Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.

Several years ago, when I was a regular livejournal post-a-saurus rex-er, I put together a list of 100 facts all about me, so people could learn more about me. The list was compiled for people who were both in my life in-person as well as people who were my intergalactic interwebs buddies. I had learned that people in both realms felt they didn't know a whole lot about me, so the list was compiled to provide a snapshot of sorts into various aspects of my existence. I think I'm going to do another revised/updated list here on my blogger for my readers, friends, family. Largely because I would like people to know more about me, and know that people don't necessarily know all that much about me...well, I guess the basics in regards to my persona. So yeah. Coming soon will be a 100facts post, providing some tidbits and insights into Karoline. Word.

There is vehemence in the aphonic.

Sometimes the words that matter, carry gravity or lackthereof depending on how you look at it, elude me. I allow myself to get mired in weaving words and language when all I need to do is utilize my powers of brevity.

I've recently found that while my linguistic skills are still somewhat muddled, I am able to get down to the roots, my roots, through painting. I am no aficionado, prodigy, or expert, and others who might ever have a chance to see my painterly side, will probably think it's total sh*t, but it's cathartic to me and I find beauty in my lack of skill.

My lack of language. My lack of training. My lack of expertise. Understanding and embracing the awkward of something new again. I haven't taken to canvas in years. I never felt my skills were good enough. I never felt good enough.

The messiness, the abstraction, layers slathered on, then peeled away. Imprints that are there if you look closely and not too critically. I've never considered myself an artist or artistic for that matter, but over the course of this extended roadtrip, I've found that maybe I can release some of what I want to say and scream onto a canvas. The canvas doesn't judge. It just is.

Painting my heart has been a release. A damn good one at that.

Homeslices III

i have a direct line to the Gods. dancing barefoot outside in the rain during monsoon season. electric rain bullets attacking, pounding down delicious ambrosia epiphanies into my otherwise starved body and brain. i have no abandon out here, splashing, shouting, laughing in the flooded streets. with the rain pulsing, pelting me, i believe i can accomplish anything. monsoon dancing stirs something from within my core. something more than the familiar numbness i’ve grown accustomed to feeling over the past several years. joy. ecstasy. empowerment. alive. i am ALIVE. then from out of the rain, you walked into my life. you are a vision. and you stir something from within my core. just like the Gods do, but really you are one of my Devils. only i don’t recognize it yet.

road trip is going well. haven't had a camera other than my phone, so i don't have many pictures, but i do have some to post.

it was soSOso good to see some of my favorite people in knoxville. then maggie and i headed to alabama to visit my oldest sister, barbara. we had such a great time there, neither one of us wanted to leave. i discovered that maggie truly is a waterbaby. not just bathtime. pooltime, too. we would have gone to the beaches there, but with the oil spill, that was a big fat no since the beaches were shut down. not so awesome. now we're in fayetteville, nc, visiting one of my best people, meka. while i may have not known her for very long before she left cleveland, we had a connection and what i would define as being an authentic friendship. our visit to her has only solidified my thoughts on our friendship and how blessed i am to have her in my life. heck, this whole trip thus far has clearly shown me how blessed i am to have such awesome people in my life who truly care about and respect me as much as i do them. they are all in my heart. and they are all in my family. tomorrow (well, later today) we are headed up to raleigh to visit dayna for the day before she jets off on her FREE TRIP to the cayman's until sunday. then we will get more dayna time on monday and tuesday before i meet john in virginia to do a maggie tradeoff so he can have some 1x1 time with our precious babe. i'll miss her so much, but i will admit i am looking forward to a little bit of downtime. she's a very busy baby, and a little break won't hurt me or her. this journey she and i have taken has been such a godsend. i have no other words.

i'll be checking in again soon. :)

Maggie and I are headed out on Turtle Road Trip 2010 in 4 days. Booyah! Is that how you spell that word? Boo Yah.

I'm excited. Nervous, and maybe a little sad to be going for so long. But excited nevertheless.

I've started compiling playlists for the road, and will hopefully have them all set by Wednesday. I'll hopefully have everything all packed up by Wednesday as well. I think the latter is a little bit of wishful thinking on my part, though.

Yeah, I'm excited.

MISSING

My oldest nephew's long-term partner and mother (I'll refer to her as H) to their 2 year-old baby boy was officially declared as missing this past week. She abandoned/deserted my nephew and their son shortly before Easter without saying why she was leaving or where she was going. She. Just. Left. No explanation. No nothing. No one seemed to take it seriously other than a handful of people including myself, and my nephew. Then a few weeks ago, H (or someone else acting as her) filed for joint custody of their child. She didn't show up to court. One of H's relatives heard from her on May 5, and H was in Baltimore, MD...that's pretty far away from northwestern, PA. No one has heard anything from her since then. And she certainly didn't show up to the courthouse last week for the custody hearing. Nothing.

