Again with the Pumpkin Patch...

Saturday we made our annual pumpkin patch pilgrimage. As promised (threatened?), here are the photos...

Forecast? Sunny!

My friend's kids were so adorably got up for the patch, and I overheard one admiring bypasser ask if they were twins. Hee! In every picture we got of them, C is looking dreamy and S is looking fierce. Seriously, don't let the ponies fool you. This girl is fierce! But yeah, also, adorable.

New this year at the patch: hay maze! For the taller set, it wasn't too tough to see where to go. But for the little people, the hay was high enough to actually be labrynthine. Plus, it was really cool to see the hay loft. I love the way my friend is all Roma Downey in the photo. I am an angel, sent by God. Haymazing!

This was the before picture, before Jim reminded me that I didn't need to shoot from so far away. But in all the after pictures, where I got closer and framed it better, the girls had gotten over the novelty of seeing me with the camera, so this is the shot that made it in.

I would like to pretend like my awesomely pegged jeans were all about my retro fashion sense, but actually they were about my stumpy legs and my being too lazy busy to get my new jeans altered to accommodate them. It was pretty muddy out there, I'm just saying.

There were so many good shots of Muriel. She is rocking her shag hairdo so effectively that we were thinking about scrapping the penguin costume and seeing if we could find her a teeny leisure suit. She also had a really cute word for pumpkin, something like "pupikaaaaannn."



Ah, these cuties. Are pumpkin patch trips really just photo ops? Hmmm. They are rife with photo ops, but we really enjoyed ourselves. And we got a really lovely pumpkin for our efforts.

In the spirit of pre-Halloween, I would like to also relate Naomi's weird new fascination, a conversation we call, "Tell me what has bited you before." Here's my list:
- ant
- flea
- spider
- tick
- bee (not technically a bite, but as you see we are liberal with our definition of that)
- mosquito
- cat
- dog
- hamster
- hermit crab (this was actually just a pinch, of course)
- jellyfish (again, not really a bite, but you know)
- Naomi

A little something in between

The end of year slate of blog posts stretches ahead...pumpkin patch, Halloween pictures, Thanksgiving, something in the beginning of December (please, not another wind storm/power outage combo!), then Christmas trip report and photos. This blog will be writing itself. So in the meantime, I will attempt to update the general status of things in our house. It is this. We are all sick and tired and overworked. Even Muriel is overworked. Ok, not really.

So, I don't know, bulleted list, maybe?

• Naomi and I have been going back and forth on Halloween costumes. I assumed, because she endlessly impersonates a cat, that she might want to be a cat for Halloween. Wrong! She wants to be something scary. I have been attacked by more than one cat, but why argue the point? She voted for ghost, witch, or monster. Witch it is. We made her a fancy skirt over the weekend, mail ordered a hat (ok, electronically mail ordered), and are scouring around for appropriately witchy striped tights.
  
• Related: We went out to dinner the other night with our friends, including Naomi's friend C. Naomi was quiet for a minute, then asked C., "What will you be for the Halloween?" This doesn't sound like a big deal, maybe, but it is. Because putting all these parts together, knowing Halloween is coming, we're all preparing for it, it's interesting what someone else will be, we make friendly chat at dinner, this is something that has not happened in such a neatly qualifiable way before. Synapses! Zap!
• Muriel had her fifteen month appointment, and is Still Not Heavy Enough to turn around in her carseat. Gaaaah. On the other hand, she did beat an ear infection all on her own when her hippie mother said no thanks to antibiotics. Small but mighty, baby.
  
• Oh, and Muriel is trying out new words. She has always had a little bit of parakeet in her, repeating sounds that sound like what you're saying, but really aren't. But lately she is making the connections between words and things, and can suddenly tell us what a range of animals say (specifically, cats, dogs, birds, cows, and elephants). She is also finally breaking out some Mamas, about damn time. Just kidding sweetie! Seriously, though, she's been Dada-ing it up for six months now.
• I am still taking a beating at work, but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Just before that light, though, is a trip to California (going back to Cali!), which results in me missing...Halloween. Are you kidding me, people? Oh well. I'll bring back some vitamin D.
  
• Jim is the sickest of all, as his lot seems to be, but is still working from home like a dog. Sick as a dog? Yes. Working like a dog? Yes. Though Luna is an actual dog, and she is neither sick nor working, unless stalking table scraps and licking the rug under the table count as work. Which I guess they might.
• Oh- one more Naomi one. We had our parent teacher conferences at her preschool, and she is doing just great. Of course she could improve on letter sound recognition and cutting with scissors and fifty other things, but you know, she is three. The best news of all is that she never pitches fits at school as she sometimes does at home. Whew! That was my hopeful takeaway, and I got what I wanted.

That's all the news that's fit to post on this sad, neglected blog. We miss you, friends.

Five Years Only

I told someone recently that my five-year anniversary was coming up, and he said something like, "Only forty-five to go!" I am not sure what that meant. We should be able to make it seventy-five years or more, right?

