Lucky Ducks

The time gets away from me every day. Everyday since Sunday I've been meaning to make time to be alone with my husband for a moment, an hour, an anything, and everyday it gets away from me. So I will start with this.

Sunday was February 19. Do you remember what that day was, Michael? That was the day that you proposed. I remember starting that day as we did any other day and ending it promised to the man of my dreams.

Many couples have their individual special days. the day they first met, their first date, their first kiss. The day they got married, the day there children were born. All special days. But for me, this day is our special day. More special than our wedding day because this is the day that you really made your commitment to me. You thought about this moment carefully, in my opinion at times, too carefully. I didn't understand how it could take you so long to decide about us. You couldn't understand how I knew so deeply and immediately. It was our only source of argument. And so when you proposed I knew you knew. I knew you weren't forced or unsure or throwing caution to the wind, as they say. You were ready. Finally.

Our wedding day, came fast and secured the promise that we had already pledge to each other and our day was a beautiful day. The threat of rain and our gamble of not using tents paid off, only to bring a storm to end all storms the whole next day. We were lucky, lucky ducks already living a good, good life. But for me, Feb 19 was the day it began. That day we both knew, without a glimmer of doubt, that we would carry each other's burdens, witness each other's lives forever, and try our best to keep the other happy and secure and supported. That was the day we started our life together.

And every year, on February 19, I hope to love each other enough to ask each other, "Will you marry me... again?"

I Never Doubted Myself - 4 Months of Rafa

She looks just like me when I was a baby

After Rafaella's first month, I wrote in this blog. I knew I had grown, I was sure of it and could even tell you how, but in full honesty and with major doubt in my mothering ability, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it in this baby raising thing. It was hard. Hard. And at the time, there didn't seem to be any of those googly moments that come with babies. Yes she was cute, button cute. That's a baby's saving grace. They're so cute that you couldn't imagine doing bodily harm but sometimes the tired, weariness of middle of the night feedings and endless crying kicks in and you have to slap yourself in the face just so that you could refrain from taping her mouth closed so that she would just be silent for a moment... just one moment.

3 months later, Rafaella is 4 months (for those of you not that good at math). She eats well and so the crying has subsided to the bare minimum. She smiles with the flirtiest face this side of the equator and laughs at jokes. I am literally the funniest person ever. Now, there are tons of googly moments. Most moments are googly, in fact. She talks to herself (because no one understands her crazy baby talk), she grabs her little feet, she's almost rolling over, she pets the dogs, she eats like a little warm bird, opening her mouth wide waiting for mama to drop in the worm. And in a way that I couldn't say for certain after the first month, I know I will make it.

This baby raising thing is a cinch. (insert eye wink!)

My Story, Valentine

Mike and I went out for our amaze friend's birthday the other night. And as we were sitting around the table she told me and Mike that we were incredible together. She told us that we made such a good team and that we complimented each other so well. She had known many couples that she did not think would make it forever but that ours would and that if we didn't she was going to be really mad. Instead of focusing on herself (after all it was her birthday), she went on about us for a little bit. She made me remember all of the reasons that I loved this man sitting there with us. And I know she meant it cause she was drunk and you never say anything you don't really mean when you're drunk.

Press play, listen to song, and read...

“All of these lines across my face, tell you the story of who I am

So many stories of where I’ve been and how I got to where I am

But these stories don’t mean anything when you’ve got no one to tell them to

It’s true… I was made for you.”

My Story by Brandi Carlile

We all have a story.

 

Each chapter of our life tells a different part of that story. Sometimes the characters change, sometimes the characters you meet in the beginning are the characters that are with you until the end. Sometimes there are costume changes, clothes, style, hair, makeup, appearance – it all usually changes within the life of your story. The story can have twists and turns, can include many genres and be one of adventure, passion, comedy, drama, friendship, change. And when we’re truly lucky… love.

 

My story today is about love. Profound, I’ve waited for you all my life, I didn't think I would ever find you, where were you i was looking... hard, love.

 

Ask a room full of strong, intelligent, confident women how easy it is to find a man that can handle strong, intelligent, confident women (really handle, like for a LIFETIME handle) and you will find a decently full room of strong, intelligent, confident, SINGLE women.

 

This is where my story begins.

 

Always one to make myself known, I have been a vibrant, flashy, bull headed girl since girlhood. Fights with boys, standing up to teachers, intimidating bullies… no one was telling me what to do. (Please, God, let Rafaella be easier than this…) In my teenage years, this personality suited me well. At a time that people fold to peer pressure, I felt secure and sturdy on the ground of who I was and the story I was living. (Please, God, let this be the case for Rafaella.)

