Shutterfly, Get Ready

Just think- at this very moment, across the world, thousands of vacation photos are being taken that will become the family holiday card -- at the beach in white shirts and khakis, arm-in-arm in front of (fill-in-the-blank tourist attraction).

I love these cards. I look forward to them all year. It's an illness perpetuated by places like Papyrus and Tiny Prints, and all the other stationary dealers. But, I digress.

Here are a few amazing photographers with a refreshing, artistic approach to the family photo. How did man ever survive on Olan Mills alone?
My favorites:
Tara Whitney
Tosca Radigonda

Where Inspiration Lives

Today's New York Times has a fabulous article on Graham Greene in Capri that is reminiscent of Hemingway's Paris to Pamplona trek in The Sun Also Rises. Check it out before it goes to the archives.

The most inspiring thing about the article to me was Greene's philosophy on writing: "I have no talent. It's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.”

According to the article, his "bare whitewashed study" gave him just the Mediterranean solitude every writer dreams about. He set a minimum daily quota for himself of 350 words and claimed that he could accomplish more in 4 weeks there than he could in 6 elsewhere. Looking around at the Brio trains and crayons on my floor, I totally get that Graham.

Speaking of writing in solitude and inspiration, there's a new show on The Sundance Channel called Iconoclasts which partners two icons who discuss pivotal moments in their lives and careers. I've seen two episodes so far: Dave Chapelle and Maya Angelou, and Paul Simon and Loren Michaels. Both docu-style interviews were fascinating. Maya Angelou said that whereever she lives, she keeps a hotel room where she goes to write. Even in the sanctity of her peaceful Winston-Salem home, she needs to get away from the housekeeping.

Nancy Drew

Grandpa was the best kind of grandpa. He laughed often, talked constantly and made the best coke floats and paper hats in the universe. He was the superlative of summer.

I was moving a photograph of him and my Grandmother out of an old frame and found this behind it. What a discovery. I feel like Nancy Drew, moving a candlestick and finding a secret room. He looks so serious. This does not look like a guy who makes butter and ice cream for a living.

You just had to know him. You really did.

The Beauty of Gray

I found my first gray hair on Saturday, one month after my 30th birthday. It seemed a bit late, actually, like a friend showing up for happy hour just in time for last call. “Where have you been?” I wondered. After all, I’ve been stressed out for years.

I would be a lot more concerned if I didn’t have any signs of aging after practicing law for five years and being a mom to a sleep-avoiding firecracker for two years. I know that it’s all relative, that everyone is busy and stressed, that we all worry about our children, and I am no different.

I’m sure there is some bio-chemical process that pulls pigment out of hair. I don’t really want to know the scientific answer about how that works. I’m more interested in the mythical explanation. That, at some point, my heart pulled color and light in from wherever I could find it, to keep me going and quiet the fears that come with having responsibility for another human being’s health and heart and all that it means to create an environment for a pure consciousness to grow, even for a short time.

Holding the gray hair in the light, I can almost see the layers, like sedimentary rock, that have taken the color from the hair. There are stacked images fading to gray: moving to a new city for the fourth time, countless deadlines, a water-filled basement the night before my husband’s thesis was due, blood in the sink from a vomiting 5-month-old, a phone call that a family member’s life was in danger, and so on.

But all of our lives are filled with challenges, some far greater than anything I have faced. In some ways, becoming a mom has exacerbated those challenges for me, and in others, it has made it easier to cope. My child doesn’t have time for my drama. I have to keep moving forward. She constantly puts everything in perspective - her own perspective – which allows me to get out of my head.

My daughter has never cared much for sleeping. The pediatrician, who resembles the lead singer of Barenaked Ladies, jokes, “it’s because she’s a genius! Yes, Sister! Tell them!” raising his hand up to her head impersonating an evangelist and laughing. He’s funny, and he may be right, but I’m so sleep deprived at this point that it’s all funhouse mirrors and slap happy goof-dom by the time we make it to the next milestone well-baby visit that I keep forgetting to ask him when she will sleep.

I know inherently that I am to blame for my sleep dep because, on those rare instances when she is sleeping, I’m not, and when she wakes up in the night, I secretly want to help her go back to sleep so that I can hold her and watch her in the blue light of her room when the house is completely still, and her hand opens and closes in sleepy slow motion over the Gund tag on her bear like a starfish underwater. It’s one of the few things that doesn’t change as she grows.

I will continue to color treat my hair and caffeinate to stay awake through the day. But I am glad that my body has, at the very least, responded by saying, "Here it is. Here’s proof that you have gone through it and survived and hopefully learned something."

Summer Reading List 2007: Kiddos Edition

The Association for Library Service to Children released their award winning books for 2007. Here's a link to the complete list.

