email from my husband that made me laugh for a long time:

i went to the goodwill outlet store and it was traumatic because it was just crazy looking people frantically digging through large bins of unsorted crap.  like monkeys looking for fruit hidden under straw or i dunno chewbacca digging for robot parts.

Themes of importance

So, since I changed the name of my blog, this might have messed up the (few) people who were following me. Not sure? Anyway, I changed it on FB, so it should be importing properly now. And then all you people should follow me, rather than just reading it in your newsfeed. Why? So I can become rich, obviously.

I wanted to find a video of Ryan Adams singing "Tennessee Sucks (in the summer)" to post here, but apparently it's not a popular enough song. But c'mon, my Tennessean peeps, do you feel me on this one? I hate when it's too hot to be outside.

Also, I'm so mad at my yard. It's full of chiggers. I have - not even joking - over 20 bites all over me at this point. We tried an all-natural repellent in the yard, but I guess it didn't work. Need to do some more research, because I hate that I'd have to put poison in my yard in order to be able to be outside without getting bitten. Any suggestions?

I've got a hankering for writing again now thanks in part to Ashley's post about how hard it is. But I have a sort-of idea for some poetry inspiration, so maybe I'll work on that, and post something here if it turns out decent. You know, in all of my spare time. Gugugugoo!

Meanwhile, here's the last good one I wrote, and the last bad one. I'll let you decide which is which. No titles.

Sept. 21

At the door, a man stood.

Backwards twisting words of his.

Dark hole of a mouth shaping forms.

Rolling, foggy sounds escaping.

Covered by my hands, my ears.

Muffled.

On the table, fists pounded

            firecrackers

into the night spewing.

Colors, shapes, and blocks.

Verbally sentences diagrammed.

Trees of sentences.

Prepositions of.

Quickly adverbs.

            Dark, beautiful adjectives

through my fingers squeezing

            my ears into.

Nov. 30

And I hear the “ding” that is you

playing Mario

while I lie in bed under a pillow

and I get mad

and I want to crush all your Oreos.

 

Also, I made peach cobbler tonight! That's summer!*

So many things. That I haven't written about. But they happened, I promise! All of them. And look, I redesigned and renamed my blog! Because it was less work than actually writing a post. Yes, I will for sure be a famous blogger some day at this rate.

Anyway, one of the things I want to write about is summer! Oh summer, sweet summer. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? I love summer. Except for all the heat and bugs. But I think I have this made up idea of what summer is like - homemade popsicles and sprinklers and fresh foods with lots of tomatoes. Made up in the sense that, I get all nostalgic about it, but did I ever really have summers like that? I mean, I've done (and eaten) all those things, but maybe not in the storybook summer way that I have in my head. And also, you still have to work during the summer, apparently. That's a little bit of a bummer.

But what this leads me to is, Pinterest! I joined and I've got a board pinning all sorts of stuff about my fantasy summer. Yeah, look at all that new jargon I just introduced you do. You don't even know what I'm talking about. You're just nodding and acting the part.

So, that's all for now. It's late. I'm tired. I'll try to write with more substance soon.

PS - Look! I didn't mention a baby this whole post!

*And homemade salsa with homegrown (though not by me) tomatoes and jalapenos!

A delicacy in some parts, I hear

As you may have heard, the world is ending this Saturday. I'm realizing now that there have definitely been some signs! For instance, the plague of locust at my house.

Okay, cicadas, whatever. The point is, science is crazy and freaky! It started with all of a sudden over night hundreds of the exoskeletons or skins or what have you (pictured above...and below) attached to our house and trees and bushes.

Seriously, EVERYWHERE. So many. These pictures don't do it justice at all. At first we only saw a few of the actual adult bugs, but then, unbelievably, even more crunchy skins everywhere and now swarms of adult bugs! They are slow and big and gross and everywhere and LOUD.

 

So we did some research, and it turns out they have a 13 year life cycle. So for 13 years they live underground, and then come out just once to mate and die. The picture above shows the holes that are all over the ground where they have emerged. Thinking of suing for property damage.

Here's what the adults look like. Luckily, they are pretty harmless. They don't eat the plants or bite or anything. They just swarm and then die all over your porch.

I showed the little bug shells to Abraham, and of course he didn't know that they're gross, so he picked one up immediately...

 

And smashed it gleefully between his hands.

vocabulary

I was cooking corn for dinner, boiling it still in the husk, and Abraham wanted to see what I was making. So I held him up, he pointed, and I told him it was corn. But then I realized that maybe he had never seen corn in the husk before, and I was trying to think of the word "husk" so I could explain it to him.

