Salone

I've been meaning to tell you that couple weeks ago my big brother left for Sierra Leone, or 'Salone', as the natives call it. (Link to map and info just in case you're not *quite* sure which country that is...). He is there under the auspices of the Village Bicycle Project for a year, and the good news for us here is that he is blogging about it:

chrisinsalone.blogspot.com

He has a knack for expressing the pith of the matter that I think you may enjoy, it's a country with a fascinating history. Please go check it out, and since he is providing for his own living expenses while there, donate a bit if the spirit moves you. As you will read, he can live quite cheaply, so even the smallest amounts are helpful.

I'm very excited for him, and jealous since Africa has been a dream of mine ever since I was a kid and read Beryl Markham's 'West With the Night'. (I highly recommend the read if you have ever had any interest in Africa, racehorses, bush piloting, adventuring, or exciting tales. I mean, who isn't?)

Good luck, big brother, and happy adventuring!

studio!

This may not be as exciting for you as it is for me, but we spent the weekend rearranging the house, making this studio/office space for me to edit photos and craft. I haven't had my own workspace in...ever, and I am so relieved, happy, excited, pleased, and on and on! This used to be the place where we had the baby bureau and baskets, which was sweet beyond compare and she loved being able to look out at the chickens standing on their house while getting dressed. But we moved her into brother's room and now I get to have ALL that natural light to work by. And non-eating tabletops to spread out on. And keep (almost) everything in one place. As you can see it is a pretty wee little place, but is larger than the couch cushion that used to be my regular home, and so much more out of the way than the kitchen floor. Ahem.







It's so cute and peaceful it would almost be a shame to disturb it. Almost.

{6 again, big years}

Six years ago today, this started. Get ready, it's a lot of photos, because six years is a lot of growing.

































Happy birthday to my dear, sweet boy. To my adventure partner, helper, drawer of animals real and imagined,  sous chef, arguer, wrestling partner, giver of gifts, snuggler, and teller of tall tales and dubiously funny jokes, these have been my favorite six years. Let's do it again. Love, me.

{6}

A big day today, for all of us. The boy lost his second tooth (no photos yet), directly below and a whole year apart from his first one. The miss turned half a year old, and wore her new cap that I made yesterday, flaunting my new sewing ambitions all over the place. The cap, incidentally, was supposed to be larger and for someone else, and I will swear by my cutting and seam allowances, so I blame the pattern. No huge mishap, though, since it looks so smart on Anaiah. Six months. Boy howdy.





She has eaten her way through this last month, I think, adding apple, pear, sweet potato, avocado, yogurt and mango to her repertoire. Her favorites are the cereal (we graduated to the multigrain version today, which she tucked into with even greater gusto), apple and mango, but she has to be pret-ty dang hungry for sweet potato to look worth eating. She makes her preferences known with a certain panache, does our girl, pulling faces and hacking and gagging before becoming sedulously attentive to her napkin until the offending substance is removed from the menu.





She is truly like the little bird we named her for, quick and bright and rapidly attentive. She is on a bird's schedule, too, up and down with the sun, and if nothing hampers her rhythm she attends to both with equal cheerfulness (thanks be). I read back through my other baby posts and was chagrined to realize that in every one of them I talk about the same old stuff (hello, boring mom brain), bath time and brother time, etc. etc. I'll spare you, and let's just assume that all that was true before is true now only more so, because there is more of her. And how! I wasn't kidding when I said she has eaten her way through the month, she is getting to be quite a sturdy lass (as an older Welsh woman once described me), and has taken to exercising her voice along with her body. Her magnum opus is 'Ode to a Spoon', to which we are treated almost nightly. It involves much dramatic raising of said object and prostrations before it, with mighty and thunderous homage to its benevolence. At least, we can only assume. 'Ode to a Washcloth' comes in a close second.





With my Great Dane of a son turning six years old this weekend, this hurried passage of time comes a bit hard. I try to soak the moments through my eyes, ears, nose, pores...and it is, it's just like sand. But the future is promising, too, so I can't complain. I like this just fine.