So We're working on the cookbook

Really, we are. It's coming along by hook or crook. Lyss steals moments to scribble on loose paper while her boys run around the living room with legos, I steal moments staying up later than everyone to tap away at this keyboard. And to make a few drawings, like the marmalade, above. To use color, or not to use color, that is the question. Thoughts?

Trust Me; I'm a Jedi

To a boy who loves star wars, from an auntie who has only ever seen "space balls".

Suspended, Impossible Autumn

This is how we do our autumn walks: A, always looking up, watching light filter through the canopy. Me, always looking down, keeping my eyes peeled for the perfect red leaf. And now F, this time asleep against A in the carrier.

The new yellow, seeing wild turkeys, balancing on a log. Thinking:
Diaphanous.
and then:
the diaphanous gown of fall's canopy,
the arch of a fallen knobby limb
that acts as drawbridge
between this beckoning color and
a girl who never liked to walk alone.

Other sentences; we traded turns making them up, and I don't remember them all now.

But I will remember the eyes of this sleepy boy just waking up
to the yellow all around him
for the very first time.

Foxtrot

We have a thing for red foxes in this house.
For A, my guess is that it's some transfer from his childhood favorite story, Peter and the Wolf.

For me, I know that I have a pleasure center in my brain for the color red (and it's warm derivations). Strangely, I dislike red when it's the dominant color, but I like it a lot in small quantities. The majority of my shoes are red, for example, but I have no larger red gear, like sweaters or dresses.
I also have a quite large pleasure center for mysterious wild animals.

Finn, who knows. But we assign him to liking foxes until he can tell us otherwise. We did get a red fox puppet for him. Trying to imprint a fox friend memory?

So, Fox, here in our little house? We'll be your friends.

Archery

A mama sea turtle, perhaps?

Any other animal suggestions?

4 Months

It's been four months since f. was born and hence, about four months since I've really checked into this space. The little one is rolling over, teething, chuckling and growing like a weed.

I, meanwhile, have been growing too. In all the early parenthood ways that you would expect. Love, patience, pride. And though most days it doesn't feel like it, I actually have been getting a few crafty things done. I have a few endeavors to share, and will be dolling out the posts over these next few weeks, as a way to ease myself into this discipline again. You'll see drawings, knitting, a few arrangements. But first, I have a chuckle party to talk about.

The above drawings will be printed on canvas, cut into patches, and faux-serged on the edges. They will be the Finn Chuckle prizes, given out at his "The baby laughed" party to anyone who makes Finn chuckle.

The idea for a chuckle party was planted by Midwife Mary when we came in for our 6 week appointment.

When we arrived Mary asked: "Has he chuckled yet?"
We replied in the negative: "Smiles, but no chuckles."
Mary used to work at a Navajo reservation hospital in the southwest, and the nurses would always ask this when parents brought in a new baby for a checkup. The idea is that in the first weeks of life, the baby is hovering between the spirit/ancestor world and our physical world. The baby stays in this limbo until the first chuckle. It's at this moment that the child has decided to fully engage in the world, and to join his/her family and community. The first chuckle is a cause for celebration, and whoever elicits this chuckle is responsible for throwing the family a party! The nurses didn't want to be always throwing parties, so they'd always ask to see if it was *safe* to try and make the baby laugh before they did it!

So who made baby laugh? We did. Right in this very house, where he was born and continues to grow. So we're saddling up and baking a cake for the adults and throwing a chuckle party. Hope it doesn't rain.

Since it's a baby party, these patches are designed to adorn baby carriers or diaper bags. I'm making three: a babe, a pala, and a mama. But what, oh what, animal should the mama be?

More to come. Thanks for stopping by.

Learning

I haven't known what to post, seeing as how feedings and changings have taken precedence over art + craft projects as of late, but I wanted to check in with a little photo and say that life, at this stage, is sweet.

Balance with projects will come, and you'll hear more from this little space when the pendulum swings. Soon.

(A digital tablet was given as a birthday present; I anticipate drawings...)