It’s too beautiful outside to stay here, so I’m just stopping in briefly. We have seedlings so many teeny seeds to plant, and sun to soak into our rather still pale skin from the winter. There’s our cardinal nest (up high in our evergreen) to watch, and too much rhubarb to eat. And eat I’m doing. Though I have this inkling it might be making the baby gassy – is there truth to that? And plenty of dirt to eat, man-cub style. Oh yes. Can you hear my patience growing? (I’m really trying).

The petals are falling and filling the breeze with scented, pink sweetness. We are surrounded by crab apple trees, and bushes and shrubs of all flowering varieties. And sometimes if you stand in the right place at the right time, you feel like you’re in a slice of peace. Wherever and whatever that is. It’s truly wonderful. And just what happened the days we (finally) brought our son home from the hospital.

If there was a way to recreate and share this experience I’m sure we could heal much anger, family rifts and erase resentment. The world would be a very peaceful place.

When the little man-cub was about 7 or 8 months old, we thought (that’s my daughter and I) that we saw signs and heard sounds to indicate that he liked yellow. We did tests with multicolored wood blocks. Pages in his favorite board books. I suppose we’ll have awhile to wait to see if our little color adventures were in the right direction, but suffice it to say we felt we had enough to go on to decided, at least for now, that yellow is his favorite color. So we planned his first birthday party around it. Naturally.

Yellow balloons, tissue paper poufs, a yellow bunting for the picnic table… and a neon yellow dress for the big sister. Neon yellow has been a new favorite around here (started in Paris last winter). And since sleep has been, well, a little too short (still) to make me feel at all human most days, we elicited Grandma’s help in making a birthday dress.

My daughter chose the pattern, an old 1960s-era scooter dress & blouse we found on Etsy.

What a fabulous design – both the dress and the blouse are stand-alones, but together they are simply beautiful, I think. We chose a Cloud 9 organic cotton piece we had saved up in our stash for the blouse, and a stunning bright neon yellow cotton for the dress, lined in organic cotton voile.

We lengthened the sleeves on the blouse and made it V-neck for comfort – and comfortable it is. It stayed on long after the dress had decidely had too much party – and chocolate, tomato sauce and grass stains to inaugurate its welcome.

We have more of this fabulous true neon yellow fabric. What kind of dress should we make for our shop with it, do you think?

It was a wonderfully special dress, for a very special day. For a girl who couldn’t be a prouder big sister, of that I’m certain.

This year I did a lot of thinking about maternal health and neonatal care. How so many women in this world of ours, right now, give birth alone, with no support, no proper food or water, no midwives, no access to emergency care. No prenatal vitamins. No nothing. And how when babies are born like my son was, in far too many places in this world, right now, they usually are not given the chance to live because there is no emergency care available.

So today on Mother’s Day, on the heels of my son’s first birthday (yay!!) I hugged my two amazing kiddos and we’re going to the Market to get some veggies… and will spend the day thinking and planning on how we as a family can better support maternal health and care for babies… picking out an organization we will suggest to our extended families to support instead of spending cash on our traditional North American Mother’s Day.

My Mother’s Day is every day because I get to hold the son that lived because he was born in Ottawa. Not Niger. Not rural Pakistan. Or remote Indonesia. Or somewhere in the mountains of Bolivia. And while that’s wonderful for me, it’s just not fair. It would be wonderful if we could spend part of our collective North American Mother’s Day conversation and effort on mothers elsewhere, and maternal health… and how it makes all the difference in the world.

It is my wish, today, that when my son and daughter are grown and ready, perhaps, to have their own children, that the other mothers and fathers around the world living in countries so far away are also able to have the kind of care and support they all deserve.

(photo at top via Flickr here  and hands photo, above, via Flickr)

It’s been a flurry of history fair costumes (and that wonderful historical hat tutorial I promised… will definitely post next week) and family visits and 1st birthday preparations. Perhaps the sweetest prep has been in the hands of the man-cub’s big sister, who was the first to touch him as he was born, and has been in constant companion this year.

(wooden robin toy from ImaginationKids and our new family favorite – the Bear stories – from Barefoot Books)

She decided to make him a “10-reasons why I love you” card book, similar to the one she made for her dad and I blogged about here.

And to know the two of them – the two children I have been honored with being a mother to – have one another and love one another…. well, that’s the best thing in the world, isn’t it?

It looked just like this the day you were born, my little one. The blooms, the buds – the world – seemed to be holding its breath, just waiting to burst into full & pulsing color. The day we came home from the hospital, after a long week where you struggled and healed so courageously, our garden and everyone’s garden, it seemed, had blossomed and the world was lit up with petals and tulips.

The sour cherry bush we planted for you is in bloom too, nourished by the placenta we shared.

