dripping with passion

hi!  this break from blogging has been an interesting experience. the way my photos and thoughts have been piling up, disorganized and unshared, makes me feel anxious. arranging memories and reflections into blog posts helps my mind to un-jumble and my perspective to settle - i miss that exercise.  the past six weeks or so have just been so wild and i haven't been able to devote time to work on a new system for blogging. days and weeks have been full and whipping past. some travel adventures ended up stacked right together - first a long weekend in holland, then a week in dominican republic, then a trip to disneyland and paris right after having ian's parents in town for a visit. it has been amazing ... and also a bit exhausting all in a row! i have been sorting through some kind of concerning health issues and have been trying to not let my spirit break too much with some significant knee issues in my marathon training. work has been wild in new ways for ian, the...

    here's ten thoughts that i didn't quite  get around to writing out and publishing yesterday. and a crazy amount of pictures of magnolia trees around london, because i just can't get enough. a couple of days ago on a walk home, moses shouted, "mommy! there's a magnolia tree! you love  magnolia trees!" :) one. thanks for the comments back on this post when i asked for thoughts about sharing details about my children online. i really appreciated the different perspectives shared, and i think it's a really interesting discussion. ian and i will continually be carefully considering what is best for our family, all things considered. the internet has changed so much about human life ... it's crazy.   moses loves going to the grocery store, riding in the cart, and then playing in the little green recycling truck toy they have there. this week gabriel came inside the truck for the first time, while mo ate a snack of his absolute favourite food - m...

today i wanted to share ten thoughts i have on parenting. this is not me giving advice ... i am just starting on the journey of parenthood, and i am noooo expert! but this is me sharing advice - tidbits that i have learned from others or from my (still very limited!) experience. parenting is such a trip, and i really believe that we need to help each other, especially in this super-connected world we live in. so, for what it's worth, here's some thoughts i've had lately on parenting.  (obviously this applies mostly to toddlers since that's the chapter our family is in right now!) (several of the tidbits below are ideas i learned from ralphie jacobs , whose instagram story highlights i have poured over. i love her approach and am so grateful to her for summarizing and teaching all the things she has studied.) one. our kids want us . kids want their parents' attention, more than pretty much anything. they crave us to watch them, talk to them, n...