Two Years

Lyra,

Two years without you.

Love and miss you more than you know.

Mom

Garland

Angie mentioned over on her blog about some of the ways she decorated for christmas. It got me thinking about how we've decorated our house this year. I made a pom pom garland this year (I followed this tutorial). I love it. I think I could make a pom pom garland for any activity throughout the year...bright spring like ones or dinosaur colored ones for Simon's birthday. I guess these colors aren't necessarily Christmasy, but it's my Christmas garland nonetheless.

The pictures in the frames (from bottom left up and around to bottom right): Tiger at the zoo when I was pregnant with Lyra, a sweet card from an IRL BLM, a recent painting of mine for Lyra's anniversary coming up, a holiday ATC from another BLM, and Simon's first water color - he got a hold of my tin and got his fingers all painted...I figured instead of cleaning him up, he might as well use it up on some paper :) I love the option to change out pictures and look forward to putting up more of Simon's artwork.

I also have a holiday card garland that is in the living room for this season, and my stars that I have yet to find the right spot for since our move. I like having a little something in our house to string up along a bare wall.

7.18.11

I'll share some of the artsy things I've done recently:

Pen/Watercolor wedding shower gift

As requested, photos of the flip flops I refashioned.

L's father's day present. I repainted the frames and then hung items that were important for that day. I like that we can exchange out any of the pictures or notes, for things Simon will do in the future, or for remembering Lyra or really anything. The top left frame has Simon's footprints in a "heart" shape. The bottom right is one of Lyra's sonogram pics (bad glare in this pic).

I have a few other things I've done, but they are gifts, and the recipients have not yet received them. So those I'll show later on.

6.8.11

Harking back to this project  and this project again, I think I've got it finished. I did a terrible job on the collage part, as you can tell by the bubbles and bumps of it all. But I love it nonetheless. Not allowing my Critic to get me down on this one.

"Cosmic Love"

Mixed Media

Random: Simon's Room

We have three bedrooms in our house, all of which have vinyl wallpaper. And it was completely obvious it had to come off. We are people of color...in that we need our house, more specifically, our walls, to be colorful. In our first apartment we painted the walls bright blue and apple green. We had a bright red velour chair that I loved. In our subsequent apartments/houses, we've used paintings or other things to sub in for the fact that we couldn't paint the walls. And now that we own our own house, we plan on going crazy. Perhaps it will be lame and overdone since I'm not an interior designer. Yes, I do art and graphic design, but the large scale of a room or house makes me feel lost somehow. And that's where L is great for me...he balances that out because he's great with bigger spaces. I'm sure we'll keep the color explosion in check hopefully.

Anyway, all that was to segue into how we changed Simon's room though, as you'll see in the pictures below :) I'd like to point out that the tree pictures around the changing table and the mobile over the crib were created for Lyra's room. The sea creatures I created specifically for Simon.

Before: Main wall

Before: Changing table side

After: Main wall

A few of the bazillion books we have for him.

I love these little tubs for toys!

(This is also the most accurate wall color that we painted...I didn't photograph it well in the other photos)

After: Changing table side

Note the "R" for our last name that Stephanie did for us.

His sea creatures and the mobile that he loves.

The design I made for him and some of the many stuffed animals for him.

12.1.10

A small section of the giant painting. I'm feeling really good about it. I have quite a few bumps and wrinkles from the collage part of it, but I'm not fretting about it. It's a learning process :)

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Bullet point listing time:

- I got my hair trimmed today. Always feels good to just let someone else take care of something like your hair. My stylist is super easy to talk to and it's always a good experience.

- My Dr's appointment for this week went well. Newest info is that I'm not supposed to be doing much of anything...pretty much just resting at all times. He never mentioned the actual terminology "bedrest", but he mostly wants me sitting or lying down. I think since we don't know what caused the abruption before, he wants to eliminate as many scenarios as possible that could bring another about. If I'm just a lump on a log, then we have less to worry about. I'm going to request a butler monkey, as Angie has done.

- We got a few Christmas decorations up. Our apartment is so tiny, there's no room for a tree, but it feels subtly festive...which fits our mood just right.

- This made me laugh, and is somewhat true of our apartment building. 

- Today has been ok. That's a good start for such a difficult month :)

11.23.10

L brought home a 2.5' x 3.5' canvas a few weeks ago. Someone was giving it away...already painted on...and canvases that size are not cheap. So he brought it home for me and I've been contemplating what to do with it. Here is the progress I've made so far (I didn't take pics from the same angles):

Collage stage

Washes and paint stage

I've been working on it here and there, so I'm not sure when it will be done. I'm excited for it though.

