I love Sunday afternoons when the sun is shining and there's no deadline over my head. LOVE them.

Leftover observations from our weekend in the mountains, and a few new ones from the week:

1. I have spent the past year focused on my child, and in a few months I will have another life who will need my attention as well. I've gotten much better about not focusing on the baby to the exclusion of all else, but my world at the moment is still pretty small. On one hand, I understood last weekend for the first time that this is not a problem to be solved. I am not going to learn how to think less about my children; this is who I am as a mother, and from now on, I will always be a mother. On the other hand, my wise friend Halle gave me some good advice. She said to make time to do the things you love now, when they are babies. If you don't, she says, you will forget what it is you used to love before you had children. You will lose your identity as an individual, and see yourself only as a mother. Good point. So I'm working on that. I need a spiritual outlet and an intellectual outlet of some kind, and I have ideas for both. I'll let you know how it turns out. But I see now that a. I am going to be focused on my children because that's part of who I am as a mother, and b. being a mother is not all that I am.

2. And just like that, fear over the viability of this pregnancy has crept back in. I have been fine for weeks, feeling the baby move, thinking of nursery colors and names. And out of nowhere I'm watching for blood and assuming the worst. Maybe this is true for everyone - once your trust has been broken, part of you always waits for the other shoe to drop. I no longer trust my body to do what it should during pregnancy. The strange thing is how that messes with my mind. I start to question decisions, question relationships, when I know better, when my life is not typically characterized by insecurity. Anyone have any guesses as to why that happens? I would love to hear them.

3. Kiwords has the funniest line in a recent post about Martha Stewart referring to HER crevice cleaner attachment for a vacuum cleaner. She says how, in all the years she's used that vacuum, she's never thought of it as HER vacuum. It's been THE vacuum, not HERS. Yes and amen. It's not MY kitchen, it's not MY washing machine, it's not MY vacuum - though I may use them the most often, I am not the exclusive owner of them. Anyone who wants to vacuum the floors currently owned by the mortgage company but used and, well, mortgaged by us is more than welcome to do so.

4. So here's something interesting: Laurie is going to China for work and is going to meet up with Elizabeth in Hong Kong this week. Laurie and Elizabeth are among my favorite people, but they have never met and have very different lives (though they are not as opposite as it might appear). Laurie and Elizabeth having coffee (or tea, as it were) in Hong Kong and I'm going to miss it. Sad.

That's all I have for now. I hope there's sunshine on your Sunday afternoon too.