Family snippets

Jellybean is trying to decide if she wants to go head down or not. Mostly she does, but she also likes to switch it up and lie diagonally. I've been doing a lot of yoga poses to encourage her towards the correct position. Ellie gets annoyed by this, because most involve me being head-down, and she wants to see my face at all times. So she runs up to me, grabs my head and pushes, yelling "Off! Off!" (That is her all-purpose preposition and in this case it means get up.) I have to explain to her that no, she may not push Mommy, and Mommy is going to stand like this for as long as I want, whether she approves or not. Sorry.

I had a midwife appointment this morning. I go every two weeks at the end of my pregnancy; I can't believe that we might only have a month left before Jellybean comes, only one or two more appointments before the actual birth. I hope she does come early. It won't be the end of the world if she is late, and I don't put much stock in due dates, but even when I am freaking out about how I'm going to juggle two small children, I do want her to arrive soon. We can't wait to see what she looks like.

This week Ellie proudly formed her first sentence: "This is a toe!" (while pointing at my bare feet, festively adorned with Water Street Blue). Followed by "This is our car!' and "This is a jacket!" She loves to demonstrate her naming knowledge.

I am finding that as Ellie's mobility grows, so does her mischief. It's not necessarily intentional. This week she has fallen into the bathtub, dumped salt and pepper on the floor, upended a candleholder filled with Indian corn kernels, shut herself into the coat closet, and split open her lip, all out of innocent curiosity. Other times it's clearly premeditated: pulling out all the books on the shelf, pushing a dining room chair over to the whiteboard and drawing on it, splashing in the toilet, putting her sippy cup into the trash can, decorating her face with (washable) markers.

I think she goes on troublemaking streaks. She'll be a little angel all morning and then cram her craziness into the half hour before lunch.

things I have told Ellie not to eat

Unpeeled tangerines
Candy wrappers
Magnets
Dirt
Coffee grounds
Pine needles
Other people's toothbrushes
Toilet paper
Diaper cream
Price tags
Sharpie markers
Hairspray
Leaves
Mulch
Zinnias
Rotten tomatoes
Grocery lists
My keys
Battery-operated candles
Tissues
Semi-raw chicken from the trash can
Napkins
Spent matches
A piece of cement

And crayons. So many crayons-- I don't know what Crayola puts in those things but they are toddler crack.

Weekend linkage

"Adventures with George Washington." I giggle easily, but only a few things can actually elicit rip-roaring laughter, and this was one of them.

What kids all around the world eat for breakfast. I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. The pictures of the girls from Istanbul made me miss Turkish breakfasts desperately. Perhaps I should start buying cucumbers and feta to accompany our usual morning fare (which is a panful of eggs, either fried or scrambled, and sourdough bread with lots of butter).

"Undisguised Blessings."

I can look at my life and say I am blessed because I have this hardworking husband. Because I have a house – with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a fenced-in yard, and a refrigerator so full of food that I lose track of things and end up throwing some of it away. Because I have this daughter – who came to life where babies before her did not, who is healthy and robust and vibrant and sleeps almost all night . . . 

[But] I was blessed –that is, receiving undeserved gifts from God– before this, when I did not have a baby. And there is blessing in challenging babies, awkward-looking babies, non-sleeping babies, or babies who won’t latch on to nurse… and there is profound blessing in babies who develop differently. So we misuse the word blessing when we think it only references things we want to call “good.”

"Literary Starbucks." Cute. Haven't you always wondered what your favorite authors and fictional characters would order?

I try to avoid indulging in schadenfreude. But the past week's frantic kerfuffle over that street harassment video has been too good to pass up. From National Review, "How The Far Left Hijacked A Cat-Calling Debate and Started to Eat Itself."

running from time

Every advertisement in America assumes that we want to look younger, and since advertisers are pretty good at sussing out the mood of the populace, I guess we do. Apparently we are all trying to return to the best days of our lives (defined as "the days when we were unwrinkled, skinny, and burdened by as few responsibilities as possible").

This passion for youthfulness bears ugly fruit: orange spray tans and reconstructed noses always ring false. It's also a phenomenal waste. People shell out extravagant sums for plastic surgery, spend hours sculpting their muscles at Crossfit, and fret endlessly over one too many appetizers eaten at the party last night. Imagine what all that money, time, and energy could achieve! Exercise is great. I love cosmetics and clothes. But how sad to see them demand more of us than our love for God and all He has called us to. (Even worse is when we think that we need to have our appearance nailed down before we can attend to those other things.)

Mrs Adrian Iselin by J.S. Sargent

Anyway, we all lose life eventually. No one defeats age, and I think that embracing truth is typically more attractive than painting on a lie. As we care for ourselves, do we endeavor to  honor what God has created, or do we try to turn ourselves into someone else entirely, a mythical ideal concocted of magazine clippings and hairspray? There's such a difference.

I see wise older women acknowledging who they are, enjoying the beauty that is reserved for their own age, and looking so amazing because of that. Then I see women forcing themselves into a cheap imitation of who they were decades ago, running from time, only to find themselves exhausted, unhappy, and decidedly plasticized.

I am still young myself, but I already notice age altering my hands. They work hard: plunged into hot dishwater, sorting through dirty vegetables, scrubbing mold from shower tiles. The work shows. They're starting to wrinkle and lose their elasticity. I know that one day the rest of my body will follow suit. My veins will stand out and my skin will droop. Some of the damage will be due to the march of time, some to nourishing children, and some to the unforseen mishaps of life. That's okay. I am not interested in fighting reality. I am interested in embracing the beauty God gives me every day.

a fruit in season

It is a little funny, America's annual affair with pumpkin. That chunky orange sphere is one of the few foods that actually holds up really well over time, and that tastes perfectly fine after being preserved. You can make an equally delicious pumpkin cake in March as in October. But somehow we've got it into our heads that we must make all of our pumpkin rolls and lattes and pies in the autumn, or bust.

(Now asparagus? Blueberries, tomatoes? Those seasonal obsessions I understand. They are truly wretched out of season.)

Perhaps the autumn pumpkin fling is a way for us to pretend that we're still close to nature, that we care about the seasons God created, when really, we have separated ourselves as much as possible. Ironically, I think the people who are most into pumpkin lattes tend to live furthest away from the natural way of things: the big city hipsters who have probably never seen a cornfield or petted a pig.

Not that I dislike big cities. I also like my air conditioning, which allows me to escape seasonal heat, and my car, which allows me to drive south to the beach when it's freezing at home. But I sometimes think that living seasonally is good for us. It reminds us that we can't have everything we want, when we want it. That the world moves in a rhythm larger than our own whims.

I wish I could find a luscious peach in darkest February, though. Though I could find a peach, "luscious" would not describe it.