come, sit with me for a second

this week has been the ultimate lesson in letting go. it's been busy, and frenetic, and i haven't had much time to sit on my fanny and relax. and we know how much i love to sit down and relax. so reading has gone by the wayside, and emails have been starred and are waiting to be replied to, and the kitchen sink it filled with dishes. i'm waiting on attending the birth of a client who is almost two weeks past her due date. every night i go to sleep, clutching my phone, waiting for my grateful dead ringtone to scare the poop out of me. needless to say, sleep has not come easily these past couple of weeks.

there have been wakes and friends to comfort, drives to be taken and kids to be babysat. there have been playdates with 23 people swinging from the ceilings. there have been dinner dates with friends and plate after plate of salads. there have been trips to the store and massage after massage to be given. there have been treats to be bought and birthdays to be celebrated.

i'm looking forward to next week. i know it's bad to wish the time away, but seriously. next week shines brightly on the horizon, promising a time of not being on call for the first time in about three months. i don't have to figure out how to shove my cell phone into everyone outfit i have, even ones without pockets. if you wonder what that lump in my bra is, it's most likely my phone, waiting for a call. next week is quiet, with nothing much on the calendar except a full day of me, by myself, in maine. doing whatever i want to do. i'm treating myself with this because, hey, i made it through another week. a day of thrifting and sitting by myself reading and looking at art and meeting new friends. a day of quiet, away from my phone.

aaaaaah.

where's the fireplace?

damn it's cold out. and windy! my groceries almost blew right off the top of my shopping cart. and we've got a serious case of green boogies. and oh yeah, joey fell down the stairs and now has a black eye (is it possible that i love him more with a black eye? sick, but true).


but sometimes you just need to wear a tank-top and have a popsicle (or two) because it's spring. it's spring, right? it's about 20 degrees here, but hey, it's spring. i just follow grace's lead.


the sounds of my day? joey saying "mom, where's the fireplace? mom, where's the fireplace? mom, where's the firetruck?" and grace saying "happy birthday happy birthday happy birthday" maniacally as she designs yet another birthday card for her friend.

off to bathtime, where i will certainly get soaked from head to toe, and remain in my moist jeans for the remainder of the night.

beautious weekends to all!
nb.

the bathroom is my boardroom

every morning there is a hustle and bustle in our world that is family.

there are diapers to be changed and pee to wipe off my jeans and kix to be poured into bowls and cups of tea to be drank and snacks to be packed and showers and nails to be clipped and toys to trip over. there are dads to be woken up and sleepies to be washed out of eyes. and then it's off to school.

amidst the chaos, there's something calming and pure about our morning routine. don't get me wrong- there is whining and crying, and kids bursting into the shower. there are declarations of inappropriateness, but most importantly, there is our routine.

the bathroom is my boardroom in the morning. it's where i hold my daily meeting with my husband, carving out a couple of minutes for a family meeting every morning. we are surrounded by steam, and i'm usually tying up my hair, brushing my teeth. someone may be taking a dump. most certainly someone is asking for something in the background. we are interrupted. but we plod on with our meeting, making sure we are on the same page about the day, and the week ahead. we catch up in our own way, with the curtain between us.

it is most certainly one of my most favorite times of the day.

today

today

i am quiet.

xx

i have a secret

oh gray.

dear sweet gray.

you are wise beyond your years. you were born smart, just bursting with emotions and smartypantishness. it's baffling at times, the things you understand at four. you can describe to someone how to insert a tampon, what a tampon is for, and why it has that handy little blue string. we have conversations that maybe we shouldn't be having, but how can i not? you ask, and i usually tell. that's just the way that's it's always been, right?

fine.

but now that you are in school, and somewhat precocious, i fear that some of these things may end up coming back to bite me in the butt.

especially now that you have a fondness for "telling secrets".

i don't like secrets, gray! secrets are not cool. especially your secrets about me.

it's been brought to my attention that lately you have been sharing your little secret with many-a-person in our family.

this secret, gray, is not appropriate.

i know you find my genitalia way cool and interesting and all, but can you please stop sharing your secret that

mama has a hairy beanerdog

with the world?


thanks a bunch.

lovingly,
mama.

are you there god? it's me, nina beana.

it's nearly spring.

spring has me thinking about new clothes. and by new, i mean "clothes that my friends give me instead of dropping off at the salvation army."

so hello god, are you there? it's me nina beana. can you please send a message to my dear friends who are on the cusp of spring cleaning their closets, bursting with excitement to get rid of their nasty and/or ill-fitting clothes? can you please inspire them to kindly offer these clothes to me?

