Anneliese, Almost Six

Last week in Anneliese's kindergarten class, she was the "owl of the week" (because just being student of the week is so last millenium?) and she got to ("got to") make a collage and bring a stuffed toy home and write in a journal about it, and also answer a questionnaire about herself.

One of the prompts was to name a dream she has for herself one day. Her answer? "See a rainbow." When I pointed out that she has indeed seen a rainbow before already, she said "Yes! And it was a dream come true!"

So, that's basically all you need to know about Anneliese and her delightful little heart these days.

But here is some more anyway:

She is reading, more and more. She is writing, more and more. Suddenly the world seems hers for the taking. (Hashtag: literacy, amiright?) She sings and dances and makes funny facial expressions and talks with her hands.

She plays with her American Girl doll and her baby doll and chats about Shopkins and Pokemon. She can build lego sets now, with only a little help from big brother. She can fix her own food and find her own tv show and she has her own email address, which she uses to send very important emails covering important topics such as I LOVE YOU and also I LOVE PARSNIPS and also HI BYE LOVE ANNELIESE, but with far fewer correctly spelled words than that there.

She remains obsessed with rainbows. And wearing as many colors as possible. In another of her school projects, she did a collage (why so many collages, teachers of America? whyyyy) or list type thing of her favorites -- naming her favorite color as a rainbow and her favorite animal as a unicorn.

She will not fit into someone else's fill in the blank, NO SHE WILL NOT. (In the most delightful way possible.)

And she is trying very hard to seem grown up, and to grow up, and to be taken seriously, while also clinging tight to a few vestiges of babyhood: her thumb, and Hattie, and dress-ups.

Anneliese seems to approach the world with the assumption that the world is out to delight her. And, therefore, it usually does. I think this is a good way to live. I think I would like to be more like her when I grow up.

I can't believe six years ago tonight she was still inside me, and now here she is, a bright-eyed funny smiling little kindergarten human, making the world better because she is in it. She is everything.

Happy due date, Beanie. We love you always.

Clemson, Brene, Sunshine Charlotte

When I was in Illinois, Mark took Nathan to Clemson for a football game, and he met up with his college roommate Jeff, and his kids, and they all watched the game together. I can't remember the last time I have gotten happier sweeter texts from Mark while I was gone. It turns out that thing we all did in college, where we dreamed of the day we would be back in the fun college places we loved, with our college friends, and our college friends' future hypothetical children? Yeah, men do that too. And it's just as sweet and happy.

I love seeing Marky share his special joys with our kids. (The girls will get their turn next.)

I went on another road trip, too, just a quick jaunt yesterday to Charlotte to meet up with my sister and see Brene Brown give a talk downtown. We knew she would be good, but we weren't expecting her to be so funny. She was great. She is brilliant and sassy and somehow makes both her brilliance and her sassiness super... accessible? Yes, accessible is the word I think I want. Everyone should go and read all of her books, immediately, stat, post haste, yes right now.

A bonus of our night (besides our super ability to find the most flattering light for selfies, OBVS) was that we stumbled into the most random of random Mexican places for a snack before the event (like, random as in, they looked a little surprised to have customers at all, much less white lady mom types) and anyway it ended up being freaking delicious, but on top of that, a group of older men (post-work types? grandpa types? we don't even know) bought us drinks, and tried to buy us more, and just... whaaaa?

That is the first time a stranger has ever bought me a drink in public. It was not what I was expecting. They also did not speak any English. SO. Random adventures for the win.

This has nothing to do with anything, but look: here is Charlotte and baby Claire at the bus stop. She got lots of waves that day.

Also, it's a good thing she is basically a ray of sunshine (at least here) (ha), because this picture was taken the last time the actual sun was out. It's been over a week of rain. COME BACK, SUN.

I don't even remember anymore what this post was intended to being about when I started writing it but! This... (?) is apparently what it's about now! Hi!

Gap-Toothed Grin

Nathan has been missing his two front teeth since the first weekend in September. He hasn't lost any teeth since one in May of 2014, and one in December 2013, so he was way overdue and very excited. (He is eight. I swear that child has never hit any milestone early in his life.)

So he lost the first one when we were at Brad's house a month ago, in an ice cream cone. (That gives you an idea of how crazy loose it had gotten but was still hanging on by a thread: it fell out when he licked a freaking ice cream cone.) That night, the tooth fairy brought him a stack of quarters in a red solo cup (stay classy, Bumgarners) but despite some hinting about doubling the prize if you lose two in one day, he wouldn't let us touch the other one.