There is a rumor circulating around, saying that H joined a fanatical cult - I am not going to name rumored cult. If she did join this cult, I wonder if she left on her own volition with all her faculties of mind and body, or was she heavily influenced/suggested to leave by one or some members, or was she taken by force. I don't know. I don't know if said rumor is true, nor do I know if it is untrue. Whichever way I look at it - independent desertion, kidnapping, cult, etc. - it's all horrible and wrong. I've been worried about H for several weeks now. I've also been worried about my nephew and their son. I've been trying to help my nephew by being available to him as well as helping with research on legal assistance, aid, and Pennsylvania's laws. I've offered to have him and his son to come stay with me here in Cleveland for awhile and have also offered to go to Penn to help them out. My nephew has declined this last offer of mine - at least so far. I hope he takes me up on helping him out some more, though. I can't even imagine what he's going through right now. What their son is going through.

And now H is officially declared as missing. It's about time.

This is some scary sh**. I'll keep on praying and meditating for my nephew, his son, and H. I hope she's okay. We are all worried and wish for her safe return. If you are of the praying and/or meditating sort, please add them to your thoughts and/or lists. We need all the help we can get.

I keep messing around with the templates on here. I'm not sure what I'm going to go with, but I am sure I will not be creating my own site from scratch anytime over the next year or three. I think the whole website launching thing is going to be thrown in my basket/list of goals that I would someday like to achieve, but are not of huge importance right now. I generally revisit those goals 1-2x a year just to see if any priorities have shifted, but as of right now - and for the past few years, and coming couple years - me launching my own website chock full of me putting some learned skills to use, is not a priority. In the meantime, maybe I'll just plug the domain name I own into this blog.

I've missed you, blog.

so much in the silence

I'm apparently going through a quiet phase. This has been going on for an undisclosed amount of time. As you can tell, it's been a fairly long phase, and I'm not sure how much longer it will go on.

I will say that it has been a difficult year in many aspects of my life. As time moves forward, I find I am gaining physical, mental, and emotional strength paired with a positive momentum, not to mention insight, education, creativity, understanding, compassion, and wisdom; Although I am not moving forward as quickly as time seems to be.

Maggie is amazing. I honestly don't know where I would be today, if not for my beautiful child. She is my heart. And for as long as I am around, I will strive to give her the best life possible within mine and what I consider to be my Greater Power.

I hope to begin posting more often on here. While facebook has its merits, it's not the same as my trusty blog.

2010

well hello there, 2010.

hopefully i will not neglect my blog as badly as i did in 2009.

hip, hip, hooray for hoping!

The wind is blowing...

has anyone seen any tumbleweeds around these parts?

I'm still alive!

Has it really been 3 months since my last post?! I guess life has certainly been a bit crazy and turned upside down and sideways, so posting has been on the bottom of priority list. Heck, I barely even check my Facebook anymore, if that tells you anything!

We are alive and well. Maggie is my little phenom.

I'll try to post something of more substance in the next couple weeks. Family and life takes priority of blogging for me right now. I know you all understand. :)

Two Months and Thensome

Maggie's two-month checkup was on Monday, April 27. It has officially been confirmed that not only do I have awesome baby-growing breastmilk, my baby is off the charts...literally. She has grown so much in just one month, it is almost unbelievable. She weighed in at 15 lbs. 8 oz., measured a whopping 24.75 inches, and her head circumference even gained some centimeters at 44 cm.

There have been some tough days over the past month...namely when John went to NYC for a manly men baseball trip, and then was supposed to head to Buenos Aires from there. During that time, Maggie either got sick (she was running a slight fever and not sleeping at all) or was in serious growth mode, leaving me with about two hours of sleep over a 4-5 day period. John made the decision to postpone the trip to BA since it wasn't critical, and now we are considering going down as a family sometime in the next month or so. We need to get Maggie's passport before any plans of us leaving the country really happens though. I'm also just really unsure about leaving the country already; well before she hits the 6 months old mark. I am thankful J opted to not postpone the trip and has even volunteered to take baby duty for several nights since he's been back from NYC. Not many dads volunteer themselves for that duty, and I definitely do not take it for granted.

Motherhood thus far has been such an incredible period of adjustment. Margaret is a really easygoing, mellow baby, which is why it completely freaked me out when she was seemingly so ill a couple weeks ago. And which is also why it stresses me out so much when she gets fuss budgety or has a serious crying jag. Margaret is just so amazing to me, and as each day passes I see her little personality starting to come out and her physical appearance morphing from that somewhat stock newborn look, to more of an individual, I'm my own baby, look.

