I've been so negative lately. Not lately. But for a long time before lately.

I know why and it is, upon reflection, totally understandable, but I need to stop now.

Yubo and I had a conference with C's teacher last week to discuss some behavior that she observed. C is a very well-behaved child with some very intense emotions and, for awhile, I have been feeling more and more ill-equipped to deal with his behavior when he's upset. C's teacher is an amazing, intuitive, gentle woman and I like and trust her very, very much. But when it came down to it, her advice had the distinct air of "it's not him, it's you." That stung and was hard to take at first, but eventually I realized that even if she couldn't possibly know everything, that didn't mean she wasn't right, at least in good part. She gave us a list of suggestions - really concrete, helpful things - and that helped me to feel like it really was possible to change my attitude. To stop, be more detached from his negative behavior, not get wrapped up in it, be happy, let go, move on.

So that's what I've been trying to do. And it's really helping.

It's still hard, and I still get angry and feel really negative sometimes, but this relatively minor attitude adjustment has opened a window for me into how huge and oppressive the storm cloud hovering over me has been.

I'm very affectionate with my children; it's just how I am and I couldn't really imagine being otherwise, but still I think I haven't really been enjoying my children as much as I'd like to and that makes me feel pretty sad. I've been so wrapped up in just surviving each day and then the next and then the one after that, maybe until the weekend when Yubo's here to help carry the weight and then there's Monday again. So my focus is on keeping the day going - bathroom, breakfast, dress, brush teeth, shoes, school, lunch, pickup, bathroom, nap, and so on. I don't stop very much and just take it all in.

K doesn't usually take a morning nap anymore and even when he wants to, I try to keep him up otherwise he won't take his afternoon nap, which means I don't get my scheduled break from the kids. That break has been my lifeline, my deep inhale. For so long the burden has felt so heavy; I nearly felt crushed.

But today, K was tired and actually asked for "nigh nigh," which he never does anymore ("NO nigh nigh!" is the common refrain around here lately) so we climbed into my big bed together and he curled up on my pillow with his silky in one hand and his mouth wrapped around the thumb of his other and fell asleep. And I'm sitting here, not running around trying to clean the house (though, admittedly, I am blogging), but I'm watching him sleep, something I haven't done for so long. He is so beautiful when he sleeps. Being two, he so is nearly always on the move and I'm not used to seeing him so still. He has these long, elegant fingers and his upper lip has the most perfect curve and his eyelashes are like two miles long.

I don't want to be negative anymore. I don't want to lose sight of how spectacular my children are, how kind and empathetic and gentle and silly. How well-behaved and bright and curious they are. How they are mine to love and raise and slowly let go into the big world. How incredibly blessed I am to be their mother.

These are on my legs right now. They're a little like a crazy tattoo, but so, so pretty. I love them. I think Yubo will think I've lost my mind. Or he'll smile that smile he smiles when I do something he thinks of as "very Nina."

I don't think I'm a very good blogger. I mean, I guess, that I'm not a very consistent blogger and that I'm not a very good blogger because I am inconsistent. And fickle. And impulsive. All my "worst" qualities come out in full force in my blogger-identity (as if there isn't anything so ridiculous as having a blogger-identity). I want to have a blog that is specific and focused and pretty and lovely and all good things, but I'm a comulsive over-sharer but also very, very self-conscious about every incident in which I make myself to vulnerable to people. It's a very odd and inconvenient character combination.

I guess I don't really know what kind of blog I want to have and lately (like, this week?) it makes me feel like I'd rather not have a blog at all. Which is maybe a bit silly, but true nonetheless.

The only problem is that I like writing and I've gotten so used to writing in blogs that writing in my journal seems quaint and awkward, like writing in cursive. I don't know how to write anymore when I know that nobody will read it.

I have been blogging for almost ten years. In the beginning, nobody really read my blog so it wasn't a huge deal and I wrote a lot for myself. And there was a nice big break somewhere in there where I didn't blog at all and journaled a lot. I look back at those journals and my writing isn't very good, but it felt somehow more filling, more satisfying, more soul-sustaining.

Maybe grad school will satisfy my writing itch and this will all be moot.

This past weekend a friend pointed out that I'm 3 months from twenty eight. My highschool girlfriends seem rather perturbed at how quickly we are inching toward thirty, but to me, thirty is like a beacon of hope. I can already feel it, the closer I get to thirty, the more I feel like I'm getting to be that person I've wanted to be for so long. I know I'll always be on the shy side, the person who takes awhile to warm up. I know I'll always be self-conscious, that I'll always replay conversations in my head a couple dozen times, that I'll always care too much what people think of me. But I think that I'm getting better. And somehow I feel like being in my thirties will equate with being more comfortable in my own skin.

I hope so.

I want to embrace the parts of myself I like, and be proud of it and not engage in this sort of dance of public self-flaggelation in order to make people like me more. (And the accompanying internal torture I put myself through when I feel I haven't come off as modest or self-deprecating or, you know, the unassuming, but charming drone-girl/child I'm supposed to be.) I want to work on fixing the parts of myself I don't like so much, but not fixate on them and spend so much of my thought-energy on beating myself up over them.

And with that, I'll stop for now because the clock has struck midnight and I have the distinct feeling that I'm standing in a ballroom with my dress in tatters.

I'm not generally a fan of plastic shoes (or plastic period), but I'm kind of loving this upcoming (January 2011) Moschino and Kartell collaboration. I'm a sucker for a pretty ballet flat and I love the cutouts created from the interwoven plastic juxtaposed with the sweet offset bow.

Simple black and white?

Or something a little bit more colorful...

