Addition to my wish list

I've been poking around on REI.com the past couple of weeks because one of my co-workers is getting married this Sunday and is registered for gifts there. I'm thinking I really need one of these kayaks. Since Chatfield Reservoir is within sight of our house, it would get a lot of use -- at least until I was run over by one of those speedboats that dense people insist on putting into what's really too small a lake.

How not to play hide-and-seek

This is the scene I encountered today when I went into Laura's room to put clothes on her after her shower. She thinks she's hiding, but not only could I see her face, I also could tell there was a large lump of something under the sheets.

Random question of the day

I was cleaning Laura's room as she sat on the bed and asked why I was throwing things away. At some point she took a break to ask, "Mom, was I a baby in Japan a long time ago?"
Update 1: Little Man Who Lives in the Vents returned my placemat, and no trade was required. I'm guessing he monitors my phone conversations as well as my blog, though, because he left it in the storage bedroom -- which I was having to clean for Daniel, Heather, DJ and Jacob's visit later this week.
Update 2: A hailstorm last night obliterated the flowers on our rose bushes -- although not the bushes, thank goodness. But a neighbor up the street had part of a tree blow onto their house, so I'm not complaining.

The travails of an only child

Laura is very fond of Twister. Zoe and Kevin, not so much. So we end up with a lot of scenes such as this, which is the result of her demand that one of us operate the spinner while she plays. I usually manipulate the spinner to achieve this result, and then we start over again.

We don't name rose bushes

But if we did, this one's name would be Stick. Or so Laura says.
Three of the five rose bushes, which I planted in April, are doing well. This is the first one to have actual flowers. The two other bushes aren't doing as well, although they haven't died, so I guess there's still hope.

Where, oh where has my placemat gone?

Mom always blamed missing library books -- some of which were never found, even when we moved -- on "the little man who lives in the vents." I think he must have retired to Colorado.
A couple of months ago when we got new dining room furniture, I put four placemats on the table. At some point, one of them disappeared, but I didn't worry much about it. (Laura insisted that Kevin had done something with it, but I doubted that and figured it had just gotten shoved under something and would show up eventually.)
But it still hasn't. So Little Man Who Lives in the Vents, assuming you've also figured out how to access the Internet via our wireless network and are reading this, please bring back my placemat. I'm willing to work out some kind of trade.

But that's so old!

Today our friends Naomi and Mario came over to get some furniture we were giving them. Laura really liked Naomi's mom's van (a Honda Odyssey), while I was amazed that everything -- a china cabinet, table and chairs -- fit in it.
Later, Laura said she wished we had a van she could drive. I told her she has to wait until she's grown up. I explained that she's 5 and that she'll be grown up at 18. She said, "But Mom, that's so old!"
It's a hard life, being 5.

It's good to have goals

This morning Laura declared herself "the grumpy emperor." Then she said, "I'm going to be grumpy forever."
As my mom always says, go with your strengths.

Book recommendation

Awhile back, a great house in Casablanca was profiled in a New York Times features section. The man who owns it, Tahir Shah, has written a book about his family buying the house and fixing it up. It's an insightful look not only at how to go about restoring a rundown house on the edge of a shantytown in North Africa but also at how a non-Muslim family from London copes (for lack of a better word) with the associated culture shock.
One of the things I found most interesting was his discovery that middle- and upper-class native Moroccans most wanted to live in modern apartment buildings while leaving historic structures to the foreigners.

By popular demand

OK, so Auntie Eva was the only one who actually asked for it, but here's another shot of Laura.
Or is it?
This morning, I was in the bathroom putting on makeup. Laura came in and asked, "What have you done with my mother?" I said, "I am your mother." She said, "No you're not, you're an evil clone."
I'm guessing that if I'm a clone, it's possible she is, too.

Father's Day

The kids in Primary made ties for their dads to wear to church today. Laura was quite proud of the feather she included; there also is an orange flower, blue-green flower, barn, cow, yellow star, pig and -- barely visible at the bottom of the tie -- lizard. (The lizard had fallen off this week, and although Kevin told me I didn't need to glue it back on, there would have been a big blank spot at the bottom without it. Not that it would have mattered with such a busy background.)
The feather created some real complications when it came time to actually wear the thing, but I must say that Kevin was pretty lucky. Some other dads' weren't as well-thought-out.
My favorite, other than Kevin's, was our friend Scott's. His was covered with dinosaurs. In fact, I'm pretty sure that had Laura been sitting by Ryan when they were creating them, Kevin's would have included a dinosaur or two as well.

