just a quick fashion post.

i may not sew well, but i do have classically trained eyes for cheating…for finding cool, inexpensive things that, with a little alteration/creativity, turn into super cool garment for babies.

like these socks. ladies knee socks i found at target last night. chop off the feet, flip them upside down (and i hemmed the top ‘cuz my girl has chicken legs, but they’ll stay just fine if you don’t), and…

voila. super cool ruffled leggings with buttons for little girls.

(they also have some great tweedy gray ones with black lace)

and with ‘fall’ mini shoots this weekend, i’ve been getting a lot of what-do-my-kids-wear e-mails. and while, yes, it would be fun to go on a shopping spree, we find our best photographic outfits from scrounging. kid photos really aren’t about the outfit, but color helps as does something interesting/funky. like a hat. or big stripes. or these super cool socks.

this is last year’s old navy christmas dress, too short…but layered with a plain tee, paired with fake leggings, some red maryjanes (when in doubt, wear red shoes!) and combined with a hair pin i found in my junk drawer, it makes a lovely thing to be photographed in.

if you’ve got a girl and you still don’t know what to put them in for pics this saturday, raid target’s knee sock aisle. some serious fall argyle that would make killer legwarmers with any skirt.

and speaking of fashion, i’m having a matilda jane trunk show party on the evening of thursday, october 1st. check out these little girl clothes…they are amazing. if you are in the naples area and are interested in coming, please contact me at: kascryder@yahoo.com and i will send you a personal invite. thanks!

so there. hope that helps.
(but my favorite is still my girl in her jammies.)

there’s something about writing a post on a monday morning. recalling the beauty of a happy week and declaring the excitement of joys ahead seem to work as a bit of an antithesis to what mondays often represent…the genesis of a monotonous week or the dread of a crazy busy one. no, this shall stand as our monday outlook as i push my intimidating calendar aside and sip my coffee a little more casually and creak the blinds open just a crack so the welcoming sunshine casts its geometric shadows on the wall behind me…happy shadows. for a happy week.

brett returned a little past midnight saturday morning after a long week of working in canada and i have decided these little trips are good because we realize just how much we miss him. especially her as i woke up to look over and see her facing me, but her hand reached up behind her just gently rubbing his face. and his smile said it all. a beauty to behold, that daddy/daughter love.

and nobody does bedtime routine like dad.

we have figured out the wonder of skype though, and now, when daddy has to go, we enjoy a few bedtime chats which she thinks is pretty cool.

so, we’re all enjoying togetherness a little more as was evidenced by this pretty little scene saturday morning in our mess of a kitchen as brett made his weekend breakfast for us all, taking egg orders like a short order cook, his backwards baseball cap hiding his bedhead, his reggae music cranked enough to inject this lovely theme of weekend-ness and family-ness and nothing-else-matters-ness to the home. and the boys played with lainey and i attempted to make a dent on the lost symbol (purchasing it the day it came out as if there was actually a chance in hell i was going to get through it quicker) and lainey smiled and repeated over and over, “gaga, mama, augen, bramban”…obviously making her little mental head-check and satisfactorily accounting for the fact that everyone was, yes…together.

and little randoms…

neighbors got kitties and simultaneously upped themselves some major notches on lainey’s cool-people-we-like-to-visit chart. our girl loves critters.

and my big girl got picked up by her best friend to go to dinner and a football game friday night and my heart half ached and half laughed hysterically at the craziness of how grown up she looked as she insisted on standing outside the front door, backpack strapped to her little jerseyed frame, waiting for her friend to drive up and drive her away for some very grown-up fun.

and then sunday…beautiful sunday. whether it represents the conclusion to a fabulous week or the origin to anther one, either way…a day on the island propelled the goodness into another week.

and, this week’s theme of magical rain seemed to recur…as if scripted verbatim from my hopes…the day panned out the dreamiest way. blue skies and sunshine for hours…and then late afternoon when we’ve exhausted ourselves with kayaking and sand-castles, sun-bathing and wading, this blanket of gray clouds slowly sweeps in bringing with it cool breezes and cold rain…

and we retreat to the coziness of the tiki where lainey naps…

…and we drink coffee, watch the football game and exchange wet clothes for towel wraps and sweatshirts.

and after an hour or so of dreamy downpours, a new calm sweeps the beach as the sun slowly sets…

(and this giant school of jellyfish guarded the coast and scared the crap out of me. convinced it was a portuguese man o’ war and we would never be able to return to isle of capri again, this concerned mama googled it this morning, compared images and determined it is a sea nettle, not deadly, common in florida, and its sting is neutralized with some vinegar. good to know.)

some post-rain shelling.

and that’s about it.

at home, we’ve fall-atized the house a bit which is like prozac for me.

from now until christmas, the simplest things make me so very happy and just the anticipation of the upcoming holidays and all the baking and family and sweet scents that accompany it make me feel good. cozy. together.

i am yearning for the first cold front, opening the sliders, our first fire, family movie night, savory soups, carving pumpkins, entertaining, decorating and then come december unloading loads of newborn clothes and folding them into new drawers…basically, i’m so nesting.

feather your nest. it’s lovely. ~k

and happy monday.

rainy days must be magic.

i’m quite certain of it, as when the rain starts to fall, these little things begin to happen here. little moments. productivity. stopping and seeing the moment for more than it really is.

