Pretty Boy

This outfit is special to us because it was made for my husband by his great grandmother (his mom's grandmother), which means Ollie's great great grandmother. I really treasure handmade things like this and am grateful Trav's mom let us use it.

When this lad was born a doting old nurse proclaimed, "He's too pretty to be a boy!"

Which seemed utterly ridiculous, because to me he looks like such a boy.

But boyish as he seems to me, he's been mistaken for a girl several times in his young life -- even when he is wearing really boyish looking clothes. I am always a little shocked by it.

But...Rosy red cheeks, pink pouty lips, and big blue eyes...yeah, I guess I can see it. Maybe the bonnet doesn't help either?


Also thanks everyone for your sweet comments and advice about motherhood. I really do appreciate it. I know you all have busy lives and writing those notes takes time! I sort of laugh at myself after writing posts like that because they are generally in the midst of a crisis, and I often later think, "Why did I post that?" It may have been a rather desperate cry for help, but I am glad I did because I read those little notes all day as I dealt with a lot of screaming and sometimes through my own tired tears, and felt bolstered.

Oh I am so dramatic!

Anyway, thanks for being here and thanks for your notes!

love,
Danielle

Bathing Beauties

Rarely is a bath had in our home without this little blond doll as a companion.

Sneaky as any of us privacy and relaxation seekers might try to be, when she hears the sounds of water flowing she disrobes and cheerfully climbs in to join the splashing fun-- without the slightest notion that she might not be invited.

I will admit that when I chose this enormous white cast iron sink and positioned it in front of the large window that looks out over the fields and our neighboring horse friends,

it was mostly this little scene--the bathing of babes-- that I was envisioning. (Not mounds of dishes...which it what it usually contains).

It does this mother's heart good to spend an evening in the kitchen making little bottoms clean and then wrapping them in warm towels from the dryer before tucking them into fresh white nightgowns and sheets.

These are the sorts of things that my dreams are made of.


you?

Flawed

I received this fancy white desk that I'd been eye-balling, for my birthday, about 2 1/2 years ago. Since we'd been students and nomads our entire marriage, we'd put off buying any real furniture till we got a real house (our someday house as we like to call it). This desk was my little tidbit of what that life might taste like, a pacifier. When we moved from our tiny one bedroom apartment to this townhouse, I was pregnant and couldn't do any lifting. I just barked at my helpful family members as they carried all my junk, "Just DO NOT SCRATCH MY DESK!" It was my prize-- my joy, the beacon that urged, "Someday...someday we'll be real people with real furniture".

We're still not. We mostly don't have any real furniture. I do little crafty what-nots here and there to make things livable, for the time being. I use what I have...make it work. TV's are propped on badly scratched yard sale night stands. Plastic Target lamps serve as our bed-side lights. A long-ago painted dresser is a make-shift hutch in our "dining room". None of fits my real vision, but it works for now.

I've had a bad case of house envy lately. Its an affliction that comes and goes. I watch as my friends make big plans to do remodel projects, or move, or garden, or install window treatments that don't involve plastic blinds, or have dinner on a table that they didn't also puff paint on when they were 7, and a tiny tingle of jealousy creeps up. "But I wanted to do that (fill in the blank...project, furniture idea, color scheme etc.) when I have a house". I know its immature and lame, and petty. And like I said, its just a tiny tingle.

Don't get me wrong...I am grateful that or heads are roofed, and that we are not facing any of the scary issues with the housing market that lots of people are. And the fact that we don't have a house...its 100% our own fault. Its a choice. We made it...as part of a bigger plan. And we will have one eventually.

I walked into my office a month ago to find that Avery had picked up a pencil and gone to work drawing on my treasured desk.

And when I saw it, I wasn't mad or annoyed at the mess. Honestly-- I was proud. I don't even know how she learned to draw. I'd never shown her. She just put together how to hold the pencil and that it put lines down by watching I guess? My little girl...growing up so much! Drawing? Can 15 month old babies draw?

I haven't washed it off. I don't know if I ever will. I love coming in and seeing that she's been there. That this is where our family lives, that tiny hands have been at work. She's real, and she's ours.

I'm so grateful for my little family. That we are safe. That we have love.

And I'm grateful for creative friends, who have all of that too-- and who have fabulous design ideas, and that our shared interests and ideas make us closer... and better together, and that our differences make us interesting.

And when the time comes, and its finally my turn to have a house, I know they'll be there to help me pick out paint.

This morning as I went to start the bath, I found my little elf had been at work again:

Avery likes to throw things in the tub. If you're missing say... your cell phone, 12 bottles of shampoo, your keys, some fruit? Chances are...its in the tub.

I cleaned it all out, turned on the water, and we enjoyed our morning bath in our sunny bathroom,

while we shared an orange.