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I'll bullet point the rest of this post so as not to ramble extensively:
Good things:
- Weekly appointments are underway (!)
- Simon is still measuring ahead
- Had a good catch-up with a BLM and felt refreshed after letting some of my crazy out. She understands my crazy, and good at listening to it all :)

Disappointing things:
- I hate to mention this, but to be fully honest, I've lost weight. As mentioned above though, Simon is measuring ahead and healthy. The nurse today sure acted like I'm purposefully trying to do this though...as if I'd want to add another element to an already high risk and stressful pregnancy.
- We had plans to visit both our families for Christmas...out of town. The Dr. said for normal patients with no previous issues, he recommends not traveling after 34 weeks. Since I'm abnormal, he wants me in town...no traveling. He wants to keep a close eye on me - which is a good thing. But that causes some hassles and recalculations of how we'll see everyone...we haven't figured that out yet.
- Still feeling sad. Or melancholy. And emotional. Not anything new though...

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Wishing everyone a gentle week. We'll be doing Thanksgiving with L's family and visiting with some out of town friends. I've been lax on posting lately already, and it's most likely I won't get around to much the rest of this week. Love to all.

9.27.10

I got together again with the BLM who visited Lyra's grave with me (let's call her 'R'). As I sat with R, learning to knit and to teach how to crochet, we talked about the happenings of the last week of our lives; the land mines of social situations, the happiness in good news, and the hope of what our futures may hold. I got to see her daughter's memorial in their house, and their sweet nursery too. It felt good to see how another family remembers their child...how our functional everyday shows the love for that child. She let me cry about how confused I was feeling, and listened with patience as I rambled trying to piece together all my thoughts. I felt embraced...despite all my crazy.  It was a good day.

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I can't say I've bounced back from what I was feeling in my previous post. After announcing about Simon, I got an email that said (paraphrasing here) that this is a transition on top of a transition. L said that we had a vision of what our family looked like when we were pregnant with Lyra...him and I and a little girl. We are transitioning away from that vision...letting it go and embracing this new image of what our family might be. I think it has hit me so hard because I haven't let go of that original vision yet...that image that we had prepared for and looked forward to. 

I hope it didn't come across that I was disappointed to have this baby boy. Quite the opposite. I know how lucky I am with this second chance at making our family. I just haven't let go of Lyra yet. Not that I ever will, but I hadn't considered how final this new baby would make her death. We are moving on with life, and it's harder than I thought.

So in the midst of all these crazy feelings, I felt it was vitally important for Lyra and Simon to come together in an image. To show this transition in our lives, and embrace our two children. Of course the stars mean so much to me, so they are an obvious component in indicating Lyra. Simon is in my belly, but with his own unique pattern and personality. Our path is unknown, as you can only take a day at a time...but it will be with both of them in our lives.

My children

11x14

Acrylics

4.20.10

Working on an oil painting last night, I was left with some leftover paint. I used to have a canvas where I used my leftovers. But last night I just had paper. This is what resulted : a front image and a side image of a very pregnant woman. It can't be me...the farthest I ever made it was 30 weeks, so I don't know what being "really really" pregnant is like. I guess it's the stage everyone seems to struggle through (understandably so), but the stage I wish I could have made it to for the sake of having Lyra that much longer.

3.24.10

Still working on...

3.14.10

Moved from sketching to painting...this is a nice ambiguous corner of the painting.

I also have another painting in progress...I like to have two going at once, so that the when one is drying, I can be working on the other. However, I've started using more paint for texture and it then means more drying time, unless there's a trick I don't know about.

2.28.10

"Tears"

Oil paint

2.26.10

I saw a flock of geese flying...in their wedge pattern. Actually they were pretty scattered...some flying in formation, some not so much. I was driving and it was at that perfect angle where there was all sky framed in my windshield...and then the geese stretched in their stringy arrangement. I wish I would have had my camera so I would have had their haphazard pattern to paint from. This painting is just from my head...and not as random as it really was. 


The coldness of it and the scattered-ness of the geese makes me feel better about our lives right now. I wrote someone the other day, saying that this baby loss thing seems like a trap. We made it past the 1 month marker...then the 2 month marker, and now the due date has passed. It's supposed to get easier and better right? Oh, but wait, there's Mother's/Father's day, 6 months, and of course one year. And all the other reminders in between that pop up - events that we had prepared to take her to, questions about children, and people close to you learning they are pregnant. Like the landmines that Surviving the Day describes, there's always something that will jar me back to the reality that I am forced to go through life without my daughter.