Pottying and Fancy Cars

They don't really go together, but don't worry, we aren't mixing them.  Although, as the Husband says, living in our new neighborhood makes you understand how many people must be in debt "just to have a little more" (he was looking at the GT parked in the driveway on the corner), we are still happy with our cars, even the Husband's little work car that has leprosy.  (Actually it's the clearcoat the maker put on the poor thing to *protect* the paint.  The clearcoat's peeling off, so the car looks afflicted.  Still runs great, though.  And when you work in a cement plant, you're not going to have a good paint job for long anyway.)

There are a lot of fancy cars around here, though the proportion of wealthy/regular people seems to be about the same as it is everywhere.  The only explanations the Husband and I can think of is 1) it's less necessary to have a functional car here because it doesn't snow 5 months out of the year and 2) Southerners were famous for loving/overspending on their horses, and this is the modern outgrowth.  Any real Southerners reading this feel free to chime in.  Why so many Mercedes running around?  Why so many trucks with rims?  Explain please.

The pottying we've been doing lately has been Littleman's.  Just to prove I am not crazy, there are books about it.  Don't think of it as potty-training a two-month-old, because obviously he can't toddle to the potty chair or anything yet.  Think of it as training me to take him potty when he needs to go.

No, I'm not crazy (see above), and no, it's not a ton of work.  I usually knew when he was going potty in his diaper anyway, and it's either take him potty or change the diaper, so workload is mainly just shifted.  And yes, he still wears diapers.  But we go through far fewer, because once he discovered I'd take him potty, he started getting really irritated if he had to go in his diaper.  (Understandable.)  So he fusses and makes his "please take me potty" sounds when he has to go, I hold him over the potty, he goes, and everyone's happy.  Now if only I could somehow master this with Buddy.

Babies are great fun.  Diapers, not so much.

Pictures of the cute Littleman playing with the baby in the bathroom mirror forthcoming, when I can get the Husband to play photographer.

Cheers,

Breanna

Only For An Instant

They fell asleep, at different times, on the same couch, this afternoon.  Each was occupied in a typical way.

Checking out the Teddy Grahms... (he has a lot of muscle tissue that needs the carbo-loading)

...and coloring in the princess book.  Actually writing a story.  (It goes: "Once upon a time there was a dragon, a big big big big black dragon.  And he was grumpy and mean and bad.  And he lived happily ever after.  The end."  Great story.)

Then Bud woke up and wanted more Teddy Grahms.  But it was a nice six seconds while it lasted.

Cheers,

Breanna

Possibilities

So I've moved from a Zone 4 to a Zone 8.

For those of you who don't garden, contemplate that in a Zone 4 you have a 66-day growing season, which means that "eating locally" in Montana in March means "beef and wheat".  In Texas, people are already taking seedlings out of the greenhouse and there hasn't been a frost for like a month.  So, having bumped up by 4 zones, I am starting (most illogically) to think about container gardening on my patio.

Not raised beds in the backyard.  Not yet.  Let's get Littleman walking around on his own little toes and Buddy potty-trained before we get on THAT crazy train.

Anyway, I am also thinking about edible landscaping and putting some of the prettier types of food-bearing plants (i.e., nastursiums, herbs, strawberries, curly-leaf kale, etc.) by my mailbox, which is the only one in the neighborhood unadorned with something like pansies or a ceramic goose or a patriotic sign.  It looks lonely, and like it feels shunned by the cooler mailboxes.  Also, the landscaping in the front yard is still tiny and you can see the seams of the sod.  (New house.)  So, my plan is to put some sort of interesting, self-watering planter beside my mailbox and fill it full of deceptively beautiful but edible stuff.  That way not only will I be learning about gardening here in the land of rain and warmth, but I will also not worry that a wandering neighbor kid will munch on a more traditional, toxic cottage garden plant, like foxglove.  I don't really think a kid would take a bite of curly-leaf kale, but I don't mind losing a few cherry tomatoes to the cause, either.

What do you think?  Am I nuts?  Or just getting the March Tomato-Crazies as a hangover from my life in a cold climate?*

Cheers,

Breanna

*If you don't know, the March Tomato-Crazies are what you get when the seed catelogues start arriving while there's a foot of snow on the ground and pale, soapy-tasting imitation tomatoes on the shelf at the grocery store, costing only a few ingots of gold apiece.  You start wanting fresh tomatoes.  A lot.  But you can't have them... so you buy plants like a fool at the garden store as soon as they appear, regardless of the fact that you have a 66-day season.

