i shake you warmly by the hand

willy wonka!
willy wonka!
the amazing chocolatier!



if you've not seen it buy something scrumdiddlyumptious and go. do it tonight. we've taken a family-wide trip to the garden theater (read: sticky local theater with night-lights that are too bright and regular, non-surrounding sound) twice. jude fell asleep within minutes due to overstimulation and the convenient portability and coziness of mama milk. henry sat in his seat sipping his own coke, laughing at the appropriate times, whispering, "she was unkind!" at the appropriate times, singing at the appropriate times.

wonderful. and chocolatey. as one who loves gene wilder in the original movie, i could not help but fear feeling otherwise as johnny depp (ooh la la) donned the velvety jacket and welcomed us to his factory. but the two movies are completely different and really can hardly be compared to one another.

the mother in this movie wears the most fabulous shag-ragged clothes. i love her. the mother in the old one was sweaty and shiny and wore that ugly, blond pony-tail wig.

the new charlie is cute and sweet while the old one was crusty and just really quite yucky. i was happy to like the winner of the lifetime chocolate supply.

my lone criticism regarding this new wonka bar is the choice of musical accompaniment to roald dahl's fantastically witty lyrics. half of the time i could not make out the words being sung. henry is running around singing, "augustus gloop" but i think that's all that we were able to hear through the accompaniment. perhaps it was the theater in which we heard the movie? ::shrugging:: and perhaps it is just because i believe that i'm going deaf! what?

how used they keep themselves contented before this monster was invented?
have you forgotten, don't you know? we'll say it very loud and slow:
they used to read!

full of strange oaths

we lost the battle with the sweat and swelter. we gave in to temptation and flipped the air conditioner to her onward position. trivoli's bank boasted the temperature to be 107 degrees the day before yesterday. it was time. we were hot and crabby. amazingly, the world is a few shades rosier when it's not so darned hot in the house. we woke early (of course) friday morning feeling cold (not cool), cold and shivery. i was giddy and laughing and leapt to the closet for a wooly sweater. it was a good dawn of the new decade, friday being my birthday and the day on which i left my roaring twenties behind me.

GOSH. this girl is thirty. i don't feel any differently than i did on thursday night. i have a new hair color due to the unfortunate distraction of the internet as i sat conducting important research with my hair soaking in the colors, forgetting to watch for the twenty-five minute mark. i have new books, i have cool new stuff from a chicago-land shopping trip taken saturday. i have a new appreciation for the handiwork of the Creator after a fascinating trip to body worlds on saturday morning. and yet i feel no older than i am. my real age, according to the calculator, is 24, but that is because do not smoke and do not sit on my duff eating cupcakes all day long. perhaps when my "real age" turns thirty i'll feel it?

birthday skirted feet.

birthday meat.

celabrators.

locale.


"the time of life is short!" hotspur

mortal once more

so all of last week was spent anticipating the saturday release of harry potter and the half-blood prince. i was extremely excited to pick up my hefty copy (though not as hefty as the order of the phoenix . . .) of the thing. the weekend was spent devouring the delicious-smelling, perfect-paper-feeling book. were it not for the frequent interruptions (children!) the thing would have been read in less than a day. as it was it took me two days and, as with all of the others, i was a little sad that i just had to read the thing so fast, that i was finished too soon, and that it will be at least another two years until the next one is out. perhaps this week will bring a re-read of the series?

for the harry potter nay-sayers among us, here's an interesting interview with john granger about the possible christian allegorical elements throughout the harry potter series. i'm eager to read the book that granger wrote on the subject. (thanks, kristen!) perhaps with birthday moo-la-lah coming this weekend?

birthday! oh my gosh, i can't write about this, i just can't, not yet. age! slamming at me from all sides. celebrate life, yes. but even at the minute of the commencement of life we're just that much closer to the end of life. aargh!

these boys grow too fast! one moment they're babies with baby breath and scent and quickly they're here moving in a blurry swirl. give me a minute to suspend it all.

beneath the stains of time the feelings disappear

it's ezzo week at tulip girl. so, as much as i hate to, here's my two hundred dollars worth.

certainly, from the beginning, all parents are, at the very least, a little bit selfish. the human desire to have children, bringing to a man and a woman a certain immortality with the birth of "a tender heir." possibly, these are the first selfish glimmerings in the hearts of ecstatic parents welcoming new, colorful, life into their own graying lives.