Last year I posted a wedding photo, so this year I thought it would be fun to relive the other wedding, the Malaysia wedding, even though that one was a few months later. Jim's parents put it on for us at a hotel in KL. The place has a menu of wedding packages, and his parents picked a winner. It came with fabulously cheesy decorations, including our names in glittery styrofoam letters on the wall, a colossal tiered artificial cake, styrofoam swans, and a champagne tower (which we totally flooded and spilled).


I was keen on getting a cheongsam, which kind of broke my MIL's heart a little- she had pictured me in a fantastic Western gown, and we shopped through the wedding district of KL before I found what I wanted at a department store. Of course I had to buy an extra large one, because I am a towering giantess over there. When I asked her if the shoes I brought were OK, she said yes, as long as I painted my toenails. Heh.

There was some kind of fundraiser going on at his parents' church, where the Ladies' guild was selling kits for this traditional Chinese New Year dish where everyone mixes all the stuff together in a dish in the middle of the table with their chopsticks, and tries to hold up as much of it as they can as high as they can, all together. For longetivy! All the New Year traditions are for longevity or prosperity. Sounds like the Vulcans a little bit. So they arranged with the hotel to substitute the first dish of the wedding banquet with this dish, thereby raising extra funds for this school that the church supports. I throw that in because it shows what good people my in-laws are, but also because it added a weird tenor to the evening, since it continued to be a fundraising event, in addition to a wedding party.

We had a receiving line coming in, and a receiving line going out, so we shook the hand of every single guest twice. We also went around and drank a toast with each of the THIRTY tables, at the end of which, we were all (but especially my 90 pound mother-in-law who doesn't drink) a bit in our cups.

Then, the karaoke started. There were the church friends, goading each other to sing... "Friends, I have it from the mouth of Peter S. that he will donate five thousand ringit to the school if Eleanor and Michael come up on stage to sing a duet." (gasping, clapping, shouting) Duet. Mostly, though, it was the old drunk guys. The list was pretty limited, in their defense, but you would think they might have not needed to sing "Please Release Me" and "Your Cheating Heart" more than twice.

Eventually, Jim was pressured into singing something- he chose "Love Me Tender." Aw, he has a really good singing voice, which made standing up on stage next to the styrofoam swans in my slightly uncomfortable dress and my booze flush a little more romantic, I guess.

Weddings in Malaysia work kind of like mafia weddings in the movies- people just hand over money. So at the end of the night, Jim's dad counted up the take, and after buying dinner and drinks for three hundred people (and the dubious karaoke service), they still came out something like two hundred dollars up. It was really something.

In the same folder on the photo drive are our the pictures of our side trip to Langkawi, a Malaysian island that is just below the Thai border. So I'm throwing a few of those on here as well. We stayed at a beautiful resort that catered, oddly, to Italian tourists, so all of the buffets had Italian food choices on them.
We found some other places to eat, though.


Mah Jong tournaments on the veranda got pretty cutthroat.


What can you say, besides "Laksa Power"...?

Coconuts! Where are the kids in all these pictures? Oh yeah...

Happy anniversary, Jim. We're not always having this kind of fun, but it's never far away.

Now, wait just a minute...

It is not that easy to come up with new and interesting lunches every day, for two little girls who may or may not even eat them. At Muriel's school, they throw away whatever she doesn't eat. So who knows what she's eating? In the case of Naomi, I know exactly what she is eating. Because they send whatever she hasn't eaten right back home in her lunch box. Often, pretty gross.

One of my less-inspired fall backs is whole wheat Ritz crackers, and the other day I sent some with Naomi's lunch that contained peanut butter and jelly. When she got home, we did the usual fruitless interrogation about her day (never successful), but when we go to the subject of lunch, she lit up a little bit.

"Miss E. put peanut butter and jelly on my round crackers, and I ate them all up!"

What now?

"You sent plain round crackers in my lunch, and Miss E. put peanut butter and jelly on them, and they were really good, and I ate them all!"

So what is the weird part of this story- that somehow Naomi got the idea that her teacher has been tampering with her lunch, as a favor to her? Or that I am so incensed that, having finally scored a hit in the lunch bag, I am not getting any credit for it?

Autumn Moon Festival

I seem to be moving in slow motion lately, which is why a post about what went down on Saturday (almost a week ago) still seems new on the following Thursday. Really, tonight's event, the preschool potluck, is worth a post, but if I went that route, I'd have to reveal the sad, bumbling couple of days I had endeavoring to bring a homemade treat for this thing, including such details as my inability to properly soften shortening, and the fact that our flour has BUGS in it. Ew. Anyway, the potluck was fun, albeit not so much nourishing. Naomi was a bit of a maniac, Muriel walked around waving at everyone, no one really ate enough food. It was alright.