The Caldecott winner, Flotsam, is a little advanced for my daughter, but it is great for 4 and up.

There are some wonderful book lists online from libraries that are specifically tailored to age groups.

The best one I have found, from the New York Public Library, is pretty comprehensive. The only problem is that the age ranges cover 5 years, so you end up with some books that are too young for your child and some that are too advanced. We are working on an ultimate Summer Reading List. Post to come soon!

Loveys Revisited

Someone at Ten Speed Press, the press that published Dirty Wow Wows and Other Love Stories: A Tribute to the Companions of Childhood, left a comment to this prior Teaworthy post that they are having a contest for Loveys. I entered my Ted and my daughter's Bu. (They are featured midway down the page.)

Ted (now 30) was my first Christmas present from my dad. Bu (now 2) was my husband's first gift to our daughter. Here they are:



Ted has become like the Skin Horse in The Velveteen Rabbit, teaching Bu the ropes of what it means to be loved, to be real, to a little girl.



"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." The Velveteen Rabbit

For Mother's Day

When my parents moved to a hurricane-prone area, I started receiving boxes filled with photographs to preserve in case of a flood. After sorting volumes and years of photos, I am struck by how many vivid memories I have that were never photographed. Most of these have to do with my mom. Like many moms, she was more often behind the camera that in front of it. Or like me with the delete key, photos of her would show up missing.

Those missing photographs were snapshots in my memory. Like, for example, how she looked floating in front of my little boat raft in the pool, or putting on make up, or cooking popcorn on the stove, or the back of her hair when she drove or what her hands looked like when I would play with her rings in church. (As it turns out, her hands look very much like mine when my daughter holds my hand.) There are moments when my daughter looks at me very hard - when she is studying something I'm doing- I wonder if she is taking one of those snapshots.

For the last 12 years, I have lived 700 or so miles from my mom. Though we talk almost every day, when I think of her, I still imagine her to look like my childhood mom, busting me out of preschool to go get cheeseburgers and watch As The World Turns. I remember what she smelled like when she was getting ready for a party or church, like perfume and spray starch or after a day at the pool, chlorine and baby oil. Even as a married woman, long gone from home, I opened a package from her and just the smell of her perfume made me burst into tears.

Here are a few of my favorite photos of my mom. I'm sure if given the chance to see the originals, she would hide them. But to me, she looks so beautiful.






I love this photograph. She looks so beautiful. I just hear Diana Ross singing Baby Love when I see this photo.


Mom went to college when I was 6. Here she is drawing Squirt, the family Hamster, for an art class. Even at 6, I understood how brave she was to go back and I was so proud. I still am. I hope I inherit her energy to constantly try new things. Happy Mother's Day Mom.

Closed Captioning

Closed captioning, as it turns out, is not only for the hearing impaired. It's essential for those of us whose homes are acoustically and/or square-footage challenged after the kid(s) are asleep. Why do they mumble so much dialogue on Grey's Anatomy? Why? WHY? Speak up Derek for Pete's SAKE! It's like there are marbles in his mouth. McMumbles I tell you!

I thought about getting a couple of these jobbies:


But then we would be like John Cusack in Sixteen Candles with matching headgear. Conversation would be stilted. If I put wireless headphones on a couple watching TV on the video game The Sims, they would lose relationship points. Right? We should probably just read. With booklights.

Moving Little Troopers

The military lexicon was often used in my house growing up; a remnant of my dad’s army days. “At ease,” he would tell the dog barking at the neighbors. Mother’s Day shopping trips were “missions” involving “recon” and herding up all of us to get to church on time involved directives such as, “move out troops,” etc. He’ll agree with you by giving an affirmative, “that’s a Rog” (pronounced with a soft “g” short for Roger).

When we arrived at my parent’s house for a visit with our 4-week-old, Dad jokingly mentioned that he had moved 40 men with less gear.

As summer travel is on the horizon, I have been doing research on traveling with small children. (See, prior post Vacation Dreaming) When in doubt, ask the experts! The best tips I found weren’t from parenting sites at all but from spouses of military personnel: http://www.military.com/spouse/fs/0,,fs_militarymama_travel,00.html
Who better to orchestrate a strategy for the movement of gear and people?

Also, for the ambitious traveler, I love the concept of this group: http://www.babyfriendlyboltholes.co.uk/
These vacation spots are kid friendly cottages with all the baby gear on site. They offer that they know it takes more than a cot and a high chair to be toddler friendly. Cottages available in England, France, Italy, Spain, & Greece.

Speaking of summer travel, I stumbled upon the Seat Chiller. It's a one-size-fits-all car seat cooler to keep the seat chilled between stops or when the car sits in the hot sun. This one is available online at http://www.babydagny.com/c/Favorites/p/Seat_Chiller.