calendars
time. i can see it traipsing its way across my body. i see my crow’s feet creeping from my eyes toward my temples. (they'll be like yours one day, dad. i really like them on you, by the way.) i see the fine lines. i feel the aches and pains that now take longer to heal. time is moving faster and i am moving slower. my children are moving faster and i am moving slower. or maybe i'm not moving slower, i'm just spending way more energy to move at the same pace. i'm just trying to keep up here. like i'm running to stand still. except i never actually get to stand still....
time's brisk pace is more noticeable than ever these days as it grows my children, stretches their limbs, expands their minds.
as long as I’ve known ian, he has drawn out huge 6-month, 8-month, 12-month calendars that he keeps on the walls of his studio. we've had them from time to time on the walls of our house since the kids were born and we've marked them with first words, first steps, and hilarious instances in addition to our weekly plans.
I picked up ian's big-calendar habit along the way and now find it a necessity in my studio as well. i sit today in my studio surrounded by the year ahead.
since last night i could have sworn that the hour between dinner and the kids' bedtime took 2 1/2 days, i am grateful for the perspective the yearly calendar offers. time is moving fast. i see now that it is only going to get faster. tracking it on paper somehow comforts me.
> > transformation <
okay, here goes.... a few pictures of what we've been doing over here the past year and a half. our house was built in the 1940s as a duplex - one unit upstairs and one unit down. for the past 5 years, we've lived in the second floor of our house and worked out of the first floor. now that we have built studios to work in, we've renovated the first floor and finally moved into our entire casa. the room below was once my studio, then marvel's birthing room. we now call it the parlor. we knocked down most of the wall shown at the top left for a more open feel. it's now sort of a go-between room that connects the living room (top right) and the stairwell - a good place for koruna and mars to snack, draw, make a mess.
we gutted the old kitchen downstairs and turned the upstairs kitchen into a laundry room. below are pics of the old downstairs kitchen and work in progress. (we of course considered keeping the shiplap, but some of it was in pretty bad condition.)
we removed some windows to make room for french doors to the side yard.
below is a picture of work in progress
and what it looks like now.
our house is filled with estate sale and garage sale finds, family pieces, hand-me-downs, gifts, and auction purchases. we're trying to get rid of everything we don't love. we're trying to simplify.
we need to simplify because we're determined to spread our wings while we send down our roots. we'll be leaving the country for a while this fall. we haven't decided all of the details yet, but we do know that we'll be renting out our casa a bit while we're gone.
the pictures that the airbnb photographer took of our house are far better than mine. check them out by clicking here. exciting stuff....
bits and pieces of our new studios
construction in progress.
austin herndon heald studio in progress.
bits and pieces of the austin herndon heald studio these days.
ian ingram studio in process. the first pic on the left is his old teensy studio.
bits and pieces of ian's studio these days
we
LOVE
our
studios.
friends
ian and i have stumbled through early parenthood as all of us do. we pat ourselves on the back for some of our parenting techniques and we cuss (usually quietly) at others. one of the things that we've done that i LOVE: we've given each of our children a very "special friend". koruna's special friend is drake. rooster slept with us until she was 4 months old. when we moved her to her own bed, drake slept with her. the cool thing about drake was that drake ONLY slept with her - he never left the bed. so koruna WANTED to take a nap - she WANTED to get in bed so she could be with drake. brilliant, right? runa is almost 3 years old now and their relationship is as strong as ever.
it turns out drake is more special than even ian and i knew. rooster recently told us that drake is: 1. a girl 2. chinese 3. is not currently living at her house in china. she now lives in an apartment over on congress. 4. has 5 of EVERYTHING that runa does not have. 5! 5. gets to do EVERYTHING that koruna does not get to do.
she's quite a gal, that drake. we love 'er.
now marvel has louie.
we chose louie for his obvious personality and his many chewable, suckable parts. mars also has brother love, a puffin given to us by michael norris, our tattoo artist and friend. mars is already totally attached to both.
i think these friends sorta helped my children learn to love. ya know, like friends do.
(we have 2 backup drakes, 1 backup louie and zero backup brother loves.)