the skinny

~ Banshee Boy turned 1 year old on February 3rd. He’s walking — well, no. That’s not quite true. He’s clearly decided walking is for suckers and has jumped ahead to running and falling. If he cannot run and fall to get somewhere, he doesn’t really want to be there, okay? He walks laps — I kid you not — around the downstairs of my brother’s house. We’re all in the family room, and there goes BB, toddling into the kitchen, rounding the corner into the dining room, out of sight, babbling in the living room, oh, here he is again to do it all again, which he does, smiling and chatting to himself the whole way.

~ He has a distinctly “boy” energy, that kid. (Am I allowed to say that anymore? Whatever. I can’t keep up.) He is never without a ball, any kind of ball. Basketball, football, water polo ball, soccer ball (which Tee Tee kicks away from him and says “No. NO!”).

~ He is also never without the tube of Chapstick he found on the floor several days ago. He just likes it is all. If you were try to hide it under your foot, which I have never done, of course, he might tug at your foot and might loudly vocalize disapproval making you feel like a very very bad person.

~ It’s been a long time since I got to buy clothes for a little boy, so I bought BB an outfit for his 1st birthday. I mean, kid has a tube of Chapstick to play with, what does he need toys for? I didn’t know this when I bought them, but the jeans I got him were …… skinny jeans. I noticed it on the inside tag after I’d gotten them home. Skinnnny jeans, pippa. For babies. And especially Banshee Boy, the world’s beefiest, chubbiest baby. I felt like an idiot. Like some kind of withered crone trying to be a hipster idiot. Ugh.

~ When my SIL opened the present and pulled them out, BB teetering close by, I looked at the jeans, looked at my little pot roast nephew and thought, “What was I thinking? No way are those fitting him! I’m giving him body shame issues! He’s ONE and his clothes don’t fit!” But they were so cute and the little plaid shirt sent the whole ensemble over the top making my SIL squeal with delight and announce, “I’m trying them on him right now!!”

~ So off came BB’s clothes. He stood there, a fat little ball in his diaper, while his mom tugged those skinny jeans up over his folds and chubs. Then something amazing happened. An anatomical miracle. God made him skinnier, I guess, because those tiny skinny jeans actually fit that little chubster. Okay, sure, they made him walk funny, blah blah, and we all laughed, but they were very sleek and slimming. My SIL exclaimed, “Wow! He’s got a full diaper, too!” And doesn’t that sweeten the pot?

~ Chapstick, skinny jeans, and a full diaper. Banshee Boy is ready for a nite on da town.

~ I worry, though, that those jeans ol’ Tee Tee got him will permanently smush his little kidneys.

Skinny jeans for babies, pippa! And I participated!

Unreal.

oh, look, it’s a ………… cherumple

O happy day, pippa!

A confection has finally come along to fulfill your previously unexpressed (and unknown) desire for a cherry pie baked in a chocolate cake, a pumpkin pie baked in a spice cake, and an apple pie baked in a yellow cake, all covered with some kind of pruritic rash of rainbow frosting.

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Anyone else feeling that pre-barf burning in their gullet? Race ya to the toilet.

Hold my hair back, will you?

quote

This seemed appropriate to the theme around here lately:

How have we learned Christ? It ought to be a startling thought, that we may have learned him wrong. That must be far worse than not to have learned him at all: his place is occupied by a false Christ, hard to exorcise! The point is, whether we have learned Christ as he taught himself, or as men have taught him who thought they understood, but did not understand him … The Christian religion, throughout its history, has been open to more corrupt misrepresentation. Have we learned Christ in false statements and corrupted lessons about him, or have we learned himself?

George MacDonald, The Truth in Jesus

happy anniversary, my beloved

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Ye

On Gobbler’s Knob on this magnificent Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 2012,
Punxsutawney Phil, the Seer of Seers
the Prognosticator of all Prognosticators
was summoned from his burrow in the old oak stump.

He greeted his handlers, and after casting an appreciative glance
towards thousands of his faithful followers,
Phil proclaimed:

As I look at the crowd on Gobbler’s Knob
Many shadows do I see
So six more weeks of marriage — which is just an approximation, obviously — it must be!

But let’s go for the record, okay?

T.

holiday kids

Taken with my crappy cell phone camera, but I got a purty new digital camera for Christmas. (These photos were taken pre-present opening, sadly.) So we’ll see if my photos get any better. If not, we’ll know that there is something very wrong with my new camera.

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See that look? That pretty much sums up Banshee Girl’s entire personality. A stinker, as we withered crones like to say.

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Original Banshee didn’t pose for this but I got lucky enough to catch this moment where she paused and looked so pretty and wistful.

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Okay, clearly, this sucks as a photo. I cropped them out of another photo and that made it even blurrier. But I couldn’t resist Elder Nephew’s smile and that sweet sweet look on Piper’s face. That’s her heart you see on her face. LOVE that girl so much.