modeling her new hat (made by me)

* * *
i love…

~ patent leather shoes
~ diorshow mascara
~ friends that give without any expectations
~ the big bag of orange, pink, and orange+pink yarn that showed up at my door this weekend (and the sweet person who brought it)
~ vintage jewelry
~ big hugs
~ satin pillowcases and flannel sheets
~ graph paper notebooks
~ headbands with giant flowers on them
~ prime lenses at wide apertures
~ bookshelves overflowing with good memories and new escapes
~ beach houses overlooking soft private beaches
~ finding paperclips
~ brewing the perfect cup of tea
~ getting letters in the mail
~ using my cuisinart stand mixer
~ putting on tap shoes and dancing around the living room
~ sincerity
~ using the word “dungarees” instead of jeans, and “flat” in place of “apartment” (i don’t really say those things, but i appreciate people who do)
~ people that aren’t hard to read
~ laughter. lots and lots of laughter
~ feeling loved

i don’t love…

~ feeling insecure and left out; feeling vulnerable
~ goodbyes (i’m horrible at them in every way)
~ meat on my pizza
~ internet abbreviations like “LOL!” and “ROFLMAO!”
~ stores that don’t have the prices clearly marked
~ jay leno. i really really don’t love him
~ wearing pants. (i prefer skirts. i do own one pair of dungarees, for windy days)
~ dialing the phone
~ clutter
~ olives
~ people who are smug
~ pit-bull dogs
~ crohn’s disease, and the constant embarrassing need to slip off to the ladies’ room
~ falling out of touch and not knowing how to patch things back together

i would like…

~ to make a big pot of spaghetti, buy a bunch of cupcakes & booze, get out the good china, turn on some good music and invite all our friends over once a month, just like the old days (aka: 2006)
~ to stop trying so hard in some areas
~ to start trying harder in others
~ to have another baby
~ to own an iphone (but only if they start selling them for verizon. i love my mobile service)
~ to have a house-cleaner (other than “Bear and Me”)
~ to be a white house photographer for the obama family
~ to eat at el bulli before it all changes
~ to take a california roadtrip in a cute little convertible
~ to have a lunch date with julie andrews and meryl streep
~ to spend more time with my friends

happy superbowl sunday. cheers to the colts (but much love to the saints), cheers to celebrating a fun evening with friends, and cheers to (please please please) winning big money the office football pool.

* * *

a couple weeks ago we went to a birthday party at build-a-bear. em had been there once a couple years ago, but this was the first time she got it. they go through a whole process of selecting their bear, putting in his heart, stuffing, fluffing and dressing him. awesome mom that i am, i kept trying to talk her out of putting the bear – which she named Chocolate – in the soccer uniform, trying desperately to steer her toward the bear-chef outfit, the fairy-bear or the bear-ballerina outfits (so much more photogenic!)…but it had to be soccer. she had a blast, and that bear’s getting major love (so’s his soccer uniform. every few days she tells Chocolate to go to bed a little early because he has a “soccer game tomorrow”).

there’s a winter break from school coming up, and we have big plans to go back and make an exact (stuffed) replica of Bo Obama, our favorite white house pup. i love the scale of build-a-bear; watching the kids walk out with their giant boxes at the end of the adventure, feeling like they were totally in creative control. it’s close to times square and i’m afraid of tourists, or else i suspect we’d be there much more often.

we’re going through a little something here. specifically, we’re going through a phase where emma either hides her face from the camera (she says i can take pictures of her clothes as long as her head’s not in the shot) or makes this silly/ridiculous mugging grin… no big deal, right? they’re just pictures right? well, probably to somebody.

oh sure, i want the em to be herself…but i really do look forward to the daily zen of the camera + the kid + me, and it’s hard enough to capture anything decent in these gloomy frozen winter days. if that dumb groundhog was right and we’ve got six more weeks of winter, i’m just not sure i can carry on in the face of the hiding and the mug-making…

i’m so happy to have pictures of emma from nearly every day of her life; it’s my journal, my memory-book, my gauge of just where we were and what we wore and how we felt. if this is going to be the “awesome goofy face” section of the book, then i’m just going to have to roll with it (and take lots of sneaky candids when she’s not looking). i guess this will teach me how to keep calm and carry on when she someday reaches that awkward braces, acne, and gawkiness stage.

[we ordered two scoops of strawberry. the server added sprinkles and whipped cream as a reward for being so charming and dancing in the aisles when the jackson 5 came on the jukebox.]

. . . . .

this weekend it was freezing cold. actually, it was below-freezing cold. saturday i got up early, ground some beans for coffee, and snuck out to the hallway to get the day’s newspaper only to find that my paper hadn’t been delivered. kind of bummed (i love my saturday morning paper, and not just because that’s when they deliver the Sunday Crossword and now i’ll be all week without my crossword and probably get out of practice and feel really lame and impossibly dumb when i attempt next week’s puzzle…), i took it as a sign that i was supposed to climb back into bed and sleep in.

so i did; emma hopped into the bed and watched the magic school bus while i snuggled her and slept until 10! and then i took the day off… no computer time, no phone-checking, no to-do-list making. just a very cold day filled with warm, easy family time, too much playdoh, an abundance of cuddles, and plenty of book reading, music-listening, spaghetti making, and long-hot-bath taking. it was bliss.

i know it’s decadent, but i’m thinking i’d really benefit from a day off like this more often. maybe even once a week.