mornings like these.

Yesterday was the three month hump ... our sweet baby Hunter is now 3 months old!  (his 3 month post coming!)  I remember this point with Judah.  Things began to feel "right".  We started Judah on a eating/sleeping schedule closer to four months and even just with that, our lives began to have a sense of normalcy again.

Ironically (not!), this morning specifically had a feel of normal.

Judah was a bursting bubble of energy.  My laundry still sat unfolded in the family room.  Hunter napped off and on.  Judah's toys were strewn all over the place.  My dishes were piled up around the kitchen sink.  I stayed in my pyjama shirt (until my husband came home!).  My coffee was in my hand all morning, and never got drank because it got too cold.  We decided to have baths because it had felt like a while since the last one...

It was just normal, but it felt so good.  Almost like a light had turned on and I realized, "...this, is my normal."  Normal isn't perfect, nor is it stunning.  It's just right.


pic pix: our tower building this morning, 06.Feb.2014, in the living room

language of color.

I've always been drawn to color and know that it's always made things make sense for me.  Right down to making sure the different shades of green on my socks and on my shirt "match", I knew it was integral in my life.  Even at a young age, I was told I had an eye for color.  Somehow, shades and hues just speak to me.  Most multiplication answers, numbers, memories, words, etc. have a color association in my mind. One of my roommates used to ask me what I saw when I closed my eyes and thought of specific words.  It became a game of swirling colors!

I knew color was special to me, but it wasn't until I was in my early 20s when I realized how much color meant to me.  It was winter and I had a day off, so I decided to take a drive out to the mountains.  I don't remember the specific place I went, but I do remember the thoughts I had, I wish it was spring, summer, or fall so I could at least photograph something with color.  I still got out of my car and went for a small hike anyway.

As I looked around me, I just saw a white, nearly colorless place.  The evergreens seemed dull and the all the other ground was covered with bleakness.  Regardless of what it looked like, being out there helped me feel closer to God and that's what I was after.  I'd never audibly heard His voice or really felt like I "heard" him before, but I talked to Him anyway.  That day, I remember asking specifically if He'd somehow speak to me.

 At one point, I closed my eyes for a minute or so, and when I opened them again ... I heard Him.

"If you look the right way, you can see the whole world is a garden..." ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

The gold moss seemed  to pop off the north faces of the trees.  Greys and purples radiated off of the rocks close to me and the mountains in the distance.  Branches and their twigs' ends were like black polka dots.  The trunks of the birches were no longer just white, but an off-linen-white.  What was once insipid and colorless, now spoke life.

Colors no longer were just beautiful, but living.  It's like it just hit me, God speaks to me through His creation, through His colors. 

Now, to me, when I see color, it's God's way of speaking to me.  When I see a pallid landscape, if I just look further and listen deeper, I see the colors.  I hear His voice.  He gave me my eyes to see through, and what I see AND hear is a gift - His voice.  

And secondly, my special language with Him.

pic pix: out my window this morning, 13.Jan.2014, at home

time.

cream in the coffee. from Sarah Nadine Arsenault on Vimeo.

Part of my goal list for the next 4 months includes a reading list.  I've been captivated with some of the intriguing facts found in "Moonwalking With Einstein"...especially pertaining to time.

Since I became an adult, it seems like someone is always telling me that time is only getting faster, and that it will only continue to do so.  After having Judah, I started wondering if Matt was changing the clocks to get me to go to bed earlier.  How can it already be time for bed?  Even now, I find myself asking: Where has the time gone?  It has already been 7 months since he was born!  How?

All I can picture is this snowball of time that gets faster and more reckless as it tumbles down the hill.  But once it hits the bottom, it just breaks apart.  At that point, no one is judging the speed anymore, they are just noticing that the snowball's time is done.

Ok, maybe a bit morbid, but essentially, it is what we keep telling ourselves time is - an increasingly fast moving snowball.

There is definitely a truth in how we feel like time is occurring (relativity speaking), but truthfully, time doesn't/can't change for an individual at any age.

"Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older."

Remember being a kid on summer vacation and not knowing what day it was?!  Or thinking that you literally waited an eternity at the hairdresser's for your mom to get her hair done?  Dreaming about what you would do when you were an adult, when you were in charge of your time?!  William James (Principles of Psychology) explains this curious time-warp perception: "In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day.  Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous and long drawn-out....But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse."

"Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it...Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives."

We need to make day-to-day memories, change up our schedules, take vacations, create as many new mental polaroids to engrain into our memories.  Those first few months of being a mom, every day was exactly the same and one day just morphed into the next because there were no new memories being made (side note: becoming a new mom is a new memory in itself...I'm not being hard on myself, but merely using it s an example and realizing this is why that time felt like such a blur.).  

Even if it is one thing a day that I mix up, I need to make each day momentous to "stretch" my time and make it worth living through.  I need to be creative, be open, be flexible with it.  I'm so excited with this new perspective, that I don't need to live my life believing that time only runs away and gets shorter...the challenge now: to live my life creatively & purposefully in the FULL amount of time given to me.

all quotes taken from Moonwalking With Einstein - Joshua Foer

pic pix: cream in the coffee > making time fun, May.2012

why blog?

Some people blog about a hobby, to display their photography, to communicate with their clients (as a business), to share their expertise, to express their opinions ... why do you?

Tonight, I heard this lady's experience about how she started writing a blog (just last month!) and the steps/stories leading her to it.  Perhaps a wee bit coincidental ... my question "why do you blog" was already titled to this post (in my drafts).  Coincidental, or maybe just that I am more curious to hear about your blogging story after hearing her talk about hers (which started differently, has a unique humor, has a different message to share, etc).

When I was in high school, I was part of this sociology type class where the question was asked:  What 5 things do you want to accomplish by the age of 25?  We were told to dream big, set no limits.  These were my 5 written items:

1. learn a language
2. travel the world
3. fly a plane
4. open a cafe
5. write a book

Surprisingly so (and God-graced), these "dreams" really weren't that far fetched.

1. learn a language - I had taken high school french, but really wanted to know spanish.  So that I learnt!  No, I am by no means fluent ... but I do understand and connect with it.

2. travel the world - Working for an airline allowed me opportunities to travel 4 different continents (including places I got to use some spanish!).

3. fly a plane - For my 21st birthday, Matt (who was taking flying lessons at the time) surprised me with a flight lesson ... and I can proudly say, I flew that little Cessna right over the beautiful Foothills and successfully landed it.

4. open a cafe - This was a dream I thought wouldn't happen until I was older with older children, with more money, etc, etc.  It was an overnight decision a friend and I made to DO something and not just work for "the man".  Alas, SPROUTS was founded.

5. write a book ...

As I am now 26 and writing this, I did not "technically" accomplish my last goal.  In November 2009, I thought by writing a blog I would one day (by the end of my year as a 25 year old) have material to fit into a book/ideas to go off of.  I wanted to somehow incorporate my photography, God, God's beauty, and truth.  I came up with the name "The Object of Today" from the idea that one of my images would give me inspiration to speak about ... it would be the day's "object" to look at and my words would be the "object lesson" of a message that was on my heart.

That 1st post has now brought me here: adding/sharing new objects in my life (like this little boy!), learning new and sometimes old object lessons along the way, making new friends (whom I have never seen face to face but can relate to what they blog about), and realizing a lot about myself through what I write.

What are some of your blogging "roots"?  What prompted you to start a blog?

Let me know in a comment below or by posting your own post on why you blog (and link to this post so I can read it!) ... I'm interested to read them!


pic pix: back in April @ the Main Dish, Apr.2012