GOODBYE SUMMER...

A big gust of wind came through this week and started blowing leaves off the trees and into the streets. 

The sun is starting to fade around 6pm and with each passing day, it gets darker earlier and earlier.

It's Falling... The days are still warm, but it won't be long till we are turning on the heat.

Wow was that fast or what? I am trying to let go of Summer, of these days at the beach with London running into waves with big little laughs and not a smidge of fear. Watching her grow was the highlight of my summer. We walked, talked, read stories and spent a little time at home for a change. These were the days, days that feel like they go on forever... and warm evenings without sweaters or coats. I loved my summer Artist way group, enjoyed the visitors that came to stay on vacation, and I couldn't get enough of wearing my mumu, Dave however, could. I am a summer girl, and I always will be.

We went for a family walk this morning and the air was crisp, and I thought to myself "well, this is pretty nice". I know it will get colder and these early mornings have been dark making it just a little bit trickier to pull ourselves out of bed. But October is really the magic month of the season. I know everyone loves fall, with it's boots and apples, (y'all, I've become apple crazy, writing a post on that)and pumpkins and Halloween. I am going to fall into it all, I even put out my scarecrows. 

Goodbye Summer, until next time, thanks for everything, you were the best.

 

JAMM: FLY FLY FLY

You will notice a cute Londy Loo, waddling around the background in this one. Motherhood and Music must exist in the same room, as I always hoped it would, and I'm grateful that it does :) You will also noticed I said "forget" twice in the bridge, I mean't "regret" the second time. (important lyric distinction)

If you were to ask most singers, they would tell ya that they prefer to sing ballads. Why? 

Probably because they contain more emotion, and the slower pace makes it easier to give it the inflection and feeling it needs to really find it's soul and connect with the lyric. In a way, it's easier-ish, kind of. An up tempo tune with the wrong arrangement was usually the kiss of death on American Idol. That is why everyone is singing slow songs, if you were wondering:) It is deceptively hard to perform fast songs and pull it off.  I mean don't get me wrong, when it comes to listening to records, I prefer something peppy, something with a solid beat that makes me wanna dance and let my hair down. Yes I do love to rock. And if I am in the studio, putting together an upbeat track is the greatest! But making it happen live, different story. Be it fast or slow, singing really well while also connecting really well while also playing an instrument really well, and picking or writing a song really well... is well, really quite tricky! I just keep working at it... someday I might get "there"!

As I mentioned last week, I also wrote this song for Banner 4th of July. The inspiration was fully present in writing this one. It is definitely my favorite song of the two, and certainly my favorite scene in the movie with Christian Campbell. I am posting half of the scene below that mjsbigblog put up on Youtube, (thanks MJBB!). This was the song that she had written just before the band split. She was feeling the need to "go find her way all on her own". But it's never really that easy, leaving the familiar, the family, the place you've always known, and it almost always hurts the ones you leave behind, and that is the hardest part. We all go through this at some point in our lives whether it's a place, a relationship or even a job, sometimes you got to fly fly fly away... and yet those places and people and things will always be a part of who you are. 

At this point in the story, years have passed, feelings are hurt, a brother and sister damaged by the distance and a misunderstood past. This song is the healer. As it always does, the music is what says what she has never been able to say, and it speaks to him what he's never been able to hear. It transcends who's wrong and who's right... it's the language that the heart can understand.

We usually never intend on hurting the ones we love, and yet so often we do... it's a bummer. Life is complicated, and so much get's lost in misunderstanding. How do we make it right? Time? Saying a sincere I'm sorry? Letting go of pride, failed expectations? Sometimes we just let it be. 

In this case, Desiree Banner makes it right with a song. And in many of my own cases, I do too... or at least, I try.

PS- Thank you and happy birthday to the lovely miss Priscilla Chang for capturing this video for me, and for helping me get my JAMM back!

PSS- Oh and yes, FLY FLY FLY is available on itunes! yay!

HELLO SUMMER...

Feelin' in a great mood today, it's the first day of Summer, and there is magic in the air.

I think I've decided that Summer is the season of all seasons...

and while I live in California where it seems to be the land of the endless Summer, there is still something extra special about this time of year...

I love how the my bedroom fills up with light early in the morning, and doesn't fade till after nine pm. 

I live for these long days... as long as the sun is shining I feel like I can conquer the world!

I can't get enough of seedless watermelon with a little sprinkle of salt.

I love when Dave fires up the BBQ and grills burgers with pineapple after work... and I think it's deliciously awesome that we eat corn on the cob with nearly every meal.

