Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow...'cause Yesterday's Gone, Yeah Yesterday's Gone....

I am already a fan of 2009. The openness to this adjustment is rather surprising to me since 2008 was such a groundbreaking year of figuring out exactly how many rounds of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" it takes to get a toothing infant back to sleep AND WE MADE IT. I've been so focused on documenting each milestone (five and half months, slept through night; eight months, waved; nine months, pulled to standing) that the passage of one calendar into the next seems kind of negligible, irrelevant. I think this change in the way I perceive the passage of time makes me a little bit of a loser, but also little less daunted by the moments that keep on slipping away, like water in my sand ditch at the beach. But our calendar from Small Liberal Arts College on a Hill tells me it is indeed 2009 year of our Lord and so far I've been having a ball. Lovey Loverpants has had ample time off of work to chill and demo for Baby Girl the myriad batteries not included toys that now populate our WHAT WAS THAT I JUST PASTED TO THE FLOOR living room. Also, we've been wildly social. I mean playdate in the morning, a dinner at a restaurant with a waitstaff in the evening. Followed the next day by Itsy Bitsy yoga in the a.m. followed by a raucous toddler birthday (the second in a week!). Yoko Loco! We're pushing through a veritable hangover from the fun alone. In the meantime, I've been staying up to finish some final projects for class. I don't know how it all got done, but the files are uploaded and I feel happy for what I've learned, but even happier about what's to come, regardless of whose calendar we're consulting.

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above: Baby Girl and I in front of the Talking Tree, Tower City, Cleveland

Wonder of a Child

I was fortunate to have parents that upheld holiday traditions, reinforced in a big way by having a brother with autism that goes berserk when dinner is not served at 6 p.m. sharp and the corny robotic snowman is not played daily 15 minutes prior to that, and the Harry Connick Jr. album is played in entirety, but NO! BEFORE!!! the David Bowie Christmas album. The combination of my parents as tradition stalwarts and my brother as a tradition stall-out culminated in year after year of festivity, rinse and repeat. Baby Girl got to experience hints of these traditions this year -- some more fully and comprehensibly than others. But it was a delight to go through the motions in a way that seemed fresh and more magical, always on the edge of my seat and with a camera ready to catch some new nuance I had never seen before, all because of a little 10 month-old angel in Robeez whose eyes were always alight with the splendor of the season.

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tower city

tower city

wow train santa IMG_2892 not that cool

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