 

But when I got to my twenties, an interesting started to happen. I started meeting men that, subconsciously, wanted to crush this. They didn't mean to but the thing that initially attracted them to me was what eventually caused our demise. If I was passionate in the beginning, by the end I was too confrontational. If I was fiery and hot blooded in the beginning, by the end I was emotional and (don’t cringe, ladies…) crazy (I know, only women can understand that calling us crazy, actually physically makes us CRAZY!)

 

And so when relationships would fail, I would be left wondering what I did wrong. I hadn’t changed, had I? I was honest and upfront about who I was and the story I was telling. After a while, I started thinking that maybe it wasn’t that I had changed but that I should change. Girls that I knew to be passive, not challenging, easy to handle, were finding love and settling down. Maybe to find love, I too had to be those things. I thought for some time how much easier my story to love might be if I could make myself into that person. (Please, God, advise Rafaella away from this thinking that changing yourself for anyone is a good idea.)

 

But in typical fashion, the easy story in life is usually never the right story… at least never for me.

I decided to live my story truthfully, living it by being who I am. And what I never realized is that I am a strong, intelligent, confident woman. But what I also am is vulnerable, self-doubting, and wobbly.

 

And then a man came along that was able to see all of me for the story that I was: complicated, difficult to understand at times, but well worth the read. He loved me with vigor. He understood that I expected a lot but gave a lot in return. He knew my loyalty was undying and that my love was pure and constant and unwavering and that he was lucky that all before him were too short sighted to see what a lifetime with me could mean.

 

He came along in a way so unique to him and so different than anyone before: quiet, patient, ready. Ready for me. Strong enough to handle life with me. Intelligent enough to know he could. Confident enough to know himself and know that I wasn't as ferocious as my bark. I loved him quickly. And if you knew him, you'd know why just as quickly.

 

Looking at this man, I realize that the story we tell ourselves about what life should be like seldom is the story that life actually becomes. And that the story that life becomes is always better than the story you planned on writing.

 

We all have a story.

This one is mine.

Thank you Meeks, on this Valentine’s Day, for showing me that my story of love was not just about finding you, someone so incredible and exceptional to love, but also about finding myself, someone as equally incredible and exceptional and loving her too.

Thank you for:

• Loving our daughter as much as you do
• Giving me this life… a good, good life, Our Buena Vida
• Being my biggest fan
• Looking at me the way you do
• Still thinking and telling me that I’m hot, even after having a baby and especially when I don't feel it.
• Allowing me the opportunity to write and follow my biggest dream everyday
• Filling the soap containers and washing our baby’s bottles and not being the kind of man that expects me to always do that
• Listening to everything I say although you can’t always hear (literally, sometimes you can’t physically hear me.)
• Understanding that I need to make my bed in a certain way and not (always) thinking I’m crazy
• Being my witness through life
• Being my best friend when I absolutely needed one

The Feeding Project

Learning new things is always difficult.

When we learn to walk or ride a bike, we try, we fall, maybe we scrape our knee and then we get up and try again. By the time we get older, it is understood that learning new things is hard but when the world is so new and everything you do is a learning experience learning can be exhausting.

Rafaella, as her doctor says, is very mature for her age. Sometimes I expect her to tell me that she's going to the mall with her friends and that by the way, she's taking the car. What?! At 4 months the doctor has put her on cereal and so the next phase of learning - learning how to eat with a spoon, begins...

As they say here in Dominican Republic, Buen Provecho!

In This Place

Rafaella Rubio Kaufman Legra was born on October 7 at 9:28pm. By 9:29pm, daddy was crying in the hospital room like a newborn baby girl. I was not.

When we brought Rafaella home and placed her in her bassinet to watch her sleep, within moments, daddy’s eyes were welling up with tears at the momentous scene that is watching your baby sleep under your roof for the first time. Mine did not.

As Olive and Jersey began to take notice of their new sister, this alien creature, they smelled her itty-bitty feet as dogs do when they are trying to understand what is happening. Daddy began to get emotional and cry at the sight of all of his children together. I did not.

It’s not that I am not an emotional person. Actually, I am a pretty emotionally charged person. I have been known to cry in the middle of a department store at first jingle of Christmas music in early November, simply because this signals the start of the Christmas season. It doesn’t take a lot for me to well up into an orb of slobbering emotion.

So when I had baby Rafaella and did not lose my ever-emotional mind but instead was in full control of my emotions - this was worrisome. I thought it would only be a matter of time.

