Feliz Cumpleanos Bella Grace!

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Bella is six! Learning to read, write, loving pink and purple, wanting to be a Kindergarten teacher when she grows up, growing up, indeed, too quickly. Not a morning person, a gal after my own heart, but off to school each morning and home at noon. She is always happy and an expert skipper and such unadulterated joy! Still remembers some of her Espanol from last year and hoping she keeps it up, even tho there is no instruction at her school. Her classroom is like a revolving door with kids coming and going often, the nature of this rural community where parenting has become a lost art. And did I mention she snores? Loudly, like her adenoids need removing, again.
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Her room is a disaster with Barbies and impossibly small and yet painful-when-stepped-on-barefoot Polly Pocket shoes and assorted miniature accessories spread everywhere. I send her in to clean and she plays for hours with entropy as her constant companion. Her clothes spill out of her hand painted drawers in various half-open yawns, or are they half-shut? She could easily fill her own yurt with her Barbie and stuffed animal collections. And this is after we have downsized more than I care to remember. I vacillate between ranting and raving my threats to give them all away and my propensity to clutch the entire collection to my chest, remembering the Christmas when Hannah got that Scuba Barbie with the chattering dolphin sidekick and Christiana her dark-haired familiar with a trained but silent sea lion. Scuba Ken joined in on the bathtime fun at some point. And now they are all growed up and saving China. Christiana can scuba dive all by herself, just like her childhood doll with the built-in wetsuit. We still have the miniature mask and snorkel - how can I possibly part with the likes of these? Ouch.
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Bella loves to snuggle and finds her way to my leg or lap wherever I land. She began in the summer of aught three and swam across the bay with me before I fully realized she was on board. She grew in utero, slowly asserting her presence as we settled into our Portugal life at Casa Mocho (House of Owls), nourished by the olives and pomegranates we picked from the trees and the pain au chocolate and fresh blood orange juice from the Intermarche market where Andy and I struggled with the language and the metric system to order Jamon y Queso, um kilo media we gestured because we couldn't speak any fraction besides a half or a whole and coming home with 2.2 pounds of ham only happens once. Bella was rocked to sleep as we walked daily on the sunny Algarve beaches after tucking the other four kids in school, digging our toes into the ochre sand backed by impossibly orange hills while old men raked for coquinas and ameijoas and the fishing boats perched precariously on nearshore waves to capture sardinhas to be grilled on sidewalks. We inhaled the incense of ancient churches and admired the beauty of the flowering almond trees, learning their legend before Bella began her own storied life. Isaiah and I flew west with the night across the stormy Atlantic while a nor'easter raged around our fragile fuselage, threatening to birth us all in the tumultuous cold sea, but landing happily in the darkness.
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Bella tread water confidently while my aging body struggled to nourish us both and keep us whole as I lay in the hospital for a month. She gave the doctors two thumbs up six weeks early to get things started, then did a belly flip in labor, deciding for us both that cutting a new bikini line would be her preferred exit strategy. She was so tiny, like 2.5 kilos of jamon, but perfect and beautiful with her almond-shaped blue eyes. She was cold in that snowy week of Valentine's Day so I stuck her under my night gown and kept her there, skin to skin, radiating the heat from our hearts beating in unison down to her perfect toes and fingers - ten of each, count them, Mimi used to instruct - while we dreamed together and woke to feed each other. When she was warm and pink enough, first passport clutched in her tiny fist, we returned to Portugal in March before even her April due date and surprised the kids in one of the most glorious afternoons of our family history. Bella met her sisters who adored her and counted her perfection by tens and beyond while their combined tears of joy fell on her soft cheeks and her brother memorized her with amazement. The hoopoes cried their delight and the wildflowers bloomed in greater profusion to welcome our Bella to the orange blossom air of her new home, the smallest Mocho in the casa.
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She is a huge blessing, our Bella Grace, the final Willa award lost, the exclamation point at the end of our family!
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Mommy loves you and Daddy does too!
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K3

Feliz Cumpleanos Christiana!

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Well, a picture is worth a thousand words... Christiana turned 18 yesterday and I am happy to report that she did not exercise her new privileges by enlisting in the armed services nor by rushing off to Rays to buy cigarettes, porn, or lottery tickets at lunchtime. She went to school instead, both high school and community college, and last night she was feted at her final home basketball game. It was Salute to Seniors Night so all the seniors are traditionally introduced to center court with their families where they are showered with balloons and flowers and candy. Christiana was the final player introduced and her friend above - Mighty Maddie - led the crowd in a rousing round of singing the birthday song with each side alternately chanting boom, rah, after each line followed by Christiana shaking it to "cha, cha, cha." Ahh, the benefits of life in a small town. She handled herself admirably. If that had been my high school and my birthday and my town focused on me, me, me, I would not be here right now to write about it. I would have died a thousand deaths.
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So, my hat is off to Christiana! I learned in the handout they produced that Christiana's nicknames are Optimism Prime and Night Hawk and have not had a chance to probe any further on either of those. Her favorite foods are sushi, ice cream, and cheesecake, which we had after the game. If she was a music artist she would be Prince and her most prized possession are her rainbow suspenders she just got a Buffalo Exchange in Portland on Saturday where everyone had an armful of tatoos and a spandex jump suit with go-go boots - everyone but Bella, Xana, and I that is. She would like to visit Malaysia and Ethiopia and she loves grocery shopping. So, that gives you a starting point in case you were wondering what to get her...
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Christiana was my first but not last candidate in the delivery room for the name I still like - Willa. So I am giving her my own private Willa Award. When Andy prevailed by naming her Christiana after the town where we lived in Jamaica I figured she would have to become a pretty good speller and she has, never one for nicknames and not shy about saying so. Our friend Peter from JA said, upon hearing the news of her birth and her name, "But it is such an ugly lickle town." So I guess she has fared better than her namesake. She arrived at 420 in the a.m., not my favorite time of day, but we induced her so who knows what hour she might have chosen left to her own devices - Miss Night Hawk. She had threatened to be huge and at 8 lb. 12 oz. was the biggest baby I pushed out so hesitate to imagine the scenario if we had not forced her to join us two weeks early. Ouch.
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Xana was a colicky baby and cried for three months until we thought we would go deaf and mad, especially after her perfect sister who made us feel like we were A+ parents. After a rough first year of sleeping mostly in her battery operated swing - and yes, thankfully that flat spot on her head did fill in like the doctor promised - she became the happiest child and is still wearing her winning smile. The day she turned one she forsake all things baby and heaven forbid you gave her a baby spoon or plate or anything of the ilk because she was done. with. that.
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Xana is sporting a few battle scars from her journey thru childhood between chicken pox and stitches but has otherwise emerged on this end in fine form. She was always a keen observer with her big brown eyes and would gaze straight into your soul, as my mother often said. She could tune into people's emotions and was known to say what others were thinking. Back now where she began, she does not necessarily feel like an Oregonian. Although she does not mind the rain, still she craves the sun. She is currently committed to eating for her blood type and a stalwart example to those of us who fall short every morning first thing with our coffee AND cream, both of which are on the list of prohibited foods. Alas. So, might as well have another donut... She wants to go to Stanford! Pray for her. She will do just fine wherever she goes, no doubt. She has always marched right on up to the ice cream counter and ordered what she wanted and slowly I learned to trust her instincts even when she was only knee high and ordering bubble gum in neon pink with unwavering confidence because she would, indeed, eat it.
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Happy Birthday Christiana Elizabeth! You go, Optimism Prime... Mommy loves you.
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K3