Week 12 - Room for One More

In other preparations for baby, we moved. We bought a bigger, more user friendly house. It's exciting and stressful at the same time.

September - Thinking spot

Owen found a thinking spot...or really a TV-watching spot. He likes the window and that the chair rocks. He uses the ottoman to get in and it's a bit of a precarious climb...than ends in a fall more often than not. I appreciate his willingness to keep trying and his ability to focus steadfastly on a task. He's a stubborn little boy, but he works hard and I love that about him.

July 1 - And Baby Chair Makes Three

Michael brought these sunny yellow chairs home as a surprise for me last summer. And yesterday at the hardware store, they had a baby sunshine yellow chair so of course we had to get it for Owen. It's so darn cute.

June 27 - Laundry Day

It always amazes me that I have colorful clothes...and that I wear them. In my mind I'm a black-wearing hardened New Yorker, but I guess in reality I'm kind of a granola-wannabe-fashionista in Kate Gosselin shorts.

June 25 - Something to Crow About

Michael likes roosters and chickens. He wants real chickens for the backyard, but he hasn't talked me into it yet. I like blown glass, so we have a blown-glass rooster...our compromise for now.

June 24 - Hurricane Owen Has Struck

June 21 - Midsummer Afternoon's Dream

Of the solstices, the summer solstice has never been my favorite. It's when the days start to get shorter, it's the retreat of the light (and a particularly heinous ex-boyfriend's birthday. If there ever was a light-suck, it was that guy). I much prefer the winter solstice or, as I think of it, the welcoming back of the light. Winter solstice is a time for celebration and we honor it with a very casual candle lighting under the moon. However, I will give Midsummer one thing over Midwinter: the most amazing Shakespearean play, filled with faeries, magic and a goofus with a donkey head. I love Midsummer Night's Dream, so much in fact, that I actually wanted to use Puck as Owen's middle name. However, he was not even the slightest bit Puckish, so I've filed it away until the day the doctors pull out a baby who looks at me and winks like he knows all the silly secrets of the universe.

June 19 - Curtains Down

I took this picture from the outside of the house but the light coming in makes it just as lovely from the inside. The shadows reminded me of Sumi-e painting. What I love about Sumi-e and photography is that both of them have a similar trick to them: just relax. In Sumi-e you have to let the brush do the work. You inhale and exhale while dragging the brush. You let the ink run or pool or wash as it wants to. Photography is similar in that you can seek out light, but you have to give your image over to the light, you let it shine or shadow or flare as it wants to. If you try to control too much you will miss the shot. And before you shoot, you take a breath to steady yourself and your camera and then finally you capture your image. One is ink and paper and the other is light and pixels, but the act of creating them is similar.

June 3 - Life in Leaves

I think I've talked before about how much I love my garden. This year I bought a flat of snapdragons and I'm feeding them Miracle Grow to see if I can make gargantuan flowers. I could spend hours and hours in my garden; it makes me feel centered and feeds my soul. That sounds a little dramatic for a plot of dirt with flowers, but something about growing something from nothing (or next to nothing when I buy the little stem starters) and seeing it flourish and bloom all summer gives me a sense of accomplishment. I miss my garden through the fall and anticipate planting again through the winter. I start planning it out in my head after Valentine's day and the minute flowers start showing up in the garden centers, I'm out in my yard making it happen. There is a nice mix of annuals and some perennial friends - the chrysanthemum my mom got for the birthday she had her knees replaced, so I took it and planted in my yard; the one my mother-in-law brought us when Owen was born; a miniature rose bush I got for my second Mother's Day; the four rose bushes I planted and gave silly names last summer; and my epically huge hollyhocks. I also had some of last year's plants make a comeback this year, that was a pleasant surprise. My garden is probably the thing that made this house feel like a real home for me. It gave me something to tend to when Michael was away at school, when I was adjusting to being home with my baby and now that I can share the yard with my crazy busy little one.