I'm totally salivating.

via Good Bones, Great Pieces

Creamy-colored, Schoolgirl-pretty Peter Pan collars (from Urban)

Yubo bought me a six pack of cheap beer last night for me to feed the snails that are attacking the roses. I feel sort of sad to kill them. Ever since I heard about the Buddhist monks who try not to step on ants, I've tried really hard not to kill insects. Yes, I see the irony of this situation considering I eat meat. (I tried to be a vegetarian, but I couldn't. I'm Korean.) Anyway, I'm killing the slugs. And I feel bad about it. But they're attacking my roses and I don't like that. Also, bugs have been biting me a lot ever since I started getting into gardening (and thus spending time outdoors) and so whatever remorse I feel about killing bugs is slightly lessened when ever I look at the bite scars currently marring my stomach.

Supposedly, Yubo and a friend of ours are going to build me a raised bed this weekend. I'm excited.

My strawberry plants are sending out runners and I'm not sure what to do about them since I have my strawberry plants in relatively small containers. I never knew that strawberries did this. It's fascinating. There's so much to learn about every single plant. It's kind of overwhelming. And fascinating!

My mother recently bought me this beautiful straw hat from J.Crew (it's sold out now), which I've been wearing while gardening.

Yubo wants a gardening hat too now, but it's hard to find something manly and wide-brimmed and not cowboy.

I've always wanted an herb garden, but now that I have one, I'm barely using it. I made some pesto last week, but that's about it. I've been cooking pretty basic meals lately - I think all my creative energy is going into the garden and I don't feel up to cooking more elaborate dishes which require more than looking at the fridge and thinking, "What do we have? What can I make from this?"

Also, what to do with mint? I have friends coming over next weekend and I thought I'd make something with melted chocolate and mint leaves, but other than that and mint julep, I'm coming up empty.

My thyme plants are going to flower.

I really, really like gardening. I'm kind of impulsive and I tend to dive into things only to get overwhelmed because I take on too much at once. But because this isn't my yard, I'm forced to take things slow, do things in small steps. A few containers here, the roses in the front, trimming back some overgrown bushes, a tomato plant. There's SO MUCH I want to do, but only so much I can do. It's challenging, but manageable.

A friend of mine came over about a month ago and suggested I try pruning the roses in my front yard. After the first spring bloom, the roses in my yard stopped blooming altogether and looked very gangly and not anything like the colorful bushes in my neighbors' yards. I've never really done any gardening before and my knowledge about roses consisted of pretty much this: ooooh, looks pretty. mmm, smells good. ouch, those are sharp little suckers! But after a quick lesson from my friend, I started hacking away at my dozen rose bushes. So far I've had a couple new blooms come up in some of the bushes, but one of them has done really well and these roses are all from that one bush.

It's so satisfying to pick your own flowers and know that you had a hand in helping them grow, and it makes me so happy to look over at them sitting on my desk.

Reading these old books is sort of like falling back - just a little bit - into that person I was so long ago. I can remember what it felt like to read that Beth really, really did die or to walk through that wonderous moment when Mary Lennox discovers the secret garden for the first time. I have kept these books with me all these years and have re-read them again and again and again. They are a part of who I am. They are like old friends.

But I'd almost forgotten about a beloved set of books I'd read obssessively as a girl. I suppose I'd forgotten them because I was perhaps a tiny bit embarrassed about them. I used to sneak them around the house and read them when my mother was at work. She loved that I was a reader, but she didn't approve of these particular books. They were trashy, she said. Stick to the classics, she advised.

These blacklisted books were, of course, The Baby-sitters Club books. I say of course because nearly every girl that grew up in the 80s and early 90s at least knew about these books. Boys read Goosebumps and girls read The Baby-sitters Club - it was as simple as that. I rediscovered them recently at dooce, of all places, and ever since reading that post I haven't been able to get those books out of my head.

Luckily, we are now living in a world where Xerox machines aren't the fanciest bits of technology around and we have this awesome thing called Amazon where you can buy pretty much any book ever printed while still in your pajamas drinking a glass of wine. Yay! I was able to order the original edition (because the newer ones are just not the same, duh) of the first book and the moment it came in the mail on Wednesday I flashed back to 1989 (are thereabouts) and haven't left since. On Thursday I went and checked out every Baby-sitters Club book they had (they only had FIVE, jeez). So really, my mind is all filled up with stirrup leggings, silver lame headbands and a time when boys were like aliens and babies were people I could play with for a few hours and then go home and take a nap. It's kind of awesome.

image credit: Jean Carneiro via sxc.hu

There weren't any peacocks in our neighborhood (we weren't that cool), but I remember visiting friends and being enamored with the showy birds. Now peacocks (and other Jazz Age throwbacks) are everywhere - on hairpieces and wallpaper and fabric. (Looking at that picture, I'm suddenly realizing that the two paint colors I've been obsessing over (lime green and bordering-on-turquoise blue) are peacock colors. I've been thinking about painting the boys' IKEA bunk beds and dressers lime green with blue and possibly orange accents. This was absolutely without ever glancing at a peacock. Weird.)

Right now though, I'm really loving this fireplace screen:

from Design*Sponge, Juliet Totten (of Poppies and Posies) house tour

I wish we had a working wood fireplace, but our fireplace is gas and I really dislike gas fireplaces. One day we'll have a real wood fireplace and I'll have to remember this screen.

It was a good deal to begin with, but because it had a few scratches (mostly on the underside), it was on clearance for a third of its retail price. It's still something I don't absolutely need, but I couldn't walk out of there without it. I really, really couldn't.

Giddy, I tell you. Giddy!