Where have I been, where have I been, where have I been.

I’ve been in my house with the curtains drawn, with the air conditioning blowing without ceasing, with children in need of their mother, with my piles of laundry and floors of toys that somehow are magnets to my feet (especially the Jungle Book Tonie, with its sharp edges). I’ve been preparing for our seven-day beach vacation that I’m entirely too nervous about (given we’re going through one of the more difficult seasons of behavior/sleep regressions/etc. with my children) (and given the road trip aspect and our lack of experience in the car) (and also given my lack of experience vacationing at the beach or, really, vacationing at all, and especially with children) (it will be wonderful, I know, as I keep remembering how just miserable this would be if I didn’t love my husband’s family dearly and as my own). I’ve been cleaning the kitchen, over and over again. I’ve been rearranging our front room, scouring Facebook Marketplace, shooing Henry and Kit from the China cabinet. I’ve been listening to Dionne Warwick and waiting on the new Lizzy McAlpine album and memorizing the Sound of Music soundtrack, as Kit enjoys singing it before bed, and I’ll do anything to help myself at bedtime. I’ve been walking past football practice in the mornings, past the lawn mowers and the weed eaters and even a robot lawn mower some days. I’ve been reading Ann Patchett, of course, and a new Gillian McAllister thriller late into the night, and just started Little Women as September nears.

But mostly, the part of my brain that writes has been consumed with the fact my book has been pitched to fifteen agents, that somewhere between one page to the entire manuscript has been shared with the magical agencies I imagine are book-lined and warm, glass havens with soft, creamy carpets in New York City, where their desks are centered around large, bright screens, cluttered with books, stacks and stacks and stacks of them, and handwritten notes and napkins with lipstick and coffee stains (I’ve only sent to women, naturally) and then, on top of it all, a magic wand that they use very scarcely, just to touch the manuscripts they feel inclined towards, granting an author their dream come true.

I don’t care if this isn’t the reality. I acknowledge that, most likely, my queries have yet to be read, that they’re waiting in an online cue in an inbox overridden with people just as devoted and hopeful as I am. But I prefer to imagine they’re all printed out on hot computer paper, that they’re being read in the lamplight of offices in the night. It’s quaint that way, 2000s-main-character.

I spent two or three days preparing my query letter – basically a cover-letter-to -the-resume situation – and all the other “pitch materials” I’ve learned about as I’ve prepared for this stage of publishing: a one-liner pitch (Driven by a piercing homesickness for her childhood, a woman embarks on a desperate search for her memories and those who existed within them), a short author bio, a two-page synopsis, a one-paragraph pitch, and then a list of agents I think would work well with my manuscript and me. And then, one night after the babies were asleep and Price was finishing the cleaning downstairs, I decided to just pull the trigger. And it felt like this massive unleashing of marbles, a downpour of effort and thoughts and hopes and dreams. I clicked send, and there it went, my book, desperate to be read.

At first, I sent it to a few agents that merely noted they were interested in literary fiction. I had a list of “dream” agents I had scribbled to the side of me, waiting. I wanted to be sure my pitch materials were good enough, that the first five, ten, twenty-five pages of my story were good enough to beg an agent to read more. I didn’t want to waste my chance with all the agents I’d found on a query that wasn’t strong enough. But then, three days after sending my first five or so out, I checked my email (an email address I made specially for this process, as to not lose important messages amidst emails from the Weather Channel and Gap Factory and reminders I’m out of storage), and there, sitting so calmly, so unassumingly was an email from a literary agent. Adeline, I would love to read this. Please send me the full manuscript. My heart felt like it could thump out of my skin, that I was floating above our house, floating to the clouds. Really, nothing of substantial substance had happened, but, yet, it felt as though it had. Someone wanted to read my book! Someone who has agented NYT bestsellers, agented a Reese’s Book Club pick! Someone in the industry for years and years. Someone who specifically wanted coming-of-age, women’s literary fiction.

I have since learned she, in one fellow writer’s comments, has taken 300 days to read (and then reject) manuscripts she requested in full.

Still, regardless of how long it takes, she saw worth in it.

I then went back to my desk that night and fired off queries to the next ten agents I’d starred, for I knew my pages and material worked. If it caught her eye, it could catch theirs, too. And that’s where I sit, nearly a month later, refreshing my inbox every morning when I wake up, waiting even for a rejection, anything that shows movement. I’ll wait however long I need to.

And in the meantime, I’ve written nearly four complete chapters, ten-thousand words of my second novel, a literary chronicle of a family home, and the family within, over the span of 100 years, inspired by my own home and its history, by Erin Napier’s Lantern House, by a random family walk in early summer, Price and I talking about the summers to come with our babies here with us. I keep saying on my Instagram that I can’t stop crying when I sit down to write. I really cannot. I told Price the synopsis of the book, and when I got to the final part, I couldn’t get through the first sentence. He just came and held my hand as I shook my head, wiping my eyes. I imagine the final ten-thousand words will be unbearable to write, just in that a beautiful life is unbearable to remember, the magnitude of gratitude to the Lord unbearable to fathom. I’ve been writing little scenes as streams of consciousness in my notebook at night, and I go to sleep relieved I put thoughts to pages (given, somehow, I’m unable to remember thoughts or points for longer than two to three minutes these days…I went to a girls’ weekend at the beginning of August, and I had to physically whisper points I wanted to bring up to myself as my friends talked and I waited my turn, or else I’d forget, gone with the wind).

It really has been one of the greatest gifts of my life to write. I have been writing for over two decades now, surely. It is the only tangible thing I can do, and have done, (outside of my family) that I am proud of. It is an honor and a dream just to send my book to the magical literary people who I assume all live in New York City (hahaha). Actually…it is an honor just to write a complete book, to have worlds and stories and people in my head.

And then I think about Substack, about the hundreds and hundreds of you who so kindly open your email every time you see my name in your mailbox. It is an honor to be read, even in this form, digital paragraphs on a computer screen.

On the Sunday morning of our girls’ weekend (with my college best friends I see annually nowadays, the girls who have made it hard for me to make any other friends after them), we went to a little diner in a strip mall for breakfast, sitting at those tables with the advertisements on top and metal around the edges. We drank hot coffee in mugs that didn’t match, two of them political cartoons about the governor before my stint in Arkansas state government, and had eggs and soft pancakes for breakfast. As girls do, we spent the last two hours we had together going over the most prominent information we’d discovered over the weekend, the shocking news that was still developing, the college memories we’d uncovered, somehow forgotten in the ten years we’ve known one another, when we’d see one another again (Florida next year), the lot. They asked about my book again (all three of them were beta readers), and after explaining basically what I just explained to you, I told them that regardless of what happens, I’m just going to keep trying, that they’ll have another book in their inbox to read and give me notes on by the end of the year. To which Mariel said, “The time is going to pass anyway. What else would you do?”

What else would I do, but raise my children and write books, the two things that fill me with enough purpose for a million lifetimes. The time is passing by me like river water, fast, eternal. I guess the question is, how many books can I write before I’m 80?

When I was in elementary school, I was the instigator of “family night” on Fridays, setting the table, planning activities, choosing movies. We watched episodes of 24 and Alias when I was far too young, far into the night. We watched American Idol, voting on our home phone and both my parents’ Razr cellphones, set up on bar stools like polling places. We rented movies at Waite’s Video Rental at the end of our block. It smelled of cigarette smoke, and we’d walk home through storage units, past the Presbyterian church, and back home to our golden retriever who would be waiting on us at the top of the laundry room stairs.

When I was in middle school, we went to the varsity football games on Friday after steak night and the chocolate fountain at the Western Sizzlin. If the boys weren’t playing at home, we went to the cemetery instead, to follow our parents through the tombstones as the sun went down. (Still, when I’ve gone to visit my uncle’s grave with my mom and grandma, there is always allotted time to wander the cemetery, reading names and dates and straightening the sun-dried silk flowers for people we don’t know. It seems fitting, when you think of it that way, that I married into a family who makes their living in the monument business.)

When I was in high school, I finally found myself against the top wall of the band shell, behind the second of five bass drums, proud to be in the black overalls, proud to be a part of the halftime show, to be known by the drumline, to be a part of something I loved so much. I didn’t watch the football until my senior year, when my brother was the kicker. It didn’t change the experience that significantly for me, when he came, because I loved my Friday nights without him. I loved my Friday nights regardless of if they won or not. I would go home after school and change into the clothes I’d wear under the uniform, piercing my ears with these old button pearls I lost somewhere along the way and am sick still at the thought I no longer have them. I’d pick up Subway for dinner and eat it on the floor of the band room before disappearing into the blue carpeted room where the drumline lived. It smelled of shoes and junk food, of Axe and rubber stick tape. Behind that door existed a family I could only really hold onto for two or so years, a collection of people I’d never know again. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and tied the shiny rubber shoes on and tightened the hat beneath my lip, tucked my folder of soft-around-the-edges band stand music between my stomach and the drum harness, and then we filed out onto the back parking lot, standing beneath the sun in black and blue until the entire band snaked behind us clump of drummers, waiting on us to lead them into the stadium. The entire night was electric. I never once felt like a band geek, but a musician, a friend, a human lit with the electricity of being sixteen and in love, with the sound of our bass drums, deep in my gut, with stadium lights on our instruments for ten minutes while the football rested, convinced what we were doing was monumental and important. Was it? To me, yes. To everyone else? Perhaps not. (That’s fine.)

In college, I spent a significant portion of my Friday nights at those same games, but in the stands, watching my brother kick the ball through the uprights and yank someone’s helmet just once, in order to prevent a touchdown after the punt. I went back to the band shell just once, while the band was still filled with faces I knew, but the band director looked at me in a way I felt embarrassed by, and I never returned again. (I shouldn’t have anyways. Things like that are best left in the past.)

And then, my life slowed, and Fridays just meant no work the next morning and take-out for dinner. My babies were born, and Fridays mean the beginning of Daddy’s home all day!, or finally, saying yes to Kit’s requests to watch Woody after naptime. I find myself all week counting down the days to the most superior day of the week, but then I have to stop, to remember that there is not one day worth wishing away around here. We walk after dinner nearly every night, and every few days, we run into my brother and his wife on their after dinner walk, and as they walk us home, sometimes my chest tightens at the knowledge that this right here is the same as those Friday nights in the band shell, precious and not eternal. Everyone is here. My parents are young. My babies are babies. My brother lives one block away.

Still, I wish for Friday nights. I just love them.

Alls to say, I was happy to have had this weekend with nothing to do but watch movies and eat donuts and listen to the CD player and read my book while the babies played. We finally have a show to watch on Friday nights again (Silo on Apple TV). There is nothing better than having a show to watch. I checked two books out from the library. Price grilled, and we finished the rest of the oatmeal cookie ice cream I’d made the week before. Price’s sister came and had coffee at our breakfast table while we got ready for church on Sunday, and then we ended our day listening to the summer thunderstorm outside our windows, sad it was Sunday night and not Friday night once more.

CONSUMING

We went to the library after church story time last week, and while Kit read at the children’s table, Henry held my hand and waddled to the room next door, searching for the Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell and The Names by Florence Knapp, both buzzy books I’ve had on my reading list for a little bit now. When we got home, I told Kit we were going to have book club. We sat in the front room with cups of juice and packs of crackers, and Kit read her selections (Dr. Seuss, Curious George, The Day the Crayons Quit), Henry began dumping baskets of toys at our feet, and I started Slow Dance. I read until one in the morning that night, and then after breakfast the next day, I put a CD in the player and read on the floor while the babies played around me, moving to the sunroom when they got bored, then upstairs, anything to keep them entertained so I could read the story of Cary and Shiloh in its entirety. I loved, and I mean LOVED, this book. It is a second chance love story between childhood best friends, and I just thought it was perfect. I struggle to find romance books I enjoy, despite that being my favorite genre. They always fall flat or end up corny or something. I don’t know. But whatever this was, is my favorite.

(Now I will say, I get nervous with my book recommendations, because I do not pick my books out at Lifeway. By no means do I read any of those rated-R “books” popular these days, but as with a lot of popular media, most books I’ve read and loved have portions/storylines/things that I don’t love. We just skip what we want to skip, internalize what we want and skim past what we don’t, and appreciate literature for what it is, stories from the minds of artistic humans. So just bear in mind if a sex scene or something of the sort comes along in a book that I recommend!)

I also, on a whim, decided to watch The Sound of Music last week, after a few days of listening to the soundtrack on our new pink CD player. (Kit sometimes has a problem with music on our phones…she wants to hold it, scrolling through the songs. It often results in a meltdown of varying degrees. So I thought a tangible CD player would do wonders for us!) I realized, listening to the lyrics, that I really can’t remember the last time I watched that movie, much less as an adult (I never have). And then I got to thinking about how, really, it was such a substantial movie, meaning wise, given the political undercurrent of the entire story. That was something I definitely hadn’t picked up on while watching it as a child. The entire time I watched, I caught myself smiling, just overjoyed at the sight of Julie Andrews, of how in love Christopher Plummer was with her, at how divine the music was. The lyrics are just beyond gorgeous. Climb every mountain? Good Lord.

ENJOYING

Henry’s sleep schedule the past few mornings. He wakes up when Price wakes up to go to work (6:45ish), whines, and then puts him back to sleep. Praise the Father! Another pair of my beloved Walmart walking shorts, this time in bubblegum pink. Holding Annie like a teddy bear every night, her soft snout in the soft of my neck. The Best of Earth, Wind, and Fire, Vol. 1. I think I say this every week, but morning television (Jenna and Sheinelle). I love making breakfast while listening to them. I love Jenna so dearly, and I think Sheinelle has been wonderful for the show.

PONDERING

How to store my comforter until the heat dissipates…vacuum seal? Rubbermaid? Throw some old towels out to make room in my office closet? If I should buy the Hobby Lobby dollhouse or a bookshelf shaped like a dollhouse (so it could stay in Kit’s room longer) or the Maileg farmhouse…how are people affording Maileg??? How can I not buy Maileg??? Is anybody selling secondhand Maileg??? I can’t stop thinking about it all, all the tiny little mice things that I just KNOW my children would love. And also me. If my air conditioning thermometer is broken or if it really is just that hot. Pondering starting my quilt, but I’m nervous! I keep finding reasons to hold off. This week’s being that I need my dining table cleared for Henry’s birthday party next weekend, so I can’t move my sewing machine just yet.

WRITING

Oddly enough, there has been something about this Earth, Wind, and Fire album that reminds me of the family I’ve created in my head for my next novel. When writing my first, a lot of the storyline was developed as I walked in the morning, listening to music. (So much of my creative process is soaked in music, if you can’t tell.) And so for the past few days, I’ve found myself doing that again, thinking about my main character Martha, who she loves, what she loves, things she’d say. I have a page in my notebook listing all her family members and their birthdays and a list of “major plot points I want to include.” I know what the family home looks like. I know the first sentence (I’ve written 1,500 words of the first chapter), and I know how the very end of the book will go. And that’s it. I’ll keep walking until I know the rest.

I’m writing this as a character out of her own mind, feeling out of place, out of sorts, in need of cleaning her house but too exhausted or perhaps just lazy to do anything about it. Just showered and wishing it was nine o’clock tonight, so I could climb into my own bed and not the one of a hot little baby. I need to vacuum, I need to put things away, I need to go outside and feel the sun on my cheeks, but here I am, uncomfortable in my husband’s recliner, watching the Travelers Championship and Scottie Scheffler, for sitting in my office to write feels far too structured for the weekend we’ve just had.

Last Tuesday morning, Henry screamed at me from the moment I placed him in his high chair, screaming at a volume indicative of something serious, yet nothing at all had happened to the little bear. I held him to my chest and shoveled my breakfast down, and then I decided that yes, his forehead was warm, I could tell from my lips on his skin, and I was right. 101.2. I held him for the remainder of the day, except for the three hours he napped in his crib, and tried to keep Kit away from him, resorting to a movie that night, despite the past two or so months of television only existing for my children on the weekends.

He woke up on Wednesday and cleared his plate of strawberries and eggs, even reaching for mine, and so we decided it had been his teeth, for they appear to be rather large and has pained him significantly more than his sister’s ever did her.

But then on Friday, when Kit appeared in the doorway of the kitchen when I told her dinner was ready, her eyes were red and glassy, and by the time we went upstairs for bath time, she was pink and whiney and warm to the touch. We spent the weekend watching Toy Story (the 2^nd and 3^rd, both two times) and golf in between, Kit never far from my lap. Price wrangled Henry, and I held Kit, and Annie stayed on the top couch cushion, her perch to keep an eye on everyone and everything (a habit that contributes to her mental illness of excessive barking at things that shouldn’t bother her in the slightest). I slept with Kit both nights, crawling into her bed a few hours after tucking her in, sleeping with her baby doll on my chest and her neck curled around the top of my head.

And then finally, the sun returned this morning, and Kit woke me before seven, asking to watch Woody, to holdjyou, all on the couch. I carried her and my pillow to the sunroom, and we watched Toy Story again while the sun filled the house, waiting for the boys to appear on the stairs. Her fever has gone, and she ate toast and berries for breakfast. She’s been coloring at the coffee table and painting in the dining room and climbing into my lap less and less, and I know the end is near.

