game three

to pick some apples

My tree girl, who loves parks, just could not manage to keep her eyes open for this one. So I picked on my own, away from the rest of the wagonload, and enjoyed the morning in the sweet scented fields.

And even though it feels like a completely different world, we're never really that far away from home... (see it there in the distance?)

Now, how to decide on the recipes?

scenes from the west gallery with my favorite museum patron

This is my last full week at home with this little cutie. I took these photos last week when we went to the art museum for the morning. She looked up at me like this through the whole thing, watching the lights and the art and the people and smiling to the point of distraction. I am miserable at the thought of not having as many of these kind of mornings, so I'm just not thinking about it. We're excited for this week, the one that we're in, and we're going to enjoy the heck out of it. And next week, well...

...you'd miss this smile too, right?

playground

Shots of the girl-monkey, and the big blue eyes that never left her. She's waiting for her turn, you better believe it.

birthday book

We had another book picked out and purchased and ready to donate to E's school in honor of her birthday (a tradition the school has each year). And then we went to the library on Wednesday afternoon and checked this one out. When we got home E started in on the stack and I suddenly heard her laughing hysterically and then nearly sobbing she was cracking up so much. Giant tears rolled down her face, and she could hardly get control of herself. We read this hilarious book over and over again that night and the next morning, on the great suggestion of her father, I called around until I found a copy in a bookstore and made the switch. Highly recommended by us.

the growing flock

I've been collecting bird prints for awhile now and this weekend we are going to finish up the walls around the desk area in F's room. We got the magnetic paint in this week, so some of these will be nesting in there soon - some in frames and some just hung on the wall with super strong magnets (out of reach of little hands of course). I also have some origami birds to intersperse between the 2D works. And after that we'll just wait for the baby to get a little bigger and add some birds (or whatever else she wishes to make) to the mix.

oh, you make it so easy

anthropologie, you make it too easy to fall in love.

I cannot afford you, but still I go in and know that you'll have somthing that I just must have.

This birdie room is too easy as well. Too easy to find the "perfect" thing, even though the "perfect" thing was purchased just a few days back.

This time, a vintage kitchen towel, which (once ironed) may stay on the crib or become a throw pillow depending upon my level of participation.

And a canvas for that final wall that still needs paint - further motivation, I convince myself, to get that project done this weekend. And you were on sale. How, oh, how could I resist?

one

One year ago today you came into our life, into a family full of girls but perfectly happy to get used to a boy. You smiled early, and often, but even before you mastered that smile, you captured the heart of our girl. She declared you the cutest baby ever, and proudly held her new cousin on your third day of life and fell in love with your round head and baby fingers and tiny toes. We had nearly given up on having a second child of our own, were not yet past the sadness of failed tries and circumstances, but we spent that first weekend with you and watched her - watched how she held you and gazed at you and smelled you and adored you.

You were the reason we kept on trying, the reason we knew that our family was not yet complete. You hold a special place in my heart for showing me that, for smiling your smiles, and for charming us all.

Happy birthday, sweet boy.

numbers

A few days ago my husband was checking in on my blog stats and he shot me an email soon afterwards. "Hey, I was the 10,000th visit - what's my prize?" he asked. Ten thousandth? Wow. That's a big number. Prize, hmmm. What kind of prize... How about the fact that I cleaned the upstairs bathroom while the baby napped?

Exciting, I know.

I might have missed the number 10,000, but the fact is, I've always noticed numbers. I might go weeks without glancing down at the odometer on the car, but I never miss 40,000 or 50,000 and I have a knack for getting the babyseat back in the car, one of the two strollers we store in our trunk muscled back into its spot, the diaperbag thrown in the front passenger seat and then a quick jog around to the front seat, key in ignition, air conditioning cranked up, NPR turned down and then I glance at the clock and its 11:11. Almost daily, I swear this happens. My daughter (bless her little 10 week old soul) goes to bed now around 7:00pm and starts peeping eleven and a half hours later. When it gets loud enough to rouse me, and I blink enough to clearly see the clock it's always 6:23. She falls quiet, I roll over, and then she's back again on the sound system at 6:37. I walk into her room, see her wriggling in her crib with delight that I've returned again for yet another day, and when I pick her up, snuggle my face up against hers and turn around to turn off the nightlight, the hands on the Curious George clock she's hijacked from her sister are always pointed exactly at a quarter til seven. In line at the grocery store on Sunday, the woman in front of me had groceries totalling $97.98. The ingredients I was purchasing for a housewarming dinner for friends, snacks for E's school, a few gallons of milk and the last of the season's peaches beeped across the scanner, finally adding up to $98.99. "Hey," I laughed. "What a series of numbers." The clerk smiled and said she had noticed too. She lowered her voice to almost a whisper and said reverently "Once, I had a total of exactly one hundred dollars...twice in a row." It was my turn to be amazed.

