Spring cleaning

I got a bit of the spring fever today and deleted 732 blog posts. I stopped deleting at Mo's birth. But I might continue, might wipe the slate clean. Mo is 4 years old now, and Margo is 4 months. The baby is healthy and cheerful. The sisters adore one another. The biggest surprise here is that I am painting all the time. So much more painting than writing. My poor old blog got lost in the shuffle of life. It's a good thing, though, to be fully immersed in life. To stop standing behind the camera and be part of the action.

Paint Snow Hill 2014

Here is my photo album from Paint Snow Hill. I should add a photo of my living room and call it "explosion at baggage claim." Slowly getting things put away and catching up on rest. This was my 8th year at PSH. There were 68 artists painting in the coldest, windiest weather the event has ever known. As usual I hid in my car. My mom came with me because a) it was Easter weekend, and b) I'm pregnant! I've had terrible morning sickness this time around, and everyone was worried I would keel over in a ditch. So Mom offered to tag along to keep an eye on me. And we had a great time together. And then I sold 9 paintings at the show. Take that in for a moment: NINE PAINTINGS! Every painting in the picture above, gone. I finished a painting of All Hallows Church on Sunday morning, and that one stayed behind for the May show at Bishop's Stock. So the only thing I brought home with me was the Lissa Abrams painting "Pine Bank" that I purchased. I'm still sort of in shock about the whole thing and not entirely sure what to make of it.

Tri-terra cardigan

I finished this little sweater for Mo at the end of March, just in time for her to wear to an Easter egg hunt at the community center. I used the Tri-Terra Cardigan pattern by Cosette Cornelius-Bates and improvised a little fake fair-isle colorwork into the yoke. Mom asked when I will start making them in adult sizes. Maybe next winter. My knitting has fallen by the wayside--as it usually does once the weather warms up--and painting has taken its place. Incidentally I had a little free time this weekend and updated my art blog. Have a look-see. By the time I finally know what I'm doing with HTML it will be completely obsolete.

Take the night off

My house is zipped up tight right now while the weather is nice enough to throw open every window. I grimace when another mom suggests a trip to the playground. My allergies are not as bad as they used to be but still. I want to be outside spreading mulch and trimming the shrubs and painting. So I do those things, and then sneeze and scratch out the ransom afterward. Spring would be my favorite season were it not for all the pollen. Instead I have a love-hate thing going with the air. This time of year I am missing part of our old neighborhood: the low place in the road on the walk to meadow. The creek crosses under and the spring peepers congregate at all hours to announce their urges to the universe. Nature's string section tuning up for another year.
 
- - - - - - - - - -

"The Frogs After Dark" by Robert Bly

I am so much in love with mournful music
That I don't bother to look for violinists.
The aging peepers satisfy me for hours.

The ant moves on his tiny Sephardic feet.
The flute is always glad to repeat the same note.
The ocean rejoices in its dusky mansion.

Bears are often piled up close to each other.
In caves of bears, it's just one hump
After another, and there is no one to sort it out.

You and I have spent so many hours working.
We have paid dearly for the life we have.
It's all right if we do nothing tonight.

We've heard the fiddlers tuning their old fiddles,
And the singer urging the low notes to come.
We've heard her trying to keep the dawn from breaking.

There is some slowness in life that is right for us.
But we love to remember the way the soul leaps
Over and over into the lonely heavens.

Grapefruit two ways, a difficult age, and consignment shopping

At Meeting there are meditations posted on the wall for each month. I read through the queries for Fourth Month and got snagged on this one:

Are you open to receiving guidance and support? And do you give thanks for them?

There is nothing like being a parent to make you realize how much guidance and support you could really use. All day every day. And yet I am terrible at asking for and accepting help. I have no experience with this. If I ask it is with an apology at the ready. I need practice. I have the gratitude part, but as far ask opening myself to receive guidance and support I am like the priest and the grapefruit.

