But I feel distracted and uneasy and sad.

Big drama on one of my internet playgrounds today. I feel pummeled and raw and have no idea how to respond or if I even want to respond to the things that were said. Right now I just want to find a smooth exit strategy, and I want to tie up loose ends before moving, so this doesn’t eat at me all weekend and spoil my moving in to our new home.

There are definitely people in that group with whom we really hope to continue relationships. And there are definitely people with whom I have no interest in maintaining connections, because we aren’t really connected anyway. I just hope we don’t lose everyone we care about in the group when we walk away. And it is when at this point, not if we walk away. It’s a matter of finding the best way to exit as gracefully as we can. And if we lose the people we really care about, well we don’t have any control over that. And we’ll get through it. We’ve loved and lost before, we can do it again.

Every time we asked Little Bear what she saw out the window of the airplane window, she said, “Ocean!”

And every time she saw other planes out the window while we taxied to and from the gate, she signed and said, “Fish!”

So according to Little Bear, we flew through the ocean on a giant fish to get to Grammy & Grandpa’s house. Works for me.

Listening to the way she says the word ocean, with so much reverence, makes me smile. She is amazed by the ocean, as am I, and it is beautiful to hear her say it.

Apparently she once saw an airplane that had a fish painted on the end of it, and so she always thinks they are fish. Even though she knows the sign for airplane and says the word plane whenever she hears one overhead. When she can’t see them up close they are planes. But if she can see them, they’re fish.

She did amazingly well for a 19 month old on the plane rides. Slept like an angel all the way from Michigan to Denver on the way home. But the last leg from Denver to Portland was a little much for her. She was wide awake, very much done with being confined to our laps, and had already read her favorite book 100 times, so she was done with that too. She did, however, have a great time playing with the phone that was built into the back of the seat in front of us. Oh, and kicking the seats, she was great at that.

At one point when we realized she needed a diaper change, mid-flight, I got out down on my knees facing the seats to change her. When we were just about done, the flight attendant came by and asked just what I was doing. I told her we had just changed Little Bear’s diaper and her reply was, “You really shouldn’t be doing that here.” And where exactly should we be doing it? In the bathroom. But no, there aren’t changing tables in there, and even if they were, there’s no room to do it. Grr.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to land back on the ground in Portland and be done flying for a while.

Now, off to the next adventure…moving in a week!

I’m not exactly enjoying this trip, to say the least. I am liking having all this time with my girls (Mama Meow and Little Bear).

The weather is nice, that’s about the only good part. Oh, and Little Bear is having fun.

OK OK, and I am really enjoying seeing Great Gram and hanging out at the commons where she lives.

But the time with Mama Meow’s parents? Miserable. Awful. And I’m not exaggerating.

Here’s an example. Last night, Mama Meow and I took turns trying to wrangle Little Bear into bed, because she was overtired and wouldn’t settle in. During this time, Mama Meow’s mom was lying on the couch in the living room reading aloud from a calorie and fat counting book. She was doing it as a form of conversation with her husband, who was engrossed in watching baseball, but responded with oh! and wow! and you don’t say! And then he would ask about another thing they eat sometimes, and she would be off to find it in the book.

Now, by itself this is a little annoying. The fact that Mama Meow and I are both fat women and feel incredibly conspicuous here because we have the audacity to actually eat…that made it downright rude if you ask me.

Plus, while we are on the topic of eating, we are eating vegetarian now - have been for over a year. And Mama Meow’s mom is annoyed by that because she doesn’t know what to cook for us. So what does she do? She makes beef stir fry yesterday for lunch - leaving us to make something for ourselves without even offering us some of the rest of the fixins, without the meat. And then today we have a big sunday dinner and she makes bbq chicken. Oh sure, she bought us garden burger patties and grilled those up…so we had something to eat. But it’s not like there aren’t a zillion vegetarian foods we could make and all have a meal together.

And they just hardly eat around here - they eat about 1 meal a day, and that is small. I’m sorry, I’m a 3 meal a day kind of Momo. But the emotional climate here makes me less than comfortable eating that much because they are so weird about food. And speaking of emotional climates, usually stress makes me want to eat more, so being here and not feeling safe eating makes it doubly worse.

OK, they are almost home from their walk and I have homework to do, so this is a long enough rant for now.