Of course, just as is when you hear the word lice and your head begins to itch, I’m wary of my heavy eyes and my cloudy mind, wondering what I’ll do if I wake up in the morning to a warm head of my own. But then, I also truly do believe in the immunity God gives mothers sometimes. And besides, surely I would be sick by now, right?

I wrote a few weeks ago that motherhood took away the anxiety I grew up feeling on Sunday nights, anxiety for homework or church homegroups or school the next morning, work as I got older. And while that is true, there are still some things that feel incredibly similar to me. Like an inbox of emails that need to be responded to (why this evokes such dread, I’m not sure). Or of course, when I’m pregnant, my doctor’s appointments. When Price drives to work every morning or when his location stills on the drive home. Financial matters revolving around our home (plumbing issues, water damage, the sort). Brand work (although I’m incredibly thankful to have them to do). Filing taxes. And when my family is sick. It’s a dreadful realization that, most likely, we all might get sick, that we all might be rendered helpless. Fevers and babies and anything out of the ordinary makes my mind race to things it should never race to, and somehow, these things always happen on the cusp of the weekend, when the emergency room is the only option, and quite frankly, who can afford it? (I’ve only been once, for spotting 15 weeks into my pregnancy with Henry, and I refused the bloodwork, just desperately begging them to tell me if there was a heartbeat. The bill was so high, I laughed out loud in the office we were sitting in. It was more than my entire prenatal care, all nine months of check-ups and bloodwork and scans. I only just paid it off.) There was once I time I liked sick days, but that was just when it was only me, and I could lay in my chair all day and watch whatever I wanted and sleep whenever I wanted and count on my mother bringing us dinner or chocolate chip cookies later that night. Now, it’s just a dreadful affair.

But, praise the Lord, my babies are well, now off to bed, said Miss Clavel.

CONSUMING

I’ve read two of Lisa Jewell’s books this weekend, two of which I bought off of Thriftbooks while we still lived in our cottage down the street and just haven’t read until now. I discovered her books in the first few months of Kit’s life, when I was reading books off of Kindle Unlimited so quickly, I couldn’t remember them as soon as I reached the last page. I’d never read thrillers before, but hers are written so beautifully, with warm descriptions and nothing that was really scary at all, and so I’ve delved into her world, having read most all of them at this point. I finished Don’t Let Him In and immediately started The Truth about Melody Browne, and she just somehow weaves these stories together so intricately, I can’t put them down. I recommend them all.

I made another batch of the chocolate ice cream from the Cuisinart instruction booklet, but this time, I added globs of boxed Ghirardelli brownie mix (the dark chocolate kind), and it tastes like my beloved order from Shake’s, the order I’ve been getting for over a decade now. Price and I watched the Larry David show on HBO on Friday night, the one he produced with President Obama, and Price complained off too many brownies in his bowl, and I wanted to take it from him, because he didn’t deserve it. That’s the whole entire point??

I do admit, I use this ice cream machine for myself, primarily. Flavors I crave only.

ENJOYING

Being a Scottie Scheffler fan. I thought he had it last weekend. I swore he did. Regardless, it’s fun to cheer for him every weekend. Listening to my all-time favorites playlist on Spotify, which they made in honor of their ten-year anniversary I think? It’s a very strange assortment of music, from my most-played song (“Guts” by Augustine, an indie band I discovered my last year of college), Coldplay, Taylor, Earth Wind and Fire, Percy Grainger, Norah Jones, Harry Styles, Faith Hill, a lot of Parcels, Ambrosia and Tame Impala and the main score of The Crown. There are no skips, and I look forward to turning it on for my walk every morning. I also have been listening to Noah Kahan’s new album every night as I clean the kitchen. He is my husband’s favorite artist, and so I’d say one of mine, too, for how often we’ve listened to it together. We discovered him on our drives to our appointments for my pregnancy with Kit, and so the sound of his voice makes me feel like my stomach is swollen. And then, randomly and something very niche, I’ve been laughing so hard at all these Jordan Spieth memes going around. I’m not even going to try to explain them, but just know that, yeah, I’m into golf! You could say!

WRITING

Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ve been reading and caring for children and checking my email excessively for any word, absolutely anything of evidence that someone other than my mother thinks my book is good. I’ve been saving notes for how to write query letters and making lists of agents that might would like my book, based on others they’ve represented. But it’s all been busy work, just filling my time.

It’s been two weeks since I’ve written you, and it feels like it’s been years since I’ve sat down and written a word that wasn’t to edit something else. Price asked me a few nights ago, after the babies were in bed and we had reconvened to hold Annie between us, laughing at the way she groans and smacks her lips until she’s cuddled just so, if I missed my book, and I said yes, that I missed writing this story I’ve been so consumed by for months. And so I’m glad to be sitting here, writing stories of the past few days, for you to read, a muscle I’ve learned never needs to sit dormant again.

For the past two weeks, I’ve felt busy, but somehow, as I’m recollecting what we’ve done, I’m not sure what made it so busy in the first place. Which I suppose is true of my life in general these days. My days are filled to the brim with things to do, but then at the end, holding Annie, I can’t remember much of the specifics to fill Price in. I folded laundry. I cleaned the kitchen. I made lunch and cleaned the kitchen again. We went on a walk. I tucked them into their beds and read a chapter or two and then we had snacks and I cleaned the kitchen. I talked to my mom on the phone. We tracked your location, waiting for you by the door, watching for your car in the drive. Then I made dinner and cleaned the kitchen one last time.

We’ve been walking as soon as we wake up. I change the kids into their onesies and dry diapers, and then I pack a lunchbox with ice waters and pouches and a washcloth in a Ziploc bag of ice, and we head out into the wet morning heat. Our route has been quiet and cloudy, except for the two or so days football camp came to town, and we walked through schools of teenage boys in pads and helmets swinging past their knees. We weaved through school buses, and that entertained Kit for as long as they possible could. My brother played high school football, and then college, although I preferred high school. He was the kicker, and I took great pride in telling people I was his sister. I went to most all of his games in high school, driving in the night with my parents, grateful for the break from the fall semester, even if just for a couple hours. It was sad when he went to college, joining a team of players I had not a clue of their names. (Except for the sunny November afternoon when he hit a 53-yard-field goal to win the game. That day I hold dearly.) Still, wandering through football camp, it made me nostalgic for the time in my life I felt ownership over a team.

We’ve gone to church story time since my last post, too, and I relish in the hour or so I get to watch Kit interact with others. Both babies sat in my lap for most of the program, looking at me for guidance when everyone stood to do the dance or lined up to do the activity. I thought about the Sunday before, when my mom worked in Kit’s nursery class and reported to me how well she played, how interested in and kind she was to the other children, how she stood at the coloring table for most of her time, concentrated with her short legs crossed. When the books were read and the songs were sang, they announced everyone could go play, and Kit turned to me and said, “Granddad?” And so we left, off to visit her granddad at work instead. She also thinks she works there, at the flower shop. She has a miniature Target shopping cart that she pushes around and collected faux fruit and jars of jelly and 8 oz jugs of laundry detergent. She pushes it around back, where she begins dumping spools of balloon ribbon and corsage wire, this and that until she finds something to be entirely distracted by. We didn’t buy the flower shop until I was in the second grade, but my thoughts, as I watch her round circles through the place, are consumed by the childhood I had amongst all these same things. This isn’t the same building; the transportation department bought the first three or four years ago to build a highway on top. But, really, it’s all the same. She’ll grow up here for as long as we’ll let her, she loves it so much.

We’ve played outside quite a bit these past two weeks, heading out after breakfast, before the sky burns electric blue and before the mosquitoes wake up. I bought the viral water table, or thought I did. I ended up getting one half the size, but as it’s turned out, we didn’t need one any bigger. We keep a pot of chalk and bubble machine out, a gardening board for me to sit on, the water hose on to mist their faces when their cheeks turn red. Kit asks for music, and so we listen to Rapunzel and Sound of Music and Toy Story as we draw and water the grass and some of us dump our heads into the water table to get our hair wet. Kit skinned her knees on the sidewalk a few days ago, and we ended up all on the porch floor, trying to console her. She desperately wanted me to cover her knees with my hands, so she wouldn’t see the blood, and Henry desperately just wanted to be in my lap, too. I decided it was pointless to be outside still, so I started to gather our things, and as it always goes when everything is already overstimulating enough, I fell down the stairs, which terrified Henry, and then I had two wailing children, their heads hot and red as cherries in a pie.

And then, this weekend, we hosted one of my oldest, dearest friends and his wife (and my brother and sister-in-law) for dinner. I’d never hosted friends like this, with my husband and my children and my kitchen and my kitchen only. I was nervous, as I always am when it comes to socializing now. Used to, I was more confident. I’m not sure what changed. We don’t have couple friends, and so it’s always my people or his, my family or his. But, really, we’re not incredibly social people anymore anyway. We grilled and I made baked macaroni with a whole block of Velveeta cheese and the homemade Oreo ice cream I think would solve world peace, and we took them on our neighborhood walk with us, stopping for them to talk to neighbors they knew (he is beloved in our hometown Baptist church). When they left, Kit waved and it made my heart tighten just at the sweetness of it, a friend I’d loved since I was in the fourth grade, meeting my children, eating dinner in my house.

CONSUMING

I’m reading Writers and Lovers by Lily King, recommended for lovers of literary fiction with a romance slant, the genre I’d describe my book as. So you could say I’m researching. I’m not sure my thoughts on it quite yet. I’m also reading Hand, Hand, Finger, Thumb by Dr. Seuss every time we step foot in Henry’s nursery, because it’s on his nightstand, and he giggles every time he sees it. He’s reaching for it and holding it like a book, even if upside down, and I’m desperate for him to enjoy reading, and so I’ll read whatever he wants, over and over again.

And then, of course, Taylor Swift’s single for Toy Story 5, “I Knew It, I Knew You” has gone triple platinum around here already. Kit has determined that Taylor’s voice is, in fact, Jessie’s, and I’m happy with that. I could branch out, listen to more Taylor, under the guise that Jessie is singing them all. How does Kit even know this is a song for Toy Story, anyways, other than that we told her?

And as for little summer treats, we drove to Andy’s to get our first chocolate swirl waffle cones for the summer, mine going back and forth between two little impatient mouths, two babies in car seats.

ENJOYING

Watching Henry eat, his grubby little fingers, his busy lips, cottage cheese in his pretty hair. He’s earned himself a bath in the kitchen sink quite a few times and has been demoted to eating his meals in just a diaper, because it’s just not worth the hassle. Reading in bed after my shower, a candle lit on my nightstand, Annie curled in a ball between my stomach and my knees. Watering my flowers every night after our bedtime walk, everything so green despite the heat. Kit gets a tiny bucket and follows me around, dumping it on the pots I just watered. She’s soaked through to her diaper by the time we go inside, and she bypasses Price and Henry at the door, gone to take her Crocs off and find a towel, she says. Getting Henry ready for bed while Price bathes Kit, the routine we had at the old house but haven’t done in some time. I missed his little body, soft and warm from his bath and a handful of lotion. I’m even happy to brush his teeth, all three and a half of them.

WRITING

On Thursday, I put the babies in their beds for naptime, and then I closed myself and Annie in my office and turned on Labi Siffre and began scribbling down scene ideas and names and birthdays and plot lines and things I want to write about, the very beginnings, strings of marrow for another book that has begun to sprout in my head. I’ve been thinking about this story for probably a month now, a page of computer paper tacked over the story board for the one I just finished, written in colored pencil and crayon, ideas I hadn’t wanted to forget. I see this one so clearly: the characters, the family, the home, the writing itself. I’ve wondered if I should take a break, if this is silly to write another book with no promise even for the first one. But then I think about the emotion I felt pouring from my hands as I wrote the first one, how purposeful, how hopeful it is for me to write at all. And I think about the children I pray I’m yet to have, and I feel a desire to work as hard as I can with the time I’m given, before my time sitting at my desk dwindles to even less each day.

Also, I need to distract myself from waiting on my beta readers and my editors to give me anything at all, even just one sentence of review. We’re a week into waiting, and I’ve succumbed to thinking the whole thing is a train wreck. I’ll think to myself, how crazy you were, to ask others to read something as silly as this. But then I’ll say, all authors have to start somewhere. And I’ll feel better for a few hours, and then the nighttime will come, and I’ll start again.

And so I need to write again. Because what if this one is better?

For my entire childhood life, the time of Sunday lunch depended upon the time the pastor decided to close us in prayer, the menu upon which Mexican restaurant sounded the best that week (except for the spouts of time we had a pizza and ice cream place in town, or the occasional afternoon fried chicken sounded right). When I was small, lunch was nearly always with friends of my parents, which I didn’t mind for the most part, as I liked to listen to adult conversations. I’ve always been especially nosey in that way. After Price and I were married and moved back to my hometown however, I found myself no longer interested in a jaunty lunch with people I’d never lived with before. Call it the aftermath of the pandemic, call it the digression of my social battery, I’m not sure. All I know is that I was relieved to know my parents were no longer inviting others to eat with us once we spilled from the church.

When Kit was born, her presence was an answered prayer for me in ways I am not ashamed to admit: one being that having a baby has been and always will be my out in any situation I no longer want to be a part of. Sue me! She was born in March, and we did not return to church until July, and even then, I kept her tucked away on my chest, and we rocked back and forth with the deacons at the back of the church. The question of whether or not Addy’s leg of the family would be present at El Parian once the service was said and done didn’t exist, for the answer was known without having to ask.

For a while, we’d go through the Subway line or do a little grocery shopping in our church clothes and eat straight out of the packages when we got home. But for some months or so now, I’ve come home and tied my apron over my dress and buttered bread for paninis or chopped celery for chicken salad, spearing carrots and quartering strawberries, slices of grapes, big bowls of BBQ chips I buy for the weekend. We watch golf on the iPad and then eat ice cream out of the tub with one spoon, Kit’s chocolate smeared lips close to my face as she mumbles bite, bite, bite until I raise the spoon back to her mouth. The sun is soft in the breakfast room at that time of the day, and naptime is looming, and everyone looks so nice in their church clothes, and I always am thinking to myself how I hope my babies will remember Sundays like this.

I think about how anxious I worked myself into feeling on Sunday nights when I was younger, to no fault of anybody but myself. I think about how this is another gift from Kit’s birth: my departure from having any reason to dread the start of the week, as all my days are the same. All of my days, theoretically, should feel like how Sunday lunch feels, warm from the sun-drenched windows, full of picnic food and chocolate, my body heavy in anticipation of sleep, content in the presence of the people I love most of all. And so as I clean the kitchen after lunch, I find myself thinking just how very important it will be as my babies grow up to keep our Sundays exactly how they are, slow and happy and home-filled, for it sets the tone for everything else.

In other news, I’ll be spending this Sunday afternoon straightening up an extremely unsettled house, as a week ago, Price noticed the just awful orange color of water stain on the dining room wall, the same wall that runs between the upstairs bathroom and the laundry room, where all the plumbing has made its home. We pulled the armoire back and discovered soft, wet plaster and floors nearly buckled, and I felt like screaming. We thought we had the plumbing assessed in its entirety (we certainly paid enough for it to have been), but somehow, somewhere, it was missed that half the pipe that drains any water source from upstairs is rusted and disintegrating, hence my just refinished plaster walls being soft and water-stained. The plumber said they will need to cut out a person-sized hole to replace the pipe, and I can only imagine the bill he’ll write me afterwards. Not to mention, now I need to figure out how to patch a plaster hole that large? Every hole anybody made in this house, for a light switch or the air conditioning return filter, looks terrible and made the wall around it crack, and so I’m not feeling very hopeful for this specific situation.

They’re coming tomorrow, after a week of taking my laundry back and forth to my mom’s and running a fan on the water stained spot every time we drained the shallow bathtub (as we have no other bath in the house, and Kit has yet to take a shower). The whole thing is just making my blood boil, so I’ll stop writing about it.

Price has also purchased these pretty little café curtains from Amazon to hang in our breakfast room. There are rent houses behind our neighborhood, and we noticed new tenants, and it just felt like we couldn’t wait any longer to finally clothe our naked windows. He hung them Friday night, and we both looked at each other with the same thought, wouldn’t these be pretty with the walls painted grassland green? We’ve painted portions of every house we’ve ever owned in this color, the perfect warm green from Sherwin Williams. Trim, porch floors, walls, cabinets, our shed even. And now, as I type, he is downstairs painting the walls we were saving for wallpaper but decided to paint in the meantime. Burning the midnight oil, he told me after putting Henry to bed and heading back to his can of paint. He’ll finish in the morning, and by night, we’ll hang the Parks Beach pieces we saved for that room, my Lenox spice village he found on ebay for my Christmas present one year, the café curtains closing us in to do as we please without people watching us from every angle. I’m so thrilled it nearly takes away the anger I feel toward the plumbing situation. Just nearly, though, not quite.

CONSUMING

I mentioned making chicken salad for weekend lunches, and by the time Monday rolls around and the leftovers are gone, I’m desperate for Friday to make some more. So I thought I’d share! I’ve been using this recipe and buying butter croissants from the grocery store. Heat them up for five or so minutes in the oven! So divine.

