high hopes in setting out to the beach for sunset tonight…only to be met with, like, monsoon rains when we got there.
making sweet lemonade from our otherwise lemon-ey circumstances, we decided to stay–found a make-shift cabana along with a super cool kid who basically gave the boys a free skim-boarding class. the rains died down a little, leaving this gorgeous periwinkle haze in the sky and a beach that belonged to nobody but us–beautiful and eery at the same time. cubby fell asleep in her little hooded sweatshirt and cuddled in the cabana with me until dark.

…and i am reminded, once again, as i look around at all the little lights from the big hotels on the beach that, while all the people inside are relishing in the beach’s beauty, they have to go home eventually. Me? Well, this place is mine…any time I want it.

So, I was in one of those I-wanna-redecorate-the-entire-house-but-I-only-wanna-spend-$20 moods yesterday which always leads to a call to my sister, the last of these calls being one where she (thankfully) talked me out of painting flowers all over Lainey’s beautiful-just-as-they-are-perfect-shade-of-pink walls. She convinced me to simplify the living room (a.k.a. get rid of needless crap), and I decided to top it off with rearranging the room which always tricks my brain into thinking I’ve completely redesigned something. The product may not look much different but look closely…

THE BEFORE: (notice the after-first-birthday pile of toys overflowing the wall cubby which makes our house look like FAO Shwartz)

THE AFTER: (problem solved with prying off weird scrolly iron things on bottom of coffee table and storing all toys in baskets under table. So much better!)

…and throwin’ in for fun: (just one of her many “looks”)

she pointed to the rainy gray sky behind the front door and “uh-uh-uh”-ed, her big eyes sweetly pleading.

“no, we can’t go outside, baby. it’s raining.”

i thought about how much fun it will be to take her out in the rain someday when she’s bigger. we’ll jump in puddles with our rain boots. we’ll twirl umbrellas and dance like fred astaire. we’ll throw caution to the wind and have fun like it’s goin’ out of style.

and then i thought, why wait?

…so we played in the rain. …and she smiled (and pulled at her clothes for me to take them off, of course).

and i remembered that somewhere, up high in my closet, were my old ladybug rainboots. i bought them ten years ago from a little amish store in shipshewana thinking they would be fun to wear to school someday when i got a teaching job.

yup…i still had them. i shook ’em for spiders, slipped ’em on her and snapped what would become one of my favorite pictures ever.

my laineybug…i love you. sorry i let you cry in your crib today. i hated every minute of it, but it will make you strong and confident and help you grow little wings that will let you fly on your own someday. i’ll always fly next to you. …even in the rain. i love you.

…enjoying the small things. ~k

“Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced… our lives are measured by these.”
~susan b. anthony

p.s. doncha love her killer grouchy face in the second one? i think it means…”don’t even think about takin’ me back inside after these pictures.” …or maybe it’s more of a “this is for lettin’ me cry in my crib.”