Tye- 3 Week Old Session

Baby Tye was the easiest baby I have ever photographed.  He was so sweet and happy the whole time- and he had the MOST. ADORABLE. PUCKER that just stayed and stayed.

What a pleasure!

Yarn and Art

My Don't Buy a Skein in 2015 challenge was almost a bust this week.  By some fluke, I happened to show up at the library to return some books just in time for knitting group- without realizing it was knitting group day.  I had some errands to run, one being the craft store, so I said "I've missed the last few knitting days- while I am at the craft store I will just pick up a skein and a couple needles...I have coupons already...and then show up on my way back home."  Thanks to my girl, who happens to read my blog every now and again and happened to raise her eyebrows at the suggestion and kindly reminded me about my resolution, I refrained.  But it was close.    I did end up going to knitting day, if only to show that I hadn't abandoned the group- and whaddya know?  Some yarn and knitting needles had been donated to the library!

I finished a twisted step-sister ear warmer in some yarn I got for Christmas last year.  Still a ball and a bit left of that.  Corynn had said she would love to have one of them too- she almost stole mine...so, probably something will have to be done about that.  ;-)

Incidentally, the auto-focus on my camera no longer works making it super hard to take any sort of self-portrait.  The above pictures were INTERESTING to take, to say the least.  Thankfully, I figured out the twisty LCD screen- which was the only was it was able to finally happen.

I haven't had much time to pick up yarn but I got through the first and second rows of my ripple afghan and am nearly out of my first skein already!  Holy smokers!  I hope that using all my homespun yarn will yield an actual afghan and not something more akin to a super bulky, super long scarf.  After all, there is no opportunity to just go and buy more yarn.  It will be either an afghan or a scarf- and that will have to be what it was meant to be.

I am reading Hidden Art by Edith Schaeffer.  I have intended to read it for years now and just have never made time to do so- I had even borrowed a copy from my mom several months ago.  When a friend mentioned me reading it in the comments of this blog, I knew that I needed to just crack it open.  I really love it.  (So thank you, Quinn, for the nudge!)

Mom's copy of the book is old and dry-rotty around the glue but it has the most sentimental, sweet inscription in the front.  I love reading inscriptions- and this is by far the best one I've read to date.
Makes me want to have a Penny in my own life.  I wonder how Cathy was shaped by the book.  Did she read and absorb bits of it?  Did she put it in a bookshelf where it stood for years, waiting to be cracked open?  Oooh...the mystery.

Snow Day

 

More snow days!  Every day a new layer of snow is added to the ever-present layers of snow already fallen.   Some days, things are changed up by the snow turning into freezing rain...but always, there is some form of precipitation falling from the sky and always, the ground is being added to, not subtracted from.  Public school children have hardly had a full week of school since Christmas and I am jealous of their snow days!  Home-educated children don't need to traverse icy, dangerous roads to get to their school books and so, they are deprived of the utter delight the 'School's closed' announcement can bring.  (I remember that delight.)

Except.

Except this:

"I have been suffering from low motivation, and an inability to accomplish much of anything that feels really satisfying lately.  I think that winter is to blame.  Obviously I do a lot, but sometimes I really need to tackle a fun project to completion in order to feel like I am not just spinning my wheels.  That’s why we craft, right?  Because so much of of mama’s life involves doing work that will be quickly undone in a seemingly endless cycle.  That work is good and important, but sometimes I need something more.  When I make or re-make something, it usually stays that way for a little bit longer than the floors stay clean after a good mopping."  ~ from Ginny's blog.

That is exactly, to the letter, the very own thoughts that have been running through my very own head.  I read that paragraph last night and felt that bit of camaraderie one finds with a total stranger, who oddly doesn't feel anything like a total stranger but, in fact, a sister.  Who understands. 

Why?  Because that very morning, I had told the children they wouldn't have to crack open a single school book, write a single spelling word, practice a single math fact IF they spent the day creating something- anything.  As long as they were creating (whatever and however that creating took form) they could have the day to themselves.  It was for them...but it was also for me.  Because I was wishing for a moment or two to devote to something that wouldn't get undone in that seemingly endless cycle.  Something tangible, that hold on and stays for a bit. 

Not surprisingly, my own bit of creativity was hampered a bit as the littler children needed some direction and help in the making/implementing of ideas.  But I was able to begin a skirt that I have been hoping to begin for Corynn- but instead of me whipping it out on my own, I decided that we ought to work on it side by side.  Which is, as it turns out, so much better.

By the end of the day, the house was a complete and total wreck. The children had flitted from one project to another, whenever the mood would strike and I let them.   There were yarn bits, cooled blobs of hot glue, popsicle sticks and paintbrushes, bits of cut paper and markers in every square in of the downstairs, right up until dinner time... but the atmosphere was thick with creativity and productivity.  It feels a bit liberating to allow yourself and your children to become mess-makers, not caring a whit about tidiness for an entire day.  

It all eventually got cleaned up and put right (that was the other part of the deal) and we, all of us, were the better for our 'snow day'.  

On Babies

I've had quite the newborn fix the last few weeks as I've been given the opportunity to do a few baby photography sessions.  Above are more than a few pictures from a photo shoot I did with my newest niece, Colette.  She is a darling of a girl and I love her.( Corynn was my sidekick and stylist that day- she helped with the  mermaid scene and took the picture of me too!  Handy girl!)   I'll be posting a few favorites from the newborn boy session I did soon too.

Speaking of babies...

I had a dream last night that I was shopping and I noticed a mother with a screaming newborn- she stood there, eyes empty and staring blankly ahead, bouncing her newborn inside a basket in such a way that the poor thing nearly jostled right out of the basket.  I went over to her and asked if I could help her in some way...maybe rock her baby for a minute or something... and she responded by picking the baby up out of the basket and with a glaring stare, she proceeded to drop that baby right on the floor and then ran.  I scooped up the poor thing and, in an instant, it was mine.  Besides the terribleness of a baby being dropped onto a floor and the eerieness of the mothers' gaze, it was the best dream I've had in a very long time.  It felt very much like I really truly had a newborn in my arms and s/he was mine.  Best feeling in the world.

Truth be told, even in the daytime I find myself dreaming about babies being dropped off on my doorstep or being given to me in the daylight hours.   I dream about holding a sign outside of the local abortion clinic that reads "I'll take your baby!" and a girl, about to go inside, decides to take me up on it instead.  I dream about becoming a 'Safe Haven House' for unwanted children and for creating an organization throughout the nation, using churches to enlist the help of Christian families all around the United States to open up their homes to babies about to be brutalized.  (Anyone need a family for any unwanted babies?  Anyone?  I'm here.  I'm totally not joking.)

I guess the news that I read (nearly every single day) is beginning to get to me~ of babies being found in garbage cans or at gas stations, left in driveways to die by exposure or found in shoeboxes in a garage years later... of children murdered by their own mothers.

Mothers, once the truest source of comfort and love, are becoming the villians of children, victimizing those they were once determined to protect.   And it is no wonder- if a baby can be disposed of in the womb, why not dispose of them outside of it?  It only makes sense.  The train has reached the station.

But even now, there are modern day Mullers.  Like South-Korean pastor Lee Jong-rak.  
Focus on the Family is airing the documentary The DropBox, airing March 3,4 &5, based on his work in South Korea.  What an extraordinary person doing extraordinary things.

Matt and I challenged ourselves to have one date a month.  Guess you know where we will be in March...at the movie theater!  I hope you join us!