January is FUN!

Uninteresting non-sequiter: this photo reminds me that when I was little and visiting my grandmother in Las Vegas, I got confused by Kentucky Fried Chicken's slogan "Finger lickin' good." I would ask for "the chicken in the box with the fingers in it." Yum!

If any of you out there think that you have/had the world's cutest baby, you are mistaken. This sassy little bundle holds the title.

banana break

Fortunately Willem thought it was funny when Nels decided to sit on his lap.

The king of the deep-fryer makes...

Spanish apple fritters!

Good times.

(Many thanks to Amanda for taking the great photos of the Good Times. It's always a shame when the most photogenic person in the room is also the best photographer.)

Do I Have A Problem?

Or is this normal? It's not that I think that someone who seldom ventures farther than Albertson's or the doughnut shop needs this many shades of lip color. It's just that I haven't found THE ONE yet. You know. The one that makes my eyes a piercing blue, gives my cheeks a rosy glow, and makes me look like I am the world's most well-rested woman.

(And, yes, this is what remains AFTER I threw a bunch out. The only one being kept for sentimental reasons rather than wearability is a MAC red called Ruby Woo that I wore for a play set in the 40s.)

Not "Just like the ones we used to know"

We had a different Christmas this year. Every year we alternate which family we will spend Christmas with--mine or Shaun's. This year was to be with my family, but that has presented a problem as of late. We are increasingly scattered (primarily geographically but arguably in other ways as well) and there is no longer a standard family Christmas celebration to attend.

We decided to head to Southern California for the first time in a year and a half. The Christmas players would include: my sister, who dwells in a small and charming apartment in Koreatown in LA, my grandfather, whose 50's era tract home in Garden Grove provides ample grounds for having him committed, my mom, who flew in from Bend, Shaun's aunt Nancy, who lives in her parents' house in La Habra Heights which has not yet been de-pack-ratted, and Shaun's Grandma Martin, who lives in a small apartment in a swanky place for the elderly in Fullerton.

If you've followed all that, you will perhaps have noticed that we were left without a suitable place to have a Christmas gathering (mainly Christmas dinner!) with all of those folks. Shaun's sister, who was celebrating with her husband's family, came nobly to our rescue and not only let us use her home (where we stayed for the week) but even prepared a Christmas morning meal for all of us ahead of time. Very, very kind.

My family spent Christmas Eve at Hillary's house, where we enjoyed a very memorable meal. Nels ate prosciutto and asked for a second serving of pate. I had duck confit for the first time. In case you're wondering, it was like the bird version of bacon. The homemade butterscotch pudding was really really really good. And pudding is not something I normally get excited about.

On Christmas Day the boys got way too many presents and we enjoyed time with Kim and Cory and Henry before they left to be with Cory's side of their family.

We ate too much, with a full breakfast followed by a dinner of prime rib roast, potatoes au gratin, and all sorts of other wonderful things. We were so full that we didn't even bother with the butternut squash soup. Hillary once again had done all the shopping and cooking. Quite a production.

The rest of our week was relaxing. We had a nice day at the Huntington with "Antsy Ancy" and Grandma Martin, and one friend visit with Steve and Danica. We are now trying to snap out of the "let's move back to California" mood that gripped us as we enjoyed the balmy climate and the great company.

The boys were introduced to and fell in love with the Grinch this Christmas. Willem is making his best Grinch face here.

Ah, sunny, sunny day at the Huntington Gardens.

How could this display not be a hit? It featured a seed pod that spun like a propeller and a fan operated by a TRIGGER!

Nels, Nels and Willem waiting for our flight home. Yes, this family traveling from Ontario (they live in SoCal) to Boise on our flight also had a four year-old son named Nels after his grandfather.

The art of appeasement: give the two year-old ALL the toys you brought. And all the snacks. All at once.

And now, here we are back in cold and snowy Boise, housebound thanks to the severe cold/flu-type thing the boys have been thoughtfully passing back and forth. Willem is developing a new dinosaur scream. Nels figured out that I find it annoying when he repeats my own words back to me. I have let the boys watch too many videos while they've been sick, and we've spent most of the day dealing with some very unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. I have finally relented for the sake of my stress level, and they are watching a Bible Songs video as I write this. I am hoping that the biblical content will calm them. Or maybe it will calm ME. Right now a choir of children is exhorting me that "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam." My attitude today has not been sunbeam-esque. But then again, a sunbeam is of no use in preventing one child from strangling another with a measuring tape. So we'll have to see about this sunbeam thing.

The Odd Couple

One is tall and slim, verbose, given to dramatics, and--how shall I say?--fastidious.

The other is short and barrel-shaped, communicates primarily via expressive noises, and is, above all else, scrappy.

I refer, of course, to my two sons. Anyone who's met them will have no trouble discerning which one is which.

Joyful, Joyful

We're off to California for the holidays. A very merry Christmas from our nuthouse to yours!

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Too Much HGTV, Perhaps

We moved to Idaho at the end of October last year. We lived in a small apartment in the suburb of Meridian. It was cold outside. The boys were one and three years old. They ate different things. They slept at different times. Finding a long enough stretch of time to get out and about was very difficult. Add to these circumstances complimentary satellite television (for the first time in my life I could view more channels than rabbit ears could conjure) and one had all the fixins for a minor television addiction.

