this and that from here and there

Assorted:

I'm probably late to this party, but spoonflower fabrics?  I can't stop staring at their stuff with allllll the heart-eye emojis.  It's a site where you can design your own fabric to be printed, or purchase any of the gorgeous fabrics already designed by talented users of the site -- and purchase any print in any type of fabric you want.  I'm dreaming of all the knits for making one hundred totally unnecessary baby clothes.  Can't do it, because they're a teensy bit pricy, but I can dream!  I'm particularly fond of this one at the moment.

How Spelling Keeps Kids From Learning.  An interesting read, particularly for parents or educationally-minded folks.

The new Lily Jade navy blue diaper bag.  I've been eyeing bags from this company for a couple of years now.  They're diaper bags that don't look like diaper bags, so, win-win, am I right?!  And this newest release might have bumped my previous contenders for favorite out of the running.  Of course, fortunately for me and my ever-changing mind, I don't seem to be at any risk of affording an almost-two-hundred-dollar bag anytime soon, so I can just keep window shopping and dreaming.  Browser shopping?  Multiple-tab shopping?  What is the internet equivalent of window shopping, anyway?

I thought this post from a wonderfully witty blog, Preventing Grace, was quite good.  Marriage: Try to be a Nicer Person.  Maybe I just resonated with it in particular; I tend to have a "Where I come from, Bucko, you just stiff upper lip and carry on!" approach to illness that I don't think is Nathan's favorite quality of mine.  Aaaaand I just so happen to be laid up super sick in bed right now with the flu, and what do you know, but if that husband of mine isn't cheerfully taking care of our kids and being so nice?  He deserves an award.

And finally, for those of you not living it, this provides some good pictures of the kind of weather we've been dealing with here in the Boston area.  So so so fun.  Nell wanted to go build a snowman the other day, so we bundled her up, amidst my warnings to Nathan that it would take longer to get the kids dressed than the amount of time they would actually want to spend outside.  Mama knows!  Within thirty seconds Nell was wailing and Ree was gasping for air in the windy chill.  So, actually, not fun.  Maybe if we could have some nice temps in the 30's, and snow you could actually walk through?  That would be nice.