We've been having smoothies for breakfast a lot, because they're easy and I can disguise vegetables in them. Unfortunately, smoothies are not really a food Annie can feed herself. She likes to drink out of a cup; she is not very good at it yet.
I guess we could always go this route though.
Everybody loved that curry. And the awesome things are 1) it's ludicrously easy, and 2) the mix is readily available in the states!
Her healthy appetite for people food and the return of my milk supply after going off hormones have popped this baby back onto her growth curve for her 9 month check-up. I am relieved. She's right on track for all her developmental milestones now. She babbles . . .
. . . and plays games with her psycho mom . . .
. . . and has added climbing stairs to her list of conquests. (Note the hovering hands of the safety professional. I'm kind of kicking myself now for creating this hazard in a place where we didn't have any stairs before.)
Our branch moved church to 10:00 to help some of our single marines be able to get there a little easier. It did not go well for us. I tried to put Annie down before church, but she'll usually sleep between 1.5-3 hours in the morning, so when I woke her up after 45 minutes she was foggy and bewildered instead of bright and happy. Then we had a sacrament meeting of the kids getting into noisy fights whenever I was in the middle of a hymn, and for some absurd reason I packed carrots as a snack, which they snapped and smacked loudly all through the passing of the sacrament. I had to take Annie out to feed her because the outfit I chose today was not compatible with discreet breastfeeding, and when I got back in both Vivi and Rafe were sitting with Drew on the stand. Not reverently. I've decided I need to hire a nanny to sit with my children at church. Or better yet, Heavenly Father can please send us someone else who plays the piano!
Last thing for Andelynn this week. She's started making this judgy face all the time. It's a little much, coming from someone with spit-up all down their chin.
RAFE
Drew plays hide and seek with the kids every now and again. Rafe thinks he's really good at hiding.
But I think he's got a flaw in his logic in there somewhere.
He is blurry in the vast majority of pictures I take of him. The only time he is still is when he's watching Dinosaur Train.
For breakfast he likes toast with "acre-pot par-serves" (apricot preserves), he's been carrying around his "CheeseBob" (SpongeBob) shovel a lot this week, and today when he walked in from church, he said "I can't take off my shoes because I'm full of hands." Here are Rafe and Vivi (in Rafe's pajamas) carrying in "logs" to build a "campfire" in our room.
They like to switch clothes.
VIVIEN
Vivien spends a good portion of her time carting Annie back and forth from room to room, sometimes to bring her to play, and sometimes to keep her away.
It reminds me so much of this page from one of my favorite books:
She loves to play games and being silly. She just chose the sticker for her reading lesson chart tonight like this:
Eeny, meeny, miny, mo.
Press a catter on the toe.
If he hollers let him go.
Hot dog, hot dog, hot dog, hot dog.
She had the family night activity this week, so we all got to participate in an elaborate scheme she made up. Earlier in the day she had cut up a piece of paper into strips and written words on all but one of them (words like "EIFL" and "RIF") and then hidden them around the house. When it was activity time, she had us turn out all the lights and close all the blinds, then we had to use the flashlight on my iPhone to look for the word strips. She showed us where to look. When we got to the last word strip (the blank one), she threw it in the air and exclaimed that now the monsters were dead! It was quite an activity. Here she is giving the scripture in Primary today.
And here she is observing an earthworm at the park. It was so big we could see its mouth opening and closing. And then Rafe sat on it . . .
DREW
You may have noticed Drew in the background of each of those updates. I know I did this week. We are so lucky to have a husband/father who anxiously engages in being a part of this family. He reads books, plays games, gives baths, sings lullabies, goes to the park, comes home for lunch, picks things up at the grocery store, takes out the trash, helps implement my ever-changing parenting stratagems, feeds people, gets the mail, prays with us, and takes the kids for Sunday walks while I blog (because my writing brain shorts out when there are distractions). He says things like, "A bad day with you is better than my best day single." He makes sure we never lack exposure to Dad humor. He's just a really good man. And we love him :)
I did a project this week that I've had in the back of my mind for a long time. On my way to the Daiso to get supplies, I passed by this pack of school children walking home unattended and had a twinge of sadness that we'll be leaving this wonderful country soon.
They have a beautiful display of felt at the Daiso, and every time I pass by it I think, "I would love to make a felt human anatomy set out of that . . ." So this week, I did. I copied and pasted pictures of individual organs into a word document where I could play around with scale, printed them out, traced them onto the felt, cut them out, and started glue-gunning.
