the inexact minute of a birth; birthday trains and bears; august labor descrip with flame-out.; no photo, but dragonflies indeed

at this quite exact moment two years ago, i was thinking it wasn't happening: this baby was not gonna get born. but i found the courage/ craziness an hour or so later to push him from his stuck place under my bones, and finn was born at 11:03 or 4 pm(we can't remember the specific minute). he was born and now he is two; two! here's the pineapple upside down cake i made & we ate today in honor of that:

and here he is, crowned, with his new train set-up:

closer:

and this is him after unwrapping the skinny-legged bear i made for him last night! he swiftly named the bear "baba" after his beloved granpa, with whom we just spent the weekend, celebrating baba's 80th birthday and finn's 2nd(their b-days are two days apart)!

and there are many more pictures to come of recent adventures, soon, soon. we've been to county fairs and living history farms and to 80th birthday parties, so i have some sifting-through to do--

i've been thinking about the birth experience all day today. i'm not going to post pictures from finn's birth. and i'm not one of those women who feels the pangs of labor several years later at the anniversary of that sensation, as if my body were recollecting itself. but i will say that tonight, and today, and recently, the whole heavy hang of august gives me some quick flames from that time, some sensory-memory-feelers. it was august and i walked down the alley behind my house, sometimes stopping in full sun for a contraction:laboring. the circle faces of sunflowers were completely out in big social bunches at the corners of the alley, and the see-sawing cicadas were in full seethe. all sounds and colors hanging in the hot, heavy air of iowa summer. at transition i puked into the green grass!

well anyway, my growing baby! now completely out of me, for definite sure. it is a little melancholy! why, we can never say! tonight at the dusky time, we were in a nearby park called oak grove and there were hundreds of dragonflies swarming up amongst the oaks. i've never seen anything like it, and i didn't have my camera. they seemed like a bunch of remote-controlled machines, and it seemed miraculous they didn't tangle and crash, in their fast hummy buzzy flying. i guess they were just excited to be together ; i suppose it was just a dragonfly gathering place.

and for some further magic, just as we crossed over the train bridge walking home, the train pulled out from under the bridge, and so we got to watch the whole thing in motion.