But as time passed, I was still very much in full control of all of my bodily emotions. No random, crying outbursts. No drooling, salivating orb of emotion. I was like a poised surgeon, like McDreamy in the episode where the odds were against him and no other surgeon in the world would take the case and he had to go into a woman’s brain just as the power went out in the hospital which stuck him in an elevator with only a bandage and a power drill. That might be a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy rolled into one but you understand the point I’m making. I was a surgeon. Composed. Calm. Controlled.

Did this make me a bad mom… already? Other friends were going the proverbial “goo goo gaa gaa” over their babies. Other moms were doting over their kid’s every move, every breath. And I wasn’t even crying.

Today, Jolene, a good friend, a relatively new friend at our abroad school, who had been pregnant when we met her, went into labor. Her water broke sometime in the early morning and I was awoken via text message by Mike telling me that her water had broken. Having talked about this prior to February 8, prior to today, Mike and I knew we wanted to be there for them in every way possible. We had witnessed first hand how emotional having a baby was out of the comfort of your country where people don't speak your first language, without everyone you love waiting in the designated area to welcome your new baby. Luckily, we had my mom and my grandmother clucking around like the mother hens they are. I was prepared to be a clucking hen for Ryan and Jolene and baby Collier.

As chance would spin it, Rafaella turned 4 months yesterday. Almost 4 months exactly to the day from when Rafa Rubio was born, I was driving to the hospital with a sandwich, a croissant, a chicken filled pastry, two almond pignoli cookies, and a cappuccino in hopes that Ryan would be in the mood for any of it. I found myself listening to music in a way that I never heard it before. I sang it loudly and fiercely. I sang it like I was memorizing a lullaby.

And then it began to rain. I turned my windshield wipers on. And in a flicker, I remembered that when we were driving to the same hospital on October 7, only a few short months ago, it was also raining. It wasn’t a violent rain like you can sometimes drown in in Santo Domingo, it was more of a rainy whisper, a whisper that was softening the day for a new baby on the way. The day Rafaella was born was such a blur, it happened so quick, that I hadn’t remembered that detail… that it rained. The same kind of rain. Until now.

Turning into the hospital parking lot, I warmly remembered that space; it was still as small and crowded as I remembered it, barely any room to park and get out with a busting belly. It was perfect. Déjà vu crept in and I was nervous to be here; nervous like I was the one having a baby except I wasn’t nervous when I had Rafaella, remember? I was a surgeon. Composed. Calm. Controlled. I was nervous because I didn’t want to crash or interrupt such a private moment for our friends. What if I texted Ryan right as Jolene was pushing and the generic text message beeps was the first sound their baby heard upon entering the world?

One of my favorite things about having had a baby in the DR is that our doctors became instant friends. When they tell you that you could call them with any questions, they’re dead serious… and they pick up their phones to prove it. So with my ob-gyn’s number in my celly, I decided I’d text her instead:

Hi dr. f – its Jennifer legra. didn’t want to bother ryan (as if bothering her was somehow ok). I’m in the waiting area w/some light food. Don’t need to go in just drop off. you think that’s ok?

I sent it and immediately thought how eerily fast I’d sent it. Wow! I didn’t even remember looking for her cell number in my phone. And with that thought, I instantly asked myself, “Who did I just send that text to?” In my state of frazzleness, I had sent my "unintended for Ryan text" to Ryan. What a dope! I was clearly not composed. Not calm. Not controlled.

I was no more a surgeon. I noticed that I was an emotional wreck. And when he popped his head out, it took everything I know in me to not cry, which would have been weird because he was the one having the baby. He looked so thrilled, like he had no idea that having this baby would be the end of sleep and sanity as he knew it. He took me to see Jolene, laying in the same bed that I laid in with the same doctor and nurse surrounding her and it all came back to me like a lighting bolt of a flashback: this room. In this hospital. In this city. With these doctors. In this weather. My baby, no, my family was born here… in this place.

I thought about daddy and if he would have cried had he been here too at this moment. Probably. And you know what? I did too.

Video: The Giggle One

I love so many things about this video.

The first and most obvious is that by chance we caught Rafaella's first real giggle on camera. How often does that happen? And I mean a real giggle. I am not trying to be that parent who says, "Did you hear that? Did you hear my 4 month old baby say 'supercilious'?" And just to prove that we even played it for Matty G., a two time parent, and he agreed.

We told him what happened and he said, "Let's hear it. I've got two. I'll tell you if that's a real giggle."

And so we played it.

And with a nod of agreement he said, "Oh yeah, that's a good one."