A few days after we got home, after much coaxing, I full-on bribed him with a new lego set to let me pull the other one out. It was just dangling. He couldn't eat well, he was scared to bite anything or even say much of anything, it was barely hanging on by one bloody little veiny thread, and, well... y'all, loose teeth are gross. I couldn't take it anymore.

It was a bribe well spent. I came at him with a kleenex and that tooth basically lept at me! with joy! like John the Baptist in the womb. Easiest tooth pull ever. So now he has spendy legos and a new grin.

And I shall commence taking allllll the pictures.

Days 6-11: MinneEFFINGsota, Take Four

{Still backdated, are you still with me?}

And on the sixth night, tired from the water park and after one small carsick rest stop, we rolled into Northfield, Minnesota, hugged Another Nathan, and there was much rejoicing in all the land.

A year to the weekend after he moved away, the kids were so excited to see his new house, and play in "their" room he had set up for them in the den downstairs, complete with shelves of toys and trinkets and plastic animal snouts and other Welcome Prizes, and air mattresses, and snuggles and legos and happiness.

And then they crashed, and Mark and I played allllll the pictures from our northbound journey as a slideshow on the Apple TV in the living room, because we are adults who know how to partaaaaay.

Day 7: The Sather Farm

The next morning we drove with Another Nathan to his grandparents' farm a few hours away, in rural Minnesota (even more rural than where he lives, which is basically in the middle of corn, if you'll recall). His mom had been sweetly inviting us to come visit the farm where she grew up, if we ever came to Minnesota, and, well, here we were.

The Sather Farm

(She drove from Iowa to hang out with us for the day. Another Nathan's mom. At her parents' farm. Isn't is just the coolest thing ever when the people you love start meshing into your family, and then they share their family with you?)

The universal preschool method for eating corn on the cob.

We had a such a lovely time with them, a lunch with fresh corn picked that day (it was basically all of Mark's corn dreams come true) (yes he has corn dreams, and has for years) (HE ATE SIX), and we got to see their horses, and Nathan got to play hide and seek with me in the cornfields, which, I won't lie, secretly scared the sh!t out of me. But he was cute.

At one point, while shucking corn to feed the horses, Charlotte proclaimed that her hair was the color of the cornsilk, which it was! Exactly! And now I can never see it any other way. At another point, while exploring all the giant* tractors and combines and trucks in their barn, we looked up and Charlotte had hopped up on a tractor with Grandpa Sather, and was waving to us happily, and oh man I just love that she makes friends wherever she goes. It also made me feel a bit sappy and miss my Grandpa, so yeah, that's the story of how I cried in a barn in Minnesota on our family road trip.

Also, Mark and Another Nathan piled the kids into a Gator (?) and drove across to where their big silos bins are (I have been informed they are not silos but bins, so okay), and Mark climbed to the top of one to look inside, even though he is scared of heights, so excited was he about this giant commercial farm.

And then we had root beer floats and heard funny stories and peeked in their ice fishing house, which apparently just sits in the garden during the summer (Minnesota is baffling and delightful to southerners like us, y'all), and played games and accepted a big crate of kiddie books from Another Nathan's mom, for the rest of our stay, because of course she thought ahead that we might be strapped for new material after a week on the road. She is just... that person. (Lovely, is what I'm saying.)

I insisted we eat at Pizza Ranch for dinner on the way home, because I had never been to one before, and, you know, covered! wagons! with pizza! But it turns out that was a dream I had put too much stock in (YES I KNOW, EVERYONE WARNED ME: NOT THAT GREAT) but I am glad I can say we did it, although I don't need to again anytime soon.

Day 8: Nerstrand State Park Waterfalls, and Northfield by Night

We fiiiinally had a slow day on our hands, so we went to a state park near Northfield and took a short walk and saw waterfalls. Was sweet and pretty.

Also, there were swings. When you're a kid, what's more delightful than swings, except grown-ass men who also will swing with you (bonus points for Daddy and Mr. David).

That evening, Another Nathan had one of his youth choir kids come over to sit, so finally Mark and I could have a break for some grownup time. We all went downtown and had burgers and beer by the river.

And then more beers at another place on the other side of the river, and oh man, Northfield is just so dang charming.

Day 9: Charlotte Booler's Birthday!!!