after this, parental selfishness manifests itself as, perhaps, the need for love and the need to be needed by someone other than ourselves. i remember worrying that henry wouldn't love me when he was born, mostly that he would be indifferent. hormonal worries, no doubt, emotions that sometimes manifested themselves as worry, others as the necessity for hot french fries. so completely ridiculous were these apprehensions! to this day i am the favorite person on henry's planet, and jude's to boot, a title that is often worn wearily but one that i would not relinquish without a really good fight.

and after these -- the need for legacy, the need for love and appreciation -- these make way for something darker, something precarious and sometimes scary. the need for control. certainly history screams of nefarious examples of selfish parents seeking their own advancement through the production of Offspring. and who will soon forget the angry king lear as his favorite daughter fails to flatter his need for Love? "better thou, hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better," the rash man had the gall to say! terrible as such things can be, i think that truly, i am the most fearful of being obsessed with the need to perfectly control my children.

i do want them to respect me as mama. i want them to know that ernie and i are the leaders, that we will lead the team in the best direction it should take. we are in charge and they must know that we mean what we say. if our household is in chaos then something must be done, the leaders must have things under control. but i refuse to succumb to the selfishness of being a controlling parent.



i'm not talking about doing things "decently and in order," of course. when i say "controlling" i really mean "manipulative." i'm talking about those parenting "experts" (and others) who promote the needs and wants of the parent over the needs and wants of the child.

one such sorry example of an "expert" is the horrible, nay, the odious gary ezzo. the man has as much business claiming that his dangerously strict baby feeding schedules, his weird and distorted views of sex, and his punitive, developmentally inappropriate, and borderline abusive discipline methods are "God's Way" to parent as thomas kinkade has rights to laud himself as the "painter of light."

the darkest aspect of the teachings of ezzo and the like is not in the abandonment of babies and small children to cry themselves to sleep, not in the slapping of infants and toddlers for acting on God-given curiosity, heinous as i believe those abuses of power to be. these are only glimmers of the scariest thing of all, the obsession with having control. the need to look the part of the perfect Christian parent, to never be embarrassed by a disruptive toddler, a goofy looking teenager. the need to have every moment a picture of perfection, with children who do not express any emotion other than smiling compliance at every command, the family climate set at a breezy sixty eight degrees year 'round.

establishing this kind of perfection can only be done through instilling a strong fear of the parents in the hearts of the children. "if they fear you, you will have control."

perhaps gary ezzo, michael and debi pearl, richard fugate, and [insert your favorite manipulative and ridiculous parenting guru here] the rest of them promote the "poisonous pedagogy," the manipulation of children through fear and brute force while rationalizing that it is for the child's "own good," hitler-style, but certainly Christ does not.

does Christ demand perfection of me? no! my only perfection comes from Christ alone, not from orchestrating a perfectly regimented lifestyle. why would i expect more of my child than Christ expects from me?

does Christ taunt me with sin and then slap me down and manipulate me and punish me every time i disobey? no! he covers me with grace and mercy for every minute of my life. when the King has forgiven my debt of "twenty years' wages", why would i in turn expect my child to pay to me the debt of "one day's wage?" (matthew 18:21-35)

does God answer me when i cry out to him, my father? yes! there is comfort and healing found in Christ. why would i then not answer the cries of my infant?

why would i not do everything i could to parent my child in the way God parents me?

so, there. my slightly unsolicited tribute to tulip girl's ezzo week. unselfishly do your research, you owe it to your children. you can start here, but be sure to check out tulip girl's terrific mountain of ezzo research.

admit you're a lucky dog.

our days are flying by summer-style. the boys grow along with the garden, the sun comes up too fast and does not go down soon enough. summer is half-way over and i've yet to have a sweet-corn dinner or take my crunchy saturday morning self to the farmer's market.

henry paints while jude snores upstairs.



i'm told this is a trombone, this spattering of paint.



and these are fireworks. i think they really are.



my neighbor packs her truck with plants and weeding equipment as she readies herself for work in some lucky dog's yard. her short hair pokes out and about from the far side of the truck and i know it's her and that she's already working hard, early as it seems.

explosions of sorts. we worked-fire, fireworked twice in honor of the holiday. the first time we sat on blankets in the dirt in front of a tree (read: "a beautiful tree when there are no glittering stars to see behind her.") near the water.

