Chesed

I think I want to go to school again. I remember liking school; but I don’t recall it being half this much fun. Today Adam’s school is having Pilgrim and Indian day. The middle grades are studying about Indians right now and the teachers came up with the brilliant idea to involve everyone.

The students came home with a note saying they can dress up as either a Pilgrim or Indian and bring their lunch in something correct for the period. I hear they are going to eat lunch in the woods and if I don’t miss my guess, there will be a ton of other fun happenings.

Adam knew immediately he wanted to be an Indian. Yesterday he told me all the boys in his class are going to be Indians and all the girls are going to be Pilgrims. Nothing like variety. The Pilgrim costume would have been super easy to do …. can’t you just see him in white trouser socks and black dress pants hemmed to come just below the knee? But the Indian fits him so much more. He’s not moderate enough to make an accurate Pilgrim. But the Indian war whoop … well, no need to practice that. Loud noises are his forte.

I was so tickled to find this costume on clearance at One Step Ahead; but didn’t want to spend another $13 on the moccasins so we picked up a little fabric and used the leftover trim from when I made curtains for the office. The first one was a disaster. The second one fit, but the fabric was so slippery he wiped out wearing only one shoe. Tears on the hallway floor and more brainstorming. Finally I cut the sole out and hot glued the top of the moccasin to the sole of his canvas play shoes that are nearly too small anyway. Ta Da! A moccasin he can run in.

He traded some furs for a tin bucket from the white man. And I just now realized we forgot to paint his face in our excitement!

See why I want to go to school again?

Recipes

Long delay, but here they are finally.

The granola recipe is one I fell in love with in Belize. I remember sitting beside my friend, Faith, in Miss Nancy’s kitchen as both of us scarfed down granola before it was time to meet the bus. When Miss Nancy made it, she walked down to the market, bought a fresh coconut and grated it. Oh yum. What I would not give to wake up in Miss Nancy’s basement to the sound of tropical birds and knowing that there are baskets full of fresh pineapple, oranges, and bananas upstairs. Have you ever eaten a tree-ripened banana?

Granola:
6 c. oatmeal
½ c. margarine, melted (I always use real butter)
3 c. coconut, grated
1 ½ c. brown sugar
1 ½ t salt (I omitted this purposely last time and couldn’t tell the difference)
½ c pancake syrup
2 T. cinnamon

nuts and maple flavor optional (I usually add chopped pecans, but I’m out of them so I added slivered almonds. And I never ever have added the maple flavor thank you very much.)

Melt butter. Add maple flavor if you have to. Mix dry ingredients. Pour butter and pancake syrup in and work mixture until evenly moist. Spread in 2 9×13 pans (or a cookie sheet). Bake at 175 until lightly toasted.

I cheat and do mine around 225. It takes almost six hours to do it so slowly. Just make sure you turn the mixture with a spatula more frequently so it toasts evenly. I often add craisens to ours, but I learned not to do it until after it’s baked and cooled because they get too chewy.

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High Fiber Bars
I have no idea why I picked up this recipe because at the time I hated peanut butter. Probably because I was taken up with the idea of eating more healthily and this recipe has no white sugar in it unless you count whatever they put in the peanut butter. But now I love peanut butter and I love these bars. They are a lot like a granola bar and pack a punch of protein and calories in a small bite. Best of all, they don’t have to bake so they’re a great recipe for teaching kids how to cook. Unless your kids have peanut allergies like Liam does.

3 c. oatmeal
½ c. bran
1 c. coconut
¾ c. nuts, chopped
¾ c. raisins
¼ t. salt
1 c. peanut butter
1 c. honey
¾ c. chocolate chips

Mix first six ingredients. Combine peanut butter and honey in saucepan and melt over low heat. Mix well with dry ingredients and stir in chocolate chips. Press into buttered 7×11 pan. Cool and cut into squares.

