Blanket Tents and Camel Pancakes

 I die for these boys.

 So much so that I made a blanket fort for them the other day.

 Even though they entertain themselves by destroying my house.

On a related note, I have finally achieved one of my major parenting goals: tonight I made a mostly recognizable animal pancake. I didn't get a picture of the fish or the cat, but here's the camel (although the Man says it looks like a llama).

Redesign

Tonight while the boys snoozed and the Man hung out with a friend who recently returned from deployment, I ate chocolate chocolate chip cookies and finished revamping the blog. I'm not saying it's perfect or even necessarily where I want it to be, but it's as far as my tech-knowledge-less skills can take me at present (at least until I learn Java which is, evidently, just like learning another language--mmhmm, I really believe that one). Basically you just need to go poke around a bit and see what's changed. At the top of the page you'll see four different topics if you would prefer to read only one aspect of the blog. "Books", of course, is all about what I'm reading; "Life" is self explanatory (if you need help with that one...I don't know what to tell you); "Thoughts" is generally a bit more introspective; and "Words" has to do with writing (and more will be added to that section soon, hopefully).

So go ahead and explore and then click that little subscribe button so that you won't miss a single riveting moment of Ink Blots, and I will go sleep off the massive amount of sugar and chocolate I ate this evening.

My Genetic Twitch

Occasionally I feel myself channeling one of my parents. Usually, when I say something really nerdy and then laugh at my own joke, I feel the need to touch my face and see if my dad's twitch is up there laughing with me. Or when I'm extremely friendly with someone that I don't really know, I look down at my cheerily waving hand to see if it's my mother's. Today it wasn't either one of those; today I did surgery on Rolly, Little's favourite stuffed dog, and I moved the boys' room around. Now before you start making assumptions, let me explain.

Yes, my sewing kit includes liquid stitch.

Fixing broken things always reminds me of my father. He could relink a broken necklace. He could super glue a shattered plate. And he was the one we went to when we needed sewing done. My mom claims that she used to cross stitch, but I don't believe her since I've never even seen her thread a needle. So today when I was resewing Rolly's head for the third time--he's well loved--I was thinking about my dad. I was also, incidentally, thinking about my mother-in-law and wishing that Rolly's head had waited to fall off until her superior sewing skills could reattach it to his plump and spotted body. Since it didn't (wait, that is), I reinforced my stitches with fabric glue this time--the tool of an inexperienced seamstress. I wonder if Dad ever had to do that. Do they have fabric glue in Indonesia?

My attempt to get the whole room in.
The dresser and bookshelf didn't make the cut.

Then I decided to move the boys' room around because Tiny can now reach the light switch from his crib and entertains himself by turning the fan off and then on and then off and then on and then...you get the picture...instead of taking his nap. And that reminded me of my mother because she has a furniture rearranging fetish. At least once a month she'd decide to move something (anything) around. When we moved into the kampung, she had to get creative since our rooms were really small and there was a finite number of possible furniture arrangements. Still, I've never seen anyone as handy at moving furniture as my mom. It still impresses me to see her insignificant 5'2" frame shove a couch around like her life depends on it. And she says she's not artistic... Anyway, when the Man and I got married, I warned him that these genes flowed in my veins (I'm not sure that's scientifically correct), and he made me promise that I would resist the urge unless I could give him fair warning since he frequently doesn't come home til after dark and isn't a fan of bruising his shins on a couch that wasn't there when he left earlier that morning. I have been very good about this until the last 3 months during which time I have rearranged the living room (admittedly with his help), guest room, and boys' bedroom, just because I could.


It made me happy on the inside. And a smidge nostalgic.

Grouchy for Grace

I took this picture to make myself happy.
It didn't work.

Our Lord's making of a disciple is supernatural. He does not build on any natural capacity of ours at all. God does not ask us to do the things that are naturally easy for us--He only asks us to do the things that we are perfectly fit to do through His grace, and that is where the cross we must bear will always come. 

