Happy Birthday Krista!

Join me in wishing Sherry Carpet a happy birthday. I owe her big time! I am currently in Virginia for a big patent trial and will be here for the next few weeks. I am sad that I cannot spend the day with her. Luckily, her father is in town to celebrate with her and help out with Little. We did have a little birthday celebration on December 28, when her brother and sister and their families were still in town for Christmas. Lauren and Eric made a delicious dinner and cake. Thanks! And we did go out to eat at a nice restaurant on December 27.

Happy Birthday Krista! And happy new year everyone!

omigosh

they're coming! tomorrow! nearly* all of my hopes and dreams have come true!

let it begin.

*though bitterly missing fofee, miss kitti & daisy spots

first aid for kids

don't mind me. i'm posting this so i will remember how to access it in a hurry. just in case.

CPR for infants & children

i'm always printing it and losing it. so here it is. now i just need to keep The Beans out of trouble so i never need it.

buddha on the nest: the prego diaries

for megan h, who asked for proof.

(this post is alternately titled, the white whale redux)

i did plan on documenting this pregnancy...it just went so fast. and for some reason no one seems to want to immortalize my pregnant image on film. maybe i was less grotesque (or, shall we say, "more glowy") the first time around? not as i--or hubs--remember it. anyway, here is what i have. (for some reference, the above picture was taken at 32 weeks).

obviously i'm only including the most flattering, least revealy ones (my litmus test: would byu administration allow this photo to be displayed on campus as part of an art exhibit?). i think we can all say YES! probably.

maybe. except for this one, which demonstrates an appalling lack of dignity:

and now, for posterity, below is some documentation of Little's time in the oven.

(this is the part where you all write in to tell me how great i look and that, it's strange, but i actually seem to be growing smaller as the days go by.... but don't really. it would just be embarrassing to all of us.)

holy crap, that's a lot of pictures of me gestating. i'm all done here.

lately

happy birfday, Little

ignore the darth vader breathing in the background. operating a camera is physically taxing for me. also i don't usually get up this early.

thanks for the fun birthday mail, fam! Little loved opening the card from J, K and Grace--over and over again. the stickers were a big hit. also, she's got a sucker in her mouth (grandma N).

here's last year's birthday video.

and the year before (no action shots of that one):

laugh, choke, whatever it takes

it's a little confusing at first.

thanksgiving in eagle

harses, harses (and chickens & cows):

glowy mountains:

many, many, pies:

turkey bowl:

cat whispering (and totally asking for it):

baffling bundling:

family of four (wee not pictured):

great good fortune

ah, the joys of the morning...

must leave for our jet plane at noon and there is yet so much to do. still, here i am talking to you people. i am a foolish and a foolhardy girl.

and now, a before-thanksgiving thought, from oliver wendell holmes:

“Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.”

now, go run through some fire. happy thanksgiving. don't burn your feathers.

the adventures of snot sucker & beans

Little walked into the room calmly, just as i was wrapping up a call with a client, and said, "stuck."

so now i have an addition to my job description: suck beans from child's nose through straw.

thanks, grandma natalie, for providing the halloween straw. it was appropriately spooky and just the right size for extracting a dry pinto bean.

this has been the first entry in my new "joys of the morning" series. stay tuned for more harrowing accounts of the escapades of Snot Sucker and Beans.

mommy handler

Little is a big talker and has been from pretty much the first few weeks of life. most of what she says is indecipherable, but that doesn't stop her from being very sure of herself. clearly she's showing early aptitude for a political career.

i am proud of her for learning that saying something louder doesn't help her cause. it's pretty funny to watch her self-correct when she realizes she's overstepped the boundaries of polite inquiry, and thus set herself back several cookies. she cocks her head to the side and says, "pees?" in a most syrupy voice. what a handler of me.

today as we were reading a book she insisted that an alligator was not an alligator. this of course confused me because i was pretty sure it was. finally i figured out she was calling it a "croc-igator." just goes to prove what i so often say: you can't fool a floridian.

well. fool me once, can't get fooled ag'in.

oh, snap!

yo mama so fat, when she steps on a scale it reads, "one at a time, please."

anyone want to guess how much weight Wee and i gained last month? did you guess NINE POUNDS?

awesome! can i get a whu-whu?

in other news, mother's cookies just went out of business. our only consolation is that we did all we could.

the sun the moon and stars

now and then, in the color of the evening Little and i stumble on the perfect setting -


- to play in the dirt.

have you noticed we're on fire here? well, not us specifically, but a lot of our neighbors. it's raging out there. the smoke drifted our way yesterday and the moon was bright orange. so it doesn't feel right to exult over the weather.

but...

exult, exult, exult! the forecast says it'll be 10 degrees cooler by this weekend! happy days in the bimpire. (also tired and a little preoccupied with current events days, but still). happy days.

kind of blue

kind of sparkly

kind of sassy

kind of stripey (election day!)

kind of cozy

kind of sleepy

Little wakes up at least once every night looking for her "sassy" (pacifier). and since i am having increasing trouble leaning over her crib with my huuuuge belly, i was actually grateful last night when she refused to go back to sleep unless i took her into the living room and slept with her on the couch. feeling her little hands explore my face in the night (to make sure i was still there?) and catching sweet whiffs of her blankie--which, i am not kidding you, smells exactly like my childhood blankie--are seriously the very reasons i became a mother.

a new kind of war

IRAQ MEMORIAL

last year i focused my tribute on the servicemen we refer to as the greatest generation--in my case, my grandparents. since then no one close to me has served in the military besides my younger brother who, i am thankful to say, was never called to active duty.