In the morning we went for a walk around Northfield's downtown market, and we had coffee cocktails (mine was delicious, other people had mixed opinions) and baked goods and the kids picked out various hair ties and bookmarks and both big kids got lanyard bracelets which they loved.

Okay so, by far, the hardest thing about planning this trip on the dates we did (which were basically the only dates we could make it work, all summer, was that we would be away from home on Charlotte's birthday. I haaaaated the idea at first, although she seemed fine with it (she wasn't asking for any particular friends or themed party at home, nor has she ever had that anyway). I made peace with the idea that as long as we weren't actually in transit, it could be okay. We could have a cake and a little party, and it would be sweet. And we did, and we did, and it was.



My friend Miriel came from her town close by, and brought her baby, and we drew with chalk outside and then made superhero capes, and we opened a few presents, and had cake.

It was very simple and sweet and easy, and that's about all the birthday chaos I would be comfortable throwing at someone else's home.

There were a few moments where I felt really far from home, and I also cried when my cake frosting fell apart (David helped me fix it, because there is no end to his sainthood), but by the time the day's chaos had settled and we were all snuggled on the couch watching her birthday video, I felt so warm and sweet and happy. Birthday feelings all intact, even while abroad. Ha.

Oh! And also! When Charlotte woke up on her birthday morning, Sheepie was suddenly wearing a birthday shirt, just like the cupcake one Charlotte had packed to wear all day!

Someone must have put it on her in the middle of the night! No one will ever know who. (Edit, backdated: this remains a much-discussed mystery of our family, even months later. Haaaaaa being a parent is sometimes the best.)

Day 10: Another Nathan's Church, Mall of America

We had to hug and kiss Marky goodbye first thing in the morning, since he had to fly back to Raleigh for work (the kids and I had plans to drive home slowly and see more friends along the way, but he didn't have that much time off), and it was surprisingly sad considering we would see him just a few days later. We didn't want the whole-family portion of our trip to be over. It was so fun! I never would have dreamed that driving across the country with three kids could be so fun  but it was! Fun and easy! We had had lots of adventures already and we were sad to send him to the airport.

But we waved goodbye and then went to church in Northfield. Anneliese had been waiting for years (literal years) (in the correct use of the word literal) to sit at the organ with Another Nathan in worship, something she didn't get to do when he was here in Raleigh (she was jealous when big brother did). I think it made alllll her dreams come true. So sweet.

After worship we had a delightful Cracker Barrel lunch (oh, how we have missed post-church lunches with Another Nathan!) and then drove to the Mall of America. The rides and such were too chaotic and busy for us that day, but we did go to the very giant and impressive Lego store, and Anneliese had a gift certificate for the American Girl store, and she had a delightful time wandering around forever, choosing a back to school outfit for Kit.

Another Nathan was also delighted:

Day 11: St Olaf, and a Hymn Festival

We took the kids to St. Olaf in the morning to walk all through the campus and chapel and see all the places where Another Nathan went to college, which was very sweet. I think he liked seeing them run all around outside in a place he loves so much. It's really pretty in the summer!

We shopped in the bookstore and ate grilled cheese at the student cafe, and it was actually a totally delightful little excursion.

The kids and I spent the afternoon bumming all over town, we went to the library and a few shops (Northfield has fun quirky shopping! Beautiful pen and paper stores, and fancy candy, and even a little shop that sells handmade doll clothes in that delighted all of the children but maybe especially Nathan, who has a hard time finding boy things for his tiger to wear), and also playing on a swingset at a park. It was sometime that afternoon that I realized how delightfully awesome summers in Northfield are, and understanding why people have summer homes in small towns away from home.

Just. So. Charming.

We lounged around in the library at Nathan's church and listened to him practice a bit, which sounds like a silly dumb thing, but it turns out it's totally a thing I miss from when he lived here. He plays beautifully, and when your best friend is a beautiful musician, it turns out you should not take that for granted, because it's lovely to listen to, and someday he might live in MinneEFFINGsota and you won't be able to listen to it as often as you used to.

ASK ME HOW I KNOW.

Anyway. Charlotte danced while he played. It was sweet.

That evening, we drove all the way up to a town north of St Paul to see a hymn festival from two important music teachers of Nathan's, they do these lovely little worship/festivals with readings and beautiful music and a choir, and he has wanted to show me for years what they're like, and here I was in the same town where they were doing one, when they were doing it, and so I was not passing it up.

