I'm up in Portland, Maine this weekend, visiting my former upstairs neighbors in the bungalow they're renovating and helping to celebrate their daughter Mattea's second birthday.

In the past year, Mattea has travelled from foster care in China to an apartment in Brooklyn, had a baby sister join the family, and moved from Brooklyn to Maine.

Like the photograph says, home is so much more than a series of rooms. Mattea's life so far has been full of change, but she seems to carry a ballast of confidence inside her, a sense of being at home in herself.

I wish the same qualities of resilience and good humor for Maxwell & SK's new addition--and, for that matter, for us all. Subway tiles and poured concrete, bamboo floors and beadboard cabinets--our homes are full of decisions to be made and lived with. Let's hear it for the givens: the love and care--for ourselves as well as for those we've chosen to make our lives with--that give us the energy to do all the other stuff that keeps a home running.