that is changing. i recently met a man with a daughter Little's age who served 2 tours in iraq, one just before and one just after his daughter was born. and i've discovered other veterans walking around in plain clothes masquerading as ordinary people. it turns out most people know someone--someone young--who has been to war, though they might not realize it (as i didn't until it finally came up in conversation). have you also found this to be true?

i am sorry to admit how little i know about people fighting the current war, from the US, Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. but i don't want to let the day go by without an observance.

and so, i turn to reflections from actual soldiers:

THE NUANCES OF CELEBRATING VETERANS DAY -by david botti:
"Talking to the soldiers last summer about my own experiences in the [Iraq] war, I felt like an old man boring a younger generation with stories of "way back when." Some of these soldiers were still in high school when the war started. A 24-year-old lieutenant, whose platoon had recently lost two vehicles to roadside bombs, told me of watching the war start in his grandparent's living room as a college sophomore. In the end, I left Iraq in August not feeling as though I'd revisited a war I'd been there for the beginning of, but one that was in essence an entirely different conflict.

"Those soldiers of JSS Babil I met this summer not only face a different war than I did five years ago but they will come home to a different country. And this is important to remember as we observe Veterans Day today...read more

reader comments to this story are interesting too:
"The author doesn't realize it, but he's done a good job of describing what it feels like to be a veteran of the war in Vietnam.... Even though there were a lot of us veterans around back in the day, most of us tried our best to blend in with the rest of our generation and know well that strange look that non-veterans give when they learn that you're a veteran of an unpopular war. It's like they are trying to remember everything they've said about the war and those that have fought it since the day they first met you, or worse."

earlier this month i read steven crane's the red badge of courage. i was startled as i often am by the relevance of the young soldier's thoughts and feelings to those i imagine myself having in a like situation. good books are always teaching me to recongnize a kinship of emotion across the boundaries of time and experience, and with that learning comes a realization that, in the joys and despairs of life, nothing is far away or long ago.

may all the soldiers around the world be returned to family and peace.

:: iraq and afghanistan war veterans join the homeless

:: veterans pass legislation to be reimbursed for buying their own combat equipment

:: iraq coalition casualties

:: other people's families

through the looking glass

i bought a mirror at goodwill that needs a little love. until i decide where it belongs in the house, it sits on the living room floor awaiting its transformation by spray paint. today it captured this little lost spirit wandering the corridors of our mansion, crying out hauntingly for milk...and snoopy.

how now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time...

-macbeth act IV, scene I

our ward trunk or treat provided opportunity for near uninterrupted cupcake eating. below: Little takes the news that the candy is gone.

below: captain ahab with bug. white whale not pictured.

resume cupcake eating:


and, cleanup: click here for same time, last year

richardson family games

when hubs and i were dating he once suggested that his major reason for getting married was to have someone handy to play games with. interesting. after asking at least one important clarifying question, i nipped that expectation in the bud. figured i should let him know early that i'm not crazy for board games (unless there is rampant cheating), hate card games, have no interest in video games, am basically no fun at all, and that he should consider whether or not any of my other fine qualities might be sufficient reason to continue the experiment. i think my exact words were: "i don't get it."

turns out speed scrabble is pretty fun. we play that. (also, in fairness, i have always been a fan of Letterman's "will it float?") AND, since the day when hubs graciously decided to take a chance on me, we have developed some new family games together. like last night's "guess how long that's been there," or, "kill it now!"

it's a great game to play if you have a refrigerator. the subject of our final lightning round: the black widow spider webbed out under my computer desk. we all got into the spirit. hubs cleared the desk, i stood by with my eagle eye and broom in hand, and Little got in the way.

we took the desk out back, flushed the arachnid out with a spray bottle, and hubs torched it with a lighter. i thought that was a little harsh.

i didn't take a picture of the old girl, but here's the last one i annihilated (humanely--with a shoe).
i have to admit this is a beautiful spider, as spiders go. maybe you have to be there. but it's really not creepy like those hairy brown ones. it's sleek, efficient, and all glossed out in shiny black with that vivid red hourglass. pretty stunning. i still don't want it hanging out where my Little likes to hide, or where i like to wiggle my bare toes, but i must say it cuts an impressive figure.

and that, friends, is my last black widow spider post...i hope.

me upon my pony on my boat

lyle lovett and i are starting our own blog here. really, it's just me.* the bimpire family blog remains, and hubs has promised to contribute. keep in mind that i might give this new blog up because, hello, it's way too much work, like piano lessons and the clarinet. and the bass drum. and the ukulele. and olympic gymnastics.

until then, see you in my state of friss.

*and sometimes not even me.

p.s. is this a bad idea?

living Little

this one likes to dress herself now. there's really only one rule: no pants. alternate titles to this chapter in our lives: "i will eat this candy with no pants on," and, "i will talk to you with no pants on."

today she enjoyed many liberties, including eating a tootsie pop, french fries and candy corn, all before nap time. also, wearing tap shoes and, of course...no pants.

:: in other news, we visited a pumpkin patch (i'm still looking for the right one, Great Pumpkin. sincerity as far as the eye can see...), rode a spooky carousel (check out the freak-show horses below), and got poked in the bum on a hay ride. by hay.

:: a halloween package from grandpa & grandma halverson has kept us in candy and witch hats.

:: our friend megan came for a visit and Little took it hard when she left.

:: tried to stay warm on cool mornings as we wait for our heater to be fixed. the days really heat up still, but our house maintains a blissful meat-locker temperature all through the morning.