Owen's Birthday

While on our two week sabatical, Owen had his third birthday. We had a wonderful time hanging out with family at my parents' house. Owen was a bit overwhelmed by the number of presents, but he certainly enjoyed playing with new toys and getting lots of hugs from the people who don't get to see him enough. And who can complain about cake and ice cream?

And at the end of the party, inspired by Will's newly-aquired golf clubs, the boys had to go outside and get in a little man-time.

Boston

Since so much has happened over the past few weeks, I'm going to try and split this into a few different blogs. After New York we spent four days with two of our very best friends, Holly and Justin, in Boston. One of our adventures included cooking live lobsters (it is New England after all). Here is one of the live ones. I believe he's the one who tried to crawl away. Being lobster-cooking virgins, the three of us left it up to Will to "take care of them." He has now decided to never do that again. He's okay with putting knives in living people, not so much through lobsters apparently.

Another fun part of our trip was comparing bellies. You see, Holly and I are two weeks apart in our pregnancies. This also makes for much to share in regards to indigestion, hormones, and eating.

And of course no trip would be complete without a day in the city. We wandered around, checking out crazy city people (i.e. lady in kelly green hose and shoes), eating at Mike's Pastry, admiring the harbor and Boston Commons. It was wonderful, not just the city, but the time with dear friends. I miss them already.

Eating Our Way Through New York

For those of you who don't know, we were in New York for three days this week. Is it just me, or do you tend to never tell anyone about the fun that you had on vacation, even though people always ask, "How was your vacation?" Is it because we don't think people really want to hear about our fun? Or because we don't have the time or desire to share our itinerary with every person who asks? Not sure. But I want to share, so if you don't want to hear about my fun, feel free to move on to checking your email or getting sucked into youtube.

We arrived at JFK on Saturday night. Getting to our hotel in Manhattan involved a tram, a bus, a subway ride, and a walk of several blocks. This took two hours. Will carried both giant bags. He was not excited. I love my husband.

To sum up our trip...it was all about the food. We love to eat good food. The only plans I had made for our trip were see one Broadway show and eat. The first food destination occurred on Sunday at lunch: Juniors. We had brisket with au jus, potato pancakes, and applesauce, finished off with Junior's famous devil food cheesecake. Mmmm. This filled our bellies for the one planned non-eating event, watching Avenue Q. By the way, despite the fact that this show has puppets, do NOT take your children to see it. You might be a little taken aback when you have to explain the birds and bees afterwards due to some puppet indiscretions. The second food destination...Mandoo Bar. Yummy Korean food. Unfortunately, the taxi we caught to get there was not in fact the Cash Cab. Boo. On Monday we did the Greenwich Village Food Tour. Of course we sampled NY style pizza, but also canoli, cheese, risotto, olive oil, salami, and gelato. Later that day, dinner took the prize for most memorable waiter. We couldn't finish all of our food and had no ability to take leftovers with us. The waiter came by and proceeded to have this conversation with Will:

Waiter: You need a box?
Will: No thank you.
Waiter (with puzzled expression): You not finished?
Will: Oh no, I'm done.
Waiter (with suspicious look): Something wrong with food? You not like?

I can't say that we've ever been grilled by a server before. I thought for a second that we were going to have to force the rest of that food down so as to avoid some serious social blunder. But he seemed to understand us not having a refrigerator and let us go. But the last and most memorable eating event occured on Tuesday. We rushed uptown around 11:30, desperate to squeeze in a trip to one of the best sushi restaurants in Manhattan before leaving for the airport at 1:30. We get there right after they open for lunch, feeling underdressed and a little sweaty. The menu is sparse, there are no helpful explanations or pictures of different types of sushi. Willl is afraid that at any moment the chef might come crashing out of the kitchen and accuse me of insulting his skills as a sushi master because I am dipping my eel roll in soy sauce. But it is by far the best sushi that Will has ever had, so the stress was worth it. AND, I got to use one of those crazy fancy toilets. If you have not experienced the $5000 toilet with multiple buttons, heated seat, sprayers and driers, I recommend you find one ASAP. Incredibly entertaining. But don't worry, we didn't just eat. We walked ourselves silly getting to all of these restaurants. And we spent time lounging in Central Park, walking by the river in Battery Park, and visiting the World Trade Center site. It was fantastic. I'd go every year if I could.

