Little Traveler: Across the River and Back Again

June 14, 2016

You have to start those grand adventures with little baby steps, right?

With both girls, we traveled across state lines from Oregon into Washington during their first week or so out in the world. Our newborn photographer Erin Tole shoots just outside Portland, across the Columbia River, and she’s well worth the foray into that mysterious land of Vancouver… (WA, not B.C.)

These newborn photos are for posterity, and also (let’s be real) for my personal enjoyment, and since I’m feeling particularly sappy today, I’m finally posting them here to share with you. Continue Reading…

BabyOregonian, Musings, Tidbits About Us

And Then There Were Two

May 19, 2016

two(miniOregonians)

Lucie bumped, cuddled, elbowed, and queried my rounding belly for the better part of last summer, fall, and winter. She grew herself through tiny tot stages, adjusting and growing and trying to understand. We started reading I’m a Big Sister* shortly after her second birthday in September, watched “circle tub” water birth videos in the new year, and practicing giving her own little baby a bath during the weeks before my due date.

I credit her with so much.

Trying at two to comprehend the foreign notion of big sister and what such a life change entails.

Since I’d never had a baby sister of my own, I wished so much to watch the two of them meet and see her heart expand.

How special for Ted and me to welcome little Marion on a Friday afternoon and then have my parents bring Lucie to the birth center just a few hours later to meet her little sister for the very first time. There’s never any telling how something like that might go, but I had my hopes…and a camera lined up just in case…
Continue Reading…

BabyOregonian, Musings, Short and Sweet and Scattershot, Tidbits About Us

Mama Said: Wit + Wisdom

May 8, 2016

Last spring, my friend Tiffiney from Wild Child Travels wrote to me asking if I’d contribute to a collection of short stories about motherhood. Something distinctly *not* “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” Something candid and truthful and maybe raw with a little humor for perspective.

Of course I said yes, and then agonized over what to write.

My piece, “Spill It” (ironically submitted just a few weeks after Mother’s Day, while I was pregnant with Marion but didn’t yet know), delves into my personal story of breastfeeding difficulties with Lucie. Not something I’d probably splash across my blog…but a story to share with the right kind of audience. I’m honored to be included alongside all sorts of moms from all walks of life.

A year later, here I am with not one but *two* little girls, and the Mama Said: Wit + Wisdom for Mothers anthology is hot off the press and available for just under ten bucks.

~ Happy Mother’s Day ~

P.S. Sweet little hours-old Lucie is pictured on the front cover, and more pictures of us are peppered through the pages of Mama Said. This reminds me (well, not that I forgot, just that I haven’t had time yet), that I hope soon to get my act together and publish the new posts of hours-old and days-old Marion photos by the talented Erin Tole.

Hang tight…they’re in the queue. [Update: they’re here!]

xx
Bethany

Musings

Wine + Chocolate + Jewelry from Around the World

April 6, 2016

Hi friends,

If you’re local to Portland, come over to my house next Thursday the 14th! I’ll uncork the wine and bust out the chocolate around 7pm and we’ll get to sample jewelry from around the world.

I’ve never, ever, ever been one for house parties. (For real. I mostly avoid them.) But when my sister in law Gabby started repping the Noonday Jewelry project and shared the stories behind the pieces, I was genuinely jazzed. What’s not to love about exploring designs from artisans based in Afghanistan, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, Rwanda, Uganda, and Vietnam and knowing that their work and the proceeds from sales contribute to transformed lives and stories of hope?

Jewelry is my favorite way to disguise the fact that I’m actually wearing the same clothes all the time.

The key is to accessorize with something eye catching, hey?

Whether living out of a backpack for 12 months straight or pregnant and in maternity clothes for half a year give or take or (now) postpartum, nursing, and literally putting on the identical outfit five days in a row (don’t ask), I’ve relied countless times on a decent set of earrings or bracelet or necklace to be my own little trompe l’oeil, so to speak, changing basic into something special. (Or maybe nobody’s actually fooled, but at least I feel good wearing them.)

The other piece for me is to carry some sort of connection to what I wear.

A person. A place. A memory. A cause. Continue Reading…

Featured Partners

Happy Mail Days

April 6, 2016

This post is sponsored by UncommonGoods. All opinions and text are my own.

This spring, UncommonGoods sent me goodies to match my love of quirky fun at home and abroad.

I love happy mail days.