Oswald Chambers

Yesterday I woke up on the wrong side of bed. I dragged myself out of a deep (and unusually uninterrupted by Tiny) sleep at 530 and staggered into the kitchen for a glass of water. And that's when I saw them next to the sink: three different glasses that had not been there when I'd gone to bed. That's how it started. Instead of thinking about how awesome it was that I hadn't been up multiple times with Teething Tiny, I was frustrated because I had three (horrors) glasses to clean before the sun had even come up.

Then I went for a walk with the dog and we tried to look at the stars while walking, which was difficult because I am naturally clumsy, and that's another story, but suffice to say, I couldn't get out of my crabby mood. I tried to pray about it (I really did), but all I could feel was frustration with my husband (well hydrated but sleeping innocently in our bed), lack of excitement to spend the day with the boys, and annoyance with myself for being cranky. Things went downhill from there.

The boys made every mess imaginable (even ripping the cover off one of my favourite books), they were loud, they wanted attention--they were boys, and on the whole (aside from the book ripping), they weren't even bad boys. But nothing was good enough for me. I was impatient. I snapped at them. I gritted my teeth and handed out the time outs like they were candy. And in between spasms of awfulness, I apologized to my children and prayed that God would change my attitude and help me act more like his Son and less like, well, me.

The interesting thing is that yesterday came on the heels of a week that was really hard but to which I had responded with grace and gratitude. Yesterday, when, for all intents and purposes, there was nothing wrong, I couldn't have behaved well to save my life. Which is where the Oswald Chambers quotation comes in. All day long I was miserable in my snappishness, and all day long I was praying for grace and wondering why it wasn't coming, why the Lord wasn't miraculously fixing my attitude. I tried to do fun things with the boys to get myself out of my funk. I got us outside for some endorphin boosting sunshine. I made plans for the day so that I had a point and purpose and wasn't just sitting around in my mood. Nothing was working.

At four in the afternoon, in between vacuuming and before a last minute planned Sonic run (I was trying everything--even ice cream), I decided to just make a joke of my awfulness and write something silly. And as soon as I started typing, I began to feel better. The clouds lifted, the sun shone, and there I was, ready to do the things I was perfectly fit to do through His grace. At first I didn't understand why God hadn't answered my desperate prayers for a changed heart until my mother pointed out that He'd already given me the tools I needed to get there: written words and a sense of humour. I just had to choose to use them. I hope that next time I roll out of bed feeling like Oscar the Grouch I remember that a little earlier in the day...

Blurb on Boys

One of my favourites of me with my boys

You know how there are certain things that let you know you're a mother of boys? I'm pretty sure I've mentioned on here the fact that I can successfully throw a foam football through a basketball hoop. That's one of them. But today as our family ate pizza in the living room while watching the Cowboys play, I had one of those moments. Those "I'm a mom of boys" moments. May I clarify that when I say that we were all watching football that does include the baby. And the dog. Admittedly, in my mind I was reading Madeleine L'Engle while the collective family of male eyes watched a bunch of grunting men run around and hit each other, but physically I was watching football too. And it was then that I realized that 15 years from now when we're sitting in the living room eating pizza and watching football together, I will actually understand what's happening on the screen because I will have fifteen years of football watching with the boys under my belt. I'm so proud of future me.

Incidently, I never realized that I would still hear one son say to the other "Stop pulling my hair!" as a mom of boys. I thought that was a mom of girls thing. I was so wrong. What can I say, my youngest and still mostly bald son has hair envy. Can you blame him?

Henry Matisse, OCD, Poetry, Marriage, and, of course, T.S. Eliot

photo credit goes to Lee G. V.

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium. --Henry Matisse

This week I've been obsessed with the home decorating blog, The Nester. When I say obsessed, I mean that every waking moment when I am not doing something productive (and sometimes when I should be doing something productive), I am reading that blog. You think I'm joking--I'm not. I'm just a smidge obsessive compulsive, and I go through phases. Next week I will decide to be obsessed with something else, who knows, maybe fly fishing. No, not fly fishing. Why would anyone, ever, be obsessed with that? Anyway, point being, one of the things The Nester writes about on her blog is the above Henry Matisse quotation. She was thinking about it in terms of creatively (and cheaply) decorating one's home, but it's sparked off all kinds of other thoughts for me. Thoughts that I can't stop thinking about when Tiny is up teething in the middle of the night.