I love Sunday drives down the PCH to the beach after church.

I get a rush rolling down the 101 with the windows down while blasting Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys and amber by 311, or anything from Pete Yorn's music for the morning after with the warm wind blowing my hair into a big gnarly knot.

I feel free with no coats and liberated in a dab of lip-gloss and no make-up.

I look forward to quick trips to the carwash, my favorite place to sit out in the sunshine and eat a strawberry shortcake ice cream bar while oldies blare over the intercom, songs like smokie's tears of a clown

I long for the smell of sun screen and Banana Boat suntan oil.

I love evening bike rides through the hood, seeing kids playing outside and people walking their dogs

I'm talkin' Flip flops, family vacations to San Diego, saturday home improvement projects, fireworks and the Fourth of July!

And this year, a lot of time spent with our Londy Loo, watching her grow, taking her on early morning walks, pushing her on the swings and watching her chunky roley poley legs walkin' and waddlin' in a soggy diaper and swim suit of red white and blue with her sweet little belly hanging out... splishin' and a'splashin at the Splash Pad amongst happy kids.

Life is good in the Summer time.

EASTER LOO AND A SONG...

Easter was quite happy. A rainy Sunday, a peaceful morning at church, a couple of simple Easter baskets, shish kabobs with a few kind friends and a whole lot of our Londy Loo. It was so fun to give her her first Easter basket and watch her dump all of it's contents on the floor... bubbles,  a book about Jesus, her own pretend smart phone and of course a little chocolate bunny. Dave found me a striped floppy hat and filled it with reeses peanut butter eggs, pretty cute and clever if you ask me. I gave him a small wooden box filled with a pink plaid Tie, a new mix CD for his car, a few cadbury filled eggs, and a handful of cutie oranges... he's done a lot of changing to his lifestyle and eating habits, so I had to go easy on the sweets. I hope I don't embarrass him by mentioning that he's lost 24 lbs and counting, He's practically a new man. Super proud of him.

Dressing up our little lady was fun, I found a yellow dress (it had a neon flower on it, but I took the seam ripper to it and got rid of it) and this over the top headband at Target late on Saturday night of course. She looked like a lil' flower child, I took nearly a million photos of her. She kept making the funniest face every time she caught me taking a picture...  Personality oozing out of her lil' ears I tell ya.

Lastly, I know it's Just another music monday, and I had something, but then my 30 day editing software trial is over. I am debating between sticking with the Final Cut Pro which I find super user friendly, or going with Adobe Premier, cause I've been hearing good things. Any tips or thoughts from you editing gurus out there? Until I get that worked out (hopefully this week), I thought I would share this video from the archives. 

Quite a while back I had received an invite (in the form of a tweet) to go record with the Lower Lights, if you may or may not remember. They are one of my favorite music collaborations out of Provo, Utah, I've mentioned them on many occasion. But if ya haven't been introduced, The lower lights are a slew of abundantly talented music  making folks that get together in the studio to create spontaneous musical magic, re-interpreting hymns and other classic songs of a spiritual or Gospel nature... a Hymn Revival! You really should get into The Lower Lights... so good.

This was one of the tunes that myself and a few of the lads arranged and harmonized in the stairwell of the studio. It is a song we used to sing in primary, particularly around Easter. It is called "He sent his Son". Primary songs are simple and pure, they have a way of transcending our stubborn overcomplicated grown up minds and getting into our hearts and reminding us of our more innocent selves.  Well it does for me anyway :) I really hope this video works for you, I couldn't find it on youtube so it's a ustream video therefore it's a bit wonky at times. Please endure the lame advertisement at the beginning and take a listen... (if it doesn't work, watch it on the little screen here)

"Have faith, have Hope, live like his son, help others on their way..."

Video streaming by Ustream

Oh and a few more things:

-An idol update with my pal Lyndsey Parker at Yahoo Music. Are you watching this year? Who's your fave?

-Have you heard of Jessie Baylin? I wrote a little post about her and her record (which is my new favorite) over on The Girls with Glasses Blog

JUST ANOTHER MUSIC MONDAY: POOR LITTLE FOOL...

i'm sorry. 

Feeling a little defeated as I type this and I don't think I have the energy to articulate why... and there is a giant mosquito hawk flying around my computer scarin' the crap out of me. I know he's harmless, and I don't want him to die, I just want him to go hang out in the living room. 

Basically, I'm tired of being late... 