it was another one of these days. and for that to happen twice in such little time…well, the planets must be aligned quite spectacularly tonight. that and brett is gone this week which always seems to ignite me to do more and be more to make up for his absence.

and while sometimes these posts happen to arrange themselves with some lovely sort of theme…tonight, it’s just pure stream-of-consciousness. a lot of pictures from a camera that has somehow created some beautiful images for me lately. a girl whose soul-loveliness has just touched me in so many ways as we enjoy these last months of just her and i. creativity. and the random little bits of life that seem to sew it all together. yes, it shall be one of those posts.

beginning with a little creativity and a $10 walmart bag we turned into a bye-bye bag. a sort of mary poppinsish bag full of never-ending surprises to entertain her while we are out. and i’m not sure why we do this for our kids…because when we were little and went to a restaurant, our parents packed squat for us and yet we were happy to play rock-paper-scissors or contentedly stack sugar packets into towers while we waited for our food. and we were just fine. however, the contents of this bag have proved to be saviors while out not to mention the process of stamping her little painted hands for the making of it was all too much fun. and we love suggestions for good bye-bye bag contents. for now, it’s play-dough and stickers, crayons, chalkboard, coloring books and little dolls with clothes.

and unlike her mother, she puts everything back right where it goes, carefully zipping each bag closed before taking out another.

and one creative leads to another. so, after procrastinating a bit on hauling out the paint shirt, water cups and all the clean-up gear for her little pleas of paint, mama, i gave in to her sweet creative soul this morning as we painted vivid swirls on crisp white paper and she clumsily attempted (with help) to paint over my dashed-line guides to spell out the name i love…and she points to it and says…yaynee.

i could have watched her all day. her concentration and the way she humbly tried to hide her crooked satisfied smile. how careful she was to not make a mess…to switch colors, dipping her brush in water between each. and then hours later when brandyn came home from school, the way she grabbed his hand, ran him to see her masterpiece all stretched and dried on the easel. look, bramban.

…and while i thought i cleaned up all the paint and put it safely away from mischievous hands, two hours later i walked into the bathroom, flipped the lid of her potty and found…well…lainey’s technicolor dream poop. her little business nicely smothered in puddles of red, orange and purple paint. i’d have taken a picture, but i spared you.

we squeezed in a noon photo shoot of this sweet baby, ella…

and i let little b stay up from a nap to help as she is now accustomed to tagging along on home shoots and does so well to stay out of the way, tag two steps behind me, make the babies smile…and even holds her own little camera sometimes. so proud of her…and she loves to be included in my “work.”

this little one worked the lense oh so splendidly.

(can’t decide on color or antique for this one!)

then came the really good…the hardest rain…and the most precious moments of my day.
we escaped, her and i, to our little ice cream treasure where i captured, in the downpour, some of my most favorite pictures ever of her. believe it or not, these were unposed. just pure lainey doin’ her thing.

the rain was just cascading in torrents and we had no umbrella (which i’m liking because we always have more fun without one)…but we did have a beach towel…so i let her play in the rain with her towel. and i don’t know who was more thrilled–her, to unleash all this toddler into puddles that begged to be stomped in, rain that pleaded to be danced in–or this mama who watched it all quietly, contentedly, thankfully…behind her lense. i’m sure it was me.

we stayed stuck, banished by the rain to our quaint little plaza, so we meandered down the line of little shops past our ice cream treasure into our favorite kids boutique where, for fun, we fancied the likes of three little grandmas inside with lainey’s parade out of the dressing room, trying on a hodge-podge pile of things she pulled off shelves she could reach.

and finally, home…where it continued to rain, dimming the house into a cozy place for naps. she cuddled into her big girl bed without the slightest of fuss and fell fast asleep in minutes. i steeped a pot of tea, lit a candle and began to look back at our pictures.

and it hit me for the first time. the fact that, although i am so already in love with our new little bean and loving the idea of her arrival being such a gift for lainey…it will mean the end of so many days of undivided attention for her.

i cried–sipping my tea in the rain–looking at pictures of painting and ice cream and a morning well-spent…knowing that these last months of brewing anticipation and the crescendo to that beautiful day also represents a slowly closing window to what we have…what she has. how her life will change…and she doesn’t even know. i am so happy for her…and yet today, admitedly, a bit sad as well. it will be good for her…and good for us, and i know we will handle it beautifully and everything will fall perfectly into place…because we love and we love good. but, i want to give everything to both of them and know expectations will have to be altered. i will struggle to document every beautiful bit of life for both…to scribble lovelies in baby books…to take pictures of accomplishments as simple as little fingers closing ziplock bags…to bake and write and read, all the while keeping a house and loving a husband and maintaining the little hollows of self-fulfilment a mama must keep to love bigger and better. a change i am embracing but know will bring new challenges.

for now…we love.

‘cuz we know how to do that.
and the rest will fall into place.

(and thank you for your comments as of late. there are a couple of you who are link-less in blogworld that have said some of the sweetest things and i wanted to send back a message but can’t. thank you always for kind words…and while i don’t ever want to be a ‘comment-digger’ i am not too proud to admit, finding a comment in my e-mail box always makes me smile. because it’s a little bit of love. and who doesn’t love love? i really do try and get back to as many of you as possible or visit your blogs from time to time. so, thank you, sweet friends.)