Vivien liked to look at the organ pictures. When I was looking for a uterus I liked, there were lots of knitted and stuffed toy uteri that popped up in the image results. Later when we were studying the finished product together, she said, "Pretend I am the soft pink uterus toy."
Here they are! I still need to go back and get a big felt piece to be the body outline, and I'm going to use spare yarn to be the ureters and portal vein, etc.
I love it. The body is SO COOL.
I also embarked on a repair mission this week. I am currently starting two of my friends' daughters on violin, and have felt like a hypocrite trying to teach them proper, tension-free posture when I can't do it myself. So, I asked Alex if he could help me figure out my issues and he very kindly agreed. We had a FaceTime lesson and discussed some changes I could make to my posture that might help. I was practicing the next day and feeling kind of frustrated that I couldn't make it feel natural/painless, then put my violin on the opposite shoulder just to shake things up, and was taken back by how easily I could place my fingers on the string with my right hand. I talked to my occupational therapist friend that night at my soccer game about it and he had me come in to the clinic the next day to do a formal assessment. It turns out I have a 20 degree difference between my right and left arms in my ability to supinate. He gave me some stretches to try. I hope they work!
My hands are out of focus, but this was already the second take and I can't ask Drew to do it again or he will roll his eyes. But fuzziness aside, you can see how much further over my 4th finger gets on my right hand when I turn my palms up as far as I can. Oh, how much easier that would make it to play!
And speaking of differences between limbs . . . This is the snapdragon I got from our neighbors who moved. It is very confused about what it is supposed to be. We've got three different colors going on, and one of the branches put out some blooms that are suspiciously shaped. It's a genetic monstrosity!
Time for some funnies. We had bakmi goreng (the stir-fry noodle dish I fell in love with in Bali) for dinner the other night. I made it with shrimp, which both Rafe and Vivien love. When they had consumed all of theirs and picked all the rest of them out of the pan, Vivi turned to me and said, referring to the disgusting food pile under Annie's chair, "Will you look on the ground for more shrimps for me?"
Annie stood today for about 4 seconds on her own. She is getting lots of good core strengthening in, pulling herself up onto everything and everyone that will hold still long enough.
I have been trying to give the kids more things they CAN do, and do by themselves, so I don't have to say "no" and "wait" to them all day long. Part of that was putting the kid cups down low in the kitchen and getting a big Brita water filter with a spigot so the kids can get water whenever they want without having to ask me. But for some reason, now they just keep several full cups of water in the fridge at all times, which I invariably knock over whenever I try to take anything else out of the fridge. Why must all my parenting efforts backfire??
Three funnies from Rafe this week.
1.When we get in the car, he requests to listen to "Henry the Potter" (since we listen to Harry Potter when we go on long drives).
2. I was cooking the other day and Rafe was sitting at the art table. He did something helpful and so I complimented him on being my sweet, helpful boy. He smiled and said, "You're the beautifullest girl in the world!"
3. You know how moms mix up their kids' names? Rafe calls Drew, "Ma-Daddy" and me, "Da-Mommy."
Watching light saber duels while they waited for me to come home from the adult session of conference and feed the baby.
For YM/YW this week they had a combined activity taught by one of the women in the ward who likes to decorate cakes. She showed them her stuff and they each decorated a cake. Everyone thought Drew had made the tree of life on his cake, cause he's the branch president. I knew better. It is the white tree of Gondor.
We have a lot of rainy days in the spring here (kind of like Seattle, where the rain stays well into June-uary). I actually quite like the rainy days, partially because the clouds veil the sun that rises at 5am and help everyone sleep a little longer. But the kids really needed to play outside the other day, and it was coming down hard enough that Rafe was becoming exceedingly anxious about his shorts getting wet . . . so we put them in their swim suits and let them loose.
The title of this blog post is attributed to Rafe. I made a big batch of bran muffin batter to keep in the fridge this week, and every time I bake some, he says that. And every time he says that, I chuckle.
