(And All My) Work Be Praise

What a super fun weekend!  For an extremely picky eater, I am amazed at myself for all of the new (and bizarre) things I tried over the past few days.  Here's what went down: 1.  homemade vanilla : Fun, easy, highly satisfactory.  We're looking forward to giving some as Christmas gifts in small bottles, and otherwise not having to buy vanilla from a store for at least a decade.  Most of the fun, of course, was in pouring large quantities of vodka and laughing at the incongruity between us and big bottles of liquor. 2.   water kefir : Overall, not bad.  Fairly easy to make, and fun to watch the bubbles form (though it wasn't excessively bubbly).  Tastes like very-watered-down juice [we used cranberry juice to flavor it], smells a whole lot like beer (which is not surprising, given the yeast content).  That's the downside, actually.  Right now I'm drinking it mixed with even more juice and trying not to breathe through my nose.  :...

I've been thinking a lot about love in the past few months.  I'm not sure why, exactly, and my thoughts have taken a number of different directions (with an almost equal number of minor epiphanies).  For now, though, I'll just share yesterday's. A few nights ago Isaac and I were joking about some little thing he'd done wrong or in a way that irritated me or some other such nonsense -- really, it was so insignificant that I can't remember what it was, and we were laughing at the time, so I promise I'm not awkwardly alluding to some big marital spat -- and he shook his head and said, "I must be so difficult to live with!" "Oh, everyone is difficult to live with," I responded. "Not you, honey.  You're great!" was the answer.  He was sincere in his own masculine way, of course, but let's be honest: I have enough self-awareness to know that I am, in fact, extremely difficult to live with sometimes.  (And I do think that...

When my friend Jen  comes this weekend, we have some grand plans in the works.  See, for the past year or two, we've each been finding our own way towards a more natural lifestyle.  You've read about a number of my pursuits already (homemade Clorox wipes, cleaning my shower with baking soda and a toothbrush, honey-and-onion cough syrup, my slow foray into cloth diapering); meanwhile, Jen's been chatting up local farmers at markets, buying chickens and eggs from real farms [you know, as opposed to real Krogers], canning tomatoes, using an all-natural shampoo bar. There are some things, we decided, that are either too big of a project or too scary  of a project to try alone, so we have dedicated the upcoming weekend to conquering some yet-uncharted waters [you know, when we're not entertaining our husbands or keeping track of the three little boys under 2 years old].  Here's what we're hoping to accomplish: 1. homemade vanilla 2. water kefir 3. yogurt (I hav...

For those of you keeping score, Levi is now saying: Dad-dy (with a definite vocal stop between the two middle Ds, and he says it all day long), zebra, duck (though we can't tell if he's actually saying "duck" or "quack"), baby, car.  He has been heard to say, more than once but not regularly: blue, grandma, bye-bye.  And once in a blue moon, when he really wants something or when prompted, he does, finally, at last, say mama.

Let me introduce you to my friend Jenny.  We met in spring quarter of freshman year (2000) while taking Interpersonal Communications together, though we didn't actually speak until our then-boyfriends [hers lasted, mine didn't] realized that we both needed roommates for the sophomore year.  I betrayed her horribly junior year by choosing to study abroad [she forgave me graciously], and then we shared an apartment our senior year.  Here we are in August 2004 at Glacier National Park in Montana And here we are in October 2009, introducing our first-born sons to each other Jenny and I have just enough similarities and differences to keep our friendship interesting.  We share the same birthday, the same northwest-Ohio upbringing, the same youth-pastor's-wife status.  She went on to grad school to become a physician assistant while I started gathering piano students.  Our first boys were born 8 weeks apart. We've decorated dorm rooms, played endless games of ...

Well, I've finally done it: I have admitted, to myself and everyone else, that I am ridiculously addicted to sugar.  For months and months I've been saying, "As soon as we finish this leftover youth group snack/open bag of holiday M&Ms/carton of ice cream/etc., I'm not making or buying any more."  But there's always, always another reason to bake a dessert, open a bag of chocolate chips, buy another carton of ice cream! Last Sunday I silently put my foot down and determined not to eat anything explicitly sugary until Friday -- and if I succeeded, I could have a treat on Friday.  Then Monday I found out that I'd be attending a birthday party on Tuesday, so I shortened my goal to just Monday.  Then the boys completely refused to nap, and by 3:45pm I was in the Starbucks drive-thru, ordering a half-price double chocolate chip frappuccino.  Fail.  Might as well finish off the ice cream, then . . . So, Tuesday I had cake and ice cream (yes, more ice cre...

Recently Levi pulled  this set of animal cards , a gift from some past holiday (Christmas?  first birthday?  can't remember), off the shelf and they became his second-favorite toy for the time being (the cars are always, always first).  As he was spreading them out on the floor one day, it popped into my head that we ought to work on some one-to-one correspondence.  So I pulled out his Garanimals wooden blocks, each of which has an animal picture on one side (can't find them anywhere to link up!), and had him place an animal block on the corresponding animal card. That was too easy, so I turned to our letter magnets instead.  It went something like this:  "Levi, can you find the monkey?"  (points to card)  "What letter does m-m-monkey start with?  Can you find that letter on the refrigerator?"  And off he'd go to bring back the letter and put it on the card (usually directly on the animal's face).  Like this:  (After m...

I've been wondering for several days whether or not I would blog about this.  In the end I decided not to, but here I am with the little boys in bed and the big boy at a meeting, and what else to do but share with the whole world what's in my head?  Nothing, except a small pile of dishes, but Isaac always washes dishes. So what's the big deal?  Well, five years ago today, at approximately 9:30am, I got divorced.  Just 8 days after my 25th birthday, that's one-sixth of my life ago -- a good long time, really.  And yet the details are so clear in my mind: *There were huge traffic jams on all of the highways because of a shoot-out between two cars on I-75. *It was very sunny, and I wore a new coral-colored sleeveless top with a band of sequins across the bottom. *I had to traipse all over the courthouse, signing different documents in different rooms. *It was the day after my becoming-ex's birthday, and I kept wondering if I should say something.  (I di...