It was a lovely last evening in Minnesota. The drive back through the cities was gorgeous, although you can't tell from this picture. It's blurry but pretend it's blurry with my tears, because I hate saying bye and I'm not very good at it.

Afterwards we had a beer and popcorn at a bar in Northfield before we went back to the house, because beer and popcorn is a thing one does when one is in Northfield.

And then we really did cry the next morning, because having our whole family together, and all of us together there with our dear friends, was so wonderful.

You're welcome, friend, for posting the pictures we took before your cry eyes got bad. (Mine were even worse, which is mostly why I'm not posting it, but let's pretend the decision was purely altruistic.)

Til we meet again, Minnesota.  <3 p="">

Esotonia 2, Ship Design By Nathan

Nathan has been on a ship kick these days. Not just ships but ships of history. Like every little kid goes through a Titanic stage, except he takes it one step farther and gets a wee bit obsessed about all the ships, all the sister ships, all the sinkings, all the survivals, all the war usage, all the drydock construction, all the measurements, all the facts, OBSESSED (so unlike him, I know) (hahahahahaaaaaa *wipes tear*).

So anyway, almost every day he has a newly constructed ship to show us. The Titanic, the Olympic, the Britannic (those are officially the only three I can name, so I am stopping now). He builds them from Legos, or from paper, or from whatever he can find in the recycling bin.

(You think I am kidding, but I am absolutely not.)

He has taken to jotting down his ship design ideas on scraps of paper, and putting them in a shoe box for safe keeping. He has labeled said box "ship designs" and

OKAY WAIT CAN I JUST STOP RIGHT HERE AND SAY I CANNOT WITH THIS KID. Picture a million laugh-cry emojis in a row. He delights me. There is no one else like him.

There are pieces of paper like this literally all over our house. 

Anyway. Okay so his box of ship design ideas started to seem a little risky, and he wanted to put his ideas down somewhere where they would be safe from baby sisters and baby cousins, so he asked me to open up his files where he wrote his blogs before, and some school reports and such (google drive), so I showed him how and he typed up his ideas, and he would like them to be a blog post too.

(I think he thinks he has a blog. Um no. But I told him I would make it a blog post here.)

So I present, without further comment, Nathan's ship design of the Esotonia 2.

Please ask me no questions, I know nothing.

Wait that's not true. I do know that when I am invited to sail on this completed ship, I'm for sure going in third class because I want the wings.

If you have five minutes of your life that you don't mind never getting back, he also fancies himself a rising YouTube star (I don't even know, y'all) and you can hear him talk about a boat he made of legos. It is exactly what it sounds like. Except with a dropped camera and a broken lego and instructions to look at something else while he fixes it. He's basically a professional, is what I'm saying.


(If you can't see the embedded video, click here to watch on YouTube.)

"Bye, boat lovaaaaaahs."

Minnesota, Take Two: The Cold Version

Hey, I went to Minnesota to see Another Nathan! He's still pretty super.

If you're reading in this corner of the internet, it's because you want to know my opinions, right? Just in general? So here are some of my opinions on some Minnesota things.

1.) The snow. I was there for their first snow! And yeah, I'll say it: it was delightful. Well, after Nathan and I got past our initial trepidation about driving in the snow (the last time either of us did that was this bad day), it was delightful. Lovely and pretty and even though that is some effed up kind of something, to have snow in November, knowing it isn't MY winter staring me down for the next five months made it totally enjoyable and pretty.

(My kids are very taken with pictures of Nathan's backyard. Christmas trees! Ha.)

That being said, the weather, except for the prettiness of the snow, was way too freaking cold for me. Just no, Minnesota. Come south for winter, all ye weary cold people of the midwest.

2.) Another Nathan's new house. Since I was there in August, Nathan bought a house! And moved. Again. (!!) So, this is what he looks like in his new house. (He looks the same.)

The house is beautiful and bright and big and has lots of rooms and a pretty office and good windows and a fun open kitchen, and a giant bathtub with a jets, where I got to sit and soak and watch the snow fall and read my book and nobody (NOBODY) came in to ask me for a snack or to help them wipe. I KNOW.

3.) His church. Still lovely. Also, look how pretty it is in the snow!

Anyway the people are so warm, and the service is really nice, and I got to sing in his choir, which was an oddly displacing thing -- a thing I know so well, yet in a new place with new people, oddly familiar and strange at the same time. (Also his choir people apparently asked him if I had ever seen snow before, zomg adorbz.) Also oddly familiar yet strange: me, flopped on a pew, reading my phone and waiting for him to practice. (Horizontal on a row of choir chairs, hence the angle.)