The next thing I adore about the video is Mike's face. A full-on daddy moment, his face turns from a smile to a "DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?!" face of amazement. With surprise and awe that his little baby Rafa is giggling for the first time it warms my very soul to have one other person on the whole planet feel the same exact way as I did at that very moment. Maybe that's why raising a baby is a two person job (besides the obvious physicality of it), so that you'll have another person to witness the miracle in front of you and revel in it;sharing the feelings in the same way you do at the same time you do because one of you feeling all of that emotion might implode.

Then, I love that in almost a split second Mike 's emotions change so quickly. One moment he is elated, the next deflated when he sees Olive (our fatty McGee dog) eating what was probably a student's discarded chicken finger. I would assume this is what happens with children. One moment you stare at them and marvel at how you could have made such a perfect little being and the next they are drawing on your walls... with poop. Having dogs is similar. Watching Jersey and Olive be outside and know that their transformation as dogs (especially Jersey) is completely due to our taking them in gives me a feeling of profound joy . I could watch them run all day and wonder at how great their metamorphosis is...and the next second they're eating their own poop.

In the scheme of things, as "home movies" go, this one fits the mold. And like all good home videos, it happened when we weren't expecting it to. We weren't trying to make her laugh, she just did. Organic & Natural.

I am positive that in life's many moments we won't be able to catch even a fraction of them on camera. And then there are the moments you didn't even realize were moments until after they happen. And this is what memories are, right? Moments that we remember. Camera or no camera.

Although for this memory, I'm glad there was involvement of fortuitous camera..

Video: The Baby Rafa Awakes

This isn't the exact happy wake up face she makes when she wakes up from a nap but it's still really cute!

Never Forget

The baby Rafa that has helped me wean down life to what is truly important: writing, quick moments of silence, good food, a few true friends, a loving community, photography, breathing, music, and constant learning.

This past weekend we returned to Cafe del Sol. The first time we came to this beach was September 11, 2011. Of all days, right? One of the most significant days of my life was spent on the beach with new friends. I thought about what day it was. And like every year, I am conflicted by what I should be doing on that day. Part of me wants to curl into a ball on the couch and "never forget", but another part of me thinks that moving on, correction, moving forward is the courageous thing to do.

But what stood out to me this time we went back was not that the last time we were there it was September 11 but that the last time we were at Cafe del Sol, which happened to be September 11, Rafa was still in my belly. And now to see her, at the beach, dipping her feet in the water, laughing, smiling, napping, being a perfect baby, it makes me think of September 11 as more than a day where my life completely changed. Maybe there are days that tremble your existence so that you can cherish the moments like this. Moments when you are with family and friends, eating good food, having meaningful conversation, reading a book...taking it all in. Because if I learned anything from September 11 it was that moments are precious and that they don't last and we have to remember to make them count. Maybe that's what "never forget" means. Never forgetting to make every moment count.

Never forget to take it all in. Standing in the moment you are in, taking yourself out of your body and looking at where you are, with who, doing what and cherishing all that you have.

The best smile

Doesn't she look like she already has a sense of humor? Thank goodness. I really wanted a funny baby - along with NOT boring :)

It's a different world when it's seen through her eyes

The husband

Nana, the sponge. She soaks up information and inhales books.

Beach chairs

Me (as taken my LaToi who became a self proclaimed photographer that day)

Our good friend, LaToi with Mike and the baby Rafa

Momma and Rubio

Daddy and Rafa Rubio

Taking a dip... hopefully she's less fearful of the water than me!

Momma, Rafa, and Nana

Getting in the way of Michael's picture taking

Cafe del Sol

Part of the World

Having a baby is extreme happiness, pride, and love. Having a baby is also extreme sadness.

Lately, as our Rafa has been growing... and I mean really growing (she's almost 4 months fitting perfectly into 6 month cloths and into some 12-18 month onesies?!?!?!) I sometimes feel this sadness like she's already getting away from me. She's already slipping through my fingers and getting older.

There are moments when I am excited about her being able to talk and walk (and sleep on her own - for sure!!) but sometimes I look at her looking at me, allowing me to give her a bazillion and one kisses and I think, when this kid is in middle school she's gonna wanna kick my ass. There's no way I'll be able to hold her close and kiss her entire face as she opens her mouth wide and laughs and coos. And at some point, although my back is in shambles from her weighty babiness and my patience can run thin, at some point, she won't need me to rock her to sleep anymore and when I sing her The Beatles song "I Will" that always puts her to sleep she might utter the dreaded words, "Mom... I'm too old for that."

Heartbreak.

I have been taught well. By a mother who constantly reinforces that children don't belong to their parents. They are lent to them by God and while it is a parent's job to do the best they can in raising them, kids will become their own people and grow into a part of the world that you have prepared them for.

I know this. I know it will happen. I just don't want it to happen to me.