Clingy moments for my normally independent daughter tend to arrive just as I am preparing dinner.  She desperately wants to be held, so I scoop her up and position her on one hip while I sashay around the kitchen-

stirring,
   mixing,
      measuring,
          and pouring with one hand. 

The sauce splatters and the timer beeps.  I try to set her down, only to be reminded by primitive language-

whimpering,
    arm shaking,
        and feet stomping- 

that I should not even dare attempt such a thing. Chastised, I pick her back up and choose to relish the moment.  While I continue cooking, I spill a few noodles on the floor.  They can be picked up later.  Setting the table takes twice as long since I can only carry a dish or two at a time. Oh well! 

That’s twice as long
  for my baby to be in my arms,
  for me to feel her head on my shoulder,
  for me to enjoy her loving pats on my back. 

When dinner is ready, I set her in the chair, and rub my achy arm. 

Achy from holding my growing child for such a long period of time,
   but also achy from her sudden absence.

I am coming to the sad, sad, sad realization that my baby doesn’t need me anymore.  Well, she needs me to feed her, change her, and clean her.  But she doesn’t need me to play with her anymore.  Not as much as she used to, anyway.

Not more than 2 months ago, I was petitioning everyone I knew for ideas on how to keep my daughter entertained on her own while I teach piano.  Now, she runs around, jabbering to her stuffed animals, reciting the names of her favorite people over and over, reading books, figuring out her toys- and she does this

all by herself!

How did the switch happen so fast?  She made it to the next stage with absolutely no fanfare, no announcement, no predictions.  I was not ready. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I LOVE that she can play by herself.  It takes an enormous load off my shoulders.

But how did she get to be so content to sit and read books after our weekly trip to the library without her doting mommy all by herself?  How did she find her way to the books without my loving guidance and direction?  How could she sit there for a half hour  and read, read, read, happily chattering away while I sat and watched?

Clichés are so overdone, but they’re overdone for the obvious reason that they are true.  And here is my true cliché:  Babies grow up too fast.

Why I Love My Husband

Reason #1:

I’m in the kitchen making cookies.  He’s taking the trash out.  He comes running inside, excited as can be.

“Becca!  Come here!  Quick!”

I come running to the door, where he wraps me in his arms and shows me this:

I feel like a kid as I jump up and down at the amazing sight.  He grins while he ignores the rainbow to watch my reaction, his happiness all wrapped up in my ridiculous joy of the moment.

I wish you could have seen this rainbow.  It was, in fact, a double rainbow.  A fabulous rainbow that was too big to fit in the frame of our camera.  Too fleeting to be captured while my husband tried to work the landscape view. 

Just right for a moment of romance.

It’s Clean Sheet Day!

You read that right.

Long ago, I decided that life is more fun when you have something to celebrate.  So, in addition to the normal celebrations (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, birthdays, anniversaries), we also make a big deal out of the little holidays (St. Patrick’s Day, Groundhog Day, What if Dogs and Cats Had Opposable Thumbs Day). 

We celebrate half-birthdays and half-anniversaries.  We also celebrate the first day of spring, summer, and fall.  We completely ignore the first day of winter, in hopes that we can somehow will that dreadful season away.

The first day of each month also gets special recognition in our household.

And every Monday?  Clean Sheet Day.  Really, if you want to get technical, Monday is Laundry Day.  But who wants to celebrate the laundry?  Instead, we celebrate the crisp, clean sheets that come from doing laundry.  The fresh smell of fabric softener.  The delicious feeling of sinking into bed after a long, hard day is made all the more delicious by a simple sheet change.

Hope you sleep as happily and with as much celebration as I do tonight!

A gigantic WELCOME to visitors from A Fanciful Twist’s Mad Tea Party!  Feel free to stay for the after party and scroll through previous posts.  You can stay as long as you want- I’m in no hurry to clean up!

Here is what happens when little girl cousins get together for a Mad Tea Party.  Magic always shows up too!

The room transforms into a magical nature/fairy land.

While the mommies prep the food, the babies prep by donning their magic fairy wings.

Mini fairy paninis and tiny fruit kabobs for little fairy hands are set out to be devoured by the fairies.

And for dessert?  Chocolate frogs and dirt cupcakes served on a ginormous leaf!

Don’t be surprised if some nature-y visitors come by to see what all the ruckus is about.

