Cankled. Rankled.

Most mornings around here go a little something like thus: I lounge in bed until around 9:30, until our man Jeeves comes in with my coffee and a crisply folded copy of the Wall Street Journal which I peruse until about 10:15, at which point I have the children, who have been fed, dressed in starched pinafores, and drilled on their Latin declensions by their individual nannies, brought in to sing a little song in three part harmony. In French, sometimes Italian. Then I am ready to start my day.

OR. I wake up around 6:45 am to Hudson singing, loudly and off-key, the ABC song. It was technically the fifth time I'd been awake since I went to bed (Helena had a rough night, Harper had a bathroom trip) and thankfully, the husband, who is much better with mornings than I, always gets Hudson and Harper up and gets them their morning milk so that I can have a little while to right myself until Helena gets up. I DID read the front page of the Wall Street Journal (as a general rule, most of it bores me to tears AND makes me feel stupid--not a great combination) as I ate two banana oatmeal muffins on a paper plate (made for us by our new neighbor!) whilst standing by the microwave holding Helena on my hip. And there, on the bottom of the page was this:

"Chubby Lower Legs, Latest Styles Don't Mix As Women Fight Costly Fight Against 'Cankles.'

In case you aren't in the know, "Cankle, a portmanteau word combining calf and ankle, refers to 'the area in affected female legs where the calf meets the foot in an abrupt, nontapering terminus'..." Now cue the Hallelujah Chorus because, "Gold's Gym has declared July "Cankles Awareness Month" and is offering a customized "cankles-busting workout." The article goes on to detail some of the measures women are taking, including ankle liposuction and special flip-flops, to tone their cankle region. There were also a couple of paragraphs (because this IS the Wall Street Journal) in which an MIT professor gave us some other examples of slang used throughout history to "unflatteringly describe the human anatomy." I think my favorites are 'wide in the boughs' (19th century, to denote wide hips and an ample bottom) and 'bay window' (19th century, for a protruding gut). So, the next time you find yourself wondering why the world in general dislikes Americans, you might want to think about that banner flapping in the wind outside of your nearest Gold's Gym. Because we care about things like cankles.

I was thinking about good parenting advice. When I had Helena, the pediatrician who saw her in the hospital was a delightful, 60ish lady with cool dread-lockish hair and three grown kids of her own who made this pithy statement when I asked whether or not you need to take a newborn's temperature on a regular basis. She said, simply, "Sick babies don't eat. Sick. Babies. Don't. Eat." And as I was sorting clothes to wash today, I thought about something my wise friend Tara, mother of three boys, once told me regarding laundry. She said something like, "If is isn't dirty, they can wear it again." Now that Harper is fairly neat at mealtimes, this actually happens. Anyone else have any pithy advice for me?

We got a new easel at Ikea.