enjoyables

it's hard not to be in a good mood today. BECAUSE LAUREN CLEANED MY WHOLE HOUSE. on friday i woke up bleary and weary, with that killer "just-hold-it-together-till-noon-and-lauren-will-be-here" attitude that makes me such a winning companion in the morning.

and she did come and she did make it all better.

so, with my cleaning calendar cleared for the weekend, i got to do fun things, like cook & blog & enjoy my family.

i thought today i would share some of the things we're enjoying lately (youngest to biggest):

{wee}
news: wee has a new tooth (her first) and she likes feeling it with her tongue and making loud sucking noises with her lips.

fun: she likes getting on all fours and bouncing. also grabbing things with her fists and pulling hard (especially a certain head of curly hair).

{little}
books: lately she's really into the adventures of two pocket dogs named biff and buff.
songs: we've been singing the music from An American Tail, in particular, "somewhere out there," another one about there being no cats in america (sha!), and the one with the duo-it's-truo.

{krista}
food: after a long summer hiatus from cooking i finally turned on the stove this sunday and last. we've been trying some new things. i recommend this and this and these and THIS THIS THIS. we also had a tasty potato leek soup because i went buck-wild at the produce market.

inspiration: get ready for this one. are you ready? diet coke in the shower. it's the biggest discovery since reading in the loo. please take a moment to appreciate my twisted genius.

{bim}
work: all day and into the night, with small breaks saturday & sunday. doesn't sound that fun to me, but whatever.

play: no matter what game they're playing, the girls are always cackling with laughter.

fya powa

friends, there is this fire here. SERIOUSLY HERE. we woke up to an orange glow outside our windows and the house filled with the smell of smoke. the good news is, our eyes and noses are really watering, so i don't think we're all that flammable.

here we were having such a nice, mild summer and then a hot day comes along and THE HILLS EXPLODE. but at least it's hot.

over and out.

dear walt

sing us a song! it's a hot summer day. they're evacuating the hills and ash hangs in the air. there is smoke in our various noses. despite all this, here we are, *still* in possession of home and family.

i've been thinking about fear and uncertainty lately--how i have been spared the worst of it for a long time. in my single years i'd panic every so often {what if i lose my job? what if i can't afford rent or groceries?} but always there was the glorious fact of my family. there are just so many of them. i knew that, come failure and disaster, i would never want for love, support and, of course, money if i needed it. i'd recite this fact during uncertain times; it became like a mantra and its comforting echo still rings for me.

granted i never rose so high that i'd have far to fall. i have made mostly safe, predictable choices. no flood, fire, earthquake or hurricane has {yet} threatened. and even though we all wonder what sacrifices the suffering economy will ultimately ask of us, well.
it hasn't asked too much yet.

and so, until then, thanks be for the comforts we have today. what else can we do but keep living our spontaneous and ordered lives? find places where we're needed close to home, and reach further if we can. thanks to all of you who do.

take it away, walt.

"Spontaneous me, Nature,

The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,

The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,

The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimm’d bank—

the primitive apples—the pebble-stones,

Beautiful dripping fragments—

"The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)

Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,

The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at rest,

The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d long-round walnuts;

The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,

It has done its work—I tossed it carelessly to fall where it may."

*-The Whit{man}

More Cute Things From Little

(bim blogs! woo hoo! -krista) and now, the paternal perspective (or, if you will, peepee):

Little is so much fun right now and says so many cute things. I am sure I am forgetting many, so I need to write these down before I forget any more.

Little:

Earlier this week, I was using my laptop at the table. Ally was sitting on my lap and pointed at the touchpad and said "can I do this?" I said she could, and she started moving her finger on the touchpad and watching the white arrow move around the screen. Then she started repeating as she moved the white arrow, "I'm gonna buy this. I'm gonna buy this. I'm gonna buy this." It makes me wonder what her mom does while I'm at work? At one point the white arrow moved into the long blue bar at the bottom of the screen (where all the open programs show up) and said, "Oops, it fell in the water!"

A couple of weeks ago, I heard Little wake up and went into her room. She got up and I suggested we say a morning prayer together. She said it and prayed for doughnuts. (We often go out together for doughnuts on saturday mornings, but I think her grandfather on her mother's side first got her interested in doughnut runs.)

Another time Little was saying a prayer on the food and was kind of mumbling along, then said, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Amen."

Little doesn't usually want to go to bed at bedtime, and a month or two ago she prayed in her night prayer, "Hemmena Father, gaint du (thank you) mommy, daddy, baby sister. I don't want to go nigh nigh. Christ Amen." She may have said a little bit more, but what I remember most is her praying that she didn't want to go nigh nigh. Her mom and I talked about how it might be an opportunity to show her the power of prayer and let her stay up, but she really is much happier and feels better the next day when she gets a full night's sleep. So we still made her go to bed. But it helped me understand a little better why God doesn't always give us exactly what we pray for, while God wants to give us what we ask for (like I wanted to let Ally stay up because she prayed for it), sometimes he knows that something else is even better for us (even though I want to give Ally most of what she asks for, I want even more for her to be healthy and happier longer and not to have things that are harmful to her).

Little usually refers to her body in the plural, e.g. "can you help me put my shirt on my bodies."

