What Child is This

We were out for a little walk and Harper walked over to some stairs, sat on the bottom one, and attempted a forlorn expression.
me: What are you doing, Harper?
she: I'm not Harper. I'm another little girl just sitting on the steps waiting for my Mommy to get home from work.
Ah, yes. That green, green grass on the other side of the fence.

When I went to get Hudson up from his nap this afternoon he was all smiley and he proclaimed, with exuberance, "PUPPIES!" then, "DADDY!" which about sums up the two joys of his life these days.

Do you think it's unrealistic of me to think that the kids will use the play kitchen they are getting for Christmas to actually begin preparing their own food?

Waltz of the Sugarplum Fairy

I couldn't think of another Christmas song about food. I just brought home and indulged in some Haagen Dazs Limited Edition Peppermint Bark ice cream. Oh, my. We already had peppermint Bluebell in the freezer but this is far, far superior. Although I'm now chilled. Would it be wrong to have hot chocolate after ice cream?

Tender Tennessee Christmas

Is a Christmas song that should have stayed in Amy Grant's living room, where I'm assuming it originated. It's just silly. Two different radio stations in Houston are playing all Christmas music, all the time, and this means every vanity Christmas song ever written gets airplay. I don't like songs that try to speculate about how Joseph or Mary or Jesus or the sheep or the manger might have felt about the whole God intersecting time and space thing. Unless your name is Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, AND you were divinely inspired 2,000 years ago, keep your musings in your journal and don't try to set them to a jazzy beat.

For the third time in 4 1/2 years of marriage, we again have a baby crib in our bedroom. There isn't room in the closet this time. The husband is a magician when it comes to arranging furniture.

For the first time in 4 1/2 years of marriage, we have a Christmas tree. It's little and has white lights. The ornamentation is a work in progress. I find myself greatly inspired by the Jesse Tree over at Chrys and Mike's blog. A project for next year, hopefully.

Here is the baby boy, who has no idea what that nice, expanding perch on my tummy is going to mean for him in seven weeks.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

It is indeed snowing just a tiny bit in Houston. Snow showers, they call it. We have our heater on for only the second time. I do not like using the heater because I don't like how artificial and dry it makes the air seem. I also don't particularly like air conditioning because I think it's unnatural and uncomfortable to be so cold inside when it's so hot outside. I realize this makes me very odd. It's also meant big marriage compromises because men seem to prefer the air to be around 58 degrees Fahrenheit inside when it is hot outside.

Harper has always been very attentive to her stuffed dog, whose name started out as Wadsworth and who has since been renamed, and this list is in no way definitive: Jeff, Joshua, Toby, Millie, Sasha, Maddie, Chanel, Hank, Dada, Gracie, Levi, and today, Mimi. Jeff was in homage to her then-favorite Wiggle (the Wiggles fell very far out of her favor around 18 months ago when she got terribly frightened by the pirate, Captain Feathersword), Joshua was the husband's beloved childhood dog, and the others are dogs we meet out and about that particularly strike her fancy. Her attentions have become increasingly maternal (some might use the word 'smothering') the past month or so. She also hasn't mentioned the puppy in her tummy in awhile which might mean that she has actually given imaginary birth after an extremely uneventful labor. Today Mimi is diapered, pajama-ed (these were stolen from the poor Cabbage Patch baby who is tragically neglected), bootied, pantied, and, after I found it in the bottom of the laundry basket, encased in the little knit hat that was on Harper's head when she got back to me from her first bath at the hospital. When I was tucking her in just now, the hat slipped off and Harper asked if I could fix it. I tried just perching it on top of Mimi's ears but Harper insisted that it be pulled down to entirely cover her face. She looks kind of like a hostage. Or a bank robbing dog in a baby disguise.

The Friendly Beasts

Hudson noticed that he had not been featured in a long while. His hair grows increasingly fluffy. We have a new computer and while it is so fast and efficient it makes me almost dizzy, it changed the way I find pictures and we all know that Learning New Computer Skills is not a strength of mine. Along with his tricycle attempts, Hudson has also developed a deep and almost primal need. To Dance. Christmas carols, the Nutcracker, the theme song to "Blue's Clues", Daddy on the guitar--he finds them all irresistible. He takes it extremely seriously. His particular choreography involves very deep knee bending, stomping, an occasional stomp/spin combination move and a grimace. He would prefer that you not watch him and if he catches you enjoying his stylings, he will push out his bottom lip, take a final, almost careless stomp, and cease.

Yesterday morning I looked at my two kids enjoying breakfast in their footy pajamas and it seems as though it is all a dream, this sweet life.

