Having just read a friend's email, I realize how anemic my prayer life is. How do you gather strength when all three of your kids are hacking and barking in coughing fits? How do you maintain a heart of gratitude and worship when your spirit feels raw and victimized? I don't know. Just wanting to check- in with the old blog here. Some photos from Thanksgiving in Williamsburg. Virginia. My family of origin was in full-effect, the myriad personalities, vivid and potent as stained glass but as chaotic and sensitive as any large- family holiday. Back in the swing here, wearing the groove in the floor between the kitchen and laundry. Finding the triumphs and treasures of this walk, this pilgrimmage of sorts. Trying to hold onto the perspective, that I am God's child but also his called disciple. That there is much work to do, mustering those stores of mama-energy but also trying to do as St. Augustine prayed, "I have no rest until I rest in You." Trying to find that type of restorative, salvific rest. Photos: The two Candelarias. Us on the bank of the gorgeous river my brother lives on. The pomegranate pinata from Benici's 3rd Birthday.

Veggie Pals- I have been meaning to post this shot so you could see it better, which I just love. We had planned to dress the babies as vegetables since before Clara was born. Baby Brighton as an organic, GMO-free tomato and his Dad, Matthew as Tomacco, a Simpson's reference to a highly addictive tomato. Baby Zady as a carrot and her Dad, Zach, as the Easter bunny, and Baby Clara as a peapod and her Dad as Lance Armstrong and her big brother Benicio as a Lion/Bear/Tiger.

A week ago tonight, I was trying to maneuver four layers of blue felt under the presser-foot of my sewing machine. I was trying to reinforce the costume wings for the boys' Halloween parade at nursery school. Life lately, it takes a lot more time for things to soak in. As I write this, at the same place where I spent too many hours cutting felt and re-threading my machine, I am confronted by the way time passes. I know that next year, Manny and Nici will probably want the store-bought, polyester superhero costumes with the enhanced pectoral muscles. I have to admit that the costume pattern I used was originally designed for an infant and I look at Manny in the picture and I can see that. Next to his friends at school who went as "Dark Vader" and Batman, I could see that he is at a crossroads. I was looking at my boy who is no longer the chubby-handed baby mouthing my nose or the tenderfooted toddler trying to keep pace with me. These days, he is a brooding drummer who requests certain CD's by singing a line pitch-perfectly. He likes to eat with knife and fork just like his Dad and asks to be excused from the table when he's through. And yesterday, wanted to be sure that the pediatrician was not going to trick him when administering his flu shot. Maybe this doesn't make sense to you but I am grieving his babyhood. I'm definitely a one-infant-at-a-time kind of girl, don't get me wrong-- but I guess I am realizing that I made those costumes with this hope in the back of my mind. Feeling time's crazy passage and hoping briefly, even for the littlest moment, that I could keep him from flying away.