When I turned thirty-one a few years back, my husband gave me gifts that were all in prime numbers, and wrapped them in paper he had made with the largest prime number spelled out on it. "Always in my prime, never past it," he had assured me. Corny, but cute. I'm sure the florist thought him a bit odd when he asked for just eleven roses.

The year 2000 was a pretty monumental year for us, and not just because it marked the turn of the millennium. We bought our wreck of a house that year, got engaged that year, planned and executed a wedding while living in two different states and marrying in a different one entirely, and lived for seventeen days, four hours, thirty-six minutes and four seconds without indoor plumbing, but really, who's counting? Having such a big year makes it easy to remember how long we've been at something. "How long have you two been working on that house?" (Nine years, yikes.) And we've been working on this marriage the same amount of time. In both cases it was (sort of) love at first sight. The house had good bones, a host of complications but endless possibilities. We both had our own lives, careers in different cities, other relationships and various complications of our own, but an instant friendship and connection soon developed into so much more. Like the progress on the house, we've had stretches of time when we put in the hard work - the long hours, the back and forth, the compromises and the stress. Times when one of us just needs a break and can't go on another step, or paint another wall, or make it through another day and the other steps in and finishes up, holds things together, cheers the other onto a happier place. And then we've had plenty of times that follow where we come through on the other side and just sit back and enjoy it for awhile, marveling at the spaces we've created, the daughters we share, the moments we have together as the very best of partners and friends. Nine years ago this very moment we were newly married, dancing under a tent with the horns playing behind us, looking forward to a few more hours in Italian silk and rented shoes, eight more days to sit on a dock at sunset as newlyweds, thirty-five months until we saw our daughter for the first time and another seventy-one until we held our second one.

Nine years that I've been lucky enough to share a home, and a life, with you.

.....


From E: Happy annaversury you gise (guys).

who said gray was boring?

I could just sit in this room for hours and enjoy myself. Wait, that's pretty much what I do! I love sitting in that chair, rocking and feeding the baby and just enjoying such sweet surroundings. She sleeps a lot, so it's hard to find time to do much in her room - but when she's awake we'll move in a few new books or raid some of the hand-me-down toys or hang a picture or a mobile. But mostly we just try to get her to smile and laugh, or sit through a book or lay side by side on the floor and watch the sheep dance above us.

For lack of a better system, I arranged her books according to the rainbow, and the corner is really bright and cheery now. She's got a few empty spaces left, but with my weakness for children's literature that shouldn't take too long to fill.

She's quite taken with the sheep mobile which dances around at the end of her bed in a way that even grownups find mesmerizing. E walked in one day thinking her dad was still in there putting the baby down for a nap, and discovered that he had already left but her sister was just laying in bed staring up at the dancing sheep. Her theory is that the baby no longer actually sleeps in there - just watches the mobile for a few hours and then protests when she's finally finished.

And a few shots of the colorful baby (who refuses to smile at me anymore when I'm behind the camera...)

...and you've definitely got a room that's far from boring.

that's some gap

Number six came out last night right after her soccer game and put an end to the plan to make caramel dipped apples on a stick this fall...

coming right along

Prudence is evaluating the rug options...
.....

So we're making progress on the nursery, and we ordered some Flor tile samples to look at for a rug. Might be awhile before we actually purchase it, but it was good to get some ideas. E let her sister choose between a few and gauged her enthusiasm by the number of kicks she gave each one. We've narrowed it down to four and E's planning on running some independent tests tomorrow - you know, to see how well blocks stack on them or matchbox cars race on them or how red your knees get from kneeling on them. My suggestion was just choosing the least expensive of the four and going with that one. We'll see...

We also got two of the bird pictures hung (and all six laid out). Now we're just waiting on the other frames to come in. I love them, I absolutely love them. We hung the sheep mobile as well, and it casts the best shadows on the wall. I'll take some photos of the whole area tomorrow in the natural light, but here are a few of the progress shots. M ordered the magnetic paint we talked about awhile ago, so we'll be able to finish up the painting in F's room and the hallway. We're going to use some of it in both rooms.

The quilt in the window seat is actually our wedding quilt that my grandmother made, but F is borrowing it for a little while and it looks so perfect in her room. Lots of rainy day reading in this cozy corner to come.

.....

On a side note - we received our new issue of This Old House in the mail today, which means the bathroom issue will be off the newsstands soon. So if you didn't catch it yet, check it out soon, and get a good giggle at E smiling as she gets her hair "braided" (she never smiles when having her hair brushed), the photographer's attempt to hide the 7.5 month pregnant belly (unsuccessful!) and M's head in a bubble. Well worth the cost of admission - or just read it for free in the aisle!

a sure sign of fall around these parts

It always feels like the end of summer when the balloons roll into town. Last night's weather did not disappoint. This is absolutely one of my favorite events of the year - a mess of blankets on the ground, food and drinks in coolers and baskets, and the cool breezes and warm bursts of flame throughout the evening. And of course, that big, pink bunny...