Me: I'm cooking corn. It's in the...um...what do you call it?

Abraham: Wa-wa. (Water).

I had to laugh. Poor kid, his mom can't even remember what water is called.

Baby brains

I read this blog post today about what the author calls a "toddler mind map" - basically a visual representation of all the things that are important to the toddler at the time. This is such a cute idea to me, mainly as something to look back on and remember what Abraham was like at different ages. So I want to draft a little list while the thought is with me of things that I might include. I really like the idea of it being visual so that he can enjoy it as well, but this will be a first step.

These are the things, people, events, etc that he is very into right now. He might express it through his conversation ("incoherent toddler speak HAMMER incoherent toddler speak"), choice of activity, or by CONSTANTLY asking me to tell him about things. He asks by pointing to my mouth and saying, for instance, "moon." This means I have to tell him about the time (like a MONTH ago) that he saw the moon outside in the sky and said he wanted to hold it, but it was too far away and he couldn't reach it. Then I have to tell him more about how he can be an astronaut and fly to the moon in a rocket (including count down and blast off) and then walk on the moon and find moon rocks. He especially likes the part about the moon rocks. He asks me to tell him about the moon nearly every day, often more than once, and always (Lord help me) more than once in a row. There is really only so much that one can say about the moon, I have learned.

So here goes! Abe's 19-month-old brain, in no particular order:

1. Trying to reach the moon
2. The moon in general. Anything even remotely crescent-shaped, he points out as a moon.
3. Going to the doctor (especially when the doctor hit his knee with a hammer)
4. Going to Feast at the Baha'i Center, listening to music and eating a cookie
5. The story of Abraham and the Three Bears
6. Food: Pistachios. Also, pistachios. And pistachios. Followed closely by cashews and cranberries. Seriously, this kid would live off of nuts and beans if I let him.
7. Playing with play-doh. Or more accurately, forcing me to play with play-doh while he watches and commands.
8. Letters and numbers
9. Counting to three and doing something, for instance, jumping off the couch, throwing a ball
10. Fingerpainting
11. Swinging
12. Eggs: he plays with the plastic ones and eats the real ones. And also plays with the real ones by smashing them when they are hard-boiled. Un. Fortunate.
13. Certain people...but I won't name them so as to not sadden those of you who may be left out.
14. Pink bear
15. Making shadows big and small (at night in his room with a little lantern)
16. A cheap little finger puppet that came with a pack of wash clothes. He wants the puppet to change his diaper. He wants the puppet to play basketball with him. This will be troubling if continued into adulthood.

Always loves:
Garbage cans
Music and musical instruments
Dancing
Chocolate : \
Stuffed animals

I'm sure I will think of another thing or two later, but this is a lot, actually. Especially if I have to draw it all. Maybe I can just use clip art... Oh technology, how lazy you make me!

PS - What a cute baby! What a good idea! I can already tell that even just 6 months from now I will love reading this list and remembering his little quirks and interests.

if he grows up to be a garbage man, i won't lie, i'll be a little disappointed

Whoever said you shouldn't let babies play with plastic bags is crazy. Because Abraham spent - I kid you not - over 30 MINUTES straight playing with one today. And if you know him at all, you'll know that, of course, it was a garbage bag. Anderson took out the trash and the recycling, and I got out two new bags. While I was putting one in the garbage can, Abe took the other and put it in the recycling bin. And then took it out and shook it, just like he saw me do to get the bag open. Then he adjusted it, put it back in, put the lid on, moved it around, adjusted, took it out, put it back in...you get the drift. I actually MADE and ATE dinner, uninterrupted! (Okay, the dinner was mostly made at this point...but I finished!)

Actually his whole process was really fascinating to me. This is where some of you might roll your eyes, but I'm serious! I have been reading a lot about Montessori education, and one thing that is talked about is the focus and concentration that a child will have when a task matches exactly right with his/her developmental needs. The child will spend a lot of time and energy on the task, repeating it over and over again, in a way that may seem super boring to us adults. And then when finished, instead of being tired, the child will feel calm and satisfied. The task is fulfilling some sort of developmental need that we may not even understand. And I have seen Abraham focused and spending time on different activities, but this was the longest I have ever seen him do just one task this way. I don't know what sort of need this was fulfilling for him at all - order? precision? mimicking adult tasks? And he might have even gone on longer except I unfortunately did something that distracted him.

Anyway, totally cool, garbage bag! I owe you one!