infertility stamp

This was the first infertility stamp issued in March of 2008 by Portugal. So many people I know are struggling with infertility. I pray for their perseverance and success every single day.

rita konig home in manhattan

The rest of her sweet house here.

alaina kaczmarski's chicago apartment

My favorite space right now is Everygirl's Chicago Apt. I love the colors of her place and how she incorporates a lot of bargain pieces with a few expensive ones. Here are a few pics and the 

entire tour of her beautiful place is here.

Beautiful light streaming in her cute office space.

Love all her details, like lining up her nail polish. The colors look so pretty in the space!

images: theeverygirl

this week

I loved this documentary from Sebastian Junger on HBO “Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington”  which explored the question of what drove Tim Hetherington a photojournalist to document war zones in Africa, Afghanistan and finally Libya, where he was killed by a mortar round in 2011 at age 40. It shows how much he was drawn to connect with the people he was documenting and how he couldn't stop returning to war torn countries to tell their stories. A slideshow of some of his haunting photos here.

Also a great read from Anya Yurchyshyn......

How I Met My Dead Parents

You think you know your mother and father, who they are, and what they mean. Then they're gone and the photos and letters they leave behind tell an entirely different story.

image: nytimes

long read via: buzzfead

  

Boston

So sad about the tragedy in Boston. I loved this quote and post that have been running around the internet. It seems like a lot of times people focus on how America is corrupt or going downhill. When tragedy strikes though it puts the spotlight on just how many truly good, caring and compassionate people there are.

and below a facebook post by the comedian-actor Patton Oswalt

"I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity.

But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths. 

But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."  

babysitting

I just got back from Britt's after babysitting Noah and Emeri for 4 days. Britt and Andrew went on a church retreat. I love when I can give Britt a few days break without the kids. It's great for me to have the kids alone because that's when I really get to know them. It's funny as I had just spent a week with them during Easter but I find out way more about them when I play mom :) They change so much at this age that it helps me to get to know everything about them. Here is what is happening with them now.

Emeri

1. She loves Mandarin oranges and carrots and could eat them all day. She loves cheese which is the opposite of Britt who would never eat it. She does not like chocolate....crazy I don't think I hardly know anyone that doesn't like chocolate! Her other very favorite things, she loves, loves Pepperoni Pizza and popcorn. She would go to the pantry all the time and say snack, snack, snack. I would pull every item out and she would say no, no, no unless it was one of those things....haha! 

2. She is an awesome sleeper!! This is new as last time I took care of her she woke up several times a night. I would put her down at 8 and she would sleep until 8 the next morning. That was heaven! The amazing thing about it too is she is not in her crib anymore. She started climbing out at 18 months. She is in a toddler bed so I thought when I put her down she would just get up and start playing around but thankfully for some reason she doesn't.

3. She loves my iPad. Her favorite thing to do on it is play music and dance. She found a song on one of the kids games I put on it and she would play it all the time and dance to it. So cute!

4. She also started something new when I was there which is she would wave her hand at me and say come on, come on Mom, when she wanted me to go somewhere with her. Lots of times I would just follow her into the closet of her room and that was it....ha! She also said "can I please have it" for the very first time!

5. She likes taking off her clothes, the exact thing that Brittany did at her age! So most of the time when we were inside she would just wear a diaper. The only problem with that was she started to take off her diaper too! Well that wasn't going to work so I had to put her in timeouts for that. Brittany had just started timeouts with her since she is old enough to understand a lot now. She has a little red chair and she was good about sitting in it when I put her in it. After a few times of being in a time out she stopped taking her diaper off. Thanks goodness as I was panicked there for a minute thinking we were sure going to waste a lot of diapers!

6. She loves waking Noah up in the morning and immediately goes and jumps on his bed. When Noah was Emeri's age when I would babysit he would come and jump on my bed to wake me up! 

7. Emeri is afraid of dogs {i was just like her when i was little} and still hates to wear bows!

Noah

1. He is a great eater and loves almost every kind of food. A couple of his faves are butter toast {that's what he calls it} and broccoli. He must have got that from me as those are my favorites too! 

2. He sleeps in now!! He used to be the earliest riser sometimes up at 5:30. So happy that phase is over! He also liked to stay up late if I let him.

3. He's good at playing by himself.  He will take his cars and make a zooming sound. Some kind of race is going on in his head as he can entertain himself like this for quite sometime. I just not quite sure what the game is :)

4. He deals well with his little sister who doesn't understand sharing yet. Emeri has a little meltdown when she has to give Noah a turn with something fun. He is so nice and usually gives her an extra long turn. That really helped me out when taking care of them. 

5. He thinks there are monsters in his room and doesn't like the dark. I had to do quite a few monster room checks when I was there :)

6. He loves people and is so social. The minute he would see a child at the park he would go up to them and make friends.

7. Love that he is out of the crazy little boy phase! He was my super helper with Emeri and just a joy to be around!

funny girl

Toddlers go through so many different phases good and bad but my favorite one of Emeri's is her latest. She thinks everything is hilarious and constantly looks up at you and giggles! She finds the stairs in her house are especially funny. When I walk up and down the stairs with her, every step she takes she looks up and laughs like it is the funniest thing in the world! She learned to walk the stairs about a month ago, which was a little scary for Britt since she is so small. She kept crawling over the gate so there was no delaying her mastering the stairs. This all started in December when she was 19 months old and started climbing out of her crib. Goodbye to the fun days when she would wake up and play in her crib for awhile! Now she just hops out and finds mom asap. Watching her climb like a monkey reminds me so much of her mom when she was her age! A picture and a video of all her happiness :)