But better than alright, if I may say, was this thing last Saturday. We had our dear friends over to celebrate the Autumn Moon Festival with us. Before they came, Naomi and I made some paper lanterns. They were nothing like the amazing chicken-shaped lanterns Jim got to tote around when he was a lad, but they were lantern-esque, and since there was no way any of the kids were getting anything with fire inside of it, they were, to quote a hilarious restaurant review that is rather un-self-consciously framed at my friend's neighborhood Mexican place, "delightfully adequate." In addition to the paper crafts, Jim and I put together a Chinese feast, which I only say because I succeeded in making, all on my own and for the very first time, sticky rice. I don't like to brag, but Damn! Sticky rice! We also had chicken wings a la Khooler, broccoli with Chinese sausage, and this kind of steamed eggplant that Jim's mom showed me how to make (it was not as good as hers, but it was still pretty good).

The moon festival has a couple of wacky legends associated with it. I chose one to tell the girls, about when all ten suns, normally taking their turn, suddenly showed up all at once, scorching the earth, and then were shot down (or, nine of them were) by this superhuman archer. I forget his name already. He found the elixir of life, but he was tyranical, and his beautiful wife drank it to spare the people of the world an eternity of rule by a tyranical archer. Then someone, the fates? made her go live in the moon. Her name I remember; it's Chang Er. And the lanterns are for her? I guess? Yeah, I am a poseur. Whiter than sticky rice. Oh well.

After the strange legend part, the girls did their lantern parade, and those of us with a sophisticated palate enjoyed some moon cakes, and those of us without (me!) enjoyed some pineapple. Then Chang Er's big round white estate made its appearance. Thanks, Chang Er!

And now, the photos:

The girls weren't sure at first what to do with their lanterns, but neither were we, really. Should we write a Moon Festival marching song? Lyric contest begins now.

Lanterns lanterns lanterns! And Muriel eating sidewalk chalk!

Our little friend, who is only a few months older than Muriel, showed up looking two and a half somehow. Must be the ponies.

Once she gets something, she gets it. And that is a big bite of mooncake in her mitt.

I've had a lot of requests from the ladies to include Jim in some pictures, so, here he is. Looking good!

Another gratuitous shot, this one of Luna looking gorgeous... must have been good light that evening.

I like this one, and especially because Muriel is still fixated on the moon over our house.

And because who knows when I will post again, let me take this chance to send a big shout-out to the newest member of the Daddytude clan. Welcome Baby David, and good job, Tudes!

Campy

Even after a five day Labor Day weekend (ahhh), I still didn't find the time to clean my house, send off many baby gifts and cards and late birthday presents and photos of my kids, and update the blog. Now that another crazy (though short) week of work is behind me, I am starting to wonder if things are ever going to settle down. And it is this feeling of rushed, stressed, kid-nagging, husband-alienating, work-struggling excess that has me longing for a simpler time, when dishes were washed in a dishpan, when strong women cooked noodle hotdish in the open air, when small children were held on "vault toilets" so as not to be lost forever, when neighbors could attempt to fall asleep while listening to their other neighbors swap loud stories around the fire, just a few feet away, late, late into the night.

So, really, this simple time was last week, and it was pretty fun. The camping out part was really fantastic. The girls got muddy, our campsite was next to a little brook (which Naomi kept delightedly referring to as a waterfall), there was much stick and rock and leaf and mud imaginary play, we saw a little cute mouse scurrying around, and the meals I planned worked out just fine (though, if you know how to make toast whilst camping, please leave a comment...). The sleeping part was pretty disastrous. The campground was in the flight path of Seatac airport, and all the landing planes seemed to be about a hundred feet overhead, every ten minutes. The neighbors were a big group, a family reunion, maybe? who despite having claimed five or six of the campsites in the area had to make their fire twenty feet from our tent, sit around it and make chat late into the night (who can blame them, right?), and feed it with new logs which they insisted on chopping with an axe at 11 pm. After they had awakened Muriel (rats!), and she could absolutely not get back to sleep because of the chopping sounds and the light and shadows dancing on the tent wall, I was forced to morph into a person I swore I would never be, the person who totally kills someone else's fun by claiming their right to quiet hours with the excuse "We have little ones who are having trouble sleeping." Who says "we have little ones"...?! Not me! But, yeah, me now.

I tried to avoid saying anything about the noise, because I knew my kids would be up EARLY and there would be no shushing them. Sure enough! We didn't have a clock handy, but we got up when they did, made some leisurely breakfast, packed up our tent, chatted with the sweet apologetic campfire gang from next door, got everything into the car, and drove down the way to the beach park, where we discovered that it was all of 8:30. So, yeah, I told them to be quiet and then still woke them up way earlier than any camper should be required. Sorry! We gave them our firewood.

Anyway, camping pictures- let's see how many the internet lets me upload before I doze off...

Man Hike!