Only 2 more nights here and then we get to fly home. Hooray! If the flights go half as good as they did on the way here, I will be happy.

So here in Momo land, we have noticed that things aren’t nearly hectic enough. Work, school, practicum, a toddler who doesn’t sleep through the night, and getting ready to move in a couple weeks…that wasn’t enough chaos.

To remedy this situation, we decided yesterday to fly to Michigan - on Thursday. Yes, it’s true, we are packing up Little Bear and going to visit Mama Meow’s family in Michigan, for 6 days. It feels like this will be the last chance we have for a while, if ever, to visit Grammy and Grandpa B. while they still live in the same town as Great Gram (GG). So even though our stress levels are beyond ridiculous right now, we decided to go for it.

I have a night off of practicum on Thursday, we didn’t have plans for the weekend other than packing more for the move, and I was able to get the time off work…so off we go!

It should be a good visit - they haven’t seen Little Bear since last summer, and she is a totally different bear now. Hopefully we will survive the flights. We will likely have to break the no-movies-unless-we-are-doing-her-hair rule for Little Bear, but that’s OK. I am sure she won’t mind. We also plan to break the no-binky-unless-you-are-going-to-sleep rule. I know she won’t mind that one, as she is in love with her binky.

The city we are visiting has a great baby rental place called Go Baby Go, that rents EVERYTHING you could need on a trip for baby - carseats, highchairs, strollers, toys, everything. What a great idea. I wonder if Portland has anything like that. If not, maybe that could be a home business to start. In all my spare time of course.

That’s the update right now. Maybe I’ll have time to post from Michigan.

We are moving! Mama Meow, Little Bear, Uncle Turtle and I are moving into a big blue house on 6th Avenue in NE Portland. We move on July 3rd and we are all knee deep in the process of whittling down our belongings, packing them in boxes and getting ready for moving day. Well, Little Bear isn’t really doing any of those things, but we are doing them on her behalf.

The new house will also be shared with 3 kitties - Lyra, Bella and Iggy. We are hoping the felines can reach some sense of harmony and cohesiveness, but they don’t have a track record of such, so we shall see. Hopefully the humans can model this for them and they will catch on.

We get to go tonight and check out the space again and measure things. I am excited to get things all toddler-proofed before we move in so it just is that way from the start.

More updates soon, but this is about the biggest thing going right now.

Oh! And our friends had their baby - he is adorable and beautiful and his mama did an amazing job birthing him. She is so powerful and strong and incredible! And she had excellent support with her, hooray for them too!

There is so much going on and so much to write about and really just not any smidgen of time to spend on it.

I am allowing myself a short list of catch-up items…

1) We are moving! We are renting a house in NE Portland with Uncle Turtle and we move July 3rd. Lots to do before then.

2) I love my practicum site and working one on one with clients is really rewarding and I am relieved that after all this school and hard work, I am enjoying what I have been working towards.

3) Little Bear is more amazing every day. She is also easily reprogrammed in some ways. She has been scared of a dog that lives behind us because he is VERY LOUD and mean sounding. So she says, “Scary. Dog.” about a hundred times a day. Sunday I decided to start reprogramming her and talking about how nice dogs are, and we like to pet them and they kiss our face, etc etc. So now she says, “Scary. Dog. Nice!” It’s pretty funny.

4) I don’t like my feminist therapies class and that is sad to me because I was really excited for it. But Auntie Crow is in the class with me, and that makes everything better. And I have been drawing in class which rocks. I splurged on a new set of fine point Sharpies and I love them.

5) We haven’t heard from Little Bear’s first mom since she finally got her mother’s day presents about 2 weeks late (due to the agency sending them to the wrong address - grr!) and it is making me a little uneasy. Did we miss the mark? Is it not about us at all?

6) I wish I could write all day. But alas, I am at work and need to actually do the things they pay me to do.

It’s nothing new that Mama Meow and I aren’t getting enough sleep. That’s been true for the entire almost 18 months that Little Bear has been in our lives and we are sort of resigned to it at this point. But lately we have really started to be concerned that Little Bear isn’t getting enough sleep.

She is a pretty restless sleeper, waking up frequently at night. Lately we don’t do much with her in the middle of the night except replace the binky she threw on the floor or can’t find in her bed (even though it is right beside her - any closer and it might bite her!). Occasionally we will rock her back to sleep, but usually we just pop the binky back in, pat her, cover her up and off we go back to sleep.