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And of course I saved the best til last. Christy gave me this recipe when I called her for a cranberry muffin recipe last Christmas. Oh, my word. They are out of this world yummy. The recipe says to make them in a 9×9 pan. This year I did that and had trouble with them being very thick and not getting done in the middle. I remember them being thin and perfect and very Starbuckish last Christmas so I think I must have done them in a 9×13. But I can’t prove that until I make them again, which I really don’t have a problem doing at all. Just be forewarned that the pan size may not be correct.

White Chocolate Cranberry Blondies
½ c. butter, softened
½ c sugar
½ c. brown sugar
¾ t. baking powder
¼ t. soda
½ c. coarsely chopped white chocolate
1 c. fresh cranberries
¼ t. salt
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1 c. flour
1/2c. dried cranberries

Beat butter. Add sugars, eggs, vanilla. Add flour, salt, soda, baking powder, Stir in dried cranberries and white chocolate. Spread in 9×9 (?) pan. Sprinkle with fresh cranberries. Press lightly. Bake at 350 25-30 min

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You’re welcome

“Can you tell me a story, Mommy?”

Some days it’s fun. But some days, it feels like the most exhausting thing in the world to conjure up a good story. Read one? Any time. Tell one … with all the fun dynamics … not quite so easy.

Adam loves to hear stories almost better than he likes being read to. So whenever we’re somewhere without books, mostly in the car, he starts begging for stories. And no matter how many times I’ve told him about the time I was climbing a tree and reached way up over my head and squished a worm or the time I took lemonade to Grandpa when he was on the tractor and stood right in a hill of fire ants, he will never get tired of hearing about it.

He always tries me first and if he can’t win there, he begs David. Sunday night I realized we’d both been saying the same thing a little too frequently the last while, “Not tonight, Adam.” And in response to the whine, “The world does not revolve around you. You need to learn to entertain yourself or just be quiet sometimes, too.”

No, it doesn’t. But it doesn’t revolve around me either.

I told Adam we were going to try something new. Instead of me telling him a story, we were all going to make one up. You know, the kind where one person starts the story, gets to an exciting part and stops and the next person picks up for the second installment. He giggled with enthusiasm. I couldn’t wait to see if he could actually pull it off.

Our first story was a bit blase.

The second one got a little better and the third one went like this.

Me: One day Mommy, Adam and Liam went to visit Daddy at work. We drove to his job site and walked around to find him. To surprise him, we brought …

Adam: A sweet tea and a Coke …

Daddy: I said, Thank you very much. So I was doing a lot of sipping at work and that made me have to go to the bathroom a lot. ..

Me: On the way home, Daddy was thinking about it that he should surprise Mommy (nothing like a hint, huh?) with something so he stopped and got …

Adam: a lemon for your sweet tea (so after expecting flowers or chocolate, David and I both laughed), but then when he walked in the door he said, “Oh, I forgot to bring it home.”

You have to know David and his incredible short term memory issues to get the significance of this joke. But all three of us were absolutely shrieking with laughter so much that Liam joined in just for the fun.

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Adam is going on his first school field trip today. Excited is the key word around here. They had to be at the school house by 7:10 so I told him I’d wake him at 6:10. I knew he was paranoid about being late because they apparently told them yesterday that if they are ready to go and people aren’t there, they will have to leave without them. (That’s his version. I’m sure it wasn’t some serious to the minute threat.) He got home from school with his Parent Gram and said, “Ok, Mommy. I want to wake up either a little before midnight or right after midnight.”

“Whatever for?” I asked him.

“Because I am not going to be late for the field trip.”

David came to wake me with a cup of coffee (the new morning ritual at our house — is that not THE sweetest thing ever?) at 5:30 and told me Adam is downstairs in the kitchen fully dressed. Sure enough, I heard the doors to the cereal cupboard banging around as he started to fix his own breakfast.

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Liam’s newest favorite play is to ride around on the big dump truck and methodically fall off so that I “wooo wooo wooo” around the kitchen and stop to pick him up like a crane. His giggles are like a shot of Prozac. I guarantee the thing I will miss most about not having little children is the spontaneous laughter about the tiniest things. That and the soft, kissable cheeks that make you just go on and on kissing.