I had a post all cooked up about how hot it was over the weekend, and how it turned the girls into crabby little crabbersons, and I had some irritating titles on the table, like "Hot Cross Bun(nies)" or "Hottentots" or something similar, and some pictures of them all sweated up, and some of them in the wading pool, with their little teeth chattering. But now, of course, it is gray and cool and rainy, they put an extra onesie on Muriel today, under the tank top I sent her to daycare in, and I can't even remember what the heat was like. Also, it occurs to me that any readers in Arizona and even in the midwest would likely scoff at my claims of the magnitude of the heat, which really only got into the nineties.

So instead I will turn my attention to the oft-neglected (and completely outnumbered) man of the house, who on Sunday joined some of his coworkers for some wilderness male bonding. They went hiking near Mt. Ranier, and had a really good time. Why, yes, he did have to go out the day before to buy a lighter, more hikeable tripod for his big old camera. But it was worth it- look at this beauty...
And let us not overlook this beauty, for that matter!
Marmot!

Here's hoping we get a little more of the hot weather- we're planning a camping trip in the next week, and we would like it warm and dry, please....

The Crumber

Remember back in college when all of a sudden everyone was reading the Rabbit books, and you decided that Updike was a genius and you were going to read everything else he ever wrote, and you went to the used book store and found some little old early Updike paperbacks and you started in on them, and ...enh. The prose was still lovely, but they just didn't have the juice?

For me that paperback was The Poorhouse Fair, which I never finished. At the beginning, though, (and I hope I am remembering correctly), is the part where one of the women in the poorhouse reflects endlessly on her contribution to the running of their unconventional household, which is "crumbing" the table after meals. She scrapes and picks and gets all the little food bits off the tablecloth so that it is clean and ready for the next meal. Friends, Jim's mom was our crumber. For three months. And today, as I picked a galaxy of sticky jasmine rice off our tablecloth, well, I missed her a little more than I usually do.

Work is absolutely kicking my ass, if I may say so. As a rule, I am your aggravating coworker, who, when you complain about how much work you have and you can't even believe it, and how do they expect you to get anything done with all these meetings, and so forth, clucks sympathetically and strains all the muscles in her face to keep her eyes from rolling. But now, I am on your side. The work is piling up! It is insane how much we still have to accomplish! I am tripled booked, every other morning, between 9:00 and 12:00, with scrums (for all you Agile development fans), trainings, meetings, and more scrums.

And because everyone is feeling this way, whenever a new task comes up, which it does about fifteen times a day, somehow it's landing on my tablecloth. More things to track. More things to learn. More things to finish up. More things to be responsible for. And although it has me stressed out quite a bit, and feeling equal parts grouch and martyr, there is a part of me that feels a little more alive than usual. So I will continue to gather up these sticky, annoying bits of work, and feel secretly grateful for some external motivation. I knew I had it in me to be more productive!

School Daze

The girls have completed a month of school (Naomi is actually in pre-school, and for consistency we also refer to Muriel's baby holding pen as school), and I am pleased to say that the report is so far, so good. I usually time Muriel's drop off to coincide nicely with breakfast, so when I get there, there is a gaggle of toddlers sitting in teeny chairs, munching on incongruous pairings like pancakes and canned green beans. Mmmm. Muriel loves getting into one of these chairs and participating in the group snack. She is a sociable creature, noticeably more so than Naomi was at this age. She gets excited to see the teachers, she blows kissses when we leave, and does her random, non-directional hand waving. From the teachers' accounts, she enjoys music time, does a great job eating her lunch, and is especially fond of playing with dirt outside. Whee!

I would compare Naomi's initial reaction to school to a fervent crush. She LOVED school the first week or two, because at school there are teachers who are kind and friendly to three-year-olds. She is an adult-centric child, and this made it especially frustrating for her when her grandparents didn't know what to do with her for three months. She has settled down a bit, and more importantly, she has shifted her focus onto her peers. Hurray! We hear about her friends, we count them up (there are seven!), we talk about one in particular who seems a little bi-polar with her "play with me, no, don't play with me now" behavior every other day. Naomi seems unfazed by her flip-flopping, even though we are dying to rig her up with a hidden panda-cam to figure out just what the heck motivates three year olds in the "dolphin" class to accept and reject friendship overtures from minute to minute.

We visted a handful of preschools before settling on this one. I had thought a Montessori school might be good for Naomi, considering the glimpses of OCD I see in her, and my own anxieties about being able to model self-motivated learning (I am externally motivated in the worst way). We saw a few that were really fantastic. The one we chose, though, is close to our house, inexpensive, Montessori-inspired (close enough!), and has a shabby, comfortable feel to it, which I mean in the best possible way. It is the preschool that alleviates any concern you might have that you are in some way related to those people you hear about in New York City that call in all their favors to get the editor of the Times to write their two-year-old a letter of reference for admission to the preschool that will fast-track their kid to Yale or whatever.

