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.

Oh, JZ, I just started reading the book you linked to on your mom's review blog (The Philosophers' Breakfast Club). Good stuff. Tim still marvels at my uber-geekiness. (But, come on. At Easter dinner with *his* family, we discussed the Higgs-Boson particle. I *have* to read hefty books just to keep up!)

Cool, Tep! My mom is kind of terrifying in her retirement--she's slamming through 1-2 books a day and her place is pretty well wall-to-wall books on every wall, with two TBR stacks on the floor next to every chair. It's entirely possible that before she dies she will actually succeed in her ambitious plan to READ ALL THE THINGS.

One downside - now that the filth is semi-conquered, the clutter is more obvious and dismal. How does that even work?

I need to start on my cleaning- which is Hazmat. I tend to feel un motivated, because once the Hazmat is cleaned up, you notice the clutter and stained carpet, so it i snot perfect.

I did walk to the store and back and so am feeling both accomplished and hot. Upstate NY, not so much with happy medium of temperatures. I love this little store, though-- it is like a real small town store, like the one I worked at in high school, and it has really awesome produce and meat (which is pretty much all I buy. It is more expensive (except their sales are good. I can't ever buy more than I can carry, though, as it is about a mile to the bus stop.