Especially now, when I’m home on maternity leave with two tiny kiddos, I’m grateful that the world can be delivered to my doorstep. Continue Reading…

BabyOregonian, Musings, Tidbits About Us

Dead Woman’s Pass: The Long and the Short of Labor

April 1, 2016

Today: I’m choosing between a shower and a blog post. (Not what you wanted to know, probably.)

In my defense, many of my previous adventures in life necessitated the foregoing of showers, and I was always glad for the stories I lived to tell afterward.

Backpacking in the Cascade Range, for example. Or trekking along a certain busy South American route* where showers were available but, uh, less than desirable. (Give me changing diapers any day over dealing with those latrines.)

But anyway. The nitty gritty of unpolished living is something that we’re all familiar with, yeah? So, I invoke you to recall your own unshowered, perhaps sleep deprived days (and nights), and you’ll have a pretty good guess about how I’m getting on right about now.

I haven’t introduced you to my sweet new girl because, well, I’ve been living with my sweet new girl, and life often gets entirely in the way of writing about life.

But here I am today, trying.

Flashback to where we were on February 3rd (my birthday): waiting. The day before a due date.

Food, Oregon, Portland, Tidbits About Us

Birthday (not Birth-Day)

February 3, 2016

Since early last summer, today’s hovered on my mental calendar as an exciting unknown: February 3rd. My 32nd birthday, and the day before my baby’s due date. Celebrations were in order, of course, but would they be for a girl in her third decade or a baby in her first days?

Would we be a family of three or a family of four?

Knowing there’s little use making concrete plans during such an up-in-the-air season, I didn’t really anticipate what today would look like until it arrived…but now that it’s hours from over, I can happily go on record saying it was just about perfect.

No baby (yet), but so very many favorite things from this life I love.

Food, Musings, Social Work

Bake Sale for Refugees

December 15, 2015

Have you felt, like me, overwhelmed and powerless to meet the dark struggles of the refuge crisis with tangible relief? It’s far too easy to be fired up on social media and then too frozen in real life to do a darned actual thing to help.

I’m one small person living in a cozy house with my little family in North America. How can I use what I have here to make a difference way out there in the wild, weary world?

Would you smirk if I told you I’m joining the effort to combat this current refugee crisis…with baked goods?

Laugh away, if you must; this is something I can do.

And if you live here in Oregon, you can, too.

Will you be within an hour’s drive of Portland this coming Saturday night? Come to Pip’s Original to shop the Bake Sale for Refugees. Score all sorts of delicious baked goods and raffle prizes from local bakers, bloggers, and restaurants (pssst: buy my κουραμπιέδες*!), and know that 100% of the proceeds from your valuable dollars spent will go to the Migrant Offshore Aid Station. Continue Reading…

Food in Italy, Interviews, Italy

Ring, Ring: The Italian TV Producers are Calling

October 26, 2015

It’s not every morning you wake in the darkness and wash your hair and get ready for an interview on Italian TV.

Two things: I’m shy. That’s why I write. It’s so much easier to type in silence than to chat out loud. (ON TV.) However, I’m also adventurous and willing to try just about anything, so when producers at Aria Pulita found our collection of stories from the Italian region of Emilia Romagna and asked me to join them for a conversation about travel in Italy (and Oregon!) on their local television show out of Bologna, Italy, I said yes. Continue Reading…

BabyOregonian, Musings, Tidbits About Us

fourOregonians!

September 23, 2015

First it was just us two.

Then three.

Then our hearts broke when we thought four was certain…but life held other mysteries.

Now, sweet little four is due to join us in the short, cold days of winter, and we’re living in the joy of anticipation.

I’ve been so angsty these past four months: unsure of how to process, unsure of how to celebrate, unsure of how to share the news.

My heart hurts even right now for dear friends carrying the weight of bitter pain while I get to post this cheery note.

For every pregnancy announcement popping up, I’m acutely aware that another heart somewhere is stinging with loss.

For every pair of baby shoes joining the row of family sneakers, every gaggle of blue/pink balloons soaring into the air, every double line on a stick that was, let’s face it, involved in someone’s trip to the toilet, for every happy due date…there is another someone’s disappointing goodbye to the fertility specialist, a punch-in-the-gut ultrasound sending parents spinning into darkness, a purchased pack of pads for blood spilled much too early. Continue Reading…

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Jewelry is my favorite way to disguise the fact that I’m actually wearing the same clothes all the time.

I love happy mail days.