enjoying the small things today.

10) it’s just one of these days, literally and figuratively:

clean sheets on the bed. a floor that managed to stay free of piles of oatmeal, cheerios or other various fill-in-the-blank messes that sweet cubby likes to pull out of the pantry. a clean kitchen. it’s all good.

9) this shirt. what? my daughter? now why would she feel the need to say this?

8) finding, on a clearance endcap in target, just what we needed today: an otherwise crappy disney princess purse set…however, it included super cool fake make-up thus avoiding future cubby catastrophes. it was so cute watching her tote the little purse around, stopping occasionally to rifle through it, pulling out the little plastic red lipstick, popping the cap off and giving her lips a good smear of invisible beauty. in fact, she is sleeping now, sweetly curled up in her crib holding puppy in one hand and the plastic lipstick in the other.

7) speaking of clearance endcaps…it’s always a good day with red tags.

6) spaghetti and homemade meatballs in the crockpot. and mozzarella/basil and the closest thing to straight-from-the-garden tomatoes you’ll ever find for dinner tonight. (thank you donna nana for reminding me)

5) surprising brett with a bottle of red. we hardly splurge on wine these days and i don’t like it, but once in a while…i like to make him happy. and the cool frenchy label sold me. i’m so glad my husband has a nice wife.

4) teaching cubby early that every vote counts. …and that $5 will buy you a cheap t-shirt.
(p.s. check out the cool camera strap cover i sewed…working on making my sis one too now.)

3) overwearing these shoes, my favorites. if there’s any shoes to be bronzed for her, it’s these babies and as many cute shoes as she has, i find myself choosing these over all the rest. they’re just so lainey. years from now i’ll look back at pictures and smile when i see these shoes.

2) taking the girls outside this afternoon to play in the water. brett would have died because it was a complete hill-billy set-up what with the beach umbrella and my lawn chair, but it was worth the fun. hey, you can take the girl out of detroit, but….you get it.

1) finding myself saying to brett more and more, “what did we do to deserve this?” because she’s too amazing…too beautiful…too over-the-top for me to grasp that she belongs to me. we’ll be watching her play at night and she’ll do something just dripping with cute and we’ll look at each other and half cry/half laugh and then “she’s ours, she’s ours, she’s ours” will follow.

…enjoying the small-but-beautiful things. ~k

i pulled up to the little parking lot next to the old hotel downtown tonight for my photoshoot of two little girls i had yet to meet. i waited two minutes before the blue car pulled in next to me…i turned to look, and sitting in the backseat were two beauties who literally took my breath away.
i grabbed my cellphone and made a quick call to brett.

him: “did you get there okay?”
me: “holy mother of pete, brett. these girls? oh. my. gosh. they’re beautiful. this is gunna be fun. just had to call and tell you that.”

kelsey and addie…who melted my heart like butter. oh, and their grandparents did this all as a secret surprise for their mommy & daddy. sweet, sweet grandma & grandpa!

this one had me at ‘hello.’ ten minutes into the shoot, her sweet little voice was calling me, “kelle! kelle!” and then she’d show me something fabulous.

no matter how old they are, i gotta get those footie pics.

this next picture makes me laugh…this little thing had so much character and her grandparents would get her to pose and “show her muscles”…and i could move her like play-doh…she just did whatever we told her to do!

…and i could easily post twenty more.

people ask me all time if i miss teaching.
everything i miss about it, i get back from taking pictures of kids…that fulfillment of childhood, that capturing their little attention, that magic that you can only get by being with these precious souls. i still get to experience it. (but i still miss reading hard-cover books aloud…the ones that smell like the library and have thick pages that crinkle when you lick them and turn the page. yeah, i still miss that.)

…enjoying the taking-babies’-pictures-is-a-spiritual-experience-for-me things. ~k
the kid pix…oh, they always get to me.

it’s funny this blog thing. i never have to think about what to post… it writes itself everyday. she just does her thing and a post evolves. and i could write twenty lainey stories a day….like how she always digs through her shoe drawer to find two matching pink crocs, her favorite, and brings them to us to put on her. or how her little night time prayer has evolved to her saying not only bruh-bruh but now mama and gaga and then a series of little grunts which prompt me to say the next family member’s name and she “uh-huhs” with approval. or how she cocks her head to the side and utters the sweetest little song you’ve ever heard when we ask her to sing.

but i’ll save those for a later day.

today, in keeping with our mess-making week, little make-up thief struck again. bobbie brown would be so proud. we were deep in the middle of a game of “find me” (i.e.: i crouch in some uncomfortable corner of our house yelling “come find me!! come find me!!” and little cubby shortly follows, trotting in with a big smile of satisfaction for revealing my hiding spot). today, after a series of “come find me’s” and a period of dangerous silence, i realized miss i’ve-figured-out-how-to-break-into-the-cabinet-locks must have been sidetracked.

that she was.

the view from my spy position:

ruh-roh. make-up, everywhere. and not just lipstick…eyeshadow too. after i realized her face already looked like a mardi gras mask/car accident victim, i let her finish the job for a few pictures.

then, she flashed me one of these faces…

…which i’m pretty sure means i’m-too-cute-to-get-in-twubble-right? i’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of it over the next oh say twenty years.

if anyone needs a make-up artist, cubby’s taking appointments.

p.s. in case you’re wondering…it’s m.a.c. chili #A97. wicked shade of red.

…enjoying the it-took-fifteen-baby-wipes-and-a-bottle-of-lotion-to-get-this-off things. ~k