And the way they process life so transparently. Like this.

Liam came downstairs one morning saying, “Me darving.” (starving)

I gave them breakfast and for once, Liam ate very well independently.

“Liam, you did a GOOD job eating all by yourself.”

Adam: “Mommy, did I do a good job eating all by myself?”

Me: “Yes, you did, but that isn’t really a compliment for you.”

Adam: “I know. …… But it just makes me kind of jealous.”

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The first few days after Adam went to school Liam would walk around the house saying, “Me miss, A’am, Mo’ ‘ y.” Over and over again in the saddest voice a two year old can muster. He still says it every few days but he’s not repeating it thirty-seven times a day anymore.

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I kept wondering if Liam caught on the day I had my fender bender. Adam had just turned two when we flipped our truck and trailer and he talked about the wreck for months and months. He would replay the wreck with his trucks and to to this day he has a super fear of being unbuckled in the car (he was safe in his car seat and not hurt during the wreck). Liam doesn’t talk as much, probably mostly because I don’t talk to him as much. And I didn’t realize until later that I never explained to him exactly what happened. But sure enough, a few days later he was driving around on his dump truck and said, “People not ‘it (hit) me. People not get ‘it. People ‘ust (just) do (go) bye bye.”

And in much the same way as Adam mimicked sounds so perfectly and sent us into gales of laughter, he drove a little further and said, “Me ‘ave (have) my ‘ights (lights) on.” and clucked exactly like a turn signal.

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Maybe there is spilled milk and rice that seems to fly everywhere at the table, but there are some pretty significant perks to having little people in the house. And I, for one, am having fun.

It’s one of those high octane domestic Mondays. I love them. Never dreamed I would love Mondays so much; but next to Saturday, they are often my favorite day of the week. We are tanked up on daddy love and ready to go again. Today was a dreamy Monday. I looked around the house at 9 and just drank it in: a cleaned up house, the washer spinning on the third load, a pumpkin scented candle flickering, homemade granola in the oven and high fiber bars cooling on the counter, story time with Liam. And now a few hours later, the pile of ironing has diminished into nonexistence and the boys’ clothes are waiting to be washed the minute Adam takes off his school uniform. Sometimes it struggles to have only two sets of school clothes. Mmmm, num, num I love Mondays.

Last week turned out to be the kind nightmares are made of. Things were going pretty well until the fender bender on Wednesday, but when I started losing all that time to insurance calls and body shop estimate visits, well, my quality of life degenerated. It did not help that Adam was getting pokier and pokier and pokier and pokier at getting ready for school. On Tuesday when we all needed to be out the door at 7:45 because I was making jam and doing the morning school run, I sent him upstairs to brush his teeth. When I went up to check on him ten minutes later he was sitting on the bed with his pants on the floor.

“Adam, what in the world are you doing?” There was, unfortunately, not even an inch of sweetness in my voice. A flicker of recognition crossed his face as he said, “Oh, I was thinking you said to change my clothes.”

On Friday it took him F O R T Y minutes to get dressed. You read that right. I was tired of the nagging. He raced through breakfast, I combed his hair while his ride waited, and he never did get his teeth brushed. I called David and had a blow off session. This is ridiculous. I am not going to spend his entire school life coaching him through each step, reminding him, hurrying him along …. because all it does is make both of us feel completely frustrated before 8:00. Neither does it teach him responsibility.

David to the rescue. When he was a counsellor at Bald Eagle Boys Camp, they used lots of natural consequences. It’s a little hard when your kids are really little. It just doesn’t work to let a child continue leaning over the edge of the tub and then have them fall out (natural consequence) because it’s not safe. But as Adam is getting older, we are able to use it more and more. I love it because it teaches him about real life …. the same things happen that would happen if he were an adult.

