Emily-ily

Artist & designer navigating family life with creativity and faith. | SAHM building her family, additional income, and a good life. #ThinkCelestial

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

America burned Japan's first gift of cherry trees. All 2,000 of them, on President Taft's direct order.

The 1910 shipment arrived in DC crawling with insects and nematodes. Agriculture inspectors condemned the lot, Taft signed off on the bonfire, and the State Department braced for a diplomatic disaster. Tokyo's mayor, Yukio Ozaki, responded by sending 3,020 more, grafted from the famous grove along the Arakawa River.

Those trees have spent a century paying the friendship back.

Four days after Pearl Harbor, vandals chopped down four of them. Park officials renamed the survivors "Oriental" cherry trees for the rest of the war to protect them from axes.

Then came the twist. By 1952 the original Arakawa grove in Tokyo, the parent stock, had nearly died from wartime neglect. Japan asked Washington for help. The Park Service shipped budwood from DC's trees back across the Pacific and restored the grove that created them. When a flood wiped out more Japanese trees in 1982, horticulturists took 800 fresh cuttings from the Tidal Basin.

These 250 new trees solve a real problem too. The Tidal Basin is sinking, and a $133 million seawall rebuild forced crews to rip out roughly 150 trees. Japan offered replacements before anyone asked, timed to America's 250th birthday.

So the genetics run in a loop. Tokyo's grove seeded Washington's. Washington's saved Tokyo's. The saplings going in this spring descend from both.

114 years of diplomacy, running on grafted branches.

[Dustin Harding ✨ awakendaysaint @dustinharding]

For a thousand years, prophets in ancient America kept a record of their people — their miracles, their wars, their encounters with the resurrected Jesus Christ.

The last of them, a soldier named Moroni, buried it in the earth, trusting it would rise again.

It did.

Read the book for free here: https://t.co/gNqpTyvsqa

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

“This was an important lesson in parenting for me. You think you’re gonna go crazy saying the same lessons over and over again, but *that’s the job.* I think a lot of parents give up on these hard-earned lessons sometimes because it seems like it’s never going to work, never going to sink in with kids. “I’ve told them 100 times.” Yes, that’s the job. Tell them 101 times, tell them 1000 times. Repeat, repeat, repeat. People give up, or they give in.”

Needed to hear this today.

*that’s the job*

[Faye L Root @littlebayschool]

Very briefly, when one of our children was around two and we were afraid they were going to choke because despite our darnedest efforts, they kept chewing on things—small things—I considered buying a “biting necklace.”

This is a very real thing I found that kids wear if they have a bad habit of mouthing or chewing objects. It’s made of rubber or something.

Quickly, though, I snapped out of it, because I realized this would ultimately tell that child that it’s okay to chew on stuff mindlessly. I imagined myself having to buy more and more replacement necklaces as they grew to be 4, 5, 6, 7 …

And so instead, we kept plodding along, being extra careful to watch them, constantly vacuuming and collecting anything that could be chewed, coaching and disciplining them to stop. We had felt like we’d tried everything and I was really worried at one point. And eventually, guess what? They stopped.

This was an important lesson in parenting for me. You think you’re gonna go crazy saying the same lessons over and over again, but *that’s the job.* I think a lot of parents give up on these hard-earned lessons sometimes because it seems like it’s never going to work, never going to sink in with kids. “I’ve told them 100 times.” Yes, that’s the job. Tell them 101 times, tell them 1000 times. Repeat, repeat, repeat. People give up, or they give in.

“Okay fine here’s a chew neckless.”

“Okay fine you can have a phone like your friend before I really wanted you to, but I’ll just put all these safety apps on it.”

“Okay fine you can drink alcohol at 16 but it has to be at home in the basement.”

You’re dealing with developing brains. You gotta be a brick wall. That’s the job.

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

I had a conversation with a brilliant civil engineer about this once.

His main point was Utah has become too conservative with their water and they are no longer recharging the water cycle. “slow the flow” is the opposite of the bigger solution because water is not being used to recharge the system as a whole.

If more water made it to the canals and rivers, then the Great Salt Lake would fill, then the water cycle would improve and “lake effect” snow would resume. More rain would fall, coursing through the creeks, aquifers, and rivers, feeding the cycle.

Utahns since the 90’s have starved that flow. They’ve choked it in the name of conservation and “retention on site”. Which means developments aren’t feeding the storm water to the canals, because the cities never expanded their canals to handle that more water, they hold it in retention ponds or tanks and it evaporates and sets locked away from the cycle.

Compound that over Utah’s rapid population growth since the 2000’s…which in turn has broken the water cycle that feeds the whole system.

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

Learned today my daughter associates the “more” baby sign with berries.

She saw a carton of strawberries on the counter and signed “more” but didn’t want one.

