I'm at the same grammatical level as Mike Tyson

How is it that I skated by over 30 years of life without knowing that CANNOT is ONE word and not two? A co-worker of mine helpfully pointed this out and I'm so grateful. She had courage to tell me the equivalent of you have spinach stuck between your teeth. THANKS JK!!!!

On another note, I checked with my husband and office neighbors, they all knew it was one word too. Josh added, altogether is one word. I knew that. I added ARE NOT are two words. Except I think I said, ARE NOT is two words.

Confession: I nearly failed the test of standard written english (TSWE), a test of grammar that I had to take with my SATs. This is why I'm saying I'm on par with Mike Tyson.

Bummer!

It will be a full month since I placed my monogrammed towels order before I receive them in my greedy little hands.
Stay tuned - when I receive them in little less than two weeks, I will provide a full report with pictures galore.

Because life is so short...

I'm going to pick up my goody goody husband's habits. Last weekend, I decided that I will now garden. Tonight I just got back from exercising with him. I jogged slowly while he power walked and we enjoyed a good conversation.

Dazee walking!

All of a sudden, Dazee can walk many steps. Literally, only yesterday she was falling down the stairs due to intentional parental negligence and last week she fell into a hole we dug. How fast they grow!
She's going to be one in exactly one week!
At the end of the video, you get glimpse of her sister trying to kill her. The loud giggling is my mother. Sadie is saying in Thai - Moo Tong (Dazee's Thai nickname) is walking!

For my dial up customers, the video is 14.5MB so it might be too frustrating for you.

Make work play

For quite some time, I had been struggling when attempting to feed my younger daughter a bottle of milk. She is very clear about her displeasure: her body stiffens, she bucks her head back and forth like an angry bull, pushes away the bottle with much force and screams bloody hell.

There's even a funny story about Josh feeding Daisy. Once, he was asked to feed Daisy and was given information by my mother that she will "act" resistant, but keep persisting and she will take her bottle. He relayed to me that he used all of his force and he could not overcome her resistance. First he started pushing on her and she pushed back. He also tried to force the bottle down in a stealthy way, to which she responded with effective blocking. Can you imagine a 170 lb man taking on a baby?!

Anyway, Daisy's scorn for milk sent me into a tailspin of scientitific and emotional analysis - did she not like the temperature of the millk, was the composition of milk to formula ratio too large or small, did she like to eat upstairs or down, was she pissed at me for going back to work, is she mad about weaning from nursing, etc.? I kept adjusting whatever variables I could think of, hoping to cure her contempt and get the feeding done. These experiments yielded some success (though inconsistent, much like how the primaries are playing out for Mrs. Clinton).
Yesterday, I might have found the silver bullet. Instead of approaching feeding her as something I needed to do, as an end goal, I approached it as a process.

I put her into my lap in the "position", she clearly knew what was going on and started her baby-in-distress routine. But instead of trying to shove the bottle of milk into her mouth, I let her pull off the cap. Then she put it back on. She did this about six times, each time I told her in a high pitched baby voice "open" or "close". This activity was highly amusing to her baby senses. Then in her excitement or lack of dexterity, she drops the cap. So I move it to feed her and she drinks a little milk. After a few sips, she pulls off as if I'm trying to gag her and we play the open and close game again. After a few volleys, she starts to open her mouth wide to "eat" the cap, I take this as an opportunity to pull the cap away and insert the bottle. Success.

I had to approach the feeding as an activity that was an enjoyable activity for both of us. I went from "I must feed her" to "I must trick her" to "I will enjoy her".

My little geisha

This was taken at a Japan fair.

Humiliated!

On Friday, we attended adult Shabbat services. As I walked through the parking lot, I noticed a group of people, all decked out in finery. Men with wool suits and women in fashionable tops and skirts. I had a sinking feeling about my own outfit as well as my daughter's; we were both wearing tight skinny jeans with sneakers.

As it turns out, you're supposed to dress up for Shabbat. My Jewish husband failed to tell us that. I hate violating a dress code or being disrespectful and on top of that, I was actually called to the bima for an aliyah. I wanted to crawl into a hole!

While I was up there, one of the rabbis started rubbing Saydee's sweatshirt and remarked, Oooh what a nice sweatshirt. I don't know if he was trying to be a jerk or was totally clueless but I was humiliated enough without this extra attention.

At the bima, I'm standing next to a women who generally looks like a slob. I barely recognized her with make up and all decked out in a velvet suit. Another woman next to me is wearing couture like clothes - a pleated silk skirt, silver silk sweater top and her neck was accessorized with a diamond vine necklace.

I still feel humiliated!!!

Busy weekend

Lilacs! Not particularly beautiful on the bush, but after I cut them and arranged them into some vases, they are quite nice indoors. Fills up the bathroom with a great smell, unlike what we're normally used to.
Some beautiful tulips Josh planted in our front and back yard. I was skeptical that they would come up given how late in the season they went in.

We'd been admiring the weeping cherry trees in our neighborhood so we got one yesterday and planted it. We dug a 2 ft hole (whew!). Sadie was a huge help in pushing the dirt in her wagon while poor Dazee fell into the hole! Here's Sadie standing in front of the finished product. Scraggly-looking, but I'm excited to see the progress over the next few years.

Backlight setting!

Look at the difference between these two pictures of the same thing with a different camera setting!

Date Night!

Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, Josh and I had a date night. We went bowling and had a pretty good time. In our first game, Josh was on fire and scored an impressive 136. I was pretty hot myself with my score of 94. Then we bowled a second game and our scores really soured. 100 for Josh and 77 for me.

On another note, we were shocked how expensive bowling is compared to our youthful memories. $7 per game and $4.50 for shoe rental. Ripoff!