I know I’m a lucky woman – I have a wonderful husband, two beautiful kids, and I get to do what I love for a living…what more could I ask for?  Well, some days I get a glimmer (and a reminder) of just how lucky I am to live this life.

Today at the store, Keith was pushing Maggie in a cart (as I was pushing a cart full of Josie)  and as we enter the produce area, I see Maggie start whispering to Keith.  A 4 year old whispering is concerning 99.8%of the time.  Turns out what she was up to was that she saw the flower kiosk, and wanted to buy me flowers.  A dozen hot pink roses, to be exact.  Keith let her pick them out, and she walked up to me and said ‘Look, mommy, flowers for you – to show you how much I love you for everything you do for me’.

Seriously?  Did my 4 year old just do this?  What in the world did I do right?

You wouldn’t think that it would get better than that, but it does.  So Maggie was carrying the flowers, and she asked to go look at the toys.  In an attempt to get her to put the flowers back (after all, it was the sentiment and thought that counted, and just knowing she wanted to buy them was more than enough) I told her that if she put the flowers back, we could go look at toys.  She thought for a minute and said ‘No thank you, I don’t want to look at the toys now…I want you to have your flowers.’

Tears.   Just on the edge of my eyes, threatening to make me start ugly crying right there in Walmart.  I love my kid.

This was my final session with M. as she’s 12 months old now and has completed her baby plan.  It’s always bittersweet to finish a baby plan with a client because over a years time you build a relationship with them, and you know that you get to see their child grow and develop.  It’s always fun to see what their little personalities shine at the end, because most of the time when I begin the session, they are just beginning their life!  I started doing M.’s baby plan at 4 months, and now here at 12 months, she is such a different little kid!  She wasn’t feeling up to give me the smiles she usually gives me during our sessions, but I did get some fun stuff.  And once we found out she liked the Backyardigans, that helped a lot!  We borrowed Pablo (the blue penguin from Backyardigans) from my daughter to try and help M. smile and she LOVED him so much Maggie gave him to her to take home.

And of course, some from the rest of her session:

It has taken me far too long to put pictures on my blog of my newest creation, but here she is.  Josie Noelle was born 7.20, and my world turned upside down, in the best, most wonderful way possible.  I knew going in that it would be difficult – especially if the baby turned out to be like my daughter Maggie.  Maggie was so colicky – we got so little sleep, she cried so much in the beginning.  I hoped that Josie would be different…but she’s proving to be just like her sister.  I’m spending many a sleepless night rocking my baby – and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  Last night, in hour 2 of our marathon rocking session, Josie looked up at me with these big bright ‘I’m not gonna go to sleep’ eyes and grinned.  The smiles she had given up to that point had been questionable – is it gas?  is she about to scream?  But not last night.  Last night it was a smile – for sure.  And it made it all worth it.

At the end of the day, if I do nothing else extraordinary in my life – I have my children.  And that’s enough for me.

I had my first session back from maternity leave – I’m still officially on maternity leave, and accepting limited clients through September, but when L. contacted me to do her son’s baby plan, I knew I had to make it work!  T. came for his 3 month session, and he was super smiley right when he got here!  He gave me some of the biggest grins I’ve ever had out of a 3-4 month old!