oh those eyes

 Is it any wonder I'm head over heels for my little boy?

The comments we get about him, 
more often than anything else,
are all about his eyes. 


These pictures make his hair look really red, but it isn't--must just be the lighting?

We had a rough two or three weeks with him right after he learned how to walk. 
I'm not sure if it was his newfound independence, 
the dreaded 2 naps to 1 nap transition that he attempted, or the fact that we were in the throes of weaning (or maybe it was all three), but whatever was ruining his little life seems to have cleared up now, he takes two long naps each day,
and oh so thankfully our happy Nicholas is back.
Oh so thankfully.

 Did I mention he's getting a dimple?  Right there on his left cheek.  
Swoon.

And the fact that he fell yesterday and conked his head on the edge of our tv cabinet...well that just makes these pictures all the more real-life Nicholas.


Blogger has finally made it simple to use beautifully large pictures-hallelujah!
Or maybe it's just that I finally figured out how to do it... 

one year pictures

Attempt number one, anyway.
Out of the 59 pictures I took, more than 30 of them look something like this:Nicholas walking away from me, way more interested in the cement under his feet than in smiling at his camera-wielding mother.
But don't you just love how he still has those adorable rolls on his ankles? It almost makes me hope that he never loses those.
Okay, so that's not true. A 20-something-year-old with ankle rolls probably wouldn't be quite so adorable.
For now, though, I'm loving it.

One of the only ways I could get him to both look at me and smile was playing "5 little monkeys." Hence the blurry hand. Those little monkeys are swinging in the tree.

I enlisted Kent's help, and we managed to get a couple of good ones, but we will definitely be trying again later this week.

He's no longer able to sit still and smile at me while I snap picture after picture,
but I'm pretty certain he gets cuter every day.
We just have to work a little harder to capture that cuteness on camera.

lemonade picture no. 5

Fifth and final.

This picture is from one of my family trips to Hawaii. Me and all of my siblings.

We were staying near Hanalei bay, which quickly became my favorite beach on the island.
While we were digging this hole in the sand there was
a rainbow over the waterfall-laced mountains,
a beautiful orange sunset over the ocean,
a local behind us playing the ukulele,
and the smell of someone's beach barbecue.

Seriously. The moment couldn't have been more perfect if we planned it.

And thanks for indulging my "lemonade" picture posts. It was fun!

what i miss

The changing from summer to fall is probably the time when I miss being farther north the most.

I get that "fall itch," you know, the one that makes you want to wear sweaters and crunch leaves under your feet and make tomato soup.
But it is still in the 90's here.
And the leaves won't fall off the trees until December.

I want to decorate my house for fall, but when it's still bright and green outside it just doesn't seem to fit.

I know, boo hoo. When it's February and the rest of the world is dying for some sunshine...then I'll be so glad to be here instead of there.
So it all balances out eventually. Even if I do miss the changing of the seasons.
But yesterday my friend Allison taught me how to make pie crusts. Let me tell you, rolling out that dough and placing it in the pie plate, trimming the edges and crimping the outside--I felt so pleasingly domestic!

The pie is delicious, and I made pumpkin, which does help it feel just a little bit more like the fall I'm wishing it was.

lemonade picture no. 4

I could probably keep showing you lemonade pictures for the rest of the year,
but I'll try to restrain myself and just give you two more.

This is the hotel that we stayed in the first night we were in France with Kent's parents and Sam and Heidi.

Doesn't it look like something out of a fairy tale?

This hotel was in Castlenaudary, my favorite of all the towns we visited as we traveled down the Midi Canal.

But the more important reason I love this picture is because of the night we had in this hotel.
I don't know if it was because of the multiple red-eye flights we had traveled the day before, or because of the quaint beauty of Castlenaudary, or if it was because the bed in that hotel room--although the room was rather sparse--the bed was the perfect level of softness, or maybe it was the delicious meal we had for dinner the night before....
I don't know what it was exactly,
but the night we spent in this hotel was the best sleep we've ever had.

We woke up slowly, softly. The gentle sunlight sifted through the partially open window blinds. We could hear little birds quietly chattering on the sycamore trees outside. Old men from the village walked slowly alongside the canal bank below our window, murmuring softly in French. The air smelled clean, like growing things and dewy ground, with a hint of fresh-baked bread from the nearby bakery.

I have never felt so rested, so completely relaxed and yet so energized.

We still talk about it.
"Remember that one night in Castlenaudary? Remember how great it was to wake up that morning?"
Especially now that we're parents, we crave another night like that one.

lemonade picture no. 3

These are the girls of Carriage House Apt. 308.
The year I lived with them was one of the best years of my life so far.

A few weeks ago I was organizing the closet in our extra bedroom and I came across a box full of my journals. Now the problem with organizing (as with looking through picture files) is that I get caught up and want to review everything.
Perhaps the problem is that I am a sentimental girl.

Either way, I was reading my journal entries from the semester I started living with this group of girls. Nearly every night as I went to bed I would write something along the lines of "I really should have spent more time on my homework today, but we went and played sardines with our FHE brothers. Tomorrow I'm going to be better and get all my assignments done."
The next night, the same entry with some other fun activity.

We actually formed a Study Party Association (SPA) group with some of our FHE brothers with the intent to get together to actually do our homework. Instead we would find an empty classroom in the Smith building, where I would play the piano, we'd plot our life timelines on the dry erase boards, play practical jokes on each other, and watch videos on youtube.

And now that I look back at it, I'm so glad I didn't spend any more time on my homework. I did enough to learn the material and get good grades, which is important,
but these friends, those good, good times,
they were actually a little more important.

Whenever I talk to one of these girls now, we can't stop saying how much we loved living together, how much fun we had, and how we wish we could be back together again. I developed a very real love for my 308 roommates. Sounds sappy, but it is true.

And none of us will ever forget the sight of George riding that little bike down the balcony on Sundays after Church.

lemonade picture no. 2

Kent proposed to me on August 1, 2007, late at night after a fancy dinner in his parents' sparkling treehouse. (Yes, I meant to say sparkling. Christmas lights, tiki torches, candles, and a sky full of stars.) The next morning we jumped in the car and drove to Monterey.

That day is still one of the best I've ever had. We called and texted every person we knew during the drive, and it was so fun to be in the car, both of us on our phones, sneaking knowing smiles at each other. We had big big news and oh the excitement of sharing it!

Monterey Aquarium, Bubba Gumps, Cannery Row. In my newly-engaged the-world-revolves-around-us state of mind I felt like every person we saw was staring at the shining (if perhaps a few sizes too big) ring on my finger.

Yes, I wanted to tell them, this handsome man here-he's all mine. And, did you see this ring? He picked it out all on his own. Do you see how amazing he is?

We stood in line to see a show at the aquarium. It was something about recently discovered deep water creatures. Translucent-skinned fish with large glowing eyes and microscopic creatures living symbiotically. To us, the show was hilarious.

To us, everything was hilarious. We were getting married-our lives couldn't get any happier.

We drove to a stretch of beach. White sand speckled with waxy green groundcover. We drew pictures in the sand with driftwood sticks. We hugged and kissed (more than a little but not too much!)

I set my camera on a perch of jacket-draped driftwood, set the timer. This picture has
always been my favorite of me and Kent.