Naturally, I immediately connected the Henry Matisse quotation with writing. I thought about the sonnet, and how in that extremely limited medium there has bloomed such incredible beauty. Think about it: when you're forced to put your thoughts into a rigid rhyme and metrical scheme you have to get creative! You might end up using words you had never thought of before. You might discover that there's a better way to express a thought because you can't write it down the original way you had intended. Or you might find that there are whole new layers to an emotion just because you're having to fit it into an ABAB pattern. While I love to write free verse as much as the next writer, I think we've lost something when we automatically assume that's the most suitable form to use, most of the time because we're too lazy to challenge ourselves to write in a limited medium (though we claim that our thoughts just can't be confined by poetic form). The funny thing is that we find that the best free verse poems contain some form of rhyme and meter.

You see, as a culture, we've come to misunderstand and abuse the word "free". How many times have we heard (or said!) the phrase, "It's a free country; I can do what I want." This is the excuse we give for many, if not all, of our indulgences, excesses, and sins. And no, I'm not going to give the "freedom isn't free" speech here. But I will say that true freedom does not exclude structure or rules. In fact, structure and rules both enhance and underscore freedom.

This brings me to my next "big thought" about the Matisse quotation. After I stopped thinking about creativity and a limited medium in writing (would I get much farther in writing a book if I just wrote one chapter at a time about a very specific topic?), I started thinking about it in terms of my marriage. Because if there's anything more limited than one man and one woman together for the rest of their lives, I'm not sure what it is. Now, I can see that limited medium as a restriction of my creative freedom and, five years in, decide to get creative and move on to a different relationship or, I can see it as a chance to make something unexpectedly beautiful by challenging myself past the normal. I think a lot of people believe that the only purpose of marriage is to be with someone who makes them happy, just like a lot of writers think that the only way to truly express their emotions in poetry is through free verse, but this is a one dimensional way of thinking. Because when we force ourselves to accept and even revel in a limited medium, we move past the surface of who we are as people.

When I chose the limited medium of my marriage, I have to figure out how to be happy when I live with a person who will not always make me happy (because he's human, not because he's not wonderful). When I chose the limited medium of my marriage, I get to challenge myself to make new memories with my husband every year instead of just reusing the old memories with a new person. When I chose the limited medium of my marriage, I get to learn how to fall in love with him all over again day after day, instead of falling in love with someone else on the days when he is not lovable and I'm too tired or jaded to be loving. It makes me wonder how beautiful of a thing the Man and I can create if we just stick with it, struggle through it, and get creative.

Then I thought about how, in God's eyes, we've been granted a limited medium in the life that he's given us, just so many years in a very restricted human body and mind, and how he's told us that the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life (Matt. 7:14). But I'm not going to wax eloquent about that, because honestly, thinking about writing and marriage in this new way is making my thoughts spin off in all these crazy tangents and it's keeping me up at night! I'm sure you can tell... I'll just close with this: maybe instead of being frustrated by the limitations that we see in our lives and seeking to rid ourselves of them in the quest for some kind of misconstrued freedom, we should see them for what they are: a dare to create something beautiful. It works for the little things (up in the wee sma's with a teething baby leads to middle of the night writing) and the big things (like marriage or dealing with a debilitating physical limitation or, in general, having our lives turn down an unintended path like motherhood or the loss of a job). So the question is: do we dare?

Do we dare disturb the universe?

See me. See me be AWESOME.

Tonight after dinner, the Man had to go back in to work and he left me with very specific instructions to sit on the couch and do nothing. And I did. For a while. I polished off the rest of the brownies, watched White Collar, and surfed the net. Then I had big plans to dust and vacuum and mop (again--because somehow even though I did the floors on Monday they are already coated in dog hair and the scum that comes from two boys), but I realized that I can do the first two of those with the help of my very handy two year old who loves to "vacuum" and "dust" with me and I'm sure I can squeeze in the mopping during naptime (or never). Instead, I decided to reorganize a few things around the house. I moved a lamp to a different part of the bedroom room. I cleaned out the drawer in our coffee table. I moved clutter from the living room to the guest room so that I don't have to see it any more..you know, general really useful stuff like that.