Only time will tell whether this place sends Naomi to the Ivies, but in the meantime, here is a list of things she has learned at school in the past month:

"Ewwww!" All the cool kids at school must say Ewww! to just about anything that happens, because Naomi does it all the time now. Ewwww! Underpants! Ewwww, a baby wipe- I'm not a baby! Ewwww! Pee!

"Criss cross applesauce" = the new "Indian Style"... Everybody sit down, criss cross applesauce!

"Zip it, lock it, put it in your pocket." - Ha! If I were in just the right mood, I might be bothered by this, but most of the time I think it's really funny, and I have already tried using it on Jim, with undesirable results.

Songs, songs, songs. She can sing "America the Beautiful" all the way through ("above the fruit and planes!"), "I'm a Little Teapot," which I had purposefully never taught her because I have always found it a little too cutesy, a song for lining up to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell"..."I'm ready for the hall, I'm standing nice and tall...", and my super fave rave, a days of the week song set to the tune of "The Addams Family":

There's Sunday and there's Monday. There's Tuesday and there's Wednesday. There's Thursday and there's Friday, and then there's Saturday.
Days of the week. (clap clap)
Days of the week. (clap clap)
Days of the week, days of the week, days of the week. (clap clap)

In case you were looking for a song to get stuck in your head for 72 hours.

Splash Park!

This Sunday afternoon we repeated last Sunday afternoon's high jinks, minus the chilliness, minus the adorable vegan kindergartner. We had some splashing, we followed up with some Chinese food. Ah, weekend, I miss you already.

Gigantic Blog Roundup

First, the picture of Muriel's cake that didn't make her birthday post:

Trip Report, Retroactive
So, way back a long time ago (at the end of June), we had our vacation. We went to Orcas island again, not because there are no other good vacation destinations around here, but because we really loved it last time, and we wanted to take Jim's parents on a sure thing. Our last Orcas trip, you may recall, was inspired by drunken bidding at a charity auction. This time we rented a house the way most people have to (find house, send in deposit, pay full price, bleah). Again, we were lucky enough to have our good friends join us on the trip as well, so along with three generations of Khooler, we had Naomi and Muriel's BFFs (and their parents) along.

Naomi with her best pal. The weather was chilly the first part of the week, but good and warm by the end.

The house was on the north side of the island, and looked out into the part of the Sound between the San Juans and the mainland. The view was really pretty spectacular, from the deck outside the main floor of the house, from our little deck upstairs, from my ridiculously comfy king-sized bed (from where, on the first morning, thanks to an early wakeup by our little closet-dweller, I got to lie back and actually watch the sun rise over the water), and from the rocky little private beach, accessible by a steep-sided trail that would not have seemed breathtakingly dangerous to my childless self of yore. 

The view from our private beach....

We didn't see any whales this time, but there were a few dolphin sightings, big ships, sailboats, and a puzzling set of dark, intriguing buildings on the far shore, which I doggedly attempted to identify with the marine map of the island that came with the house, only to discover a little typed square of paper that had been laminated onto the map, telling me exactly which islands I was seeing, and what those dark, forboding cities on the far shore were (uh, oil refineries). The only part of the house that didn't have a great view was the hot tub, which we tried out just on principle, but I think if it had been on the deck, there may have been considerably increased stewing. Also on the topic of stewing, my friend brought the pinot grigio wine cube from Target. And then her husband went to the liquor store for Jameson (because he has been reading my diary?), and a Khalua/vodka pre-mix thing that we renamed, in Jim's honor, "White Asian." Slurp.

This is the first season I have really watched "So You Think You Can Dance," and I am a little concerned that it is influencing my already slangariffic vocab. Because I was about to start writing about how good the food was in our vacation paradise, and the first adjective that came to mind was "sick." Thanks a lot, you weird dancing judges. Anyway, the food was not sick, but very very good, thanks to a friendly unspoken competition between Jim's mom and our friend J., the same vacation chef who kept us in bacon last trip. Yes, there were Mexican delicacies (homemade guacamole a la J. has converted me from a guac hater), yes there was sticky rice, on the Eastern side. We even had a birthday cake for C. Mmm.
I was concerned that Jim's parents would be bored on this vacation. Their sport of choice is shopping, preferably discount (or DVD) shopping, preferably at the same strip mall over and over and over. Occasionally, they like to vary from this routine with a trip to any establishment which provides them with all you can eat food. If the food includes seafood, specifically shellfish or sushi, all the better. Our vacation choice provides travelers with exactly zero opportunity to do any of this. But they settled right in, on the deck, reading a thriller, in the case of Jim's dad, and just taking in the view, in the case of Jim's mom. I confess, it was enormously gratifying. As for the rest of us, there was a lot of story reading and little-people playing. The bigger, though still quite little girls shared a room off of C. and J.'s room, which made for really terrible nights' sleep for those two. Shenanigans! We did a little hiking. We hit the beach (the lake beach, where again, the water was waaaaay too cold for any of us to go in further than knee level).

(Muriel auditions for some wacky Racquel Welch movie remake starring only babies...)

