Sugar and spice

If you know me, you know I am both totally girly and totally ungirly. The girly me is into fairies and mermaids, love and lust poetry, birth and breastfeeding, musicals (just saw Dirty Dancing at the Opera house, which rocked my world), vintage fashions, and acoustic love ballads. The ungirly me: I have little to no interest in jewelry, shoes, handbags, and products. I have no idea how to do makeup (though I can paint and draw), and I have never myself paid money for a waxing, pedicure or manicure. My time is too precious to spend any of it primping and prepping.

That said, I love love love having daughters, and through them, my inner girly-girl comes flouncing out--through floofy little dresses, ruffly bonnets and fairy wings. I admit it, and below is proof. Last week, my aunts came over for tea, and so I dressed the girls in white linen (and Viola wore three strands of my grandmother's beads). How adorably sweet is Maeve in the ruffly bonnet? Viola is a dainty little lady, and I had to grab my camera while she was admiring her braids (a 'do she requested) in the mirror a few days ago. Note the matching cotton jumpers on my girls (geeky, yes, but with their matching hair, how can I resist?). My brother Sam and sis-in-law Kristin were visiting, and I love the shot of them with Maeve--looks like she belongs to them instead of me, which tends to happen when my brothers are around.

Happy Valentines Day!

Here is a little valentine for you in the form of a slideshow--it features sweet and mushy love moments from the last year...Cheesy, yes, but it just might bring back a memory, make you smile, or even just give you a moment's respite from whatever it is you should be doing right now...

Welcome Sheridan and Samantha!

This weekend, Matt and I packed up the girls and headed to NYC to meet our new twin baby nieces, born Friday morning to Matt's brother Chris and his wife Brooke. Sheridan Leigh Wertz was born first, weighing in at 6 pounds, one ounce, and Samantha Denise followed one minute later, weighing a wee four pounds, thirteen ounces. Though teeny-tiny, little Samantha is one strong little thing, nearly launching herself out of our laps with her skinny lil' legs. Samantha has a full head of beautiful jet black hair. Her 'big' sis Sheridan, however, surprised all of us by looking just like her cousins Viola and Maeve with golden-red hair! Funny that two dark haired couples could produce such a rare hair color--in three out of four babies...The one bummer of the weekend was that of all times, I forgot my camera! Figures their aunt the photographer would show up at the hospital to see them without a camera. So I immediately took over Brooke's camera and did my best to get some of those precious and fleeting newborn moments (a sampling below--first two shots by Chris). I copied them from flickr (so if the quality isn't great, that's the story). Congratulations and overflowing love goes out to the proud new parents and our beautiful new nieces!


Hi Mom...

Look at those lips!

Sheridan spent a couple days in the NICU (like her big cousin Viola did).

This is why most of my pics are of little Samantha--





Soooo tiny and dainty!

Big cousin Viola was enthralled with her 'Mantha.