Several Interesting Tid-Bits...

...None of Which Warrant Their Own Post:


1. Saturday morning we took Tai to the JC Penney Portrait Studio for his first-ever professional photo shoot. Now I know why people do this when their kids are 3 months old -- they can't run away. Tai was not scared or freaked out at all, but wholly uninterested in sitting still on this little red dot in the middle of the backdrop, where the lighting was best. Five minutes into the session, the photographer actually called out to her colleague in a somewhat exasperated voice, "we've got a runner!" which made me (a) think of the "we've got a bleeder" line from There's Something About Mary and (b) wonder why she seemed at all surprised. Are there 17-month-olds out there who sit in one spot for more than 5 seconds?

2. When Minh requests coffee and donuts for Father's Day breakfast everyone wins. Tai and I especially like the chocolate frosted donuts.

3. After consuming his Father's Day breakfast of caffeine and sugar, Minh took quite a while to contemplate whether he'd rather spend the morning shopping at Costco or doing yard work. He really knows how to live it up. In the end he chose yard work and specifically requested that I help him with a labor-intensive task during Tai's nap. In this case, not everyone wins.

4. Later that afternoon we attended a 40th birthday party for a friend, held atop a hill in a beautiful grassy conservation area. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing, there were balls to kick around and other kids to play with....and Tai could only focus on touching all the food that was laid out for the guests and picking up the giant knife that was set out with the dessert.

5. At that same party, Tai somehow lost his balance and ended up falling onto his butt --directly on another child's slice of rhubarb pie. (This is why we always have a change of clothes with us!)

6. In other news, the farm share is going pretty well. We've had two pickups so far and last week I picked strawberries for the first time in my life. The fruit and veggies are tasty and we've been forced to cook alot more than we had been. Our bodies are a tad freaked out about all the veggies though. The farm keep sending us emails with recipes for the veggies, but no information for how to deal with Kohlrabi gas.

7. On a related note, simmering in my crock pot right now are the following: chicken stock, garlic, onions, celery, broccoli, turnips, spinach, shredded carrots, and 3 very small beets. It started out as Cream of Broccoli soup and turned into Cream of Everything in the Fridge. I'm scared. Minh will get home before me today and he has been instructed to (a) add the milk (hence the "cream of") (b) taste it, and (c) call and let me know if I need to bring home a pizza. I'll report back on how it turns out, if I live to tell the tale.