Last year I decided to do a 365 project (a photography project where you make and share a photograph each day). I made it through about the first week. This year I decided a more realistic goal was a Project 52, which only requires one photograph a week. I joined the Clickin’ Moms P52 group, which gives us a theme for each week. This week’s theme is breakfast. I had a mental image of something warm and fresh and homemade – blueberry coffee cake, cinnamon rolls, waffles – but the fact is we eat pretty light around here most mornings and the odds of me whipping up something like that were slim. Then I realized that I should focus on the member of our household who loves breakfast more than life itself – our cat, Smoky. Smoky waits anxiously each morning for someone, anyone, to get out of bed, even just to use the bathroom. Then she weaves between their feet, meowing pitifully to remind them that she hasn’t eaten for hours and is likely on the brink of death. I decided I would get a shot of her diving into her morning bowl of food. In anticipation of the shot I was planning, I set her bowl in the middle of the floor, set my camera in front of it, and lay down in the floor to get the perspective I wanted. I poured her scoop of food into the bowl and waited. This is what I got…

I waited and waited to get an action shot of her scarfing her food just like she does every. single. morning.

The look on her face clearly says Oh, I see. You want a picture of me eating. Well guess what? I’m never eating again. Ever.

Cats.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you.

When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

–The Velveteen Rabbit

Last Saturday, on a trip to the mall in Nashville, we lost a member of the family. Sammy, Gracie’s little black kitty, has been her BFF since she was a year old. I came across him at Hallmark when the Webkinz craze was in full swing and bought him on a whim to go with her witch Halloween costume. Little did I know that he would become her constant companion from the moment she saw him.

She slept with him every single night and every single nap. She couldn’t go to sleep if she didn’t have her Sammy. She hung him by his tail over the edge of her stroller so he could “walk,” chewed on his nose while she was teething, and always carried him the same way, with his tail folded up in her fist and his body tucked under her arm. By last Saturday, Sammy’s hair was matted, his filling was flattened, and his nose was completely chewed off. He was grubby and, quite frankly, he didn’t smell too good. But he was loved. And he was real.

When we couldn’t find him at the restaurant where we left him, we put up a Lost sign, put an ad in Craigslist, and left a number with the restaurant just in case somebody decided to return him. Gracie cried for a while but was convinced that someone would return him to her. I put her to bed that night and cried for hours. Sammy was a huge part of our lives. I had come to think of him as an extension of my baby. I hid in the bathroom and sobbed into towel, knowing that we had probably lost him forever. Then I washed my face and ordered a new Sammy on eBay.

I worried about what Gracie would think. Would she accept him as Sammy, or think he was just an imitation Sammy, not worthy of her love? Today, he arrived and as Daddy held him out to her, she studied him for a minute. “That’s not my Sammy,” she declared. But then she took him, and tucked him under her arm, and didn’t put him down for the rest of the day. She isn’t quite sure yet if this is the Sammy, or just a new Sammy, but she has declared him to be Sammy, and for now that is good enough.

Tonight as she was going to bed, she told me that she was going to sleep with Sammy “with his hair all crooked.” I said “his hair is all crooked?” She said, “Yes, when somebody loses him, it makes his hair all crooked.” I don’t blame you, Sammy, if they left me at KFC it would probably make my hair all crooked too.

One today is worth two tomorrows.

–Ben Franklin

What on earth could that quote possibly have to do with a shot of silverware, you ask? Well, allow me to enlighten you.

This isn’t just any silverware. This is the silverware my husband & I received for our wedding. Many of our friends & family contributed to this set of silverware, & for over 10 years, it has mostly resided in an oak silverware storage chest. We took it out for the rare occasions when we had people over for a “meal.” And by that, I mean something that actually required silverware. Most of our gatherings are birthday parties that involve barbecue, hot dogs, or pizza served on paper birthday plates that require no silverware. Meanwhile, for our every day meals we were using mismatched utensils that came from a variety of sources – hand-me-downs from parents and grandparents, leftovers from college and apartments, & the odd piece bought here & there to fill in the gaps.

It occurred to me recently while I was searching for a fork only to find that all 4 of them were dirty, that it was absolutely ridiculous to keep our full set of good, heavy silverware tucked away instead of putting it to good use. What were we waiting for? Elaborate dinner parties? Not going to happen, people. I declared that the good silverware was now the everyday silverware. Mike looked askance at me. What if it gets all scratched up? What if? What if it is sitting in its oak chest in pristine condition when we are dead & gone? We can pass it on to Michael & Gracie, who will have their own pristine sets of silverware from their own weddings (or so I hope). I would rather that they inherit it a little scratched & scuffed & full of memories of family dinners together.

