The Upside to Cabin Fever

I've spent more time home than ever since little one arrived. She made her debut just before the temperature hit sweltering and the azaleas out front wilted away in the midday sun. Without warning, the heat of June cut short our daily outings and postponed strolls with friends until after dinner in the shade of evening. Within the confines of our air-conditioned oasis, I've teetered between going downright stir crazy and suddenly loving this home more than ever -- in large part because the little person who lives here now has transformed it. That's why it felt serendipitous to finally get around to reading the rest of Kinfolk's Home issue recently during an afternoon nap. I happened to open to an essay called "A New Lease on Life" and it was just perfect. It was everything I'd want to tell you here if its author Nikaela Marie Peters hadn't so eloquently already done so.

"When my son was born, my house became alive," she writes. "I noticed it in the first week. The structure I’d come to accept as ordinary—an early-1920s middle-class home with a stone foundation, hardwood floors and limestone moldings in the porch—started acting extraordinarily. In the otherwise silent night, save for the sounds of a suckling newborn, I was sure I could hear the house breathing."

If you subscribe to Kinfolk, you can read the essay here in its entirety. It's all quite beautiful.