Poet Mouse

This is my Olive. I am blessed to be her Noona! She is featured here wearing her birthday crown and birthday tutu that I made for her. Making tutus is my favorite new trick. The crowns, I think, will become a tradition for me with the little ones in my life. A new one each year, to supplement the dress-up box...

And this is Frederick. The book of the same name by Leo Lionni is one of my favorite children's books. When the other field mice are busy storing up grain and so forth, Frederick tends to sit in the sun and daydream. The others consider him rather shiftless, but in the dark of winter, when they've grown bored and cold, he shares his own bounty: he tells them the colors, the sounds, the images, the stories, that sustain them. He is, in short, a poet, and the book is one of very few with the moral that we should respect daydreaming.

Olive just turned one. I was thinking of bequeathment, as one does as a godparent, and I thought of Frederick, and that I would like to help Olive understand the value in experiencing the world quietly, seeing, dreaming, and storing up stories for cold days. For her first birthday I made her this quilt:
So happy first year, walking, talking girl.
And here is a lovely color to store up for the colder months.