The Chick Problem

Will is finishing a string of night shifts tonight, which means I watched a few movies during the past few days after putting Owen to bed. It just so happens that two of them were chick flicks. And after watching the second one tonight, I had the same fleeting thought that occured after the first one....something along the lines of, "I wish Will would do that." And immediately after the thought, I became aggitated with myself. Because I know that these movies are not REAL! And then I felt compelled to send out a message to all of the women who might be reading this: chick flicks are porn for women. I didn't invent this idea. One of my good friends and I have discussed this before. But it is so true. These movies do not present men in a realistic fashion. Yet we watch them and yearn to have the same things said to or happen to us. Don't get me wrong, my husband is a wonderful man. God has blessed me with an exceptional marriage. But Will does not write me love poems, light candles all around our house, confess his feelings for me to strangers in eloquent ways, and rush towards me across a room to kiss me with supreme gusto. I watch these films, and part of me becomes unsatisfied with the amazing relationship that I have with my husband. This is not Will's fault. However, I'm sure there have been times in my life when I've ended up going to him in tears to tell him that I need him to be more romantic, most likely because I recently received some false notion from Hollywood of what defines love.

I Corinthians 4-7: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Nowhere in there does it say anything about flowers, candles, gifts, grand romantic guestures, or waxing eloquent. My husband loves me in ways that I can't describe. And ways that the Lord already put on paper for me in the above verse. Yet I find myself yearning for what the world defines as love. Silly me.

Angry Baby

I thought the vomiting had ended. It had been about nine days since the last unfortunate episode. However, Wednesday morning I was brushing my teeth, and as I went to spit out my toothpaste, I got more than I was expecting. Owen was right outside the bathroom. He walked to the doorway and asked suspiciously, "What are you doing, Mommy?" I told him I was sick, and he declared, "I'm going to shut the door, so I won't be scared." When I came out out he asked if I was still sick. I explained that I was fine, but that sometimes when mommies have babies in their bellies, it makes them throw up. His next question was the kicker..."Is the baby still angry?" This led to discussion of the fact that the baby isn't angry with me, it's just the way God made pregnancy. Thus Owen's next associative declaration..."God is in my belly." I know this sounds strange, but lately he asked where Jesus lives and my answer was "our hearts." He knows that the baby is in Mommy's "belly." Bellies and hearts aren't very far apart, so you can see how this might confuse a two-year old. Big questions for such an early age. We'll be discussing politics next month.

Television

Owen loves watching television. As his mother, I'm doing my best to keep this under control. I'm one of those moms who is super grateful that he will indeed sit down and watch something when I'm desperate for half an hour to get something done, but try very hard to limit this obsession. So we have an arrangement...one tv show in the morning, one after nap (God bless the people who invented tivo). Which leads to my story. Saturday morning Owen awoke early, ate breakfast, and watched Thomas the Tank Engine. Will got up soon thereafter, so I took the opportunity to go upstairs and shower. As I was walking around upstairs, getting ready to go shopping, I heard Will and Owen discussing watching tv, so I called down to remind Owen that he had already watched his morning program. He then said, "Hey Daddy, how 'bout when Mommy goes shopping, we can watch a tivo show. That's a good idea." Hilarious. I don't think he was trying to be deceptive. It's not like he tried to whisper it. But he's learning to work the system. Of course, when I got home, he immediately said with a big smile, "Mommy, I watched Bob the Builder!"

Work on the House

We're having a little work done at our house. Nothing huge, just a couple of ceilings being replaced. Apparently the former homeowners thought that if you have a giant hole in your plaster ceiling, the best way to repair that is to throw quarter-inch plywood over the whole shebang and roll it down with some textured paint. Seriously. The comment from one of the workers was, "I've been doing this for a long time, and I've never seen anything like this." I'd love to have a chat with the do-it-yourselfers who used to live here. Find out if they were doing drugs at the time. But anyways...Owen loves having people working in the house. He would sit and watch them for hours if we let him (and probably run and get his "tools" to help). Today after we arrived home from the grocery store, I ran upstairs to put some clothes in the wash. I came back downstairs to discover that Owen had gone out on the deck where the guys were eating lunch. They had given him a cookie. He was happily showing them his Thomas book. He looked at me and said, "Mom, why don't you go back inside." This brought hardy laughter from the workers. One declared, "He wants to hang out with the guys, Mom." My son cracks me up.