We waited until last night after a good weekend to bring up the subject. Just before he went to bed, we talked about his problem with messing around while he’s getting dressed and how he is going to need to learn how to be responsible on his own. We gave him a few options … learn to hurry along or have me wake him fifteen minutes earlier. He said earlier. We talked about the way he gets dressed and decided it would work better for him to put his shoes by the front door instead of putting them on with his shirt and pants so his “fingers can wake up.” (Seriously, this is his excuse for why he cannot get dressed faster). And then we told him that I will not be telling him to hurry up or what to do next. He normally has fifty minutes and that is way more then a gracious amount of time to get completely dressed, eat his breakfast, comb his hair, and brush his teeth. If he does not get done by the time Kristina gets here to pick him up, I will take him to school when he is ready and he will be late (this is a HUGE deal to him). Plus, because he missed his ride, he will need to give up some of his allowance money to pay for the gas.

Just before he went to bed he decided he didn’t need to get up earlier than normal after all. I was super relieved. I knew the first morning he’d be super quick and I wasn’t sure what to do with the boredom … or worse yet with the way he would believe he can mess around and still get ready on time.

At 7, David woke him and reminded him of his responsibility. In F I V E minutes flat, he was downstairs with his shirt buttoned correctly and his pants and socks on. He ate breakfast, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, put on his shoes and tied them and waited. I looked at the clock and realized he had almost a full thirty minutes to wait. He read books, we talked, he looked at more books and played with his toy snake. Finally he went back out to the door to wait. In a minute he said, “Mommy, I am just waiting and waiting. I will pay you one penny from my allowance to just take me to school right away.”

Funny, funny boy. I’m wondering how long this will last.

Speaking of school: what do y’all pack in your kids lunches? Adam likes taking leftovers better than a sandwich but what else? He’s tired of chips and yogurt but likes fruit and a cookie. How can I round out that much sweetness?

Speaking of allowances: Adam gets $1 / week and is saving and saving and saving for a BB gun. The other day he showed me a coupon to Dicks Sporting Goods for $10 off any hunting purchase of $50 or more. When I asked him where he got it he said, “I found it in Pa Beachy’s trash can and he said he didn’t need it so I kept it and gave the other one to Andrian (his friend at school). We’ve been doing the allowance since he turned five to teach him about money. He has to put 50% into savings, tithe 10% and 40% he can spend. I nearly popped with pride when I saw his money savvy skills and his generosity. I did not have the heart to tell him the coupon would expire two months before he had enough cash. Everything inside of me wanted to loan him the money so he could use the coupon, but David to the rescue again. “Do you really want to teach him to put things on payments?” Of course not. Instead we’re letting him redeem the coupon with us. Please don’t tell him.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of allowances, did you know in the Parents magazine they suggest giving a child an allowance that is half their age. Can anyone tell me why you would give a six year old $3 a week to spend at will?????? Is it any wonder Americans think they should have lots of easy money? If you do this and it works, tell me how.

Speaking of domestics: Please give me more yummy granola recipes. I have only ever made one kind and I’d love to try some new ones. We are a cereal for breakfast kind of family, but we all love homemade granola over the boxed kind any day. But you can only eat so much of one kind for days on end.

My white chocolate cranberry blondies are almost ready to come out of the oven so I’d better run. Happy Monday everyone!

Check out this most amazing giveaway. Or wait, don’t. Because then the odds of me winning are higher. But seriously, everyone will want to win this … and of course, if you win, but don’t want it, you can always call me.

Today

~ 2.5 hours on the road

~ annoying, no fault* fender bender

~ 3 bushels of apples made into applesauce

~ a cricket serenading us most of the way home in yet another bushel of apples ( can anyone say aNnoYinG? )

~ getting home to find out the proof that supposedly was in production is now only actually ready for approval and we already have orders for three cases we can’t fill til they come

~ insurance phone calls

~ more book orders

~ my “important” schedule for tomorrow getting disrupted with body shop visits

But,

Today was also

~ making applesauce at Mom’s house instead of my own (!)

~ yummy lunch (!)

