so, we go through the same ordeal every night.
she, after bath and jammies and other preparatory bedtime rituals, climbs her stool to her suitcase of books where she starts pulling out the ones she expects us to read. and by ‘ones’, i mean fourteen…first carefully selected and tediously set aside into an organized pile…until about four books in. by five, the careful selection becomes more of an animalistic three-second book shopping spree as she madly whips out as many bindings as she can muster before we stop her. and then there’s just this colossal pile of literature on the floor which, despite my love of children’s books and reading good words to my little’s sweet brain, intimidates the crap out of me.
and so we whittle, convincing her to shave down the mountain to two.

pick two, we say.
pick two, she repeats.

and although i sometimes squeeze in a third on my own (who can resist willy bear), she’s managed to accept our reasonable compromise.

because lord knows we all have our mountain of books to tackle, but sometimes picking just two is perfectly satisfying. because it’s doable.

and that’s my philosophy as of late.
because it’s november and work is aplenty. and there is a two-year-old to read fourteen books to. and a house to clean. and a husband who walked out of the bedroom tonight while i was putting lainey to bed and mumbled, ‘gross, there’s a scalloped potato stuck to the door.’ and i ignored him, pretending if i didn’t acknowledge he said it, it wouldn’t really be there. because there are doctor appointments and grocery store trips and the unraveling reality that in just a short time, there will be this tiny froggy-legged swaddled bundle of blessed sweet breath to love and hold and nurse and breathe in, and with that comes finishing a two-girl bedroom, unpacking tiny things that will need a place to stay, and goodwilling half my closet which, i swear, i can hear growling at night. it’s alive.

strangely though, i am not overwhelmed.
my goal is to have all my holiday work edited, designed and ordered by december first. which leaves me a month to clean and nest and drink in the holidays…and another month to zen myself into the beautiful place of knowing it is near. and i say that just to account for another month… because, believe me, i am so already zenned. i want her in my arms so bad, i can taste her. i have imagined a trillion times the first blink-blink of her tiny eyes as she takes in the new light and love of her world or how she will smell when i bring her head to my lips that first night we spend together…alone in our room…or just how our girl’s eyes will twinkle when she holds her little baby for the first time…and how it will feel to huddle with the warmth of one more body to make an even bigger family or feel my heart stretch to fit another little egg in my nest to protect and teach and love. yeah…zen i am.

things are getting done, and i, like my sweet little, have learned to compromise, setting aside the mountain for two. shake down the kitchen and edit two sessions. clean bathrooms and design a card. a load of laundry and e-mail three people back. play baby dolls with my girl and drink in, for a moment, the first bout of little bean’s hiccups felt. yes, two at a time. sometimes more. and i tackle them heartily, diligently and perhaps even enjoyably. i am the little-engine-that-could and me & my caboose are chuggin’ along just fine.

the caboose has grown.

and comparive tummy observations have become a weekly ritual.

cold fronts continue to knock on our door, and we gladly welcome them…
tonight with hoodies.

big fans of the hoods here in the house. i mean, big. she sometimes curls herself into a quasimodo hunch just so she can ‘hood’ herself with the back of an otherwise hood-less shirt.

oh, she has been just heaven lately. i hate that ‘mama wuhk’ has become part of her vocabulary, but at the same time i’m comforted and inspired and entirely okay with the fact that she understands work is a part of life–both as a means of survival and as a manifestation of hobbies and interests and talents and reaching for big things in life…and that she knows she is completley integrated into all of it…today following me out the door for a shoot with her own tiny camera. ‘mine came-wa’, she squeaked before she held it up, backwards and upside-down, and pretended to click away right beside me.

i wonder what she makes of it all…if she will want to take pictures as she grows up. if meeting children and babies and all these mamas and daddies will help her learn more to love people. if she will be a lightroom whiz at the ripe age of four or design a custom album for a first-grade project. if she too will someday stretch across pavement to get the perfect angle…if she will find the beauty in seeing life, loving life and attempting to capture a little bit of what makes us so entirely happy.
i wonder.

there is much to do…but we’re takin’ it by twos.
tomorrow, we will see our little bean on the screen again…relish in the joy of snapping a newbie’s pictures…hack a little more away on our pile of edits…and maybe–just maybe–find the time to scrape some scalloped potatoes off a dirty door.

