"and now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been" {rilke}

i'm writing this a bit early, since right now we're in that about-to-move but not-moved-yet limbo. and tomorrow i've got lots of loose ends to tie up, then thursday my mom is coming in town to help us out (yay! my mom is wonderful!), then friday we're packing up the truck and saturday we're moving! a new town for a new year!

so!
of last year's resolutions, i completed three of the five (grew my hair out again, didn't gain a mess of weight whilst pregnant and kept trying at getting my book out). not too bad. i lost my passionate-obsession with virginia woolf, so i don't think i'll try to finish all of her novels, not this year anyway, when my reading time will be curtailed by being a wife/mommy/teacher. i made some resolutions earlier this year before zu was born and they're way intense. i think i'm going to not be quite so tough on myself and make some easier-kept, quantifiable resolutions instead:

:resolutions:

1. finish reading through the entire Bible (currently in Nehemiah)

2. lose the baby weight by the 9month-post-partum mark

3. submit my work to at least 10 magazines this year

4. send my book out to 3 publishers

5. save up enough money to take a really awesome 5 year anniversary vacation in august!

 ~

of course there's lots more that i want to do--find a nice rental house, decorate and settle us in, revise my syllabi over the summer, take a fiction class, take zu to see rock city....but i know this first year of teaching is going to be very difficult, especially since i don't have much experience and i have Zero time to prepare, so i'm not going to push myself particularly hard this year. 5 things is enough.

cheesy chicken n rice

Ingredients:
1/2 cup milk
2 cans cream of chicken soup (or cream of broccoli or cream of potato)
a bit of chopped onion
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 cups shredded cheese
4 shredded and cooked chicken fillets
1 tbs butter
cooked white rice

Directions:
mix milk, soup, onion, salt, pepper, cheese, butter and chicken in a bowl. pour in a 9x5 pan and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 5 to 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted. pour over a cup of cooked white rice and enjoy~

____

i've been getting creative with whatever is left in our pantry so as to use up the rest of our food before the move (thanks to supercook.com!) i've almost used everything. and this has been the best random-pantry-ingredients recipe so far

what kind of professor am i going to be?

the i

For a personal poem written in the first person to be good the poet must work against the dangerous tendencies of the “I”—self-congratulation, solipsism, untransformed confession.  To the extent the poet believes that the experience rendered in the poem is peculiar to him/herself, the poem will be tainted with narcissism.  Details often will be chosen because they “happened,” rather than because they arise out of the imperatives of the material.  This is to say that the good personal poem is to some degree always fictive.

            The not so good personal poem makes us feel uncomfortable the way the problems of strangers do.  We’re not quite sure why they’re telling us what they’re telling us.  At best, the problem is interesting, but we feel more like voyeurs than listeners who have some stake in what we’re being told.

Stephen Dunn

{preparing for class, i came across some old articles from my first creative writing and poetry classes. interesting stuff. a lot of which i'd forgotten about. all and all, a good read}

y'all i need a haircut

so maybe one of these?

~~ {A} ~~

 so Zooey, my favorite manic pixie dream girl. i always come back to her when i think about getting a new style, she has what i think is pretty much the perfect look. i love her color, style, etc. (girl crush).

(btw, isn't that an interesting archetype? i think i almost always love every movie with one of those type girls. and most young people like me are attracted to that in a story too. maybe its that we're a generation of idealistic dreamers? i'd love to research the psychology behind that, one day)

so this, minus the darkness (i'd stay red) ? or

~~{B}~~

 a little longer, shaggier, with side swept bangs?

or...

~~{C}~~

 

  shorter with side swept bangs?

i dunno. i'd like something a little more Styled looking (and less scraggly wildness). and i haven't cut my hair in 6months. again. ahhhh things just get away from me.

ok so, which one? opinions?

Zuzu at 3 months

is sprawled across my stomach sleeping hard. babygirl has not let me put her down for a nap since daddy left for work at 2:30. typically i'd work a little harder to get her to go down in her crib for a nap, but since we've had such a hectic week, i figure she must need the extra cuddle time.

so, three month old zuzu is just as much a doll as ever. she's a flirt! all during our travels (except towards the tail-end--unfortunately her aunt heather only got to see her at her most tired and fussy!) she smiles and coos and hams it up with whoever looks her way. what a charmer, i love it.

she's mastered grabbing hold of stuff. she can hold a rattle for a little bit (until she loses interest) but mostly likes to grab at burp clothes, blankies, headbands. she can barely wear headbands because she immediately grabs them and pulls them over her eyes or in her mouth.

