Not even "my little moogy"?

Ian and I are leaving the Chik-fil-A and getting into the car.

Ian: Mom, I don't want you to call me any more names.

Me: (raching my brain to recall a way I've insulted him)........names?

Ian: Right. From now on, I just want you to call me Ian, or Miller, or Mitchell, or Henning.

Me: Aw, okay.

Ian: or Child. Child is okay.

Me: How about Son? Is Son okay?

Ian: Son would be okay.

Me: How about Sweetie Bear?

Ian: no.

Me: Cookie Puss?

Ian: NO.

Me: Noodle? Widdle Pooky?

Ian: NO!

Me: Cutie Booty? Nu Nu Boo Boo?

Ian; MOM!!!

Me: okay, okay, fine. Ian it is.



Ian: Sweetie's okay too.

And then 3 years passed.

Ian: You are mean. No - you are crazy. Crazy!
me: Hey, dude. You remember how, last night, Daddy reminded me not to call people crazy? Because it was not a good word to say? Well, he was totally right. We're not going to call people that, okay? You remind me and I'll remind you.
Ian (mutters) you're crazy.
Me: What does that even mean? What does "crazy" mean, Ian?
Ian: (very emphatically) It means when you are not awesome.

Nice Try

Me: You were so good at the doctor's office!
Ian: You were right. He is a really dood [that's how Ian says 'good' -ed.] doctor.
Me: What should we have for lunch?
Ian: Ummmmm...Cheeburger Cheeburger!
[regional chain lunch counter - there's one near church.]
Me: That's a pretty good idea.
Ian: Wait, how about..............Lollipop Lollipop??!
Me: Wow! I don't know where there's one of those!
Ian: (sighs, looks out window.) They're all far, far away.

I promised that, the next time we had a cork to screw, I'd show him how it worked.

Ian is obsessed with the corkscrew.

He was being Mr. Crabass this afternoon, and I suggested a picnic to jolly him up. We ended up sitting on a blanket the deck, eating grapes, cheese, and Girl Scout cookies, helping dinosaurs climb the Eiffel Tower. It was quite relaxing.

I opened some sparkling apple juice (Ian wanted soda, which was not going to happen, but this compromise allowed me to sit around under the beautiful blue sky and gaze at buds and hold a wineglass and kind of kid myself that I was drinking wine.)

But we needed a bottle opener to open the cap on the apple juice, and the first one I could find was on the big corkscrew. Which looks like a person, and airplane, and, not surprisingly, a dinosaur.

No preschoolers or Mommies were harmed in the eating of the picnic.

We had to explain to Ian that, while the Easter Bunny comes to most kids houses during the night, she visits minister's kids in time for dinner.

The Lord is risen indeed. I have tonsilitis.

closed for the moment:

Thanks for stopping by. Right now all the action's over at www.funkyfatgirl.com, where I have already failed the NaBloPoMo Challenge but am still concentrating in efforts.

Such as they are.

obilgatory pumpkin pics.

guess i'm a mommyblogger.

guess where we went.

this probably doesn't ring any bells



nor this, I imagine.





this might do it

















or, in context....

















guess what can be purchased there? Quite inexpensively.














we like museums.

we heart the woods

Everyone's a critic.

me: Come on, get in the car, sweetie.

him: NO! I don’t want to ride in your car! I want to ride in Daddy’s car!

me: Sorry, dude, not today. Hop in.

him: I don’t want your car! Mommy’s car is SCARY!

me: Scary? (wtf?) What could possibly be scary about mommy’s car?

him: All the bad songs.

You sure are.

Incidentally, I can vouch for this.

And now, I present 3 scenes, two from today, one from a week or so ago.

1. Ian the Comedy Writer
Scene: Our station wagon. Ian is strapped into his seat; Eric is driving, I am in the passenger seat.