May 28 - Splish Splash

Owen has always loved to go outside. When he was newborn, sometimes it was the only way to calm him down. Now he's obsessed with the hose. He likes the spray, he likes sticking his hands in there, he likes to shoot it into the sky and feel it fall on his head...he LOVES water.

May 22 - Late-Night Reader

I never realized how much of our life happens in our bed. Sure there's ... that. But it's also where we read, where we cuddle, where Owen plays and often ends up in the middle of the night or early morning because sleep outweighs good parenting habits. Our bed is the place where we tell tales of our days and greet each morning - sometimes with open arms, sometimes by burrowing under the covers. It's the place where we vowed to never go mad, but let's face it, two grumpy people on no sleep never solves anything. I bought that bed when I started working. It was my big-girl bed. We've been through 3 different sets of mattresses in 5 years because we can't find the right ones. I woke up in a pool of my own blood during a miscarriage in that bed and it's the bed where Michael and I have spent countless hours marveling at the little person we created. Oh, if that bed could talk, the stories of novels and lovers and late-night phone conversations and dust bunnies underneath it would tell.

March 17 - Spring is SPRINGING!

The chairs are out and the flowers are budding...I'm SO READY!

As an aside: I'm apparently kind of colorblind, so if you see a photo that is toned like crappola, can you tell me? Sometimes I come in like a week later and I'm like "that is SO green/red/blue" mostly green though because I'm apparently tuned for aliens or something. Thanks :)

March 8 - Hammering Away

Still flooring...Day 2

March 7 - How Much Fake Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck?

Is it creepy and voyeuristic if it's your own house? We're making progress...and boy am I tired!

March 6 - Something Messy This Way Comes

First the bathroom, now the world! We (no, not ME) are starting prep work for laying the new floors this week. We have discovered several interesting things about our house. None of the walls are straight; the geniuses who sold us the house put in tile without taking out the baseboards; there are pieces of candy wrappers under the tile...lifesavers, in case you were wondering; we have a lot of crap and not very places to put it; the dog is gonna have a nervous breakdown - but that's not the house's fault.

March 5 - Chasing Rainbows

I have crystals in almost every window in the house. I love them and the dancing rainbows they create.

March 2 - Fork It Over

We need to buy groceries, so we ate eggs for dinner.

February 23 - Wooded areas

I should know by now that "I'll just bang this out in a couple of hours" means something more akin to "We'll see you next Tuesday." But it's coming along and it looks great. Once he conquers the bathroom, he'll be ready to take on the rest of the house. I'm pretty excited.

February 18 - A Bitter Spoonful

It was a bad day. There was ice cream.

I hate our silverware. We picked this beautiful, nicely weighted, appropriately priced silverware for our wedding. We spent days picking up spoons and knives to see how they felt in our hands. We spent days finding a set that would feed our future babies and not impale the roofs of their tiny little mouths. We planned dinner parties and Thanksgivings and games of spoons around this silverware. No one got it for us. Well...almost no one. My mother-in-law gave us two place settings...yeah, that's it. But that's a rant for another day. This is gonna sound ungrateful (and I'm really not ungrateful because I USE this silverware and I appreciate the thought and love with which the gift was given) but my aunt got us this entire set of silverware that "looked like the one you picked, but it was cheaper" ... and I hate it. The back of the spoons, forks and knives weigh more than the front so they are always flipping out of our hands and off our plates. The spoons are HUGE, I mean like for giants...fee-fi-fo-fum giants. I always say we should just get a set we love, but there is always something higher on the priority list. So we have this silverware that I hate and have complained about for ... almost four years. I blurred out the face of the spoon, so it can remain anonymous. It would be a shame for the silicone baby spoons to mock it in the drawer.

February 17 - On a Roll

My favorite kind of laundry day is the one where I don't have to fold anything. And today was my lucky day because my husband fell on the laundry folding sword. He rocks!