{Preview} Three

In the past few weeks I have awoken to tiny voices in the night, like ghost cries in the shower - echoes, faint, trailing.  I have found myself dazed at one a.m., barefoot in the hallway, listening for a newborn.  It’s nothing really, I tell myself.  And I don’t want another baby.  I’m not patient enough, miserable at pregnancy, and more times than not, painfully inadequate at handling the children I already have. 

Yet I am so intrigued by three and the mother who can handle it.  What is the magic she bares?  The internal dose of pale blue calm she centers herself on again and again?  How do I get that?  Like Missy:  freckled, perennially sunned, ageless.  Unflappable.  A workhorse:  forever going, doing, making, creating.  The kind of mom you want to buy hours off of.  And, she has three.  A breathtaking trio of pouty lips and cerulean eyes, porcelain skin and ink swept lashes. I photographed the baby, Lucy, last spring at four weeks, then this fall shot all three.  They plopped in the grass, a rambling little river of girl, and had me.  Had me thinking.  Three.  How very, very sweet.  Perhaps.

Perhaps, but mostly, I remain scrambled, and in awe.  Repeatedly scrolling through batches of photos like these, adding up the small, beautiful bodies – one, two, three.  Searching big round baby eyes like Lucy’s hoping for an answer, or the courage to scrape together my own.

I'LL do it.

Jammed the last two weeks with endless loops of designing and editing, keeping very odd hours, while juggling children like clementines.  A little extra TV, take-out, and mini cars zooming at my feet while I worked squeezed minutes out of the day.  Things I promised myself I wouldn’t do seemed to keep the schedule going.  And somehow, everyone is just fine.  Perhaps except for the night I made tomato soup with eggnog instead of cream.  But the frenzy has slowed, and the kids seem unfazed.  I’m awaiting orders to trickle in from the press and getting into a rhythm of going to bed before 2 am.  Strangely I miss the hot buzz, my brain feeding on that blue-creative-fire, but it’s been nice to get back to the very important business of wiping tears, laundering sheets, photographing the kids just mucking around, and figuring out how to get the two-year-old dressed in a timely fashion.  I think it may be fair to say the Christmas orders will be boxed and pretty before we sort this last one out.

Made by hands

My favorite gifts over the past few years have sat under the tree in crumpled paper bags.  Adorned with glitter and smudged paint, they are bound with unfurling yarn, and thick, pepperminty white glue.  Preciousness related not to what's inside the bag, rather than the hands that carefully made it.

This is our holiday card from last year.  It's made by hand, layered with luxe, creamy stock, archival glue, the velvet ink of Little Rhody Press.  Slipped into a sexy little velum sleeve it's like wrapping a tiny piece of art to send to your loved ones thru the mail.  This time of year our mailboxes are overrun by the artwork of a few large companies that have a grip on the market.  Consider scouting out and supporting an artist you love this holiday season.  There are people right around every corner making beautiful things to share.

I will be sure to post the custom cards from this season, as well as the faces I get to capture.  I cannot express how very thankful I am to those of you who have booked, read, ordered, recommended, supported.  You have kept my hands busy and my heart full of gratitude.

Finishing Touches

In the home stretch of a project I have been working on since April for a dear friend of mine.  I convinced her I was the one to do both newborn portraits and handmade custom announcements for her third baby girl.  Very happy she said yes.