Baby Doll

In honor of my darling niece, Aria, I give you a poem, originally written for my littlest brother when I was six years old, and revised for Aria:

Aria my niece is a sweet little girl,

I like to play with her just like a toy [it turns out, this poem's rhyming scheme works better with boy babies, although we wouldn't trade our Aria for a million boys!]

She has brown hair [or, in some cases, blond];

She is so sweet;

And she really, really likes to EAT! 

Have you ever seen anyone sport a wig with so much fabulous charm?!!!

We sure do love our baby-doll girl. 

Happy Thursday, folks.

-Sarah

© by scj

Happy News

It snowed again this weekend.


This is the snowiest winter this area has had in awhile, and we are loving it.

We love watching the snow fall from our cozy perches by the fire place, but we especially love going on walks in the snow.

My brother and his wife stopped by for a bowl of soup just as the snow started to fall, and they left my mom and me a note on their way out.

Roo likes it too! She gets cold, though, so my mom has devised a way to make one of her wool vests fit Roo. The fitting process involves lots of safety pins and is not unlike fitting a cloth diaper to a newborn baby.

The vest tags! 😂

My mom is nothing if not resourceful.

A related side note: Roo went through heat recently — apparently small dogs go into heat at a pretty young age — and my mom fashioned diapers for her out of old underwear. Watching Roo trot around the house in those "diapers" was one of the delights of my life.

Roo adores my resourceful mom.

They are BFFs.

Oh Roo-berry, you are the apple of our eyes, the sauce on our spaghetti, the peanut to our butter. We love you, as is evidenced by our suffocating snuggles and excessive doting, and we are wondering how you will do when Baby Jackson is born...

Yep, that's right: My brother, Aaron, and his wife, Natasha, are having a BABY, due in June, 2017!!!!!!

This week, Baby J is the size of a white onion. We are fresh out of white onions, so we found a yellow onion that looked like a white onion, and we marveled at how fast Baby J is growing.

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, then you know my brother met his wife on their college track team. He was a dual sport athlete at their university — he played soccer and was a sprinter on the track team — and she was a world-class heptathlete. After graduating from college, Natasha went on to compete on the world stage, and she trained for years at the Olympic training Center in Calgary, Canada. Her goal was to compete in the 2016 summer Olympics for Canada. Unfortunately, her years of training were riddled with frustrating, incapacitating injuries that interfered with her Olympic dreams, and it was with peace and hope for a new season of life that she retired from track and field last year.

We are all excited about what this next season holds for her and Aaron.

She and my brother announced their pregnancy on Facebook with this sweet video, accompanied by the caption: "Aaron and I collaborated on a design project together. It's not your average Nike ad..."

(This video format may not be compatible with your mobile device).

You guys, I think I am going to adore auntie life. And my parents. Well, they are over the moon about being grandparents.

They've already started buying baby clothes, starting with this onesie:

Photo taken from Pinterest

Baby Jackson, you are the perfect addition to our clan and we love you already.



Hopeful, grace-filled Monday, my friends.

I'm cheering for ya!

-SJ






© by scj

Grandma Ona

My Grandma Ona passed away last month, and though she had grown old and her health was failing, the suddenness of her passing was a blow.

My grandma was quite a woman.

She was tender, resourceful, active, tenacious, and hilarious. She lugged castaway furniture out of alleyways to give it new life; she cooked with plenty of butter as all good cooks do; she kept her fridge — and other corners of her house — well-stocked with candy (in this way, I always felt she was my kindred spirit), and she never judged me when I wanted to eat chocolate before and after every meal. She raised three kids after the sudden and very early death of her husband; she sent all her grandkids birthday cards every year; and she laughed readily and fully — especially at herself. She was marshmellow and steel, and we loved her for it.

Once, when we were kids, my sister, cousin Emily, and I stayed at my grandma's house for the weekend. We had a hankering for hard-boiled eggs that first morning at her house, so we plopped several eggs in a pan of boiling water, put the lid on the pan, and, before the eggs had finished cooking, we decided to go shopping. My grandma had a knack for finding a bargain and a hunch that the sales down the street would yield all sorts of treasures.

In our eagerness to hit the sales, we forgot about the boiling eggs, and when we returned from shopping, we were greeted with the overpowering stench of eggs-gone-bad. Upon walking into the kitchen, we noted the burner was on, the egg pan was empty, and the ceiling was splattered with the boiled eggs. It was a sulfuric Jackson Pollock, traces of which would stubbornly cling to the ceiling for many years to come. 

When my grandma saw that mess of goopy egg on the ceiling, she laughed fit to kill. Her shoulders shook, and tears welled up in her eyes, and the three of us girls joined her in deep belly laughter. For the rest of her life, whenever we revisited the egg incident, we laughed.

Last week my family sat in a circle and told stories about grandma. We revisited the egg incident, of course, and we remembered our last conversations with her; and when we were done remembering aloud, we planted a rose bush in her memory. When spring comes, it will yield sunset roses with petals of fuchsia, sherbet, amber, and crimson.

My siblings and I with grandma's rose

I think my grandma would have loved it.






© by scj

Thanksgiving

The Jacksons accomplished an incredible feat this Thanksgiving weekend: we were ALL in the same place!

And boy was our selfie game strong.

The sibs

One of the week's highlights was the presence of Copper, the pup my littlest brother and his wife got in early 2016.

Copper is Roo's older half brother.

Do you see the resemblance?

The two pups hadn't met before this weekend, so it was a ball to watch them meet. I was in dog heaven.

With Roo

With Copper

Copper is happy-go-lucky. His tail is always wagging, and every creature is a new friend. Roo, on the other hand, is a bit more cautious. She has to carefully assess a situation before engaging it fully.

Roo (on the left) assessing

Assessment phase #2 (getting more comfortable)

It didn't take Roo too long to determine that Copper was a worthy friend, and the two spent the weekend engaged in puppy play. They romped; they frolicked; and they raced around the house. Copper showed Roo how to stand on her hind legs and walk all over the kitchen sniffing for morsels of leftover turkey (have you ever seen a dog walk on his hind legs without extra support? It's remarkable! Turkey inspires truly amazing things, I suppose), and together, their begging techniques were almost irresistible.

Well, actually, they were absolutely, entirely irresistible. I was a turkey-dispensing softy as long as the two of them were together.

Oh my oh my: a world with dogs is a beautiful world, and a Thanksgiving with pups is the best kind of Thanksgiving.

I hope you had a celebratory and restful Thanksgiving, my friends.

Hopeful, light-filled Monday!

Cheering for you,

Sarah




© by scj

Sneaky Sneakster

Somebody — and I'm not naming any names, mostly because she deserves a christening post all her own— likes to sneak into my bedroom and climb onto my bed when I'm not around. She knows she's not supposed to be in my bed, but the Golden Princess loves luxury, and she's got pluck, so she sneaks.

She's a Sneaky Sneakster Extraordinaire.

Case in point: I was jumping on the trampoline one toasty day this week, and Girlfren was hard-pressed to find comfortable shade. There was shade on the patio, but the patio is made of concrete, and Golden Princesses are not fond of sleeping on concrete. So she found a sliver of shady grass and stretched out:

After I'd jumped awhile, I noticed Girlfren's head had disappeared, and a bit later, half her body disappeared:

And then, awhile after that, she had disappeared completely:

The sneaky little sneakster's a smart cookie.

Happy Sunday, folks!

-Sarah


P.S. My sister and I introduced The Child to hula hoops this weekend, with high hopes we'd turn her into a hoop-jumping circus dog.

Our attempts were not successful.



© by scj