Bedtime Bottle
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

The letdown when the milk lets up - new entry up at DotMoms.

Katie's Room

Katie's Room
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

She's large for her age, but she is still really a very small human. Sometimes when I am lugging her around, or sitting beside her, or holding her on my lap, or struggling to strap her into her car seat, or dressing her in her 18 month size clothing, I forget how small she is. I forget that there is a whole entire human being packed into that little 2 1/2 foot tall, 25 or so pound body. There is a whole person sleeping in a tiny bed in the other room right now! A person who didn't exist until one day, she did, because we helped create her. A person who will (hopefully) one day be smarter than I am. A person who will one day choose her own clothes, her own friends, her own career.

Amazing.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I have so much that I am thankful for.

Painted Red

Painted Red
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

The year after I graduated from college I lived in Lexington, Kentucky, in a 2 bedroom apartment with two of my friends. My share of the rent was $92 a month. The manager of the apartment complex was this woman named Chino Short (ok, not really, but go with me on this). She was married to a man named Bobby (that was his name). Chino and Bobby lived underneath our apartment, and they had a blue sectional sofa which took up their entire living room, and above the sectional sofa were mirrors, mirrors, everywhere. The rest of the decor in the room had the theme of COUNTRY BLUE, and included things like wooden spoons and spatulas, trimmed in lace (attached to the utensils with the use of a glue gun). It was an overwhelming room.

The parking lot behind the apartment complex faced a creek, and one day I put my boyfriend's car in neutral after I'd parked its front tires slightly over the parking bump in front, and it rolled into the creek. I still have a numb spot on my right leg from banging it against some part of the car on the way down into the creek.

But what I remembered this morning about Chino and Bobby Short is that one day my friends and I came home and saw that a parking space had been drawn in the parking lot with white spraypaint. There were letters inside the rectangular space, and the letters were "M R G." Mr. G? we wondered. Who is Mr. G? And if it's not Mr. G., what does it stand for? For the love of God, who painted those letters?

It was later one night, when Chino was on the steps in the courtyard, drunk and spouting racist insults against any and all would-be tenants who happened to be black (I don't let that kind live here), that she told us that she was the one who had spraypainted that space. That space is for me and Bobby, she said. Because I'm the manager.

Ahhhh.... MRG is short for manager. Of course it is.

The wall in this picture might not have been spraypainted, but you never know.