Playing in the fountain

This is how much crab Liam smashed and ate

Playdough sculpture at Artomatic

Dinner at Shagga Ethiopian Cafe

At Abigail's watching Finding Nemo

Nouvelle Vague at the French embassy

For most of the show, we sat outside and looked in the window, enjoying the summer breeze, sipping crappy wine, and congratulating ourselves for our ingenuity.

Golden Girls forever!!

This was graffiti in the ladies' room at my favorite bar in Silver Spring, Quarry House. I miss Bea Arthur, too.

The lion vomited lettuce on me and cleansed my chi

This weekend Tara took me to a fabulous party. Every year the hosts focus on a different country and go all-out with the theme. This year it was China, so there was tons of Chinese beer and food, and even a dance troupe.

As I was getting ready to leave for the party, Liam looked at me suspiciously and said, "Why you look so pretty?" I think he didn't realize that I was going out, but it still made me think maybe I need to put a little more effort in my usual Saturday look. I didn't think this was so much different, besides the lack of t-shirt and jeans:



The best part of the party was the lion dancers. Some guests were given lettuce to feed the lion, who would accept it along with your chi, chew it up, and spit it back onto you, giving you your chi back cleansed. Who could pass that up?

Here Tara's chi is being masticated:



And then, Floo!, spit back onto her. Testament to Tara's undeniable coolness, she picked a piece up and immediately ate it.



I think my chi might have been a little darker than I realized. The lion fell asleep from the exertion of cleaning it.



So it was time for the dancers to threaten it with swords.









Revived! As is my energy, I hope.

I get nervous when it's too quiet

As some of you know, we've had the worst time getting Liam to sleep on his own. Those sleepless days were dark, I have to admit. Most of the issues have been resolved, but for the last year or so, one of us has had to stay with him until he fell asleep. Recently, he's been okay with us leaving him to play quietly in his bed by himself until he drifts off. This affords his parents some down-time before we ourselves collapse, so we're grateful.

However, it's a system that is not without its kinks. The other night while Todd was studying for a final and I was taking care of both kids solo, I got a little careless and inadvertently left Liam alone with pens. About an hour past his bedtime, he called me up to show me this:



The worst part was that he tried to hide the evidence by using soggy toilet paper to clean up the ink on his sheets. Still, what a cutie! Thea loved coloring on her hands and arms, too, when she was about that age.

Liam loves paneer, Thea likes the rice