Memorial Day usually has a bit more solemnity topped off with grill food.

Noah's anime eyes are KILLER. How does that kid not have a pony yet?

It's snowing in the mountains again. It's supposed to be in the 80s by Thursday. I am not enjoying this.

Noah doesn't want a pony. He wants an AT AT Walker.

What's magic about dump trucks? Yesterday I caught a toddler trying to drag his mother down a side corridor towards one as she insisted she could "see it just fine from here!" But he was fixated.

What's magic about dump trucks? Yesterday I caught a toddler trying to drag his mother down a side corridor towards one as she insisted she could "see it just fine from here!" But he was fixated.

In my experience, it works with any large vehicle. Trucks, buses, trains, noteworthy cars, it all works. Such words (including "wheel") form the second-largest chunk of Ryan's vocabulary (after animals).

Baby Noah=Utter cutiehead

Noah Now=Still utter cutiehead, just in a bigger less babyful way.

It's weird - those perfect apple cheeks, the cupid's bow and rosebud mouths - how much of it is dependent on just not having any teeth yet. Once the front teeth come in the rosebud attenuates, once the back teeth come in the face lengthens and the perfectly smooshable wee face never comes back. Once I ran into a new mom eating up her infant's cheeks at a coffeehouse, just after Matilda's teeth had started coming in; I mentioned this to her, and she got a panicky look and started snuzzling the little cheeks even harder, like, Oh, shit! Nobody told me there was an expiration date on these things!

ION... dilemmas. Church is in less than an hour, but now I'm wide awake and busting ass on the housecleaning; it's visibly moved from Hazmat to Filthy to You Have Kind of a Clutter Problem, Don't You? I hate to miss church, especially now that I've found another crunchy lefty social justice and women's rights advocating home, but I also hate to lose momentum on the cleaning.

I think we'll have to go to the 11:30 service. I just de-crusted the bottom shelf of the fridge! If I take a break now, the filth will see it as a sign of weakness and come back at me double strength.

Church will be there next week. If you are like me energy and time to catch up on housework coinciding is a rare and blessed event. If I believed in God, I'd guess that God was telling you to skip church.

Up until I was about five or six, my dad had a big old dump truck. He'd use it to take corn and oats to the mill to be ground into grist, or cows to the auction house. I thought it was pretty cool to watch the back part of the truck tilt up to dump the corn and oats out. I wished we could dump the cows out as well, but I realized they might get injured so I never asked my dad to do that.

I was sad when my dad traded the dump truck and our awesome '59 Ford station wagon to get a new pickup truck.

Recipe, please?

Exxxxxxxcellent! Thanks!

I'm wide awake and busting ass on the housecleaning; it's visibly moved from Hazmat to Filthy to You Have Kind of a Clutter Problem, Don't You?

Dang, I am jealous. (We're in our usual state, which is somewhere between Hazmat and Filth.)

I was awake from 5 until 9. I went to bed at one. I was going to go swimming, but decided a nap with Loki was necessary instead. NOW I'll swimming.