Smells Like a Memory

We often joke around our house about Ava's amazingly keen sense of smell. She can smell anything from what seems like a mile away. She's always the first to comment on dinner cooking, or the smell of flowers in the air, or fresh cut grass. She can smell from downstairs when Bailey has pooped in the playroom (damn cat!) on the far end of the house. She can't even walk into Target without commenting, "Mmmm, I smell popcorn!"

It's no secret that smells can induce memories and feelings, and most scientists agree that smell is in fact the strongest sense tied to memory. Most of us will have a strong visual image when presented with a particular smell from a good or bad memory in our childhood. I know, for me, that the smell of a campfire floods my brain with wonderful images, camping with my dad when we were kids, or attending a campfire at Camp Eberhart in my teens. I simply can't smell a campfire smoldering and not feel the smile creep onto my face, literally lighting me up from the inside. My nose knows:)

But I found an interesting article about the correlation between olfactory sensitivity and emotional sensitivity that intrigued me. (http://www.neatorama.com/2009/10/13/correlation-found-between-sense-of-smell-and-emotional-sensitivity/). Are people who smell better more emotionally sensitive? And why? It certainly might explain my extremely sensitive daughter, who seems to feel every emotion like it might be her very last. It might even explain my own over-sensitivity when it comes to my emotional feelings.

Whatever the scientific reason for the link between smell and memory, I know that as a parent I plan to use it to my advantage:-) I want my children to smell a campfire, or my homemade macaroni and cheese, or even just the chlorine in the pool at the Y, and be comforted. I want to conjure happy, loving memories that will last a lifetime. Can you smell that? It's a memory:)

Picture post

Just a quick picture roundup from April, as I've been meaning to put these all up but keep forgetting. We had a very nice Easter dinner at Chuck's sister's house and I remembered to take some pictures of the kids with relatives, since I haven't taken any new pictures in ages. You'll notice that Chuck is absent from all of these photos...one of these days I'll manage to convince him to actually be in a picture with his own wife and children (hint...hint...) ;-)

I hope everyone had a nice Easter and April, despite the terrible very UN-spring-like weather we've all had. I'm sincerely hoping that May is better than April, though is the forecast for this week is any indication, I am going to be disappointed, lol.

Please keep Ava in your thoughts as she's pretty sick with some sort of fever virus, poor doll:( She's been running a pretty high temp for the past two days, I hope she feels better soon!

To Everything, turn, turn, turn...

I love all of the four seasons for different reasons, but there is something particularly reviving about the brink of Spring, that essential time when it hasn't quite yet sprung, but Mother Nature tempts us every so often. I am not, at all, a Bible reader, but I can't help but think of the song adapted from Ecclesiastes, "To everything, there is a season, and a time to every purpose, under Heaven." Beautiful words with a significant meaning, for spring simply can't exist without the winter that precedes it.

For every time I felt that aching in my soul this winter, that hollowness in my bones and the longing for a warm breeze on my cheek...it's sweeter now. I can lift my face to the sun and finally feel the heat, bask in the smell of new green things about to burst forth. I can literally feel the earth's trembling excitement in my bones. Everything has lay dormant for so long, myself included. I feel like I am finally emerging again, from a cozy den and a long winter's nap, to find myself utterly fresh and new, colorful and fragrant. How strange it is to have felt like I literally lost myself because I couldn't plant my toes in the grass...

I don't believe in the general premise of religion, but I can relate to what a religious experience must be like. There is nothing more soul stretching, more grounding and yet simultaneously uplifting--for me, anyway--than stretching out on a nice green lawn, feeling the wind on my face, and admiring the sky. If there really is such a thing as the "Holy Spirit," that's the only place I can ever imagine it existing.

One of my favorite architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, once said, I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. I couldn't have said it better myself:)

Happy Spring!

Aiden's Birthday

Aiden had a great 5th birthday. Thank you to everyone who mailed cards or sent presents, he was so happy and excited! We just did a nice, quiet family day with presents, cake & ice cream, a trip to Chuck E. Cheese, and anything he wanted for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He got two Star Wars Lego sets from Chuck and me and then decided to spend his birthday money from his Granny & Grandad and his Aunt Deb & Uncle Bill on two more Star Wars Lego sets, so he is in Lego heaven and hasn't stopped chattering about Legos since his birthday, lol.

After my failed attempts at both Chuck and Ava's birthday cakes last year, I finally decided to start a new birthday cake tradition in our house. The day before your birthday, you get to go to Walmart (classy, I know, but they have the biggest selection of ready-made cakes!) and pick out any cake you want. Then you can put whatever you want on it, toys or candy or decorations. We found some Power Rangers birthday decorations at the Party Store and Aiden decided to make it a theme. He picked the most atrocious lime green and blue cake (but it was delicious!) and arranged all of his Power Rangers on it along with a Power Ranger candle and a #5 candle. He declared it perfect and it was the easiest birthday cake I've never baked, ha ha.

Happy birthday to my wonderful, sweet boy! Great things lie ahead for him, of that I am certain:)

Five years...

I told the cashier at Walmart this afternoon, "My little boy is turning 5 tomorrow." Aiden looked around and said, "Huh? What little boy? Mom, I'm a big boy turning 5 tomorrow!" Just like that, a sucker punch to the gut, right in the middle of Walmart.

Has it really been 5 years since he swam in the space under my heart? Since I felt his tiny body writhe and wriggle inside of my own skin? Five years ago today, right now, he was supposed to have already been born, but my little man was stubborn right from the start. He's always had his own agenda:-) He just got stuck like a stick in the Georgia clay, refused to move, and so finally at 2:24am on March 23rd, 2006, he was promptly retrieved from my stomach, came out screaming, and pretty much didn't stop for the first 6 months of his life.

Everyone says to cherish those first few months, that they go by too quickly, that you will forget them all too soon. I have a confession...I wanted them to go by quickly. I wanted to forget them, forget the endless screaming, forget being covered in spit-up and being so tired that I could barely remember my own name. I couldn't believe that this was what other mothers raved about, what other mothers wanted to hold onto and never let go. But, little by little, we got to know each other, him and I. I discovered my son and, in doing so, I discovered a new side of myself as well.

When a child is born, so is a mother. And now my little boy, my baby, is turning five. I realized this morning that I've been a mother longer than I've ever done anything else in my life. Longer than any other job I've ever had, longer than any school I ever attended, even technically longer than I've been a wife, I've been a mother. And it's all because of him.

Gone are the days of wishing that time would speed up. He has bloomed into the most perfect and amazing son that I ever could have hoped or wished for. He is kind and polite, smart and outgoing, willful and ambitious. He has his bad days, and I have mine too, and we weather them together, just like we've always done.

I'm so excited to celebrate his birthday with him tomorrow. :-) Lot's of pictures to come, I promise!