This week was the finale for Friends & Neighbors on Apple, and I was so sad to see it go. There have been a few times in my life when I so fondly remember watching a show, regardless of the quality: the first season of Only Murders in the Building, our first married fall and the theme song will always transport me to that time in my life; the first season of Outer Banks, as Price and I watched four or five of the last episodes all in one night in our first bedroom together and it felt like a sleepover, even though we’d been married a while and the show is actually not good at all; the fourth season of Stranger Things, we watched each drop the night it came out; every season of Survivor we watched together before Kit was born (the first 40 and then the first new era season was merely days after she was born and it made me feel so homesick we turned it off); and then the first season of Friends & Neighbors, back when we had a bedroom with a television mounted on the wall and our babies both slept through the entire night. This new season was not as good as the first, but I loved it all the same. I root for Jon Hamm regardless of what his character does. And, two, I think this is the perfect formula of show for me, the perfect dose of crime/darkness/scary, amidst comedy and just good characters. I thought about how I used to sit down and watch horror movies, true horror movies with my friends in high school, and I listened to Crime Junkie every morning while I got ready for work, a practice that eventually led to debilitating anxiety and dread and nightly nightmares. (Once I stopped listening entirely, it felt like a fog was lifted from my mind, in case you’re feeling the same way. Why are we so enthralled by true crime anyway?) And so this kind of show is just wonderful.

And at night, after I’ve finished my writing for the day and have taken my shower and filled my ice water up and lifted the duvet up for Annie to nestle beneath, I’ve been reading another Ann Patchett, of course. This time, I chose The Dutch House, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. I watched her on the Today show this week, promoting her new book Whistler, and Jenna asked her such a wonderful question: essentially, do you think you could’ve written this book when you were another age, or do you think you had to be at this point in your life, in your experiences to tell this story? Ann said it would be the latter, and I was inspired by that.

WRITING

This week, I finally finished rewriting the last chunk of the portion I wrote three years ago. Finally, I have worked out the kinks of my old voice, and it all feels cohesive, all 85,000 words. Now, I’m going back through it start to finish to edit for plot holes I noticed last week, comma placement (I’m generous), and dialogue I felt landed a little too corny. My goal is to have it printed and on my editor’s porch and the manuscript emailed to my advance readers by Friday evening. I’m feeling like I’m in college again! On deadline! Studying for my exams! Feeling like a younger version of myself, a dreamer, a worker, a student still.

Tonight, after dinner, we walked, as we always do, and it all felt the same but for the sky, soft pink on the horizon, orange on the treetops, glowing white clouds on top, the kind you can draw, and then, as if there wasn’t enough to look at, it looked to be gray-purple above it all. The trees rippled as we went, flashes of pale green, the underside of the leaves. As we inched back down the street to our house, the breeze smelled of our gardenia bushes, the hundreds of blooms quickly wilting to the color of butter. And by the time we parked the wagon and stroller back under the carport, we could hear the thunder.

Kit has been requesting this week that she ride in the stroller, leaving Henry and Annie the wagon. This makes me sad a little, given her long legs resting uncomfortably at the foot of a stroller she once used as a bassinet, the stroller we walked up and down these streets with Annie in the carriage, when it was just me and my girls at home. Henry has gotten a little handsy in the wagon. Often we look down, and he has a clammy fistful of Annie’s tail hair. Or Kit will squeal in frustration, and Henry’s got his paci hanging out of his mouth like a cigarette, laughing as he tries to pounce on his sister. I know this is why she wants to ride alone. But it makes me feel sick to my stomach at the thought her wagon days might be over, that she might be close to a tricycle or walking beside us or something else grown babies do.

I’ve been sneaking away in the middle of the night every Friday to go sleep with her until morning. When she was in the crib, there were so many sleepy mornings I would nearly climb in there with her. (I did once, and the way the springs groaned, dramatically, let me know I was not welcome to do that often.) And so when we moved her to a big girl bed, I was relieved that on nights she didn’t feel good or was scared, I could just pack my pillow and go sleep with her. I thought about when she’s a little older, having sleepovers on the weekend, watching a movie in bed, reading however late she wants, girls only. In the meantime, I haven’t been able to help myself. She wakes up when I crawl onto the bed, and she immediately reaches her arms to me, hold you, hold you, hold you, and then we sleep, our faces centimeters from one another, as we did for naptime every single day of her life until a few months before Henry was born and I sleep trained her. It’s not a deep sleep by any means – today, I would call it a cat nap as she played with my hair and climbed on and off the bed to get books – but there will be a day I don’t do this, so I’ll do it until I can’t.

We celebrated our fifth anniversary this weekend, and all week, I’ve been in a state of disbelief it wasn’t just last year. I still can sit and remember how I felt those few days leading up to the wedding, sleeping in my childhood bedroom, obsessively clicking on the weather app, sitting next to Mom at the nail salon. I thought it should be a national holiday, my wedding day, as if the entire town was swelling in anticipation. And really, all brides should get to feel that way for a day or two, whether it’s true or not. Standing in church this morning, I thought about the music the organ played as I walked down the aisle, a piece taken from Psalm 122, “I Was Glad.” Then it got me to thinking about the fleeting moments from the entire weekend, memories that weren’t photographed, weren’t seen by many, but I desperately will hold onto for all of my days.

Like my sisters-in-law closing the prayer room door on me, leaving me to wait for my dad to come gather me and my train and my veil, after everyone was tucked into the church. I watched my bridesmaids through the glass of the door, and I couldn’t bear to look into their eyes. Then as Dad and I walked to the doors of the church, I begged him to tell me, why does it have to feel so sad, so emotional? We hid in a staircase as the organ started, in hazy yellow light, and our photographer asked us to look at one another for one last picture, and we just couldn’t do it. And I wish I had.

I remember, too, specific faces as I walked down the aisle, my college roommate’s mom, who would have dropped anything for us those four years together. I remember my friend Alec, his cheesy smile. He’d come at the break of dawn that morning with a charcuterie board for my bridal breakfast, this beautiful spread, a labor of love. I don’t know what he did the rest of that day, but wait for the wedding, and that could just make me cry again today. I remember my childhood best friend Jack, my sweet, precious Jack who walked down the aisle to start the wedding, he, the third in our friendship Nick, and my brother, Gabe, all in a line, my bridesmen even though I assume they were embarrassed to do so. And then he read the scripture before we said our vows. The night before, when I saw him and Nick arrive for the rehearsal dinner, I had cried at their presence. In the video of us walking down the aisle, I noticed one of my dad’s best friends Kenny, who did my parents’ wedding flowers and their wedding cake, was the interior designer for my childhood home, and was an immense help for my wedding flowers as well. He was the last to fluff my dress and help open the church doors, and then you see him stepping out of sight as we began our walk. Something about that was emotional for me, too.

After we were married, they whisked us off to the ravine on the campus where we celebrated our reception. The sun was setting and the air was light and there was cottonwood fluff floating in the air, and we were married. I remember shivering with the magnitude of what was happening to me, feeling like time was slipping away so quickly, like I couldn’t consume as much as I wanted from this day, all the beauty of it. At the reception, I cried three more times: dancing with my dad, when two of the most precious of my friends from high school made their way to me, friends from drumline who sometimes I thought I might not see again, and then when I saw the buckets of sparklers, and I knew I’d have to leave. We cried in the limo, thankful for it all, and then changed into my church dress and a trench coat, for the weather was unbelievably chilly for the end of May in south Arkansas. We were awake by four a.m. the next day, on our way to Rhode Island. And that was my favorite moment of the entire thing, turning to Price in the taxi and telling him that even this time next week, we will still be gone.

A few days later, I called my dad while I sat out on the porch of our beach cottage, and we cried that the wedding was over. These weddings, mine and my brother’s, were the magnum opus of his floral career, things we’d dreamed of for decades. We grieved them when it was all over.

But somehow, it’s been now five years. My wedding bouquet is preserved in resin, half in a block at my house, the rest in a block at my parents’. I’ve not felt a single May 29 as beautiful as mine since then, all muggy and bright. I open my bottle of perfume once a year to smell the day as it was, gardenia and jasmine and brown sugar. I got Price a Atlantic Schooner for the mantel, wood for the fifth anniversary. And he got me cherry pajamas in honor of Cherry Hill. And we had chocolate ice cream I poured coffee into while it churned, and that was that, half a decade later.

CONSUMING

This week, I started and abandoned a Coco Mellors book, sadly. It was just far too vulgar to me, although I was enjoying her writing itself. We went to Sam’s on Thursday morning, our new monthly routine to save money on diapers and wipes and meat and Clorox wipes, and while I was there, I bought myself a copy of Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent. I’m a little past halfway, and I have loved every word of it. It had me in tears in bed last night.

Side note: for Kindle users, you might relate, I’m rolling my eyes at the fact that all my Libby holds become available all at once. It’s almost as if the app can suspect, too, the moment I open a physical book. She’s reading! She’s reading! Give her more options!! Currently on my hold list: Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Coco Mellors’ Blue Sisters (giving her one more chance), Sally Hepworth’s Mad Mabel, Emma Brodie’s Into the Blue, Gillian McAlllister’s Caller Unknown, and Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear (all very buzzy reads).

I also have been immensely enjoying anything and everything that comes out of the mouth of Jenna Bush Hager recently. I’ve found she has done a fantastic job coming into her own after Hoda left, and I’ve loved her with Sheinelle, too. I especially love following her book club and her publishing imprint, Thousand Voices (a lot of the books on my hold list are her recommendation).

PONDERING

If we should take Kit to see Toy Story 5 in theaters or wait until we can have a movie night at home, with Hennie. How beautiful my oakleaf hydrangeas are, as they turn a deep pink like embers. If I could transplant the ones on the east side of my house, so they could have morning sun, too. Our first summer story time at our church this past week, my children attached to my hip and screaming thinking I was dropping them off at nursery to fend for themselves. But then once we settled, I watched Kit wander the room, and I wished I had a camera on her everywhere she went, to watch how she interacts with people when she’s alone. I had a sinking feeling this week at the fact I’ve known always but am only just now realizing is painfully true, the fact that the time we get with our children before we have to share them with others is fleeting. I can’t bear the thought of spending my mornings with my babies, but yet, the day will come. Oh, I’m SICK.

WRITING

I didn’t write as much this week, but I still found it to be a productive few days. I finished rewriting the portion I wrote three years ago, and I discovered you can send documents to your Kindle and read them there. So I cleaned my manuscript up and sent it to my Kindle, and I read it as a full book all the way through for the very first time. I read with a notepad and a pen beside me, scribbling errors I noticed or things I’d change or times when the dialogue felt corny or forced or unnecessary. And this next week, I’m going to go make rewrite one more section, and then read it all again, this time on my computer so I can edit as I go. I feel myself slowing down with the heat of summer, as if my mind is swamp water. But we’ve come this far! I can’t quit now.

I started this past week on my own, loading the babies up to go to my mother-in-law’s for the day while I drove north, up to the hospital for my last scan of the dreadful lump in my breast that is officially a benign fibroadenoma, thanks be to God. The doctor congratulated me and told me that, unless anything else appears, she’d see me in 17 years, when I’m 40 and ready for the season of my life where mammograms exist, and then they sent me on my way, off to Barnes and Noble. I bought six books, all for my babies, and the man who checked me out asked, “Nothing for the adult?” and that made me smile. Of course, it wasn’t entirely true, I’ve always loved buying children’s books, and so Mei Mei, The Bunny was partly for me, and the Goodnight, Blue Truck was one I’d wanted to read, and then selfishly, I needed some new stories for the nighttime. The act of spending twenty minutes in Barnes and Noble itself was for the adult, something I’d been looking forward to for weeks. Then I went next door and filled my cart with tulips and ranunculus and chamomile from Trader Joe’s, and then I went home, to do chores that involve spray bottles of bleach.

Once, for two years, I lived in that city and kept vases of chamomile on my kitchen counter. Once, I even owned a home in that city, a home just a few hills and stoplights from the hospital where I was born, and where, at the time, I just hoped my babies would be, too. We bought that house two months before we got married, half a decade ago now, and it was a factor to me, the proximity to the hospital, just for the babies. We owned that house for exactly one year.

I can drive around those parts without any direction, and there’s a sense of pride for me, a hometown girl, that I made it as long as two years in a city like that, with a Target and Tide dry cleaners and a commute. As I drove past the turn off to my old house, I thought about the morning I faced my high school prom date at the stoplight, both on our way to work. That town, to me, felt like there were millions of people there, and I couldn’t believe my eyes, that this boy I’d known so well and didn’t any longer was on the same path as I was. He waved, and I smiled back, and then we both turned towards downtown, following each other as I went to the State Capitol, and he went I’m not sure where.

In those days, I had no idea what I was doing. I was an assistant to a woman who really did not like me. I didn’t like working in a place saturated in politics in 2021. My friends had dispersed after college, and making friends made me nauseous, and besides, Price and I owned a house and I’d rediscovered the public library and that was all fine. At some point that summer, I enrolled in a master’s program. I worked for the Governor, and his term was up in less than two years, and we had to plan ahead. And for me, for whatever reason, that meant I was going to be a schoolteacher. But then on the day I interviewed for a long-term high school English sub position, Price got a call from back home, a job on the horizon that would move us there with it, and all drive and devotion to what I had been working towards shriveled up into nothing. (I finished my master’s program, but only because I wanted to graduate again.)

And then we moved home at the start of spring, and the city became the place I go to have a baby, where I go to have my breast scanned. And as the years pass me by, it becomes more and more unbelievable that I had ever existed there, this version of myself I hardly recognize. Those two years will be a blip in our story that our kids will wonder about. Why did they do that? I belonged home, and always will.

For the rest of this week, I’ve found myself on the floor of our front room, Disney soundtracks pumping through my ears, crawling around with the babies, reading on the floor, watching for trucks to drive by, and wondering if I’m doing enough. I go back and forth between thinking our days are fulfilling to them, and then not. The kitchen will empty as I’m cleaning up from breakfast, and I’ll tiptoe to the sunroom, where they’ve stationed themselves in front of the fireplace, reading, listening to the Tonie Box, playing with the dollhouse, and I’m always proud to see them like that, on their own. But then Henry will catch my eye and hurry towards me like a little bug and the spell is broken, and then I’ll think, I should be playing with them.

I always remember my mom telling me when Kit was tinier that she always knew she wasn’t a playful mother, that the only thing she was good at doing with us during playtime was coloring books and babysitting my baby dolls. She told me once that while my brother and I played, she would clean. Vacuum, scrub the toilets, fold the laundry. Another time, she told me that she’d let us play in the bath during the day, when all else failed, and she’d sit there at the tub and read. I think about those things all the time, as if those stories are my permission to multi-task, to move the babies along our days, doing things that need to be done, like baskets of laundry and morning walks.

It’s just an all-consuming battle inside my mind, motherhood. Am I whimsical enough? Am I structured enough? Am I taking care of them well? Am I taking care of myself? Are they learning kind and worthwhile things from me? Do they love me because I’m a good mother, or because I’m here? What will they remember from these days? What do I want them to remember?

I want to remember it all, and I think that is one of the most wonderful things about being a writer, to hold the power of storytelling, the preservation of time. I read once that you should count yourself lucky to be loved by a writer, because then, you will live forever.

CONSUMING

As I said a few weeks ago, one of the greatest joys of my life is reading a book, falling in deep and utter love with the writer, and then discovering an entire world of novels they’d penned and were waiting for me to read. The very first time that ever happened to me was in 2016, reading my first Kate Morton novel. This month, it was reading Tom Lake and immediately going to check out another Ann Patchett from the library after I finished. This week, I’ve devoured her debut novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, the story of a pregnant woman in her twenties who flees the bland life she’d settled for in California, both her husband and her beloved mother, to escape to a Catholic home for unwed mothers in Kentucky, creating a new one there in secret. Ann’s writing is just so incredibly beautiful, how she glides the reader through years of storytelling in each novel. It is my favorite kind of prose, how she writes.

And speaking of debuts, my mother found mine, a staple bound stack of about 35 computer pages, riddled with red pen, which I know to be the notes my G/T instructor required I take while reading the story aloud to the class. I remember thinking, I offered to read this? I didn’t have to? So why is this all of a sudden an assignment? I couldn’t stand that woman. I wrote the book in the fourth grade sitting at the kitchen table, and I titled it The Trail to Heaven, and I haven’t gotten past the third page in my reread. The premise is that my brother and I were caught in a house robbery, and we escape to our cousins’ house, where we convince them we need to hit the road and catch a flight to Orlando, Florida (we had gone to Disney World not too shortly before I wrote this piece). It’s incredibly embarrassing and will never see the light of day in full, but it’s sweet to think of myself, listening to Michael Bublé on the Bose speaker and creating this world. Essentially, what I’ve been doing the past two months, twenty years later.

We also have consumed an entire batch of homemade chocolate ice cream this week, my first of the summer, made with a Cuisinart machine I got for Mother’s Day. I used the recipe that they included in the box, with Dutch-processed cocoa powder and brown sugar, and it was just divine. Tonight, I’m making a batch of Oreo ice cream, trying a new base that uses corn syrup and Xanthan gum and then you dissolve a sleeve of cookies in it in the pan on the stove. And then with another sleeve of cookies, you mix it with melted butter and a dash of salt to make Oreo brittle. And I’m thinking I’ll just have dessert for dinner. Every night. I’m thinking I’ll give up on my healthy eating, this will be so life changing.