Windows into Our Day

I'd like to thank the people across the street who are putting a pool in their back yard.

 Not that we'll ever actually get wet in that pool.  It's just that the big earthmoving equipment makes for a lot of entertainment around these parts.

 Who needs a TV?

(As I recall, you can also trick them by saying "pretend the house is a car and the window is the windsheild and you're driving it."  But they haven't quite reached that stage yet.  I'm itching to try out "pretend you're a rock."  Thanks, Baba, for the memories.)

"Eeeeyyyy."  (Practicing the Fonzie impression that his brother taught him, apparently.)

A novel use for my elegant dining room--laundry folding with an eye on the machinery-watching children.

Cheers!

Breanna

Lent Again...

The great thing about the liturgical year is that it cycles around again and again, and you can always find new things in it.  Sort of like reading the Bible through again and again, and finding a passage you could swear was never there before.  God has a way of making things pop at opportune moments.

Caravaggio's interpretation of "Jesus is condemned to death before Pilate," the first station.  Not sure where Pilate is; perhaps the painter is implying, subtly, with the perspective, that we are seeing this through Pilate's eyes.  Sobering, yes?

Today I read Moses's address to Israel just before his death, where he reminds them of their failure to enter the Promised Land because, in the NLT, "you refused to trust the Lord."

Isn't that interesting?  We assume most of the time, I think, that lack of faith is involuntary, i.e., either you're convinced of something or you're not.  But here, clearly, the Israelites had a choice.  They could either trust God and cross the Jordan when He told them to, or they could refuse and sin.

I don't think the Lord is speaking, here, about the emotional sensation of fear.  Emotions are often simply things that happen to us and out of our control (although our response to them sometimes moderates how often they occur).  But the proper response to the sensation of fear, as well as whatever circumstance is triggering it, is to trust the Lord.

This might be, and perhaps usually is, an action we take.  In Israel's case it would have been crossing the Jordan--or at least refusing to listen to the cowardly spies.  In our case it might be something as big as changing jobs or moving (like, to Texas...) or as small as praying "Lord, I'm frightened and there's nothing I can do about the emotional sensation right now, but I trust You to direct events to glorify Your name.  I would appreciate it if You would take away the thing that's frightening me, but that's up to You.  Give me the grace to respond in a way that glorifies You."

Or, to put it in a much better way, "Abba, Father, everything is possible for you.  Take this cup from me.  Yet not what I will, but what you will."

Lent comes around every year before Easter to remind us that we need the Gospel--not just for our initial salvation, but every day of our lives as we fail and fail again.  We like to pretend we don't sin after salvation or that our sins are somehow minimal and don't need much repenting of.  Lent reminds us that our sin held Christ on the cross.  Like Moses reminded the Israelites about their past failure so that they would remember to trust the Lord in the future, Lent reminds us of our inability, in ourselves, to do anything righteous.

Lent is forty days of ashes, of remembering the disciples who hid.  Lent is forty days of trying to remember what it was like when we didn't know that Easter was coming; all we had was trust.

Last year I wrote a poem about the whole thing, in response to a writing buddy who dared me to write a poem.  I don't think it's very good, but here it is anyway, in case it helps someone.  If you remember, Mary Magdalen was the first one to see the Lord after His resurrection.

Cheers,

Breanna

At last! An update.

Packing was hectic.  It seemed like often Mama was the only one awake.

Come to think of it, perhaps that wasn't just my imagination.  (We are discovering that, this far South, those footie jammies have fewer applications.)

("Me? Do something?  I wasn't doing anything.  I was just laying here...")

("...watching while the kids did  that... surely the packers will put all those things in logical places?")

Item: the professional packers did indeed pack professionally, but they are, for the record, less logical than Pat-pat.

Driving through Montana, where the scenery looks like this:

We looked our fill, because we knew we were going to have to go through Kansas, where the scenery looks like this:

It's a good state to have a Kindle in.  (Sorry, Kansas.  I appreciate the wheat and all, but you have to admit that you're a difficult state to drive through.)

A blurry picture of just-leaving-the-hotel.  Boy we got tired of the car.  Especially since Miss Boo puked during the first 12 hours, and we had to attempt to clean the carseat with wipies.  In case you are curious, wipies do not clean puke off of carseats well, and those little 100% citrus oil air freshener sprays at least have a powerful orange smell.  We survived until we got our washer and dryer hooked up...barely.

This is either Kansas or Oklahoma.  No offense to Oklahoma, but you look the same as Kansas.  But hey, look!  Windmills!

