ELDER LOVIN, IN THE CITAAYY

this is my baby brother blake. my baby brother blake is an old man now and i can barely stand it. where did the time go? he's leaving on a two-year church mission in just three short weeks and i can't even deal. is this the little girl i carried? is this the little boy at play?

so blake is here this week so i can pinch his cheeks and give him lots of noogies and remind him a million times about how i used to change his diapers when he was little, and also so he can go to the nintendo store one more time. it's been so great having my family here. i'm trying to make sure i get all two years worth of obnoxious big sister stuff taken care of in one go, it's a tall order.  

so what else is there to say about blake . . .  besides the fact that he's hot and gets all the ladies. (p.s. blake hijacked my laptop just now and wrote that himself.) okay, here's what else there is to say about blake. blake started walking really early, and he had this amazing bow-legged old man shuffle that we loved. we would watch him putter around the house in his little footie pajamas when he was about nine months old and giggle at how adorable he was. he was just about the cutest thing.

blake went through this really fantastic phase when he was about six or so where he watched a lot of japanese cartoons. one time he organized this massive pokémon tournament for all of the neighborhood kids. sudden-death rules, handmade fliers all over town.... oh no, he's telling me it was yu-gi-oh. whatever. it was amazing. 

i call this, the three randys! big randy, little randy, female randy.

i really did change a lot of blake's diapers. and he's spit up on me soooooo many times. i was 13 when he was born, my dad was doing a lot of traveling overseas, and my mom had my two sisters to take care of too, so a lot of the time i really did feel like blake was my baby. i remember watching him play in a burger king play area while my mom took my sisters to a dentist appointment, and this older couple kept shooting me the dirtiest looks thinking i was some unwed teenage mother. i thought it was kind of funny and didn't bother correcting them.

thanks to blake i learned how to properly burp a baby, how to slowly bounce and sway the fussies out, how to swaddle good and tight, and how to reinsert a pacifier one-handed while simultaneously talking on the phone and flipping the pancakes. blake made me a better mother. he made me a calmer mother. i'll owe him for that for the rest of my life.

blake is a great brother-in-law. blake is always on brandon's side, even if brandon's side happens to be pretty dumb. i had a hard and fast rule growing up that any guy i dated had to really like my little brother. not just put up with him, but like him. you know, little brothers can be sort of obnoxious to their big sister's boyfriends sometimes, and a few of the guys i dated would sort of look at blake with a wary eye, like, how long do i have to play with this kid before we can leave? but with brandon, it was instant. it wasn't so much that brandon had patience for blake, but that brandon got blake. brandon and i spent our first christmas together when we were dating back in 2002, around the time that Blake And The Incident With The Bran Muffin went down, and that pretty much sealed the deal for me. (another time.) 

blake, we are gonna miss your face. you are such a stinker and these next two years are going to be so good for you. what a fun time to be a blake. i can't wait to see how your mission molds and shapes you. i can't wait to see how you come out the other side. 

p.s. blake also makes rad choices in footwear.

more of blake in ye olde archives past: 

HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE

and i wrote a little bit of fiction inspired by blake once, you can read that HERE.

oh i almost forgot!

on me: 

high waisted black denim + silk boy shirt: madewell

clogs: c/o nina z

wool socks: camper via j.crew

(similar HERE)

on me again:

airbrushed tee: custom marc jacobs

(going on all month at their bleecker street location!)

jeans: h&m

shoes: saltwater sandals

(size down!)

on huck:

tank: american apparel

leggings: thief and bandit

shoes: toddler birks