From the Archives

Isn't it amazing when you find an old roll of undeveloped film? So full of possibilities. I remember my friend Jeff once told me that his father found a roll still in a camera, with a few pictures left. Mr. McKay finished the roll, and when he had them developed he discovered pictures of himself as a young child and as a father to grown children on the same roll. This is the loss that comes with the advances of digital photography.

Dave brought home a surprise roll the other day. Turns out, they are from Clio's first week. What a lovely gift to see these first looks we gave to one another.





And to see this serious expression on our always lively girl.

Bathing Beauties

I'm not sure if it's some kind of survival mechanism relative to the number of consecutive days that snow has now been on the ground, or if it has to do with the uptick in the thermometer (to a balmy 30 degrees), but the girls have taken to wearing their bathing suits around the house. Sometimes they put dress-up dresses over the top, but I haven't caught that on film. Yet.

Flashback Friday: Walmart Portrait Studio

It's flashback Friday over at the other blog, which means I've been going through old photos. I found these portraits of Clio that we had taken at the Walmart photo studio in Illinois when we visited Barb and Pete in May, 2008, about 6 weeks before Eleri was born. I could have sworn I wrote about the session back then, but I couldn't find the post. Until....I checked the DRAFTS from back then, and found this:

"Flipping through a Parents magazine on the plane to Illinois, I was inspired by a few ads for various portrait studios- JC Penney, Target, etc.- and suggested a trip to Wal*Mart as one potential outing with Clio. The idea was to let her pick out a new outfit, and then go ahead and have her first formal portrait sitting.

Let's just say it did not end up being a great experience. I take responsibility for the fact that the timing was just bad- we were really pushing things with both lunch time and nap time, and by the time we actually got started, Clio was not her absolute best.

But mostly, it had to do with the fact that the seemingly to-good-to-be-true deal is, in fact, too good to be true."

I don't remember the exact details of the bait and switch, but I do remember that there was one, and that we went in for a $10 package of photos and ended up spending more than $30, and the photos weren't even particularly good.

But from the vantage point of nearly three years later, they are good! They are! I mean, Clio has had many cuter moments, but aren't these fun?

Clio Grace, Author

Clio has taken to making books. The process is pretty straightforward: Clio makes a bunch of related drawings, then puts them in order and dictates the words for each page, which a grown up writes down. Then she makes a cover, comes up with a title, and the whole thing is stapled together. Mostly this is a Daddy activity. I am delighted that I finally replaced our scanner (it broke while I was at the hospital birthing Clio, when a floating shelf came crashing down on top of it) so that I can share her artistry. Text for each page appears below the image.

I love this rainbow. I really want to buy it.

I really love this flower because it has some silver in the middle. I really want this flower because I think it has underwear.

I want to climb up this rainbow to get this snowman because it has underwear on its hands.

The flower I really like because it's all covered in red. There is also green.

This flower is so pretty. It just has some dandelions on each petal.

This flower has a flower inside of it.

This flower has rainbow petals on it.

This flower has pokes around it. Pokie pokes.

This street light has a monkey in its belly.

This whole thing is so crazy. Cause it is so crazy.

It's hard to argue with that. I might share a few of these, depending on how much patience I have for scanning and transcribing.

Outfit of the Week

Sometimes, Eleri manages to get the dress-up clothes out of the basement and up into her daily wardrobe. She puts these things on herself, which is why she ultimately ends up with the layered look. (She's into layering these days anyway: short sleeve shirt over long, dress over skirt--that was a favorite tactic of Clio's at this age, too. Must be developmental, somehow?) I especially love the use of this dresses' waist band as a halter strap (which, incidentally, broke off and smacked her in the face when we tried to pull the dress down without pulling the stap over her head first. That was an unpleasant surprise.)

The self-dressing also accounts for the hunchback look, since Eleri can't pull her two shirts down under the dance dress.


Did I mention that she is also wearing sweatpants? Boys sweatpants two sizes too big, from the cast-off pile at school, no less.


And now that we're on the subject, Clio is rocking a while lot of a look here, too, only none of hers is from the dress up rack.

Eleri gets stuck in her shirt

Her sister laughs.
Her father documents.
Where is her mother?

What a helpful bunch.

Surprise! New Look

So here's what happened: All my pictures were feeling really, really dark. Looking at this blog was feeling gloomy. I hold two things responsible: the fact that I take so many pictures with our cherrywood table as a backdrop, and the blue tones of the original Clio Confidential design.

My new blog, Love Your Space, feels bright and fresh with a clean white background. So I got to thinking....

What you are looking at is probably not a finished design. It might be too simple. I don't know. But it feels like I can breathe when I look at the blog again, and for a while I couldn't. Liberating the design content to its own place also lets me breathe, and I'm so happy to post some regular old Clio Confidential content again. These are positive developments.

It's funny, though. It felt very sad to change the template here, to tinker around. For so long, this has been a place of comfort, the place of family history, and I was as used to the look of it as my own handwriting. I hesitated before applying a new template--what if I couldn't get the old one back? But then I remembered that, of course, it is the content, and not the design, that makes this blog special.

Another change: I've added the "if you like this post..." feature. So far, it seems to be picking posts at random, so I'll have to do some research to see if I can make it choose more relevant posts.

Let me know what you think. And be prepared for some tweaking over the coming days!

Heather