Jim, J., and I went sea kayaking, which was a terrific adventure, and also made me think it was possible that my arms might fall off. Ahh, vacation. This one really was over too soon.

Bridge Topic: Vacation Homes

One thing I didn't mention in the vacation post is that the house we rented, in addition to being large and wonderfully sited, ridiculously well-equipped (kid plates? high chair? pack and play? blender? beach towels? checks and more checks on the list), and a tiny bit eerie in its ability to make you think someone was right there, when they were upstairs, or long gone, when they were around the corner in the kitchen, also had a distinct decorative theme: pine cones. You may think this is the sort of theme that would be a kind of suggestion, just a little something to tie rooms together. But no, this house was obsessed, in so far as a house does that king of thing, with pine cones. The things I mentioned in the "well equipped" list, above, are about the only thing in this house that didn't conform to the decorative theme. So there were pine cone wall paper borders, towels, sheets, dishes, glasses, silverware, placemats, switch plates on all the light switches, lamps, bed headboards, nightstands, wall hangings, throw rugs, candles, picture frames, mirrors, drawer pulls, curtains, and various bric a brac. To name a few. There was a set of framed stamps FROM OTHER COUNTRIES that had pine cones on them. There was a cute folk-art thrift store tin frame with a pine cone theme. There was a figurine that was clearly resin-cast, but was intended to look like a folk art miniature of an evergreen tree constructed out of pine cone parts (what are those parts called? You know, the petals of the pine cone?).

I was tempted, dear readers, to treat you to a peek at this excess, but there was no way to capture just a few photos that would realistically convey the scope of this theme. It was mighty, overpowering, all-encompassing. Pine Cone Cabin! You know who you are. It was in bookclubbing this wacky aspect of our vacation, during our vacation, that my friend and I formulated an important theory. Because it is too mind-blowing to imagine that there exists someone who has the time and the patience and the resources to scour retail and resale establishments to furnish a vacation home this completely and this thoroughly thematically, there simply has got to be a service out there in the world that exists to furnish vacation homes according to themes. In my two minutes of googling, I have turned up a couple of cabin-decor type places that have all the furniture and bedding and switch plate covers and coasters and salt and pepper shakers. So I guess I can imagine that those crazy, over the top touches could be accomplished by actual owners (the seven framed antique postcards of little resorts across the country that have "pine cone" in the name?), with the muscle work handled by a tireless online shopper. I remember that whenever we stayed at the North shore in Minnesota, the themes always centered around black bears or moose. I have to imagine there are many beach cottages that have fish or seashells or both.

But who could forget the hall of taxidermy, where I stayed with my girlfriend during a girls' weekend of terror, outside of Vegas, a year and a half ago? We were apalled by that place, so incredibly well-stocked with dead, menacing animals as it was, and wondered how anyone had the time to hunt as many deer as they would have had to to create that many antler chandeliers and, embarrassingly, magazine racks for the bathroom stalls. So, naive J. Khooler of one and one half years ago, I announce to you this: they just picked a theme and someone ordered one hundred and fifty dead animals off the internet. Duh.

But that brings me to a quick anecdote, which is almost in the present day (finally), and that is this: I had another girls' weekend, with the same girl, only this time it was in her new home, fabulous Boise, Idaho. Not that you care, but people from there say "Boy-see," not "Boy-zee," which is kind of my preferred pronunciation. Oh well. There was no taxidermy whatsoever involved in this weekend. Last time, I was the pregnant friend, but this time, it was my friend bearing that burden, if you will. She is due at the end of August, and is postively radiant (though she is normally, too). There was a baby shower for her that involved sick (read, fantastic) coconut cupcakes, a fun little farmer's market in Eagle, and a night on the town in Boise. Here's what our night on the town looked like: 1. Check into hotel. 2. Get suits on for trip to pool. 3. Discover pool is the greenish, three-lane lap pool at the Gold's Gym in the hotel. Eee. Return to room, still dry, for nap. 4. Get dressed up, including cute (uncomfortable) shoes. Hey, it happens once in a while. 5. Sit at sidewalk table of very nice restaurant/bar, drinking, eating tiny appetizer, watching people. 6. Report to real dinner spot, the fondue restaurant. Sit at a crazily romantic little table. 7. Eat way, way too much food that has been dipped into something or cooked in something right at our table. 8. Stagger and/or hobble back to hotel. 9. The end.

So, yeah, girls' weekends were a little different when we were closer to being actual girls. This is the friend who used to take me to the makeup counter, then dinner at a casino restaurant, off to a club, and then dancing at the after-club. Not that I expected much dancing out of this trip. It was just fine with me, how relaxing and devoid of binge drinking our evening was. The great part is that just being with my friend, which was ostensibly the appeal of a girls' weekend all along, is now genuinely the primary, wonderful treat of the experience. It is so great to get together and have nothing but time to talk and plan and dissect. Thanks, girlfriend! Spending time with someone who has known me since I was 13 (and still likes me!) is a remarkable gift. Though I will admit that going through security at the airport and eating out at three different restaurants without any small children along was weirdly delightful as well.

