Again and again the treats kept coming on this yoga retreat. The weather was gorgeous, the vegan food delicious, the water was peaceful, Lake was charming, and the yoga was plentiful. It was the perfect setting for a perfect weekend. 

This retreat served up just what we needed: yoga on tap. In between yogas and sips of nature we soaked up the elements and honored the divine feminine. A joyful celebration!

Lake and I are glad to have spent it with you welcoming yogis! After an incredibly rejuvenating weekend, I’m home now with my sweet family. These two lovely men inspire and guide me toward my powerful divine feminine self every day. 

Lake and I are on yoga retreat at Lake Shoecraft for the weekend. I had never heard of this lake either. But Lake is always up for a lake adventure!  It’s lovely and not too far north of Seattle. We left town just as traffic was really piling up, so unfortunately the drive time got drawn out. Our road trip went really well, though so it was a happy occasion! And I had plenty of time to fit my kegels in. 

We are here. It’s beautiful. We are unplugging now. Vegan, goddess yoga we have arrived. 

It can be hard to feel sexy as new parents. Yesterday I was in my physical therapist’s office crying about not having had sex since our last appointment. Nothing to report on for improvements in pelvic floor rehabilitation. Even though it had only been a week, a week can feel like forever. It’s hard to get motivated to do pelvic floor rehabilitation when your PT is the only one down there. How do siblings ever even have a chance? Then add on a plantar fasciitis flare. Things can start to feel pretty dire. 

Enter the boot. Wearing a night splint is part of my plantar fasciitis treatment. Our bodies heal a lot at night and I want my foot to be in dorsiflexion during this time for optimal healing in a more lengthened position. This way I’m not reinjuring the fascia every morning immediately when I step down because the fascia has repaired too short. So it helps a ton. I am grateful towards my mother-in-law for having “this old thing” on hand from healing a fractured fibula or some such lower extremity bone part. However, “this old thing” splint is actually an inflation boot cast which is huge and plasticky and comes up to my knee. This really helps my foot pain if I wear it at night to sleep. But it really doesn’t help my sexy factor. 

This morning my husband renamed it the “sex boot”. Worn over the knee-high “sex sock”. He’s so kind. We had a big laugh. I came back to bed after Lake’s breakfast this morning still wearing one knee-high sock from the night before. After sleeping his typical nine hour night straight through, Lake woke ravenous as usual, breakfasted, then miraculously went right back to sleep for an early nap. My husband was still in bed so I rejoined him. Wearing the sock. 

One wonderful thing about making love as parents is a lot of the artifice falls away. What’s left then? Something fresh and real. Not waiting for the ideal moment. Stinky Sticky Love. Sometimes a sex sock. And it’s absolutely perfect. 

Like my husband, I’m a zealous remover of appliqués and tags. The seam ripper is my best friend. It gets a lot of work. More so since Lake joined the family. It seems clothes for new people are unduly heavy in the adornment category. I’m forever removing tags and patches and logos and cutsie things. For example, I found these Robeez leather shoes at a Wallingford consignment shop for a few bucks. They are nice as far as a flowered shoe goes, but they don’t suit Lake. He’s got a certain style. So the deconstructing ensues. Now they look simply like shoes. I guess that makes me a DIYer in reverse. 

Lake approves. 

My husband coined this verb lindsin which is what Lake and I do on Tuesdays in the late afternoon/early evening. To be lindsin is to be hanging out with Lindsay and likely laughing a great deal. To be lindsin around is to maybe walk Greenlake or Gasworks and then get revived at TNT or Tigerly Ox. Or today our lindsin had us strolling the zoo and then got us big (well, technically medium size) bowls of pho afterwards. 

Lindsay is my college roommate from freshman dorms. She was there with me through blue hair and ethnobotany. We listened to Sarah McLachlin and dressed up alike to go get dinner at the dorm dining hall. Now she’s Auntie Lindsay and we’re all coordinating with Baby Lake. 

We’ve been walking Tursdays together since before I was pregnant, and we walked weekly all winter through my pregnancy with Lake. The weather got darker and rainier and I got slower and slower. Then the weather got brighter and springier, and I still got slower and slower. Then a few weeks after Lake was born we resumed our Lindsin around. We didn’t go far at first. Lindsay is so great, happy to go whatever pace. Rain or shine, Tuesday we continue to get our lindsin on and we are the better for it. 

[Artwork courtesy of the app Prisma]

Lake will have accomplished his first 100 days “in office” on Tuesday. It usually takes me a lot to sign a special-interest petition as I tend to think we already have plenty to focus on. Now that I’m having the special, but not rare, experience of motherhood, the issue of paid time off for prenatal physician visits and maternity leave seems critical and prudent. 

I’m pro-life, pro-family and pro-society. I want to live in a country that supports mothers and their children. It starts with affordable national safe daycare, preschool and before that paid maternity leave. It is humanitarian relief right here at home affecting the mainstream. I advocate for 100 Days. My infant son is three months, 100 days old coming up on Tuesday. I’m just now emerging from a fog and believe I could safely go back to work if our family needed that. We are choosing to make other financial sacrifices so I can continue to take another unpaid three months off work to spend with my beautiful infant son. I feel truly blessed every day, but between student debt, rocketing real estate prices and recovering financially from the recession, we have been greatly challenged in realizing the American Dream. Keeping us on the economic sidelines is hurting our economy. To have two children and to take a total of one year unpaid off work is for example the missing down-payment for our home. And that’s just loss of income. We haven’t addressed the cost of child care yet. 

I believe economists agree that our country needs a healthy middle class. Supporting mothers is supporting families is supporting our country to be great. Considering urging our leaders to take action to transform the foundations of family life to build a stronger society. Thank you. 

change.org/babysfirst100