I can't catch up, it's been this way for like fifteen years, or I don't know, maybe twenty nine...  I want to change, and I don't know how, and I am trying. In the words of what about Bob "i'm doing the work I'm not a slacker". But I'm slow, and I care too much about too much, indecisive and a tortured perfectionist working with a great deal of imperfection. Really, It's okay, but it's not, and this isn't a woe is me post. I'm just sayin'...

All of you decisive efficient people that are always on time, teach me, what is your secret?

I know I said I was going to post a Valentines Day song, but I thought Valentines was Friday, and I had been working on "close to you" by The Carpenters all week. It is not an easy song, and I wanted to do it really right, because it's Karen, and it's basically sacred. Then it turns out that Valentines Day was actually Thursday, and because life was serving me a Thanksgiving feast on a salad plate, I just wasn't ready for that. Incidentally, I was wearing my red hello sweatshirt which I have worn for nearly five days straight, and so I put a heart onesie on London and thanks to Summer, pulled off a cute instagram (see below). Dave came home from work with Valentines in hand for me and the Loo, sheepishly, I told him that Valentines was just going to have to be on Friday, like I planned.  I had a small thoughtful gift, the card but not a second to wrap it, or write it. But I couldn't even pull off Friday... Friday turned into Saturday.

Kinda like how Just another music monday has yet again turned into Tuesday... okay, almost Wednesday.  So I thought I would do "Close to you" for this week, but when I sat down at the piano on Sunday, my fingers didn't want to play it, my voice didn't want to sing it. Like I said, Mediocrity just isn't an option when it comes to the Carpenters.

It was Sunday, and probably one of the most perfect days that a February has ever seen. Dave suggested we head down to the beach. So we bundled up the Loo, grabbed the beach blanket and my guitar and headed on through the canyon to Malibu. We found a little spot on the sand, the tide was high but the ocean breeze was truly euphoric (it took me like ten minutes to find that word in my mind file) We walked London out to the water and put her toes in the sand and she let out some unbelievable giggles, ahhh, finally, a moment of pure contentment... Thank you Lord! I pulled out my guitar and thought maybe I would figure something out. Then I realized I forgot my capo at home (a capo is this small contraption that you clamp onto the neck of the guitar to change the key) and so I sat around and tried to figure out a tune in my key. I stumbled onto "don't panic" a vintage Coldplay classic. So just as the golden hour struck and the sun was setting over the sea I thought maybe I could capture the moment and sing "we live in a beautiful world" right in front of the pacific ocean. However, Londy's sweet pumpkin giggles turned to pterodactyl screams and she was ready to go, but I figured that there was no better scene then this for "just another music monday" so we got her set up on the blanket with a toy to chew on and put "whats the drawback" on my phone, it's her favorite song.

Dave manned the iphone camera, (as he has been doing for the last two videos, his camera skillz vastly improve week to week, he's becoming a pro, way to go Dave!) I started out my usual little intro, and started playing "bones sinking like stones, all that we fall for" when I looked over to see london rolled off the blanket with a handful of sand that she was shoveling into her mouth... so that was the end of that! I ran over and grabbed a wipee and tried to stop her, but she was hell bent on eating sand, so she did. There is a bit of footage of the whole fiasco, maybe you'll see it.

So yesterday was Presidents day, and I had yet to record a tune. I decided maybe I would try "God only knows". My favorite beach boys tune, and one of my favorite songs of all time. It was the song I sang during Hollywood week, that solidified my fate into the Top 50, and ultimately the Top 24. The publishing however was not cleared for TV, therefore no one ever saw it. I practiced it through out the day, again, not an easy song. After a day of yard work and tasks involving the Girls with glasses show, it was nearing 5pm, the sun was setting. Once you lose day light, the show is over. But after calming the Loo, recharging a dead phone battery, and forgetting the chords, a las, my third attempt was denied. 

Then it came to me this morning, Poor little Fool, a song that was written by a fifteen year old girl, intended for Elvis to sing, but then was recorded and made a hit by Ricky Nelson in 1958. It was a song from my childhood. My dad had an ovation guitar with heavy strings. I remember he would play "grandmas feather bed" by John Denver, and "Poor little fool" by Ricky Nelson, as we would sit around him in our jammies right before bed, and he would sing to us. It is one of my happiest memories, and one of my first favorite songs. So this morning, before I could even make the bed, I grabbed the Loo in her jammies and my guitar, put the Capo on the fifth fret and played this happy little ditty (but actually kinda sad) for my own little one. 

So, to carry on the tradition of Brad the dad, I give to you "Poor little fool"

UNDER THE ORANGE TREES...

Was going through photos on my computer and came across these two photos... What a wonderful difference seven months can make...