A new self portrait

Laura had another fun day with the camera yesterday. She even took some close-ups of herself, which I'm not going to put here. But I thought this shot was pretty good. How it ever occurred to her to hold the camera like that, I don't know.
The shirt she's wearing here is a new favorite. It was a gift from her grandparents and says Astros Girl on the front.

Story of the day

The New York Times has a story about Paul McCartney turning 64 this weekend -- and about how different his life is from what he probably expected when he wrote the lyrics to When I'm Sixty-Four back when he was a teenager.
My favorite part:
Now a billionaire, he has said he has no plans to retire, either as a rock star or as an animal-rights advocate (although, at 65, he will be entitled to a basic pension from the British government, at least $156 a week, and a free transit pass).
Just think: Someday we could run into Paul McCartney on the Tube in London, and he'd be riding for free.
OK, so that'll never happen. But it's pretty funny to think about, and maybe we'll look for him anyway.

Let Laura eat cake

Laura was sick, there was an unpleasant trip to the doctor, and then she asked for cake. (The deal we had made was that she'd get a treat if she was good, though I suspect the nurse who had to help hold her down for a throat culture probably would argue that she should never get treats ever again.)
To mark having lived through the experience, I made Bisquick cupcakes. There was a recipe and everything. They didn't turn out great, though I strictly followed the high-altitude directions. But I figure it's always good to expand one's use of Bisquick.

The big adventures of Flower and Midnight

On Saturday, we got two gerbils for Laura. The brown one is Flower, and the black and white one is Midnight. (Midnight's on her third name; first she was Pacific, then Possum.)
So far, Midnight and Flower mostly just hang out in the top level of their cage (as pictured here). That's good, though, because they're easiest to catch there.
(And in case anyone's wondering, Sebastian became an outside cat awhile back.)

Let the grass stains begin

This morning we watched a few minutes of the England-Paraguay World Cup game. A player was trying to steal the ball and went sliding across the field. Laura said, "Wow, he's gonna have a grass stain!"
If my grandfather had Internet access, he'd reply to this post and list the merits of Tide.

In case someone's thinking of buying me a gift

Three words: enameled cast iron. OK, so one of these (by Le Creuset) costs $90 or so, but at least it doesn't have a nonstick surface for me to destroy. And they come in more traditional colors, such as "graphite."
Yet another reason to love the New York Times: They review -- and photograph -- expensive cookware so I don't have to. All the news that's fit to print, indeed.

The popsicle guys

In the Friend magazine a few months back, there was a page of prophets from the Bible to make into puppets or flannel board characters. I finally got around to making them into stick puppets yesterday, and Laura has taken to calling them "the popsicle guys." She's quite interested in them having (nonbiblical) conversations, about things such as television. Perhaps some day she'll understand that there was a time before television -- and it was much more recent than the Old Testament.
(For the record, the guys are, from left, Jonah, Enoch, Adam, Noah, Samuel, Abraham, Moses and Daniel.)

Laura's book nook

We've posted photos and brief descriptions of some of Laura's favorite books down the right side of the page. This morning, as I was picking up Crepes by Suzette off my bedroom floor, I asked Laura if it was one of her favorites. She said, "Yeah, it's on the blog."
I guess I should be ensuring she doesn't try to create a MySpace page.

Pulitzer winner in the making?

Laura always is taking pictures with my camera. At least it's digital, so there isn't any money lost on ruined film. She's become quite skilled at self portraits; this one is from this morning.
Since I work at a newspaper that has won three Pulitzers for photography, maybe I'll ask if she can do an internship or something ...

I've got the purple ticket

In the mail at work this week, I received an envelope from a hotel in Osaka, Japan, that I'd never heard of. Not that I didn't appreciate it and all, but it's further proof that my friend Bill Montgomery has a bizarre sense of humor.
Two years ago, the ACES conference was in Houston. Tickets for the Saturday night party at Treebeards were little purple slips of paper. He's been sending them to me -- via both interoffice and regular mail -- ever since.

About the name (and photo)

Although I'm not a big Shakespeare buff, there are a few lines I always remember. "By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes" is one of them. (That's from Macbeth, in case anyone was going to have to go Google it.) Being a copy editor, I edit everything: bank statements, the scriptures, sacrament meeting talks, directives from my boss, you name it.
One of my other Shakespeare favorites is "Away with him, away with him! He speaks Latin" from the Second Part of King Henry the Sixth. But alas, that one wasn't as easy to alter to suit my purposes.
The photo is a detail from a drawing Laura produced of me for Mother's Day.