And then...

And then!

AND THEN!!! (this really deserves a drumroll) I reattached the shift key that Tiny ripped off two weeks ago. Yep, it's a big day in the Friz household. I no longer have an excuse for leaving annoyingly uncapitalized facebook messages in the middle of the night when I'm incapable of using my right pinky to shift instead of my left. Whew. What a relief.

Aren't you all glad that I accomplished something so huge with my evening? Other people cure cancer, but I--I--save the world by reattaching one shift key at a time.

Pushing Pause

I don't really want to write tonight, but it is write or clean the bathrooms. I'm laying down the law for myself. Sitting on my tush doing nothing is not an option (at least not yet). And since I was up all night with Teething Tiny (seriously, it's sticking as a nickname), writing seems more doable than scrubbing down the bathroom with vinegar and bleach.

I could tell you funny stories, perhaps the one about how I was so tired this morning I tried to pour applesauce in Little Man's cup instead of apple juice, or do my usual pet venting, since I took both of them to the vet today and walked out of there with a hole in my hand compliments of Oswald (I now have a very nice Cars band aid on it), or share some really deep thought about what I'm learning these days, except that my brain waves are flat lining. Instead I think I'll tell you that since Josh make it home for dinner, the boys and I had a patio picnic. We ate banana walnut bread and apples and enjoyed the green table and the wind chimes and the early autumn sunshine. It was...lovely.

Sometimes my life is so full of the checklists of having two kids--diapers and sippy cups and soiled sheets and library books and timeouts and teeth brushing--that I have to make sure I'm really paying attention to those beautiful moments when it is just us and the wild enjoyment of life, whether that's a sunlit slice of banana bread or horsey rides in the hall accompanied by raucous laughter or the feel of a soft head resting underneath my chin.

And then there are unexpected blessings, like the Man dropping in to see the boys before bedtime and a spontaneous game of hide and seek that ended with all three of them in a dog pile behind the couch. I think Tiny gave away the Man's hiding spot. He giggles...

Wordage

When I go to the library I get books for the Little Man (technically), because I don't have the time and energy to browse for myself while one handedly pushing a stroller with a baby whirlwind in it and using my other hand to hold onto a toddler who constantly asks me if I'm done yet. But when I'm being honest, though the books are for L.M., I only pick ones that I actually want to read to him. This is because in his mind, repetition is a virtue unparalleled by any other, and library books must be read and reread until we're so sick of them we have to take them back, at which point, he has them memorized already anyway. I do not tell a lie. Last week he entertained himself by responding to any and all meal choices with those classic words from Dr Seuss: "I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. I will not eat them with a fox. I will not eat them in a box. I will not eat them here or there. I will not eat them anywhere!" It got old fast.

Point being, that, since technically I'm looking for my own entertainment instead of my child's, I frequently come home from the library with books that aren't quite appropriate for his age level. This has lead to some stretching of his vocabulary. For example, this week he is obsessed with the Maurice Sendak illustrated Swine Lake, written by James Marshall. New words include "marquee", "lorgnette", "inconspicuous", "scrumptious", and the list goes on. I'm trying to allow him to figure out most of the words by context but will occasionally pause and give a brief definition. I also grabbed a copy of Nina Rycroft and Stephen Harris' Ballroom Bonanza with its lovely illustrations of dancing animals, which has proved educational as well. L.M. was quite upset that there were no foxes on the page that mention "foxtrot" and was unimpressed by my explanation for the "tango." I also found out that he hates flamingos. Who hates flamingos?

The funny thing, though, is that while he may not understand half the words in the books I pick out, he can still tell if I'm reading in English versus another language. I know, because he is adamantly opposed to being read to in Spanish or Indonesian. I don't have words for how this makes me feel, but at least he will have an expansive vocabulary in one language...

