Click through to the A Collection of Passions blog to read how Aveline shattered the myths I used to believe about little girls.
(Thanks Kacie, for asking me to guest post! And congratulations, little Lulu is just beautiful. <3)
Author: Gina @ Oaxacaborn
Gina Munsey is a Mexico-born, Eastern Europe-raised missionary kid who ended up being a Californian by way of Florida outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She lives her days full of coffee and adventures while her 12-year-old learns Mandarin Chinese and Greek, her 3-year-old uses all the markers, and her artist-husband creates worlds from pixels and light. A blogger since the turn of the century (ouch!) she's an editor, co-op teacher, and writer who has only completed four chapters of her languishing manuscript. You can find Gina right here at oaxacaborn.com, or in the middle of [home]school surrounded by stacks and stacks of books.
POETRY & WORDS :: When it rains
It’s 2 am, and I’m awakened to the sound of a sobbing little girl and heavy raindrops beating against the side of the building. She is teething, the rain’s falling from the swirling fingers of a tropical storm, and my head is tired and groggy. I lie still for several minutes, as if by remaining motionless I could somehow will her back to sleep. She shifts from quiet crying to calling out “Mummy!” and in a moment, we are both in her room. She’s upright in her crib, stumbling around half-asleep and half-awake as though the mattress were a ship deck, rolling on the high seas to the sound of the pelting rain.
“Get out,” she asks, stretching out her wobbly hands. “Wear blanket scarf.” I wrap her favorite fuzzy blanket around her the way she wants it, and she reaches her arms toward papa. He holds her while she drinks water, and then she lunges in my direction. “You hold,” she says.
Her tiny hands clasp together behind my neck. I stretch out on the rug next to her crib, and she nestles her blonde head on my chest, the same way she’s done scores of times since the moment she was born. She moves her ear over my heart, and the rhythm soothes her. We lie there together in the darkness, listening to the staccato of rain and the beat of my heart. She sighs. I close my eyes. She’s tall, and I marvel how her feet stretch down past my knees now.
I think how thankful I am to have her here with me. I think how wonderful it is that when she cries, I can be next to her.
Over the next hour, she alternates between crying and whispering, “Nigh’ nigh’ sleep.” Finally, I hear nothing but the persistent noise coming from the very loud frog claiming squatter’s rights in the second-story rain gutter outside the window.
I close my eyes again, this time in my own bed, and fall asleep to the constant stream of tropical rain.
INSPIRATION :: Babiekins Magazine Print Issue Hits Stores June 24
Mark your calendars, ladies and gents! I’m excited to announce the newest PRINT issue of Babiekins Magazine is set to hit newsstands June 24! It’ll be available ’round the world (Barnes & Nobles, Books-a-Million, and select Target stores in the US), but if you can’t find a copy in your part of the globe, let me know and I’ll help you find one.
For this issue, I interviewed some of my very favorite Instagram mamas — Whitney Reeder @whitneyreeder, Deborah Gordon @apieceofcake82, and Claire Moir @dancelittleliar (thank you ladies!)
I also talked with Sue Kleine @sueshine about her precious autistic daughter Sammy Lu in one of the most heartwarming interviews I’ve ever had the privilege to be a part of. On the fashion front, I chatted with Katherine of the American children’s label Wovenplay — and oh yes, Aveline’s airline travel antics make an appearance in these pages too.
And the photography this time around? Just plain-old gorgeous. Wait until you see Deb Schwedhelm’s editorial!
There’s more, but I wouldn’t want to spoil all the surprises, would I? Suffice to say the amazing people who put this issue together are quite possibly the most talented and creative magazine team out there (why yes, I am biased.) I’m so delighted to be a part of a project like this!
LIFE IN PHOTOS :: One 2-year-old and One Fan
Summer in a Florida apartment. Need I say more?
