Lovelihood

Day one of The Boy's two week tenure at his new school's summer camp (also to be his after-school care provider) was a success so great he exclaimed it the Best Day Ever. He enthused over the friend he spent the day playing with, the plentiful outdoor time, the fort building (but not with the big pillows — the big kids were playing with those), and the extra special cheese I secreted into his lunch. On the menu for tomorrow: woodland creature sandwiches and some grapes with a cookie chaser.

Nearly nine months into this take-a-photo-every-day thing, The Boy has finally caught on that I'm constantly looking for pictures to take. He knows, for instance, that once the sugar scrub has all been mixed and jarred, I'll want to take a few moments for glamour shots. And once those Fritos get their sheen of chocolate on, he prompts me to go grab the camera. Sometimes, photographic inspiration isn't so obvious. Like today, after noodling around outside for a while, he came running in to get me to photograph the dried-out seed pods endemic to the corner of the backyard that he calls his garden. And I obliged because the only other shot I had from the day was a poorly-framed camera phone shot of him hanging upside down on some ladder rungs at the playground.

I am certain that every mom has handed her child a scrambled Rubik's Cube (or an off-brand stand-in) and waited for that flicker of genius that would our college savings plans unneccessary (you know, because we'd be assured full scholarships to our college of choice). And most of us are handed back a block as messy as before, with the imploration to please fix it. I also possess no such genius, nor the blind patience to just hack away at the thing. But I'm more than willing pry the pieces apart and snap them back into fresh-from-packaging perfection.

It's been months of Fridays and naptimes spent in labor over this guy (from this book), who I'm sure will one day be named, but for now just bears The Boy's initial. I finished the top the other day, rushed off the final seam and haphazardly folded it up on my table to get an already late dinner made. It wasn't until today that I laid it out in a proper sandwich and got a good look at the whole thing. And I'm pretty happy about it. What's more important, The Boy is excited about it. I've been told to send it off to be quilted, or to wait until Thanksgiving and toss it onto the Oma's long-arm. But I'm convinced that that phrase "labor of love" was coined by a quilter. And I'm resolved to do it myself. By hand, maybe, like the rest of them.

I keep a bag of chocolate chips (non-dairy, of course) in the cupboard precisely for the sort of occasion that calls for dipping something unseemly into something even unseemlier. Fritos (no substitutions, please) were happily dunked into smelted chocolate, an activity that elicited such squealy joy from The Boy that it was impossible not to forgive his frequent "accidental" finger slips into the chocolate. I'm sure the preschool teachers these are intended for harbor no illusions of sanitary practices in the homes of their charges.

This day ends with a completed quilt top folded up on my sewing table and a batch of coconut-orange sugar scrub awaiting last-day-of-preschool teacher delivery. Not a bad way to use up the last of my half-pint jars. Also, not a bad day for making things.

While puttering around the fabric store the other day — The Boy feeling through quilt back options and I indiscriminately grabbing at fat quarters and miscellaneous craft supplies — we tripped over a sweet-hued stash of perle embroidering cottons. So, with yesterday's completion of u under my belt, I took some down-time at work to plot out the next alphabetic venture.