henry bounced bubbly on the trampoline, his hair still flying when his feet were stopped. the ground show, water show at the works were fabulous, great balls of fire ("goodness gracious," the song screamed from the enourmous speaker standing behind us), sprays of pyrotechnics the likes of which henry and the other children had never seen.

it was hot and everyone looked it, most notably the shaven head of seth, the sticking golden hairs of jude and the seriously dripping brow of the unknown woman sporting too-tight blue-jean (light, stonewashed -- chic?) cutt-offs, sitting in the lawnchair a group or two over, drinking something iffy, telling her curious and excited little kid to, "sit down and shut up."

conversation-wise the evening was limited to, "it's almost time for the fireworks!" (repeated over and over and over and over) and "i can't hear you over the blasted music!" and "have you seen my other book?" noisy. and dangerous -- not a place you can just sit back and "keep and eye" on your children while chit-chatting. water, thousands of people, busy road. but it was worth the long walk in precarious shoes (why are you wearing such shoes, mama?) and the many trips to the trampoline. and the dust and noise. fantastic. "go green!" shouts henry before he runs off in the darkness and is nearly lost by his frantic parents.

the second round were small-town, run by the "jaycees." we park by the high school and sit on the lawn. every year we get there about ten minutes before blast-off and always get a prime park and a terrific spot to park it -- clear sky and open space for grass glitter dancing. not too long, not too short, not too sporadic. we return home to find neighbors blasting their own cheap variety late into the night. we wake up in the morning to find shrapnel and rocket nose-cones all over our yard. we shake our fists launcher-yard-ward. we continue to find pieces as the week goes on.

two minor annoyances: we were tee-peed last night, white streamers breezing in our fantastic tree. punks! ernie lost sleep and wished he'd been down there to beat the kids with a deadly african (?) weapon. i heard the kids cheering as they ran to their car. we're old now! we called the police!

and secondly, we've a creepy cat that comes and sleeps in our garden! get out, cat! it looks sick or something. please don't crucify me, but i let henry squirt it with the hose when we were watering the drought and came across the creepy thing. "scat, cat!" he echoed as the thing ran away.



i've lost count. does anyone even care?

these trees shall be my books

the button mother-load. for a little bit of money i was able to bring them home. fabulous. many black and white variations on the button. i'm ever-so-excited. something must be done. something with buttons. i'm inspired to string and stitch.





places selling plants are practically giving them away -- go out and be given (in exchange for a few pennies, i'm serious, not much at all). a few more things added to this year's project. my ten year plan (!) is to become a master gardener and be a stop on the garden walk. my neighbor has the most glorious shady yard with mysterious minatiature gardens here and there. a woman around the corner has a huge garden that honestly looks like it crept from the pages of a magazine and took up residence on the two hundred block of elm street. last weekend ernie, my mother and i took the garden walk maps and walked around them. more inspiration. my neighbor's yard is liveable, especially for children, with sturdy plants that won't fall over in a wilted heap if they're stepped on by bare little feet. i didn't know this was possible, imagining glory gardens to be like the one around the corner, fancy and fragile, beautiful yet stressful if little ones are around, asking for punitive shrieking at the slightest ramble off of the path. and yet it is possible to have children and plants in the same place, stray balls and water guns notwithstanding. and so we begin . . .

we've the good fortune of inheriting bricks that were taken from the road in front of my parents' house before it was covered smooth in black. there are more that need wheel-barrowing down the street, but look at what we (read: henry and mama) tested last night before dark! with the rest of the bricks, some sand, hard work, more plants, time and water and we're there!



"he hath a daily beauty in his life."

hey, i've got nothing to do today but smile

ernie and i finished (finished because we'd tried several times only to be overcome with sleep) watching "chuck close: a portrait in progress." fabulous. we are both completely inspired. ernie had watched the thing before but inspiration comes in waves and we've been drowned in said waves.

if you live nearby one of these exhibits (touring) go and see. astonishingly perfect, the little parts masterpieces themselves, coming together to make something rather unbelievable. go. do it.

the weekend comes, july comes, and a cool morning breeze has found her way here again. everyone is decidedly happy now that the heat has dissipated. next week brings posts on "fireworks and other explosions." the weekend brings paint and the installation of locks (for safety primarily, for sanity secondarily). july brings a foreboding birthday. it brings a trip to see "body worlds" in chicago. it brings family from afar. i wish it would bring the chuck close exhibit to peoria, or chicago at the very least. and of course, it brings limeade in a sweating green pitcher.



happy booming holiday, friends and fans!