As I was sitting outside on my front porch watching Matt and Amélie play in the leaves I remembered long, long ago playing in the leaves with my brother. We built forts in the leaf piles and ate tins of my grandpa’s leftover Korean War rations. They were old and incredibly disgusting (were they ever disgusting), but we sure had a lot of fun.
Tonight we’re skipping house church because we need to be a family. The last few weeks have been crazy, so I’m headed to the store to buy incredibly unhealthy processed hot dogs so we can cook them over a fire in our backyard. Then, we’re going to carve our pumpkins and roast pumpkin seeds.
Jack cut his second tooth today.
Last night at church Jack giggled during the prayer. I think baby giggles are the best prayer of all.
Amélie is obsessed with signs. As we were sitting in the parking lot of a store the other day waiting for Matt to come out, she asked me, ”What does ‘c-r-i-m-i-n-a-l-s-b-e-w-a-r-e-g-u-n-s-w-e-l-c-o-m-e-h-e-r-e’ spell?” Try explaining that to a 4-year-old. Thankfully I could see the sign so I knew what she was asking me. It’s much harder when she sees a sign I don’t see while we’re driving that she wants me to figure out. I’m not always really good at reading run-together letters. The gun sign led her a day or so later to draw a picture of a gun with a line through it and then she had me write, “No squirting water guns in rooms because they might point them at Amélie or Jack and it’s dangerous to point them at babies. No people squirting water guns at Amélie’s house. Next time leave your water gun in the car.” Our home is sporting another sign that reads, “No putting people in boxes in Amélie’s room because it is not safe.” Sometimes she likes to write her own signs, and then we shorten them. Today she told Matt some really long thing she was wanting to write about the dogs, but she ended up just writing, “No dogs.” Much easier. She likes to help me write my grocery lists, too, which is rather interesting.
Matt and I tried to go out on our first date since Jack was born. We couldn’t stray far, since Jack won’t take a bottle (still), but we did go out at our little Mexican restaurant in town. I had a steak quesadilla and a whopper of a margarita before my friend called and said that Jack was crying. Apparently he can’t live without us. Oh well. It was nice to have an uninterrupted conversation for almost 1 1/2 hours.
Amélie is going to be a bride for Halloween. Jack is wearing an orange thermal sleeper that says “boo” in the front and “trick or treat” on the bottom. I’m hoping for no tricks.
I’m reading Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. It’s a rather interesting companion to another book I’m reading, Men and Women in the Church by Sarah Sumner.
Our house has become the neighborhood kid hub. It’s kind of fun but very…NOISY. Earlier I went upstairs and saw Amélie’s panties all over the floor. I was immediately concerned, because she had spent the afternoon playing with three other boys, two of whom I didn’t know that well. She told me that she had thought that Jack (neighbor) would like to see her pretty underwear. When I asked her what Jack said, she said, “he runned away.” So then I had to explain how we just don’t show our underwear to other people. The girl’s got a lot to learn.
I’ll write something perhaps a bit more profound soon, I hope. Right now one of those neighborhood kids is playing our keyboard at an ear-shattering, brain-numbing rate.