~ help from Beth (!)

~ unloading my heart to Mom and hearing t-r-u-t-h … something I desperately needed in the face of a lot of misunderstanding and criticism (!!!)

Today also =

~ exhaustion (more mental than physical)

~ hot dogs for dinner (thank God for Liam-friendly leftovers in the freezer)

~ early bedtime (one can only hope)

The end.

* the no fault fender bender???  Thanks to the utility people who were messing with the lights and apparently gave two of us a green light simultaneously.  WHY in the world would they mess with a major intersection at a busy time of the morning?  Why are they not considered liable for this?

…because moments like these need to memorialized forever.

Liam and I before lunch:

Liam: “Me go mine ding det.” (swing set)

Me: “Mommy is going to clean the basement after lunch then you can play on your swing set.”

At lunchtime:

Me: “Liam, do you want to pray today?”

Liam: “aaahh” (yes). Pause. “No ‘elp me.” (help)

Me: “Ok” and trying not to smile at the cuteness of him squinting his eyes shut.

Liam: “Di Do” (Dear God) long pause “Mo’y ‘elp me.”

Me: “Thank You” (Liam repeats)
“for my food” (ditto)
“and my milk” (ditto)
“and my swing set” (ditto)
“A- Liam interrupts
Liam: ” ‘elp Mo’y keen up” (help Mommy clean up)
Amen.

Can he please just be two forever?

Yummy

Sticky

Sweet

Sticky

Jam.  Jam.  Jam.  Jam.
 

For the first time in eight years, I cooked jam.  A long, long, long time ago aka fifteen years ago Mom and Dad started a little side business cooking homemade jam.  We started in our regular kitchen using the dining room as our filling station.  It wasn’t long at all until jam took over the house most of the week and we obviously needed a new space.  The jam business got moved to the basement with a commercial stove and huge sinks and life was a little less sticky. 

We girls all took our turns being “employed.”  Sometimes it was fun.  Sometimes it was drudgery.  I liked that it was hard work and you had to move quickly.  I hated that it was so hot in the summer.  Leaning over a 120 degree stove in the stifling humidity of July and getting splattered with jam that boils underneath the surface then shoots up to hit you in the eye is not pleasant.  I sported little battle scars on both arms from burns for a long time.  But lifting 50 lb bags of sugar made me strong and I was proud of my little biceps.

There were days when things went well and we finished in record time with no incident.  There were days when jars overflowed, a case of jars shattered, and kettles overflowed or burned on the bottom.  There were days when we talked and laughed and days when we wanted to scream.  I guess all of life is kind of like that.

I’ll never forget (unless I become senile) the day Mom and I first went down to the local IGA with her cute little basket of four jars of jam to see if they would sell it.  It wasn’t long until there were many, many stores sporting racks of our homemade jams.  And then there was the first day the big truck came from Richmond to take pallets full of jam. 

My days of jam mostly became a memory when I started college until the summer I only did one class of A&P and got conned into helping again. 

Two months after David and I got married (and about two weeks after Christy and Steve got married), Mom and Dad took a three week trip to Europe.  Beth was teaching school, Christy was far away in TX, and since I only lived an hour away, I became the logical person to take over the business.  Things went a little differently when I couldn’t run to the bottom of the stairway and yell for Mom, but overall we survived.

And that was it.  I thought. 

A few days ago Mom emailed to say she’d gotten an unexpected large order and none of her employees could work.  Any chance I wanted to fill in.  Bizarre as it seems to me even now, it sounded kind of fun.  Plus, I needed the cash. 

Liam and I headed over Friday morning at seven.  And we made jam.  Luckily, I got my old job back.  I always, always cooked unless I had no other option, because I hated running the table.  Yesterday no one wanted my job. 

I ran.

Lifted (Sugar comes in 25 lb bags now, though).

Stirred.

Mixed.

Jumped when I got splattered.

And ran again.