Maggie started sleeping in her crib last week and has successfully slept through the night for a grand total of five nights now. Can you believe it? This recent development has surprised me being that she is only 10 weeks old, oves sleeping with her mama and/or in the bassinet next to the bed, but with her getting to be so long, the bassinet was really no longer an option. She's just a bundle of surprises. I've been told her all night sleeping jags are going to change back to getting up every few hours once she starts teething, but I'll definitely take the 6-8 hour stretches of sleep she is granting me and John. My sleep schedule is still totally out of whack, but it is nice to have a couple hours of calm for myself to catch up on household things, read a book, or hang out with John before I am able to crash myself.

Margaret smiles all the time, speaks and holds baby cooing conversations with me throughout the day, she can gaze at faces in mirrors for long periods of time and gets very excited about it, loves being read to, and absolutely loves Beethoven - dancing to it and just listening to the music. She is so curious about everything and I often worry I am overstimulating her, but I think she lets me know by getting fussy if certain activities become too much. Margaret recently discovered her hands and has since been putting her little baby fists into her mouth and sucking on them every chance she gets, which makes for a very drooly baby. :) She's also a very active and social baby, which is good to see, and is also interesting because I just knew she would be active while I was carrying her. And the most recent accomplishment is that she rolled about halfway over last week, but hasn't done it again since then, so I'm thinking it was a fluke, but who knows...as I said before, Maggie is just a bundle of surprises.

As I kind of talked about already, we have had some stumbling blocks, but nothing major. There was the mystery bout of sickness and/or growth a couple weeks ago that I already mentioned and a couple other somewhat minor things. We've found out that Maggie definitely has her dad's sensitive skin, with a couple pretty serious cases of diaper rash she's gotten even though we are vigilant about changing her and keeping her bottom dry. It can be so painful and my heart hurts when I think about it. Then there is the fact that Maggie abolutely abhors tummytime. I've tried it with her several times over the past two months, to no avail. She is having none of it. It makes her unbelievably cranky and hysterical. We've tried tummytime on the floor, on the couch, on her gym mat, and in her crib. Still not having any of it. The only other stumbling block we've really had to deal with is when Maggie gets herself all worked up over not getting fed fast enough...that's where the highly active baby thing becomes a curse. She will squirm and wiggle to the point where I can barely keep her both in my arms and on the Boppy to feed. Then she will also start smacking her face and pulling on it so aggressively I get scared she's going to hurt herself. Luckily these events are few and far between, but can definitely take their toll on my heart.

I'm just amazed at what an awesome baby I was blessed with. This is one journey I never really knew I'd be able to make, but I am glad it worked out that I am able to do this. Being a mom to Miss Margaret is everything I hoped it would be. At least so far. ;)

Have I mentioned

that I can't wait to get the For Sale sign in the front yard? No? Well, I can't wait. I'm especially agitated with the state of the house today. Probably due to the apocalyptic rainfall which means the house probably sprung another leak somewhere. Or maybe it's being confined to one main living space with baby, kitty, and mommy to cavort. One main living space with hardwood floors and mommy's sciatic nerve flaring up, so not much fun to be had on the floor. And man, that cat is driving me berserk today. Quarters are too close. I sure do hope this house sells within a year. For the sake of not only my sanity, but for J, Maggie, and Lucy. Because living with me when I am like this sure can be challenging.

Speed Racer

I got my first ever speeding ticket tonight. I was by myself, luckily, but I still feel like such an idiot. I'll probably be beating myself up about this for the next several weeks...if not months. *sigh*

Yet another reason I can't wait to move within the next two years...

I haven't posted a super venty (not to be confused with venti chai tea from the sbux) blog lately, and today seems to be the opportune time to do so...So I was poking around online earlier today and found that somehow our address was reported in some 2008 report the city of Blankity-Blank-Blank Blanks posted online. This mysterious report listed a number of people who were fined for having "noxious weeds affecting the public safety, health, and welfare." Say whaaaa?!?! This is the FIRST I had heard of this. The report contains statements saying individulas listed were given notice to rid the property of said weeds prior to being fined. I'm sorry, we were never notified. EVER. I'm militant about taking care of things and keeping current/abreast of bills, mail, you name it, so I know this is true. We NEVER got a prior notification. I looked and haven't been able to find anything in our files about notifications regarding noxious weeds.

The only thing I can think of is when we were out of the country for several weeks last spring and upon our return we received some mysterious fine from the city via USPS for them supposedly doing some grass cutting. No one from the city had actually cut our grass and we received no prior notification. Just a fine with no details. We refused to pay the fine when no one at city hall could tell us what exactly it was for, who cut the grass, and why. The whole idea of being fined is/was totally ridiculous because we had already paid someone to mow the lawn and care for our kitty while we were gone and it was done, so it couldn't have been that.

