SLOWING FOR HAPPINESS

1/ 14 weeks and a kitchen sink of garden roses

2/ iced tea cooling in the kitchen

3/ the last week of nap holds as a 23 month-er

4/ morning chats from bed

5/  husband in the early morning, talking to me at the foot of our bed

6/ packages for my shop

7/ hand holds

8/ tired eyes 

9/ a quiet sunday moment

every morning lately, i have been slowly given a hot cup of creamy coffee in bed and as i take my first sips, my husband opens the blinds on all three of our bedroom windows and sits at the foot of our bed (photo 5). he rubs the tops of my ankles and asks me about my day ahead, what i want to do. see. accomplish. 

god he looks beautiful in the morning light. his eyes are always smiling before his mouth.

i, on the other hand, usually feel like a wreck, my hair tangled in knots that look like a meteor's crashed into and my nighty is always twisted somewhere wrong on my body. my shoulders ache from holding our almost two year old in my arms all night and i yawn and usually tell him i'm not sure, except i just want to be happy.

happiness hasn't always felt the way it has today. especially today. it used to look a lot different for me. it used to be something tangible, something i could reach or taste or hold. a place i would have to uncover or journey to. an end product. 

but now, it's diluted to a necessity. my happiness is burrowed in what i feel, how i feel when i approach it, the pressure my body reacts to when pressed up right beside it. it's often as simple as walking outside to our garden, wondering what hour our first rose bloomed. it's as simple as sitting my baby boy on top of the counter with his messy, played-in shirt, listing off the ingredients that go into our smoothie. it's as simple as my husband bringing me home a bag of berry skittles or him telling me he finds me beautiful in a moment i would have never considered. it's going to a nursery and picking out the palest pink of snapdragons or finding a documentary on netflix that both excites our eyes. 

it's nothing more than the life that encircles my own. it's the house of all that's built around us. it's the bloodline that links me back to where i need to always stay: in a state of perpetual gratefulness with a deep understanding of the contentment the floods our face when we close our eyes and know exactly what - and who - we see.