Things are a little different then they were eight years ago.  For one, they use these:

I was horrified.  Hand over the huge gloves, please.  But four kettles in, I was hooked.  I love them!  Totally going on my list of things to buy at Bed Bath & Beyond.

Second, the cook also now pre-mixes.  I could not believe this.  I used to be running non-stop just to keep four kettles going and now they cook with five AND the cook pre-mixes?  But when I found out the stove has gotten slow with age it made more sense.  One batch used to take twenty minutes; now it takes forty.   I think the jam cooks better since it’s slower.  I never got close to burning jam and only once got close to having one run over.  Plus, it hardly ever did one of those volcano under the surface numbers I used to get caught in all the time.  You really have to cook jam to get that, but I don’t know how else to describe it.

Third, there are now three people working instead of two.  That’s fun.  Except the exhaust fan is so loud the cook can never hear the conversation anyway. 

Fourth, we almost always made one flavor per day.  Now they do two or three flavors a day.  This is not an improvement in my opinion, but it works. 

Liam was a sweetheart.  He played on the pallets, helped stamp boxes, and thought he’d grown into a giant overnight when Christy let him help pack cases. 

I loved the physical workout of hoisting thirty pound buckets and filling the sugar bin and racing around the stove at top speed again.  Most housework is not exactly a workout and I’m getting flabby.  But none of us girls are exactly pining to inherit the jam business at this point.  

I have never, ever made jam at my house since I’m married.  I’ve made thousands and thousands and thousands of pints of jam in my life.  Strawberry, Peach, Blueberry, Blackberry, Black Raspberry, Damson Plum, Cherry, Red Raspberry, Strawberry Rhubarb … and apple butter.  Cooking 500 pints of jam in a few hours might make me tired, but it does not phase me.  But someday when I grow up, I’m going to learn how to make one of those little batches of strawberry freezer jam.  Because I’ve never done it.  Funny, isn’t it.

And just in case you’re looking for the best jam on earth ….. it’s right here.  In Virginia.  From Roanoke to Richmond and beyond.  And if you’re like one of a number of customers who say it’s so good they want to stand at the sink and eat it out of the jar with a spoon, there is mail order to the rescue. 

Family Fruit Basket Jams …. the stuff your bread dreams of. 

More later ….

School is starting one week from today. Apparently I missed the genetic code for Mom’s not wanting to realize their children are growing up on my way down through heaven way back when. I am as excited as Adam! We’ve been shopping for school supplies, packing his backpack, and talking and talking about school. He wakes up every morning and heads straight to the desk drawer to grab a pen and mark off another day on the calendar. I can almost feel that school feeling when the year is just about to begin. The new tablets of paper, the new erasers, the school house that smells super-clean and fresh and ready. It makes me want to enroll somewhere myself.

Yesterday we celebrated by doing a bit of last minute school clothes shopping. Somewhere many monsoons ago, someone chose to inflict school uniforms on the patrons of our school. I’m not a fan of uniforms in the first place, but the colors they chose make me roll my eyes every time I think about it. Light blue button down shirts and navy pants. Light blue dresses for the girls. Drum roll please. Suffice it to say, I should never teach at this school. Often when the boys are sick or particularly grumpy, I give them baths and find the cutest clothes they have. Somehow it makes it easier to be sweet to them. I’m thinking that seeing all that blue day after day after day topped with a child who hasn’t had his fingernails trimmed for a month, sporting a bad sinus infection, and struggling with a Math problem …. Well, I’m just thinking that come February I’d have a really hard time focusing on something positive.

So anyway, we went school shopping. Because Adam’s closet isn’t exactly wealthy in the light blue button down shirt department. But we made it a super fun day to celebrate his coming of school age. David was doing a job run and working at the office so Liam stayed with him for an hour and a half while Adam and I went to the mall. It was so, so much fun to be with just him. We held hands and went quickly from store to store looking at children’s clothes. And since it was his special day of celebration, we skipped the dollar menu at McDonalds and ate pizza at Sbarro. He was perfectly quiet with delight at his huge piece of pepperoni pizza. We talked about school like we seem to do every other minute right now and he solemnly informed me that he is most excited about learning to read. And just because we never get the chance to do treats without Liam, we double-treated and got cinnamon pretzels at Auntie Annes.

