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a mom's thoughts on climbing

October 28, 2004

so a little more talk about our trip to the new last week... let me back up a bit. brian and i had convinced ourselves (well, i know i had, and it seemed to me that brian had too) when seb was all brand new and shiny that climbing routes with ropes and gear and packs, etc., was going to be way too complicated for our already baby-complex lives, so we decided to put off going to the new river gorge for a while. early this summer, we decided we wanted to take a climbing trip that would involve camping and not flying to keep it cheap. in august, we thought we'd go south, but decided it would be too humid and yuck and far. in sept, we thought we'd go to the boston area and visit family and friends on the way, but decided that would be too buggy and yuck and far. so at least to get rid of the too far factor, we settled on going to the new in october, thinking we'd mainly boulder there and maybe climb routes, ropes and all, one day. well, it turned out that we spent two "days" climbing routes, and it would have been three had we not spent THAT day bushwacking some non-existent trail to find the crappiest rock in the whole gorge (bubba city sucks! never climb there!). i found (and maybe brian did too) that gearing up to do some long(er) climbs wasn't any more complicated than bouldering. it was so good to be back on a rope. at summersville, one area near the new brian and i had almost completely climbed out, i felt at home and a cozy warmth enveloped me as i climbed routes that will never lose their familiarity, taking a moment at the top to look out over the lake and fall colors below me. it was so GOOD to be back! even if i was just climbing the easy routes or toproping. and i met with friends we hadn't seen in two years at least, and made new ones i hope to see again and again. so much of climbing tends to be about these people who i don't appreciate enough until i'm separated from them. and they met seb! confirming our suspicions that he IS the cutest kid ever. EVER!

now we're home and it's sort of lonely after having all those people around. so in the quiet, while seb is taking a nap and brian is still at work, i sit and daydream about going back to the new, tying into the sharp-end of a rope, and climbing up and up and up.

randomness and seb's first "new" trip

October 25, 2004

silliness

bettiness

most of these pics are from hawks nest at the new river gorge. we didn't have as many photo ops the other days, and friend kathleen was photo-happy since she wasn't climbing the rest of the day...

slacker mom

October 13, 2004

at least in the weblog sense... i've been so busy writing essays for class (wahoo!) that i have neglected my narrative of seb-happenings. class has reached a crossroads into writing a long essay from now until semester-end, and i have decided to write about motherhood issues--pregnancy, childbirth--and then flesh out a bigger political issue from my personal experiences. should be interesting. so far, i have only written 2-3 pages essays just to explore different ideas and memories. my instructor teaches at chatham and some sort of high school for young gifted people, and she also is an accomplished essayist, poet and editor. she recently edited an anthology of essays and poetry on pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. anyway, on to seb...

seb is a born climber--not only rocks, but gates and stairs and chairs intrigue him too. we were walking in bloomfield the other day and came upon a ramp guarded by a steel railing, and seb scampered to it directly, grabbed the railing and hiked his feet up onto the cement ramp and hung there. a woman walking by asked his age, and when i told her, she exclaimed at his climbing skills. "i know!" i replied with equal enthusiasm. he's a genius! he likes to "scare" me when i'm at the computer in the dining room: he runs around to the opposite side of the table, crouches down and then pops his little face up hollering, "aaaagh!" which always dissolves into laughter at how clever he realizes he is. and i giggle right along with him.

a not fun and exciting thing we recently went through with seb (because i need to have a well-rounded narrative here) is his habit of not eating. the past few weeks he has been getting molars, so he's been off his feed a bit because of that, but i'm also convinced that he's not eating just because i want him to so badly. brian and i swore up an down to eachother p.s. (pre seb) that we would never fight with him about eating or mealtime after witnessing countless episodes of horror that my sisters have had trying to get their kids to eat. however, the pediatrician is convinced we are starving poor seb, and has also made me feel fairly guilty for not trying hard enough to broaden his toddler-food-loving horizons, so against my better judgement it has become a fight. a fight that i lose most of the time. it is the one thing that has made me completely lose my temper with him, and it sucks! so at the beginning of last week, i remade my pact with myself and brian that eating is a battle i refuse to fight. if seb only eats cheese for the next 5 years, so be it.