April

November

Thanks to the lovely Jess for taking these photos... MENDIPIXEL 

ONE MONTH AGO...

It is June 24th... this means that I gave birth to my daughter,  London June Ray, exactly one month ago today. How can this be? Everywhere we go, we get stopped by strangers, they look at her with sentimental eyes and they all seem to say the same thing... "they grow so fast" or "don't blink" and "enjoy every second", and with every little passing moment I am acutely aware of this acceleration of of time... and it actually causes me a pain in my chest, a physical anxiety, a panic almost and I beg my beloved Londy Loo to please... Grow slow.

We stare at each other most of the day. And when she is asleep I stare at pictures of her, I've got nearly a thousand of them, documenting every last facial expression, cute outfit and tender moment. Yes, she even has her own instagram account dedicated to "a little bit of London everyday". I'm infatuated, deeply, and it's a bit ridiculous how much I love to just look at her, study her features, kiss her cheeks over and over, and hold her as tight as I can with out completely squishing her delicate newborn frame. I cry a lot, like the day she turned a whopping week old, or when her yucky little remnant of her umbilical chord fell off to reveal the perfect belly button, or when I saw real tears stream down her tiny face a few days ago. While  hormones and exhaustion are  likely the culprit, they can't take all the blame... real love such as this is intense.

As Ron Burgandy so poignantly and dramatically exclaimed, "I feel like I'm in a glass case of emotion!!" I am happy, I am sad, I am worried,  there is constant ache, a vulnerability and a confusing melancholic joy that I can't even describe. I suppose this is why it has taken me so long to write about it, which I was certain that I would do nearly the second I came home from the hospital. I wanted to get it all down, while it was fresh and new and powerful. But... I just haven't been able to find those words to articulate this kind of love, I still can't, and I couldn't find the desire to sit in front of a computer when I could be sitting in front of my beauty of a baby, and nor has she allowed me much time to do so. She is not one of those babies that snoozes the day away in a swing or a swaddle, nope not my girl. She is bright eyed, always looking up at me, melting my heart and demanding my attention when distracted by the buzz of a text message, requiring me to rise before the sun and stay awake with her till almost noon, She was quite literally born ready to give this life a real go. Even the lactation consultant who came to my rescue in the depths of my woes of nursing (so hard, a blog post unto itself) held my squiggly wiggly and alert newborn up to take a good look at her, and said to me "wow, this is a wild person!". Eventually I might likely grow weary, but for now I am so happy to just be right here with her, right now, taking in every bit of her sweet wild spirit. I'm not getting much done, but who cares, I've spent the last decade of my life "getting things done" and being a hyper-multi-tasker, overly ambitious and constantly stressed about "doing it all". However, a funny thing has happened to me, while I still care deeply about my music, my "projects" and being a girl with glasses, right now I am quite consumed with the desire to do one thing really really well, and that is to be London's mom.

That morning I went to the hospital to be induced one week shy of my due date, I was abnormally calm, as a cucumber. Now I realize I was just completely oblivious of what was to come, and thankfully so. Perhaps my subconscious was protecting me, blocking out all fear, because I expected no pain. Sounds silly I know, I was about to push a person through "down there", and with my one and only plan for an epidural in place ,  I anticipated to not feel a darn thing. However this was not my fate. From the I.V. to the anesthesia, to the epidural, to the catheter to the main event... I felt a lot. Unfortunately the right side of my body seemed to have complete disregard for the epidural, I could wiggle my right toes, do leg lifts, I pinched my thigh only to let out an "ouch"! My left side however was dead to the world, and if I had to push a baby out of my left big toe I would've been good to go, however we all know that the left toe is not the location of a babies entrance to the world. While my contractions were rather dull, the necessary region was still fully aware of every painful sensation. This was not good news, and that calm feeling was abruptly replaced with panic. I informed the nurse several times that "I think I need more".  I'll be the first to admit, I am scared person, I am fearful, particularly of pain. Through out the day the nurses and doctor would ask me "on a scale of 1-10, how is your pain?" It wasn't till the end of the experience that I'd gotten an educated sense of that pain scale. Basically I learned that my tolerance for physical pain was, low. Dave, calm and strong as he always is, held my hand while my body shook and sweat ruined the make-up that I had put on that morning in hopes that I would look decent in photos. Looking back at the pictures, that attempt was unsuccessful...