There was a young man studying to become a priest. Grapefruits were available in the cafeteria each morning. He did not grow up eating citrus fruit and discovered that he enjoyed having grapefruit for breakfast. But the act of cutting the fruit in half caused the him much anxiety. He discovered that there were two kinds of grapefruit. Sometimes when he sliced open a grapefruit the sections appeared as a sunburst of little triangles. That kind of grapefruit was easy to scoop out with a spoon and eat. Other days the sections were arrayed sideways. This other kind of grapefruit was time-consuming to eat and made the priest struggle through the membranes over and over to get to the fruit. He studied and compared whole grapefruits trying to tell one type of grapefruit from the other, but all the fruit looked the same. He continued to be confounded by his breakfast. One day the seminarian told a friend about his difficulties. The other man explained to him the anatomy of a grapefruit and how to cut them in half along the equator. The young man was ecstatic! This simple information was a revelation to him. It changed the quality of his life.

I am still comparing grapefruits. Do you ever feel like this? That one brief turn of the wrist is all that separates you from enlightenment? If only I was receptive to a little guidance.

I want to take Mo on the Metro one weekday in May to see Juan's art show in Washington, DC. I really want to see this show. As I plan the day trip out in my head, I consider how in the suburbs it's not a big deal if there are no changing facilities available. We can always retreat to the privacy of our car to take care of business if necessary. How does this work in an urban environment when I am only armed with a stroller and picnic blanket? Do people change their kids in the middle of a park? Are changing facilities more readily available in public rest rooms? And where will we eat? And when will she nap? And I'm thinking about how wiggly and difficult Mo is right now and wondering if taking her to the city by myself is a good idea and generally trying to talk myself out of the whole excursion before it begins. Conveniently a few lines from the movie Angus popped into my head. I don't know the exact quote, but Angus and Grandpa are having a conversation. Angus laments that he is at a difficult age (14), and Grandpa says, "Me too." I am so wrapped up in thinking about what a difficult age Mo is to do this little field trip that I am making the trip more complicated than it needs to be, and I realize that I am at a difficult age also. Upon reflection, who isn't?

And one final thought... I was at the children's consignment sale at the fairgrounds a couple weeks ago. As I waited in the long line to check out, I was right in front of an Amish woman and her two sons. The line deliberately snakes around through the toys and baby supplies, so you can shop those items while you wait. The little Amish boys wanted to touch every plastic, blinking, flashing, musical monstrosity that they saw. At first their mother scolded them and tried to shepherd them back into the line, but after a while it was a lost cause. She kind of shook her head and said they were old enough to behave themselves. The sale would be sensory overload for any child, but you could actually see the Amish boys' minds blowing. I thought how difficult it must be for that Amish mother to keep the consumerism of the world out of their home. And then I thought about how hard it is for me to keep even a fraction of the consumerism of the world (branded clothing, computer games, gadgets, princesses, etc.) out of my home. Some days we are not so different. Acquisitiveness threatens to swallow us all.

Paint Snow Hill 2013

I got home from Paint Snow Hill on Sunday evening. It was a blast, as usual. There were 70 artists painting, and all total 49 paintings were sold at the show. Five of those were mine. And I made another trade with Jess Cross Davis at the end. Here is my Paint Snow Hill 2013 photo album complete with notes and stories if you would like to take a look. Now I'm back to the mommyhood. I can hear the distant fussing. Fun while it lasted...

Happy Birthday to me

Robb and Mo made me a birthday cake on Saturday. Mo was not really interested in helping until helping meant licking chocolate frosting off the spatula. We celebrated at Urban Barbeque in Ashton and returned to Mom's house for singing, candles, and cake. I'm still basking in the heap of lovely gifts: books, a cd, a picnic set, assorted food treats, and half a cake left over. What a nice birthday!

I dubbed last week the Week of Nagging Tasks. Robb and I scurried around taking care of things we've been putting off like renewing both our drivers licenses, stacking wood, getting blood drawn, calling the exterminator, and pricing truckloads of mulch. All things not so fun at the time but certainly nice to have in the rear view mirror.

An orchard for a dome

Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.
(from poem number 57 by Emily Dickinson)

We hung a suet feeder just outside the kitchen window at the new house. Each morning Maureen and I watch the songbirds--we all eat our breakfast together. The variety of species that visits each morning is impressive: eastern bluebirds, northern cardinals, white-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees, red-bellied woodpeckers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, blue jays, red-winged blackbirds, American robins, boat-tailed grackles, northern juncos, purple finches, and white-crowned sparrows.

