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My Little Flower Girl
Every day Baby Bug gets smarter and smarter. I can’t believe that humans develop so quickly. I have this sneaking suspicion that she’s starting to understand what I’m saying and I can’t get away with all the mindless babble any more.
We go for walks and I tell her about all the flowers we pass. I’m secretly plotting that she will know all her flower names by the time she’s three. Those other kids can know their colors and numbers but my baby is going to know the difference between Mexican sage and lavender. Who knows maybe she’ll be a botanist.
We always stop to admire the roses. There are a lot of white roses on our path. Sometimes I pull a long branch down toward her and she lifts her nose like she’s trying to smell them. But I really think she thinks I’m offering it to her to taste. Sometimes I forget to stop at a particular rose that we’ve stopped at every day for the last three weeks or so. When this happens she pulls sideways and strains towards the rose, quickly reminding me that we missed a stopping spot. So I retrace my steps and let her smell her rose.
Today on our evening walk to the park for one last push in the baby swing, we walked by a big rose bush with bright salmon colored roses lit up by the setting sun. I didn’t even notice them. I was too busy looking at the ground or thinking about who I was going to call on my cell phone or something. Suddenly Baby Bug started jumping up and down in her baby carrier and lifting her arms up into the air. I thought maybe she had seen a bird or something so I looked up to see what she was so excited about. And there it was. Two big explosions of orange against the periwinkle twilight sky, like tangerine popscicles against dark shadowy ice… it was beautiful.
My daughter, already she warms my heart.
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Falling for Fall
I love Fall. I never used to. As a kid, fall meant bulky scratchy ill-fitting sweaters and tights that wouldn’t stay up. It meant school and lots of stay-inside days. In high school, Fall and Winter meant rain and if it rained then the hairspray on my bangs would completely lose all it’s stiffness and my day would be ruined. Oh the horror.
But now I love wearing bulky clothes. I hardly ever wear tights but I love wearing socks. I still don’t really love rain but I could care less what my hair looked like. I love the crisp air in Fall and the blue blue blue skies. I love taking walks with Baby Bug and not feeling drops of perspiration run down my back underneath the baby harness. I love sipping hot drinks and walking on a beach completely bare of tourists. I love thinking about pumpkins and butternut squash soup and warm cozy things like making pies.
Speaking of… I wonder if I’ll be able to pull off making pies now that I have a baby. It was such an achievement for me last year. I think I can do it. And you know why? Because I AM the MASTER MEAL PLANNER!!! [insert cheery tooting kazoo music here] Meal planning rocks. I thought it was a silly idea at first. Just one more thing to fill up my day. I thought it was overkill. I mean what are you going to ask me to do next? Lay out my clothes on the bed the night before and iron my shirts! Enter my receipts into an Excel spreadsheet? That’s just silly talk.
You know what? Meal planning works. It was a very productive exercise to force myself to sit down and think about what I had on hand and what I needed from the grocery store. I usually just wing it and it’s a good thing I’m creative because you know how well winging it works. Then I got out my big fat Joy of Cooking cookbook (that I just happen to be reading these days. I kid you not.) and I picked out one new recipe to try. We have “new recipe night” now. It’s kinda fun. Except I think I’m either allergic to walnuts or I poisoned myself. (I’ll try to link the recipe on my cooking blog and link it here later.)
I feel like such a fake trying to be so domestic but it’s not that bad really. If I’m here being a mom 100% of the time, I might as well embrace all the facets of professional wife-and-momhood and be good at it. It just feels so foreign. I’m not a good cook. I don’t really like to clean. I’d rather spend all my time playing on my computer and making things. But this is what fits around the baby’s nap times and this is what makes my family happy. So I’m going to do the best job I can. And maybe along the way I’ll enjoy it and become a good cook. Imagine that!
Enough about that. Here are some more swing pictures. We have a lot of pictures of Baby Bug in the swing. Mostly because we go to the park EVERY DAY!!! I have to. It keeps me sane. But these pictures are special because I sort of almost got a picture of her peek-a-boo invisible new tooth. It’s there, I can feel it. It just doesn’t really show up well, especially in a gritty slideshow.
