This was the winter I fell in love with writing again.

I have always, always loved to write — and my mom will be happy to tell you about my elementary school librarian who once predicted that I’d be a writer. The thing is, whenever I get a little time on my hands, I end up writing. The last time this happened was when Erick and I were living in New York City; he’d just been accepted into the PhD program at UC Berkeley, I had just finished a master’s program in photography. Our days in New York were numbered, so I was tutoring and doing freelance photography to fill the remaining time. Except I mostly ended up writing.

Well, now I have a little bit of time again. That may sound counter-intuitive, because I’m a busy mama. But I have two good nappers (and one horrible napper who goes to preschool 3 days a week), the kids are in bed before 8 every night, my husband is busy, and I’m not working. Enter writing, stage right.

I just wanted to explain why you’re now getting an average of 2 posts a week from me, when I promised only that I would post a minimum of once a month when I started this blog 9 months ago (In case you’ve been thinking, “Good God, WHY won’t she stop!?!”). Back then, I didn’t realize how much this blog would feed that part of me that needs to think things through in writing, I didn’t realize that it would become an outlet for the adult conversations that I’m not able to have during this season of life, and I didn’t realize how well writing would fit with my current life. (Also, some people have said nice things about my writing, which of course only encourages me to write more. So really, it’s your own fault.)

Inspired by this new outlook, I decided to do a little spring cleaning on the blog. You may have noticed some minor tweaks to the format. For instance, it now has categories. And a snappy new tagline: “Life. Motherhood. Vermont. (Not necessarily in that order).” But I also figured that I needed a new icon to represent The Pickle Patch, not just a snapshot of our family.

So recently, when the girls were napping — and clearly it was a LOOOOONG nap — I started thinking about an icon that would represent everything The Pickle Patch stands for. I looked down at the creeping kids’ stuff all over the Sun Room floor. Conveniently, all of the play food had migrated down from the Rec Room and was spread out across the carpet. Inspiration struck, and here is the new Pickle Patch icon, which is probably visible as a thumbnail somewhere on your page:

What do you think? Too much?

(Postscript: I should have made a “making of the icon” video, but didn’t think of that until it was too late. Instead, you’ll just have to picture me Scotch-taping a toy pickle to our Sun Room window).