Map of Trees

It's 3am, and my eyes are kind of crossing.
I've been drawing! I even wore sunglasses now and then to give my eyes a rest from the BLARING computer screen.
Michael has this incredible album underway called Map of Trees, and one of the finishing touches he needed was some artwork. Tonight, I helped him by drawing 108 trees that work as a pictorial musical score with special instructions in paying attention to details for inspiration with performance.
I had to take breaks many times to let myself fall asleep a bit before I kept going. Trees are hard! Trees are exhausting! And I'm already kind of scared of how sleepy I'll be tomorrow. Naps for everyone, please?
But I'm happy to have done this for Michael-- I want him to be successful, so of course I'm happy to support him! And I'm pretty proud of how it all turned out. Because even though trees are hard and exhausting, trees are awesome.
Behold, my six-and-a-half-hour labor of love:

My Kitchen: the Mess Hall

We have had many adventures with Scarlett and her high chair.
It's kind of pointless by now...she can unbuckle her straps. She can wriggle out of ties and elastics and all the other traps we've devised. Either we're really crummy at fastening her to the chair or she's super brilliant.

I think she's super brilliant.

Like any other baby, Scarlett loves to drop her food on the floor. Very purposefully. It's almost like she imagines she's a Food Whisperer, studying the food, deciding it really wants to be on the floor. The floor is its home. She plucks the food up, dangles it just a second over the precipice of her tray, and with a solemn face drops it. A mercy killing? Then she peeks at it on the floor. Maybe to survey the damage. Did it survive the fall? How does bread splat compared to the way grape tomatoes splat? How big can I get that juice spill to spread?

I often wonder how she has the energy to be crazy every day when most of her food meets its end on the floor instead of in her belly. And sometimes it is just a little bit sad to see a praiseworthy piece of dinner that is more like art for all the work I slaved into it get swiped off her tray without ever making a detour to her mouth.

But it's okay. She has fun. She's cute about it. Like "Now Mom, these activities are for educational purposes. This survey will only take a few minutes." And apparently she gets the food she needs somehow.

With all the adventures she puts her food through though, she makes a huge mess for me at every meal. If I don't keep up with her and sweep/vacuum/mop every time, the area under her chair resembles a little city ants would call Paradise.

Honestly, I want Scarlett's high chair experiences to be positive. They're mealtimes, after all. And food shouldn't be mixed up with other issues, if it can be helped. So with all the stuff she and I put each other through while trying to secure her to the chair for safety's sake, it's probably a good thing she's having so much fun sending her food lemmings off the cliff of doom.

That's what I'll tell myself every time I have to hunker down and clean up yet another food mass-catastrophe.

Blast From the Past: Making Mom Laugh

My mom read to me a lot when I was a kid. In fact, she read to me when I was older, too-- if I asked her to. She was sensitive to my need to feel mature, so she never pushed. But I could tell when I asked her to read to me that she was so flattered. She loved reading to us. I think that's really a big part of why I loved it.

When I was about 7 or so, my mom read "Mr. Popper's Penguins" to Maddie and me. It is one of the first chapter books I remember her reading to us. We laughed at the silliness of it, and I enjoyed the story largely because penguins were one of my most favorite animals ever in the world. :)

One evening, when my mom seemed to be in an especially laughy mood, I sensed that I might get away with a little "naughtiness." So I confided to her that nearly every time I read the title of the book, I misread it as:

MR. POOPER'S PENGUINS. 

And my mom laughed and laughed. She would stop laughing for a moment, but then as soon as she was about to read again, she'd laugh and say to herself "Mr. Pooper" and we'd have to wait while she gathered her wits. I loved it. I felt so happy that I had made her laugh. I personally thought it was hilarious, so I was really flattered to discover that she thought so too.

I remember enjoying the book. But all the delightful parts of how Mrs. Popper wore gloves to play the piano and Mr. Popper turned his basement into a fridge-land pale in comparison to my memory of making my mom laugh.