Feature Friday | Rainbowy

How are you guys liking this new Feature Friday addition? I have to tell you, I’m loving it. I love having a “day off” every week; but more than that, I love being able to feature and spotlight some of my favorite bloggers week after week. Giving back to this fantastic blog community makes me super happy. And this weeks blogger in the spotlight is no different. I first found Nichole earlier this year. I was doing some blog hopping, hoping to expand my reading list and landed on a beautifully written post about the innocence of childhood and the beauty of winter. Having just moved to Alaska, I was transfixed by such a beautiful description and poetically painted picture of life from a child’s perspective.  I’ve been an avid reader since.

Nichole blogs at in these small moments, where she strives to capture the wonder, beauty, and whimsy in the small moments with her children. She is also one of the editors of Write on Edge, an online writing community, and can also be found writing for Babble.

She earned her undergraduate degree in English from The University of Texas and her master’s in English from California State University.  Before having children, she worked as an English professor, teaching Composition and Shakespeare, much preferring the latter.

Nichole lives in Northern California with her husband and two children, Katie, 4, and Matthew, 23 months.

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With this past summer came huge changes for our family.

When our four-year-old daughter’s hints to enter preschool turned to pleas, we relented and enrolled her in a Tuesday/Thursday program.

I knew that I would miss her fiercely, but I didn’t realize just how much two days of school would impact our daily lives.

Those two days of preschool, added to ballet on Mondays and errands on Fridays, have left us with precious little unstructured time.

It seems that we are now running from one thing to another and I find myself rushing her far more than I’d like.

Last evening, as I prepared for an event, she watched me put on my makeup. She was full of questions, wondering what each product was for. I felt rushed and in my haste, my answers were clipped.

As I applied my mascara, she pulled out the blush and asked if she could do it for me.

“Tomorrow,” I promised.

So today, our one day when we have nowhere to be, I gathered her up while her brother napped and brought her into my bathroom. I opened the drawer that holds my makeup and brushes and asked her if she would please do my makeup.

The joy on her face was immeasurable.

The mixture of curiosity and anticipation left her wide-eyed and intent.

She reached for an eye shadow and asked…
Which brush do I use?
Where does this one go?
What’s the name of this one, Mommy?

With a huge smile, she vowed to make me “rainbowy.”

Gently, she covered my eyelids; Cloud, Shale, Phloof, Sable, Pink Freeze, and Honey Lust on one eye and Chahut, Sketch, Mulch, Ylang, and Poise on the other.

With my eyes closed, I was swept away by the sound of her voice.
Hold still…I’ll be really gentle.
This one is so sparkly!
Oh, you look so pretty, Mommy.
You can definitely open your eyes.

She moved onto the blush, Cubic for one side, Gentle for the other, which she methodically swept from eye to chin.

I was struck by how, when I do my makeup, the brushes don’t feel nearly as silky. They don’t glide across my cheeks as they do when the brush is in her gentle hand.

Confident that my cheeks were pink enough, she reached for lip gloss.

In her preschooler hand, the wand looked different…bigger.

She swiped Blizzard on my lips and onto the skin around them.

Her smile showed that she had no use for the natural lip line.

And when she passed me the mirror, I saw that she had indeed made me rainbowy.

What I hadn’t anticipated is exactly how happy she would make me look.

In those fifteen minutes, I let go.
I let her lead.
I let life slow down.

And we shared a small moment that will likely stay with us for always.

Thank goodness for Wednesdays.