One week old

He's not impressed with your silly antics.

Joufflu

Henry takes his naps very seriously. So seriously that sometimes he forms a little crease between his nose and his forehead while he's sleeping.

He's home

We like his fuzzy ears.

We were very lucky to have Bama and Pa here all last week. They left very, very early this morning. Grandma and Grandpa come tomorrow. Lots of excitement around here!

Oh Henry

He finally came, and we are so glad he did. Ginger was awesome, and she's recovering well. He was a little bit difficult because of his size and because he wanted to enter the world like Superman, with one fist up next to his head. But he made it.

Henry is a grunter. Awake or asleep, he is almost always grunting. The only time he stops grunting is when he's in a deep sleep, he's eating, or he's trying to listen to a sound he hears. Otherwise he's grunting:

Practicing

Sophie gave birth to a cabbage patch doll last night. We are ready for Henry to come, and it would work out really nicely if he came today.

School started last week.

It's still the middle of summer, and it is so wrong that school is already back in session. Ethan agrees with me.

Andrew is in middle school now and his bus picks him up at 7:02. Sophie starts preschool in a few weeks.

Overheard

EMMA: I know how I can make some money!
ME: How?
EMMA: I'll draw some pictures and then I'll sell them.
ME: Who are you going to sell them to?
EMMA: I don't know. Like people who are driving by.
ME: How much are you going to sell them for?
EMMA: I don't know. Like five bucks. Otherwise it'd be a rip off, just for a picture.

Overheard

SOPHIE (while cleaning): Why does the sun keep dropping off dust to us?

Photos from the park last weekend

At the carwash

Overheard

SOPHIE: Dada, can you read me a bedtime story?
ME: Yes.
SOPHIE (handing me a book): Read this one. The Egyptian one.
ME (opening the book to a story about how mummies were made): You want me to read you a bedtime story about how mummies were made?!?
SOPHIE: Yes.
ME: Oooookay.

Some excerpts:

"The brain was pulled out through the nose with a special instrument made for that purpose."

I don't know why she giggled at this part, but she did:

"Next, the corpse was caked with natron--a natural kind of salt--that absorbs all moisture as it kills the bacteria that rot flesh. The natron was left on for about 40 days."

Sweet dreams.

The siege

Sophie had to sit in her chair for a long time tonight until she at least tried a bite of her ravioli. After many tears and a long time, she gave in and tried it. I won. Although as Ginger said, I won the battle, not the war.

Driving home from a meeting in Kentucky today, I listened to this, and was glad to have heard this:

A word now about our own families. Some of us are older; some are in mid passage; others have yet to begin. Some of us are parents, and some, grandparents. Grandparents have empty nests. Such emptyings are part of the plan, of course. Yet, since our flocks have left their nests, we find ourselves remembering and savoring precious days now irrevocably past. We listen in vain but with eager ears for children’s voices we once thought too shrill, too constant—even irritating. Yet that cacophony of children, which we once called noise, was actually sweet sound, a sound we yearn to hear again if we but could.

For the rest of you now amid the cacophony, seize the defining moments. Make more Mary-like choices and show less Martha-like anxiety. What are calories anyway, compared to special conversations? Of course, meals need to be served and consumed, but the mentoring memories will not be taken from you.

That is good advice. I am totally on board with that, but she had to at least try her dinner, right?

Two "Mary-like" moments I'm recording here for my own good, so I don't forget:

1. When I came home tonight I went to the end of the driveway to put away the garbage can, and heard Sophie's little bare feet sneaking up behind me. I turned around and she thought her sneakiness was very funny.
2. Yesterday afternoon she begged and begged me to stop working and play house with her. When I finally went to play house with her in the basement after dinner, she had a present that she had wrapped for me to open--which had been sitting down there all afternoon--and a birthday "cake" that we ate after she sang me happy birthday, even though it's not really my birthday.

Planning her attack

Those boys better watch their backs.

Overheard

SOPHIE: Dada, can you make me a bomb?
ME: A bomb! Why do you need a bomb?
SOPHIE: A paper one. I need a bomb to destroy the boys.