Did You See....

the November Anthropologie catalogue?  I've been meaning to post about it since it arrived two months ago!  The art direction was rather fabulous:

A Little Personal Piece

This is the first thing I've created (besides a freezer full of breast milk) since Robert was born.  It's a personal drawing, a re-imagined story of this little fledgling.  

My son had to stay in the hospital for 18 days after I was discharged, and I wanted to make something to illustrate that part of our story.  When the little blue jay bombed out of his nest too early, his mother kept trying to feed him, and would dive bomb anyone who got too close to her chick.  The awful part was that she seemed (pardon the anthropomorphism here) so sad.  She would perch on the electrical wires directly above him and let out these awful, keening cries all day long.

During our early preemie days, when it was time for me to go home and leave Robert for the night, I couldn't help thinking about that mama blue jay.  I probably sounded an awful lot like her too, sobbing my way down the Mass. Pike.  And I would think about her each morning, on the way into the hospital, when I would become almost feverish if I got caught in traffic.  Once I was in the hospital, it took incredible amounts of self control for me to refrain from body checking people out of path on my way up to the nursery. 

But I knew that in the end, my own little early bird was going to be just fine, thanks to all of the high tech equipment feeding him and keeping him warm.

And now he's a little chubbalub:)