It was our last Friendship Day this week. They started broadcasting the base radio station on the PA system at 6:45 am; it probably would have been less obnoxious if they hadn't played their usual commercials. There's one for the vet's office where a man calls in to see if he has to register his pet monkey, Bubbles, since he can talk. But whenever Bubbles tries to say anything in the commercial (his lines are all movie clips, like the "I am not an animal!" line from The Elephant Man), the guy on the phone screams mean things at him. It's not my favorite commercial, and I was embarrassed that they would play it for the thousands of Japanese people lining up to come on base. Hopefully it was muddled enough that it was unintelligible to all who haven't heard it 5,000 times on the radio already.
We had Dutch Babies (that turned out weirdly) for breakfast per Vivien's request, because apparently I made them the same day as Friendship Day last year, so Vivien seemed to think they were a part of the Friendship Day tradition. When Annie woke up from her morning nap, I plunked her in the baby backpack, unfolded the double umbrella stroller, sun-screened everyone up, and joined the thronging masses.
We were pretty boring this year. We walked down to the flight line, watching the airshow as we went, met Drew to meander through the static airplane display, stopped by the squatty potty porta potty for the tiny bladdered people, bought and ate hot dogs, and then it seemed like we should probably go home. We stopped to get Vivi and Rafe's faces painted, to make the day more specialer.
Rafe went for the parasaurolophus.
Other than that, it's been a pretty low-key week. We took about half of our toys to the thrift store after several very long, frustrating bed-time clean-up sessions, and now we have few enough toys to have a Montessori-style toy closet. I took pictures of all the toys individually, printed them, cut them out, and taped them to the shelves to mark each toy's place. It's been fun to see some of the toys that used to be buried in the masses come out to play. This is "Halloween":
And the cleaning has gone slightly better, assuming I can get them to actually start cleaning. Usually their "legs are too tired." Puh-lease. Sometimes I have to sit in there and start counting backwards from five, holding a light saber threateningly over my head every time they stop moving. I'd much rather be doing my own chores (I can't believe I just said that . . .)
But my real parenting win of the week was the morning and bedtime routine checklists. There's one for each child on either side of the bathroom door. The magnet with their face on it advances down the list as they complete each task. Now when Vivien gets up in the morning, I don't even see her until she's made her bed and gotten ready for the day all by herself. She is quite proud of her independence. And I am too! Rafe's still a little shaky on the details, but we'll keep working on it.
(The sun and moon seem backwards, but Vivi liked her face to be on the sun during the day, and we reset the list at night while they're sleeping "under the moon" as it were. It would make more sense if the labels didn't say AM and PM. Next time . . .)
Also this week I had to take the doorknob off the kids door so they would stop locking each other out of their shared room. It's been kind of nice to have a peep hole to see what's going on in there when the door is closed . . .
. . . unfortunately my Japanese phone always makes the picture-taking sound, so I can't be as sneaky as I'd like.
We've used Mom's phone a lot to take movies this week. I had Aunt Meller send Vivien a couple videos of herself dancing and I think they might be better than ballet lessons. Here's an inspired Vivi dancing to "Dancing All the Day" from the Janeen Brady "Watch Me Sing" series, which I love. I am in awe of her leg lift at the end.
Here's a nice example of Vivi's lisp:
We also got a couple good little Vivi songs on film this week. They're not quite Frances material yet, but they're getting there.
"Babies are cute. Inside they're a gift, and always the one that keeps. They sometimes grow up to be a kid; sometimes they always see. If no one knows that I am having my counting watch by time."
"Rainbows in the sky. I see my rainbow waiting for me up in heaven. Whenever I know, whenever I know, I see the things I see. The butterflies fly in the sky!"
She tries to get Rafe to sing, but he's resistant. Vivien's almost-threat at the end cracks me up. "If you don't say something, or do something . . . Come on! Do it!"
And finally, Drew transitioned Vivien from the balance bike to a real bike with pedals. Watching her ride brings back memories of when I learned to ride in Michigan, and I would ride around and around and around the garages of our apartment complex.
There are lots of places in Japan that become purely magical for about one week of the year. We were aiming to catch the autumn leaves in all their glory when we went to Sandankyo Gorge last fall, but we went about a week too early. Last weekend we continued this pattern when we visited the Kawachi Fuji-en wisteria tunnels.
Our intention was to avoid the crowds during Golden Week (Japan's busiest travel holiday), and miss them we did. We also missed about 70% of the blooms. I walked past a Japanese man with his camera and heard him say "Chotto hayai desu ne?" and was thrilled to discover that I understood what he said. It doesn't happen very often. But he was right; it's a little early, isn't it?
