Look at the Baby!

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Forever new, forever exciting, babies bring joy into our lives with their cooing rosebud lips, small and perfect little hands and feet and that shock of downy soft black hair!

To celebrate spring and life as all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, this is a little vintage baby tribute of items found on etsy.com by vintage sellers. No matter how far we have come with new fangled do dads and fancier and more technical gadgets, there is something sweet and wholesome about looking at how babies were brought into the world without all that stuff and did just fine.

Be All That You Can Be

The army slogan "be all that you can be" isn't only for the military. It is really an American mantra that is drilled into our progressive, workaholic minded culture.  There doesn't seem to be a balance between work and life and instead the lines become muddled in gray. Being a married woman with no children, the impact of this truth hasn't really hit me as hard as it could. I know that work is healthy, keeps you grounded and gives you purpose. However, when visiting our neighbhors recently to see their new bundle of joy, this truth hit home. Here was a family with their first child and the mom was going to stay at home and raise the child. I was immediately defensive and jealous. Much to my own dismay, I launched into a speech of how impossible it is for two parents to have this option, when the "option" was right in front of me. They were choosing to have this balance that I so yearned for, but everything around me told me it couldn't be, it wasn't right and so on. When did our culture stop valuing mothers for mother's sake? When did daycare take the place of what only a mother can do? I can't say, but I am sorry to see it is a different world than the older generation experienced. 

My mother raised six children on one blue collar salary. She tells me that it is possible and I smile and say in my head 'not true.' In an effort to be progressive and career minded, values have gone out the door. There are strangers raising the next generation and still with all the money, power and equality, people are more unhappy than ever. What will it take to "be all that we can be" for real? Take back your life even if in small increments and don't sell out the one life you have for the approval of those who don't have to live your life at all. This sounds so preachy, but is so true. The lack, the lack and the lack. Simplicity is so much more than just having less. It is taking less on to have more.

Consumer Rights Make You Want to Drink

Sundays always find me introspective, a bit pessimistic, and blogging. Curious to find if artists greatest work was accomplished on such a day when the weekend is over, the money has been spent, the late night partying optimism has been laid to rest and a keen awareness that Monday is right around the corner. 

Not that there has to be a storm cloud behind every sunbeam, but somehow when the winter is long and below zero is the temp for the 1st of March, it is hard to feel alive and light hearted. Today for the first time in a couple of weeks, I added some new items to my Etsy store. It is always like putting yourself out there into the cyber world to be viewed unabashedly by the consumer's critical eye. Feels kind of naked and vulnerable. My favorite are the convos with detailed questions that I quickly and thoroughly answer, but then never hear a bloody thing after that... not even a thank you. It is part of the consumer right - to inquire without obligation. With one my new posts today, I blatantly laid it out there that the item was flawed, but take it or leave it. I kind of felt like I had to defend myself with this disclaimer after all the critical remarks you get.

So, with that, there are Sundays contemplations and maybe time for a beer to end this with a bang.