So what I am sharing today is a shot of our “good” silverware in its new home – the silverware drawer. Where it will be used every day. The mismatched stuff can wait in the silver chest until Michael or Gracie needs it for college or a first apartment. And guess what? Our good china is now in the cabinet instead of the china hutch. The scratched up stoneware is on its way to a new home.

Come on over, every day is a dinner party here.

I cannot believe that this year is already over. No, wait, I can’t believe that this decade is already over. It seems like only moments ago that Mike and I were newlyweds waiting anxiously to see if technology as we knew it would end at midnight on Y2K. I blinked and it is 10 years later and we have 2 children we hadn’t even begun to think about when the decade started. This new decade will see M old enough to DRIVE. My mind reels at the thought – after all, I have seen this child play Mariokart. It is an experience that requires copious amounts of Dramamine. The 2000-teens will also see G turn into an almost-teenager. If what I have already experienced of her love of shopping and outlandish taste in clothes is any indication, that experience will require more than Dramamine. They, of course, being children, would gladly jump forward to those grownup incarnations of themselves. I, being a mama, want nothing more than to freeze them as they are today.  However, time is relentless, so I will have to resign myself to freezing them in photographs while being grateful for the experience of watching them grow.

I cannot begin to take in how much our lives have changed in the past 10 years, and the thought that it will probably change that much in the coming 10 years makes me want to curl up in the fetal position. You see, I don’t deal well with change.  For that reason, New Year’s Eve has never been my favorite holiday. The change from the old year to the new invariably leaves me feeling a little blue. Part regret over things left undone in the old year, part a desire to avoid change in the year to come, whatever the reason, I always dread New Year’s.

Then there are resolutions. I always make many and keep few. There is always that feeling that the slate is wiped clean and you have the opportunity to make life perfect this year. This year, I resolve not to make myself crazy trying to keep a hundred resolutions and to accept that life is not meant to be perfect and neither am I. I will try to slow down and enjoy the crazy imperfection of life with a 7 year old and a 2 year old. Because soon they won’t be 7 and 2, they will be teenagers and I will be subsisting on Dramamine.

On top of all the big changes implied by a brand new year, there are also the mundane things, such as taking down the Christmas decorations. I once left our Christmas tree up until February. Yes, I did. And let me tell you, by February, the sparkle is gone and you just want your space back. This year, I resolve to get the tree down before February. I think that is a reasonable resolution to make, and one that I might even be able to keep. So, since their days are numbered, I decided to take a few shots of our decorations before they come down.

Wishing you all joy in abundance in the coming year…

I have several posts coming to get caught up from the last few months, but just lately we have been busy getting ready for Christmas. One of my favorite things about the holidays is tradition. We have several Christmas traditions at our house. M and I bake, decorate, and – most importantly – eat Christmas cookies. I play Feliz Navidad repeatedly to annoy my husband, who for some reason is not the avid Jose Feliciano fan that I am. We drag the decorations down from the attic (and by we, I mean my husband) and proceed to unpack approximately 1,000 Hallmark ornaments from their original boxes. Okay, we don’t really have that many, but there are a LOT of them, each one bringing back special memories. M & G each have one from their first Christmas, there is one from our honeymoon, several that document M’s varied interests over the years – John Deere tractors, fire trucks, Star Wars – and many, many more.

But by far my most inevitable Christmas tradition is the one that begins around December 18, which is when I panic, realizing it is only a week until Christmas day and I haven’t sent out our cards. So I rush to get a decent picture of the kids, design a card, get cards printed, pay extra to have them actually get to me before Christmas Eve, then hand them out in person to everyone I see on or around Christmas day. I like to pretend that hand-delivering Christmas cards adds that special, personal touch. Those I don’t see get their cards as post-Christmas, pre-New Year’s cards. In my defense, the holiday season does actually continue until New Year’s Day.

Well, this year I decided to get in gear, and I have actually designed and ordered my Christmas cards with *gasp* 2 entire weeks to spare! I will actually get to mail them to our family and friends, who will actually get to see them before Christmas. Maybe I am starting a new tradition…

So I give you, without further ado, the Borders family Christmas picture 2009…drum roll please. (I forgot to mention one of our other most beloved Christmas traditions – watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and reciting the entire thing from memory as we do so.)