[Mia♡ @luxemiaa]

My grandma always said “toodaloo” instead of goodbye because she hated goodbyes. When she passed away we were on our way to bury her ashes in the cemetery and we were stopped at a traffic light. There was a red Pontiac Sunfire in front of us with a license plate that said “toodaloo” on it. I kid you not we all lost our minds and started crying.

[George Alexopoulos @GPrime85]

Not Disney, but someone definitely should. If only we actually valued the arts and invested in them, instead of just complaining.

All it would take is one or two bold American millionaires willing to gamble on art instead of worthless crap like sports or poker, and a small team of animators.

Offer each animator a fair living wage for one year and see what they make. If it works, do it again. Repeat.

[Lyndsey Fifield @lyndseyfifield]

My heart melted overhearing my 5 year-old and 2.5 year-old sweetly talking in the backseat of the car, encouraging one another and saying “Can you help me, Alice?” and “You can do it! Look! We can do it together!”

It was then I realized they were unbuckling each other.

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

@ElGranCheerio @dustinharding

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

@joyinbecomingp1 One of my top favorite films!

Always a good one to watch. Just solid filmmaking, story, and acting

[Tweet is the Work 🌷 @NoblestCalling]

One of the best pieces of parenting advice I got early on is that you don't need to be all or nothing on most things. When I wasn't producing enough with my first we supplemented a little formula and that made it possible for me to nurse till 18 months. No need to beat myself up about no longer getting the EBF badge. If your toddler is still wetting at night but trained during the day just use a pull-up instead of punishing yourself. Be flexible and do what works best for your family and your sanity.

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

@BowtiedQueenBee I’m new to the conversation on tick bites… what’s recommended?

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

The art is there.

It just matters who or what you “subscribe” to (not all of it is in our control, aka algorithms).

You can find it if you go looking for it.

Everyone interacts with a seas worth of art, good and bad, and we have to sift through it to find what really resonates with us.

Art today is branding, memes, photography, videos, animation, theatre, sculpture, painting, drawing, fashion, dance, writing… basically it can be applied to anything.

If you want to build culture…Build a movement…Support the movements that resonate with you.

We are too interconnected to be one thing anymore. One style, one era.

Rather each year there are micro eras and styles and movements.

Art has as many cultures to its own definition as there are cultures of people in the world.

Many people can part of many things.

It’s up to you to bring to light the movement you want.

And in time, history will determine which ones define our era.

[George Alexopoulos @GPrime85]

Art is a cultural save file.

It says "this is what we as a people hold in high esteem. It has no practical value other than being a symbol of our time here, what we would like to pass on and be remembered by. Please treasure it as we do, and preserve it."

For the Renaissance it was Christianity, experimentation, sensuality, mysticism, mythology. For the Impressionists, it was playfully breaking old rules and the glorification of common life. For the Hudson River school, it was viewing America as a stunning, romantic, divine symbol of the New World, a virgin land filled with potential. And so on.

Cultures that fail to produce art are forgotten. Cultures that produce crap art are laughed at.

So why are we producing so much crap?

[smv @slimvnsn]

My 3-year-old has started helping around the house and I need him to stop immediately.

Tonight he decided to clear the table. Took his plate to the kitchen with 2 hands, tongue out, full concentration. Beautiful moment. Then he came back for my plate, which still had food on it. I said I wasn't done. He said I was.

He was right, apparently. The plate was gone.

Then he helped with the laundry, which means he took a folded pile and unfolded it, item by item, with love. Grandma watched him destroy 20 minutes of her work and said nothing, because he announced he was helping and there's no legal response to that.

Then he watered a plant. The plant is fake. It's been fake for 3 years. He waters it every day and the fact that it never dies has convinced him he's incredible at this.

The finale was sweeping. He got the small broom, swept a pile of crumbs into the middle of the room, looked at it, then walked away. The pile is still there. It's his now. We don't touch it.

Every parent knows this exact math. The help costs more than the mess.

You take the deal anyway.

You take it every single time.

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

@evilmatryoshka Girl. I get you.
I’ve been there. Been doing most of my child’s bedtimes her whole life too and she’s almost 1.5 years old.
It’s extremely difficult to not have time for yourself.

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

@megha_lilly As a mom of one (and we will expand too!) this couldn’t bd more true!

Small houses are great because kiddo can explore without worrying about destroying the office, library, music room, basically whatever fancy display room you have you don’t want kids in!

[Megha @megha_lilly]

Art quality deteriorates when it becomes a hobby. Because serious men don't have "hobbies" that's for girls and idle rich boys. Any time great art has been produced it's been produced by men (and women) who treated it like a serious profession and were paid as such.

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

Results:

A busy indoor day with the toddler who is happy!

Momma was doing her best on a low day for her

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

End of the day tally:

•Bubbles spilt on the couch
•Paint water on the kitchen table
•Mandarin Oranges and Alfredo on the floor
•Laundry strewn around the living room
•Bathroom floor wet with bubbles and bath water

[Emily-ily @whisper_sight]

@LoganARobison Wow! That’s the kind of park you dream about as a kid