Hello Age 30
Last day of of my twenties, people.
We started 29 about to birth the third child in a 4.5 year time period. 6 years of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding has me beat. Feels good to know I gave them all I could in their earliest times - from womb till that magical one-year-mark when here in Hawaii, we celebrate with a huge wedding-sized luau (that's next month)...
10am this morning.
I'm going through headshots from yesterday’s shoot with Kaveh. Two coffees down. holding baby Haea in left arm propped up against my left leg, pressed against the table, while she sucks away under my shirt, teeth latched on to the left nipple which means you can’t just pull her off or it is a skin rip. I’m basically stuck in this position till queen-bee decides she's done, could be 20 min or more.
I first shot with Kaveh in 2010 in the Waikiki, two-bedroom apartment I had before Makani, before babies. We had gorgeous wood floors and a lot of natural light coming in at that place, so it was a perfect mini studio for that first shot together. I didn’t know much about the dark-featured guy who ran after me to give me his card while on the set of “4 Wedding Planners”, but my gut is usually right and has proved some very valuable friends.
After all these years of shooting with Kaveh and our after-talks over coffee, I had never actually worked in his home until yesterday. Your home says a lot about your personality, your values, your habits…and I have to say his is lovely. Clean, slick marble counters, bamboo floors kept in perfect condition with lots of floor to ceiling windows and sliding doors letting in the natural light and crisper air of the higher-breezes of the Wilhelmina hills. His ancestry shows in the gorgeous, reddish, maroon Persian rugs throughout the living room and bedroom. The years he spent in Europe and French Canadian cities also shows in the minimalist type decor, the architectural details allowing linear spaces, the red, Italian-leather barstools, compact storage and modern, sleek, pendant-hanging lights. The Bookshelf of spiritual enlightenment, Bhagavad Gita, Teachings of Krishna, and mediation prayers all reflect the beauty of his late wife, a yoga teacher from Mexico. It takes a certain kind of person to attract such a peace seeking person. I mentioned to him that it shows me how kind and good of a person he must be to have her and a home that feels so clean and transparent.
We’ve changed a diaper and switched boobs since the first paragraph by the way…left handed typing is a skill I've yet to master. Kids are fighting over the iPad show. I have to let them watch it while I work. Can’t get anything done unless they are entertained or sleeping. Its basically a wreck of toys and shoes ever since Haea started crawling - that’s just life with toddlers folks. I put her down a second ago and she's half up the stairs already. I’d love to just block off the whole foray with a big baby gate - those big ones are a little harder to find on this island and it also requires a little handyman skills to set it into place which has been last on my list of ‘to-dos’ between the constant need to clean cooking materials to make the next healthy meal, or shi-shi bed linens that need to be washed yet again for the third time this week. I also just got through the tax documents that were due the previous month and and sorting through the files to box away in those banker boxes… And Elia is breaking my thoughts with, “Mom, Kanai is eating pizza on the couch, again!”
Ugh. That boy is the rebel. “Kanai, are you supposed to eat on the couch?” silence. “Kanai, get on the table, you know better.” ….wait for it…
“AHHHHH” his scrunched angry 3-yr-old face about to turn tantrum as I give him the mama-bitch look (You all wonder why moms can’t relax… you go clean my couch everyday then). He sees my look. Swallows his cry. Pout of defeat. Yep, you know better, baby.
We are now looking at shot number 209 of 378 photos to go through from the 2.5 hour shoot. Pretty typical for a portfolio shoot for me. This is the stuff people don’t realize takes so long - the going through the 300 photos and narrowing them down to ones that don’t have your eyes closed, your strands of hair blowing across your lipstick, your panties showing through with the light at that angle, or how that one pose of you hitched in that pair of jeans causes some love handles to overflow and cause completed distraction away from your face… Then of course, you have to go though editing, which thank god, Kaveh is so experienced in, of which, you crop out or smudge out the bra strap or the electrical outlet on the wall behind you.
Can't lie, it's been a very consuming year. The more kids you have, the more your body wears down, the more your lack of sleep and drain of nutrients shows, the more mouths you have to prep food for, get vitamins for, shop healthy fresh groceries for. The more beds to buy and loads of laundry to pretreat, wash, dry, fold and put away. The more appointments you have to keep track of, time schedules to have plugged into a calendar, alarms to have as reminders for the bath, the gymnastics, the payments due for someones health insurance, school bill or hula class. It's harder to work on anything at all with someone always calling mom, crying, needing help to reach the sink to wash their doo-doo hands or needing to vampire-suck you dry every hour or so... cost of sitters goes up to and trying to find the right people to fit your integrity, energy level for your children, your lifestyle and your budget is more and more challenging each added child. Your love life definitely gets the hardest test and tug of your abilities. But hey, thats what i hear from every couple with infants... it's just part of it.
Getting away to get back into a non-mom day is a big deal. So hopefully, we can get a handful of the hundreds of shots to be a good selection showing what I am now - a little more worn in then I was a few years ago, some wrinkles around the eyes, a few gray hairs that came and went, the pressure from pregnancy weight stretched my shoe size out a half size more. At least I am more comfortable in my skin than before, more cut-to-the-chase with time as I no longer have time as a luxury. As the therapists, doctors, and clinic professional said to me at the most recent postpartum check up I had, the moms who have the least depression and the most energy to care for their kids are the ones who take their own individuality seriously, and make time for themselves more than the others because they refuel when they feel the have their own life in addition to their family instead of their life revolving solely around their family. So that the mission this year, this decade really - getting back to me. Its definitely a balancing act, one day at a time… so here we go, age 30.