A Two-Part Introspective Entitled: Too Old To Wear Pigtails and the Temptation of Foggy

Part One

I have never been that girl, the one that looks put together even when they aren't. Admittedly, I had a few really low years (say, 14 to 18) when I didn't even look like a girl, but that's a subject for another post. When I started dating the Man, I began to try. Mostly because, wow, is he good looking! but also because he doesn't dress like a complete bum, and I felt like I had to pull myself up to his level so that people didn't wonder why in the world he was dating a slob like me. Then when we moved on base, I felt like I needed to try even harder (because I am an extension of The Captain's image, of course). Last week I even, finally, gave away some of my prized and funkier items that at this dual-childed stage in my life, I should never wear again. Goodbye, belt with the cute little whales on it. Goodbye, crazy scarf with the flourescent accents. I am, however, still not matching my earrings. Don't judge. Matching is hard. The point is, though, that I'm making improvements--focus on that.

Yet somehow I keep finding myself in positions like I did this morning, where I show up at Little Man's "school" wearing a pair of holey moccasins, my ripped and worn U of M hoodie, and a billie on my head. Not to mention that it wasn't until half way there that I realized I hadn't brushed my teeth this morning. Also, as a side note, skinny jeans are really uncomfortable when you haven't shaved in 5 days. All the other moms looked cute. Even the ones wearing their workout clothes. And the ones without make up. I will admit that I had a completely legitimate reason for looking like something the dog dragged in--I was up all night with Teething Tiny--but really, the truth is, there was no excuse for the pigtails. Somebody put together an Intervention. I need help.

This was a mistake.

Part Two

It is a beautiful foggy morning outside, and while I was imagining getting in an accident (and, incidentally, not having the correct insurance papers on me) the whole time I was driving Little Man to "school", I am enjoying every minute of it. Fog reminds me of Pangalengan, the tea plantation my family visited when I was growing up. It was up in the mountains so the weather was cooler and it wasn't unusual to wake up to mist coating the tea bushes. We would spend our days hiking through the tea fields, soaking in the hot springs, and reading good books while drinking hot cocoa (this was before I started my coffee obsession). Needless to say, the weather today is making me want to regress to days of old, forget my yucky kitchen floor and the piles of dog hair that are accumulating in the corners of each room, and just curl up on the couch with a cup of coffee and some Madeleine L'Engle. But I will prevail. The floors will be mopped, the bathrooms wiped down, and maybe I will even order a new computer cord so that I can print off the new insurance papers. Resist the lure of the fog!

My Future, by Bill Watterson

I love Calvin and Hobbes. I always have. The comics, not the philosophers. Growing up we had a stack of at least half a dozen Calvin and Hobbes books, and they never got old. I only own one now, Yukon Ho, because I found it for the obscenely low price of $3.99 at Borders (moment of silence) and who can turn that down? It sits on my book shelf between Jules Feiffer's The Man in the Ceiling and my incredibly beautiful copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, given to me by my college roommate's sister. These are nonessentials. The essentials are that I got down Yukon Ho last night and my world is a better and more terrible place today.

Better because Bill Watterson is wonderful. He makes me laugh so hard that sometimes I pee a little. You didn't need to know that. It's genetic. My mom and her older sister used to gang up on my youngest aunt and tickle her so hard that...well, you don't need to know that either. Point being, Calvin and Hobbes bring happiness to my partially jaded and occasionally cynical soul. Plus, laughing burns calories, which is good because I made spice cake this week and--wooooow!

But more terrible because sometimes when I read Calvin and Hobbes it's like looking into my future. I'm serious. This is so happening to me, but instead of Calvin and Hobbes it will be my sons:



Yes, that's her jewelry box becoming buried treasure.

