Archive for November, 2010
Cotton candy. My daughter’s hands, even after she’s freshly bathed, smell like cotton candy. She’s been asleep now for a good 10 minutes, but I am still holding her close to me. She is warm and her teeny little fingers have somehow hooked on my nose. An endearing, soft, snore escapes her and she squeaks noisily on her soother. My mind is filled with nothing but the exhale and inhale of her sweetness. This is a perfect moment.
I have never been very good at being ‘in the moment’. My mind is usually in 15 places at once, on conflicting time-lines to boot. I can be thinking about risk management, client communications, new designs, deadlines, bills, and diapers, but as soon as my little girl puts her hands on my face, my mind is completely still.
Pre-baby, I had oodles of bras. My delicates were one huge tangle of lace, wire, and satin, and they were the first things to spring out of my underwear drawer. I think I only wore 4 of them on rotation, but all 20 or so of them were there for show. In the mornings after my shower, I’d stare at them with a kind of strange retail-mired ‘these are mine’ pride and sometimes toy with one or another knowing full well that I was going to abandon them in favour of the simple ‘no-lines-under-my-shirt’ bra, or ‘the-one-that-makes-them-look-bigger’ bra.
I remember when I was 17 years old in Paris, my friends and I saw Naomi Campbell walking down the street. We were there for a couple weeks on a school trip and we had been poised and ready for any kind of celebrity encounter when she passed right by us. We were in awe of her gazelle like grace, and her incomparable stature. Thinking back her legs appeared so long they made her seem more exotic alien land-strider than human. She seemed perfect in the moonlight, as if she were lit professionally. I remember she was wearing some jeans with boots and a leather jacket. It was a style all of us tried to emulate for the next year. But right then in that moment whatever the magic, I remember staring, barely breathing as if sudden movements might spook her even as her figure retreated into the distance and out of sight. Wow. Supermodel.
I’ve always had fine hair. I was thrilled when, during my second trimester, I noticed that my wispy tresses actually started to fall nicely. My normally tangled ends tickled my shoulders in straight sweeps, and brushing and styling breakage seemed to be something of the past. I was in alt.
It started innocently enough. I realized how hard it was to stop and take pictures of my wee little girl when I was chasing her around, or had her in the Baby Bjorn. So, we got into the habit of picking out cute styles together (Vee would grab at a dress or pants and passionately shove them into her mouth.. which she still does) and then do a ‘photoshoot’. It turns out that Vee likes to pose. She adores the camera, smiling on demand, and even looks over my shoulder sometimes with that funny little tinge of hauteur that I see on the front pages of Elle and Vogue. Oh dear. I have a spotlight baby.
Now it’s become a game. I can hardly wait until she outgrows her clothes and we can finally go to the mall or into sweet little boutiques together. Here’s my confession.. Generally I go even when her clothes still fit. Then, we go to the park, play in the leaves, or just pose on a good bedspread backdrop. Here are some of fall’s best shots.