She wakes up every morning between 5:45 and 6 am. This child will not sleep later than 6 am at all. Ever. Believe me, I’ve tried to convince her.

She just seems so tired all the time. She does one nap usually for about 3 hours, at 11:30 or 12ish. And we try to have her in bed between 6:30 and 7 pm.

She definitely is a kid who has a window of sleepiness and if you miss it, the next chance doesn’t come along for a good hour or two, no matter how exhausted she is in the moment.

Lately she has been wanting to rock and have her binky multiple times in the morning, long before naptime. She has been falling asleep in the car around 9:30 or 10 am if we are out driving around. We took her down to 1 nap about 3 months ago - actually she sort of took herself down to 1 nap, and we went along with it. It seemed to be working fine, but now we’re not so sure.

We just don’t really know what to do to help her sleep more. She has some frantic, tantrum-like behaviors that seem to be related to how tired she is at any given moment.

Any thoughts, all you friends out in blog-land?

Wednesday night I had my first sessions in my practicum…and they went really well! I felt more comfortable once we started than I thought I would, and now it never has to be my first sessions again!

Hooray for Momo!

Yesterday Little Bear and I had a great playdate at the park and it was really fun to be introduced as Little Bear’s Momo. So few people really call me that or recognize it as my name in relation to Little Bear. It felt really validating and cool. Thanks, S!

I swear I had at least one or two cute Little Bear anecdotes to write about, but I can’t find them in my brain this morning, so I will have to post them later.

Tuesdays are the days when I go in later to work, and get to have a little time with Little Bear before I start the 3 days of the week stretch of being at work and school and practicum until past her bedtime.

This morning I woke up and was really grumpy. I went to bed at a fairly decent time, and while of course Little Bear woke up in the night, it was only twice and both fairly early. So I actually got a fair amount of sleep. But I just grumble every time I hear her muttering in her crib and I check the clock and it is 5:45 a.m. That’s just too damn early! But not for her. She consistently wakes up at this time.

I got off on the wrong foot with Mama Meow today too. Being so chronically tired makes me forget things like one of the reasons I am home longer in the morning on Tuesdays is so I can get Little Bear dressed and do her hair so she is ready to go, and Mama Meow gets a break from always being the one to do this part. I did manage to do Little Bear’s hair (although the parts were all crooked) thanks mostly to the Richard Scary video we got at the library. And we left the house on time. But it was too late, the grump had already set in and it felt awful.

And now I have to finish work in a few and head off to class. I wish the first day of that 3 day stretch of my week could have an easier start, because it makes it feel like the whole week is doomed, and that isn’t a very pleasant thought.

Gee, on that cheerful note, I guess I’ll sign off for now.

This is my second Mother’s day - my first as a Momo, since I didn’t give myself this name until after Mother’s day last year.

Uncle Turtle took us out to breakfast and it was delicious. Then Mama Meow and I went to the co-op to get some groceries. The joyful moment of this post’s subject heading was back at the car after shopping. Mama Meow was holding Little Bear and Little Bear was throwing her head back and laughing this amazing, joyful giggle. We were kissing her belly and I was tickling her and we were all just so full of joy. These are the moments I longed for while we were waiting to become mamas.

There is something soulfully satisfying in recognizing those moments when they are happening. I remember once when Little Bear was much smaller and I was rocking her while she slept. I remember thinking how often I had wanted to do just that - rock my sweet baby - and there I was.

Today I feel very grateful for the chance to be a Momo to Little Bear and to be parenting alongside Mama Meow. We’ve had our ups and downs over the last 17 months, mostly due to the overwhelming adjustment that is sleep deprivation. But through it all it means so much to me to do this amazing work of parenting together.

This is also a shout out to any mama types who read my blog - categorically, you rock!

As I type this, Mama Meow is talking to Little Bear’s birthmom in the background. We are so sad that our presents didn’t get to her in time for today. We still use the agency as a liason service, at her request, which makes it hard to meet deadlines sometimes for holidays and things. But they will arrive tomorrow hopefully.

Well, time for this Momo to call it a night and head for sleep.

Little Bear will likely wake up in the night, so I need to get a head start.