if you know me in real life, you know that i:
1. don't buy clothes, or rarely do and only if i'm going on vacation (read: never)
and
2. only wear clothes given to me by people. mainly, i get a cheap thrill off of saying "this is steph's shirt and kim's pants and this necklace is jess's and these undies are from high school." because you know, i usually buy my own undies. although i wouldn't put it past myself to wear cast-offs from friends.
and
3. really get off on going to clothes swaps. because for some reason i make out like a bandit and most always walk away with bags of shizz that i love and cherish
and
4. i just really love digging through bags of clothes.

so here's what i'm asking: can i have your old clothes?

purdy please?

when comes the sun?

i'm dying for the sun. and by sun i mean the real sun, not the sun that's out when it's 20 degrees out. i'm freezing. i guess it's my own fault because even though i live in snowy new england, i refuse to own a jacket. every morning i trek to grace's school in a sweater or sweatshirt. and it's cold today. for as long as i can remember i've had this thing with jackets, always ripping mine off when i got to the bus stop. there's just something about jackets. vests? i can do vests. but not so much the jacket.

lately i've taken a liking to turning up the hot water in the shower so my skin is almost scalding off. which makes for lovely dry skin, thank you very much.

funny thing is that i really don't love the summer. i don't love being hot so much, either. fall's my time to shine. but after this long winter, and an even longer february, i can't wait to bask in the springy sun. i like to drink my morning cup on the deck. i like to sit under the umbrella and do art projects. i like feeling like my house is bigger than these four walls.

have a freakin' cookie and take a seat!

have a cookie, will you?

certain things feed my soul, and some of these things include:

homemade chocolate chip cookies, but only after they have completely cooled off

an order of falafel from my favorite restaurant, with a side order of fries, salt, and ketchup from one of those little squat glass bottles

emails between some fabulous women about important things

some books, about important people

conversations with boo that go like this: "hey, did you spring ahead?" "-yeah, did you?", "no, i was just checking to see if you did." regarding the time change

family gelato trips

joey's obsession with lip gloss and his way of rubbing his lips on mine to get some

our tie-dyed easter eggs

and my dyed green index fingernail.

happy end of the weekend. happy birthday, steph!

tea bags

i like
to keep
my tea bags
in an oversized mason jar
on the kitchen counter
because just looking at them
all snuggled up in there
makes me feel good.

there's just too much to say lately so i've been saying not so much. my goal is to do more real one-on-one talking and meeting up with my peeps, and i must say that it's way better this way. life has been really busy with playdates and mamadates and stacks upon stacks of books to be consumed and february blues and spring cleaning and reorganizing and purging and even a little exercise thrown in for good measure. and did i mention that i kicked the coffee habit? this coming from a mama who would have had an IV of the black stuff if i could have. so that was a big one for me....and i don't miss it one bit. the two times i've cheated in the past month ended terribly- one with the worst heartburn of my life, and the second with the worst stomach flu ever (just a coincidence but i still took it as a sign....and note to self- don't get the stomach flu after eating a huge dinner of chicken parm and angel hair pasta). there's an upcoming birth and some corned beef to be eaten and beautiful new photographs from angels to be framed:

thank you mama al! i fondle this photo daily- thankfully it still has the plastic on it, or it would be covered in greasy buttery fingerprints.

one last thing that's really been keeping my head above water- joey's obsession with saying "merry christmas!". except it doesn't come out as merry christmas at all. it sounds exactly like "merry cat-piss". so i wake to the sounds of merry catpiss, and i fall asleep to "merry catpiss, mama. merry catpiss".


it's the little things that make me happy, evidently.

things to distract you: photobooth friday revisited

despite the lack of photobooth posts (and posts in general), there have been photobooths. like this little gem from last weekend: i'm holding a sign that grace made that says "mom". not quite sure if you can see it when it's scanned. i love gray's face in the third square down. i could just eat her.
then there was this strip that john and joey got me for christmas. i love joey's face in the bottom square. in a lot of ways his face pretty much sums joey up- whiny, needy, complainathon-2000. i can just hear him crying to get out of the booth- something between a whine and a cough. we call him whine-bag. we only say it because we love him.
then this solo booth of joey from right before christmas. whenever i feel sad i go over to this strip that is hanging in my kitchen and i focus in on the face that he's making in the third square down. when i look at it nothing else matters. i get these feelings like "i made this kid", and "he's his own little person" and "i could die happy right now".

this is the magic of photobooth strips.

a new earth

"although body-identification is one of the most basic forms of ego, the good news is that it is also the one that you can most easily go beyond. this is done not by trying to convince yourself that you are not your body, but by shifting your attention from the external form of your body and from thoughts about your body- beautiful, ugly, strong, weak, too fat, too thin- to the feeling of aliveness inside it." - eckhart tolle, from a new earth: awakening to your life purpose

um, word.

punches to the soul

the universe has been packing some major punches lately. and coupled with the book "a new earth" by eckhart tolle, i've been doing some much needed soul searching lately. here's my newest message from the universe:

Ever notice, Nina Beana, that in the long run, those who don't eventually go "within," often go "without."