PONDERING

How I didn’t know the Coral Charm peonies turned yellow in time? My dad made my prom corsage out of those peonies, with the boy from the stoplight, and I wore a black velvet dress I’ll never in my life fit in again, or have any reason to wear again, but no matter how many times my parents ask me to clean out my closet at home, I can’t bear to part with that one. How often gardenia bushes bloom, for I have hundreds of blooms in my front yard right now, and the neighborhood is fragrant of them (the answer is once a year, sadly). What I should make for dinner, wondering what I’ve been making for dinner for the past decade, because for the life of me, I can’t remember. Why must child bearing permanently alter our bodies? Why must I still look pregnant, permanently it seems? Why must hair regrowth be so prominently above my ears, like horns? Why can’t it just be everywhere else on my head? And why is the only real, effective solution to hair loss not Nutrofol, but to be pregnant again? And why are people on TikTok, the small people, you know, insisting on sharing OOTDs with their weight listed in the caption, the weight of a seventh grader, rattling off how they in a size 25, but I sized up two sizes for a baggier look? I could scream.

WRITING

I’m still rewriting my novel’s second draft, the pages I wrote three years ago. I keep thinking to myself that if I only had two full days to lock myself away with a candle and a cup of coffee that never ran cold, I would finish. And then I will go to UPS and print the manuscript and drop it off in a gift sack on the porch of my editor. But I’m working in increments of thirty minutes, maybe an hour at a time. I’ll tell myself I’ll work on it tonight, but then the night comes, and I glimpse my bed in the lamplight, as I pull on my pajamas, and I can’t help myself.

On TikTok, I keep reading stories of published authors, admitting their debut novel was their third, fourth, even fifth manuscript. That they have books that never got out of submission, and now they’re just sitting on the shelf for no one to read. In these videos, they advise hopeful writers to just always keep writing, that no writing is wasted writing, and I agree, but I’ve struggled with the concept of draining my green resources of world-building, of storytelling, and then just having to move on. I keep thinking that surely, surely, if I keep trying, something will come of this story, because what if this is the only one I have in me?

But then a few nights ago on an after dinner walk, Price and I started talking about how we want our children to remember summers at home with us. And by the time we looped back around to our house, a seed of an idea had been planted in the base of mind, and by Friday afternoon, I had tacked a paper of scribbled notes, a tentative title, onto my pin board.

And I keep thinking to myself, that even if all this is silly, me tucked away in my office writing books only ten people will read, how much fun I’m having, doing what I love.

Last Friday, the FedEx man (or “may-man!” as Kit calls anyone with a truck and a box on their hip) dropped off a short, slender package on our porch, containing Kit’s very first set of golf clubs, an old set Price found off of eBay with red grips, so short they made us laugh. Price was thrilled when he got home from work, happy with the set, happy with Kit’s interest, happy with the thought of playing with his babies, and so he booked us a tee time for the next morning, for us to go play after our tradition of Saturday donuts. For the Masters, he always finds us all a piece of merchandise (also off of eBay), and this year, Kit got a collared, quarter-zip golf shirt with the Masters logo on the breast. And so after breakfast, she put on her golf clothes, her Crocs, brushed her hair and pulled it back with a clip, and then we loaded up the car with their clubs, sunglasses, a lunchbox of snacks, and a bottle of milk for Henry (also in a collared shirt), and headed to the course. We made it all nine holes, me and Hen behind the wheel while Kit walked with Price, a tub of crackers in the crook of her elbow, her cheeks pink. She lost interest in the game after three or so putts, but the memory exists, the interest exists, and that’s all that matters in our pursuit of producing tiny one-day professional golfers. We watched the geese, standing from afar and told her they were mean, as to deter her desire to inch closer. We let her play every green, most every time just to end up dropping the ball in the hole by hand. She came home and ate off of both of our Subway sandwiches, famished, and then she slept as though it were nighttime, the result of a warm day and two tiny legs, trying to keep up with her dad and the golf ball.

This week, I had the babies and our stroller in the mini-van, sunscreen-ed, ice water-ed, and on the way to our walk by 9:45, nearly an entire hour earlier than the routine we’ve kept up since August. I didn’t start walking this route in this way (to exercise rather than just to have something to do) until about a month or so after Henry was born, mid-August. We had been walking circles around our neighborhood after every meal before him, an assignment to curb the gestational diabetes I’d been plagued with, all summer. Slow, short treks in the wagon, the weight of one baby and one dog. But now, as the mornings creep towards 90 degrees, the sky cleared of the clouds of springtime, I’m aware we need to shift our schedule around, if I’m going to keep this up. I’m going to have to venture out into the dreadfully messy shed, not fully unpacked, looking for the pink stroller fans I took to Sunday church last summer, fanning my severely pregnant self in the pew while everyone stood and sang. I’m going to have to change them into walking clothes, instead of leaving them in their pajamas until naptime. I’m going to have to clean breakfast up quickly, saving the pitter-pattering for when we get home.

We’ve made friends with a couple who live a block or so over, a retired English professor and his wife. They walk the same route every morning, hand in hand and a book in the other, and on most days, we stop and talk. He had been shocked to learn I studied English in his department, but what I didn’t tell him was that I was far too scared to take his courses, and I’d avoided him the entire time. Regardless, here we are now, friends. They told me yesterday they had bad news, that they were moving their walks to seven in the morning. And really, I should be doing the same.

But there’s something about the sun hot on my shoulders, the red in my cheeks, on my forehead, tanned hands. It’s a higher sense of accomplishment, to walk in the heat, to walk despite the heat. It feels gratifying to get to the end, to need water desperately, to feel the warmth of my blood, to sprint the hill right before I finish, squinting as I chase the sun.

Then I open all the doors of my mini-van from my key fob, this magical car you’ll have to pry from my cold hands as long as children live in my house. It is the season of warm leather seats, nice on your skin until they’re not. At the beginning of the week, I opened Henry’s door, bouncing him on my hip, and I was hit with the smell of being 12 years old again, spending what felt like entire summers in the heart of Texas, bumping around the backseat of my auntie’s Honda Chrysler. I wonder what it is they put in mini-vans, for them all to smell that way?

I feel like I have learned to romanticize the heat, the swelling humidity of living in the depths of Arkansas, from writing about it. My novel revolves around the summertime of a childhood spent in Mississippi, and I’ve found syrupy lake water and warm skin and burning blue skies to be beautiful things to describe. Still, though, as Price and I pushed the babies in their red wagon, all three of them squished in now, down the street after dinner, I told him I still dream of summers Rhode Island, where the heat is dry and half the severity. I’ve written about it here, this ache for a place we’ve only spent a little more than two weeks within, but it is what it is. Both times we went only engrained the feeling of being seaside, of breathing sandy air deep into my soul, as if I’d spent great portions of my life on the edge of the country and not deep within.

I told Price I’ve come to terms with the reality of summers in New England and how they could fit into our lives. I told him just give me two weeks, two weeks is all, that I’d find a cottage with a grassy yard and a little path to the ocean, and we could stop at the grocery shop on our way in, just existing there for the last little bit of summer, before the babies go back to school. I told him I read a book once about children returning to the house their parents rented every summer, up somewhere on the ocean. About how they cherished that house, despite realizing how decrepit it was later on, in their adulthood. Their memories were rose colored, and that was fine, because it was childhood, and it was good. I have something to work towards now, two weeks in Rhode Island someday, for the sake of Kit and Henry’s childhood, for the sake of my life.

CONSUMING

This week, I read a book and a half, both pre-ordered from debut authors I’ve stumbled upon on Instagram. The first, Phoebe Thompson’s Girls Our Age, wasn’t my cup of tea, per say. But the second, the one I’m still a little over 100 pages out from being done with, is one I’m enjoying a little more. Shannon Garvey’s June Baby, a novel from Jenna Bush Hager’s publishing imprint, is a story of a woman in her late twenties who spent the last decade of her life working blue collar jobs on Block Island, living a life riddled with tragedy and heartbreak. The story has been marketed as a beach read, and really, I would argue it’s far from one, except for the setting alone. The author does a marvelous job describing her character and her surroundings. The story itself, however, is one of heartbreak and regret and, quite frankly, hopelessness. So we will see where it goes. I loved getting to participate in the excitement of a stranger’s publication day, though, both books arriving on my doorstep the very day they came out. I watched Shannon’s interview on the fourth hour of Today, and then that night, I started it. They were just two girls who dreamed of writing a book, and here I was, reading them!

This week, I also discovered a song I’ve now listened to a plethora of times: Kenny Loggins’ “Celebrate Me Home,” as first heard on a Lizzy McAlpine playlist, her cover being just as beautiful. If you haven’t listened, you should. And if you haven’t listened to the Ultimate Disney Movie Songs Playlist, you should find that, too, on recommendation of Kit and Henry. We’ve been listening to this for hours each day, on our miniature Bose speaker that primarily lives in our kitchen, but now goes room to room with us. I’ve been so immensely surprised at how Kit can announce what song is playing, just after the first two or three chords, and for movies she’s never even seen. Price just recently added a few songs from Sound of Music, and within seconds of Julie Andrews’ voice, Kit started shouting “Poppins! Poppins!” (I promise I will not be one of those parents that gloat on Facebook, but…she’s brilliant? Right?)

And then last on our content plate, despite my limiting of screen time to one movie a weekend, the spare flat screen TV is back in the front room in honor of the PGA Championship. My coffee table books and gold lamp and my potted plant has been moved and replaced with a screen wider than the dresser it sits upon, but for the majors, I’ll allow it. I’m, of course, pulling for Scottie. But if not, I’m hoping Justin Rose makes a run for it.

PONDERING

The absorbent cost of groceries, how the dollars are snuck in, tacked on the top of numbers that seem miniscule, but all added up, equal hundreds of dollars. How a box of diapers costs $45 at Walmart, and there’s nothing to do but swallow and insert my debit card. My parents have a Sam’s Club membership, and I think I’m going to have to just slate a morning to drive out of town every two weeks or so, the expedition worth the money saved. How in the world I got Henry to sleep in past eight for two mornings in a row, and why in the world I haven’t accomplished it since. My Mother’s Day stepping stones, how the stones sank deep inside the concrete as it dried, how it dried white and ugly. Then Price told me that when we were patting the stones on the sidewalk out front, hitting them as to rid the stone of bubbles, we must have woken the worms in the ground, for the next day, he saw ten or so where we had been sitting. Why my beloved TruFru isn’t tasting as wonderful as they did when I first discovered them, back in March, my treat that kept me going as we worked into the night at the house. I’d have a bowl of them while Price gave Henry his midnight bottle, around two a.m. and for a while, I’d think, I’ve never had anything as good as these in my life. I’m scared the novelty has worn off.

WRITING

I wrote the first 30,000 or so words of my book three summers ago, before I was pregnant with Kit. I wrote it in the afternoons in my office at the inn (some of you may remember that far back), after I’d cleaned the rooms and vacuumed the hallways and started the laundry in the mornings. That summer, it rained nearly every day, rolling thunderstorms with white sheets of water against the old windows of my office, and I’d sit and watch the lightning and the trees in the wind and write this story that was only just really forming into one worthy of being told. I printed the pages out and took them home to Price, reading them out loud while we sat on the back patio. Then I’d give them to my mom, thinking they were really worth writing home over.

But now, after I’ve finished the book in its entirety, I’ve returned to pick apart those pages, and I literally keep laughing at myself and my conviction that these had been good at some point. I’m sick I ever let them see the light of day, and so, so incredibly grateful I’m editing them now, before handing them over to that retired English professor from my walks, who so graciously agreed to edit them. I told my mom yesterday that I pray I won’t feel the way I feel now about those first few chapters in a few years, about the entire book. She said that no, of course I wouldn’t, but she’s my mother. So I suppose only time will tell!

What is it about our human inclination to fall from things that bring us near to contentment, to the versions of ourselves we feel most at home in? I’m always asking myself this, as I check out a library book and read before bed, as I sit down at my desk and write, as I journal my prayers, reading Scripture out loud while the babies swarm my lap. These are things that make me feel whole, make me feel creative, make me feel prepared for the day, content from the day. Yet, here I am, worried I’ll stop and have to rediscover it all again in a few months.

Our parents might say it’s those damn phones, and honestly, it is.

But they aren’t going anywhere, so here I am, determined to write and read and sit and sew and walk and do things that feel like home.

It’s summertime here in my tiny, unassuming town. The universities are celebrating graduation today and tomorrow morning, and then our population will drop a few thousand until the heat of August when they all return, backpacks and texting in the driver’s seat. It’s one of my favorite times of year, when the campus we live behind is an empty park, when the streets are quiet and the sun is pink. I’ve never spent a summer down here by the river, where the breeze is tangible, a few degrees cooler than just one street over, where we lived last summer and the summer before that. I’m welcoming summer, heat and all.

For nearly half a year now, I had this idea to finish writing my novel, a story that revolved around the summer of 1995 and has taken me ten years to write, and share it in installments here on Substack. When we moved into our home in March, I started writing, letting the story consume any time I had while the babies were tucked into their beds. I sent voice notes to myself on our morning walks, ideas I didn’t want to forget by the time I packed the stroller up and pulled back down our driveway. The story evolved and expanded and became something bigger than I had intended, a behemoth piece of my mind on paper, and I found myself searching for debut authors on TikTok, watching their stories of querying and submission and reading their Publisher’s Marketplace blurbs with tears in my eyes. And I stopped thinking about this summer and started thinking about another summer when maybe, just maybe, someone might hold my book in their hands, published by a publishing house with my picture on the back, This is Adeline Murphree’s first novel.

And so there won’t be any installments of my novel this summer, which you won’t be disappointed by, as you only just found out about the pivot in plans. And I had contemplated whether or not I wanted to share any part of the writing journey, because what if nothing comes of it? but what if something does? And then I thought, these people have signed up to read my work, and so if I share it with anyone, why wouldn’t it be you?

I finished the last unwritten chapter last Thursday at 4:15, and I just kept thinking of how I’d exhausted my mind of anything beautiful left to say. I kept asking myself how anyone could write two books? Three? How in the world is Nicholas Sparks doing what he’s doing?

But this week, I started my second draft, first revisiting the 20,000 or so words I wrote while pregnant with Kit, 20,000 or so words that now read like child’s work, and the editing, the rewriting, the imagination is all there again, reloaded after four days away, pouring from my fingertips like warm honey. I’ve made friends with a retired English professor and his wife on my walks, and they have so graciously agreed to edit the book once it’s finished, and so I’m working towards handing them it all printed in the next week or so, and then I’ll begin quilting to distract myself from the waiting.

But that leaves me with nothing to write, and a summertime now with an empty docket of stories to share, my Substack revival gone and all. And so I’ve decided I’m determined to share journals of thought weekly again, a summer camp of book reviews or thoughts in need of somewhere to go, updates on my decision to pursue traditional publishing, this and that, you know. I haven’t decided on a day I’ll post yet, or if it will always be on a certain day, but I have a summer plan, and that’s enough.

Before I start my lists, though, I do want to say how powerful your readership has been to me these past two months, sitting in my amber office, writing to the soundtrack of Pride and Prejudice and Downton Abbey. Even if my writing doesn’t catch the eye of a single literary agent, and this book, in the end, sits dormant on the shelf, I still wrote it, and I know I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the knowledge you existed, people who enjoy reading what I wrote. You have been an incredible gift of grit and confidence and perseverance, and I am thankful with everything I am.

CONSUMING

Two things of note this week: the smallest of which being the bubble gum pink bags of Swedish candy Bon Bon NYC sent over for Mother’s Day. I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this company three years ago, but I did, and I ordered a large sweet & sour mix for Price on Valentine’s Day, and lo and behold, he’d discovered them for me, too. Both then and now, my favorite is the little Cola flavored candies. And the bag itself. It alone feels special, this pink paper bag sitting in my pantry.

But mostly, I consumed Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake like air. The word I keep thinking to describe the story, the storytelling, Lara’s motherhood, the ending, every single detail, is divine. This genre of fiction is my favorite, literary, slow, methodical, thoughtful. Books that have beautiful plots, but aren’t driven by them. Books that are, instead, driven by brilliant prose, the author’s skill at using words and sentences to evoke deep, intimate feelings within the reader. While I read Tom Lake, I felt immersed in the cherry trees, in the summer stock theater, in the relationship of sisters listening to their mother. This is my favorite thing: to read a book of an author who wrote plenty more, unlocking a world for me to spend time in for a while longer.

I borrowed it from the library, where I have an inclination to turn them back in rather late (two weeks is not long enough if we’re being honest), and so I dropped it off in the little mailbox on the porch yesterday, while Kit sat in the car yelling, “Book! Book! Book!” and I pretended I didn’t hear, for we had errands to run and I looked too terrible to mosey around public places.

I’ll purchase this in hardcover for my own personal library, I loved it so much.

MOTHERING

Kit has slept in her big girl bed for a little over a week now, a full-size memory foam mattress on clearance at the front of the store, now tucked up in the very corner of her room (resulting in a very difficult making of the bed when the sheets need to be changed). She sleeps with five pillows, her covers, blankie, and Baby, and yet, somehow, she is still sleeping as if she were in a crib: perpendicular to the pillows, her head nearly on her nightstand, blankie tangled around her and the covers as if I hadn’t even pulled them back. When I’m putting her to sleep, I wish I was bathed and in my pajamas, so I could just stay tucked away with her, so I could wake up with the warm sun in our eyes together, for lack of curtains. She hasn’t discovered the ability to get out of bed, or even to read the Little Golden books I leave on her nightstand. So I watch her toss and turn and listen to her count and sing and recite all of her family members in the sweetest, tiniest voice I’ve ever heard, the voice that has started calling me mommy and I hope never stops.

