The Month in Moments: March

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March was a keeper. Looking forward to an April that keeps on.
GGC

Beautiful Blogging: Amanda Magee

image credit: Amanda Magee

If I could link to all of Amanda Magee's posts, I would. She is incredible. Her writing, her insight, her storytelling and realness... her words are some of the best this space has to offer. Today I'm linking to two posts, in particular.  The first one is about marriage, which struck me over the head, specifically this passage:

It astounds me that in nearly ten years of parenting and eleven years of marriage I’ve received more advice on child-rearing than I could ever hope to put into use and only one piece of marriage advice. We’ve done the raising of our girls on instinct and memory, tossing in the odd piece of wisdom we’ve heard. Marriage? That’s the big secret, you only hear about it when people are splitting up. Do we only care about people’s children? Or is it really that we have to have people think we know exactly how to do everything with kids? That single piece of advice I got on marriage? I was nursing Briar in a chair beneath a sun-drenched window on the eastern side of our house. She was 4 days old. My mom set a sandwich on the arm of the chair, stroked Briar’s head and whispered with her lips touching my ear, “You leave something for Sean. Promise me that you’ll leave something for him.”  I nodded absent-mindedly. She walked away nodding almost as if she had accomplished the whole purpose of the trip in those two sentences

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Leave something for him. 

It is so hard for me to remember that. Hal and I met ten years ago this week. Months later we were pregnant. We stayed together for our son. We stayed together for our family. It was never about the two of us and that has been a huge challenge in our marriage. I don't know how to be a wife without being a mother, too, because I was never one without the other.

Leave something for him.

Yes.

Thank you, Amanda/Amanda's mom. 

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And this. Oh my heart, yes:

Pushing off the chair, we headed for the trail and I felt the understanding sink in—our stories are changing, just as teeth are being lost and crushes are being lit, the rhythm of how we sway in the wake of our own momentum is new. Briar and I have talks at bedtime, the lights turned out, her sisters tucked away in their own room, we conspire—to learn, to laugh, and to begin the startling and exquisite journey to a place where the way she needs me is different, less predictable.

The times when all three girls are in agreement seem less, yet they have certain things that fuse them together. I am devouring all of it, while realizing that there are shadows cropping up, plumes of warning.

I cannot share every story and I cannot be present for every moment. We were supposed to get to this moment, despite the lump in my throat, at their ascent and my own racing heart; this is good. My clench is slowing to a pulse, allowing me moments of letting go- 

“Sure, you can take a run without us, but please stay together,” I call to them as they disappear into the blur of neon ski coats, the other words about being super careful and not crashing into a tree fade at the back of my throat. They are letting go too.

Thank you for your words, Amanda. Your posts are a gift. 

GGC

Places to Go: Natural History Museum

The last time we went to the Natural History Museum, Fable was Bo and Revi's age which is insane. There is absolutely no excuse for us to have waited three entire years to go back to a place that used to be one of our favorites. (We got a membership this time around so we'll be back. A lot. Also, we now have memberships to every single place that exists in LA. WE ARE MEMBERS OF EVERYWHERE! WE ARE THE MEMBERIST.)

Anyway. It just so happened that on Saturday, we set our record for longest-time-in-one-place-without-meltdown-until-we-were-leavinge-because-Bo-and-and-Revi-did-not-want-to-go-home-even-though-the-museum-was-closing. SEVEN HOURS. (We usually spend about three hours out on adventures because... well... everyone melts down.) Not this time! We teetered close several times but then someone would became distracted/suddenly interested in a microscope/newt/ touch-screen that made animal sounds and RECOVERY!

We skipped naps.

We left the stroller in the car.

And the Ergo.

It was just the six of us and one purse with a few diapers and a few bags of almonds and a water bottle and that was it. Minimal supplies, fingers crossed, we'll see how this goes.

And it went. We had a sit down lunch at a restaurant wherein we all ate our lunches with only MINOR drama. (We bought strawberries to go with lunch and the kids wanted grapes instead HOW COULD YOU WITH THE STRAWBERRIES, YOU ARE THE WORST!)

The Natural History Museum has done incredible things these last few years, including creating several new outdoor spaces where the kids spent half the time running and rolling down hills and hiding in huts and crawling through little passageways...

The new Nature Lab is EPIC and beautiful and incredibly interactive and we spent HOURS in that mother. Ironically, the kids (and Hal) were most impressed with the rat habitat: 

Pretty amazing going back to a place that used to be a monthly destination only to find that everything has changed. Sometimes that feels sad to me but this time it was the opposite of sad. It was exciting and wonderful and kind of the best.

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For more on The Natural History Museum including current and future exhibits, go here.  The Butterfly Pavilion opens on April 13th and runs through the 1st of September which I cannot wait for. (We are currently sheltering a caterpillar/butterfly named "Nut" at our house so we're incredibly invested in this butterfly business at the moment.) See you there, maybe?

GGC