One of our favorite ways to wile away the long Minnesota winter is to snuggle down, looking at a few good books.  Typically this means heading over to Half Price Books, or looking in the sale sections of Barnes and Noble or Borders.

I recently saw this article about the "best" bookstores in the Twin Cities and I am excited to try out some of these stores I've never visited.  However, I am curious to see if they really are the best, or if they are just famously independent.  One notable store missing from the list is our favorite unique downtown bookstore-- James and Mary Laurie Booksellers on the Nicollet Mall downtown near Target.  Jim introduced me to this store a while ago, and the tall shelves are crammed full of books, prints and music.  On one visit, we were serenaded by the sounds of 1950s Sci-Fi movie soundtracks.

Visitors can peruse map drawers full of botanical prints and posters from the WW2 era, as well as venture down crooked stairs to the basement where turn upon turn reveals more books.  The selection is a bit more pricey than we typically buy-- not too many used paperbacks or children's books there, and our collection of rare books consist of just one modest volume, but that one book is treasured and displayed.

Just what an independent bookstore should be, it will be interesting to see if any of these other locations can measure up, and to see more of what our Cities have to offer.

And what a break it has been!  About a year ago I took a look at this blog and thought just how absurd it was that I had left off at the place in the story where I was pregnant and miserably huge, and thought that someone might think that something dreadful had happened to me or to Noah, when in reality I just popped into Noah's room for a bit of a blankie reapplication and a hug as he naps away a yucky cold.

When labor hit, a couple weeks early I was going into motherhood thinking that I had it all figured out, especially as someone who had worked in childcare, who had been a nanny and teacher, I thought that I was ready for the challenges and emotions that would arise.  However, as I stared at my newborn little son, I was stuck with how profoundly beautiful the sight of him was that mere words couldn't describe what I was feeling.  That and a case of the "baby blues" dropped me into a writer's block that took  me quite a while to come out of.

For once in my life, I simply didn't have the words.

Which threw me for a loop. Would I ever be able to write again?  Could I possibly have the time, focus and extra me, beyond my all-consuming "Mommy-ness" to let my creative self free again?  Or was that being sucked from my body along with the milk and energy my little Marathon-nurser so readily consumed?

Only recently have I been able to think about delving into creativity once again, and quite honestly I have been focusing on the visual part of communication that I love so dearly, and have been having some small success with my portrait and product photography, which is something that I have always done as a component to my writing, especially in journalism, but only in the past year has it really been my focus.

I can't say that I will post as often, or with as much enthusiastic abundance as I did before.  In fact, as I re-read some of the thoughts of that former Carrie- BN (Before Noah) it sounds so foreign to me.  The me that is here now is a woman with a better sense of who she is, and of her own limitations.  My marriage has matured, my sense of self has matured, and Noah has matured to a wonderful and energetic toddler of 19 months.  I'm excited to write more of our adventures out here in the frigid North Country and to give y'all a bit more of an idea of what is going on with us than a status on facebook can give, and to show you, friends and family a bit more of our life.

Stay tuned!