PONDERING

Buying an ice cream machine (my mother made homemade vanilla ice cream and served it with espresso on top, and one bite alone convinced me I needed one for the summer). If I should wallpaper my bedroom (yes). If the mosquitoes will be worse this summer, given how near we are to the river, and then in the same thought…will there be snakes in all my hosta beds? Ben and Erin Napier’s furniture line, the chairs with the colored piping specifically. My college graduation, as we walk past the white chairs in rows on our nightly walks, preparing for Saturday morning, and I’m hit all over again with the everlasting bitterness in my heart from the dreadful year of 2020. Why must making dinner be so hard, so very daunting? And on that note, why do groceries cost what they do? If I should buy Kit a limited-edition Kit Kittredge doll, while they’re available (although given my last question, the answer is an adamant no). What to do with the family of kittens living underneath my house. Who made up the concept of grammar rules, and, really, does a run-on sentence harm anyone? (No.) Summers in Rhode Island. The fact I’ve been married nearly five years now. And then, I disappear into the memories of our honeymoon, waking up in a cottage on the sea, hot coffee on the way, and I ache to experience seven days of that once more.

But alas, I wake in the house I’ll spend all my days in, with a warm baby whining in my ear, desperate for milk and his mother, for morningtime, for play. And so I pull on my Bartlett for America sweatshirt and heat up his bottle and open the blinds in the sunroom and watch the Today show and then read on the floor while he tears up Kit’s dollhouse meticulously set up the night before. And one day, I’ll ache for this, too.

As I’ve slowly unpacked boxes to fill up our home with our things, I carry all my favorite, most precious belongings upstairs to this tiny room. Every single journal I’ve ever finished. My collection of Kate Morton books, all signed and dated from when I read them. My ceramic picture frame of my mom and me when I was Kit’s age, playing with her lipstick. My pink toile lamp that’s lived in all my bedrooms since college. All the fiction books that resonated with me more than the rest. Every Liane Moriarty and Lisa Jewell I own, including the advanced copy I was sent in the mail of Liane’s latest. The Anthropologie coffee mug that matches my mom’s, full of my sewing scissors. I’ve scavenged a broken chair and covered it with a tattered quilt I bought from this very house’s estate sale this summer, a yellow desk for my sewing machine from the back rooms of my dad’s flower shop, and, most importantly, a wooden writing desk off of Facebook Marketplace that is near identical to my grammy’s, which was painted chartreuse and then teal and lived in my childhood bedroom all my life. I’m burning my Trapp Fireside Pumpkin candle, the one I’ve saved for a special occasion because they don’t make them anymore, in the springtime, because it smells like writing my book. And this is the room in which I will do so.

I’ve bought a sewing machine and a quilt-along kit, telling myself I can do it. I’ve bought yards of fabric for curtains, never having made any before in my life. I’ve lined the top shelf of my closet with my binders from college, all full of handwritten essays and highlighted syllabi, penciled class notes with scribbled ones from friends in the margins, fliers from things I went to. Those binders are my prized belongings, the equivalent to my brother’s football conference champ rings. I have a basket of wallpaper scraps I use as drawer liner, all paper from the inn I managed in another life, tucked beside my desk, because they’re beautiful, and while not practical as decoration, maybe one day I’ll need a roll and it will easily be in reach. But for now, it just looks pretty.

I dug out my hot glue gun and covered a bulletin board with the prettiest fabric one afternoon during naptime, with the windows open and Annie asleep in the broken chair. Then I cut squares of flashcards and mapped out my book, this book I started writing the summer before I turned 18, on a beach in Oregon. This book I picked back up writing the summer I was pregnant with Kit and working at the inn, in my office with a view of every summer thunderstorm, in the hallway outside the laundry room, waiting for sheets and towels to dry. It has twenty-six chapters, and I’m a third of the way through it, and I have plans to share it in any way I can when it’s finished.

I listen to Bonnie Raitt and Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel and Norah Jones in here. I listen for the babies, for if I’m in here, they’re sleeping, all warm and tucked into their beds with the blinds drawn. And if one of them wakes up, I go and feel their heavy bodies on mine as I carry them back in here with me. I keep thinking about this room in thirty years, when my house is vacant of children, but I’ll still exist. My writings, their hemmed little things, perhaps my quilts, quilts I want to hand stitch like my granny did, my books. I think about this room in just a few years, when Kit might want somewhere to write her stories, as I did at the kitchen table when I was a child, as Kit Kittredge did in her attic bedroom. I am so glad this room exists.

This home is everything I’ve ever dreamed of. Little bookshelves and windows everywhere. A yard with pebble paths and hostas and hydrangeas. A front porch for rocking chairs. A bedroom with lamplight and a big chair. A kitchen drenched in sunlight, drenched in storage, drenched in cookbooks and plates and coffee cups. And then here’s this little room, a room I really never even dreamed of having, for it seemed so luxurious, so unnecessary. But here it is, a part of my answered prayer.

I am so relieved to be here. Even tonight, scampering through the house with wet feet to find a band-aid after nicking myself in the shower, I thought about how just a month or so ago, I told my mom, with a pit in my stomach, that I literally could not imagine this house clean again. Ever again. Every crevice, every surface, every wall was coated in a thick layer of dust. And yet, here I am, in this clean house full of my things. Not quite on display, not quite put together, but full of them all the same. Barefoot.

In every other place I’ve lived, I dreamed about the life I’d have. But this home has such a heavier weight to it. I’m not dreaming of any life, because it started the moment we carried our bag of donuts and three little babies through the front door. Our precious, precious life is full and fast and present, and it’s happening here.

The family we bought our home from lived here for sixty years, moving in when their daughter was just two years old. All move-in week, as we worked into the wee, wee hours of the morning scrubbing floors and unpacking towels and cleaning the kitchen and unloading the flower shop van filled with our things over and over again, I kept thinking about that, as we were preparing to bring the babies home the morning after Kit’s second birthday. I kept thinking about one of the first nights we spent at my parents’ house during the renovation, when I asked them to recount all the places they’d lived together, and how strange it is that I never knew them all, and really can’t truly remember any but one.

So…I’m settling. I’m settling into this place you’ll find me for the rest of my life, where my children will get dressed for their first day of kindergarten and pack their bags for college. Where I’ll play with my grandchildren and celebrate our 70th birthdays. Where I’ll write my books and stitch my quilts and cry over the passage of time and praise the Lord for what all He’s done.

Here, in my wooden room I’ve deemed my own.

And with that, I have to stop writing, to curb the emotions. Goodnight.

Then, there was an estate sale a few houses down from that first one. A tan brick craftsman, stately and warm…a house my husband had loved for months at that point. The house was for sale, and he had poured over the listing pictures at night, trying to convince me what it would be like if we bought it. But the pictures weren’t the best…they were dark and oddly angled. And I didn’t feel the need to leave the house I love quite yet. And so some nights on our walk, after listening to his ideas for this house I didn’t want, I’d huff off in frustration, in stubbornness.

But the estate sale…oh, do I love an estate sale.

Our last appointment before Henry was born was at 8:30 an hour up the interstate. And with all the whispering around town over this house, I knew I had to see it before everyone else had had their take. So I asked kind, kind Mr. Stover if he would let me stop by before we left town. And so very generously, he said yes.

That morning, we drove down the street and were shocked to see people sitting on the front porch already, people waiting in their cars drinking energy drinks as if here for a race. We parked across the street and decided to wait until it properly opened, afraid to go up there and ask to come in early in front of all these people. I didn’t want to put him in that position. But then Mrs. Stover came and knocked on Price’s window. “Come with me.”

We went in through the back door and into the little square kitchen with blue stripe wallpaper and linoleum brick floors. To the right was a small breakfast room with shelves of glassware and copper pots and dishes, two walls of warm windows. Mrs. Stover weaved her way back to the front, calling out, “Take your time!”

Which, sadly, we couldn’t do. We had to hurry, look quickly and without much studying. I was there for quilts and dining room chairs. I started making my way through the house, feeling this since of warmth like honey, like I was in someone’s childhood. The windows were golden with morning, and the house felt cozy, despite the size. Upstairs, there were five bedrooms, all with doors to one tiny landing. It reminded me of the house I lived in until the fifth grade, all of us asleep in a little circle of rooms, our golden retriever asleep on the shag rug in the middle. Every room felt soft, with old lace on the windows looking over the river on one side, the neighborhood we love so much on the other. Then I stumbled upon the tiniest room, with wooden wainscoting and yellow floral wallpaper on the walls and ceilings. It felt as though Andy from Toy Story would live in that room, and I held my Henry through my belly, smiling at the thought. Kit and I had watched the first three that week.

We bought two quilts, a floral wedding ring and a pink patchwork, and a set of maple twin beds. We paid and the Stovers let us leave our trash bag of quilts with them until after the appointment, convinced Henry would be here that day. My suitcases were in the trunk; I was convinced, too.

When we got outside and back in the car, it was silent for a moment or two. Probably Price waiting for what I might say, not wanting to stir me up if I didn’t feel the same as him. Then simply, “I could tell that home was loved.” We called my mom to report our findings, and I told her how the listing pictures hadn’t done it any justice at all. That the house was warm and homey and beautiful. So beautiful. So much potential for somebody one day. But anyways. And on we went.

My doctor sent me home with no news of Henry’s arrival, just a “see you soon!” for next week, instructions on where to park for our induction that we didn’t end up needing.

When we got back, we loaded Kit and Mom up and walked through the house again. I looked closer this time…the yellow room with yellow trim upstairs, the sunroom with a fireplace I hadn’t seen the first time, the shed that looks like it’s sat by the Rhode Island sea since 1973.

Henry was born that weekend, as everyone at the estate sale had guessed, and life moved on slowly for the next month or so. But our home down the street, this home I cherish, started to close in on me. I couldn’t keep up with the housework, with the cleaning and the laundry and the clutter. Which, of course, could be accounted for being merely healed from childbirth with two babies at home, alone for most of the day. But also, as hard as it was to admit, it was because of our Jack-and-Jill home, where every corner was already filled and there was no room to add another life. Things didn’t have places to go anymore…people didn’t have places to go anymore.

Price started adding a tiny strip of road to our walk every night, a road that went down the side of the estate sale house, with a view of the hydrangeas and the rock path Ms. Lucille surely laid. She and her family go to church with us; she and her daughter sit on the aisle across from us. They had moved there in 1965, when her baby girl was just around Kit’s age now. Since the sale, the house had come to life in my mind, little thoughts of their family living there, what it once was. I thought about it in terms of names and history and childhood, not just the house at the end of the street.

The house sat dark as we walked by it, empty windows and leaves on the porch and in the drive. I thought about 1965, babies running the circle of downstairs: kitchen, sunroom, hallway, living room, dining room, kitchen, and round and round again. I thought about porch lights and lamplights and golden warmth from the windows at night, signs of life.

By the end of August, I told Price we could go see it, but if I’m not lying to myself, I knew we’d make an offer, showing or not. We went just at around five o’clock one Monday, the only voice ringing throughout the then empty home the voice of our realtor, who thankfully is also a friend. I took pictures, tons of them, knowing we’d go back home and want to dissect everything again after the babies went to bed. I felt sick to my stomach and the deep, deep and urgent need to cry. But at the same time, I felt a sigh of relief. Here it was…home.

We’ve been dreaming of this home that was to be ours since our offer was accepted in September. On our walks, we peer in the windows and push the wagon through the grass. I’ve carted the babies over there for hours in the morning, meeting with electricians and painters and sheetrockers and carpenters, playing on the porch with Kit and the acorns while we waited for their assessments.

We sold our house within two days of anyone knowing it was for sale. And we’ve just been waiting for the domino to fall, for everything to line up just so.

As I’m writing this, I’m surrounded by cardboard boxes with construction paper taped to them, instructions on where to go and what you’ll find inside. But when you read this, my precious little cottage will sit empty.

I feel in a way that I’m losing a cherished member of my family, the home to the most important years of my life. Where I grew my babies and brought them home, where I danced to Martina McBride and Earth, Wind, and Fire with Kit in the kitchen, where I’ve spent days’ worth rocking my babies in the nursery we wallpapered ourselves, where I’ve written and read and cried and became the mother and wife and daughter I am today.

I don’t know what I was thinking when we bought this house, really. It’s entirely too small for a family even with just one baby. The finances didn’t make sense, the size didn’t make sense, the future didn’t make sense. But I loved it, and I saw our life here, mine and Price’s. And I just hoped for the rest.

I remember nighttimes at the cabin we rented while we renovated this house. Price and I would lay in bed, listening to the interstate just yards away, and I would ask him what he was looking forward to most to moving in. We always talked about Saturday mornings, about a pot of coffee and a pie plate of cinnamon rolls and taking our time.

And now, we’re asking each other the same thing. The answers so similar, just with more lives involved, more space. With a breakfast room drenched in sunlight, a study with lamps on the dining table for coloring and crafts and reading, a yard with a picket fence built by hand, a basketball hoop out the back door. I dream about the tiny wooden wainscoted room that my books and my desk and my journals will live in, where I will write a book and sew quilts and write letters to my babies. I dream about the tiny laundry room upstairs, where the baskets won’t have to travel far and the smell of detergent will drift into everyone’s bedrooms. I dream of the tiny rock paths laid throughout the edges of the yard, where fairies live. I dream of the sunroom in the winter, a fire lit and a show playing from a TV tucked away in a wicker hutch. I say a prayer of thanksgiving that this is the home my babies will remember, that, God-willing, my babies will bring theirs home to one day.

This home we’ve left isn’t one Kit will remember, much less Henry. But in my mind, it was mine and hers, where she taught me how to be a young mother, where we listened to podcasts and folded baby clothes together, where we napped with our faces inches from each other every day, spent hours reading on the front porch, waiting for Daddy to come home. I don’t think I’ll be able to drive this street for quite some time. I don’t think I can imagine, much less see, someone else’s life here, in this home I’ve made.

I told Price before we made an offer that my fear is that the first night away, I’d feel so homesick, I’d desperately want to go home.

I am not as scared of that anymore. Enough time has prepared me. This home we’re headed to feels so familiar, so prayerful, so settled, so God-given. Really, I’m homesick for there already

.

But with motherhood, and with a tiny house, my environment isn’t up to choice. As I write this from the bathtub, creeping towards midnight. Rather, writing has become scribbled thoughts and ideas, ideas that more than likely will never be returned to, because the sad fact of the matter is, when the babies are tucked into bed and my time becomes my own, the draw to watch The West Wing and fall asleep on the couch is much, much stronger. Sad, but true.

A few weeks ago, we had our roof redone. Which is an incredible nuisance, but a necessary one apparently. Even if your roof isn’t really even that bad. But I digress.

Thankfully, I have the advantage of being able to pack up and spend the day at my mom and dad’s house, instead of bearing the beating of our own all day long. And that is where this story begins: my return to childhood as a keeper of another’s.

Now, I am over at my parents’ house plenty, given I live less than two minutes away and my mom is my best friend. But I hadn’t been there alone in quite some time, and alone with my babies, ever. We arrived early, early, the coffee just ground and the Today show still in its first hour. Kit stayed with Mom as she took her hair rollers out before work, and I gave Henry a bottle in the living room. I started thinking, as I opened and closed the fridge, nestled into the chair, smelled Mom’s coffee and heard Marty whimpering from his crate (my mom’s dog, who especially loves to kiss babies on the mouth, so had been put in his room a little early), how odd it is that I once existed in this house as a resident. That my routines and pajamas and mornings existed here, opening and closing this very same fridge, but yet, I can’t quite remember the intimacy of it. Everything is the same…but a tad different. Of course, as nearly ten years has passed since I left for college. As the day went on, I’d catch myself searching for things…a towel rack that was never there or a trash can in the bathroom. I’d smile when I hit the right light switch without thinking, proud there was still evidence this was my home too. It made me realize this place had changed in my mind, changed from our house to theirs, despite the fact I know it will always be mine if I want it to be.

After breakfast, I took the babies and Annie outside, to the backyard where my mom tends to her flower beds and makes little rock pathways for her grandchildren to meander through. We moved to this house when I was in the fifth grade, a little past my time of playing outside, so my memories in the yard are of sitting with our golden retrievers on the back patio or suntanning on the roof outside my upstairs window. Kit and Annie ran through the milky grass, the sun golden on their curly heads. Her pajamas quickly collected mulch and leaves, but I didn’t dare stop her, for she was having so much fun. I sat on the patio with Henry in my lap, listening to the birds and the crickets, sounds that make me feel 17, make me feel as if the same families of birds and bugs live in that yard still. Annie’s breath was smoke in the cool air, her eyes lit up with freedom to run behind the hydrangeas, through the pebble paths, behind the shingled shed where Mom once tried a compost pile.