Today we went to visit the horses at the Houston Police Department stables. They were a lively bunch and Mrs. B and I made the decision that the carrots and apples we brought were best handed to the friendly beasts via our hands and not the four other eager sets of tiny hands we had brought along. We assured the kids that tossing carrots into the corral and putting pieces of apple into the feeding buckets was equally as fun as having the horses snatch them directly from their hands. Harper decided on the way home that when she gets to be six she will be able to hold her fingers still even if there is a horse tickling her palm with his big horsey mouth.

Go, Tell It On the Mountain!

Well, the December Blog Challenge, Revised, has begun. The goal is to blog every day for the next two weeks and use Christmas carol titles for each post.

We seemed to have settled on a name over the weekend:

She will be called Helena Jane and we will pronounce it HuhLAYnuh and probably call her Lanie. We will not be dismayed if it gets pronounced HELL-in-uh (I think that's how my friends in England might say it) or Huh-LEE-nuh, which is apparently how it gets pronounced in Nederland, Texas, according to my mother. So, there. She is getting an H after all.

Harper got an actual Big Girl Bed at Ikea this weekend. She is thrilled. We got some really cute (and cheap) bedding as well. Sheets, duvet cover AND duvet all for around $40. Take that Pottery Barn Kids. Ikea has figured very prominently in our design scheme since we moved to Houston 4 years ago and have lived on one salary. Though I'm pretty sure we'd still shop there even if we could buy expensive things. The thought of heavy, expensive furniture has always stressed me out. It seems restrictive somehow. As though if you decided to up and move to Argentina or Alberta or Albania it would just be so cumbersome and back-breaking to transplant. I knew this girl Caroline at A&M and when she packed up her dorm room to go home at the end of each semester, if there was stuff she couldn't fit into her tiny car, she would give it away, reasoning that if it wouldn't fit, she probably didn't need it. That's just good. I wonder what she'd say if she could see our minivan packed for just a few days at my parents' house.

Ten for Tuesday

I stole this from Robin. There are probably rules of which I'm not aware, but my version is just going to be a list of ten things that pass as an actual post.

1. It's beautiful weather here in Houston today--clear and coldish and autumnal.
2. I'm supposed to be going to the doctor every two weeks now and I find this very vexing.
3. Because each appointment takes around 2 hours, some of which is travel time and parking time, and some of which is spent waiting to be asked the same pleasant questions they asked at the last appointment. To which my answer is always no. I am, however, exceedingly thankful for uncomplicated pregnancies. I just think I should be allowed, in spite of my Advanced Maternal Age, to go to the doctor only when there is an actual need. When one is in active labor, for example.
4. I read a novel titled Home while at my parents' for Thanksgiving. If you ever think about writing your very own novel, Marilynne Robinson will either inspire you to be better at it, or, as is probably the case with me, her writing will convince you that if it's already being done this well, why sully it up with your own paltry effort.
5. On that note of self-pity, I have just received in the post a series of lectures from The Teaching Company titled, "Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft." A fellow named Brooks Landon, who teaches (with Marilynne Robinson, incidentally) at the the University of Iowa's famed writing workshop is going to lecture me on things like The Riddle of Prose Rhythm and Prefab Patterns for Suspense. I'm extremely excited to start.
6. This afternoon, the Daddy accompanied us to the park, to our delight, and on the way home Harper exclaimed, "Daddy, I found an idea!" which I thought was a pretty cute take on the more conventional having of ideas. Perhaps she's already watched Prefab Patterns for Suspense. The idea she found had to do with officially changing her name to Lightning Harper Anne.
7. The baby still has no name, though not from lack of input. Some people seem to feel we started the alliteration business and we should persevere lest #3 feel left out. Because clearly having names that start with H has bonded Harper to Hudson in a way she never would have experienced otherwise.
8. Your child can listen to Tchaikovsky for weeks and weeks and still tell you, that actually, her favorite song in the world is "I Was Made To Love You" by Toby Mac, Christian rapper. No offense to Mr. Mac, whose song she has heard maybe twice on the radio, and is indeed snazzy, but it's like that post I wrote last year about how you can take your kid to the Louvre and whatever, but they'd still rather look at the inflatable Frosty the Snowman snowglobe in the yard down the street.
9. I watched "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" last week. For a movie about a guy who has a stroke at 42 and is utterly paralyzed and able to communicate by flickering his one unaffected eyelid, it is oddly uplifting. I think it's just good to get a vivid reminder to be daily and deeply thankful for bodies that are whole and work as they should.
10. On Monday I shall again embark on Jamie's December Blog Challenge, Abridged.