along with all of the big life changes we’ve got going on these days, i have a new blog design and a new URL. you can now find my alchymie blog at
i’m excited about it and can hardly wait to be able to post on it about the birth of the one and only marvel heron ingram. i posted there today about his room….
whoa! it’s hot and we’re big….
popsicle tongue
popsicle mouth
popsicle afternoon
shana came over the other day so we could do some sewing. i actually got a rare photo of her (below) – she’s always behind the camera. we finished off the afternoon with popsicles and shana captured it beautifully. a lovely afternoon…
runa and shana being crafty
marvel
a wonder
something that causes wonder, admiration, or astonishment; a wonderful thing
i’m 34 weeks pregnant with our son and i still haven’t posted about his name. i love his name:
Marvel Heron Ingram.
we’ve had the name Marvel tucked away in a secret spot in our hearts for a while now. i love that it describes what he already is to me – a marvel, a wonder.
we chose Heron because ian and i have a history with birds. the first trip i took with ian’s family was into the czech countryside to look for birds. the equipment, the body of knowledge, the skill of intense “birders” was new to me then, but i have since grown to share their wide-eyed admiration for the fascinating little beauties. birds have had their place in almost every ceremony and ritual of ours. ian and i both have bird tattoos on our arms.
ian's tattoo
i even have a circle of bird skulls on mine. it seemed natural to choose a bird name for our son.
my tattoo
the thesaurus says that the opposite of marvel is expectation. how fitting that is as well. i was raised with 2 sisters, i have lots of girl cousins, and i have a fierce love for a large group of amazing girlfriends. i’m not going to know what to do with a little boy. this time around, i have no expectations.
i can only marvel at it all.
i mentioned in an earlier post that we would be doing some renovations in our casa. those days have come.
our house is pretty quirky. it was built in the 1930s as a duplex with a bottom floor apartment and a top floor apartment. since we bought the house 4 years ago, we have lived on the top floor and worked in our studios on the bottom floor. that is all about to change…. in the next few months we’ll be building a structure out back that will house both my and ian’s studios. that means we get to live in our entire house for the first time! and there is LOTS of work to do on it.
we started with our upstairs bathroom because it was teensy tiny and the thought of a family of 4 sharing it was maddening. we had to scoot around each other if we happened to be in there at the same time (even before i was big and pregnant) and it had only makeshift storage and fake wall tiles. below are pics of the old bathroom from outside the bathroom door.
we knocked down one of the walls and engulfed our (ridiculous) hallway into the new bathroom. in doing so, i had to say goodbye to some of koruna’s “wall art” that was sprinkled all over the bottom half of the hall wall. until the renovation, i just couldn’t bring myself to clean it off because it reminded me of the morning that it happened – i learned a lot that morning. (i’ll have to write about that in another post.)
that is the only thing i miss from the old bathroom setup. below are pics of the new one.
much bigger
we used white penny round tiles on both the floor and bath that we found for cheap
we got a beautiful vanity online - so much storage! we also repurposed some lockers to use as wall-mounted towel storage
ian got this old ceremonial fertility stick in northern thailand. it's made from some sort of root and now holds our toilet paper
i love the new bathroom. we spend lots of time in there now. at 34 weeks pregnant, i pee about 25 times a day. the whole family can now participate in runa’s baths. we can all brush our teeth together. and koruna can actually see herself in the mirror.
i don’t know if all of the coming home improvements will be such life improvements, but i hope so.
i’ve always loved the act of traveling – of moving through space – whether it has been riding my scooter or sitting on a trans-atlantic flight or slowly exploring an underwater cave in the middle of a jungle.
this weekend i took a 4 hour road trip to cooper, texas in our old truck. i was by myself on the dry texas highway and i loved every minute of it. i mostly listened to country tunes on the radio and cried, belting out those country songs from my childhood at the top of my pregnant lungs. man, i love doing that. it’s been so long since i had the chance.
these were my first few days AWAY. when we realized that i’ve been with koruna every day for 2 years and that we’re about to start this whole process over again, ian sent me to visit my mama, my grandparents, and my aunt and uncle in cooper (population 2,000ish). before i meet this one who’ll come from me, i decided to spend a little more time with those who’ve come before me.
ian's drawings of granny and granddad on their anniversary
i went to slow down. i went to be taken care of. i went to hear my granddad’s stories and to smell my granny’s kitchen. i went to stay up late talking to my mama. i got everything i wanted and more. i visited the cooper museum that my granddad loves so dearly. i got to shop at my aunt and uncle’s antique store. i got to look through old family photos. and i got to see a matinee with my granny, who hasn’t seen a movie since driving miss daisy. (and i thought i didn’t get to see many movies these days…)
and i missed koruna and ian. it was fun to miss them for a couple of days.
i painted runa’s toes for her second birthday.
she painted mine.
then she painted ian’s.
these little piggies
koruna muse turned 2 last week.
i would have never guessed how much i could learn from a two year old. my time spent with runabird has taught me not only about the unfathomable depths of love, but also about myself, the world, human nature. i have never felt more challenged or more proud or more vulnerable.
these are big weeks for koruna – big weeks for us all. runa just moved into a big girl bed. she doesn’t really need diapers anymore. she understands that she has a brother on the way. and she’s losing her nanny.
my sister, whitney, has lived on our property for several years. trading nanny hours for rent, she has helped us take care of runa since she was just a few weeks old. this dreamy situation has enabled me to work from home while running my business.
tomorrow whitney moves. and everything changes.
my daughter has been forever imprinted by whitney’s daily influence. i reckon that means that a part of whitney will always live with us.
i’m nervous to see how i’ll now balance my career and my family life. how will i possibly find the time to do it all? how will i keep from going loco?
time will tell.
shana came over the other day and took our latest family portrait. it’s so nice to have a friend you can still play with. thanks, shana.