As each takes its turn and flies away, Mo says, "Back!" She hauls my Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds around and pages through the illustrations. The daily bird watching is a quiet sort of routine we share. When I write "quiet" I mean simple. I find myself looking for more ways to cultivate simple, peaceful routines for Mo, for all of us.

About 50 years ago Elise Boulding wrote, "It is possible to drown children and adults in a constant flow of stimuli, forcing them to spend so much energy responding to the outside world that inward life and the creative imagination which flowers from it becomes stunted or atrophied." More apt today than when she wrote it.

I worry that there is too much noise in our lives. And as my mommy-friends encourage me to sign Mo up for this or that, to buy the latest learning gadget, I resist. We go to storytime at the library and meet our friends to play. We color and play with puzzles and read books. We listen to music and dance and sing. We pretend to cook, and we actually cook. We do laundry and put away dishes together. I'm not some kind of luddite saint--we watch tv, too, but try to keep limits on it. All the while I see people racing around us. I try to do it the way my parents and Robb's parents did it. Their model works just fine.

Cabin fever

After last week's norovirus, we're ready to get out of the house.

Daily meditation

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Just my luck

I've never been so happy to see Friday the 13th in all my life. Yesterday was my 34th birthday, and it started with a clingy feverish toddler, a reaction to Wednesday's vaccines. Then Sukey twisted her front left leg on the morning walk. We were really busy at work that evening, and I didn't get out until late. As I was driving home I decided to stop for a yellow light instead of gunning it. I applied pressure to the brake, began slowing, and suddenly the pedal dropped straight to the floorboards. I sailed through the intersection as yellow turned to red. Robb had to wake Mo up to put her in the car to come rescue me. Truly a birthday for the record books: sick kid, limping dog, long shift, brake failure. Seriously, far as brake failure is concerned I was REALLY lucky that it happened when and where it did. And not when the light was already red (and thus launching me into the path of cars crossing the intersection) or in heavy traffic or on the Bay Bridge... It could have been so much worse. It makes me anxious thinking about it, so I'm changing the subject. Who wants to see some recent baby pictures????








I have another busy day at the office tomorrow, while Robb takes Mo to her first swimming lesson. She's going to love it. I'm off to bed now. But I'll leave with a celebratory birthday poem in hopes that my lackluster birthday does not presage a year of doom and gloom.

"Proclamation at a Birth"
by Linda Pastan

Let every tree
burst into blossom
whatever the season.
Let the snow melt
mild as milk
and the new rain wash
the gutters clean
of last year's
prophecies.
Let the guns sweep out
their chambers
and the criminals doze
dreaming themselves
back to infancy.
Let the sailors throw
their crisp white caps
as high as they can
which like so many doves
will return to the ark
with lilacs.
Let the frogs turn
into princes,
the princes to frogs.
Let the madrigals,
let the musical croakings
begin.

Early spring

Not to talk about the weather, but how can I not? Once the heavy fog burned off this morning, the day became gorgeous with the temperature hovering in that 75-80 degree sweet spot. All week we've had lovely, lovely weather. More like May than March. The henbit has already peaked. The cherry blossoms are in full swing at Joe and Joanie's house across the street.



We (meaning Robb) have already mowed the lawn once, and we (meaning me) are almost done mulching the flower beds. Once they are done I want to scrub down the siding. The north end of the house is looking pretty mildew-y. Robb wonders why I bother with some of these projects since we're renters. But I want to leave the place a little nicer than we found it. And I am optimistic about my goal to leave this house by the end of 2012. I don't really have a plan at this point, so don't scrutinize that last sentence too hard.



Would you believe that dogwoods are starting to bloom? And that's just crazy--usually the last petals are falling right before Mother's Day.



Robb is hot and heavy into his model skipjack, the Maureen Elizabeth. (He originally planned to name it the Barbara Leigh, but that curly headed little cherub bumped me off the nameplate. I see how it is.) This is a picture of me holding the rudder. Kind of looks like a cartoon meat cleaver. Anywho, Sunday is his first race, and he's super psyched.



I continue to be obsessed with a place I call "the meadow." My favorite spot in the neighborhood.



