goodwill

This walker, from the Ballard Goodwill, became ours for 3.99. So maybe I wouldn't have chosen dinosaurs, but for 3.99, I love dinosaurs. We also scored a Fisher Price high chair (sans tray, which is replaceable from the FP website for about six dollars) for another 3.99.

giving thanks

This morning I am thanking God for answering a prayer I've been praying for a year or more.

But thanking God for good gifts is painful and bittersweet.

If I thank God for answering my prayer, I am acknowledging his sovereignty, his ability to answer prayer. Acknowledging that God can, in his sovereignty, answer prayer means acknowledging that many times, in his sovereignty, he hasn't answered prayers. Mixed with the joy of answered is the sorrow of unanswered.

An unfinished thought.

yeah, she's her mama's girl

Do you think it's pathetic that I only post pictures of my daughter, and never write?

tie it, and dye it, and mark it with a b

Thanks to the Alaback and Ohmann cousins for this one-of-a-kind onesie!

Eating her feet is Rosemary's newest thing.

beach

I asked Rosemary how she felt about a beach vacation, and she said:

And then we went to the taco shack, and then we went inside for a nap.

video

I don't know why I didn't take any video in Tulsa. But, apparently, I didn't.

Here's my daughter at a birthday party tonight. The quality of the light in this video reminds me of old-timey home videos. That's one reason I like it.

The other, of course, is my daughter.

for Aunt Katie, as well as her other admirers:

garden, june

I set these extra tomato seedlings, and stunted pepper seedlings, out in the sun to die. But look at their will to live!


Here's a nurtured from seed tomato plant. Arugula going to seed in the background.


And snap peas.

oh happy day

1. About ten minutes ago, I found my jeans. They once were lost, and now they are found. Though I thought all my pre-pregnancy clothes had been packed away in the attic, turns out one bag had fallen to the back of my closet. Hand me down Citizens of Humanity. A reason to lose the last five pounds. Oh happy day.

2. For breakfast this morning, chocolate. Of all the chocolate bars in all the chocolate factories in all the world
oh happy day.

3. Last night, bun thit nuong cha gio for a double birthday celebration. (Happy birthday, Ruth Anne.) Oh happy day.

4. Yesterday, spending time with mom and grandma and aunts, uncles, and cousins. Oh happy day.





Also, when Jesus washed my sins away. Oh happy day.

Home

I've spent my 28th birthday in Tulsa, my birthplace, and will fly to Seattle tonight. Rosie and I both got new red shoes. By tomorrow I'll post some family pictures.

Marilynne Robinson won the Orange Prize last week. Here's an article from the Guardian with excerpts of an interview with her.

that's Rosemary

a poem by my housemate Grace:


Rises early in the morning
Opens her eyes to see the world
Smiles as a sunflower
Experiences something new every day
Meets new friends frequently
Afraid of being alone
Rides on Dad's shoulders
Yells and screams sometimes
That's ROSEMARY.

relief

Eighty-four degrees. No A/C. Too sweaty to sleep. Hot, fussy baby. Hot, fussy mommy.

Mocha ice cream.

"I came to suspect that certain professors were on to us, and I wondered if they, too, were actors. In classroom discussions, and even when grading essays, they seemed to favor us over the hard workers, whose patient, sedimentary study habits were ill adapted, I concluded, to the new world of antic postmodernism that I had mastered almost without effort. To thinkers of this school, great literature was a con, and I—a born con man who hadn't read any great literature and was looking for any excuse not to—was eager to agree with them."
-Walter Kirn

via PTbruiser. An essay worth reading.