That shot of my table full of peace pals shows you it was too dark to get a good photo of Raine

so I retired to the chair and crocheted the day away. Ling-Yen did brighten my afternoon but I had to wait for today for the sun for Raine. I am not happy with the color of her mouth and lips and wonder how much of my trouble is from cataracts and how much is just the desire to be better.

I have so much time waiting for the fabric for the AA babies' bodies that I had time to get a photo of "Peanut" Ching, dressed as a tomboy, ready for her trip to Pennsylvania. I now have three babies waiting on their bodies with the addition of Soogi from Susan Racine.

Yesterday I gave myself permission to redo her body when I found, though she is beautifully and professionally painted, her body was a much-mended bereunger body without dolly joints stuffed with some heavy off-brand poly stuffing and closed with the plastic ties.  The other odd aspect was there was a stiff wire holding the two arms up and out.

Tomorrow is cleaning day. Mary's choice not mine. However this gets this job out of the way of any work planned for next week. I am assuming that Monday will bring the fabric was all are waiting on. Since it will be Monday that Peanut leaves, I have today to clean before Mary comes to clean tomorrow. The typical cleaning the house before the house-cleaner. Actually Mary only comes to do the floors which I cannot, so she leaves me to clean everything above the floors.

Today I had planned to make baby bodies, but when I realized two of the babies were AA and I wanted a warmer brown for the bodies for them. which had not arrived from Amazon, so I decided I had better be patient and wait for it. Also I was getting worried about sending the chosen poems to Ukiah  for the booklet of winners to be given out on April 17th at the ukiaHaiku Festival. Instead of working on babies, I put that all aside to finish up the judging, which always takes more time than I think it will. However I had the letter for Sherrie and the packet of poems ready for Werner to mail when he went to town in the morning. Somehow, picking the poems was more exciting to me than I thought it would be so that I could not settle down afterwards.

Out the studio there was Raspberry sitting on the photo table in the new outfit that came from eBay the day before. This was a size 12 months so it fit her perfectly and there was no squeezing and yanking to get it on her. She is happy to be holding my newest sterling silver rattle - another bargain at $8. Her hands are just the right size to hold it.
While I worked with her, Werner came home with a new box. It was a doll from the collection of Susan Racine that I got at a bargain price on eBay. I wished I had taken a photo of her right of the box. She was dressed up very cute for the trip, but I was too eager to see her as a therapy baby in sleepers. I did cut her hair before putting the sleepers on her. Here she is! I know she should not have hair, but it was glued on so she will be  therapy baby for someone who is not as bad off as others can be.

Susan had painted her beautifully. To finish her I will make a new tan body in stead of the white one she now has and use the doll joints so her arms reach around to clasp her new mommy right. I want to stuff her with my combination of poly fill so she feels like one of my babies. I hope she relaxes and learns to smile a bit more when she gets her new matching body.
Later then, I turned my attention back to Peanut in the quest to find the right outfit for her to make her trip to Pennsylvania. This was the one that was just that much too small for Raspberry but fits Peanut fairly good except the skirt is slightly too big. We may decide to send her in jeans like the little tomboy she is. Her hair may be too red for all that pink. Something weird happened with her hair ribbon. More changes. We will see what tomorrow brings us.

This week's crew all stuffed and ready for bodies, in spite of the heat wave we are having. I the lower right hand corner of the photo you can see the really big job I did today. I put the bamboo rugs back down on the floor. I do not know how I stood the studio with the cold ugly cement floors until now. Necessity, I suppose. I did not want water pouring in over the bamboo again as it did in  January. Now I am fairly confident that we are not getting any more big heavy rains. Just trays full of new babies, On the left is Raine, then Shyann who is new to me and a Kimi who feels like an old friend.

The sun shone today, however in a different place than it was a week or so ago, so I started to photograph too late in the morning. But the babies were happy in their new jammies and eager to show off so the work went very fast. I am most proud of our newest bi-racial babies. This is a first for the orphanage so I am wondering why it took me so long to recognize how cute they are and why I was not seeking them out earlier.

Meet Grace, who is feeling much more at home today than she was yesterday. I still need more practice with the make-up for these babies. Those lips are way too pink. I hate the burgundy lips that is ordinarily used so I think I went too far in the other direction. Now in the photo I see I must find a middle way. She is such a patient dear child that I think she will be up to another visit to my lipstick palette to pick a better color for her.

Her closest cohort  is Kyra who came with her color already in her skin. She is livelier and has more confidence. She insisted on having the elephant pacifier and I find I can deny her nothing, She lacked the coordination to get it in her mouth and kept asking, "ow? ow?"  After the photo I laid her down and showed her how to drop her chin so the nipple went in her mouth. Then she was sleepy and there were no more photos of her today.

Gracie wanted a flower to match the flowers on her sleeper. I tried to explain that all that were blooming were too big for such a little girl. She just could not understand that flowers came in different sizes. She knew what size she was and the flowers on her jammies were the right size. Why were my flowers wrong? You can see she is still questioning my excuse.

Gabe was trying to say something to tell me what he wanted to hold for his photograph. He tried and I tried but we could not understand each other. Now, tonight, seeing his photo I know what he wanted. The little toy car that was in the basket. He is looking at me as if he thinks I am not very bright that I could not figure that out when he was on the photo stand. He has serious doubts about my ability to run the orphanage.

Last, but not least! is tiny Clair. I took in her jammies more last night but saw when I was holding her today that they needed  even more tucks. I think I need to think that every seam needs to be resewn. That did not happen today. Instead I weighed and registered the whole crew. Tiny Clair only weighs 10 ounces. What a tiny handful she is! Our tiniest baby ever.

I wanted to show how close the skin tones for Grace and Kyra are by photographing them side by side. Doesn't Grace look happier with Kyra holding her hand below the photo? She does need someone to love her. Who doesn't? My one small satisfaction is that I got the right lip color on Kyra.

Finally today we were able to hold the "getting your body" celebration. The studio was warm and the sun shone in on the bench so no one grumbled about it being too cold to sit model in the birthday suit.

Grace was surprised that she was first, She kept whispering, "Gabe, Gabe," but she was the closest one to my shoulder on the table  so here she. Not only do we have a Grace this week but also a Gracie of whom I am most proud because I colored her myself. 

She is still a little uptight being here at the orphanage, but there is also an AA Kyra to keep her company. I think she will feel better when we get her into a pair of jammies.

Kyra is already feeling at home here with us. I love her hands, though I think her arms need fattening up. I don't think she has been feed carefully enough. She also gets along well with Gabe so I am finding the two of them already getting into trouble together. They egg each other on to see who can do the more daring thing.

I took Gabe's one photo before he got his face painted. While I was working with him I noticed the top of chest, at the collar bone, makes a dip. I may have to resew his body before we are done. I was thinking about that and almost forgot to do his face colorings.

This is little Claire; she is only 10 inches long. I had no jammies that fit her so I took my smallest preemie sleeper and took tucks in the arms and body. I would have shortened the legs too, but the zipper was in the way.  Seeing this photo, I may have to work to find a way to hide the zipper in the next tuck. I think it can be done. Tomorrow the sun is supposed to shine and if it is here in the morning as it is now in the evening I have the best light for portraits.

Doing taxes!