I'm always snapping photos of it. Constantly. For the past three years. (That's why Robb says our hard drive is 80% full, and I need to start migrating photo files over to the external. But it's only 4 terabytes. I'm not sure that's going to be enough.)



Recently a for sale sign cropped up at the end of the driveway. If I had a million dollars I would buy the meadow...all 17 acres and the 6,000 square foot house that sits by the water's edge. I wonder if the new owners will love this place as much as I do. (And I don't even live there.)

Housekeeping

1. Yes, this photo kills me. The sunglasses. The walking around. The terrible job I did trimming her bangs. Kills me.

2. Yes, Mo was a little old to have a serious case of RSV. The main reason for the hospital stay was the combination of her high fever and dehydration. She couldn't keep down the oral ibuprofen and acetaminophen--or anything else she ate or drank--at home.

3. No, there's usually not a sea of vomit with RSV. It's generally a lung infection that causes breathing trouble. But Mo's lungs sounded and looked good throughout. The hospital's pediatrician said she had seen a number of RSV cases this season with gastrointestinal symptoms. She suspects the virus is changing.

4. No, I am not eating gluten free anymore. My new year's resolution was to stop listening to my doctor because avoiding gluten is a pain in my butt. And if I don't need to do it I'm not. Tomorrow I go in for bloodwork, so I will know soon how that's working out for me.

5. And while we're on the subject of resolutions I saw someone on the internets wrote something like, "If you don't have enough time to do what you want to do, turn off the tv." So true. I have enough time (baby permitting), just too much screen time and mindless distractions eating it up. So first I quit the moms meetup group. Then I pared down the blogroll I follow. And I saw that Theresa ditched FaceBook--very tempting! And in a fit of mental housekeeping I considered deleting my blog but stopped short. So I'm trying to stay away from the computer during the day. Success is mixed.

6. No, I won't be joining Pinterest anytime soon. I'm concerned that I will spend more time bookmarking than actually doing/making, and in the end it will make me less creative and productive.

Like I was saying...

...Angie spent her precious vacation this year at our house.

(What on earth was she thinking??! We're so boring. I'm constantly rattling on about boobs and poop, while Robb is 24-7 obsessed with building his model skipjack. And then there's the screaming baby.)

But she did it. She braved the airline with the flip-top planes and made her way to our wilderness outpost in Southern Maryland for two whole weeks. And we are so glad that she did!



Sukey told me that Angie sleeps altogether too late in the morning. She wanted wake Angie up to tell her herself, but I told her that was rude. Instead Sukey decided to sit outside Angie's door and cry. So I had to put a gate across the hallway and make her sit a respectful distance from our sleeping guest. Every. Single. Morning.



Mo loves her Auntie and had lots of fun playing with her. The baby, as usual, limited our outings somewhat. But we still managed to go to Mom's house for a weekend, go walking around Solomons and Annmarie Garden, visit the Calvert Marine Museum, and explore St. Mary's City. Poor Ange, she thought St. Mary's City was going to be an actual city, maybe a shopping district, and not the place I went to on my fourth grade field trip. The look of confusion on her face as we drove up to the historic site... And we made her eat mayonnaise. At least once a day.



Much of Angie's visit looked like this: frantic knitting. What do you expect when two artsy crafty type girls get together? Spontaneous knitalong! We both got all amped up after spending a day at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival with Mom and Aunt Bunny. (I forgot to take my camera to both the festival AND Colin's 1st birthday party--still kicking myself about this.) Neither of us got too crazy with purchases at the festival. I bought yarn in one of the sheep barns from a farmer. He and his wife raise border leicester sheep. At first it was very exciting to be surrounding by so many delicious options, but after a while it's a tad overwhelming. Complete sensory overload! And I know that after the first few barns Mom--not a knitter--had seen enough yarn to last her a lifetime. We all took a break from shopping, ate lunch, and watched the herding demonstrations. I love to see border collies shoot out around the sheep like furry missiles. Aunt Bunny bought me the Elizabeth Zimmerman book I've been lusting after. Sweet! That was on Mother's Day. Robb graciously offered babysit so we could take our time at the festival. What a nice Mother's Day present!