This is Oklahoma, just outside of Tulsa, a random big lake we went past without knowing it was there.  It's a state park.  Sometime when you don't have toddlers in the car, maybe you want to stop and see it.

This is a blurry, bug-spattered picture through the windsheild of a grain silo that says "Welcome to Texas".  It was sunset on our last day.  We got into our new town about 9:30, and boy we were glad for the relative freedom and mobility of a hotel room, even if the entire hotel was populated with Japanese tourists and National Guard.  (Thank you for your service, Guardsmen.)

The furniture (including a new couch, the edge of which you can kinda see in the bottom left corner) made it to the new house.  The Husband is taking a well-deseved rest here with Littleman after the first day of his new job.  That's a glass of iced tea at his elbow, appropriate since it hit 85F here today.  (Not kidding.)

But you should have seen what it looked like earlier today.  (That's Spongebob on the TV, on the way to flipping to March Madness, which we can finally watch, woohoo!)

It's called a "pendant chandelier" and it's above my front door in the foyer.  I didn't know I had it until we got here.  Isn't it cute?

(To recap for those who haven't been following the blog: I let the Husband pick out a house all by his onesie.  Thus, the first time I laid eyes on my new house was after we had purchased it, and I had to make decisions about where stuff went for the movers.  An exercise in flexibility, to say the least.  Everything about the house is amazing, so far.)

And again...you should have seen it earlier...you can picture it with stuff put away and no baby bassinet, right?  (Littleman naps near me, because the house is so soundproof it's hard to hear him in the boy's room.)

A perk of living in the South: Krispy Kremes are fresh down here, and they are very good.  (The humidity monitor behind them says that the humidity is at 67%.  Believe it.  I haven't had dry lips since I got here, and my hair won't stay flat even if I spackle it.)

Another southern perk: sweet tea.  (Do not call it "sweetened" tea.  It just isn't done, apparently.)  I am figuring out how to make it.  A downside: having to put bread in the fridge so it doesn't go mushy.  An oddity: living in a "dry county" and having to go to Arkansas to buy beer for a thirsty crew of box-unpacking relatives on St. Patrick's Day. 

A further oddity: a toose (or a gurkey), which is what we are calling a bird we saw at the park that looks like it has the head and body of a turkey with the webbed feet of a goose.  They hung out with the geese and swam.  Does anyone know what they are?

I'm sure I'll have a lot more pictures, preferably of cute kids, soon.  We've been unpacking for about eight hours a day, every day this week, and we still haven't got completely settled.  Suffice to say that my new house is amazing; among its other amentities, it boasts a jetted tub in the master bathroom that is big enough for me to stretch all the way out in, and I am a tall girl.

God is faithful, and what's more He gives you all kinds of unexpected and undeserved benefits.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.

More on Lent soon as well, and thoughts on the Stations of the Cross.  It's really difficult to fast from rich food in restaurants.  I had suspected going into Lent that it would be more difficult to keep myself from complaining, and then I read this book by Jerry Bridges that pointed out that complaining and also any speech that tears down another person is sin.  It is very difficult to keep from fussing about other people, particularly if you include incompetent cable guys and people in line ahead of you at the hotel breakfast buffet who take all the sausage.

More soon.  In the meantime, try the link to the Way of the Cross above.  It's a good meditation, and puts the sausage-hogs into a lot of perspective.

Safe in Texas

I have pictures, but am typing this on hotel wifi.  Just a note to say we're here and it's gorgeous, and we're all ok.  More soon.

Cheers,

Breanna

New Blog on the Roll and Other News

Although I have resolutely held back on putting her in the blogroll, I have at last included Amanda Soule.  I did it because her blog is so beautiful and because she knits and loves Elizabeth Zimmerman and was pregnant at the same time as me.  I resisted doing it for so long because her blog makes me all insecure-feeling about how mass-produced most of my things are and also about the fact that when I paint a room it doesn't seem to make that much difference.

(Item: perhaps this doesn't happen to you, but do you ever feel like you are a bad decorator because your stuff is neither completely new nor completely handmade/repurposed?  Like at least you should match?  Perhaps you're not surprised to learn that I lean toward the handmade/repurposed look, and yet...)

I promise to be taking pictures during our Adventure to Texas.  You can have a nice, big, baby-y post when we get there, and get internet service, okay?

We're leaving for Grammy's tomorrow for Littleman's dedication.

Now I have to go because Buddy is opening my CD drive and I can't stop him one-handed.

Cheers,

Breanna