Be still, my beating heart.

Bea met the Columbia River today.

She took me by surprise when we approached the glistening, wavy water. We still haven't taken her swimming and when she met the Pacific Ocean she was only three months old, nestled in a sling unaware of it's grand introduction into her life so I wasn't sure what to expect. Our girl ran right up to this big river and made herself at home. It was a beautiful sight. I wish Kenny were there to see it. Don't worry, I sent him a picture through text message and she asked for dadda and I told her we'd all come back to play in the water. She walked right up to her waist and splashed and laughed and I got to thinking about how important these big bodies of water are.

I wasn't born in Maine and I didn't even spend my whole childhood there but I spent my happiest days there, as a child and young woman. I say I am from Maine because of this. Before that my family life was tumultuous and frightening. Maine was a place of safety and acceptance and part of growing up in Portland Maine is growing up right on top of the Atlantic Ocean, an ocean I am so very anxious to introduce Bea to. It's one I played in with my siblings, my cousins and friends until I was blue all over. We swam with seaweed tickling our legs and wave bubbles and bobbed as deep as we could, pretty fearless. We ran up to the shore and back again to ride the tame waves. The beaches we walked to and sometimes drove to, had pink roses and hot wooden slats to cross before the sand and salt. If you walk along the shore for long enough, you will often find huge, climbable rocks with tide pools baking in the sun, waiting with their critters and oh what an adventure it was climbing those rocks.

I remember feeling slightly sunburned most of the summer, salt dried on my face in white streaks, my long hair clumping like dread locks and sleeping hard and deep after a beach day. Don't you love those memories of being a child, playing all day for so long, with all of your might that when you hit the bed you just melted, careless and dead to the world? Those beach days were like that. Those ocean memories are important to me. Bea will have Pacific and Atlantic Ocean memories, I am sure of it. It seems to me some rivers and lakes aught to be added to the list as well; Columbia, check.

Thank you child for playing in the river with me today. I love remembering how special these giant bodies of water are to such little creatures like us.

Happy Solstice and summer to you.

We are growing carrots, tomatoes, peas, radishes, lettuce, strawberries, heck we are growing so much we could call ourselves farmers. Farmers of a small raised bed and some patches of dirt all around the yard that house our vegetables and fruits for our family and a few friends, if we remember to share. Kenny and Bea are often eating homemade popsicles. Bea is sometimes wearing underwear instead of diapers. There is usually soccer on for the first part of the day and mad dashes to kick the ball out back before the second half or the next game starts. Today Bea somersaulted all by herself. Kenny and I were both there and I am pretty sure we both had tears in our eyes.

That's Brutus on the left. He's an awesome dog. Every time we walk by Bea looks and asks for him. He runs up to the fence and jumps high to kiss her strawberry mouth. In the stroller we have Lion and she sometimes gets thrown onto the sidewalk.

Bea days are magical ones. Oh, I guess that's every day! How lucky are we?

I am an admirer

of people who make things.

They show up on my doorstep in cursive letters

and even knock without notice sometimes.

They put aside routine

to satisfy an urge and

I hear it in eagerness downstairs

drumming as my sweet daughter sleeps beside me somehow.

It is a gift of butterflies

fluttering alive in me,

flying about until I decide to open my middle

and make the art that pulses in me.

This person and her sleeping, it is changing. It is slowly becoming something solid and almost predictable until, it's not and that lasts for weeks and then one night shows up that was like those solid nights of six hour sleep stretches and you realize there is progress in this little one's sleep learning and all the while she is growing immensely and perfectly and growing such big white, beautiful teeth and unfurling even more than she already had.

Bea, you are such a bounty of life. I am in awe at your every single little thing.

Oh the sweet days.

It is magical, this watching a human develop. Bea changes constantly and not just in a slew of pictures that show her crawling and then walking or chubby and then svelte but from morning to bed time. "Did you hear her try and say "cracker" so perfectly? All of a sudden she kind of runs and plays. She plays with toys and uses her imagination! I mean, I see her walking the little fisher price people around the kitchen and her baby, she takes her walking too, to see the puddle rock, to see Anna's forget-me-nots. Oh you are a delight, sweet baby girl.

Meow.

For a sweet friend:

Meow.

Boy, I love our neighborhood. I've lived in a few different neighborhoods since moving here eight years ago and loved each one because shoot, it's Portland, city of over grown lawns and vegetables trellised over sidewalks. There are beautiful wooden boxes on stands built to share books with little doors and all. There are planned cherry blossom streets and not so planned calendula yards. I really love it all. Bananas? Pomegranate? Kiwi? People here grow everything, just about. We usually bump into chickens at least twice on any given walk. There was a block in southeast Portland that was the goat block. Portland you are my dream city.

Lately, I've been admiring the spring blossoms. There have been wind chimes, misty mornings, and usually a wagon in tow but this day I'm about to share with you, Bea asked to ride in the backpack so I grabbed the camera realizing I had free hands and a bit of a relaxed eye instead of the now busy eyes ready to catch Bea before she runs for the road or dead heads the perfect yellow mote of daffodils protecting our neighbor's brick house. It is probably so perfectly tempting to her like the millions of rocks in our backyard (sometimes I watch her mouth water).

Azaleas, camellia petals, a turtle, a sick baby, lady crocks, and more. What is your favorite spring flower?