I spent an inordinate amount of time watching HGTV ("Home and Garden Television" for my family members who also have never had cable.) It was one of the few channels that could be counted on not to be inappropriate for children, and I was quickly hooked. Room makeovers, interior design competitions, people looking for new houses, homeowners finding out what their homes are worth...what's not to like?

Well, OK, there were a few shows that I quickly learned to avoid. Shows that do things on the ultra cheap and feature lots of crafty "re-purposed" items. As I've said before, I like things to be what they are. And, on the other end of the spectrum, I took a pass on the shows that focus on $35,000 bathroom renovations. I recently saw a bathroom featuring glass "vessel"-style sinks. I don't want to have to Windex my sink every time I use it to keep it looking nice. Also, only one sink in a "master bath" is just fine with me. I don't really need company when I brush my teeth.

Once we moved into our house in Boise, I stopped watching TV during the day. For a long time. But upon putting our house on the market, I allowed myself to be sucked right back in.

One show I enjoy wasting my time with is House Hunters. A house-hunting couple takes a look at three different places and then decides from among them. The US version can make me a little crazy, depending on the subjects of the particular episode. "I don't really like the color in here...this closet's only big enough for MY clothes...this isn't a very big master..." and my most despised comment: "The kitchen's OK, but I really wanted GRANITE counter tops." Don't people know that these counter tops will look as dated as avocado appliances and goldenrod medallion vinyl flooring in about 10 years? As Mark Helprin says in his novel Freddy and Fredericka, "I wonder where in the world there is a hole big enough to swallow all the granite counter tops that in a few years will be marching out of kitchens like an army of the dead.”

Now that HGTV has House Hunters International, the domestic version has lost much of its luster. This program is FASCINATING. I watched a German and Dutch couple search for a home on the Italian coast, where the ages of the available properties varied not by decades, but by centuries. "Is this the original floor?" Why, yes, it is the original floor. From the sixteenth century. I've seen a Brit and Australian looking for a house in Jamaica. And a Japanese couple buying an apartment-sized home in Paris. It's fun to see what does or doesn't come with a house in different places. It's so different everywhere, and so are people's expectations. But the challenge of choosing a house is the same for everyone to whom money IS an object: deciding which items on a long wish list are the things one wants most.

The show that's caused me trouble, though, is not House Hunters. It's Designed to Sell. On this program, some hapless person trying to sell his house is rescued by a designer with a team of carpenters, who spends $2000 and fixes all of the nasty things that would put off potential buyers. The show culminates in an open house at which a steady stream of nicely groomed people wander through the house and "ooh" and "ah" over all of the improvements.

When our realtor started holding open houses to sell OUR house, my only frame of reference was Designed to Sell. I did not have a team of carpenters. I did not have a budget of $2000. That, however, did not prevent my perfectionist tendencies from kicking in. I banished all clutter and piles of stuff. Everything was put in its place. So much so that I think it borderline creeped some people out. After a few open houses yielded no offers, we asked our realtor if he thought there was anything we needed to do to make the house look better. "No, they love it," he replied. "They love the colors, they love the furniture. Actually, someone asked me if anyone lives here or if the house was staged."

Well, that's just silly. No one would stage a house with a fake cat, complete with litter box. But it did make me think I was going a little overboard with the HGTV.

That and the fact that Nels identified the host of House Hunters by name.

"Mommy, is that Suzanne Whang?"

Addendum

I may need to make a resolution this coming New Year: no more self-diagnosis via Web MD.

Now, I'm no frontier woman when it comes to bearing up bravely when in pain, but, as someone who recovered completely from mono and viral meningitis (at separate times) within three weeks, not to mention taking only a week to get over being treated for malaria when I really had food poisoning in Africa, it galled me to be laid low by something as pedestrian as pink-eye.

On the morning a week after my eyes began their cruel attack on my face, I walked into Willem's room and was greeted by the cheeriest "Hi, Mommy!" I've ever heard him muster. He prattled on happily ("Daddy doing? Puppy go? Morning!") while I stared aghast at his face. It appeared that a hive of bees had stung him about the eyes. He looked like a different kid. He was in a great mood, for which I was very thankful, but his sanguine mood was so incongruous with his appearance that the overall effect was extremely creepy.

Of course I called the doctor immediately. The nurse called me back. "He has pink-eye," I said. "He got it from me. I'm getting over it."

"OK. I'll call in a prescription for some drops. What pharmacy do you like?"

After we got it all squared away she added, "Now give us a call if it gets inflamed or red around his eyes. That would mean an infection of the tissue around the eye, and that can get pretty nasty. We'd need to see him so he could get oral antibiotics as well."

Now, I may be a bit wimpy when it comes to pain tolerance, but I'm no slouch at vocabulary. So when I said, "Hmm...inflamed. Like, all puffy and pink around his eyes?" it wasn't because I didn't understand her meaning, but because it meant I'd been incapacitated for a week by something worse than pink-eye and that my discomfort could have been quickly alleviated if I'd only seen fit to visit a doctor.

I took Willem in. Less than 48 hours later he looked like a new kid. Or rather, like the old kid. Nels and Shaun escaped with only one red eye apiece and very little puffiness. The whole family has been dosed and the dread words "eye drops" have been added to each boys' vocabulary.

I have found that the sicker I get, the more impaired becomes my judgement. This results in things like having one's appendix out at two in the morning the day before Thanksgiving. So let 2008 be the year: if I can't function, I'm calling the doctor.