You got the power,
The Universe

damn! that's a serious message. one that's true but not easy.


so i'm off to do some dirty work!

venturing out

this week is school vacation. my goal is to get out every day and do something. i can't believe it's already thursday. this getting out and doing stuff thing really makes the week fly by.

so thursday. hello thursday.

thank god for friends (thank you mama for the dreamiest of days yesterday!). thank god for family. thank god for brothers who bring over drinkies after the kids go to sleep.


off for more adventures.

a sitar kind of day

i wish i could say that it's been a quiet day here. a quiet, peaceful day of baking homemade fresh bread and burning incense and peace love togetherness. instead, i can report that it's been a very loud and boisterous day, filled with baking homemade fresh bread thanks to soulemama's recipe, lots of new music (beastie boys and ravi shankar, with a good dose of bob marley and the beatles thrown in), musings about a fake person that we invented named "lebanon rappaport", thinking about breaking into the local hummus factory for an impromptu tour. the kids have been alternating between eating off my earlobes, trying to crawl up my fanny, and playing "ronkey donks" (which is basically a kid version of sexytime with clothes on).

if i could describe the sounds in my brain they would definitely sound like the manic crazy sitar sounds that ravi shankar busts out with.


today is a sitar kind of sunday.

happy stinkin' valentine's day!

this will be me at the end of the day today. we've got two valentine's parties (not to mention the one that we went to yesterday) and then we're going to the indoor playground, one of my most stress-inducing places ever. i'm trying to channel my inner "peace love togetherness vibe" (thanks, c. for the talk last night, and for calling me a happy hippie even when i don't feel like one), even when the kids will inevitably hurt themselves or hurt others, break some bones, and crash after some major sugar highs!


did i mention that i quit coffee almost a week ago? i'm asking myself why right about now.


happy stinkin' valentine's day!

dear heartburn

hello, heartburn. it's nice to see you again. psyche! it's been a while since you've plauged me- let me see...the last time you stuck around john was in kosovo for 10 months, and i moved away from my home in NY and moved back to my childhood home. i holed up in my bedroom, waiting for news, waiting for anything. it was post 9-11, and everything seemed scary and horrible. i was taking paxil, and sometimes xanax, just to get through the day. because the days were long, and terrifying. i had a shit job that was good work but wrecking my life. working with troubled adolescents that tell you on a daily basis that your hair sucks, your face sucks, you suck- not the best job choice for someone so sad.

so back then, heartburn moved in and didn't leave for a while. but everything got much much better when my new husband came back, we moved back to NY, and we had our life back. life was still uncertain and scary at times, but i didn't have the heartburn anymore.

but now it's back.

but here's the tricky part- life is kind of amazing. so what gives, heartburn? why are you back to eff with me and my digestion? could it be the two bottles of balsamic vinegar that i've consumed in the past couple of weeks? could it be the coffee, the tylenol? could it be hormonal, could it be the banging and dancing in the car? why oh why are you back?

i promise i won't drink balsamic vinegar anymore (even though it's so delicious). i've stopped drinking coffee for you, heartburn, and that says a lot. i couldn't even completely quit when i was pregnant. but i've said a sad goodbye to coffee, and now i've quit it completely for you. what else do you want, heartburn? i'm eating lots of fruits and veggies. what am i doing wrong? even a sip of water sends you into a tailspin, making me gasp for air.

what gives?

please let me know if there's anything else i can sulkily give up for you. because heartburn, you know how much this girls loves herself some food. so don't keep wrecking it for me, ok?

thanks a freakin' bunch,

nina beana

for the record

the kids are playing quietly right now! what what?!? can it be true? until the polly pocket wars begin, here i am.

also, joey woke up at 6:30am this morning, which hasn't happened in weeks. which means that i am less zombielike than usual. which hopefully means that today is a good day.

this weekend was busy and involved actually leaving the house a multitude of times, which was much different from the rest of the week, where we played inside almost exclusively. we had two trips into the "big city" (what gray calls boston). i had a pad thai and we went to our favorite diner. we took some drives. watched boo jump into the atlantic ocean in drag. you know, the usual.

i'd just like to state for the record that fake eyelashes scare the crap out of me. especially when someone wearing the fake eyelashes is getting them trimmed while they are wearing them. (there were no injuries, although there was the chance of a nostril being sliced through).

i love the fallen lashes on the lipsticked lips.

happy birthday to you jen!

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happiest of days to our dear friend jen out in NY! i roused the kids this morning and they did this video for you- you can see gray's attitude because i shut "her show" off to film- joey is happy as a clam as usual. featured in the clip is the "puke bucket", which can also explain gray's crankiness. she's been throwing up for the past two days! so excuse the grouchiness...but HAPPY BIRTHDAY! we love you!

someone's problems are bigger than yours

wiener poopie. i love it. my day feels better already.