We probably got to spend more time admiring the gnarled trunks of the ancient trees than we would have if the blooms had been out in full force, and they were really cool.
There aren't actually that many trees at the garden, but they are so old and their branches have been trained through their lattices for so many years that the whole hillside was covered (or rather, will be covered) with flowers.
The blooms that were out, however, did not disappoint. I wish there was a way to save a scent and share it with your friends. Maybe someday my smart phone will be able to do it. Until that day, you will have to believe me when I say it was heavenly. We went on a slightly overcast day, so it was cool and lovely and the air was sweet and buzzing with bees.
The tunnels were made up of white blossoms . . .
. . . deep purple . . .
. . . and a pretty pink.
And while the blossoms inside the tunnel weren't quite blooming, the outside looked awesome. I loved the shape of this tree, which I hadn't noticed walking through the actual tunnel.
Another closeup.
The fresh new momiji (maple) leaves floating over the wisteria were also stunning.
The garden was about a three hour drive from our house (through many, many tunnels, for each of which Rafe shouted, "TIME TUNNEL!! TIME TUNNEL APPROACHING!!" like the conductor on Dinosaur Train). We had intended to do a 4-day tour of Kyushu (the south island of Japan) that weekend, but the military issued a travel restriction on the other places we wanted to go, because of the earthquakes, so we made it into a day trip. To break up the driving a little bit we stopped in Shimonoseki, the last city on Honshu (the main island of Japan). In the distance is the bridge that connects the two islands:
Shimonoseki is a nice city. The main streets were lined with cheery azaleas. It was inspiring . . .
DO YOUR BEST!!! YOU CAN DO IT!!!
We decided to visit the aquarium and headed first to the dolphin show. There were two moms and their babies in the tank. I know all babies are cute, but those baby dolphins . . . They have to move their little bodies so fast when they swim to keep up with their moms, and when they come out of the water for a breath, blip! Much "kawaiiiiiii"ing happening at the aqua theater. For the show they had the moms do easy stuff like waving their fins and making their sound and swimming swiftly around the tank to make waves instead of jumping high, since they had both given birth less than a month before.
After the show we explored the rest of the aquarium. Vivien got to dress up as a penguin, which she found more diverting than viewing the actual penguins.
There was a tunnel to walk through with this swirling vortex of silvery fish circling dizzyingly above.
And a tank with this enormous sunfish. It turned completely on its side at one point and dragged its weird mouth around the wall of its tank, tasting as it went.
We sat and watched the underside of an eddy for awhile in their Kanmon Strait tank. So cool!
And at the very end of the exhibits was a blue whale skeleton.
We admired the gigantic size of the foramina in its skull.
And then we had to walk through the gift shop. Stupid, stupid gift shop with your weird, over-priced toys that my daughter becomes unhealthily attached to on sight. I wouldn't buy her a white cylindrical seal pillow, and she cried ugly, blotchy tears for the rest of the day.
At least Annie was happy.
We spent Sunday at church and home (and at a friend's house, celebrating her birthday, where my children locked the door to her baby's room that has no key and effectively cut her off from the baby's bed, clothes, and diapers for two days until the contractor could come get it open. At least the baby wasn't in there . . .), then on Monday we decided to take advantage of the leave Drew had already been approved for from the cancelled Kyushu trip and go camping on one of our little typhoon-absorbing neighbor islands.
It is about an hour drive from us and conveniently connected to the mainland by bridge.
Here is our campsite. We were right next to the bathrooms and kitchen area and had the entire campground to ourselves . . .
. . . so we got the best view too.
Apparently the Japanese don't believe in picnic tables though. Good thing we have been practicing sitting on the floor!
We spent much of Monday exploring our campsite, combing the beach for seashells and relaxing. We found lots of fuzzy caterpillars.
And on the beach there were tons of seashells with holes in them, which I have since learned are probably signs of the inhabitants of the shell being eaten by a predatory sea snail. We collected a bunch, then I gave them to Vivi that afternoon with a long piece of dental floss and she spent a good hour threading them quietly while Annie took a nap.
Then it was time to start getting ready to cook dinner. Drew made fire with flint and steel!
He's a good daddy for our family. Wouldn't trade him.
I wanted a picture with Annie too.
