“Honey, I don’t think it’s supposed to look like that.”
“Well, can you just . . . hold him . . . no, like, his head.  There.”
“Oops.  Sorry.”
“Uh, okay, I guess I can . . . fix the other . . .”
“Maybe you should do it with him sitting up instead of lying down.”
“Maybe you should try it for ten seconds and then tell me how I should do it.”
“Here, I’ve got him now.”
“Honey, he’s crying.  I don’t think you should hold his neck like that.”
“Well, he keeps moving!”
“Um . . . maybe Isaac can entertain him enough to keep him still.”
“Aaaaaaaaaamos!  Amos, look over here!  NO!  I mean, over here!”
“Okay, Isaac, you clap while I hold his ear.”
“Can you bend him down a lit– . . . never mind.”
“OH, NO, Amos, DON’T . . . okay, no, go ahead.  It’s okay.”
“Maybe we should finish it up when he falls asleep.”
“There’s just that ONE little lock I think I can get . . . if he would . . . well, that’s not . . . awful.”
“Mom, it really doesn’t look so good.”

“You should see how yours looked the first time I cut it.  You should be grateful for non-digital cameras.”
“That’s okay.  We’ll just tell people Theo did it.”

“No one would believe him if he denied it.”

I made marshmallows a little bit ago.

Did you know you can make them?  I mean, without a factory?

It’s a little messy and weird.

But the results sure are worth it.

Isaac and Theo both have many fine qualities.

But Amos sure seems like he’s trying to make both of them look bad.  All the time.

This morning, I was trying to teach him how to say please, either verbally or in sign language.  He really wasn’t getting it.  Fruit, bread, milk, cheese–nothing was tempting him to say “please.”

So I gave up and sat down to my breakfast of sauteed kale and eggs.

He started whining for my food.

I said, “No, Amos, you won’t like it.  It’s kale.”

Do you know what he did?  Do you know what that little stinker did?

He signed “please.”  Like he’d been doing it all his life.

So, of course, I gave him a piece of kale.  And he loved it.  And kept pestering me for more.  By signing “please.”

Little stinker. Don’t get taken in by the cute face.

This one had Stephen, Isaac, and me guffawing out loud.

(GOL isn’t an internet abbreviation.  But it should be.)

A nice piece by NPR (no, really!) on the recent election:

All Things Considered

I swear, I am not making this up.

This morning, Amos climbed up on the table again.

(I’m sure that part isn’t all that hard to believe.)

I got him down, and I scowled at him, and I said, only half joking, “Go to time out!”

He looked at me, looked toward the stairs, looked at me, and (I swear, I am not making this up) went to the bottom step and sat down.

He stayed relatively seated (still not making this up) for a full minute.  I called him over to me, and he came.

I asked him, only half joking, “Amos, why did I give you a time out?”

He put on an I’m Sorry face, looked sadly at the ground, and babbled something.

I said, “Okay, don’t climb on the table again.”

Amos, my one-year-old son, nodded at me and went off to play.

I swear, I am not making this up.

But I haven’t gotten to the funny part yet.

Theo watched all of this with intense interest.  When the whole of it had transpired, he turned to me, looked rather seriously in my eyes, and said, “Gosh.  He does that better than I do.”

You said it, kid.  Not me.

And in other fun news, Stephen and I have both accepted full-time teaching jobs at [a Happy Little] College in [our future town], Alabama.

We’re both grateful for the providential circumstances: two full-time jobs at the same place, a college that is strengthening its ties to the church to which it is affiliated, south of the Mason-Dixon line, terrific colleagues (from Duke, even!).

I’m grateful that I’ll have the first full-time, contract-enabled job of my entire life.  And before I’m forty!

None of us are looking forward to the move itself (except, perhaps, Theo, who sees almost everything in life as an adventure), but we’re all looking forward to this next stage of life.

I turned in my dissertation yesterday.

I’m not done yet–still have some citations to clean up and revisions to finish and the defense to go–but a huge, huge step in the right direction.

 What am I working on today?

Corrections.

How ’bout you?

Okay, here’s the thing.

I find the writing and the acting on Downton Abbey to be exceedingly poor.  (There are two, and only two exceptions: The Dowager Countess, who gets all the best lines and has pitch-perfect delivery, and Mrs. Hughes, who is an island of quiet sensibility in an ocean of telenovela.)

The best writing choices they make are the ones where crucial plot points and conversations happen off-screen, because they couldn’t possibly write them as well as crucial plot points and conversations need to be written.

Still, I am forced to admit: if I were an actor starring in the TV equivalent of the Harry Potter, I would not, I repeat, not ask them to write my character off.  For any reason.*

I mean, yes, okay, Mark Hamill and poor, poor Bob Denver.  But, still, even if it were my fate to become unemployable after being “that girl that was in Downton” for the rest of my life, I’d take it.  (Specifically, I would take the paycheck and become a real estate tycoon who dabbled in just enough philanthropy to pretend that I wasn’t a poor use of oxygen.)

I’m not surprised that sometimes people die in the Downtonverse.  (Is that a spoiler?) I’m kind of glad of it, actually.  But I can’t fathom asking to be killed off.

“Can’t you send us off to check out Lord Grantham’s holdings in India or something?  Just, you know–give me a year or two off.  And then you can bring me back in with a nice diversity-enhancing new valet or a new lady’s maid for the wife or something.”

* In case my friend Biped is reading: equivalent societal phenomenon, not equivalent literary and cinematic achievement.  Fair enough?