After a while, I changed everyones diapers and dressed them in sweaters for our walk, heading out on the route I used to run during the summertime in college, a route significantly harder with a double stroller, but how would I have known? When we got home, we made our way upstairs to my bedroom, where I pulled out my old Fischer Price dollhouse and a Rubbermaid of little people and furniture. Kit rummaged through the toys, interested primarily in the toy minivan and the tiny, tiny baby. So I started setting the house up for her, placing beds and chairs and cribs where I’d always placed them. The entire time, I had this feeling of familiarity, but even more so than just simply that. I felt like I was on the very edge of a door, almost like the leftover wisps of a dream, where one tiny detail of your day brings you back, but just barely. I couldn’t capture the entire feeling, just the edges of childhood, the edges of that dollhouse two decades ago. I felt that when reading Barnaby Goes To School later that day, this feeling of I’ve been here before. Or when I opened the collector’s Disney princess books with Kit later that afternoon, picking a book for nap time, unable to pinpoint what exactly I was remembering. Or when I untied a tiny pink and purple backpack with my name on it to find a notebook with a note to my baby’s teacher, listing everything I was sending with her to school: a bookmark, an eraser, a pencil, and a book of family pictures (with some of Gabriella and Troy throughout), like a tiny little time capsule I hadn’t meant to make.

My mom has always called the downstairs guest room the “nursery,” a fact I once told my ex-boyfriend’s mother and might shouldn’t have. But my mom knew all along the purpose of that room was not to hold old friends or siblings or even me for the stints I wanted to sleep downstairs and not in my own bed, but to hold her babies toys for mine to play with, to fill nightstands with blankets and hats Gabe and I once wrapped ourselves in, to stuff our crib in the corner so Kit would have a place to rest so we don’t have to go home after lunch. I got her to lay down that afternoon, and then Henry and I went out to the living room, where I nestled into a chair-and-a-half with a frozen chocolate chip cookie (a favorite of Mom’s) and a Dr. Pepper Zero, Henry asleep in my arms, and Annie curled up beside me. I worked my way around the kitchen, looking for a measuring cup for formula, a tiny plate for cookies. The counters are filled with my mom’s things, as they always have been. But it was just another thought of mine…thinking about my kitchen, and about how this is hers. Her stick of butter, her copper canisters, her pile of preferred dishes drying in the sink, her coffee waiting to be microwaved after work, her picture of her late brother above the sink. This is their house.

And mine. But you know what I mean.

A few days later, we had to come back again, while my kitchen floor was replaced (yet another incredibly unfortunate home project that had to be done). This time, I made the mistake of showing Kit picture albums from high school. She tired of me quickly and went off to discover a vase full of my brother’s abandoned spare Lego pieces, but I sat there with tears in my eyes over how young everyone looked, at pictures of Charlie, the golden retriever we brought home in kindergarten, and who has been gone for 10 years now.

Then we went upstairs, where I cracked open a copy of Lady and the Tramp, startled to see scrawled in my eight-year-old-self’s handwriting “Kit” on the inside cover. I looked up at my daughter, peering at me as she waited for the story to start. I was 25 when she was born, but had been waiting on her my entire life. Kit Kittredge was my American Girl doll of choice, for her love of the typewriter and neighborhood newspapers and her attic bedroom. She was the doll I sent to school, who I scribbled ownership into my books and sent on her way. My daughter is not a doll, but look! Here she is, her skin pink and soft and her hair curly and her laugh loud. I did not name her after Kit Kittredge, but I might as well have, for the doll’s life was a fabric of my hopeful imagination for what I might have in real life one day: my baby girl, Kit.

I count it as such a gift that I am able to return to this place, these memories I didn’t unlock until I bought my children with me. It’s as if the house grew alongside me until Kit and Henry arrived, and then it went back, went back to my world of childhood, and I know how blessed I am to experience it. A childhood home is to be treasured. So much so, my father’s brother moved heaven and earth to carry their beloved parsonage, where my granny and papaw raised all four of their babies, down the road when the church Papaw preached at for fifty years decided a parking lot would serve them better, as the pastor has his home elsewhere. The parsonage rests at the back of my Uncle Jeff’s land now, and while they’ve since renovated it, for a while, it felt like stepping back in time, the kitchen and bedrooms exactly as they remembered it long, long ago.

Two Christmases ago, I gave Mom a needlepoint for the nursery that said this: just when a mother feels her purpose is gone, she becomes a grandmother. And really, the same could be said for these houses, too.

After all of this, the routine of winding down, I’m happy to sit on the couch by myself for a little while, but then I’ll hear a baby sigh through the monitor, and I’ll be wishing for morning, too.

The thick heat of summertime has loosened its grip on our little town the past few weeks, after a few long awaited rainstorms rolled in, the beginnings of cold fronts that promised to stay awhile. After an entire summer of walking morning and night, in attempts to maintain low blood sugar readings for my gestational diabetes, I haven’t wanted to shake the routine, and the ability to do these walks in temperatures below one hundred now is a heavenly gift I try to take advantage of every single day. So I take the babies to a sunny and hilly route, in my one pair of biker shorts and a Stanley full of ice water, my AirPods playing old playlists from college.

Yesterday, I listened to my playlist from sophomore year, voice memoing my college roommate when Lizzo’s “Good As Hell” came on, rattling on about how these playlists are so random, as I organize them not based on vibe, but on time periods. Which leaves me with highly curated playlists to be enjoyed by, really, only me. Because I can turn any of these on and be transported to a season of my life immediately: “swim meets, “summer job,” “driving home from band,” “running in between swim lessons,” “summer before I graduated.”

I chose sophomore year yesterday morning, because that was the year I started running seriously, training for a half marathon that December. I would wake up before the sun and drive to the high school track to do sprints, wind my way through campus on Saturday mornings for long runs. It unlocked a love for my feet on pavement, a time to think, a time to listen. Coldplay, Demi Lovato, the score of The Crown, Justin Timberlake, Ariana, Vance Joy, Percy Grainger.

My mind keeps returning to the same thoughts the past few days. Silly ones, like my extensive reviews of The Summer I Turned Pretty every Wednesday night, my literary exploration into why this show meant for teenagers has captured the attention of seemingly the entire country. More profound ones, ones of parenthood, of missing my friends, of time. Then creative ones, or, at least, wishfully creative, as I yearn for time to write a book, for an idea to spark, for a place to burn a candle and write. And so I told myself to remember my beloved blog, where I have beloved readers and a place to practice my craft, to share my thoughts. Here I am.

In regard to The Summer I Turned Pretty, I’ve found myself counting down the minutes until Wednesday after the babies have closed their little eyes, and I can sit with a bowl of ice cream and the remote in hand (for consistent pausing and rewinding) as I watch the final installment of this book made television series. I’ve shared at length on my Instagram that I do really think this show is very primary, lacking in quality writing and especially in quality acting, remove Conrad Fisher played by Chris Briney. However, my favorite part of Wednesday nights is when the show is finished, and I scurry to TikTok to join the online commentary, to listen to the absolute comedians sharing their thoughts on the episode I just watched. And then I settle into the academic corner of the internet, the readers dissecting this show as if we were in AP Literature, sitting in those blue plastic chairs, sharing our interpretations of The Yellow Wallpaper. And I think this is where I find the reason I have enjoyed the past ten weeks of such a silly show…in this shared sense of comradery over loving hidden meanings and symbolism and character development and dialogue.

It reminds me of my English courses in college, the ones I took from a whimsical professor named Dr. Wink. These classes always had less than ten students and took place around an old conference table in a room with no windows. I was an English writing minor and felt like an imposter most of the time when I was in my English classes, but in these, the ones where we spent the afternoon, always the afternoon slot, dissecting each other’s writings, I felt right at home. I had this thought as I was driving a few days ago, passing by our town’s elementary school. And it turned into my wondering why in the world did I ever dread school? The concept of school itself, now, as an adult, sounds wonderful. A place to see my friends every single day, to pick out an outfit and wear perfume, a place to study things that interest me. It made me wonder why college takes place when we’re so young, as I would have enjoyed the academic aspect of it so much more these days than I did then. Of course, I understand why I didn’t love high school (they weren’t all English classes), and I understand why college can’t be in our late twenties (we have to make a living), but this thought, stemmed from The Summer I Turned Pretty, reminded me of my love of being a student.

Which one could say I’m still a student today, a student of motherhood. My homeroom teacher being an incredibly difficult professor named Kit, who lacks patience and mercy and assigns far too much homework. She has a teacher’s aide, Henry, who is too scared of her to say much at all, except to cry and disrupt the class every hour and a half or so, adding to the tense learning environment. And the principal, Annie, is currently contemplating quitting her job due to stress.

I have been laughing at myself recently as I think back to the first two or three weeks of Henry being at home, when I marveled at how well my mind was coping in comparison to my first stint postpartum. With Kit, I felt darkness settle like fog on my mind every day around four o’clock, consumed with dread for the nighttime, for midnight feedings, for the crying I knew I would partake in over any odd little thing. But with Henry, I came home and felt normal. I felt confident, I felt prepared, I felt content. And I credit that to my Kit, my baby girl who has steadied me since her brother was born by her presence alone. But now, my laughter at myself is due to how quickly the times can change. Kit has gone from my steadiness to my tornado. Just today, it happened like a switch. We were in the nursery, Henry watching the ceiling fan as I folded towels next to him, Kit flipping through her library books and arranging jelly stickers on her closet mirror, occasionally placing one on my calf, on Henry’s head. And then she decided she wanted to drag her basket of books onto the carpet. When it caught on the corner, she urgently started saying “Help, help, help!” and when I told her the basket was okay right there, she collapsed into snotty tears, high pitched screams. I eventually left her to put Henry in his bassinet and fix her a lunch plate, going every two minutes to check on my screaming daughter, only to find her crumpled in a ball, apparently just walking around her room and collapsing every few feet. We turned on some music and sat at the kitchen counter together after I held her tightly to my chest, promising her it’s okay to be angry, to be sad, but, take it from me, it doesn’t ever really help to explode. (One day I hope my words will soothe her, but at least today, my voice alone can attempt to help.) We finished lunch and then put her down for a nap and that was that. No longer my steady force, or at least for the time being. My Kindle and my show and my walks will fill in until she calms down.

I turned 27 this week, entering into the portion of life where I have to do quick mental math before confirming my age, as I’m not reminded of it constantly, as we were in high school and college, what with milestones and celebrations. I told Price the night before that I’d be spending the day with people who had no idea it was my birthday. Then I corrected myself: people who have no idea what a birthday even is (my children). And the day went as I expected, tears welling up as I read messages from my earliest friends, just at the fact they remembered. On my walk, I listened to my high school playlist, experiencing the magic of time travel again. I thought about my childhood friends and how dearly I miss them. I saw one at a wedding I was in a few weekends ago (a wedding for another childhood friend), and I felt like I could have cried when he hugged me goodbye, as the next time we see each other isn’t guaranteed these days, these days of adulthood. It could be months, it could be years. My mom asked to take our picture, and I want to frame it as evidence the friendship is still living, invisible but for a string that gets picked up every once and a while. Why do birthdays do this? This heartbreaking self-reflection? I thought about how old I’ll be when Kit is my age, how thankful I am to be having babies in my twenties, when my body feels so strong still. And then I pushed the double stroller up a hill, churning my legs as fast as I could go.

We spent the rest of the day back in our pajamas and then the night at my parents’, where my mom made my favorite three layer chocolate cake that calls for coffee in the recipe. I catch myself not wanting to leave when we’re all together like that, nearly wishing our spouses and my children would go back home and leave me and my brother there like teenagers. But alas, Price and I drove back home with a car of two crying babies, me ending the night rocking Kit and saying our prayers out loud.

In my 27^th year, I hope I become a better mother, a better wife, daughter, sister. I hope I read more, and write more. I am toying with the idea of sharing chapters every month or so of a fictional story here on Substack, just getting my wheels turning for a novel one day. Perhaps this will be the year my story connects itself in my mind, and I make the time to write it all down.

I guess we’ll see.

The weekend Henry was born, with every moment, we were getting closer and closer to our schedule induction, something I couldn’t hardly bear to think about. The emotional turmoil I was preparing my mind for, knowing when would be my last morning just me and Kit, putting her to bed and then sneaking off to the hospital for our late night check-in…I just couldn’t do it. And so I prayed harder.

This entire pregnancy, I was convinced I was further along than the doctors said, convinced I wouldn’t go full term anyways. That Saturday, I just felt it in my bones, felt his nearness. My stomach looked like a deflated basketball, so very low, Price and I could hardly believe it. I stood that night in Kit’s mirror as Price bathed her, and I pressed on the top of my stomach, already empty. That was the only sign I’d ever had with Kit, feeling as if a bowling ball was between my legs the day before she was born.

On Sunday morning, I asked Price to go wake baby girl up. I could hear her giggle on the monitor as he opened the door, the squeal of him opening her heavy curtains, clicking on her lamp for the day. When she saw me in bed, she smiled and nestled her head on Price’s shoulder, teased. Then we all curled back up in the sheets, turning on Teletubbies as our bedroom filled with the sun.

As I laid there, I felt baby boy kicking, thought about this week, the weight of this morning, the last like this before there were four of us. And then, I felt an odd twinge of pressure. And just like when I felt my water break with Kit, for a few minutes afterwards, I felt this desire to remain still and not say a word, remain in this life I know now, before the reality sets in that it’s time to leave it all. Annie and Kit at the foot of the bed, Kit’s hands mindlessly running through Annie’s hair. Price, the very best father, beside me. My stomach round and tight, my baby safe and mine inside. Maybe ten or so minutes later, Price began to get ready to go mow the yard before the sky burned blue. Kit was ready for breakfast, pushing our old door that hardly closes open and letting Annie run out with her. And the moment I stood up, I knew.

I told Price I was going to just wait a few minutes to make sure, as I gathered my things to curl my hair last minute. Kit stayed with me, a cold bottle of milk at her side, interested in the open suitcase, completely unaware her life was about to change. I called my mom and told her she might not need to get ready for church, to which she laughed and agreed to come over at 10:00. And then there I was, putting my hair in rollers, my heart beating faster and faster as my mind realized what would happen that day. I was going to meet my baby boy.

On the drive, I kept thinking how thoughtful the Lord is, that I’d been praying for the very same labor, and here I was, holding Price’s hand with a towel in my seat, calm and on our way to get our baby. My contractions started to hurt only as we took the exit to the hospital, pulling into the very first parking spot by the front door.

We were taken to a room in triage, where a nurse met us and checked to see if my water had in fact broken and then to see if I was dilated. And as a shock to us, we were already five centimeters. We kept saying to one another, “Boy’s just ready to meet us!” Nervous smiles, shivering chins, adrenaline and confidence and nerves all rolled into one. The nurse laughed and asked if I wanted an epidural, said we would order one immediately so I didn’t get too far along to get it. And then she loaded me up in a wheelchair and pushed us through the double doors, around the hallways until we arrived in the very same room our baby girl was born in, just sixteen months before.

The nurse we had until Henry was born was an answered prayer, an answered prayer who told me stories of her daughter as she put the IV in so I wouldn’t think about what was happening, covered it up with a towel so I didn’t have to see, who let me lay my head on her shoulder as they inserted the epidural, who let me prick my own finger for my blood sugar readings and brought me an orange popsicle as I dwindled, covered me in blankets fresh out of the warmer, who made me feel cared for and calm the entire day.

We made it to our room around noon, and by 2:30 or so, we were using the peanut ball, the magic finishing touch that brought me both my babies. The doctor, calm and kind, came and sat in the room with us at a quarter to four, as my stomach twisted in knots watching our nurse roll in the table with all their tools, lace up the doctor’s gown, start talking me through how to push.

And somehow, only nine minutes later, he was here, a little baby with a head full of hair, curled up on my chest, as sweet as could possibly be. He looked just like his sister from the very moment we saw him, to us at least. Because how could he not? There we were, the parents of a daughter and a son, consumed with love for the both of them, in awe of the miracle both of them are. We will only ever see them in everything we’ll ever love from here on out.

Thanks be to God.

I do know this, though: I have less than a week left of my bedroom being my own. Which is a very difficult thing to swallow, given I have cherished the candlelit hour or so after my shower, when Price and Annie are still out in the library and I am reading or watching trash television before falling asleep. But then I remind myself of the first night I laid Kit down in her nursery crib, rolling the bassinet away from the side of our bed, how hard I cried. And how quickly that night came, really. How quickly that night will come again, just this time with two little babies in the room next door.

Price and I went to our last doctor’s appointment yesterday morning, stopping on our way out of town at an estate sale down the street, where I walked away with two old, old quilts and a pair of matching maple twin beds. Twin beds that will one day replace the crib in our wallpapered nursery, with folded Irish chain quilts at the feet and little lamps beside them so my babies can read books at night. I know that night, the first side by side, will come quickly, too.

But as for now, as my baby boy is still cuddled up inside me, I’m relieved all the tiny little things I’ve ordered for his side of our room has come in. If you read last week’s post, you’ll know how in disarray my home feels after a weekend of rearranging…but his “room”…it feels precious and perfect and ready.

When Kit was born, we used one of the common baby registry bassinets, one that swiveled onto the bed for easy access, mesh siding, made of plastic. I felt like it was lopsided and entirely too bulky, and she would have outgrown it sooner than I would have outgrown wanting her beside me. So I pulled out my wallet and invested in the Babybay cosleeper bassinet, a purchase I never one time regretted, especially now, with another baby on the way. It made me feel closer to my baby and then, of course, like my room was pretty again, and not a constant reminder of newly postpartum nighttimes. I use king-sized pillowcases, picking out a pretty sage striped for his bed, as sheets, and love to drape blankets on the end. This quilt was a one-of-a-kind from Etsy, made from starry and gingham Liberty fabric (linking some others I loved here, here, and especially here). The gorgeous knitted baby blanket on top is a gift from my grandmother.