After hot dogs and s'mores we all headed to bed. I attempted to put everyone down at once, but they were too excitable, so I just laid in my sleeping bag and let them have their Wild Rumpus for about half an hour. Then I played Peter and the Wolf for them on my phone and they all drifted off to sleep. Drew shared the air mattress with Vivi and Rafe, and Annie and I shared a sleeping bag on some pads off to the side. I didn't get a ton of sleep, but I also didn't get peed on, like Drew did because I forgot to bring a nighttime pull-up for Rafe. Sorry, honey. Smiley Annie was up first.
I let her crawl around while I listened to the birds in the leafy treetops saying "good morning!"
Also I admired my sleeping beauty. Thanks for giving her your lips, Drew.
When everyone was awake we had oatmeal and hot chocolate. Poor Rafe-boy took a sip of his cocoa, realized it was too hot, then promptly spilled the entire cup of it all over himself. No burns, but still lots of crying. I took the kids down to the beach while Drew packed up the campsite. Oh, and he charged my phone with his portable solar panel! I think he wins the award for this trip. Especially because after we were all packed up, we decided to check out a waterfall on our way home, and google maps thought it'd be a good laugh to send us down a Japan-narrow, overgrown jungle road with a sheer drop on one side where Drew had to walk ahead clearing fallen bamboo stalks and tree branches as we went. The adrenaline was pumping for sure, and I had "no guardrails . . . No Guardrails . . . NO GUARDRAILS!" stuck in my head the whole time (Kaitlyn and I used to sing that song when we were driving to AZ and there were no guardrails on stretches of the winding mountain passes. It's an ominous tune.).
This is a weird picture of Drew, but I was too preoccupied with keeping the car on the road without scratching the heck out of it to worry about photography, and it is the only one I snapped. Promise you will only look at the crazy road and the precarious bamboo.
The waterfall was nice. We had a pleasant walk through some farm country, then into a grove of trees.
Whenever I see leaves on rocks like this, the word "grotto" comes to mind, even though this is not a grotto. You have to say it really glottal-y.
There was a series of bamboo chutes running from the falls down to the trail. It was very scenic and peaceful and Japanese gardenish.
On the way back we were able to coax some jewel-bright dragonflies to land on our hands. They kept landing on my phone whenever I would hold it up to take a picture.
And here is a picture of the toilet at the trail head, just for kicks. Squatty potty with a bucket and ladle next to it to flush with. At least toilet paper was provided.
And that was our extended weekend adventure! This weekend the kids and I went to the Kintaikyo Matsuri, which is basically a festival to celebrate our awesome bridge in Iwakuni.
In the Edo period of Japan (1603-1860's), the feudal lords had to spend every other year living in the capitol so the shogunate could maintain control of them. The festival is a reenactment of the return of the feudal lord and his household to Iwakuni Castle after his year in Edo (present-day Tokyo; that would be like walking from Highland to Black Canyon City outside of Phoenix, or from Highland to Reno, or from Highland to Yosemite).
They had a group of taiko drummers across the river to accompany the procession.
The kids really enjoyed all the costumes in the parade. That is, when they weren't throwing stuff in the river. They were in pretty good company though. All the Japanese kids were playing in the river under the bridge.
It took about an hour and a half for all the participants to cross. The women in kimono were so beautiful and elegant--such bright colors and graceful movement! It didn't take much imagination to feel like we had gone back in time.
Down on the bank of the river there was a big group of men in samurai armor firing muskets. Vivi was grouchy because we'd passed by a stall selling toys and I wouldn't buy one for her (Again! Meanest Mom!)
They were loud! And it was kind of funny to see the samurai with muskets, as I usually picture them with swords in my mind . . .
Vivi, Rafe, and Annie were VERY popular at the festival. I had the double umbrella stroller and Annie in my baby backpack, and we had to stop for every group of old ladies we passed to coo at them. They all asked if Vivi and Rafe were "futago"/twins, and Annie gets compared to the Kewpie baby a lot (Kewpie Mayo is THE mayo here). It's a pretty good comparison, I think.
It was a fun day! I'm glad we braved the crowds and celebrated the beautiful Kintai bridge! I will miss it when we move.
Now I just have a bunch of random stuff to record. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I get up at 5 and go for a swim at the pool on base. Sometimes it is just me and the lifeguard, but some days I walk in and there are 30 marines on deck either doing PT or swim quals. I try not to be self conscious, there in my swimming suit in front of 30 very fit young men. It helps that they're usually in their funny skivvy shorts and looking very nervous about swimming. This week in the locker room, one of the female marines I have shared a lane with a couple of times came in and said, "Hey thanks for sharing a lane with me again. I feel bad cause I suck at swimming and you're over there all swimming your laps and sh**." I wasn't quite sure how to respond, so I just said, "No problem! Thank you!"
