My post over at Get Born magazine this month is a poem. Enjoy!
Two small fingers tap
together. More.
Kai blows air through
resting lips,
Bbbbbbbbb, like a shiver.
Helicopter.
Tap tap. More, say two small fingertips.
Mar22
Dec31
A Year of Vulnerabilities
In the little over a year that I’ve been keeping this blog – sometimes actively; sometimes poorly – so many, many things have changed in my life. My children have grown from infant and preschooler to toddler and big kid. And I have struggled with growing up with them. The constant pull and weight of wanting them to grow while wanting them always to be little – holding on to the fleeting stages with everything I have while knowing that in the next moment a new stage will begin with the same amazing grace of the last.
And in this last year, I’ve really found my niche in writing as a mother. I started like the fish love the sea as a blog about writing, baking, mothering, and crafting. I’m afraid those of you interested in baking, writing, and crafting have been terribly disappointed because, just as the rest of my life has gone, the blog has followed my mothering almost exclusively. Which is okay with me. I am fulfilled at most times in my writing by my blogging here, over at get born magazine, and for the Greeley Tribune’s Greeley Moms section. I’m certainly baking and crafting and even writing as much as I can; I have just focused my energy here on processing the mothering side of things.
As the year ends and 2013 begins despite the doomsday-ers’ best predictions, I’ve done my requisite reflecting on the last twelve months. This time last year, I was finally coming up for air following the postpartum depression that changed the way I think about motherhood. I was groping for ways to really understand Baby K’s little personality, and still navigating the strange new dynamics of my two-child household. Since then, I have done a lot of healing and forgiving – mostly of myself for the little things each day as I acknowledge that I truly am doing the best I can as N’s and K’s mother.
This new year will find me still seeking the right – or right-for-right-now – path for my family, and I suppose that will be my journey with each new year that comes. Helping N grow his beautiful, exuberant interest in life; helping Baby K succeed in telling us about the quiet little soul behind the mouth that works so hard to speak. Loving every moment with the perspective that it is all so vulnerable, so fleeting, and so perfect for the people that we are and the family we are meant to be. Because the last two weeks – in particular the shooting in Connecticut – has deeply reminded me of our human vulnerabilities, and hopefully given me a lasting renewal of my dedication to appreciate the now.
So with that, I wish you all a wonderful new year filled with love and peace and light. And I THANK YOU for reading, following, sharing like the fish love the sea. Cheers to 2013, and Cheers to You!
Dec23
New Direction, New Get Born Post…
First, I apologize for my absence! I’ve got a lot of things I’m working at sorting through, one of which is the direction I’d like to take the blog in now that it’s been a year. My little life here with N and not-so-baby-anymore-K has changed a lot this last couple of months – focuses shifted, directions changed – and I’m hoping to reflect all of that in a new feel for the blog. So bear with me!
In the meantime, here is my post this month for Get Born. It’s a rambling gush of feelings on the lost babes in Newtown, and I hope you’ll take a minute to cry with me. Love to you all, and thank you for sticking around 
Twenty Spaces Held
Blogged by Kayenta on December 22, 2012
I have not really written anything substantial about the shooting last week, and this is likely to be a rambling gush of feelings after a week of tears shed, of thoughts held with near constancy for the lost babies’ mothers. What they must see in what should be a season of light and love. The void they must face as they look past an empty Christmas and see an endlessly empty lifetime… read more
Oct26
A Writing Update
I just wanted to share with you all that I’m now writing online content for my local paper, The Greeley Tribune, for a new moms section they’re doing. I’m not going to link them all here like I do my Get Born posts, but my usual days for the Greeley Moms will be Wednesdays, so go read them (please)! I’m proud to be part of a new project with some other talented moms!
Today I posted this about Kai…
There are times in life that those around us think they know what is best for our kids, what is going on with them and how we should proceed.
But most times, their mothers are the only ones that truly know. It’s that little mother voice in our hearts, the intuition, that tells us something isn’t as it is supposed to be.
