Overwhelming Busy-ness Should Burn Fat!

Lily's first modeling shoot

She is the easiest model I've ever worked with! :)

Ah, I can't believe how fast time is going now-a-days. Well, maybe I can but I wish there were some way to harness is and tell it to chill out for a little while. I want to smell the roses and remember tiny moments of Lily's infancy... I guess a full course load, opening two (yes two!) handmade clothing stores, working on various personal projects, designing new clothing and getting back into fashion photography makes things a little hectic, who knew?!? :-P

Well, that is what's going on with me. I graduate May 10th so things should calm down after that.

More importantly... Lily is amazing and beautiful, she is verbalizing a great deal, she's testing out her fun, non-crying, screaming abilities (especially when ignored and in a crowd), is verrrrry close to crawling, likes working to get toys that are just out of reach, will cry if mommy walks out of the room (sometimes daddy too), likes "jokes" and pat-a-cake, can't get enough "Oh My a Fly," makes raspberries indiscriminately, and laughed at a poor guy in my drawing class while he was explaining his work.

I love being her mommy!

Amazing Gift Box

This Christmas, while we were visiting Eric's family in Wisconsin, I was very impressed by what I found out was a yearly tradition of receiving a box of very thoughtful, personalized, sometimes homemade and often local (to the gifter) gifts. I, at that time, thought that it was an amazing idea to collect gifts throughout the year and send them in a magic box (I found this especially inspiring as I prepare myself to move thousands of miles from my own family). I'd never seen anything like it and it was really, really fun to open the box and discover all of the wonderful gifts that had been specially chosen for their particular recipients.

Tonight, I got home from going out with a friend and found a box waiting inside. It was one of the magic gift boxes-- I am calling it magic because opening it and discovering a wide variety of hand-chosen and made things... well it reminded me a lot of Mary Poppins' magic purse.

Inside of the box we discovered kits for making baby toys and scrap booking (which I keep meaning to learn to do), ornaments personalized with infant Lily pictures, miniature frames with Lily photos, stuffed animals, sing along books, pampering stuff for me (with a fierce red velvet bag), pictures of Eric growing up, stencil monogrammed totes and onesies and much more. In all, amazing, I am speechless.

So tonight I have resolved, again, to try and start a similar tradition when I move away. Especially as Lily grows older, I think it will be a beautiful way to keep us all connected to our families even though we will be (or already are) far away from them.

Thank You Mary Catherine, you are an inspiration!

Lily Steals the Show

On Friday Lily, Sabrina and I attended the launch of this year's Bellerive (the Honors college's literary publication). I have one poem published in it and decided it would be fun to show off Lily and listen to the guest speaker.

The speaker this year was Richard Newman a very good poet who is also editor of River Styx (a prominant literary journal based in St. Louis). I was lucky enough to get a seat on the couch, was eating some yummy finger foods, and chatting with Sabrina as Mr. Newman (who was sitting in a chair next to the couch) was preparing to speak. At some point in the three minutes preceding Newman's speech, Lily grabbed a hold of his index finger and kept it, just holding his hand (though I didn't notice), as she watched the people mingling.

Dean Bliss introduced Newman and I was surprised to find that Newman did not extricate himself from Lily's grasp.. "I was going to stand up for this speech, but as you can see that is not possible..." then he said something quite cute about how nice it was to have someone to hold his hand for his speech and continued to sit like that until, about 3-4 minutes later, Lily let go of his finger and found other amusements.

Happily, there were photographers present, who took about a million photos of this cute event. I can't wait to get them and show them to you.

It seems little Lily has had her first taste of stardom. She seemed to enjoy it and happily shared her enthusiasm with everyone who greeted her. We were at the launch for about 2 hours and many, many people came up to me amazed. She never even got a little crabby-- events like Friday remind me (though I never really forget) how lucky I got with Lily. She's truly amazing

Sorry I don't have a pic of the launch yet... will get it up asap.

Some Cute Photos

(^^^Absolutely the Cutest Baby Face EVER!^^^)
Unfortunately we all came down with the flu in the last few weeks (poor Lily!) but I am happy to say that we are all almost completely healed up. Lily and I have a bit of a cough and she's a bit gooey but otherwise we are doing well.

I finally uploaded photos of Lily in her new legwarmers (2 of the 3 pairs) and thought you might like to see them (they are sooo adorable).

The Whales

Most Awesome Giraffe Cuteness!