Awesome

When I got back from my girls' weekend on Sunday afternoon, my husband performed his usual ritual for the day we are reunited after a long absence, which is to go and see a matinee. Whatever. I took the girls out to the backyard post-nap, and it was so warm and sunny and lovely that I decided we should head over to the new splash park not far from our house. We hustled through the sunscreen/swimsuit/towel/dress/shoes procedure (involving a spectacular fall down the stairs by Muriel, which did not result in any injury to Muriel, but gave me the most amazing adrenaline dump), drove to the splash park, and jumped into the spray. At which time the dark gray clouds completely took over the sky and the warm 71 degree weather turned into cold 71 degree weather. The sun makes a big difference, is all I'm saying. Muriel kept putting her face directly in the spray, so she got pretty wet. I started to feel like a bad parent, since they were in their wet little bathing suits and I was not inclined to take off my SWEATER, so I dried them off and changed their clothes and set them loose on the dry playground portion of the park.

Naomi remembered some random imaginary play we had enacted the last time we had been at this park, which had to have been four months ago or more, that involved being trapped in the high tower, and having the other person come for rescue purposes, bearing nutritious, tasty (pretend) muffins. I don't know how muffins got involved. But we picked the game back up, and Naomi came to rescue her sister and me, up in the tall tower, and brought the pretend muffins. There was another little girl on the play structure (or whatever they're called) with us, watching our weird game, so I said, "Do you want some of our tasty muffins?" And she blinked her wide eyes for a few seconds, and then said, "But, we don't know if they are vegan!"

News Flash! More on Muriel!

Like that kid isn't getting enough press around here, I have to post again hot on the heels of the (tardy) birthday newsletter to announce that our Sinbad the Sailor bondage is at an end... Muriel walks! Or, she did today. This morning she stood up and took a step, and sat down and kind of thought it over, and looked pleased with herself. Then she stood up again, and walked about five steps. Naomi and I cheered. Then we all ran out to school, daycare, and work, in that order. I told Muriel's teacher that she had walked for the first time this morning, and when I picked her up, she said she did four or five more times at school, and that she kept catching someone out of the corner of her eye, and saying, who is that? Oh, Muriel! Little ambulatory biped!

Also, Muriel had her one year check up, and she is healthy and tall and big headed and...super skinny. I thought she was, but it is not that great to get the confirmation that your kid is an absolute featherweight. Without being too specific, her weight is lagging behind her height and head circumference...by 70%. Zoinks! So, I'm putting the call out- if you have any finger food ideas to suggest, I'm all ears. I'm looking for good (not too sugary) carbs, especially. I can only give her so much cheese, is all I'm saying.

Happy Birthday to (M)Yoooouuuuuu(riel)

Muriel has made it a year on the outside, and we are proud of her for it. Was there a theme for her birthday party? There was: birds. That's it. And it wasn't exactly fully realized. There were some funny birds on her cake, a cute furry singing oriole toy, and a mylar balloon in the shape of a chick (which was probably intended for baby showers, whatever). But there was also a balloon with a dog wearing a party hat, that said, "Do I smell cake?" And a whole other cake, Mango Creme, which Jim's parents contributed to the party.

There were hamburgers and bratwursts, there was cucumber salad and German potato salad, there were cherries, there were chips, and homemade guacamole (thanks to Mr. V. for that delicious stuff!). There were two sets of grandparents, a family of old friends, and two of Jim's coworkers and the coworkers' spouse or partner.

The weather wasn't exactly fantastic for the party, but it wasn't raining, and it wasn't freezing, so we got to spend it outside, per plan.

Kid's table!

Some of the younger party guests were extremely zealous in helping Muriel unwrap her presents, to the extent that I have no idea which guests or friends sent or brought which gifts. This is going to make writing the thank you cards an exciting mental and creative challenge.

Muriel changes so much week to week. She doesn't even look like the same baby- her poofy cheeks and square, squishy head have disappeared, which is not to say that she doesn't have a head, just that she has shed her baby looks and is heading into toddler-dom. She is itching to walk- does anyone else remember reading "Sinbad the Sailor" as a kid, the part where Sinbad gives a ride on his shoulders to an old man, but the man hangs on tight and he has to carry the guy around for days or something? Our version of that is when Muriel convinces you to help her walk by letting her hold your fingers and clomp around the house. Seems like a nice thing to do at first, but she will never, ever, let you stop. Try to let go? Try to set her down? Try to pick her up? Good luck. I forget what Sinbad does to get the old guy off, but fortunately for us, Muriel is just going to start walking one of these days, and we will all be released from our bondage.