I love the peaceful feeling of this photograph, especially since it means that all those who receive our card will believe that this is how my children look every day. If reality were my goal, I would have used the shots in which G has pulled her nightgown over her head while M rolls his eyes so far back in his head that only the whites show while begging me to let him have his pet lizard in the Christmas picture because, after all, he is part of the family too.  However, reality was not the goal. The goal was to have a beautiful photograph of my sweet babies looking to all the world the way I see them in my heart.

Merry Christmas to me.

I am on vacation with my family for the next few days. We are in Florida, and in between rainstorms, we are getting in a little beach time.

Here are a few shots from M & G’s first trip to the beach…

On the way home from our Memorial Day weekend at Nana & Grandpa’s, I noticed a rainbow in the sky just as we were getting close to Russellville. I called to M to look out the window. At first it was small, just a section of rainbow in the sky. As we drove, the rainbow grew, and by the time we reached Russellville, it was a full rainbow, touching the ground at both ends. Daddy pulled over so we could get the kids out of the car so they could see it better. (Okay, really so I could get my camera out and make some pictures of it.)

Maybe we could find the end of it and get the pot of gold, says Daddy.

No, says M, you can never get to a rainbow because as you walk toward it, it moves away from you.And there isn’t really a pot of gold at the end of it. Miss P said so.

Miss P is the voice of authority, as far as M is concerned. She is his kindergarten teacher and knows everything. Whereas Daddy and I know nothing. In fact, he once argued for a good 10 minutes with me at Cracker Barrel over whether been is pronounced bin or bean. We are from the south. It is pronounced bin. He refused to believe that I could be right about this. Miss P said it was supposed to pronounced bean like the food. Yes, in England. Not in Kentucky. The fact that I have a college degree in English didn’t impress him in the least. I am not Miss P, therefore I must be wrong. And that is okay. One of these days he will realize just how smart I am. It amazes me how smart my own mother is now, compared to how little she knew when I was a child.

Tomorrow is M’s last day of kindergarten. I am so proud of how much he has learned in just a few short months.  At the same time, I am a little sad because it is one more step away from a childhood that is going by much too fast. He is very excited to be an almost-first-grader, though, so I will enjoy his excitement and thank Miss P for making his first year in school such a good experience.

But Miss P is wrong about one thing: I firmly believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Summer appears to have decided to stick around this time. After all the cold snaps and never ending days of rain, we are finally seeing some nice weather. M & G made good use of it the other night. We worked out in the yard, clearing up a winter’s worth of debris, and they enjoyed every minute of it.

Well, almost.

G was thrilled to be outside. She is going to love playing outside just as much as her big brother. Here she is…all smiles…

But not for long…

M wasn’t doing something to suit her – and she let him know about it…

Those eyes crack me up.

I’m still not sure how someone so little can be SO opinionated. But, she gets it honest, as they say.

From her daddy…

Remember the old Western “Shane”? At the end of the movie, Shane rides off into the sunset,

like all good cowboys do, and the little boy who has become his friend calls after him to come back…

While going through my old files, weeding out and backing up, I came across the set of cowboy pictures I did of M last spring, just over a year ago. He was so into cowboys then – the only way I could convince him to cooperate for pictures was to let him dress up in all his cowboy gear…

Now he has moved on from cowboys, just as he once moved on from Bob the Builder and John Deere Tractors. Today it is Star Wars and Legos, tomorrow, who knows?

A year ago, I thought I would scream if I had to listen to the Lone Ranger and Tonto one more time in the car on the way to Nana and Grandpa’s, if he ran through the living room again firing his toy gun and rolling across the arm of the couch, if I had to have one more battle about why he couldn’t wear Wranglers and cowboy boots to church.

Today, I wonder how it is all going by so quickly. I would gladly welcome the little cowboy and all that went along with him back with open arms.

Come back, Shane…

In honor of the soon-to-be (please, please!) spring weather, Miss G tried out a new hairdo.

At first she wasn’t too sure about it, but then she decided she looked pretty cute.

It didn’t last long though. First the bows went, then the ponytail holders…

We are all getting a little cabin fever here – it has been a long winter, even though we haven’t had much snow, and we are all ready to get outside and play! It doesn’t help that we’ve had so many teaser days with temps around 70, and now they are calling for snow on Monday!

Come on spring! We’re waiting…