Hanging Up

Yesterday I hung up two items. We've only been in the house for a year and a half, so putting things up is still happening sporadically. It's also a novelty to poke a hole in the wall and know that it's our wall, not someone else's wall, and no landlord will assess a "damage" fee for hanging up pictures.

Not long ago when the Monkeys were bouncing on mom and dad's bed (they are allowed to do this) and thumped into the wall, and the picture hanging on that wall suffered a mishap. The frame stayed attached to the wall, but the picture under the glass slid to a cock-eyed angle. It was the Papal Blessing on the occasion of our marriage. The framing job was a hasty home job, just the paper stuck under the glass, so I took this accident as Time to Reframe. Our friendly neighborhood frame shop owner did a marvelous job -- gilt frame with a red velvet mat -- and so I rehung the blessing over our bed.

The Pope was John Paul II, but the picture was from early in his pontificate, not as I remember him, World Youth Day 2000 in Rome and World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto. I had been able to obtain the blessing through my parish at the time of our marriage. I thought it would be a reminder of our original plan to "elope" to Rome for our wedding. After the large scale affairs of our siblings, we wanted something small. Really small. As in, we each travel to Rome with a friend/witness and get married there. I knew several priests who gladly would have met us there too. We went so far in the planning of this as to investigate several "destination wedding" planners and find out what we would need in terms of paperwork and permissions, to fulfill both secular and Church requirements for marriage. But I got cold feet, and woke my fiance up in the middle of the night, tearfully saying "I want my Mom to be there." "Okay," he said sleepily, and that was the end of Rome. So we have the blessing instead.

The other item I hung up was a Growing Tree. I had wanted for a long time to have an on-the-wall record of our Monkeys' height growth, but I wanted it on a removeable surface, not directly on the wall, in case we move so it can go with us. The major delay in this project was obtaining a piece of cardboard tall enough. While clearing out a closet recently, I came upon the box that had transported the crib mattress through several of our moves. Deciding that the crib mattress in question, now under its second child on the toddler bed, will need to be replaced rather than stored, the box was ready for recycling. Or reusing. "Re-purposed" is the current popular term, I believe. I cut open the box and painted a tree on the cardboard, glued a measuring tape alongside the tree, marked the height measurements of the Monkeys at birth, 1 year, 2 years, etc. and stuck it to a door. Monkey1 has markings including 4 years of age, while Monkey2 has markings to 2 years. (Picture here.)

Every few days the Monkeys will ask to be measured, and since we're better than six months since their last marked measurement, the growth is significant. Of course, they also ask Mom to be measured, and really laugh that I'm off the chart. I made the Growing Tree one-inch shorter than my height... just a little delusion that my kids will stay small.