and, already, nearly everything goes in her mouth! whenever we give her our finger to hold she immediately tries to put it in her mouth, ha! and her licking problem still prevails--watch out if your bare arm is within licking distance when you hold her.

her neck control is really good; i think she's probably ready for her bumbo seat, but i'm going to hold off another week or two, just to make sure (i don't want her to strain a muscle). i'm excited  for her to be able to hold her head up on her own enough to sit in it though--she loves it when we hold her up like that, i think she likes to be part of things.

we're still cloth diapering. i'm thinking of maybe switching to disposables for overnight, since the cloth diapers sometimes leak when she sleeps 8 or 9 hours, and i don't want to wake her up to change her in the night, you know. using them during the day still works great though. and i've yet had to buy diapers, even once, thanks to some generous friends and churchmembers.

the past few weeks she's really gotten good at self-soothing. saying adios to the pacy and loving her thumb (now that she can suck on just her thumb, not her entire hand). this has really helped her daytime naps; she can go down for a nap now without having to be wrestled to sleep (seriously, kicking and squirming and fighting it as much as possible! silly girl!). we'll put her in her crib when she's fussing and let her fuss for a few minutes til she drifts off (only for fussy complainy crying not serious crying; you'd have to hear the two to know the difference, but there is Definitely a huge difference!)

her night time sleeping has been as good as it always was--thankfully the traveling didn't throw her off once we got her home. it changed a little though--instead of going down around seven or eight and waking up at four a.m., she goes down around ten or eleven and wakes up around eight or nine a.m. i prefer this schedule anyway, it feels like more sleep!

she's started doing these leg/body slams in her crib sometimes; we first noticed them when we were on vacation, she was in her crib and we heard Whomp, Whomp, Whomp--she was lifting her legs straight up then slamming them down on the crib! it was supercute.

another new thing we noticed on vacation--the first time that i ever saw her get genuinely scared! i sneezed and it must've startled her but she just burst out crying so so loud! and this week we found out that she's also scared of packing tape (the noise it makes when taping up a box). poor little dear! she screams so loud and i pick her up to cuddle her and comfort her and she has these shuddery little sobs, they are the epitome of sadness.

well, thats it for zuzu updates, not much else new that i can think of. her ninna, papi and uncle blake are coming in town tomorrow for christmas celebrations. my decorating has been dismal--a single ornament hanging from our ceiling fan pull. i guess that is almost worse than not decorating at all. luckily little zu won't remember things this year, and next year i will go all out, promise!

sleep baby zuzu with your cuteface on

Zuzu slept 9 hours (and counting!?) last night. i of course have been checking to make sure that she's still breathing every 15 minutes since i woke up at 7 and wondered why i had been sleeping so long, since my baby typically is up at 5AM, ready for her ba-ba and some quality time on the playmat with her best friend, Mr. Pooh Bear.

and, naturally, the one night that i could've slept so soundly and so long, i woke up at 3AM with torrential fear&self-doubt. and then had a nightmare about how i don't have a phd in literary criticism (i don't) which made me useless to the world. then again, i've never thought mfas were Useful, in the typical, pay-the-bills sense.

bryan keeps telling me "i believe in you, i always have" which is both applicable to the situation and a quote from our much-loved live-action The Tick sitcom (canceled after...5 episodes?).

well, the car is packed, the ba-bas are premade and stored in icey-coldness, and we're heading out right after church.

praying for...
safe (and sane) travels with baby Zu, guidance in any decisions that might have to be made, and for courage, heaps and heaps of courage.

i'm here with my hands on my heart

a rainy day indoors with my husband & my baby. it barely feels like december, despite the drear & cold. and you'd be hard pressed to find the smallest sign of christmas here. in a week, our lives could, out of the blue, change forever; so i've had my mind on other things. i feel ready. for whichever way it might go: a sudden and completely different way of things, or the quiet everydayness thats grown familiar. we're praying over it every night. i'm studying every day. and we hold our breath for one last week...

the cows are lowing and there is frost on the ground

november was a blur--florida and thanksgiving and a wedding! so much traveling. so of course i vow to come home and never.travel.again. and now we have a trip planned for a little more than a week from now (a short trip though). i've got an interview. what can i say? it wasn't something i was looking for. but much more on that much later. probably after its all over. in the meantime, i've been hitting the books. luckily i'd already been doing some research on lineation in free verse poetry on the side, for fun, since zuzu was born (yes, i am a nerd) so that is what i'll talk about. at first i was daunted but then, as i researched and lesson-planned, i remembered that i Do really love doing this. that its my dream-job for a reason! i suppose its just the possibility of all that change (again) so soon (january?) that i'm a little wary of, if it happens. and thats a big IF. at least i can't say that 2011 lacked adventure.