Angie and I each made shortie versions of Das Monster. Hers is green and orange; mine is purple and gold. By the way, Ange, remember when the farmer told me the purple yarn said it gets way softer when you wash it? I think he fibbed. I hand washed both pairs of shorts. Yours came out buttery soft, as did the yellowish-orange stripes on mine. But the purple parts still feel like a burlap sack. Should I wash them again and perhaps again after that? I'm not thrilled with the prospect of Mo's tushie being clad in steel wool.



Angie brought Mo a bonnet and a doll from Pennsylvania Dutch country. I embroidered a face on the doll (the Amish make them faceless to ward off vanity). Mo was much happier wearing the bonnet than she was with the crown. Although her general ambivalence toward headwear remains.



Queen Maureen does not approve. Off with your head!



Mainly Angie's visit provided us all with an opportunity to get to know one another better. (This is probably an issue familiar to anyone in a blended family. Or anyone with large age gaps between the children in their family. We've got blending and age gaps going on. Which means that I get along well with my siblings and have a lot in common with them, but I did not share my childhood with them. So I grew up as an only child in one family AND I am the oldest of four in a completely different family. Make sense?) It was an excellent visit. After she flew home I looked around the suddenly too-quiet house and said to Robb, "I miss Angie." -- "Me, too."

Also, she taught me how to crochet and how to bind a quilt. Awesome! I finished the quilt and will be posting photos soon.

Oh and why didn't you tell me that your toothbrush was in that box you asked me to mail home for you? I went to slip a little note in before mailing (weeks after your trip in my usual prompt style) and saw your toothbrush inside. Tell me you bought another toothbrush by now!

You don't want to sit next to me at dinner...

...because I only have two topics of conversation these days: poop and boobs. Just think, if I wasn't nursing the baby I'd only have half as much to talk about. My life has been so overtaken by both ends of Maureen's digestive tract that Monday night when Becca called and asked me what was going on, she then had to listen patiently to a three minute description of an unusually full diaper before I let her tell me that Ernest proposed to her. (!!!) She must have been thinking, "When the hell is she going to shut up about the poop?"

Probably never.



This post here is going to be about poop. (Apropos of nothing, pictured above is Robb's birthday cake. Poop is not the secret ingredient.)

Last night at work I answered the phone with my little spiel, "Thank you for calling the veterinary clinic. This is Barbara. How may I help you?" A very familiar voice replied:

"OH.

MY.

GOD."

I knew exactly what Saint Robert* was talking about. "I know, right?"

New this month Maureen's digestive tract has matured so that she only poops every three or four days. But with great maturity comes great volume. When she finally goes, it's a doozy. Total destruction. And Robb, poor Robb. He still gags when he scoops Sukey's poop, and he's been doing it for over four years now. Until last night he had only dealt with the aftershocks, not the main event. I don't think he entirely believed me.

"I used nine wipes," he said. "NINE WIPES!" If you weren't sure, that's a lot of baby wipes. You can tell from the CAPS and the exclamation point.



In other news we celebrated Robb's birthday, our wedding anniversary, and my first Mother's Day while Angie was visiting. (More on Angie's visit to come...) I saw this ridiculousness appear in the margin of my Facebook screen. Really? I should send him a message? How about I just have a conversation with him? Since, you know, he's my husband, and we live under the same roof. Stupid social media.



I kept Robb's anniversary present for weeks in a box marked TOP SECRET PROJECT hoping to make him twist in the agony of curiosity. It worked for maybe a day. And then he seemed to forget about it. But when he opened it--a family tree--he was very happy. There is a ring for each year we've been married and a branch for our little sprout.

[*Saint Robert will chronicle the total volume of baby poop he's cleaned up--and the many times it has caused him to dry heave over the changing table--in section IV, article 14, items A through D of his Application for Sainthood.]

Milestones

Yesterday was Colin's 1st birthday, and Maureen turned 4 months. Today is Robb's 3...erhem...th birthday. Happy Birthday to both of the boys! We are going to Colin's party on Saturday. Tonight we're having lasagna and devils food cake for Robb. And we have a special treat: Angie is arriving to stay for two weeks!!!

Strange mid-western spring

"Mother"
from Delights and Shadows
by Ted Kooser

Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass an the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.

