our singing bird: the archives of adah: dear liz and seamus,

the bathtub calls, but i'd like to recap our fabulous valentine's day weekend with a photo montage. praise jesus for the brevity of captions.

in case you forgot already, these are the highlights from the past 24 hours:

we couldn't have arrived to a better greeting. we showed up looking over-packed as usual, and when we got there, there was a coconut cupcake and valentine's day package waiting for the little one. inside the cupcake was sugar, and inside the package were stickers, glitter glue, and a scratch rainbow pad that made me nostalgic for fourth grade. this was an unsurprising and lovely-as-usual gift from aunt liz. seamus put the coffee on and we sighed happily about being out of the car.

then liz, from her huge craft stash, whipped out the styrofoam-like things that were made from corn starch. press 'em down on a wet sponge, and they stick together for endless designs. over the weekend we made a rainbow, a flower, a couple cats, a giraffe, and an elephant.

time for a walk. the sun was shining and we expected to be outside for awhile, but it turns out the mamas forgot to pack the kid a coat. who knows how she managed to get out the door without one on in the first place, but then again, if you know the triumphant hustle of trying to get a toddler outside a door frame, you could understand how this might happen. we made adah an impromptu sling from a scarf so her doll susie-q could come with.

at this point i handed seamus my camera because it always appears from photographs that i never spent a minute with adah because i'm so often the one taking the pictures. sadly, i can count on my fingers how many pictures i have of the bug and i. so now i have evidence, when years from now in a state of feisty adolescence, she says i was never there for her. and look-- i was! here we are skipping down the street with her, and there's anne holding a hello kitty bag!

these fun shenanigans continued throughout the day. by the time it got dark and we were looking out the incredible living room windows into the city speckled with lights, i was already tired. i can't help that i'm a hundred and eleven. adah was just starting to do gymnastics off the coffee table onto the couch, and we still had to cook dinner and paint a hundred (okay, i exaggerate) doll house people. but that's okay, folks, because i was awoken by the culinary amazingness that was happening in the kitchen. i should say SEAMUS had to cook dinner, because he was in there whipping up some enchilada sauce from scratch and i was just pleased to be his sous chef with liz, preparing the dip and all the fixins for fresh spring rolls, an odd but delicious fusion. the two things we do best together on weekend days? take pictures and eat. we were stuffed into a happy, healthy oblivion.

after dinner and more cupcakes we moved into adah's birthday project: painting little people for her doll house. i didn't even attempt to bring in the 160 piece put-it-together-yourself furniture i have stashed in the trunk of my car. this photograph was taken when i could hardly see out of my eyes anymore i was so tired. that's why it's so blurry. i can totally see why the artists on etsy can sell a small family of hand painted little pegs for $50 because it's quite the challenge. liz even used masking tape for straight lines, but it was practically impossible. as the night went on, things got a little more blurry, and seamus' contribution had some serious cleavage. but seriously, thanks, friends, for your artistic contributions.

i'm going to skip the part about how anne locked herself out of the apartment and had to call me to remind her of the door code after i had fallen asleep already.

sunday was another lazy, happy day. out came more stickers and paints and crafts. the gymnast showed off moves and ate her first and hopefully last dorito, and then uncle chicken came to visit.