The only dilemma I ran into when thinking through how our routines would go with this baby was the fact we still use Kit’s beautiful rocker multiple times a day…to read in, to say good morning in, to settle her in for a nap and for bedtime. We are nowhere near prepared to not have a rocker in the nursery, especially given he will eventually go in there, too. So we made use of an old family heirloom my grandpa had offered up to me now three years ago, before any babies even. It belonged to his aunt and uncle, a beautiful Ethan Allen glider that fits perfectly to the side of the dresser we bought for $100 on the side of the road a few months ago. I ordered custom linen cushions off of Etsy, and then repurposed an old Chappy Wrap blanket and Pepper Home pillow that matches one in Kit’s crib, both in the most gorgeous, and surprisingly easy to clean, pear velvet fabric.

On the dresser, I ordered a seagrass changing basket and found one of my favorite lamps I’ve ever owned (my first a blue and white floral I bought for our very first home together) on the bottom shelf at Homegoods, a tiny cream Ralph Lauren that holds a 7.5 watt lightbulb so I can leave it on all night in the beginning, when the nighttime makes me feel anxious and I need to watch him sleep instead of sleep myself.

It’s different preparing for the second baby…this little temporary nursery as evidence. I didn’t need as much, I didn’t worry as much, but still, I wanted a tiny home for him to be welcomed to. Drawers lined with plaid wallpaper, that smell of Noodle & Boo laundry detergent. Clean sheets, soft blankets, new pajamas and some passed down from his sister, who was just his age actually.

All of his tiny little things, brushes and creams, swaddles, hats, onesies and little sweaters, Kit’s houseshoes that were once mine and my brother’s, gauzy blankets and the tiniest, tiniest diapers with Pooh Bear on the back, live in this dresser in our bedroom. His whole little world, on my side of the bed somehow. Just waiting to be used.

Earlier last week, I had come across a French blue gingham couch from Ballard Designs, the perfect sized sectional that I could just see my babies piled together on. Of course, spending that money unnecessarily right now isn’t quite justifiable, so I layered my favorite linen quilt on the back of the couch we’ve had since I graduated college and called it a day. Enough change to satisfy my dreaming for at least a little while.

As we sat in the library on Friday, however, Kit flipping through her copy of Cinderella and Annie curled up with Price in his recliner, I asked him, “If we were just moving in today, how would you arrange this room?” And all of a sudden, our day was filled with purpose, with a job to do: tear apart our house and put it back together again, all because of a tiny inkling of a feeling I had that our current living area didn’t work for me anymore, or that nothing felt truly designed anymore.

So I stayed in my pajamas and pointed and admired and contemplated as Price moved shelves and leather recliners and couches and chairs around. I followed him with a vacuum, claiming this was good regardless of if we ended up moving everything back, purely due to the fact I was able to dust places we hadn’t seen since we moved in over two years ago.

Our primary focus was on the library, the room we spend the most time in and always have. Since moving in, this room held my beloved chair-and-a-half, Price’s beloved leather recliner, an old broken (and gray…) Homegoods wingback chair, one of the greatest antique market finds – a $100 pie cabinet, and Annie’s crate tucked behind my chair, the biggest eye sore of all. The television has lived on the mantle, anchored by the ugliest, most humongous stand I’ve ever seen in my life, and while books and dried hydrangeas have absolutely helped the situation, I always felt we weren’t doing the mantle justice by sticking a clunky TV on top. I had seen Camille Alexandra, a San Diego based interior designer (@camillealexandrainteriors on Instagram) put hers in a bookshelf, and so I thought, why not try! And wouldn’t you know…it fit perfectly.

We moved the couch into the library, up against the window, framed by the pie cabinet and an estate sale nightstand. Then moved one of our seersucker accent chairs into the corner by the bookshelf and brought home a precious chaise lounge in need of reupholstering to nestle beside the fireplace. The room, while not quite finished, feels open and better utilized. The mantle, while not styled yet, already feels appreciated, prettier, even with nothing designed. Every morning, I’m excited to come and turn on the lamps, sit in the morning light spilling through the window, and every night, I’m excited to come sit in the lamplight even for just a minute. I keep thinking to myself, why didn’t we think of this before?

Well, probably because it leaves the living room in shambles, for lack of a better word. Right now, our library chairs are living in there, along with an entirely too large upholstered circle ottoman I stole from my childhood bedroom as a solution to Kit hurting herself too much on our wooden coffee table. Nothing feels good in there anymore, but rather, it feels foreign instead. And that’s what I wrote in my journal this morning, this other, more dramatic side of rearranging, the feeling of homesickness for the way I had things originally. I wrote about how this might not have been the best time for me to move every single thing around in the tiny world I exist in these days, my home, given my tiny world is about to grow by an entire little human, our routines, our mornings, our family completely altered. I’ve been thinking about when we brought Kit home, how much comfort I found in returning to a place I knew so well, how much heartache I felt to come home and realize we had just finished the last season of a show we’d been watching for months. It’s silly, the things that bring comfort and the things that bring hardship in those first few weeks after having a baby. I’m not sure what will be the same and what will be different with baby boy than with Kit, but I anticipate the comfort of home will be the same, as it always, always is.

As I write this, though, Price and Annie piled onto the library couch with me, watching an interior design show on HBO as I type, I love this room, feel so comforted by it. I am thinking of late nights with baby boy, those nights that last too long and I need somewhere to go, away from Kit’s room next door to ours. I know I’ll find solace and warmth in here, with the golden sconces and TV in the bookshelf. The living room can wait…as long as my library feels like home.

This understanding of and belief in long-term interior design doesn’t stop my mind from racing with ideas all day long, though. I keep finding myself just sitting in the living room, mentally moving furniture around, imagining smaller dining tables or a printed couch, new window treatments or a way to get that mantle free of technology, too. While Kit naps, I scroll Facebook Marketplace, then go stand in that room and imagine again, wonder if I could ever get over the fact I spent $65 on a couch to reupholster…why did it only cost $65? A question I don’t think I’d ever truly be able to move past enough to actually purchase it.

I’ve settled on the truth that this room is a hard room to design, given we’ve split it to make space for a makeshift dining room, as the library was originally intended to be one. Price hit the nail on the head when he said the struggle is that there isn’t any anchor to that living area, it all exists in front of the fireplace, with no walls or corners to nestle things upon. So I’m thinking we’ll revert back to how we originally had it: a couch with two chairs across, an upholstered ottoman in the middle. My dream is a room of texture and pattern play, ginghams and florals and plaid. Curtains to tie in the library, the color of parchment and pops of red, French blues, rich greens, wicker and family pictures. My first step might be purchasing a pile of fabric off of eBay, the same we are using to reupholster the chaise lounge in the library, and kindly asking my mother to make new curtains. Then scour sales and save my money until I can order a patterned couch, preferably one from Green Row, a dream of mine.

In the meantime, the beautiful fabric we ordered to reupholster our chaise comes in today, privacy bamboo roman shades for the library arrive tomorrow, and we’ll be well on our way to settling the library into a form of completion, ready for a baby boy to come home to in just mere days.

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I made a list of all the dream products I’m using/would love to use as I slowly redesign this half of my house. You can peruse my inspiration here!

Our suitcase is rolled into the hallway corner, packed except for a few last minute things. When Kit was born, my water broke in the middle of the night. I called my mom and asked what in the world we should do, for whatever reason, the concept of my water having broke not crossing my mind. All I knew was that something happened, something that would require a hospital. And I had never been so thankful to be able to get dressed, grab already meticulously packed bags, and leave within the hour. Of course, I’m hoping for the same thing with baby boy!

And of course, as a first time mom, I overpacked, but as a worrier, I never truly believe overpacking is possible. Perhaps a nuisance once you realize everything will go to plan, and you don’t need five pairs of pajamas, but I’d rather be prepared. A few months ago, I started a list of things I wanted to do differently, things we could bring to make our experience better. The first item scribbled down was a pack of Clorox wipes, after my shocking discovery that hospital recovery rooms really weren’t cared for the way they should be. And really, I could’ve left it at that, substantially improving our experience overall. But Price and I mulled it over for a few weeks, adding ideas along the way. And tonight, I feel confident in our readiness, confident in my tight, contracting tummy, my inching closer and closer to meeting him, as if a hospital bag can really determine that.

Cozies:

• Two pairs of comfies…opting for one of my favorite Lake pajama sets and a heavenly lounge set I want fifty pairs of from Abercrombie. Kit was born at night, and we didn’t really settle into our post-partum room until close to eleven. The epidural hadn’t completely worn off, my sheets hadn’t been changed, so I waited to shower until the morning, when I could get back into clean bedding and something soft to wear. I remember being worried to bring nice pajamas, but once I was there, I wished I had!

• Two Piyama lounge dresses…really, these are two options for going home, or a back-up in case baby dirties one. And given we have a big sister visit this time around, I wanted to have something sweet to wear for such a special moment! I’ll pack a pair of sandals, too. Not my Vejas like last time…the swelling post-birth is really unbelievable.

• A pair of cheap slippers…a common theme you will pick up on in this list is my leaning toward disposable items. Our stay in the hospital last year left me especially traumatized at how dirty everything felt…the couch Price slept on, the bathroom, the bed, the floors, just every inch of space we had. So there are quite a few items I’ve opted to purchase with the intention of leaving behind. Slippers and shower shoes being one of them. I picked up these gray options and flip-flops for Price and I to share!

Suitcase, pouch, hanging organizer, travel cubes

Necessities:

• Postpartum needs…the hospital typically provides everything you need, but I am packing the Frida mom boyshorts and the peri bottle, and my favorite overnight pads.

• Cosmetics…I’m keeping it simple here. No makeup bag (given I only wear makeup these days on Sunday mornings or visits to the doctors office), no extensive skincare routine. I’ll pack what I need to take a good shower, wash my face, refresh my hair and spin it into a bun or pull into a clip (I am about to start giving myself blowouts every two or so days though…last time, I showered right before we left for the hospital, and my hair looked pitiful the entire time! I would love if I had done a fresh set of rollers the day or so before, so all I have to do is brush it and I’ll look put together!)

• Two sets of cheap (but not as cheap as the hospital) bath and hand towels…the towel situation was incredibly grim with Kit. Too small, too stained, too reminiscent of the smell of bleach, which I suppose is a good thing given where we are. So this time around, I bought two $4 towels from Walmart with matching hand towels, entirely unashamed with my intention to leave them in the room when we are discharged.

• A flat sheet and blanket for Price’s “bed”…again, the state of cleanliness his sleeping arrangement was in with Kit was so alarming, I’m coming prepared with a cheap flat sheet to lay on top of the couch turned bed. This way, he doesn’t have to worry about cleaning the crevices of such a nasty situation before trying to go to sleep on it. I found one for less than $10 on Amazon.

• Travel Clorox wipes…for an initial wipe down of the bathroom, countertops, faux leather seating in the room. You just never know.

• Stroller fan…I didn’t use one for Kit during her delivery or afterwards, but given the heat of July this time around, I’m coming prepared! We have two of these and use them constantly…in the car, on walks, around the house.

• Extra-long phone chargers

• iPad and Kindle…we didn’t bring any type of entertainment or time-passer last time, and I wish I had! I find it strange to think of casually reading a book or watching The Office while something as monumental as having a baby is underway, but what else is one to do?

• Disposable camera…we filled two up last time, taking pictures of all our hospital visitors, our parents in the waiting room, little moments once we got home. Something is so very nostalgic about those pictures!

• Snacks for afterwards…I had a leftover Subway chocolate chip cookie as my one and only meal post-birth, until the next morning. And given my gestational diabetes diagnosis, I want to come more prepared in the case baby boy comes in the middle of the night and my large chocolate custard with Oreos and fudge brownie has to wait. So I’m packing a few Barebells protein bars, a bag of pretzels, and a large bag of Brookside chocolate-covered pomegranates.

LL Bean Tote, pouch

For baby boy:

• Coming home outfit…the take-me-home bundle from Kissy Kissy, the very first thing I bought for him!

• Two onesies

• One nightgown, a monogrammed one from the brand Paty

• Two plain kimono onesies

• Potty pads & bags…since the day Kit was born, we’ve been using puppy pads on her diaper changing table and potty bags for her dirty diapers to help with the smell and clean-up. Only wet diapers go in the diaper pail! And both are especially helpful when you are away from home, and it’s easier just to bag everything up and throw it away.

• Philips Avent pacifiers

• Kyte Baby heirloom brush

• Two swaddles, one Halo and one Aden & Anais

• His baby quilt

Diaper bag, pouch, and train case

For a complete list of my hospital bag links, you can shop everything here!

That Sunday, my family’s flower shop had Christmas Open House after church. I spent the afternoon hoarding my mom’s chocolate chip cookies from customers, so I could take a bag home for myself. Checking people out. Fluffing tissue paper in gift bags. Distracting myself from the heavy feeling of anxiety over telling my parents. This happened with Kit, too, and I still am not really sure why. For months before I was pregnant with her, my favorite videos to watch were of people telling their families they were expecting. But with both of my babies, I felt so emotional over the news, this weight of wanting people to respond well. The ordeal of deciding how to tell is almost too much for me, which is disappointing, but for our next, I might just drive right over and yell it from the carport, leave no room to think on my end.

After the last customers left, I had Price bring Kit to, supposedly, pick out a Christmas ornament for her tree. And as I carried her around, my head already feeling fuzzy and my face red hot, I simply said, “Do you have any that say big sister?” And that was that.

The next week, we spent Thanksgiving with Price’s family. He opted for the casual shock factor, too. For his mom and dad, he slipped it into conversation as we unloaded the car: “I don’t know how we’ll fit everything next year with two babies!” For his youngest sister, pregnant and in the thick of heartburn at the time, my first symptom for both pregnancies, he said at the dinner table, “Addy has heartburn, too,” and then just looked at her until she realized what he was implying.

I think something strange about the second pregnancy, especially so close to my first, is not wanting to make it such a big deal to people, in case they don’t care. But then, that’s an odd sentiment to fear, given this baby’s life is just as worthy of anticipation as my first baby’s life. Still, I found myself unsure how to tell friends, just casually telling people as they needed to know. Which, really, is fine by me, given I’ve always felt very territorial, very private over my pregnancies. Nine months is a long time to be pregnant, a long time for people to know. Especially people who don’t necessarily need to know. And it felt precious, both times, to keep these babies between us until our anatomy scans halfway through.

Not surprisingly, I really didn’t feel pregnant until right around then anyways. There has been such a difference in my own attention to the fact I’m carrying another little life than when I carried Kit, purely because Kit consumes my attention, my time, my days here and now. At the beginning, I felt like our appointments were more and more often, but this was merely because time sadly moves quicker in motherhood. The nurses would ask me how far along I was, and it would take me a couple moments to gather in my head what week it was, whereas last time, I knew down to the day.

When I was fifteen weeks along, I went on a weekend trip with my college roommates. When Grayson picked me up, I had a list of things we absolutely needed to talk about…gossip mostly. But tucked within a few topics, I listed “I’m pregnant,” and when I handed her my phone to let her choose which story we should cover first, she screamed. When we got to the hotel room and met Mariel and Megan, I couldn’t wait any longer, telling them within five minutes of sitting down on our beds. And now I know that was the Lord’s provision, pushing me to tell them and not wait until later, because just a few minutes afterwards, I started spotting, something that had never happened with Kit. I called my mom from the hallway and cried, unsure of what to do, what this meant, what to tell Price. By the absolute grace of God, I had nothing to worry about…we skipped our dinner reservation and spent that night in the emergency waiting room, somehow managing to laugh at the absurdity of the people working there and the people waiting beside us. Our weekend went on, baby boy along with us.

We found out this little baby was a boy the week after Valentine’s Day. Just as I did with Kit, I went into that appointment with a feeling in my heart of what he would be, and I’ve been right both times. This time, I felt more of a desire for a certain answer though, a girl, entirely because of my own desire for a sister. I think, too, this guilt of Kit not having me all to herself for much longer clouded my judgment on what she would want and what she wouldn’t, as if she would love a sister more than a brother. But on the drive home, as I held his little ultrasound and we decided on a precious, perfect name, I could already see this little boy, a little Price beside my baby girl. And all was well.

Even as I write this, that morning feels like just days ago. The past few nights, I’ll stand in front of my mirror and peer at my swollen belly, the deep stretch marks, the rolling skin as he makes himself known at night. I watch his heel in my side, his bottom rotate back and forth, tiny hiccups. But still, I said to Price, “I don’t think my tummy is even that big?” And unfair statement for him to have to respond to.

I just cannot get past how different these last nine months have been than my first pregnancy…the heat of the summer, the passage of time, the confidence. Of course, the dreadful diagnosis of gestational diabetes will be the first thing I remember of this time, the finger pricks and the medication, the taste of sugar free candies and protein bars, the soreness of my hips and back after pushing the girls around the neighborhood in their red wagon, trying to get my blood sugar down, the familiarity of my clinic and my nurses, after two months of weekly appointments. It’s given my pregnancy such a routine, what with having to diet and exercise, and really, it has turned into something I’m grateful for, or at least fine with. Even just for my exposure to and tolerance of blood, I feel stronger than I was before.

