love, friday (glass half-full edition)

In honor of being awakened by my child (not the unborn one) at 5:00 a.m. for the day today - after wake-ups at both 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. - I present to you, "the glass is half-full version" of this week's love, friday:

• Love being reminded that Baby Amelia will not be born with a consistent schedule by my son, Jackson. The one who's been teasing us with 11-hour sleep-straight-through nights for, oh, a year and a half or so, and just decided now to stir things up again. It's all good, right? All practice, right?

• Love that Grama is always awake at 6:30 a.m. and willing to go to Perkin's with weary parents and a hungry boy.

• Love getting my daily walk out of the way at Southdale before the mall even opened (I felt a little out of place since I was under 65 and wasn't wearing white sneakers, but my belly got a lot of lovely looks). Love that Jackson and Dan LOVED having the middle of the mall all to themselves and that I could hear Jackson's laughter from almost all corners.

• Love that Caribou Coffee was open early to provide change (pennies were required for the water fountain) and a chocolate cooler on the way out the door.

• Love car naps that turn into much-needed morning naps, thus providing a morning "break" for Mom & Dad.

• Love Dan's philosophy of "wear him out" for the afternoon, and that it involved a surprisingly simple plan of running around the Lake Harriet Rose Gardens while I knit under the shade of a big oak tree.

[love that Jackson loved being barefoot and ran back and forth between the two water fountains flanking this huge lawn about a hundred times]
[can you see Jackson and Dan? way off in the distance...one streak of small boy white t-shirt with a dad following closely behind...]

[the roses from a distance...can you smell them?]

• Love that we were able to trick him into napping again this afternoon. Oh, did I say we tricked our kid? That's not very nice. How about bribe? Cajole? Pull the wool over his eyes? All I'm sayin' is that you can't see fireworks at night if you don't take a nap...

• Love that the 4th of July means that we get a long three-day weekend together. Both Dan and I are really hoping that it can lead right into his paternity leave (ahem, Amelia?) but we're not holding our breath, either. (Is that thinking that the glass is half-full or half-empty?)

• And completely unrelated to my love, friday theme today but still love-worthy: love my new knitting project. After seeing the beautiful Moses Basket from Kristina on the new rocker stand with freshly washed (organic) bedding, the hand-knit blanket that I made tossed over one side, right next to our bed, it became apparent that a Koigu mobile was in order. Love Koigu mitered square hearts (really, it's ridiculous how much I love these hearts) and love that Needlework Unlimited sells "Koigu bits" so that I could get just a small amount of the colors I wanted. (More soon...)
love, friday (glass half-full edition)