…loving. ~k

it began as one of those days…
i woke up too early.
devoured a bowl of generic fruit loops.
made a cup of coffee.
gasped when i realized i had a glucose tolerance test in two hours…
…that required fasting.
called my nurse.
called the lab.
decided to go and wait.
ran completely late picking up my friend.
ignored the bright orange carpet cleaning flyer someone had put under my windshield wiper a day earlier and drove through its obnoxious flapping.
ignored the empty gas light.
ignored the fact that this day was all too like last tuesday…when i left my atm card in the machine after a deposit until it didn’t give it back…and then repeated this exact move several days later with the temporary card i had just received to replace the old one.

…but then about three miles in, i took my irritation and stress…and laughed. because flapping orange flyers are really kind of funny. and i know from experience that my jeep can soar on empty fumes for oh, say twenty more miles or so.

so i let it go…
and it became a very good day indeed.

…ending in a real-life baylee story.
that went something like…
…two little blondies went to the beach…where the cool breeze kissed the shell-peppered tide. and they shoveled deep holes into the sand and smiled while their mamas watched the pink sun sink behind heavy clouds.

…and they all lived happily ever after.
yes, a very good day indeed.

three photo shoots today…and a dinner with friends tonight.
it is cool. the windows are open. the sun has just risen its splenor over our front palm trees…and i am loving november.

perhaps the more frequent posts suggest we have more time available around here which, may i squalsh such rumors now. while that is hardly the case, i am finding our home more alive and jiving quite well with all there is to do. and, whether it is the spell woven by the enchantment of november, the anticipation of so many beautiful things in the near future, or the bewitching breeze that has finally landed in southern florida and awakened the stagnant air that had been sitting far too long in our home…i am feeling completely inspired lately. and with that comes this sensual stimulation for the beauty of little things that hibernates from time to time.

i feel like a kid. i want to color and skip and wear tie dye. i want to make hot chocolate and cram it with more marshmallows than my sugar allowance can tolerate. i want to wear daisies in my hair and ditch my heels for worn converse sneakers…with beaded safety pins. i want to embroider bff bracelets and hand them out at recess. and then i want to end it all with a party at the roller rink where i shall strap on those awesome brown skates with the big orange wheels and the ugly laces, and i will skate this belly around the disco-lit rink, holding hands with my friends before we meet up at red leather booths in the roller cafe for soft pretzels and frozen cokes.

yes, that’s how i feel.

and in that state of mind, we are enjoying…

*trading our overly-priced organic baby soap for one night of ‘fun’ bath.
and by fun bath i mean this cool pink bath foam that has triethanolamine in it. and i have no idea what triethanolamine is.

*wearing my wedding day perfume. on a monday. when i’m home all day. for no good reason other than it smells like july first, 2007. and that, my friends…was a happy day.

*red shoes. because red shoes are always fabulous. top that with ballerina ribbons that criss-cross up your ankle and you just took your fabulous and upped the ante.

*the woods behind our house. they’re different than the up-north woods that are thick and layered and dark. i miss those woods, but i’ve also come to love this other kind of woods…open and sunny and revealing of all the stuff that goes on back there…we’ve got a backstage pass to nature, and the sounds we hear always remind us of that.



i’ve been loving them more and more and appreciating the solace they give to a morning cup of coffee or an afternoon of throwing in a couple rows to little bean’s blanket…

*baby touchdowns.
it’s when we balance this little frog on the summit of my belly…and our little kicker punts hard enough to knock it off. lainey thinks it’s very, very funny.

*willybear.

which i was read when i was very little…and i remember it well. my mom found an old, tattered copy at a goodwill a couple years ago, scooped it up and sent it to us. it’s now lainey’s favorite book, and she brings the jacket-less little book to us and says, ‘read wiwy-bee-oh’ a few times a day.

*lazy mornings.

..when we sneak off to make coffee and then retreat back to the covers so we can lie amid pillows of fluffy down long enough to smell the coffee scent that slowly wafts into the bedroom while we lounge, our bodies all warm and intertwreathed. this morning, she designated our bed as her stage and went about performing a silly show for our morning entertainment.

…ending, of course, in an encore of her sweetness.

…and that black background in that last pic, believe it or not, is simply the contrast from the way the light hit her against our dark headboard.

and that, my friends, is what we are enjoying…right here, right now.

that…and nina simone.
~k