Ian: Knock knock!
(eric and I exchange a look that says, hmmm, this is new.)
Eric: Who's there?
Ian: PINEY!
Me: Um, piney? Piney who? (subtext: What? Piney? what the...?)
Ian: A PINEY! And it REALLY SCRATCHES!! (hoots with laughter, which is so contagious that we also start laughing.

It's been more than a week, and we still have absolutely no idea what it means.
And it's gotten a whole lot funnier.

2. Ian the Performer (a monologue.)
Ian and I are at the lakefront in our town. We've eaten our sandwiches, played on the playground for hours, and are now (with more than a modicum of resistance) making our way back to the car. Ian detours up a ramp and onto the huge concrete stage at the lakeside bandshell. I accompany him, to make sure he can't take a header off the front.

Ian: (stages just off-center, all the way downstage, his eyes raking the empty hillside) I am a magic magician! And I am doing a magic show! Which of you kids would like to come up on MY stage?
(Turns to me) No one is coming on my stage.
I shrug - sad but true. Some nights, it's just like that, kid.

2. Ian the Naturalist
A little closer to the car, Ian spots of ducks standing on the shore, a foot or so from the water, grooming and conversing. He steps toward them, and I catch his arm.

me: Not too close, honey.
Ian: But I want to meet the ducks! Can I pet them? They have furry feathers!
me: I don't think they'll let you, Neen. I'm sure they'd jump in the water to get away. They're scared of people getting too close - they're wild animals, after all.

Ian: (pauses to think. Then:) But I am a wild kid!

Read this lovely brokenhearted reflection about being a new parent.

It's weird. I am very happy. Right now, I am blissfully happily married, breathless with happiness about my work, happy as a mom, happy with where I live, pretty f.ing happy.

And I know a lot of brand new parents, and I often have a chance to talk about what Ian's infancy was like.

During Ian's infancy, I was not happy. Not happily married. Not happy where I lived. Having zero fun, which was hardly surprising, but thinking that might be a permanent state of affairs. And - this made me feel most hopeless - having lost any scrap of joy in my work. Exhausted, about to capsize on a wave of bad chemicals, desparately in love with my kid. Just overcome. You know, the usual.

And I wonder why I can't sugarcoat that. Not even a little. I cannot bring myself to tell little white lies about that first year; I'm not even tempted. Am I just mean? Selfish? It's not to make myself look good - in these stories, I am not a hero, and not a helpless victim either.

Do I just love a good story that much?

And all I can say is: Exactly.

I complain a lot, on both my blogs, especially about being a parent. I tell stories about horrifying behavior (like the underpant drill team incident) and moan about having to adjust my internal pace to that of the Dead Worm Patrol. Whine whine whine.

Antonia thinks she does too. One never minds when Antonia complains on her blog Whoopee, since it's always snortingly funny and creative, and accompanied by photos of her daughter in huge costume hornrim glasses or Billybob teeth.

But some people must mind, because Antionia has written a response to a reader whom she has frightened - "Poor em.s read my post about Blogher that bemoans how boring and tedious it is to be a parent. Em.s is 14 weeks pregnant, out of the first trimester and ready to get excited about the most wonderful journey life has to offer, and I come along and tell her it's going to be AWFUL." So she says this:

...Because I have Esme, I can roll down grassy banks in parks without feeling silly. Because I have Esme, I can walk through London making monster noises. (One day last month I inadvertently made a monster noise at respected no-neck media personality Sandi Toksvig, and you can't put a price on that.) Because I have Esme, strangers smile and start conversations with us, strangers who would normally walk by with grumpy faces.

I can't put into words how good the good times are - I can't do them justice - and I don't feel the need to write about them here. I just enjoy them. [...]

And all I can say is:
"Exactly."

greetings from the cincinnati zoo

the sort of bird that rides on rhinos


the sort of bird that looks like a drag queen


the sort of lion that looks like a display at FAO Schwartz
(alternately, Aslan's standin)

what we've been doing

enjoying treats

hangin' in the great outdoors

Last week

Last week, a bunch of people from our congregation spent a Saturday morning on various helping projects - some helped renovate houses, some did landscaping or stream cleanup, and about 10 of us went to a retirement home to visit the residents.