Sometimes we listen to it, and sometimes we ignore it only to have it keep haunting us until we finally take notice. That little voice tells us the fever at 2 a.m. is worth a trip to the emergency room. It tells us the spot on our child’s skin is more than just a bug bite or the tantrums our little one throws are more than just the terrible twos. … more
Oct23
A New Path – Get Born Post
I’ve been struggling with some new information about my baby this week. My post is over at Get Born today.
A New Path
Blogged by Kayenta on October 22, 2012
Life is at its most unfair when something is wrong with your child. After months of my mama intuition telling me my one-year-old was struggling with speech, and after he started losing words he once had, I took him for a developmental evaluation. The diagnosis was suspected verbal apraxia …. read more
Oct15
The Hardest Lesson
I live just north of Denver, Colorado, where last week a ten-year-old girl named Jessica was kidnapped then found murdered and dumped, dismembered, like trash in a field. While I read terrible stories like this once in a while, none have happened so close to home. This one not only made me sick, to think of what that poor little girl’s last hours were like, or what unimaginable pain and anger her parents must be feeling; it also made me really think about how I can best give my children the tools to avoid predators like the one still at large in Colorado.
I don’t have children who are even old enough to walk down the block alone, let alone to school where some monster could swipe them off the street, and I am hyper-vigilant about strangers. I grew up in a generation scared by stories of kidnappings like Adam Walsh, who vanished just after I was born. We rode our bikes around our neighborhood like it was our job, but we knew how to scream and kick and run from strangers, and we knew a lot of the gruesome details about what could happen to us if we didn’t. To this day, I am honestly a bit terrified to walk across even my local King Soopers parking lot at night or pull up to an empty ATM machine. Let alone stop alone at a rest area, no matter how populated it is, even in the middle of the day.
What I want to do for my children is to give them the information they need to understand that terrible people exist and may some day cross their paths without making them unrealistically afraid. I’ve read parenting articles and blog posts on talking to young children about strangers or “tricky people“, a new term used to identify people who may not seem strange at all but may be very, very dangerous. I’ve talked to friends whose children are a little older than mine and gotten advice on what to say. I’ve thought about what I appreciated my mom saying to me, and some of the graphic scare tactics I could have done without. And all of this has led me to wonder more than anything else WHEN I should start talking to N and K, and how much I should tell them when I do start talking to him.
In a tearful panic, shortly after reading the sickening news that the dismembered body in the field had been identified as Jessica Ridgeway, I brought up strangers with N. I asked him if he knew what a “stranger” was, and then told him a mishmash of things about bad people, strangers, and firmly shouting “no” if someone you don’t know asks you to go anywhere with them. We did a quick roleplay where he practiced yelling “no” in his important voice, and we talked about finding a mom with kids to help him if he is ever lost without me or his daddy. I made him repeat several times what he would do if someone offered him candy to get into a car or asked for help looking for a lost animal. Each time, he shouted “no way!” and said he would run far away to another grownup he knew.
When the impromptu talk was over, I didn’t feel any better. I don’t feel like N is now any better-equipped to deal with a potential abductor, nor do I feel like I’ve done a good job broaching the subject. But then, he’s only four, and I wonder how much he can comprehend in any real way. At this age, is it simply my job to keep my eyes on him at all times so that he never has to use the abstract self-protection skills I have poorly introduced to him? Is it unrealistic of me to think I can do that until he’s old enough to understand that bad guys don’t just exist in movies? In the meantime, I can only pray none of this will be tested – now or ever – while I try to find a way to help my children see the world in all its lights and darks and give them the crucial tools to keep themselves in the light.
Oct7
When He’s Not Busy Being “Daddy”…
…my husband creates awesome, fun, family-friendly games for Apple devices! His newest game, Finicky Fish, came out last week, and I encourage you all to check it out! I’m so proud of him! I get very “I’m the creative one around here” sometimes, but his creativity just takes different, techie-er forms
So, please, go get the game, play it, rate it, share it! Thank you! I think you’ll like it!
