.449 mon petit bébé est un enfant de trois ans

a blizzard on her birthday postponed any pre-proposed plans for festivities. 

we declared it a pampering no "no" day and simply made it all about her.

  

  

(((i have a three year old)))

.433 toddler life

the first year of toots life was rocky. her mommy's brain was sick and then she was healing. her mommy's faith was shook and then she was praying. her mommy's father was sick and then and she was grieving...(a deep, seemingly endless, still springs up out of nowhere, type of grief).

so, on days when her 'terrible two' takes a turn for the worst, i remember that she's dealt with major emotional change since the day she was born and simply expresses it in all the beautifully draining ways that toddlers can do: tantrums. stubborn defiance. coloring on walls or floor boards or windows that her mommy sometimes colors on, too. 

she's my child in every sense i could imagine. creative, emotional, dramatically expressive. and on days like these past few ones have been, i take stock of all that makes her a ball of goodness in my eyes, because sometimes she's a just tiny stranger with a tornado in place of her emotions.

but, she knows her birthday, her abc's and all the letters to her name. knows, too, that a diamond is a rhombas and happily declares it when spotted on stain-glass windows or on sides of milk crates stacked high against concrete storefronts. she counts to twenty effortlessly and can now recite a tiny poem in sign language. she loves books and libraries and telling me bedtime stories rich with dragons and princesses and flying frogs on flying carpets. she'll choose an apple over candy and drinks water before apple juice all on her very own accord. 

i am extremely proud...and in awe...and overwhelmed...and in love...and, sometimes, drained, but, always grateful, that i get to be the mother to this little girl. with eyes like my father and the spirit of her grands, i am learning that all of me lives in the very core of who this sweet, amazingly beautiful soul is.

  

she told me to draw a picture of her. in her eyes, this was a masterpiece.

she drew me, too, but erased it immediately as she was inspired to draw a spider, instead. 

(pouting because it was too cold, and too late, for the playground)

.427 nerds

fun with halloween candy. 

and this is what happens when you mix toots with sugar.

.420 color and still

"when life gives you lemons...(ask for tequila and salt)"

author unknown

"keep your coins, we want change"

banksy

“i can ask for cigarettes in every language” 

david bowie

i had a goal in mind, to replace certain photos in my still life gallery on my website.

(though only 2 of these photos made the cut)

.417 growing imagination

"we're a family of readers", says my mother, and she is right. books, the first weapon she armed us with, have been apart of my life since before i could speak. an advocate of the written word, my mother made the art of buying books and reading books, as much of a tradition as celebrating ones birth. she cultivated a love of words so deep, first within her own children, then within her grands, i'm partly convinced that words are in our dna, as real as skin or moles or "good growing" hair. i wasn't surprised when she announced, the other day, that it was time for toots to have her own library card. having read every book to her from her own growing collection, i'm excited about the new imaginative places we're sure to visit with a world of books at our disposal. 

i was bred to be a writer. regardless of whatever creative path i choose to journey through, at my core, i'm rooted in words. my mother instilled the beauty of reading and the structure of writing. my father, who use to read parts of his memoir to me, cultivated the art of shaping words into emotion, like the way an artist strokes paint in blank spaces, deliberately. 

words make me happy. language is astounding.

i am drawn to people who use them artfully, distinctively, each time that they speak. like my sweet-voiced, clever word using toddler is learning to do. toots, who loves books and adores the library. who memorized her favorite story so well, you'd swear she could read. who loves poetry and cadence and the rhythm that language can sing. it's pretty awesome, to share a love of literature with her, to just be able to experience her falling in love...with the written word, too...