When everything is finally set up, the fairies magically arrive, dressed in their best fairy attire.

Then, the fairy eating begins!

Check out Camille’s and Vanessa’s posts of the same party!

 I feel like I’m missing my inspiration and creativity lately.  Where did it go?  My windows are shut as the A/C cools the house, so it didn’t escape through those, unless it can seep through poorly installed window panes.  In fact, I’ve barely even been outside lately.  Maybe the inspiration forgot to follow me in the last time I ventured outside…That must be it. 

That’s why I’m really grateful for good ideas like this one. 

Kelly, from According to Kelly is hosting a Favorite Things Swap, where you swap 3 of your favorite things with another blogger somewhere else in this vast world.  You can sign up to participate by clicking on the links above. 

Now, I’m off to the outdoors to find my hiding inspiration.

I put off my last grocery trip for way too long.  The past few days were spent rummaging through last year’s Halloween candy and wondering how serious the expiration date on our old food storage was.

When I finally did go grocery shopping, I couldn’t stop eating.  I bought a few treats and snacks, thinking how fun it would be to savor them throughout the week at different times.  But having been deprived of treats for too long (3 or 4 days), as soon as I unloaded the groceries, I ripped open every single bag and stuffed my face. 

But stuffing my face wasn’t satisfying enough.  I started combining.

Chips Deluxe soft and chewy cookies ordinarily are delicious enough by themselves.

But my sugar deprived body would not settle for mere cookies.  It forced me to dip those cookies in succulent peanut butter.

You know what else is good dipped in peanut butter?  A spoon full of frozen chocolate chips.  Mmmm….see ya later.

She sleeps in her crib.  She always has. 

Sometimes we miss her so much.  So he tiptoes into her room and picks her up.  He brings her to our big bed, and nestles her down in between us. 

In her dreamy state, she cuddles with him.  We think she’ll go back to sleep and stay that way all night. 

But then, she notices me.  She rolls over to my pillow, and lays her head right next to mine.  We stare at each other with happy eyes.  My eyes start to droop.  Her eyes start to droop.  I let my eyes close completely.  Soon, I open my eyes to see if she has succumbed to sleep, only to see that she is quickly opening her eyes again to see me.  We go back and forth- eyes closed, eyes opened, eyes closed, eyes opened- until my eyes stay closed.

I wake when he stands and scoops her up.  He’s taking her back to bed.  She has been playing a game where she alternates giggling with kicking his back.  Must be great fun for her, but at midnight, great fun should only be had in her dreams.

He brings her to her crib, where she calls out to me.  I go to her room for a cuddle.  She requests specific songs.  We sing for her.  She happily closes her eyes, and settles in for her long night sleep.

But, oh how we miss her.

The sun is out in full bloom today!  I even turned on the air conditioner for a split second- until I remembered that the city raised the utility rates.  I’ll save the A/C for the days when the sun scorches the earth and my east facing home to upwards of 100 degrees.

All this sunshine is making me exuberantly happy.  And excited.  Excited for what, you say?  For our tea party this Saturday, of course!  Have you signed up for Vanessa Valencia’s Mad Tea Party?  It’s taking place at www.afancifultwist.typepad.com this Saturday!  Go here for details.

Apparently, June didn’t get my message.

Last year, on this same weekend in June, we went to this awesome chalk festival.

This year, on the same weekend, it rained and rained and rained.  And it wasn’t a fun summery rain.  It felt like 8:00 pm all day long.  So dreary. 

So our plans to go to the chalk festival were washed down the drain, probably much the same as the hard work of all the great chalk artists who set up the day before.

Instead, we went to an “aquarium,” or rather a simple fish store.  Oh, and there’s a few lizards and tarantulas too.  But if you hype it up enough, you can really feel like you spent a day planning, then paid good money to go inside a fantastic aquarium and see outrageous undersea creatures.  Not like you just had to find something to do that was outside of the house, but indoors, and you didn’t want to spend any money.

I’m not sure how long the free fascination will last for the little dear, but we’re going to take advantage of it for as long as we can.  As soon as she realizes you can actually buy the little glub glub fishies, we’re going to have to find a new hobby.

Oh.  And where do you go to eat the yummy picnic you thought you’d be leisurely snacking on at a sunny chalk festival, but then it turned out to be a dreary, rainy day?  Why, to your car of course. 

I’m tired of the rain.