Strangely enough, we did not find a single short-sleeved button down light blue shirt in town so I came home and ordered them on Lands End.

Liam cried and cried and cried heartbroken tears when he got back in the car with me. I think he could not believe his luck at having been with daddy because it is always Adam who gets to ride along, not him. He is going to be a very sad little boy next week when Adam goes to school.

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Why do viruses have to plague us in the summer? I got hit with a vicious sore throat, body aches, exhaustion, chest congestion & sniffly nose last night. This morning Liam joined me. Every time he sneezes (which happens about every five minutes), snot shoots down over his clothes and covers his hands. I had full intentions of starting the potty training process today. This was the perfect excuse to push it off for another few days. My body wants to do nothing but go back to bed for two more hours and when I wake, to sip hot tea or something else soothing. Somehow cleaning up streams of urine from the floor does not seem like a good idea. I think we’ll read a lot of stories instead and hope for long naps.

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The boys are totally cracking me up when they talk right now. Liam is the funniest to listen to because his words are so twisted and mixed up and consonant missing he nearly creates a different language. He repeats ev-er-ything Adam says. Everything. And his favorite phrase is, “Oh, pi[t]y [s]akes.” Don’t ask me where that phrase came from. This morning he pulled off one small piece of his honey cake and said, “[l]ook. Oh, pi[t]y [s]akes.”

We all turn into bums because he can’t say the c sound yet. So he walks around saying, “Mo[mm]y bum (come).” He has always been a super daddy baby, but since I took so many trips this summer, I’ve become a little more important to him. Almost every day out of the blue he will run and wrap his arms around my legs and say with delight, “Mo[mm]y bum [h]ome [n]ow.” Home means wherever he is at the moment. It’s nice to feel loved.

Everything is big, big. His eyes got so wide they nearly went vertical when we drove into Virginia Beach and he saw the huge hotels. “Big, big [h]ouse, Mo[mm]y.” And whenever anyone asks him how old he is he says, [t]wo. A[d]am [s]ix.” But mostly I want to just squish him because he is so full of sweetness.

When we were shopping he touched everything from salt shakers to baby clothes and said, “duuuuute (cute) mo[mm]y. Dis duuuuuute. Mo[mm]y [l]ook. Duuuuute.” I gave him his bath at bedtime and he marched down the steps to get his blankie. “Da[dd]y, me dute.”

But cutest of all is the way he always says, “dank oo pees” (thank you please) every single time you give him something. I wish I could just attach a little video camera to him all day and memorialize the stage he is in. Because he is so much fun.

Adam’s funniest thing right now is the way he abbreviates things mistakenly. When we were in Harrisonburg awhile ago he saw a horse and buggy. I explained that there are Old Order Mennonites there who are similar to the Amish in some ways. Since then he always refers to them as “Older Mennonites.”

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Speaking of Harrisonburg, I get to do a joint book signing with THE FAMOUS DORCAS SMUCKER on the 28th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In my wildest dreams I never expected this to happen!!!!!!!!! We’re going to be at the Dayton Farmers Market from 11-1 so please come out and say hello. I cannot believe I will actually get to meet Dorcas!! I’ve been reading her blog for years and if you’ve been reading mine for any length of time, you know I love her. I love the way she has with words … spinning a tale out of ordinary events and keeping you spellbound then setting you down gently and quietly again without a bump at the end. Her writing is tight and tidy and all the raw edges are wrapped up. I love her sense of humor.

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Is anyone else getting overwhelmed with claustrophobia at the idea of summer being over and winter coming? I just want to scream and dig in my heels and say no, no, no. Adam loves winter. He really does, but he says it often just to get a reaction from me. And whenever I fuss he says, “But you can’t do anything to stop it.” So unfortunately true.