Muriel loves music- she dances even when I just sing songs to her (especially if the song is "Get Your Freak On"). She likes to pound out sounds on the piano, and drum on things, and shake things. You heard the prediction here first! Muriel will have a musical life! She has, alas, fallen out of love with baby food, which means we have entered the uncertain realm where we can't measure with satisfaction how many containers of carrots or green beans she has consumed in a given week. She is pretty good at trying foods, though. She is learning how to drink milk from a sippy cup, but she is not into it. She knows a handful of baby signs, and has just busted out with "more," which we were hoping would mean she would stop shrieking during meals, but not so far. She likes to imitate any sound anybody makes, including herself, so if someone coughs, she makes a weird coughing sound. Wacky baby. Oh, and she HAAATES lying still on the changing table. It is a wrestling match every single time. She also enjoys looking out the window, scrambling up the stairs when we are not looking, chewing on her own and others' shoes, and laughing at her sister. She is a funny, beautiful, smart, good little person. We are into Muriel!

PS- I am somehow deleting all the birthday photos I laboriously uploaded to this thing, and the files are all out of town on Mr. K's computer, so I will update with more when he returns. How can you live without seeing the globby freehand icing gel birds on Muriel's birthday cake?

And the Award for Most Inscrutable License Plate Frame Slogan Goes to...

"Hoochie Nana and Lovin' It."

Please discuss. And let me know what that is supposed to mean. No, I did not make it up.

Here are the things that have happened since I last posted:

• Went on vacation to Orcas Island. Sea kayaking!
• Finally managed to organize a department lunch. Attendance, just over 50%.
• 4th of July, Muriel's birthday party, including both sets of grandparents.
• Muriel's actual birthday.
• Muriel's baptism, again, both sets of grandparents.
• Parents-in-law returning to Malaysia (actually that happens in a few hours).
• Both kids starting "school" full time (again, this happens in the future, though not the distant one).

So, clearly, there are pictures and wry observations (or just observations) associated with all these events, but I am a bit of a wreck right now, to be frank. So I put it to you, my loyal reader(s)... which piece of news would you like to see reported, and possibly photo documentaried? All votes count for something. Peace out.

A Thousand Words and Then Some

I have already copped to slackerly posting these past few months, but in peeking through our recent photos, I see that there have been plenty of happenings happening. Why did I not just post one of these pictures each time, and knock off a thousand words apiece? 

Who dressed this merry band of kitchen pirates?

In an attempt to bring his war-making skills off of the computer and out into the real world, Jim bought a force of mercenary ladybugs to take on the forces of Aphid, which had overrun the province of Euphorbia. Cute general, don't you think?

This little bunny-fest took place at the "Sheep-Shearing Event" at a farm park here in town. Thanks to (my) bad planning, we spent most of the day waiting for the shuttle bus. But the adorable kids who bring their pets to be admired and petted by small children were waiting, as predicted, and Naomi made friends with a few long-eared creatures. The rapt look on Naomi's face is because the big girl holding the bunny was chewing gum, and Naomi found that almost as fascinating as the bunny. 

Look, Jim is actually in more than one picture this year! What you can't see in this is his poor tropical parents, wearing their parkas on a walk around our neighborhood.

Seattle Folk Life Festival! This is a really fun three or four day festival that involves lots of street performers, spoken word, music, folk dancing, eating (not folk eating), and drumming. Always drumming. Because this is Seattle, the mini-donut booth sign had the word ORGANIC bigger than the word DONUT. This was Naomi's first all-to-herself ice cream cone. 

Picnic! Muriel is a picnic natural- for some reason it has not occurred to her yet that she could just crawl away. She sits sweetly on the blanket and waits for me to shovel food into her mouth. Naomi does pretty well too. Also, the playground at this park is pretty awesome. The girls and I went back to this park a few days later (with three other ladies) for a brunch picnic, so there you go, the playground is awesome.

Another picnic! Actually, we billed this outing as a snack picnic. Probably not the most foolproof plan for developing healthy eating habits, or health at all, to associate any outing we have with eating. Oh well. Speaking of healthy eating habits, Muriel is all about the roughage. Every picture we take of her that's outside, she's munching on something a goat might fancy- grass, leaves, pine cones...

Today I was all set to write about how wretched the weather has been, how it seems it will never ever improve, how summer will never come. But then every picture I have not gotten around to posting before now shows us enjoying what appears to be lovely summer weather... So I guess the deal is that we have seen summer around, and summer looks good, and has been chatting us up, and gazing into our eyes, and we really thought we might be starting up something. But now? Now, in the damp, dark gray, 53 degree days of June? Summer is NOT returning our calls. Summer! Think about what you're doing! We could have been so good together!

Outdoors, I am a goat kid, but indoors, I am a musical prodigy!

In other indoor news, Muriel is determined to walk. She can walk pushing a stool, or holding someone's hand, though she puts one in mind of a showbiz chimpanzee, you know, in a cute way. I love this shot, because it captures another big development in our family- a sharp rise in the level of affection and care Naomi is showing her sister. 

Yea, sisters! 

OK, now I'm off the hook for another month...