So I’m falling a little behind posting the daily photos. I’ve actually been taking them every day, I just haven’t had the time to put them up because I’ve been down with a cold. I think I may go back and put the photos up on the days they were taken and back date them.

Today’s photo is of the tomatoes Wyatt and I picked this morning. Aren’t they gorgeous? I love a homegrown tomato in the summer time. I don’ t know if there’s a food that I find more delicious.

I have great memories of going outside with Mom in the summer time and each picking a big beefsteak tomato off one of the plants behind the garage. We would take them inside and slice them up into four or five thick slices and eat them for lunch with a dollop of cottage cheese. The cool, creamy cottage cheese perfectly offset the tomatoes, still warm from the sun. Heavenly.

This is my pile of books to read. I keep it next to my bed. There are a few others in the queue scattered around the house, but I’m too afraid to put them on the pile because I have a very real fear that it will fall down on me as it is.

The Sarah Vowell up front is the one I’m currently reading. Zach had pulled it out to read, but I accidentally started it before he had a chance. (He had another one he was thinking about, so it wasn’t too terrible of me.)  Other books in the list are a couple of Ayelet Waldman Mommytrack mysteries, a Jasper Fforde book about a woman who can go inside the stories in books, a probably depressing but hopefully good Joan Didion book, a book about discipline and some other random stuff.

Earlier this morning:

“Mama, do you know Winnie…Winnie the Pooh? Do you know his brother?”

“His brother? Who is his brother?”

“The boy! What is Winnie the Pooh’s brother the boy called?”

“Oh, you mean Christopher Robin?”

“Yes! I am Christopher Robin!!” he says running out of the room.

One second later he’s back. “And you are Christopher Robin’s Mama!”

And all morning he has called me Christopher Robin’s Mama…..

Back in June, I was promoted to a new job: Director of Online Development. One of the perks that came along with the job was that I got an office when my department moved a couple of weeks ago. Offices are hard to come by at my company so I feel pretty lucky to have one. It is so nice to be able to sit down at my desk and shut the door when I need to get some work done. And it’s also been fun to do a little decorating, such as it is. In the photo below you can see my burgeoning art collection. One of my dad’s sculptures is on top of the book case and above it on the wall you can see one of Wyatt’s paintings. I absolutely love it. He and his dad made a special trip to the MOCHA to paint it for me and when they came home Wyatt specifically told me that it was for my office wall.

We found this rude tomato growing on one of our plants today. I had to take a picture of it.

My Dad made this turtle when I was little — since it’s dated 1973, I’m guessing it’s safe to say I was still a baby. It was always in our house when I was growing up. It was on the bricks and boards shelves first, later on top of a speaker in the living room and then as time went by it made it’s way into the den.

When I got my first apartment after college, it felt totally empty. I had my own set of bricks and boards shelves in the living room populated with some books and a few candles, but the place felt a bit short of personality. I started thinking about the stuff in my parents’ house that made if feel homey. On one level, I knew that it would take time — years even — to assemble my own collection of knick-knacks and meaningful little objects but I was also lonesome for some of the things that made my parents’ house feel like home to me. I knew that their knick-knacks were their’s, but I also felt like they were mine too in a way. I specifically kept thinking about this turtle — they’d lived with it for twenty-some years, but so had I. And twenty-some years was my entire life. I really wanted that turtle in my living room.

When I went home for Christmas that year, I asked my parents if they’d mind if I took it back with me and they kindly agreed to let me have it. And I sure have liked having it in my living room these last ten or fifteen years. First on the bricks and boards in my living room, later on my desk in my office and now on a high shelf back in the living room.

For now, Wyatt is a bit too jumpy and rambunctious for this, but I look forward to the time when I can put it down on a lower shelf where he can look at it more easily. When he can run his fingers over the shell, poke the turtle in the eyes and grow to feel like it belongs to him when really it belongs to me. And when he gets his first apartment, if he still likes it and misses home, I’ll pack it into his suitcase at Christmas-time and let him take it with him because it will be part of his memories too.

But if it’s not something very special to him, I’ll just hang on to it, because it is something very special to me.