When I get back in the morning, I must feed the hoodlums "brakdis," as Rafe calls it. This is assuming he hasn't taken matters into his own hands, as he did this morning . . . .
It did not take long to find the guilty party.
He looked like this to me:
Breakfast usually takes awhile, because the kids suddenly realize halfway through that they haven't been to the bathroom.
"Vivi, do you need to go potty?"
"I'm marching."
"I see that. Do you need to go potty?" Marches to the bathroom
After breakfast we usually make calls. I am excited to be in a similar time zone, so I don't always have to call at dinner time.
Do you like how Melanie and I have matchy-matchy hair now? Melanie, this is what your pixie cut will look like when you are "ugly and fat," just in case you were wondering. ;)
After breakfast I put Andelynn down for a nap. When it's really sunny outside she decides she just wants to play instead, which has started to involve sticking her limbs through the crib slats and getting stuck, then screaming in distress until I come free her.
While Annie doesn't take her nap, Rafe and Vivien run back and forth from the family room to their room. Rafe takes the corners as tightly as he can, but he is not quite as coordinated as he thinks he is and keeps clipping his hips on the door frames. He's got permanent bruises over both anterior superior iliac spines. When Annie wakes up, we usually try to get out of the house. Vivi and Rafe have both figured out how to shimmy up poles, which makes my heart swell with pride!
Some days we are ambitious and go to Kodomokan. They got a new ball pit enclosure. It's a lot less ghetto than the taped together pieces of cardboard they used to have.
After our afternoon play, everyone is usually pretty cranky. Everyone wants to play with things they shouldn't, like my plants out on the balcony (which have started putting out different colored flowers on the same plant).
Rafe usually spends a significant portion of the early evening in timeout. Yesterday I escorted him to his room and started closing the door. He said, "I want my door open so I can slam it." I said no. Annie will rip out chunks of hair if you get in her way . This was from Vivien's head . . .
But, if we can make it to Daddy's return, things are better. And then it's dinner time. I am starting to develop a thick skin at dinner, because my little eaters are becoming quite vocal about what they do and don't like. "This is the worst dinner I have ever had," happens surprisingly often. I'm pretty sure the other night Rafe had water and mustard for dinner. We were having bread as a side and he asked for some mustard on it, then when Drew had squirted it on, Rafe held the bread up to his face, inhaled deeply and said, "Mmmmm, mustardy," and proceeded to lick the mustard off the bread. Sigh. I do my best! He sure as heckfire didn't complain when I made this amazing chocolate cake from scratch tonight though . . .
I've been wanting to make an old fashioned chocolate cake for awhile now because we got this book from the library and she makes a chocolate cake for her family every night. I'm probably going to need to buy this one. We loved it.
We have been doing a lot better with having family night ever since I made name tags for my family night board. We decorated cookies a week or so ago with a bunch of sprinkles we inherited from someone who was moving.
After dinner and bath time we have stories and scriptures. We've switched over from the illustrated and abridged scriptures to the real ones for our family scripture study. It's been a good experience thus far. I love it when the scriptural language starts creeping into their vocabulary. Like when Vivien says, "My feet are being a little stiffnecked. They are making me try to trip and fall." Vivien reads all the words she can sound out during our scripture reading. She is making great progress in her nightly reading lessons. And I like to think that I'm getting better at helping her work through frustration . . .
Last thing, that has nothing to do with anything, is that everyone at church loves to hold Annie. I hardly ever get to hold her, unless she's too hungry or tired to be distracted from wanting me. The primary girls call her "Sparkle." The young men would take her to class with them every week if I would let them. There's a deacon and a priest and a beehive who always compete to hold her during sacrament meeting for me while I'm playing the piano. And now she is crying, so I should go feed her.
I got sick of the flower arrangements we've had on our rostrum for the last year, so I made new ones for spring! It was very therapeutic.
I lied. One more thing. Rafe refuses to wear pants. Ever. I have all these nice church pants for him that he won't even look at on Sunday mornings. So, I cut them off and hemmed them and now he wears his "church shorts." I'll have to find him some fancy socks to go with them.
