My spirited Child

Oh Lucy...

So anyone who knows me well, knows all about my Lucy.  She is such a free spirit.  More of a sprite than a fairy, she has gold dust in her hair and wind at her feet.  Stepping those feet in Ruby's footprints couldn't be easy as Ruby is nearly perfect in every way.  So my Lucy takes another path.  She is just MORE.  More happy, more angry, more excited, more frustrated.  She laughs louder and cries harder.  Her aunt always says she lives life with an exclamation point.  It is so easy to get caught up in Lucy's difficulties that I have vowed to make note of her strengths as well.  My favorite thing about Lucy is that she is hands down the funniest kid I've ever met.  As I'm typing this she walked by me on her tip toes, backwards with her eyes closed and smiling for no reason.  And she talks to everyone!  She walked straight up to a stranger at the park and said "Hi, I'm Woosy.  I'm poopy, wanna play with me anywayz?"  

So here's my favorite story.  It's a few months old, so some of you may have heard it, but you'll laugh anyway. 

Lucy is potty training.  She LOVES to be naked (doesn't everyone?)  She also loves our backless kitchen stools.  She loves to spin on her tummy on these stools (can you guess where this is going?)  One sunny day this summer, Lucy was naked (other than glitter glue sparkling on her fingertips) spinning on her belly on her stool and

                                               ...wait for it...

Yep, she peed.  It was like a fountain.  SHE KEPT SPINNING!  I had a pee fountain in my kitchen.  

So I will try to remember to share the more entertaining Lucy stories here.  It will remind me to laugh because sometimes I'm too busy screaming at her.  And it is my job as Mommy to be the memory keeper, a treasure house of happy moments locked in time like photographs...

P.S.  Lucy to my KISA (knight in shining armor) last night "Hey Daddy, smell my booty".  
                                                       Bananas!

Fairy Houses

Today my girls and I are in love.  In love with fairies.  After watching the new Disney Tinkerbell movie The Great Fairy Rescue, Daddy (my Knight in Shining Armor) suggested making fairy houses.  Ruby's imagination is lovely and she created a magical cottage out of a box.  Lucy & I worked together to create a glittering "deep dark woods house" for her fairy friends.  My camera's broken but I just gotta get a photo posted of this mini village! 

Okay, I'm starting a blog...I think.

Let me introduce myself.  

I am an optimist, dangerously sentimental.  I love coffee, art, music, family,  friends, and most of all photography.  I believe in gratitude and have faith that the heart of life is good. 

I am VERY happily married and have three fantastic kids. 

Ruby Lauren Paterson is 5 and just started kindergarten.

Lucy Gabrielle Paterson is 3 and in preschool.

Finley Michael Paterson is 11 months and never leaves my hip.  

On my best day I am an aspiring photographer, a therapist,  a clever and self-deprecating writer and enthusiastic and adventurous wife and mother.  On my worst I am invisible.  I am a cleaner of all things that seem to stay messy and a chocolate milk fetcher to a child who seems to have a hole in her sippy cup.  I am a moody chick, but that's life.  And if I can go around telling other women to accept themselves just as they are, well I better drink a little of my own Kool-aid. 

So where does silver pennies come from?  Well, it's a magical story.  My childhood up to about age six was enchanted.  My mother was the kind of mom who took long walks with me and counted cracks in the sidewalk and dressed our cat in baby clothes for walks in the stroller.   Everything had a fairytale history.  We collected snails and let butterflies land on our arms.  We literally had a white picket fence in sunny California.  When we were going to bed each night, she would read poetry from an old green tattered book called Silver Pennies by Blanche Jennings Thompson.  It was all dusk and meadows, stars and green glass beads.  The one poem that always got my imagination going was called For a Child Named Katherine.  Fairies would come and sprinkle magic dust over her while she slept and this is where happy dreams came from.  It is out of this book of fairies, moonbeams, and dimly lit willow trees that my creative dreams were born.  

So here goes... a little bit of us every once in a while hopefully with some funny stories and maybe a few photographs too.  So grab something warm and soothing to drink and come into my ordinary world full of extraordinary characters.