It was Mother’s Day Weekend for us as we celebrated on Saturday at our place with my brother and his family, and my mom, and then had a mothers’ brunch on a gorgeous Sunday with Luke’s mom, nana, my mom and Grandma Vitti, along with a bunch of non-mothers like luke, his sister monica, her dad Michael, her uncle and aunt Tom and Carrie and Chiara.

Chiara made a beautiful gift of her handprint on a white tile. She managed to get both blue and purple handpaint and make a perfect impression of her little hand. Before I had seen this Mother’s Day gift, she had a conversation with a dad, Ed, at her music class in which she asked him what his favorite color was. He said blue and she said, My favorite color is blue and purple and white.

But my big gift today was when I asked Chiara to pick out which shoes she would wear today and she said her pink jellies, or the plastic candy-colored sandals that have ankle straps. She said, I want to wear my jellies, but mommy, can you snap them?

So I said, sure, I’ll snap them for you.

And she replied, “You’re an expert Mommy.”

Grandma Mimi gave Chiara a tie-dyed dress today and in the gorgeous spring light, she looked as brilliant as a sunburst. You can see her jelly sandals on her feet!