These are a few of my favorite things

It seems like every day I think of something else I'm particularly taken with lately, so I think a post is in order. Maybe it's holiday nostalgia, who knows. But here they are (in no particular order)...

Annie's new haircut

This is my first, and last, stint as her stylist. (I think I'll quit while I'm successful.) Her precious baby curls were just getting too long and mullet-ish, so I cut them after bath one night. She's growing up, though, and the curls don't want to stay, which saddens me...but for a few hours after I wash it, it curls up like this, and it really melts my heart. It's the last remnant of baby in her and I'm hanging on to it. So, we won't schedule that "real" haircut anytime soon.

Cute blog stuff

My very talented friend has started a fun little business helping us in the blogosphere make our blogs more aesthetically pleasing. It's like a fancy book jacket - I'm such a sucker for a good looking book - it just makes you want to read more. I highly recommend her...you can see some of her wares here.

Lucy & Cate

Meet Cate, Lucy's best friend from kindergarten. Cate (and Libby, Addie & Todd) are precious new friends of ours. It helps that Libby & I get along so well, and that Addie and Annie are the same age, too. And that they go to our church, school, and to PEEPS with us. Add to it that Libby and I share a love/need for Starbucks, and we manage to see each other quite regularly! I love Cate for Lucy especially, because she is the first girl that Lucy has really attached to as a b.f. Cate is self-possessed and charming, bright and thoughtful, creative and magical. And she is good (my adventurous Lucy needs all the good friends she can get her hands on). When Lucy gets a devious glint in her eye and contemplates climbing the wall around the playground at school (over which is a lengthy fall to the ground, hospitalization, and certain suspension), Cate gently pulls her back. And Cate is fun...she and Lucy can hole up in Cate's room for hours, HOURS, making up all manner of 5 year-old magic to entertain themselves.

First 'now

It has been cold here (finally) the past couple of weeks. One day this week, Annie and I were home alone, and I was sewing in my sewing room, and it started to snow. Annie pulled a stool up to the window and watched in fascination for hours (well, it was hours for a 2 year-old). "It's 'nowing, Mama, it's 'nowing!" (It was really more ice, sleet, and flurries than it was real snow, but when you've spent your whole life in Mississippi, it was snow enough.)

Go Fish

This isn't a new favorite...we have been in love with these guys for months now. But it's time to confess it publicly. Despite my aversion to 1. Christian music and 2. children's music, I am pretty taken with these guys. (I mean, I forget to turn them off when the kids aren't in the car anymore.) They are, in short, an acapella kids Christian boy band. Sounds dreadful, but they are really good. We must give credit to Cate et al. for introducing them to us. You can find them here, and even hear snippets of songs from different albums. We just got the newest CD ("Snazzy") along with the Christmas CD ("Snow"), and we love them. Annie's pick: "Itsy Bitsy Spider" Lucy's pick: "Superstar" My pick: today, it's the Jammie song (becaus jammie time couldn't come soon enough today). Overall, my favorite album is "Snooze," because it magically calms whiney, tired, strung-out children.

Home

I have been listening to Josh Groban's "Noel." I put it in for the first time yesterday, and it had been a verrrrry long, trying day with the kiddos, and I needed some soothing. And soothe it did. And then all of a sudden he was singing "I'll be home for Christmas," and all of a sudden I was a puddle in the middle of my kitchen floor. I am home for Christmas. Not packing my family to go home at Christmas, not trying to make another place feel like home at Christmas, but I am HOME. My midwestern bones never got used to 75 degrees and mosquitos in December, wanting to wear wool sweaters, hats and scarves, and drink spiced cider (because we needed warming, not because it was a Christmas thing to do). It always took a lot of mental arm-wrenching to get me to decorate the house or bake cookies or play Christmas music...funny how we connect events and settings...but it just doesn't seem like Christmas to me unless it is cold. Unless you are driving (like Lucy and I were on Thursday) in the dark, late afternoon in lots of traffic and freezing rain, and then you drive down your street and see your warm, christmas-lighted house, where a fire is roaring, music playing, Michael and Annie waiting for you. This is home.

...this feels a bit like Oprah...

...I mean, the whole "favorite things" bit. So I had the thought, that if i were Oprah, what favorite thing would I go nuts over? It would surely be this jewelry by Heather Moore. I am so nuts about this stuff...I play on her website more than I should admit, making myself necklaces with different charms, sentimental and fun. It's total fantasy, because at the end of all my playing, I see the "shopping cart" with its' total, and the fun is over. Oh well, it doesn't hurt to play or dream. But if I were Oprah and you, my reader friends, were guests on my show, you would all be getting one of these:

Cat, Mat, Sam, & DotA.k.a., LUCY IS READING! It just happened this week, and it really seems so miraculous. She has been bringing little books home from school for us to read since August, but this week some sort of switch flipped inside, and she started to READ. Not guess, or memorize, or intuit the words from the pictures, or just recognize "sight" words we've been practicing, but she started really, honest-to-goodness, comprehending letters and words on a page. Her teacher noticed she's really "taken off" this week, too, and Friday we had three books come home! I have made the poor kid read them to me a thousand times already this weekend, it just thrills me so much to see her reading. It's like her eyes have just been opened to a world that she couldn't access before...can you imagine the world if you couldn't read?...and she is about to discover how much more there is than the world she has known. It really is a miracle. And I get to watch it happen. I love this.

Don't peek, e

I just finished Jack's christening gown. I started it in Jackson, just before we moved, and it was really a good thing that it came here unfinished, because it really made me get back into the sewing groove, which I have needed. Sewing has had much to do with my "coming back to life" after the disorientation of our move, and I feel much more like me when I am in my little sanctuary of a sewing/project/junk room. I am really pleased with how it turned out. And pleased that he and all of his siblings will wear this gown, and that I get to be a little part of family history for this dear, sweet family. Some day Jack will be getting ready to baptize his child, and his wife will say, "Where did this dress come from?" and he will tell her the story of his mom and her friend, and how we loved each other so.

more sewing...

I think I'll end with this one...they still need buttons and hems, but I'm pretty much done. These were supposed to be last year's Christmas dresses, but they never quite materialized back then. Happily, the girls can still wear them, at least for a few months. :) I love them in blue. They can get away with murder in blue...those eyes!