Always Remember That

As part of a Social Studies project that has overtaken our lives, Mallory is conducting a tour of cupcake bakeries in the Triangle area. The research involved in this project, as you will imagine, has been quite tasty. Yesterday we went to Chapel Hill to visit Sugarland, a bakery featured on Food network which also happens to be right across the street from where Chris and I first met. Chris and I kept mentioning this kind of thing -- This is the restaurant we ate at on our first date! This is where I'd pick your mom up after class! Our first apartment was right down that street! -- and each time the girls would say, "Ewwww!" It's unclear why details of our past life disgust them so greatly. "If your daddy and I had never met, and had never dated, you wouldn't have been born," I've said numerous times. Mallory, however, seems to find the whole concept of dating very unpleasant, and I think Phoebe just doesn't like to contemplate a world before ...

I'm posting this picture because I like the way my hair looks: And this one to show that good hair is temporary, but the cuteness of Phoebe is not: And this one to thank my husband for hanging out with the girls at Girl Scout Family Fun Day while I manned the "Time Capsule Signature" Station: And this one because I like it:

The thing is, without my blog, how will I remember that the other day, Phoebe said something about a desperate housewife, and Mallory said she bet that Phoebe didn't even know what a housewife was, and Phoebe said, "You're right...but I think it's someone who's always grumpy." And I don't want to forget, either, that recently Phoebe has started to say, "I love you as much as a pickle!" And then a few days ago she raced to the bathroom shouting, "I need to pee as much as a pickle!" and slammed the door. A few seconds later the door opened and she poked her head out and said, "There I go again with the pickles!" And -- Mallory has to do a report on a famous North Carolinian, but her first choice -- Virginia Dare -- was taken by another kid in her class. She was working on some other homework and asked me to look up some other possibilities for her. I googled and discovered that Betsy Byars was born in Charlotte. "You c...

It's an odd thing, not wanting to give up one's blog but also never really feeling like updating it. Anyway, I'll take the easy way out and highlight the past few weeks of our lives in pictures: Phoebe. Is there anything funnier than a Phoebe? Above she is dressed up for her half-birthday at school (since she's a summer baby). (She did, in the end, decide not to wear the hat.) Every outfit, every clothing changed is thought out with precision detail. Where she gets her fashionista tendencies I do not know. A few weekends ago she suddenly announced that if I did not get her a pair of jean shorts she would just die. This was alarming, but since we had to go shopping anyway, I said I'd see what we could find. Luckily we found some on sale. She has taken them off only to go to school --she wears them to bed! -- and she thinks they look best when she wears them with a skirt-shirt, as shown: ...and is frustrated by the fact that she mostly has skorts, which cann...

Because I have all the time in the world and unlimited patience, I want to make this: The flowery one on top, not the stripy one on the bottom. Even though I've never crocheted anything larger than a scarf, and I only made the scarf this weekend, and before that I'd never crocheted anything larger than a cell phone case. Even though this afghan is made of two-hundred and twelve separate blocks that would have to be stitched together, and my least favorite thing about crocheting is stitching pieces together. Even though I don't need another blanket in my house, I have plenty. Even though I'm afraid I'm going to become a crazy crochet lady who keeps making things that nobody needs and foisting them on people. Here, have a scarf! Have an afghan! Have some booties! People will tire of me. If I'm going to make an afghan, having never made one before, it would be smart to start with something easier: or at least with something smaller: But what if I hate ...