And yes, I'm already writing down all the adorable and awful things that they do (why do people always feel like they should remind me to do that?), but it doesn't help my terror level when the Man tells me stories about how, as a kid, he made cinnamon toast one morning in a pop up toaster. He just kept pouring in the cinnamon sugar because it wouldn't stick to the toast... Yeah. It also doesn't help that I've seen the havoc wrecked by my husband's seven year old sister (and my 28 year old sister for that matter). Chaos runs in the family. At least all I'm passing on to them is the inability to make it to the toilet in time. There are diapers for that sort of thing.

Calvin and Hobbes--this is what you do to me! At least it builds character, right?

Stroller Stuff and Possessed Potties

You know those people who say their car is just like a giant purse? I feel that way about my stroller. On any given day my stroller carries:

• two kids (I realize that, technically, they don't count)
• house and car keys
• water bottle attached by this handy caribeaner called "The Mommy Hook" (never to be said with a serious expression or normal voice)
• wipes and at least two diapers, not necessarily in the needed size
• bacon flavoured dog treats
• a pilfered airplane blanket
• two books (Consider Love and It's a Book!, classics of literature, of course)
• a football (as a conscientious mother of boys, I never go anywhere without one)
• four or five miscellaneous baby toys, including--but not limited to--at least one squishy block, one rattle, one teething ring, and something that squeaks annoyingly
• two shoes but only one sock
• sundry trains, at least one of which will deliver annoying messages like "I'm James! I'm the finest red engine in Sodor!" at every bump
• a pinecone, because one must carry nature with oneself at all times
• a couple sippy cups, used or unused
• that paci that I can never find when I need it

So really, when I go running with the stroller and say I'm pushing a thirty pound stroller with sixty pounds of kid in it, I should really add another ten pounds for all the junk I am hauling around in the basket. It's ridiculous.

Side note (and to keep this from being my most boring post ever): Little Man's potty is one of those singing ones that cheerily performs some inane tune when someone takes a leak in it. Thrilling, right? Yeah...no. It likes to start singing at random moments, generally at night, when there is no one even in the bathroom much less peeing into a toddler potty. The Man and I have decided it's possessed. Demon potty!

Early Morning Thoughts

It's risky trying to write at this time in the morning, but for some reason the boys are still sleeping (I love these late sunrises), so here I am.

I've been thinking about the Lord's Prayer a lot the last few days since it's our Sunday School lesson this week. That's the funny thing about teaching instead of just going to Sunday School--I'm actually putting in the time. Anyway, it so happened that another book I was reading (Children and the Christian Faith) was also talking about the Lord's Prayer, so it's been on my radar constantly. One of the things that I've been challenged about is to pray the attitudes of the Lord's Prayer instead of just the words. For instance, when we start with the Our Father, we should be in thanksgiving that we are His children, that He is the one in Heaven, and that He is truly a loving and sovereign Father. That sort of thing. My favourite part now is "Give us this day our daily bread" which, admittedly, used to be the part I thought was unnecessary for me since I have always had the food that I need. I learned this week that I am not just praying for physical bread, but also spiritual. I am praying to be fed by the Bread of Life, Christ, so I can pray for the things that will feed my spiritual hunger (patience, strength, a sense of humour) as well as my physical hunger.

I'm sharing this with you because it has been such an encouragement to me, but also because it's good to get my thoughts down. Yesterday I received some news that has left me grieving, so when Tiny woke me up at midnight needing medicine I had trouble getting back to sleep. My mind could not stop, and my heart was in a state of disarray. I woke the Man up, and he encouraged me before falling back to sleep himself, and then I found myself back at the Lord's Prayer, using it to bring my heart before Christ. And before I knew it, I was asleep again.

This morning I read a quotation in my Bible study that I found incredibly beautiful and encouraging. I'd like to end with it. It's from William Hendriksen's More Than Conquerors: "Peace, the reflection of the smile of God in the heart of the believer who has been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, is the result of grace." I am so grateful for God's grace in reminding me of a lesson learned, in providing the "bread" that I need for the day, and in comforting my heart that it's hard to not reflect God's smile today.

And now my Thomas pajama wearing, toy-horse riding two year old is telling me that he "sneaked into the closet and got a Big Bird diaper", so I should probably go. Plus Tiny is mad he got left in the crib all by himself. It's a hard life...

