belly your neighbor

Helena is obsessed with belly buttons. Hers, yours, her brother's, it doesn't matter. If it's a navel, she'll play with it. First she finds it, lifting your shirt up a little bit. Then she plays with it with her index finger, smiling and laughing the whole time. Sometimes she'll blow raspberries on you, other times she'll hug your belly like it was a dear friend.

It's great to watch them grow in intelligence from day to day. Each day it seems like they are more interact-able. We play fun games, read stories, and eat good food together.

Life is good.

Up to my throne

We have an armchair that James has taken to climbing into and sitting, but only when the seat cushion is removed. He never liked sitting in it until he stained the seat cushion, and we took the cover off in order to wash it. While the cushion was gone, James found that the new, lower seat height was just right for climbing into and proudly sitting in the cushionless chair.

When the cushion got put back, he found the chair too high to climb into, and now whenever he wants to sit in the chair he labors to remove the cushion as big as he is so he can climb into the chair and once again sit proudly.

He watches from his mountain walls

Every so often I am privileged enough to witness the sunrise over the Sangre de Christo mountains. Before the time change and our move, Logan saw them often, but I am only up once a week or so.

This morning it was glorious. A front came through last night, and there was a curtain of gray across the Eastern sky. The peaks of the mountains disappeared into the clouds, but there were places the Sun could peek through, deep orange and red overflowing its gray walls and pouring out to meet me. I drove the longer way to work with the better views so I could take it all in.

veggies!

Well, very exciting news-- we finally got hooked up with a vegetable coop that delivers fresh local produce to us every monday. The produce has been really great so far, we've had two deliveries. Really fresh, and its fun because its a surprise what you get every week. They only collect from local farms so all the food has to be seasonal so you don't get any tomatoes around now, but you do get bok choi. We're lucky here in New Mexico though because there is a really diverse growing season-- in the south it stays warm pretty much throughout the winter. I'm excited to get on the eating seasonally/locally bandwagon. The more I read about it the more important it seems to take these small steps in the local foods direction. And its far more important than just eating organic food. When I signed up for the coop they had a little questionnaire that polled: "Would you rather purchase organic apples flown in from California, or local apples from a small farm in Albuquerque? " I thought that was an interesting question to pose to people who wanted to join their coop.

Wacky weather

Man we're having a crazy storm today. It's freezing cold and alternating dark, windy, and snowing, with bursts of cheery sunshine. We've seen rain, snow, and sleet today. Not much is sticking though. Anyways, a good day to stay warm indoors and make some yummy soup.

Chutes and Ladders

Los Alamos just built a new skate park in front of the public library. There was some controversy over the location, with many vocal opponents at city council meetings. I don't see how it's a bad thing, the Library is close to downtown and across the street from a park. The skaters hardly interrupt anybody.

In any case, we went to play on the adjacent playground, and watched the skaters. For Helena and James, it was the first time we had been to a playground that they could truly appreciate. Helena proved herself to be the more daring, practically diving down the slide. James warmed up to it eventually, but Helenas thoroughly enjoyed herself.

It was a good day.

rare little rose, piece of inmost horticultural art

Last night was Halloween. Los Alamos has a "Trick or Treat on mainstreet," where every kid in town goes trick or treating around the several businesses downtown. It's quite the event, nobody goes around the neighborhood until that event ends around 7. We only had 4 or 5 groups of kids come to our door between 7 and 9. Logan and I speculate that many people don't give out candy because they figure the kids get enough from mainstreet. Also, we didn't see any teenagers or middle schoolers, which was strange, because I know for a fact that there are several that live on our street. My guess is they focus on certain neighborhoods, especially the more well-to-do areas. There is a house in one neighborhood that gives out Godiva chocolate. According to the teens I work with, people come up from towns 30 and 40 minutes away in order to hit up that houses and others like it.

We also had our friend Jeff over. The idea was we could play games and give out candy together, although the dearth of costumed visitors meant we pigged out on the smarties and snickers ourselves. It was good to chat and play games and drink Sangria.