Today was a fabulous Saturday of sunshine and fresh air and good old-fashioned family togetherness. It felt like everything was crying out with thankfulness that God created them—the brilliant and teeny yellow daffodils, the redbud and plum trees that are beginning to bloom, the grass that’s turning bright green, and of course, us, the humans who get to luxuriate in such grandeur.

When temperatures start warming up again, children flock to playgrounds. Against backdrops of still-naked tree limbs and grass that looks crunchy and yellow, they play hard while the sun shines. And then, as the sun begins its descent, mamas might put them on the swings for a few moments before calling it a day. Heads sag to the side in tiredness, faces a bit drawn. And then playtime’s over and the moms pack up their crews and move on towards home, thoughts of dinner fixings in their minds. Someday soon the sun and its delicious warmth will last long past suppertime. We wait in eager anticipation.

Dear Livia,

You sit beside me at the dining room this Sunday morning. Adele is blaring on the stereo and you want to know what rumor it is she sings of. I manage to evade this question as I’m not prepared to explain the intricacies of love lost and found to my first grader quite yet. You are pouring acrylic paints onto plastic lids, mixing colors to paint onto t-shirts. The dining room table is littered with paint bottles, colored pencils and, alarmingly, electronics. Perhaps this isn’t a wise configuration of projects, but it serves its purpose in keeping us close to one another as we express ourselves creatively. The dog is perched nearby in his bed, sending indignant small barks at the people who dare walk by a nearby sidewalk. I stop between nearly every sentence I type to prevent you from painting the dining room table, your wrists, the floor and your jammies. Your enthusiasm for crafts is matched only by your remarkable knack for knocking things over. Yes, you are now painting with your fingers. I tell people that you’d roll your entire body in paint if I let you and I’m not always sure they believe me. I want to encourage this need to physically create, your desire to touch and smear, to feel the paint between your fingers. It requires deep breathing for me to let you get messy and you probably haven’t noticed, but a lot of our projects wrap up quickly when the deep breathing no longer helps. Then again, you are now a big kid and can clean up fairly well on your own. How much fun this growing older thing is. I delight in you, growing girl of mine.

Love,
Mom

DFW Airport, January 2012

As it turns out, I don’t feel any better about avoiding sweets on Day 4 than I did on Day 1. Bummer. The sensation of denying myself sugary treats has become more familiar, however. I am less likely to reach for a Swedish fish or Dove chocolate to pop into my mouth. My mind is beginning to grasp that those things are off limits—don’t even think about it, missy. But I want want want to eat sweets almost all day long. The very idea of self-denial is clearly not something I am accustomed to. (Interestingly enough, we’re not avoiding sweets for Lent, the timing is merely coincidental.) This challenge began in the interest of breaking an addiction to something that is obviously not healthy in my life. You can imagine how it’s not helpful to munch on sweets all day long when you have diabetes. :)

What I am enjoying is the knowledge that I can pick and choose what goes in my mouth. I can pick and choose healthy, life-giving items over the ones that are temporarily rewarding, yet life-draining in the long run. I know I will return to eating all those blessed, amazing, spectacular tasting desserts. I simply hope to show a little more self-control when that time comes.

My friend Bethany indulged me by modeling for a little photo shoot on what had to be the most humid day ever last summer. The payoff was the brilliant light and the time alone with a good friend. We both have little girls now, so it was fun to escape daily life to play with our cameras and the light near the Wesleyan campus one evening.

Now Bethany and her family are in Germany and we miss them greatly. Fortunately, we get updates on little Adeline’s cuteness through Facebook. How in the world did people survive before Facebook? ;)

There’s a sense of formality that comes with posting family portraits online. I want to do it right. And yet it took everything in my power not to title this post “My Big Brudder’s Family.” Yeah, so that would’ve been baby talk, but I truthfully think of Adam as my big brudder—and I love him for always being the guy I can look up to.

Shooting Adam, Kristin, Madeleine and Noah last fall was a particularly fun thing for me to do. It felt like I was pushing the pause button to take stock of their lives. Setting it up as a true photo shoot allowed me to tell them where to stand and how to move, etc.—all the photographer commands I hold back when shooting in an informal setting over birthday cake or Thanksgiving dinner. When I step back from the images and take it all in, I’m struck by how awesome it is that Adam has such a cool family. I love my sister-in-law and my niece and nephew. We really live a full and rich existence.

Liv and her bear Ornament who regularly gets dressed up as a giraffe.

I’m having a moment of This is My Life. This life of mothering a funny, passionate and observant seven year old. This life of attempting to know where a million different stuffed animals are so a classroom of 1st graders can have the appropriate visuals for their presentations next week. (Apparently Livia volunteered to bring the animals other kids didn’t own. Because yes, we own them all. Or we did at one moment in time.) This life of checking the school lunch menu each morning to see if their offerings beat out a turkey sandwich and Clementine. This life of spraying a little girl’s hair with smoothing spray to keep the frizzies at bay, then using just the right elastic so that her hair stays put all day. This life of putting little tennis shoes in the pink Hello Kitty backpack in case her snow boots—and socks as the case may be—get too wet while she’s playing at recess. This life of Special Breakfasts and rewarding Good Learning days and finding drawing after drawing of Mommy and Livia holding hands with hearts above their stick-figure heads. This is My Life. Praise be to God.

I prayed for this child and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. – 1 Samuel 1:27

I began hunting through my files tonight for a new header for Needs More Butter. Dressing up that space brings me a little bit of pleasure, so I indulge from time to time. Hunting for food pics made me realize that it’s been awhile since I’ve taken shots of the foods I make. Okay, kind of interesting tidbit. However I found a photo of Jeremy’s lunch at the Cliff House when we were in San Francisco a few weeks ago. Oh my goodness, that meal was delicious and the company was awesome (my Aunt Carol and Uncle John) and the view was spectacular.

And then I realized that I’ve posted two—just two!—shots of our time in San Francisco. Ridiculous. Obscene really. Here we visited this amazing city, which gave me a much-needed break from life at home, and I haven’t blogged about it hardly at all. Tragedy of all tragedies.

And then I realized, as I set thoughts of San Francisco out of my mind and continued to hunt for food pics, that I haven’t blogged more images and thoughts about Maralee’s birth. San Francisco no longer seems to be the only glaring tragedy, rather there’s a string of blog failings.

And then I realized there was more. I scrolled backwards through my files, noticed many extra gems from the December Photo Project, and then recalled a shoot from last fall that I still haven’t posted about in depth: my brother Adam and his family. What in the world? Who am I? Who have I become? Weeping and gnashing of teeth! Woe is me!

Or not.

But I have a lot of catching up to do.

Now, can someone pay me to blog? And while they’re at it, pay me to post links on Facebook as well? Because today, I would’ve made some money doing that. I am good at doing that.

**The image above was captured last Sunday, the day after a snowstorm dropped about a foot of wet, heavy white goodness on our lawns. The trees have never been prettier. Somehow we managed to escape any downed limbs in our yards, thank goodness.