This show. My love for Grace and Frankie is still going strong. The eponymous leads are marvels (and I’m a little in love with Brianna), the writing is superb, and the fashion is exquisite. (I’m kind of living and dying for the marigolds and red.) Daniel and I finished the latest season, and, not to sound like a Sad Sally, but it’s been nice to have a show to laugh over…you know, since a lot of the stuff we hear about in the news is a Choose Your Own Catastrophe.
 
This article about NYC. This fantastic article features pictorial comparisons of NYC buildings on 5th Avenue in 1911 compared to 2016. Take a look!

These cards. All hail the $1 section at Target. I bought these for Sam’s stocking last year and we started playing recently. He forgets/bends the rules on occasion, but 95% of the time he plays this game like a champ. Selfishly, I love having someone else in the house who likes games (Daniel does not). And it’s actually been really cool/sad/exciting from a parental perspective, too. I even get excited for him when he makes a match (though I can't say that he 100% shows me the same courtesy). 
 
This weather. I’m pretty sedentary by nature (obsessed reader here!), so on a typical winter day it's easy for me (notice I didn’t say reasonable or healthy) to burrow under blankets and neck to toe fleeces. That's all well and good, but then add in the fact that I'm pale in a non-Nicole-Kidman-kind-of-way and also have hermit-like tendencies, and I can start to feel a little blah in the winter. Within the last week we’ve had a string of cold days and really cold nights, and then these balmy spring-like temps rolled in and we’re all loving it. Every day we’ve been heading outside to ride assorted tricycles/motorized vehicles, feed the chickens, and sit on the grass in the sunshine. We even managed to fit in some time yesterday to investigate the suspicious destruction of two pumpkins we had previously discarded in a brush pile; Sam has determined that it's the work of a pink bear, so naturally we remain on edge and alert to all threats, pink or otherwise.
 
This planter. My amazing friend Stephanie gave me this absolutely gorgeous planter recently, and I crush hard on it every morning. It’s the color of vanilla bean ice cream—you know, the fancy kind that’s white with black flecks—and it’s been a cozy spot for the Trader Joe’s succulent I bought last year.
 
Other Things I’m Loving: I think we can say that Sam is approximately 85% potty trained (a million exclamation points). Also, Raymond’s walking, and I'm thrilled because for the longest time, when we tried to stand him on his feet he promptly turned boneless and sank to the floor. (A good limbo strategy, but not so great for gross motor skill development.)

​This pillow. While in an optimistic mood, I ordered throw pillows for our window seat. I found this Anne of Green Gables one on Etsy, and I immediately recognized a “kindred spirit.” I am determined to keep my two giant dogs and their giant jowls off of it, because if they mar the pristine white cover “my life” will be “a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.” There. That’s not too dramatic, is it?
 
This game. While visiting my family in Kentucky, Daniel and I played Scrawl, a drawing game that’s hard to explain but is basically a game of telephone using an initial drawing instead of a whispered phrase. I am an atrocious artist, and when I first got a card that instructed me to draw “a Centaur crossguard,” I thought, ****. But I persevered, and so did my cousin, Joey, who had the misfortune of always receiving my horrible artistic attempts but who didn’t complain very much (and whose complaints were always very reasonable when he did). 
 
This article. Sarah Zhang details a recent discovery of lapis lazuli in tarter (like the stuff on your teeth); just by studying this, researchers have more insight into the role that nuns played as scribes of medieval books. That summary sounds really dry (my fault) but I’m all about any article that tells us a story of forgotten women.

These panties. *Overshare alert.* One day I woke up and realized that I was wearing some not-very-cute matronly panties--all because I wanted something that covered most/if not all, of my butt. (Tushy for any toddlers reading out there.) There had to be some middle ground, I told myself, so I debated where to buy panties and after a couple of embarrassing Google searches, I stumbled upon these from Amazon. I'm planning on trying more styles, but I grabbed this bikini style first, and I really love them. (And yes, I recognize that the bikini style isn't exactly wild and free, but I just really wanted that style. Also, is anyone even wearing thongs anymore?) 
 
Other Things I’m Loving: Sam has picked up the phrase “Never, never!” which sounds very dramatic anytime I ask him to do something and that’s his reply. I finally got my life together and moved my iPhone pics to my external hard drive, and praise God, I have available storage again! And both of my kids have been into singing “Hakuna Matata” lately. This is adorable, in case you were wondering.