Portraits

These are my baby sister’s babies.  So hard to believe there are now three little Baker boys.  They were the last three born and they complete our family.  Kade keeps us all laughing.  He has such a funny sense of humor and a stubborn streak just like his Mom.  Griffy is one of those boys who is magnetic.  No doubt this boy is going places.  You simply can not stop marveling at his insane levels of cute-ness and independence.  He is sure to be found with his big boy cousins running wild, hitting baseballs and doing karate moves.  And baby Spence has just arrived on the scene.  Because we had gone three years (a record) without a baby amongst us, he is never short of an aunt to hold him.  We all fight over him and kiss him and cuddle him and he gets a photo session a week for life because I simply can not get enough of this baby.  So proud of my sister for being such an AMAZING Mom no matter what obstacles are put in front of her.  Even without sleep, with a sick baby or a million and one things to do she looks amazing, makes pinterest teacher gifts, bakes, cooks, is an amazing hair stylist and has a clean house!  It’s almost too much to believe but you could stop by her house at 8 a.m. or 11:00 p.m. and everything is in its place and there are fresh baked cookies on the counter.  It hurts my brain to even imagine how she does it! I promise this ends my yearly blogs about my own kids and my “almost” own kids.  Back to our clients tomorrow!

I think I have always tried to be the kind of parent that enjoys the smallest moments with my kids, the every day, even the bad day.  Lately, that has become an obsession.  There has been so much tragedy in the news, from our own small part of upstate New York, to the unthinkable national tragedy last week, to such sadness and violence all around the world in places like Syria and Iran and Afghanistan.  It can become easy to wrap ourselves in a cloak of fear and want more guns, more violence, more madness.  But there are places to look for the goodness in the world and in the wake of such profound sadness there are always so many more people with helping hands and open arms and feeling hearts.  Instead of asking to start an arms race in our schools, instead of thinking the world has become an awful, scary place full of terrible people, I hope we can all turn off the news and turn off facebook and turn off the constant onslaught of opinions and information and remember that the world we live in is filled with honest, caring compassionate people.  We can put down the fear and the anger and we can be kind and teach our children to do the same.  We can love and sing and dance with joy in our hearts because we have this moment and the rest is never guaranteed.  My daughter’s chorus has a mission statement, a quote by Leonard Bernstein that reads “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before”.  In this season of hope, let this also be our collective response to violence. Play the music a little louder.  Give your child violin lessons for Christmas.  Teach them or yourself to play Chess.  Invite your neighbors over.  Play with your dog.  Hug your kids and listen to them when they speak, really listen. Take these moments, even the tiny fleeting ones and keep them with you.  Live this moment completely.  Here are a few moments with my own sweet kids in my very muddy backyard with our pup Banjo.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

emily dickinson