The Boy has found a seat that's almost just his size.
Sittin’ on the Steps
Eating Yogurt
The Boy enjoying his late-morning yogurt until it runs out...
Communism and Food
"Communism did to the national cuisine what it did to so much else and reduced it to the lowest common denominator: uniform and bland stodge characterised by poor ingredients, low standards and low expectations."
Corn!
L is such a picky eater. She's a first child: we really didn't know what we were doing. We followed this book's advice tempered with that person's wisdom and those mothers' experience. We're doing things a bit differently with E. He eats what we eat, and he has from the moment we could give him solid food. As a result, he's not a picky eater.
There are a few culinary preferences that the Boy and L have in common, though, and one of them is corn on the cob.
L hummed and purred as she ate, working it back and forth like a typewriter paper carriage. The Boy makes use of a variety of methods: the double-handed high hold, the single-handed nibble-from-the-end, the single-handed reverse grip flute position (the right hand would be gripping a flute from the top, not the bottom), and variants of them all.
Occasionally, something not-quite-right hits him, and he balls up his fist and his face into what looks like a mysterious sourness.
But he gets over it, takes a new grip, and continues.
Spaghetti!
Every parent has this picture. I know that somewhere, in an album packed away in a box somewhere in my folks’ condo, there is a picture of me eating spaghetti.
What is it about spaghetti that it’s an almost-universally favorite food among toddlers?
Chainsaw
I hear a chainsaw somewhere in the distance in our neighborhood, and I think, "That's a sound I usually associate with Babcia's small village." Then I realize it's just the Boy making his car sounds downstairs.
Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love
Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits.
Watching the Rain
A rainy morning, so the Boy made frequent trips to the back door to observe.
Train
More discoveries in the basement.
Readying
All furniture cleaned, books back on the shelves, tennis balls back on desk legs, computers set up -- and the first teacher work day isn't for another week...
Eric Sevareid
One asks not only for the courage of his convictions, but for the courage of his doubts, in a world of dangerously passionate certainties.
Off-road
The Girl has a new bike, with gears and hand-brakes. It's a lot to get used to. Today, she lost control, ran into a ditch, and like a champ, didn't panic but merely let the bike coast to a stop.
Watering
Lost Treasure
"Daddy, we found this but we can't open it." I recognized it immediately: my mother's old jewelry box that had long ago become storage for toys. "We can't get in it, so we don't know what's there." And neither did I, but I was curious.
Nana and Papa had saved some of my old toys and books from my childhood, and now that K and I have children of our own, we've pulled some of the toys out and re-issued them. The Boy has gone simply crazy over my old Matchbox cars, and L has incorporated some of my old books into her favorites rotation, but this old box was a mystery. There was no use searching for a key, and the thought of picking a lock -- even a simple mechanism like this -- was laughable. A straight-slot screwdriver and a quick twist of the wrist did the trick, though.
"Oh, some of my old G.I. Joe toys!" And I was instantly transported back thirty years to the time when these simple bits of plastic were the world to me. I pulled the figures out, remembering how I'd discovered the fact that unscrewing the small screw in the figure's back opened a new world of creative possibilities: this figure's legs could be attached to that figure's torso.
Some of the figures exited the O.R. in worse repair than they entered. "What happened to that fellows arm?" I pondered before realize that it must have been a battle wound. The same with that fellow's melted-off hand.
My collection was always modest. I had a few figures, a few vehicles. Several in my collection were from mail-in offers, including two of my four bad guys. It was a long time before I realized how utterly laughable the idea of Cobra -- a secret army plotting to take over the world -- was, but at the time, it seemed a more realistic alternative to Star Wars figures.
And besides, G.I. Joe figures articulated at the elbows and knees, far more realistic than the Star Wars figures that had to look like they were eternally goose-stepping imitators of Frankenstein. Later figures even added a second plane of motion: the elbows rotated.
None in my collection sported that awesomeness, though: they were old-school, bend-at-the-elbow figures.
I took them out, lined them up, and explained to L who were the good guys and who the bad.
"Can we play with them tomorrow?" she asked.
"Sure," I replied, wondering what schemes and stories a girl used to playing with princesses and Barbies might come up with for a pile of old G.I. Joe figures.