oh, marvel

oh, the love! marvel heron ingram was born at home on monday, august 22nd.

he is astonishing. breathtaking. marvelous.

i'll write about these days soon - i'm just too busy living them right now.

making room

my studio - once packed with a jeweler's bench, tiny tools and heavy machines - is now converted into a birthing room. a big tub sits in the middle of the room waiting to be filled with water, with me, perhaps with marvel. what is usually my creative work space has become a space for a different kind of creation altogether.

i'm due in 2 days and am trying to wait patiently for the marvel's arrival, but patience has never been one of my virtues. i don't know that i'll ever hold a child inside of me again. we don't plan on it. and so every once in a while i remind myself to close my eyes and really notice how it feels to carry mars, to share my everything with him. i want to hide this memory somewhere deep inside me so that someday, when i need it most, i can find it and revisit the here and now.

and yet i know that i can never come back here. i already barely remember who i was before i was a mother - i am only bits and pieces of that woman now. what will i later remember of these years? which seconds will ingrain themselves in the folds of my brain, embed themselves in the walls of my heart?

i don't know. i feel ready to meet my son, but part of me wants to hold on to these days of just me and ian and koruna. so all i know to do right now is to make room. make room in my body for my son. make room for marvel's arrival. make room for our expanding family in our home. make room in my heart for more expansive, exploding love. make room for the memories.

early morning at barton springs

shana has done it again, folks.... she met us a few mornings ago at barton springs.  i'm so glad she did.

mars and i went swimming at the springs again early this morning. pink orange sun coming up behind the buildings downtown, white moon still hanging overhead.  mornings there are magic.

mars

we're big on nicknames around here so any name we considered for our children had to come along with some good ones.  we've already been calling marvel "mars" and that nickname inspired his room.  we're almost finished with it.  it was our bedroom until a couple of weeks ago, so it's taken a major overhaul to get here. koruna helped paint marvel's walls.

here's a sneak peak at the mars room in progress.

the moon is now complete.

we mounted a globe above the changing table.

ian is still working on a big red mars on one of the other walls and we hung an antique rocket (an old treasure that my mama found) near it.

one week 'til due date and the excitement is mounting....

cooling off

work on our casa continues. before koruna was born 2 years ago, my dad came to austin and installed central a/c in the top floor of our house (the part we live in) so that our newborn wasn't dripping with sweat from day one. since we are now moving our bedroom downstairs in preparation for marvel and will be taking over the entire house in the coming months, my pop returned recently to cool the downstairs.

at the last minute, my dad's partner couldn't come to help with the install so ian was drafted. it was a helluva job, but they did it in a weekend. they worked morning, noon, and night in the triple digit temperatures. i am typing this in the luxury of my cool downstairs studio. thanks, papasita. and thanks, ian.