MONDAY’S PRETTY THINGS :: 5 Impossibly Delicious Pictures of Food
Tarta de ruibarbo via Elle.es
Alaska black cod via Cannelle et Vanille
Blueberry coconut lassi via Cook Republic
Potato salad with dill via A Thought for Food
Artichokes via Manger by Mimi Thorisson
(You guys, Mimi’s blog is seriously one to add to the reading list. Before her current home in Médoc, France, she’s lived in Hong-Kong, Singapore, London, Reykjavik and Paris. The photography is stunning, and the stories she weaves as she prepares food make you feel like you’re tagging alongside her. Check it out!)
LIFE IN PHOTOS :: This Kid
This kid is pretty great.
Even if she DID moo — loudly! — through the entire dairy aisle last time I was at Target.
She’s been extra interested in “taking pih-uhs” lately, so of course we did the only logical thing. We gave her a blog.
Introducing…Aveline {and a } Camera, a website of photographs taken by a two-year-old.
POETRY & WORDS :: What Bloggers Knew 10 Years Ago That We Forget
I’ve been blogging for ten years. TEN! Well, I’ve been writing online for longer than that, because I was posting in garish-colored fonts on antique website before I even had a blog. But I’ve been blogging continuously for an entire decade now. (Yikes!)
And you know? While I don’t miss the animated clipart or MIDI sound files, I do miss the blogging world from ten years ago. Why? Precisely because it wasn’t a blogging world. It wasn’t a popularity contest.
Bloggers then was people with things to say, and plain little weblogs which gave them the space to spell out the words. Blogging then was writing. You could type as much or as little as you wanted. You didn’t have to promote it anywhere, because there was no social media.
Perhaps nostalgia is clouding my eyes, but I feel like back then, “Content is king” wasn’t just a good bit of blogging advice. Content actually was king. And it was something you had to create yourself, otherwise you didn’t have anything to post. There were no themed weekly series or linkups or duckface selfies. There were no #OOTD posts or shopping roundups.
And the mystery of how to drive engagement? There was no mystery. It was simple. If a reader had something to say, he or she manually typed it out in the comment box. There simply weren’t any other options (well, except for Xanga e-props). No one could star your post on Twitter or click the thumbs-up on Facebook because neither of those websites existed.
I’m not being a Luddite. I love the internet. I love the possibilities and opportunities the internet provides. I’m a technology — and social media — junkie. I think it’s nothing short of incredible that I can sit here with the world at my fingertips and plan out marketing strategy and email people the world over about a business idea. I think the global connectivity made possible by technology is incredible. I don’t think we should ditch our laptops and plug our land lines back in. I love my WiFi and my laptop and my Netflix and my camera and my phone and my iPod Touch. I don’t think we should all start buying wheat berries, churn our own butter, and learn Morse Code.
But I do think that those of us who have been blogging for a long time need to look back on why we first picked up a keyboard and a URL.
For me, it was the same drive that always caused me to pick up a pen and notebook — an insatiable urge to pour words out of ink, and push and twist them into life on the page.
As bloggers, maybe it’s time we injected a little more of that life back into our blogs.
I don’t mean we have to lose the themed weekly series and the linkups and the OOTDs and the roundups (although it would be nice if profile pictures were duckface-free). But let’s keep perspective. Let’s not become so crazed chasing higher follower numbers and obsessing over stats and wishing big blogs would invite us over to play that we forget why it is we started to blog once upon a time.
I’m typing this in the fullscreen mode of the WordPress editor, and each time I pause, a prompt appears on the screen.
It’s simple.
It’s powerful.
It was the driving force of the early blogging movement.
And imagine what would happen today if we did more of it!
INSPIRATION :: Spring/Summer 2013 Toast UK Home+Home Catalogue
Thanks to these images from Toast UK’s Spring/Summer 2013 Home+Home Catalogue, I’m dreaming of a nice seaside picnic — one that involves crusty bread and jam. And maybe a nap in a breezy riad, waking up to Moroccan mint tea before a boat ride where I just sit on a heap of cushions and don’t have to row at all.
Hey, there aren’t any rules against dreaming, right? :)
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