We have a huge property - an acre and a half - and I haven't seen any noxious weeds on it since I moved in, so I was thinking maybe the city was trying to stick us with a bill for the ravine on the lot next to ours, but is certainly NOT OUR PROPERTY. Then when J went to pay the property taxes last year, again there was nothing said or written about the mysterious fine by the city. We thought it was gone since there was no actualy proof of anything when J called to inquire about it, it was resolved, and we didn't have to pay, aaaand we didn't receive anything else in the mail regarding the mysterious grass cutting caper. Now I see this report online. What the heck?! This really chaps my hide. I just emailed J about it, but don't expect much in return for the next several days since he is out of the country until the end of April.

I tried to like this suburb of Cleveland, this house, and this neighborhood since I moved in with J, but it just hasn't worked out that way. The people are rude (i.e. If I wave to you, you should wave back. Or if I say hello, maybe you should as well.), or the people are a lot older than we are with no kids or their kids are all grown up, there aren't any sidewalks, people drive down the road like bats out of hell, somehow garbage ends up strewn on our lawn at the end of our property line bordering the street at least once a week, and I plain don't like living in a house I had no choice in choosing...just to name a few reasons why I don't like it.

I've wanted to move to a different area/suburb that better fits our needs for quite some time now, and just recently got J to commit to moving the family out of this fixer house from his previous marriage to a new house within the next two years. We are going to make the necessary renovations and then hopefully sell the house even stevens. I tried, I really tried, but it just isn't going to work out. It really is/was a little too much baggage for me to handle. Then reading that report today just added fuel to the fire. UGH.

Big Baby

It's official. As of last week, Maggie has outgrown all of her 0-3 months clothes. She's not even two months old yet! That is one big baby!

One Month Stats

With my computer deciding to go up sh** creek without a paddle a few weeks ago, I was unable to post the CRAZY stats my daughter had during her one month checkup at the pediatrician.

Well, I think they are crazy stats, especially considering that I had to box up Margaret's 0-3 month clothes today. Seeing as how she has outgrown all of them. That's right. I did not stutter. The 0-3 month clothes are out and the 3-6 month clothes are in...And I probably should have boxed her small clothes up a week or two ago, but alas, I was holding on to the fact that she is just so young still! I mean, barely a month old and outgrowing your 0-3 month clothes...NOOOO! NOT YET!

One month checkup stats: Weight: 12 pounds even. Height: 22 1/2 inches long.

That's one big baby!

Computer Woes

Two weeks with no computer. TWO WEEKS. Talk about unplugging.

Well now that my new laptop is theoretically fixed, I'm hoping I'll be able to pop online a little more often...especially now that Margaret is getting older and is supposedly going to start sleeping more often and regularly.

This whole experience of my new laptop going on the fritz has been quite frustrating. Considering my old laptop was almost three years old before it started dawdling and acting up. My new laptop had problems from the get-go. I got it in December and had issues from Day 1. This last time it decided to crap out on me was the third time Dell had to be called in to intervene. John got a service tech to come out and fix it - apparently my motherboard was fried for some reason - which is beyond me considering I hadn't installed anything on the new laptop other than Office.

If this thing keeps acting up, I'll do as John suggested and just get a Powebook next time I need a laptop. I know John has had minimal problems with his, and that seems to be the consensus with everyone else I know who had/has one.

Needless to say I'm glad to have a fast-functioning computer.

The Stroke

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of my mom's horribly debilitating stroke. I just want to say that I am so happy she survived and is still alive and kicking. I hope she continues the good fight and will be around for many more years to come. I love you, Mom.

The Baby Arrived!!!

I've been so lax in posting since I had the baby. But she did finally arrive! After 20 hours of labor, then having to have an emergency c-section, she joined the ranks of the Swanson-Headlee household. Hooray! She was a surprising baby, and I even ended up naming her something different than I had initially anticipated. And while I don't plan on having any more babies, if I do end up with another little girl somehow, I still have another name at the ready...

Margaret Elizabeth was born on February 18, 2009 at 251PM. She weighed in at 9lbs., 5oz., and was 21.25inches long. Her head measured at 40cm. Her ranks were as follows: Weight: 90%ile, Length: 97%ile, and Head Circumference: 99%ile.

I just knew she would have a fairly large head based upon both mine and John's noggins. I also knew she was going to weigh more than the 6.5-7.5 pounds my OB projected. Yep. I was right in both respects...and that makes me feel good because even though I've had a severe case of placenta brain since becoming pregnant, my intuition didn't completely suffer.