I wrote about this feeling when we announced we were expecting, but I feel it even stronger now…this knowing I do not want to be done experiencing the miracle of having a baby. This is my greatest prayer, for more children and a home to fit them all. I feel so fond of these last nine months, regretful as I haven’t written every feeling and symptom and memory in my journal like I did Kit, I haven’t written anything in his baby book except for his due date, but so, so very fond of this pregnancy that felt like it existed mostly between the four of us, me, Price, Kit, and Annie. Watching my tummy at night, slowly organizing his dresser-full of secondhand clothing, talking about “baby brother” to Kit and Annie throughout the day, two girls who have absolutely no earthly idea what is happening and, frankly, aren’t interested in knowing.

Every night, after I read Kit her story, we say our prayers, ending with a prayer for baby boy, asking God to take care of the day he is born, to protect us on the road to the hospital, for my doctor to be on call, for the nurses to be kind, for our bodies to be strong, for Kit, for Annie, for the feeling of home when we come back.

Nine months pregnant at last, and a heatwave to welcome me to it. But thankful all the same.

The first we lived in from the time my brother was born until I was in the fifth grade, a one-story blue house with a white picket fence on the side and the most magical brick patio in the backyard to two young children. Our bedrooms were all at the end of the house, three doors to a square hallway, the last being the tiniest bathroom with a pedestal sink. There was a galley kitchen, with the cabinets painted a deep green and a round wooden table in the breakfast room at the end. And our favorite room was through the breakfast room, a den with a huge green club chair and a red floral couch, a black fireplace, the piano in the back. That house was painted greens and khakis and pink in my room, the walls covered in black and white family pictures, cabinets of books and burning candles, blankets draped on the back of every chair.

Right before middle school, my parents finished renovating an old, old two-story stone house just a few blocks down the road. I first stepped foot in that house when my mom dragged us to an estate sale with her, and I left complaining that it smelled of the elderly. It wasn’t air conditioned and hadn’t been cared for in quite a while, but she fell in love with it, taking home green drinking glasses and a dream. The house was gutted and a contractor hired, and a few years later, it was ours. It felt like a mansion coming from our tiny house with the tiny bathroom, rooms sitting empty for a little while until they had curtains made and our family friend and an interior designer in town Kenny came to help. The day he finished decorating was so very surreal, this gift of walking into your once empty home to the smell of new couches with matching pillows, thick rugs never before been stepped on, all of our old pictures hung. It felt like our home, every detail so thoughtfully us and has felt that way ever since.

Given this love I’ve had for the way my home has always made me feel, it never should have been a surprise the joy I found growing up rearranging corners in my room or organizing my desk drawers, choosing pictures to frame, the way my bed looks made, even setting up my doll’s furniture in their pink two-story house. Setting up my home has always been my favorite part of any move, into a dorm or the three moves Price and I have made together. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized the power in interior design, in how to make a space feel like a home, even temporarily. I think of the rental Price and I lived in while we renovating our current home, this cabin by a pond and the interstate, one bedroom with no doors to separate the living room, kitchen, and where we slept. All of our furniture for the most part was in storage, and so I made do with a curtain for privacy, Annie’s crate as a nightstand, little lamps on the corner of every table. Every night, I longed for my house to be done, imagining the morning we finally got to move into this dream of a home. But nearly three years later, I lay in bed and think fondly of that little studio cabin with the concrete floors where just a little inclination for interior design made it feel like home.

I think there is so much more to designing a home than perhaps the widely understood definition of interior design tells you. I asked Chat GPT to describe my home style, and I was first of all stunned by the depth of answer, and second, very much honored to read this of myself:

“…often described as heirloom, comfortable, and meaningful, Addy’s interior design style reflects a cozy, slow-living approach rooted in her historic craftsman cottage. Her home’s mood is cozy, comfortable, and homey, while her décor approach is personal, curated, and heirloom-oriented. Her aesthetic celebrates the beauty of intentional everyday living – emphasizing comfort, heritage, and emotional resonance.”

And that’s where I believe the power of personal interior design comes into play. Not copying a Pinterest board or exclusively shopping at Target, not following strict design rules or making decisions based on home resale one day, but in creating and curating a home that feels like your home, the way my parents did, the way I have in every dorm, every apartment, every place I’ve ever lived in.

I love creating home-centered content on social media more than I could have ever thought I would. I love being creative, I love sharing my home in the morning light, I love capturing my home for me to remember. Lived-in, cherished, curated, incomplete, full. And I love being a help to my readers as they create their homes, too. So I’ve asked you to send in some interior design questions, and I’m going to answer a few of them here (and save the rest for another post!)

Q: What pieces do you think you should invest in in a home?

A: I think there are a few things that show their quality very quickly. I’m the first to buy throw pillows from HomeGoods, picture frames from Target, quilts on sale, prints off of Etsy. But I do draw the line here: rugs need investment (the thin, cheap ones that don’t even unfurl after a few days look like the belong in a dorm); all wooden furniture (think dining tables, dressers, hutches, nightstands, bed frames) need to be real wood, preferably antique (because they don’t make wood like they used to apparently); and big pieces of furniture, like couches and chairs. Your home will look and feel significantly more timeless if it’s built off of quality. And keep in mind, this doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be expensive!

Q: All things wall art – how to source and style!

A: The sourcing of art is my husband’s forte. Our collection started after our honeymoon to Newport, Rhode Island, where we fell in love with the east coast. Quickly thereafter, our front porch was oftentimes filled with packages from eBay, carefully wrapped paintings of lighthouses and sailboats and the Castle Hill Inn. We visited quite a few art studios while in Newport, bringing home prints that reminded us of moments from our time there and learning names of local artists we liked. Over time, we’ve built our collection solely through sourcing off of eBay, flipping through piles at antique stores, and one single full-price Parks Beach piece I bought for Price’s birthday last year. I think the key here is finding a style you like and immersing yourself in it, becoming familiar with artists and sellers, and slowly building your collection.

As for styling, I am not the biggest fan of gallery walls, but instead little clusters throughout. I always love hanging a smaller piece beneath a large one, on the side of a mantle or above a nightstand, framing it with a lamp or a pot of dried hydrangeas.

Q: Adding color and character into the kitchen décor!

A: To start, paint your cabinets anything but white! Ours are painted a warm cream (the custom formula is saved in my Instagram stories), but our last house was green (SW Grassland), and we loved those, too. I love butter yellow kitchens especially, too. Think Margo Roth’s (@itsmargoroth on Instagram)!

Then be strategic with what you sit on your countertops, opting for collected, beautiful, useful items rather than just décor. Find a set of canisters for flour, sugar, and salt that you love! Ours our copper from William Sonoma and add such warmth and age to our kitchen. Find old cookbooks at estate sales or flea markets and use those stacked throughout. Hang pretty plates on the wall, display your favorite seasonal dishes, collect vases and pitchers and use those as decoration. Frame family recipe cards or the menu from somewhere special (we have our breakfast menu from our honeymoon framed in our china cabinet!). Use a ceramic pitcher to hold wooden spoons (do not display your rubber spatulas).

My biggest piece of advice though is to find a kitchen lamp and nestle it into the corner somewhere, turning it on first thing every morning and right before you go to bed. It truly makes all the difference.

Q: Good curtain sources?

A: I was gifted a set of pinch-pleat black-out curtains from Two Pages Curtains last summer, and we have absolutely loved them in our bedroom. I had never had “investment” curtains until these, and now that I’m thinking about it, I believe curtains should be invested in, too. They add so much depth to our room.

I always love Pepper Home’s products, too. I’ve never ordered curtains from them, but I most definitely would! And Pottery Barn.

Also, I am a firm believer in having a sheer curtain behind the main curtain for those gloomy days or days your neighbors feel a little too close. And those I do not believe need investing in! We have $5 panels from Walmart and love them.

Q: Where do you start with styling a room?

A: When I think about each room in my house, I can pretty much narrow it down to one thing I loved that inspired the rest. Let’s use my library as an example…I vividly remember sitting on the couch one night, talking to Price about what furniture we would use in there. At that point, we really only knew that his leather recliner would find its home in the library, and that we would be building custom bookshelves. Somehow, we landed on the idea of plaid wallpaper, sending us on a search that ended with Ballard Design’s “Bobby Plaid Wallpaper” in linen/gray. From that one sample swatch, I chose the fabric for my chair-and-a-half, the rug (a year later), our sconces, what art we hung. Even with Kit’s room, Price found the Laura Ashley “Elderwood” wallpaper, and we took that swatch everywhere until we had the room designed.

Q: What do you do when you’re stuck on what to do in a space?

A: Give it time. Take a step back and spend time on Pinterest. Stop obsessively searching for items or solutions, and just consume inspiration for a while. I’ve found it’s better to let a room sit unfinished for as long as necessary than to rush it and risk it feeling overly designed or not designed well.

Q: Dining table and chairs!

A: I am always, always drawn to an English farmhouse table. Some gorgeous ones I found are here, here, and here. As for chairs, I would search for two statement end chairs, like these and these. And then supplement the inside chairs with an eclectic mix of wicker or cane seated beauties like these or these. I have found all of my dining table chairs either on Facebook Marketplace or antique shops, so don’t rush and spend too much money on new ones!

Q: How long would you say it’s taken you for your home to feel mostly complete?

A: I think that as my life evolves, my home’s level of completion evolves, too. After a year of living here, I might would have said it was pretty well complete. But then Kit was born, and the requirements of my home changed, my library bookshelves needed to be reorganized to fit baskets of toys, my kitchen cabinets to fit bottles and cans of formula, my front porch became a place we wanted to spend time on and not just decorate in the fall. And now again, even this afternoon while Kit slept for her afternoon nap, I had Price in our bedroom, rearranging to make room for baby boy’s bassinet and the old rocker my grandpa is giving us. We needed a new lamp for the new dresser for the new baby, and so on and so on. Home is an ever changing gift, and it’s comforting to me that I will never feel it is near completion!

I also think this mindset, as a lover of old things, is freeing, because you never know when you’ll stumble upon a piece you love, but didn’t necessarily need, but fits it in your house all the same. Such as my old pie cabinet in the library we bought on a whim for $100 and filled with quilts and puzzles. I can’t imagine my library without it, but I didn’t know we needed it until I saw it.

Q: Sunroom turned playroom inspo!

A: This would be a dream of a room to have in our home one day! I would lean into making this space both for your family and for your babies…comfy patterned armchairs, a thick, soft rug, bookshelves, family photos, baskets and pretty trunks for storage. I’ve linked some finds here! And a cozy addition my family will definitely be using: an old VHS television off of eBay!

Q: Cleaning routine, please!

A: While this isn’t necessarily interior design, I strongly believe a home is not at its full potential unless it is clean. Everything is so much prettier and cozier when it’s stewarded well!

Every night, I thoroughly clean the kitchen: scrub the sink, load and run the dishwasher, wipe down the countertops and the high chair, put odds and ends away. And every night, Kit’s room and the library where her toys live are picked up. This way, we start our mornings in a house that feels ready for the day!

Every other day or so, I’ll run the vacuum, do a couple loads of laundry (that get folded when they get folded!), and sweep the front porch.

And every Friday morning, I deep clean the bathroom, vacuum the house and mop the kitchen, wash the sheets and towels, dust, and return to all the baskets of laundry that need to be folded and get it all put away. Weekends are my most cherished times at home, when Price is with us and the mornings stretch out with nothing to do but go on walks and watch golf. So I love to do my full reset in preparation for these days!

Cleaning tips I have picked up over the years: use old washcloths instead of paper towels to wipe down your counters and throw them in the washer when you’re done – you can wash them with lights or darks, Dawn dish soap is the answer to cleaning almost anything – I use it to clean my kitchen sink every night and use it to clean our bathtub every week and even sometimes add it to especially dirty laundry loads (it also, when combined with the Messy Mouth spray, has gotten out nearly every stain on Kit’s clothes), Barkeeper’s Friend will take out any steel scratch or clean up any greasy mess or pan I’ve ever tried it on, taking out the trash every night does wonders for the smell of your house (and I recommend using scent-free trash bags), use a lint roller to dust your lampshades and the Swiffer dust pads to dust everything else.

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I loved answering just a few of your questions…I could’ve gone on all day! See you next week xx

It’s such an interesting mindset to be in…waiting. Two nights ago, I laid in bed and watched my stomach roll around, trying to discern what exactly I was watching. His bottom? His knees? Praying his head was staying down amidst all his busyness. I have realized there are things to be grateful for since my dreadful diagnosis of gestational diabetes two months ago, mostly just the additional ultrasounds, where they tell me how much he weighs, and my weekly appointments to sit and listen to his heartbeat. All of this knowledge, of his size, his activity, the sound of his heart, and then watching him, just a few layers of skin away, leaves me so very eager to see him, for Kit to know him.

In the meantime, I’ve fallen into a routine of savoring what I have right now: frozen Kind bars and Breyers carb balance chocolate ice cream, my bedroom to myself for a few hours every night, the bassinet waiting out in the hall, an electric fan clipped onto my rocker on the front porch, Minute Maid sugar free lemonade in a can.

Kit has also started taking her afternoon nap in her crib, after her entire lifetime of sleeping on my chest or in the crook of my arm. One day, I just decided to lay her down and see. That precious baby just rolled right onto her tummy and slept for two hours. And while that was a sad milestone, it was a necessary one, as my stomach grows and we get closer to bringing our little boy home. Now I get to indulge in an afternoon shower, even for just two minutes, change into old pajama pants and climb onto my bed with Annie for a nap of our own. Or time to scroll. Or time to write or read, but never time for chores. I can do those with Kit, my sweet little busy helper, who loves to hand me laundry and climb into the empty basket, or hand me warm pieces silverware from the dishwasher, one at a time.

I am consuming an abundance of content every day, perhaps wasting too much time doing so, but enjoying it all the same. Price and I just finished watching Our Friends & Neighbors on Apple, which we thoroughly enjoyed. I started reading Abby Jimenez’ Just for the Summer, a quaint little read that I am not sure will get more than two stars, but I’m happy with all the same. I’m not reading nearly as much as I was last year, when I had three naps a day to fill, a calm bedtime and a sleepy baby to hold, time to spend. And I also can’t quite settle into a genre I’m interested in reading, other than Lisa Jewell’s books, but I want to own them in hardback, so I don’t read them on my Kindle. Last year, I read majority thrillers, and for whatever reason, this year, I can’t stomach the suspense or any dash of fear. But then…these days, what does that leave? I’m finding most romance novels cheesy or entirely pornographic, and I haven’t been interested in historical pieces in years. So that leaves me scrolling Kindle Unlimited, hoping the algorithm shows me at least one or two I find a tad appealing. I’ve been watching a lot of birth vlogs on TikTok, always tearful by the end. Spending a lot of time on resale Facebook groups, buying little sweet things from Boden for my babies, on average $10-14. Google searches: constant Braxton Hicks contractions, what does it feel like when your baby is flipping, why is bedtime so much harder than naptime, and frequent visits to USPS to track various packages and Madewell to spend a gift card I can’t forget I have but can’t decide what to spend it on.

This week, I’m grateful and content for the work my husband did in the yard last weekend, work that I thought I paid a landscaper to do, but ended up being a full two days worth for Price regardless. We spent last Saturday morning in the Walmart garden center, filling up two carts with grass seed, salvia, caladiums, bug spray, ivy. Then every few hours, Kit and I would check his progress. I felt as though I had a magic fairy to boss around…I’d tell him I wanted my pots redone, and poof! there they were. The patio was weeded, the flower beds reshaped, the hostas replanted, the yard mowed and trimmed. All I found myself in charge of was Kit and Annie and the front porch, which we scrubbed with water and Dawn dish soap, the girls discovering the misting feature on the water hose, and Kit discovering she can catch fireflies and hold them with her fingers.

My yard feels how I’ve been itching for it to feel for months now…free of tall weeds for snakes and ticks, free of poison ivy, colorful, clean, like the beginning of a garden, Jasmine crawling up our shed, my pots weathered green, Kit’s butterfly stone with her handprints nestled in the back bed. I’ve been taking the girls out every morning when we wake up to water the plants before the sun makes its way to the back of the house. Kit wears her little pink crocs, and I let Annie run, and it feels precious. Then we go inside, and I turn on the playlist I made for us last summer, the one with Faith Hill and Martina McBride and the Dixie Chicks, and I make breakfast, and somehow, the practice of going outside in our pajamas and watering our flowers makes the entire day just a little more magical.

I thought a lot this week about my own childhood, trying to remember what my brother and I filled our summertimes with, as I watch Kit’s cheeks flush pink and her hair curl on the front porch, waiting for Price to come home. I don’t really remember just a ton of specific activities, but more so just feeling content and comfortable and cared for and happy.

I’ve been ending my days with Kit on the floor beside her crib, trying to help her learn she call fall asleep on her own. It’s been taking an hour until her little body slows into sleep, and I lay there and think about our day, about our house filled with the sound of girly country music and the washing machine going, the excitement of going to sit on the porch with a stack of books and a snack, Kit pulling her shirt up to show me her tummy, because I keep doing the same to look at mine, even though she has no idea why. And then I hear her breathing slow, and Annie lets out an impatient deep breath, and we both sneak out, for a shower and a sorry but fine excuse for ice cream in bed, dreaming of the large chocolate custard with brownie and Oreo I’ll have delivered to my hospital room in just a few weeks.