Buffalos and Being Obnoxious (etc., etc., etc.)

Photo credit goes to my father.
Aren't the pixels lovely?

• I find it odd that schoolbuses have to pay on the toll road. Then I begin to wonder if police cars have to as well. And what about fire trucks? Where is the Man when I need to ask him such important questions? Oh, yeah...work.
• On a similar note, one of my favourite things about living in Oklahoma is that the toll booth workers are the nicest in the world. Seriously. If you pay a $1.75 toll with a $20 in Jersey (not that they're ever that cheap there), you'll be given the stink eye. Here, they just nicely count out your change and wish you a good day--with a genuine smile.
• A couple weeks ago, we took my parents to see the Wildlife Refuge where there is a herd of very large buffalo. The one pictured glared at us from what seemed like right outside our car window. Little Man refers to him frequently as "the scary buffalo". I've tried to talk to him about the reality that we were inside of a very fast car that would drive away before he managed to charge us, but no dice. Then I tried to reason with him that Daddy would keep anything from hurting him and since Daddy was with us, he would be okay. That didn't make a dent either. Then I gave up and started joking about it, and I told him that Daddy and Aki would take that buffalo out if it ever tried to hurt him. Now he has some confused idea that the Man and my dad are going to get the buffalo out of the grass and put him somewhere else. I need to stop using figures of speech with my two year old.
• I had a friend's three year old daughter over last week, and she found Little's small New Testament and loved it. She told me that tiny things are the best. Even though I'm not tiny and perfect like she is, I totally agree. Especially when I realized that Sonic now has "mini" sizes in all their ice creams. Today I got Little a mini chocolate shake and myself a mini Java Chiller, and I didn't feel guilty at all for being a bad parent that let's my child eat too much sugar and for being an awful nursing mother who is exposing her infant to unhealthy levels of caffeine. It was such fun.
• Today at the orthotist's office, I entertained my children by singing (loudly) multiple renditions of "Pop Goes the Weasel" and all twenty gazillion verses of "There Was an Old Lady". I am that mother. I also walked around the parking lot of an extremely upscale mall last week carrying a very visible pile of used diapers in my hand. I was looking for a trash can, but I feel that point is irrelevant.

Terasi, Tallness, and Travelling

• My husband has obviously lived with me too long: he truly believes that house plants are supposed to die after a month.
• Being tall has its benefits, best of which is that I can clean the fan blades without having to fetch a chair. I also serve as a wonderful ice breaker for my mother who lives in a country populated by people who come up to my waist.
• For some reason, when I vacuum, there is the most awful smell. At first (and this is disgusting), I thought it was the smell of human feces. Then, after I was struck by an inextricable feeling of homesickness, I realized that it was the smell of terasi. I have to say, that's one thing that I really haven't missed about Indonesia. I'm all about sambal, but I'll skip on the terasi any day. My vacuum filter is currently soaking in a mixture of hot water, soap, and bleach.
• You know that feeling of accomplishment and relief you get when your child's first tooth pops out? Yeah, severely diminished by the realization that there are at least 3 more on their way.
• I have this weird obsessession with eating baked beans and bell peppers. There's just something about it... The crisp slice of bell pepper scooping up the somewhat mushy beans, or maybe it's the contrast of flavours. I know it may sound gross, but I just... love it.
• Last night at the dinner table, Little Man would look at Tiny and say, "Cold, cold, cold, cold!" and Tiny would bust out laughing hysterically. I realize that I already don't get their sense of humour and I am in big trouble for the future.
• Tiny is busily pulling all the travel books off the bookshelf. I'm serious when I say that he and Little are in cahoots, since just this morning Alex informed me that we were going to Indonesia to see the cows, water buffalo, dolphins, monkeys, and...camels? Didn't know we had those there...
• In my house we just heard, "Noooo! That's my Bill Bryson book, you crazy baby!!!" And on that note, I'm going to stop blogging and go parent. Before he tries to eat my bookshelf whole. I fed him lunch, I promise!