My mom and dad walked into the room after driving in from AZ,  along with my sister who had surprised me with her unexpected presence. Seeing them suddenly made me feel like a little kid lying in a big scary hospital bed and I cried... cause I was so happy to see them, cause I wanted my mom, because I was scared, because of the drugs,  because I was in pain, because in a few short hours I was going to finally meet my very own first child. My little sister who gave birth a year before me took my hair and tied it up in a knot on top of my head to keep it out of my face, she assured me I could do this.  Within a few short hours I had made significant progress, my wonderful nurse Joy went on her lunch break and assured me that by the time she returned, I would be having a baby. The anesthesiologist returned to give me a pep talk a one final boost of the epidural, and my right side began to feel dull in the nick of time. My doctor came in, assessed the situation and announced it was time to push. I had been listening to John Mayer's record "Born and Raised" through out the day to sooth my nerves and take my mind off the pain and anxiety of labor.  Those songs will always remind me of the day London was born...

I looked at the clock, it was just ten minutes past six pm. It was go time, I tried to calm my shaking body with the deep breathing techniques I had learned in my pre-natal yoga class. I wanted to be brave, I said a million little prayers under my breath "please heavenly father, please help me do this". I begged Dave to not "look", to stay up above with me, but he couldn't help himself and wanted to be a witness. He was amazing. I was relieved after my first push to feel pressure instead of pain... though the pressure was intense it was bearable to my worn out body. My tricky doctor would distract me in between pushes by asking me about how Dave and I met nearly nine years before at the Thanksgiving dance in Mesa. I would get to a certain part of the story and suddenly feel the strong urge to push. It was hard physical work. My dad waited just outside of the curtain to be saved from the visual of the birth, but I could hear him cheering me on from the other side. My mom and sister stood at my side wiping my forehead and taking photos that would document the most important experience of my almost twenty nine years of life. We never made it to the end of the story, and those final pushes I squeezed Dave's hand with all I had left, the doctor exclaimed "she has hair!" I was over the moon with just the thought of her little head of hair and I started to cry, I could hardly wait to see her, and with one motivated last push and she was out by 6:41pm, it was so quick and yet played out in slow motion, she didn't even cry, as they immediately placed her beautiful little body on my chest.

She was still covered in Goop, I didn't care, I felt like a momma lion with the instinct to nearly lick her new cub clean, but I held her close to my body and kissed her head over and over and told her "Im your mom! I'm your mom!" I cried, I laughed, I was so high. Never felt so euphoric in my life, all the pain, the pressure, the fear, didn't matter. Now I've gotten to do some pretty cool things in my life, had some pretty special moments, but none of them could compare to this one. Dave cut the chord, we huddled together, a little family. The love... the love.

They took her, they cleaned her and weighed her. Just as my ultrasound suspected, I had a big healthy baby, 8 lbs 12 ounces, 20 inches of perfection. My family all took their turns to hold her.  Watching them hold her I kept thinking "that is my baby". I couldn't wait to hold her again. As well I become intensely aware of how thirsty and hungry I was, little did I know I would not be allowed to eat nor drink during labor. Finally they brought me a fruit juice concoction that was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted and I chugged it faster then I should, only for it to come right back up. The room became quiet as my family went back to our home to sleep, the doctor left us for the night and it was us and our London. The responsibility for her life weighed heavily upon us. It was nearly impossible to sleep that night. Having never felt so exhausted I could hardly close my eyes. We watched her like a hawk, the tiny rise and fall of her chest. Picking her up at the slightest cry. Attempting several times to nurse her, it hurt. The epidural wore off and the pain of labor settled in. My body felt like a wasteland and yet I felt like I was floating on a cloud. 

The last four weeks have been nothing short of the most euphoric, challenging, exhausting, painful, happy, heavy, lonely, overwhelmingly joyful time of our existence. The spectrum of emotion is vast and extreme. It's amazing what a body can do in just over nine months, and though it might not ever be what it once was, is healing and changing almost daily and I am grateful for the miracle it produced. Nursing has been harder then I hoped, hurts like heck and yet is truly heavenly in those moments when it is working, it's getting better everyday. Dave Ray CPA, I've never loved and appreciated him more. He told me before she was born "I'm gonna be a good dad, I think it's going to be what I'm good at"... but he's way better then good, he's amazing. Turns out he's a full on baby whisperer. It's remarkable to see this sports loving, hockey playing, accountant turn into a swaddling, diaper changing, lullaby singing super dad.  The day he had to go back to work I fell apart. Parenting is a team sport...

There is so much more, but this is certainly long enough, and It's nearly midnight, I will with out question be awoken by the cry of a hungry lil' baby with a poopy diaper in less then two hours, and that nap I was going to take today never happened, so I'm going to stop here... for now:)