I love this wonderful photo that Amy Turn Sharp submitted of her son Blaise. You can see the full series of shots over at her blog.

My son Conan is pretty much weaned now, at 13 months. It's been about a week since he last nursed, and he's perfectly happy without it. I have mixed emotions about it — on the one hand, it is SO liberating, but on the other hand it's the end of a really close part of our relationship, a connection we will never have again. But time moves on, and my little guy is rapidly metamorphosing from a baby into a toddler.

Thinking back on my early experience of breastfeeding, the thing that really jumps out is that I never, NEVER believed that we would make it through a whole year. For the first 2.5 months nursing was excruciatingly painful for me. Besides the physical pain, I felt like a total failure because I was constantly in a state of dread regarding the next feeding. A good mama would WANT to feed her baby, right?

That special one-on-one nurturing bonding time that I had so hoped for during pregnancy sure took a LONG time to materialize. I nearly gave up on so many different occasions. In retrospect, only my sheer stubbornness and a sort of twisted sense of maternal self-sacrifice kept me going. Now, a year later, I'm glad I did. Because as horrible as the first couple months were, the later months really did make up for it.

Continue reading "Breastfeeding was crazy hard, but weaning is sad too" →

Mama C-Ta says of this beautiful portrait of her and her son Julian: "Nursing my 2 year old — I want to capture it before it ends which can happen without a moments notice."

Photo by Sherry Insley

This is Joriel's son, Sagan, rocking his rainbow umbrella on one of Seattle's many drippy winter days…

This may take some serious carpentry and creative skills, but your little dinosaur-lover would "snap" at the chance to sleep here. The textured face… oh, and the way the mural on the back wall extends the body… those vicious teeth! What a flippin' fantastic themed bedroom. This sure beats the heck out of my Strawberry Shortcake canopy bed!

Kudos to 3 Murphy's and family for stepping outside the proverbial box and creating a memorable and fun space to play, live and learn in!

(found via Craftzine.com)

As a mixtape maven myself, I would *DIE* to have my little bundle o' love sporting this cute little onesie. They're hand screenprinted on 100% cotton so theyre safe and comfy for your wee babes.

They're available in 3 mo., 6 mo., 9 mo., 12 mo. and even toddler sizes, so you have no excuse not to snatch one of these adorable numbers for the lil one in your life!

HeatherJeany's shop is chock full of hand printed goodies from custom Scrabble-style notecards to odd yet unique limited edition prints, as well as darling baby-wear.

While doin' some baby-wear browsing I also came across this collection of witty little shirts and onesies from WilloToons that were too great not to ignore… I mean come on! How can you resist the "eat. sleep. rock. repeat." onesie?!?