital and saying to the nurses, “Here’s the baby you gave us. We’re all done with it.”
Before I started writing this blog at 8:00, I bounced Ruthie to sleep and put her to bed. And since I started writing, I have gotten up three times and so has Barb. It’s 9:15 now and she has been quiet for 10 minutes which means she will probably stay asleep.

I started writing while I was feeling frustrated because I couldn’t help her. Now, she’s asleep and I am listening to a baseball game. Barb’s reading her book next to me. Life suddenly feels blissful. (sigh)
In a recent blog I told how we were facing big decisions for life after school. We have since decided to move back to NW Washington and I will be renting a woodworking shop for the summer months. I am renting a fully equipped shop in Bellingham, assuming the bench space of a former classmate while he spends the summer fishing in Alaska. I hope to make furniture for clients and for galleries. I have a couple requests for work and hope to start working on them the first week in June. If any of you reading this are interested in having me make you some furniture or cabinetry or wedding gifts or anything, please tell me. I’d love to talk about it.
As our time on the northern California coast comes to an end, we look forward to “settling down.” I hope we are capable of doing that. It’s time for us to live normal lives for a while. To take care of ourselves, focus on our basic needs and enjoy being in a place where we have friends and family who really know us and can help with Ruthie. Being in California and Sweden has been great, but we haven’t had that peaceful feeling that you get when you are in a place that is your home. We have spent the last couple of years looking ahead. It’s time to slow down and live in the moment.
We continue to have nice visits from family. My parents were here all of last week. They brought their trailer and camped near the ocean. We had a great time with them and enjoyed having Ruthie bond with her grandparents.