I love to hear him play, and it's fun to see him be in charge of his own program and kinda kick ass at it. Also, the part where we go to lunch and overthink/overtalk everything from worship is freaking fantastic too.

4.) Nadia Bolz-Weber. So you might remember that part of the reason we picked that particular reason for my trip is that Nadia Bolz-Weber, who is a sassy and brilliant Lutheran pastor, was speaking in Minneapolis (at Mr. David's church, actually!) - and I very much wanted to see her in real life. And we did!

I'm not super good at paparazzo pics in these situations.

She was full of really smart and lovely ideas -- which she presented in a random mish-mash of an order, maaaaaybe just sort of as they occurred to her? which I'm sure was frustrating for the people planning the event -- but for me, I was glad to sit in the pew and just listen and think. I thought she was great. I will buy any book she writes in a hot minute, and I would love to hear her actually preach in worship sometime too.

5.) The Mississippi River. I still have an odd fascination with this river, and praise be to Mr. David for knowing that and walking us an extra block to go see it even though it was ridiculously cold and windy. (It was like 15, with the wind chill. That's nothing for Minnesota. How Another Nathan will get through this winter I don't even know.)

It turns out I cannot take a pic in the cold without *looking* really cold.
Southern blood, y'all.

6.) The Mall of America. Excellent. Beautiful. Way less overwhelming/crowded/chaotic/tacky than I was picturing. And shopping is always fun.

Also! They were only at the verrrrry beginning of their Christmas decorations. Two big trees had just gone up, but no decorations or anything else. For a giant mall who could have (and many did) start this crap before Halloween, I am super pleased that they didn't. Good job, Mall of America. *emoji applause*

Also the lego store was insane slash awesome LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL WALL OF LEGOS.

(If anyone tells you that when they become a parent, they will be immune to learning to love the things that their kids love, just roll your eyes at them and walk away, okay? Legos are aweome. Ditto dinosaurs and rainbows and Daniel Tiger toysies.)

7.) Tinytown Sarah. Hey so here's a random thing. Another Nathan moves to a tiny town in Minnesota, and it's actually not very far from Sarah's own tiny town, and that means we got to see each other! And I got to see baby Olive! Who is one of the very best babies on the internet. We had coffee and we chatted and we laughed and we braved the wind chill to take selfies and she didn't even call me a wimp about the weather or anything! And she is just as kind and funny and lovely to talk to as I remembered from the first time I met her. Internet friends turned real life friends who live close in the midwestern wilderness to your other real life friends: RECOMMEND.

8.) The Dundas Target. A++ for a clean bright shiny neat Target existing in the snowy vastness of small town Minnesota. In Target was one of the handful of times Another Nathan and I lost our bearings for a sec and thought we were in Raleigh and nothing had changed, and we had to shake ourselves, like hahaaaaaomg no we are somehow walking around his college town in MinneEFFINGsota. Target makes it feel like our friendship still manifests exactly as it always has, except (even though we don't love admitting it), it of course doesn't.

But then, nothing's existence manifests exactly as it always has. Friendships, and parenting relationships, and how we feel about God and books and celebrities and life and our spouses and ourselves -- it's all always in flux, isn't it? I don't know what to say about that, because I don't know if the notion terrifies or comforts me, but yeah there it is.

Relatedly (and I feel sheepish admitting this now, because it seems dumb and naive in hindsight), I think I thought that the Transition part would be the here part, the saying bye and watching my best friend move away -- but it turns out the Transition persists. That in some ways I am still grieving our old Raleigh life while feel also excited and proud for him in his new one, and there are days when having those two things side by side, existing in tension with each other, feels complicated. I think maybe I just needed to see that with my own eyes, up there in his new life, and name it, so that I can feel okay about the days that still feel off or floundery.

But it's lovely for us to know (still be learning?) that the meat of our friendship, what makes us, us -- is still there, totally. And that sitting in a comfy chair in a coffee shop together and dreaming big dreams about each other's families and careers, honest confessions about parenting and relationships and job fears -- those are things you just want and need your best friend for, and sometimes no one else will do.

So I think what we have learned here today is that thinking about the Dundas Target makes me be all bloggy existential about life and friendship? Okay then! Good times!

So, yeah. We had a good visit. Dear friends are just.. great.