My house smells of cider candles and the old artificial Christmas trees, of windows open, airing out the nursery and the kitchen after breakfast, the library during this week’s rainstorms. It sounds of baby giggling and morning news, of the washing machine and Laufey Christmas while I wash our breakfast dishes. It feels golden, warm, tender, so, so, so very wonderful, I fear I can’t consume it enough, an urgent need to photograph it constantly, capture it in the twinkle of string lights as the sun sets, the pink glow of Kit’s seersucker curtains, the front mantle, overgrown with juniper branches and flickering candles that burn between nine and midnight.
My home was made for Christmastime, for the crammed walkways to make room for our trees. It is at its warmest right now, especially this year, as Kit’s Christmas gift makes its way to us, as her stocking hangs on the mantle, as she grins up into the library tree, mesmerized by the lights and the old, old fabric candy cane ornament I let her play with (and have machine washed four times already).
I took our Christmas card pictures one morning last week. I woke up early and dressed Kit in her secondhand corduroy Christmas dress, red with a white peter pan blouse underneath. Then we padded to the library with Annie’s cookies as a reward in one hand, and I tried. I tried so, so very hard to take a sweet little picture of the two of them, of the sisters, one red and furry, the other a miniature of myself. I didn’t quite get the picture I had in my head, but I got one of Kit, looking beautiful as can be, and just ten minutes later, after she’d been changed back into her pink-striped pajamas, I captured a precious moments of the sisters, playing alone in the nursery, as they love to do, and that felt right. My baby girls, on the floor in the pajamas.
In the whole process of preparing to take these pictures, however, I discovered my old Nikon camera, stuffed in the back of my hosting closet. This camera I bought for $100 my sophomore year of college, a last minute want for a summer month spent studying art in Europe. I hadn’t realized at the time really how good it was, how beautifully it captured moments. I scrolled through its library, scrolling through pictures of my brother’s high school football games, through his high school graduation, through my cousin’s wedding, pictures of my first apartment four years ago. Random pieces of life captured.
Slowly this week, while Kit crawled behind me, I wandered the house in my pajamas and my glasses, taking pictures with my old camera. I started in the front room, the hardest to capture because of the way the sun rises. Then Kit’s nursery, pretty at all times of day. The library, dark and warmly lit. The kitchen and my bedroom right after nap time, when the sun seeps through the windows for just a few golden, blinding moments a day.
When I uploaded them onto my computer, turning up my brightness and tapping through them slowly, I felt nearly teary-eyed at how so, so similar they look to how my house feels. I’ve done it…I’ve consumed the tenderness of this tiny cottage at Christmastime, photographed in a way I’ll remember year after year after year. The light that feels like Kit’s naps with the windows open, listening to the wind chimes as she sleeps in my arms. The light of the kitchen while I eat my breakfast and while I feed her pears and bananas afterwards, as we listen to Norah Jones and clean the dishes before going on a walk. The light that feels like a cup of tea in the library, all closed in for the night, a patchwork quilt and SNL, lit by our sconces and the tree.
So here’s a day of Christmastime, as told by these heirloom photographs, starting…
In the library…
Where we plop a happy baby down and pull out her woven baskets of little toys, books, stuffies. Where we watch all hours of morning television on NBC, muted while I read my Bible and write my prayers, turned on high while we have breakfast in the kitchen next door. Where she waits for Price to come home, Annie, too. Where my mom visits after work and sits on the floor to watch Kit play.
This is the room I want Kit to remember one day, where all her first Christmases were. How it felt to nestle into our big chair, where the first few months of her first year was exclusively spent, and hear the heat click on. This is the room Santa Claus will visit, where our stockings hang, where ornaments that mean things live.
In the kitchen…
Where we switch on our gingham corner lamp the very first thing, listen to podcasts and music on a speaker. Where we clean over and over and over again, all the day long. Where I make baby food homemade, where I make lunch and dinner and a cup of tea every night this week in hopes I won’t miss ice cream instead. Where Annie sits patient, hoping everything I prepare in the crook of our countertops is honeycrisp apples or rotisserie chicken or a can of green beans.
Our kitchen is the heart of this house, where we come in and out every day, where our mail sits until eventually filed away, where Annie is fed, Kit is fed, where Price ends the night over a sink of scalding water and milky bottle parts, Noah Kahan playing as loud as he can without waking baby. I decided to leave it as simple as I could for Christmas. A cabinet of Christmas china, a wedding registry decision I’ll never regret, and my new tiny tree to hold my copper pots and pans. A kitchen tree, if you will. I hung a wreath with a green satin bow above the kitchen sink, too. And burn an Aromatique’s Smell of Christmas votive every night, nestled on a saucer from our china collection.
In the nursery…
Where I crack the windows to hear the wind chimes and feel the cool air. Where we read on the floor and Annie listens. Where we pick out what sweet and soft little outfit Kit will wear each day. Where I rock her to sleep in the mornings, in the afternoons and again at bedtime, Annie curled beside us in her pink bed that lives in the nursery now.
I wanted her room to feel like a girly, homemade, woodland wonderland. Felt and tinsel and crepe ribbon from a spool we bought for her gender reveal last October, tied around Annie’s neck as she sprinted into the backyard of our family, now bows on her bookshelves. Then two broken soft Christmas trees with copper bells on the tips, given to me by my dad in college, because he couldn’t sell them in store with broken bases. This year, I broke a ribbon spool and hot glued it to the base, good as new. Four Christmas dresses bought off of Poshmark, hung in her closet just waiting for the little girl to go to Sunday church.
In the living room…
Where we play the piano in the afternoons. Where Kit escapes the library to, to crawl around a room unfamiliar to her, interested in the coffee table, in the basket of remotes and wires, in the boxes delivered by the mailman by the door. Where I write in the corner at the secretary desk, a framed letter from my dad balanced on top, drawers filled with stationery and birthday cards and old pictures, stacks of my writing textbooks and old business cards from a life past lived. Where my dining table sits by the window, where we’ve fed people we love dearly around pretty tablescapes and flowers my dad delivers the morning of.
This room smells like my childhood Christmas, of artificial tree needles old and brittle, the smell of unpacking ornaments while Mom made dinner. I made a paper chain out of old wrapping paper and our library wallpaper scraps, sitting on the floor in our hallway, baby in her bouncy chair just watching me cut and loop and tape. We hardly ever sit in this room if not for when people come over, but every night since I nestled the candlesticks amongst the garland, when I emerge from Kit’s room after nestling her in bed, I’m overcome by the flickering light of remote candles, of the glow of the tree, cream and red and green orbs by the window. I’m left wanting to shower and bring my quilt in here, to watch a movie like we used to, on the couch my parents gave me for my first apartment.
In our bedroom…
Where we all sleep, the warmest room in the house. Where the baby monitor catches Annie before we head the bed, tiptoeing her way onto our pillows. Where we make the bed after breakfast. Where baby tosses and turns or sleeps so soundly, we take turns going to lay our hands on her back, making sure it’s moving up and down, up and down.
Winter white bedding and dried hydrangeas, a pair of glass Christmas trees dusted in glitter, and a wreath on my mirror. And once the temperature dips into freezing, dips away from random warm and sunny days, my flannel sheets will be tight on the bed, a heated comforter fluffed on top.
Gorgeous!!
lovely