Cute Sayings and Doings

Ever since Little started talking, I have been meaning to compile a list of cute things she has said and done. I decided to compile them in blog posts and drafted the following in March (2009), but never posted it. I am finally getting around to it, but some of the info is now out of date (e.g., she has learned to say her "L"s; and instead of the strings on oranges, she now calls almost any vegetable or nut that she doesn't want to eat "beans." If she eats my cereal with nuts, she'll make it clear she doesn't want any "beans" in her cereal, "No beans!")

Little:

We have a gas burning fireplace with some fake logs. One day, Little pointed to the logs and called them "Fire Poop!"

Little loves to eat oranges, but is always careful to make sure there are not white strings on the slices before she will eat them, sometimes she calls the strings "beans" and tells me "no beans" before she will eat the orange slice.

When Little is running around playing with friends she often calls them "Guys" (as in, "C'mon Guys!" or "Hey Guys!") or "Every-body" ("C'mon Everybody" or "Everybody run in circles" or "Everybody clap-a-hands"). The other day she said "C'mon Every-guys."

Little's favorite game as a young two year old appears to be running in circles and will try to enlist everyone in the room into running in circles with her, "C'mon Everybody" "Everybody run in circles."

When Little was around one and she would get frustrated, she would lash out with her hands to hit something. She got a few stern rebukes for hitting her Mom in the face and soon stopped hitting other people. She switched so that when she would get frustrated or angry she would hit her own face and then she would give you a very serious look to let you know she meant business.

Little has a bit of trouble pronouncing her "L"s and they often come out sounding like "Y"s. But it melts my heart to hear her say, "I Yuv You Daddy."

Little also "Yuvs" juice. It is really cute to see her make the sign language sign for juice with her little finger swinging in the shape of a "J." She calls cranberry juice "cram-uh-na juice."

Around the time Little turned two, she became one of the youngest backseat drivers. I was driving around a curve in the road and got a little distracted. Because I was distracted the car was not turning as tightly as it should have, when I noticed, I over corrected jerking the car back into its lane. This startled Little, who exclaimed in a very serious voice, "Whoa, Daddy! Careful drive car!"

Little loves to do both jobs in many of the games we play with her. Sometimes she'll ride on my back, or hold onto the waist of my pants and put her feet on my calves as I crawl around. She calls this "ride Daddy's horsey." When she is done riding Daddy's horsey, she almost always wants Daddy to "ride Little's horsey." She will crawl around while I walk on my knees pretending to ride on her back. Sometimes she'll run to me and want me to lift her up and swing her around. She calls this "run for Daddy." Then she'll want me to run to her and she'll grab the sides of my legs and try to swing me. She call this "run for Little."

Pictures of Little from February 2009:

Picture of Little from January 2009:{watching the inauguration}

summer. it's the thing right after spring.

{ Little tells me about once a day that she has to go bye-bye to see grandma & grandpa}

{i waffled a little on posting this next picture. on the one hand, Wee is sprouting a large and embarrassing head flower.
on the other hand, Bim looks hot.}
{what would we do without this guy? probably tie big rocks
to our ankles and jump in the lake. maybe not. but probably.}

today in the world

i caught Little staring at my wedding ring today.

"do you think my ring is pretty?"

"it has stars in it!"

{click photo to enlarge}

"...it's colors! it's jingle bells!"

speaking of stars and colors, get a load of this boy's eyes. love you, PJ.

the anniversary post

yesterday my nephew asked me to tell him my favorite song. ridiculous crazy-face. i told him i could try for a top 5 or 10, but even then i felt stumped. i named a few beatles songs, some nanci griffith, deb talan, lyle lovett, counting crows, lucinda williams. oh! the be good tanyas. but it was like trying to choose which of my children i love best (in a scenario in which i have 100,000 children). then he asked me which of my children i love best. these are tough questions with really easy answers: i don't have a favorite. i have lots of favorites. go watch TV. oh, it's still stolen. go outside and play.

but then tonight i was out celebrating with bim (a little something they call a four-year anniversary) and the movie we went to see used an instrumental version of this song. it sparked a memory of listening to placido domingo sing it on one of my parents' records. i love it. especially this version. it's funny because it's true.

just like my love for bim, who definitely makes my top 5 list (you're welcome, babe). tippy top, actually.

four years may not seem like a long time. and if you compare it to infinity, it's not (if there's anything i learned in first grade). but if you compare it to 3 months, which was bim's relationship record to that point, i made out like a bulldozer.

{that image just works on so many levels.}

these four years have been full of goods, though. lots of different views out of different rental units, lots of furniture being rearranged. i've had two babies, bim has had none (technically), though we share the two i had. he's gone from student to clerk to daytime attorney and after-hours super hero. i've gone from inept PR person to queen of my domain.

and may i just say here how happy i have been? every day for four years i have begun and ended my day with the same prayer: thank you for bim.

don't these people look confident? it's like they know how ridiculously easy marriage is going to be. this is to bim, for making it that way.

"and time after time
you'll hear me say that i'm
so lucky to be loving you."

the baby in the bubble & the boy with the baboon heart

random stuff to look at:

i'm a fan of baby bubbles. the girls' awesome grandma natalie knows this and has provided well for our wee. so soft, so comfy, so simple.

yeah, that's right. beef jerky. yeah, i did. SO WHAT?!

smells like meat.

(she wasn't done with that.)

sunny mornings.

these two

...in the next episode of 'the adventures of snot sucker & the beans: when is it time to give up the nap?