Adventures

I. Things always melt down as soon as you get all three pots on the stove at once. You want to time the pasta to finish, the sauce to heat up, and the mushrooms and sausage to be done all at the same time. But then when you have all of these finishing at once and need to keep stirring the sauce to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan you can't drop everything at once to go help James, who apparently didn't make it all the way to the potty, to help clean up.
"You can wait two minutes, James. I'll be right there, just take your wet clothes off and finish going on the potty."
"WAHHH!!!"
"It's alright, it was just an accident. But you need to take your clothes off yourself while I finish getting dinner ready."
"WAHHH!!!"
"Why is Owen crying?"
<through sobs from both boys>
"He's trying to play in the puddle!!"
"Owen, get out of there. Hey, no no no!"
<my phone starts ringing with a call from someone with information on a college teaching job>
"Hello, can I call you back in a few minutes? It's a little crazy--NO! Stay out of the puddle! James, just finish taking your pants off and I'll help you in a sec--yeah, I'll call you back as soon as I get dinner on the--THE SAUCE!"
"My cars got in the puddle! WAHHH!!!!!"

II. Owen has learned...well, he's learned a new word.

It's the wind-up that really makes it special.
"nnnNNNYOOo!"
It is his new word for everything.
"Good morning Owen, would you like to get up?"
''nnnNNNYOOo!"
"Would you like to get your brother up?"
"nnnNNNYOOo!"

"Would you like some breakfast?"

"nnnNNNYOOo!"

And of course, you can already guess the answer to questions like:

"Are we ready for a bath?"

"Should we think about getting ready for bed?"

"Would you like a bite of salad?"

"Can you come and wave goodbye to Daddy?"

By the way, if you're wondering what he was doing in the video, he pulls out everything in my wallet any time he gets his hands on it. I am only okay with him doing this because he digs through the plastic cards until he finds my Visa, which has the Buffalo Bills logo on it, which he points to and then proudly says "Buff-a-wo!"

III. Three year old birthday parties can be rough, even when they're your own kids. But we had a great one last night for our little friend Lachlan. Poor Lachie was the little baby that couldn't keep up with the big kids for the longest time, but I think it's safe to say he's old enough now to do whatever (and climb wherever) James and Alexa are off to. And the best part? They can supervise themselves (so far as we know) so the adults can have a great time on their own!

IV. 

"The Calm Before the Storm"

V. Recently finished reading the Memoir of Marco Parenti, which was a look at interesting events in Medici Florence through the journal of borderline uninteresting (but really ordinary in the best sense of the word) silk merchant whose family was tied up in their political upheavals. Now onto a Hemmingway Novel (Islands in the Stream) in honor of Lux, whose wedding month has now arrived.