Well, it's Saturday.

Two posts! In three days! Both with boring titles!

 Helena swallowed a little rock while she was taking her bath last night. It was a small polished purple stone, about the size of a raisin. She asked if she could take it in the bath and I said she could, because it never dawned on me that a 3 1/2 year old who hasn't put anything non-edible in her mouth for a couple of years now would try to ingest a little pebble. Alas. I came in to get her out and she looked grief stricken. I asked what had happened and she confessed immediately that the rock had disappeared down her froat. She then told me it was all going to be fine because she was sure that any minute it was going to pop out of her belly button. I had to tell that, as much as I preferred her version, that wasn't exactly how things were going to progress. So. I have just completed what was my first procedure of Pebble Procurement 2012. I wore gloves. I did not frow up. Little Pebble, come quickly.

Two nights ago, just before bed, the husband came in and described, in graphic detail, how I should fight off a pit bull if the kids and I were ever to get attacked. He also said that, if it were an option, I should definitely offer Sasha as a sacrificial chihuahua if it came to that. You can imagine that I slept very well after those images were seared into my brain.

The kids have been going to bed a little later than usual, and have, quite to my surprise, been sleeping later as well. Hudson moseyed down at around 8:45 this morning. He has finally stopped napping, which could be part of it. It tickles me that he comes down still in his pj's, but wearing his belt, from which hang his knife, his gun, and his light saber. (and of course socks. Because he only takes them off to bathe or swim, and then only reluctantly). I'm reading this novel about a Texas Ranger (the lawmen, not the baseball players) and he describes how incomplete and naked he feels without his weapons. I guess we have a budding Ranger on our hands. I've been cultivating a fairly eclectic summer reading list. I'm currently half way through The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, and the Texas Ranger book (by an author named Charles Martin, whom I'd not heard of before but learned about on Krista's blog). Waiting on the nightstand are:
 Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott  
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz  
Before They're Gone: A Family's Year-Long Quest to Explore America's Most Endangered National Parks by Michael Lanza  
Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners by Laura Claridge

We shall see how many of them I actually get through. I have been moving at a pretty steady clip, but I generally burn out then go for a while not reading much at all.

 We seem to be having an ant infestation in and around Helena's room. I'd rather not think about why. It started last Saturday while I was gone. I think we are finally going to cave and invite an exterminator and his magical, highly chemical insecticides into our home.

We had a family trip to Freebirds (while we were waiting in line, Helena patted my tummy and asked if I have a baby in there. I assured her I do not, and regretted the horizontal stripes on the t-shirt I've been wearing for three days straight. She also asked, in a very loud voice, what the girl making our burritoes HAS IN HER NOSE MOMMY! Thankfully, it was just a nose ring) and then REI today (I love these places approximately 95% less than the husband and kids do, but an outing is an outing) and we came home with a new Kelty canopy thing to shade us if we ever make it to the beach this summer. Also, Harper spent a whopping $22 of her own money on this little portable camping stool that only weighs around an ounce so that she can bring it along on all of her extensive backpacking adventures.

Well, the husband has gone to a birthday party for one of his students, and we just had pancakes for dinner. Now I have locked myself into my bedroom to type out these important memories of these days of our lives while the kids are apparently plotting an overthrow by the sound of things. Actually, it turns out they were putting together a little theatrical event:

Harper was more a director than an acter, and Rapunzel's unplanned cameo did not, apparently, merit a cast mention. The plot mostly centered around Batman performing great feats of strength with the red plastic chair.This is how I like to think of Batman--in the days before the Darkness.