You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts
burning in circles like birthday candles,

for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.
There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened

and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever.

This poem was featured on The Writer's Almanac this morning, and I knew I would have to repost it immediately. Yesterday was heavy with tornado stress, and I've just gone off my thyroid medicine--a combination that left me feeling exhausted. I perched on the couch watching the early news alerts and then began amassing supplies in the central bathroom. The diaper bag, a bowl of water for the dog, a battery operated lantern, the cell phone, my sneakers, and the baby carrier. I imagined putting the baby in the carrier and the sneakers on my feet before picking our way out through the rubble and into the rain. I've seen Twister but still picture tornadoes as dusty events and not rain storms, but they must be that way usually. A dog leash, I forgot to grab Sukey's leash! I had a granola bar but no dog food or fresh water. And I should have filled my pockets with cash and jewelry (if we had a pocket's worth of either) for bartering. Robb would have been tragically swept up in the funnel cloud--sorry, my love, that's the peril of working on a boat in a disaster movie. In reality it would be very hot in the bathroom, the three of us jammed in there panting (the dog) and sweating (the baby and I) for an hour. And boring. Instead we played on the nursery floor across the hall and waited. And Mom called to check on us. I told her about my preparations.

"Make up some bottles and take them into the bathroom with you," she said.

"I don't need bottles. I make milk for her."

"Oh, yeah." She thought for a moment, and then said, "But you know, just in case you are crushed."

"If I am crushed, how is little Mo going to get a bottle open?"

"Maybe you could feed her with one arm. Or you might need bottles in case something fell and only crushed your boobs."

"Only my boobs?" What kind of selective rubble is this?

"You're right, never mind. Your boobs won't be crushed--they're too big."

Everyone's a comedian.

The poem also made me think of Dad and how I had forgotten to remember this the eighth anniversary of his death. Maureen was two weeks old, I was enthralled with her, and I missed it and didn't realize I had missed it until mid-February. I think he would agree, though, that it's only right for new life to trump death. It seems the proper order of things. Oh, but he would have loved her!

Baby's first Easter

We began the day by oversleeping just enough that Daddy went to sunrise service alone while Maureen and Mommy got the day started at home. The Easter bunny stopped by our house and, from the looks of Mo's loot, expects teething to start soon. Our friendly neighborhood Easter fairy left a purple egg with a dollar inside in the flowerbed next to our mailbox. No one has fessed up yet. Maureen changed into her dandelion dress (the one she wore for her baptism reception) in time for Gramma's arrival. It fits her great now. But with temps climbing into the mid-80s and high humidity, she spent most of the day in only a onesie. For Easter dinner Daddy made crab imperial, baked potatoes, peas, and salad. For dessert Gramma made a coconut cake. After dinner we all went for a walk. Then as she loves to do when we have company staying over, Mo got set to party all night. By about midnight Daddy finally soothed her to sleep in the living room where they both stayed all night: Daddy on the couch and Mo in her bouncer.

Paint Snow Hill 2011

Dear Paint Snow Hill,
I love you!!!
Fondly,
Barb

Click here to read the full post.

Homemade kind of day

Yesterday was a very nice, low key kind of birthday. I made these cookies (minus the browned butter because I can only cram so many tasks in between baby feedings). And yum. My baking buddies hung out in the kitchen with me. Robb made me dinner, and then stuck 3 candles in an ice cream cake. I will be listening to my mix cds in the car today. Love them!



I also made a rice pillow for Aunt Julie. It's green. I forgot to take a picture. She's undergoing cancer treatment and has been complaining of a sore shoulder. I thought a warm hug might help. We'll see her over the weekend. Tonight we are driving to the beach because this weekend is Paint Snow Hill 2011.



If you are in the neighborhood, please come to the Wet Paint Show & Sale on Sunday, April 17, from 1-4 PM. It's at the Old Firehouse on Green Street and will be the only chance to see and purchase paintings created by 60 artists during the 8th Annual Paint Snow Hill. Participating artists come from 5 states. We will be painting throughout the Snow Hill area April 15-16. 25% of sales support Snow Hill's Arts & Entertainment Program. Hope to see you there!

(No, there won't be any cookies left by then.)