I knew it would happen like this. I would close my eyes with you to sleep, and then suddenly, somehow, you would be one and a whole year – your baby year – will have sped by. It always happens like this. And my heart is full with love and gratitude for your being here, in every sense of the word. And there is a little rough sandpapery part of my heart that struggles with the speed of it all, and wishes, wishes you might slow down a little. My last baby. The last firsts.

Oh, my son, I love you forever. Thank you for being here and teaching us so much in such a short time. And happy birthday.

This no-shoes dirt play is very interesting. I don’t think anyone is watching me right now.

Squishy.

Very squishy.

Big sister, please.

Those look quite squishy. Hmmm.

Let me have a closer look.

I see. More dirt. More dirt.

For the last 2 years, the Ottawa tulips have sneaked up on the Festival held in their honor every May. I remember walking waddling among them this time last year, wondering when this big boy in my belly would make his appearance. And now we walk among them again, with that soon-to-be-one birthday boy up in my arms, strapped onto my belly. Still, in my arms. (Can that be forever?)

I finally took inspiration from the many fields of tulips around Ottawa this time of year, and planted them ever so tightly together in our front yard last fall. Too tight, I thought. But now that they are coming up, I realize that the closer the better when it comes to tulips. And daffodils for that matter.

And the closer the better for holding babies. Especially when they are teething so hard they spike a flu-like-fever that definitely catches the attention of their parents. I guess that’s perfectly understandle when you get 3 incisors all at once, in a sort of teeth flurry.

Wishing you a wonderful end to your week!

We had no idea there was a squirrel nest somewhere near the top of our house. And we all wished we wouldn’t have discovered it the way we did, finding a sweet newborn baby squirrel squeaking away, in the front yard. I had never seen a baby squirrel up close before, and despite having declared the adult versions of these animals a lifelong enemy due to a series of unfortunate squirrel break-and-enters in my bachelor days (and some swiped bagels and apartments full of squirrel leavings) – my heart broke a little bit for this sweet baby. I was once again swept into that primal place we as mothers get to visit when we birth our own children – a place of vulnerability and wishing and hoping.

We tried to make the baby as warm and comfortable as possible, waiting for the Mama squirrel to come and claim her baby, rescue it and put it back in the nest. But we knew that she knew that baby was hurt, and she had to feed herself after birthing all of her babies, and take care of all the rest of them. It’s nature’s way, we told ourselves. But the sweet baby, lying on its side, breathing deeply and so very new to this world… well… it captured our hearts, as I’m sure all newborn baby anything can.

After a day of watching, out of the way of the mother who we hoped to come… we buried the little squirrel in our backyard and were all at least a little relieved it was not in any more pain. Difficult lessons for little ones to learn – the starkness of life and death is hard to swallow sometimes.

That afternoon my daughter and I set to work making lots and lots of window stars to shine the rainbows of light inwards and outwards, hoping to bring more light this way. And the daffodils decided (finally!) to peek their yellow heads out that afternoon. A sure sign that life goes on, and is still very very beautiful.

It was hard to list this last little team if fresh frocks, though their size 2 or 3T made it easier to resist spiriting thm away an pretending we had never deigned + intended these for the shop (hee). My mom and shop partner made these, turning her many decades of clothes design + textiles work into sweet dresses that seem so very right now.

The color-block mint one is made with a cotton linen blend we found in a local store, and has 4 little buttons at the back to close it.

And these are new versions of our Ava chevron dress – one in olive green with turquoise, and the other in orange with royal blue.

The little details matter so much. And since we try to design sustainably so that the clothes can last beyond one season (hopefully beyond one year), there is an extra button hole at the shoulders for adjusting as she grows… and an extra few inches in the handsewn hemp to let down. And dresses can become tunics… can become shirts!

And this Mama is itching for a few new summer dresses – oh, Pinterest has made that quite intense (people have been pinning the most gorgeous dresses!) Are you doing any sewing for yourself these days? Wishing you a wonderful start to your week.

… feet,, that is. Feet that are now standing, and walking and growing too fast but still the target of tons of slobbery kisses and big-sister-zerberts. We took newborn feet photos a year or so ago now, his wrinkly delicate-looking feet sitting on top of his sister’s. I wanted to start a new project: document our kids’ feet differently every yeat. A sort of eclectic collection of feet art.

To start our project, we decided to use paint this year – two shades of green all-purpose kids paint and acid-free  watercolor paper.

I can’t wait to start my little feet art nook in the house. Have you done anything like this? Have any other ideas for other years? I was thinking about outside-feet-in-the-grass photos, ink prints and food-feet things like lining up lima beans next to feet.

And on the subject of sweet (oh, baby toes), lemonade stand season is approaching and I ran across this fabulous + entertaining interview with NYC kids about their ventures in the summer lemonade business. Note to self: let still-learning-to-spell daughter make the sign, apparently it might jumpstart her profts!

(that’s a photo from last summer….)