There were quite a few kids on our team; I signed us up for this one because I thought it would suit Ian. He's friendly, he's a good talker, he can sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

Okay, seriously: I signed up because I'm on staff at this church, and I need to be living out the vision of the church and modeling wholehearted participation and MAN ALIVE DO I NOT FEEL LIKE DOING CHURCH STUFF ON A SATURDAY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. So that's the full extent of my suffering for the kingdom - spending a couple of hours visiting old folks in the day room. Yes, I am a fine, fine example. I felt like I had to sign up for something, and so I found something that I could do with the kid. Nice, eh? Why yes, I am quite saintly. I am one saintly mother.

And may I just point out, my little tiny ridiculous suffering is NOT particularly compounded by the fact that it was a nursing home, on account of my mom's long stay in one. So no credit is due me for overcoming nursing home squick.

Anyway, here is my point. The group took nosegays to some residents, and those were well-received. We found a quite corner, pulled out the markers and made some greeting cards to pass out. That was fun.

And then the group kind of split up, and we found ourselves visiting some ladies in another common room. Each was in a wheelchair, kind of wheeled into random positions, not to watch TV or look out a window or converse. One woman was parked on the linoleum, and someone from church was chatting with her, and she was clearly distressed, shouting. And I thought, okay, we'll be fine over here singing for the unresponsive patients for the rest of the hour. No way we're visiting the shouter.

But I do have some small sliver of heart, and it got the better of me. I saw the distressed woman gazing at Ian, and I couldn't conscience staying away. We can over and said hello. Ian took her hand. She frailly stroked his hair.

Ian cracked out the A material: from "Hi! I am Ian!" through "I am talking! To you! We are talking!" and even a quick verse of "Home on the Range". It's a great program, really. A surefire hit.

As the program went on, though, the woman became distressed again, and started shouting - "I'm sick!" "I want to go home. Can't you please take me home?" "This is an awful place, I would never come back here." "I'm dead already." She was weeping.

Krista and I fell into a silence. Ian looked at the woman, the looked at me.
He cocked his head and said "That lady says she is sick."

Yep, I said, that's why she's here, so doctors can take care of her.

"She wants to go home," he said. His heart was breaking, just beginning to crack.

Yes, she does. You know what that's like, huh?

He stared at her for a long time. "She is very sad."

Yes, she is. You're right, Ian. She is very sad.

Ian put his head on my shoulder.

Eventually I pulled myself together a little, and we prayed, with Ian holding her twisted finger. We stayed with her for a while. Eventually we went on and said hello to some more people. Ian was a little shyer over the next hour.

In the afternoon, his father woke his up from his nap. He looked up from the crib and said "Daddy, are you happy?"

"Yes, I am, Ian. How about you? Are you happy?"

"Yes. I am happy."

If I tell him I don't have all the answers - if I tell him that I, his mother, the person who explains things, doesn't know why some people are desperately unhappy, and there's nothing we can do to solve their problems AND YET God expects us to be with them and hold their hands for their sake and God's sake and I will never in this life know why...

...does that make his world more frightening, or less frightening?
More sad? Or less sad?

it's been a while since we've had a photo so

Recent Events

1. Ian recently tried to hypnotize us at the dinner table. He asked for a treat, and when we refused, we gazed calmly across the table at us and began to rock very slowly and subtly from side to side, whispering "but yesssss....cccinnamon rolllllll.....yesssss......"

2. In the living room the next day, Eric did a magic trick for Ian that climaxed with the revelation of a small silk rainbow streamer. Ian picked it up from the floor, laid it gingerly around his neck like a stole, and smiled at Eric: "Now I'm a princess!"

Bummer.

via Addison Road.