Many Things (and Buttercream)

It's been many days, so we're taking this in bullet-like paragraphs:

Cora is 15 months old today. I will not rehash my love/hate relationship with the passage of time (short form: she appears to no longer be a baby and this makes me cry), but holy crap do I love this toddler-baby. She is EXUBERANTLY everything. Loud, fast, hungry, joyful, smiley, sleepy- she is all the things at 125% and I want to squeeze her 130% of the time.

(Note: Those are all happy faces. Exuberantly happy, even.)

Landon lost his 3rd tooth! The first one he pulled all by himself, this time while at school when we didn't even know it was that wiggly! I'm glad I didn't have to pay the $40 dental extraction charge and even more glad I didn't have anything to do with the pulling because wiggly teeth freak me out in a way that nothing else involving blood or the human body does.

He was very excited, and JP and I were very excited when we remembered to be the tooth fairy at 11:30 p.m. when we were climbing in bed. We were less excited when he attempted to burst into our locked room 20 minutes before he was supposed to be awake the next morning to let us know the tooth fairy left him a $2 bill.

Landon also typed his first report (about an animal, of course) on the computer at school this week, and then illustrated it for fun, because he's Landon and his love of illustration is topped only by his love of animals. "Mom, did you know all the letters are NOT in the right order on some computers?!"

He also wrote out his Valentines on Tuesday, the very night he brought home his class list. Without any involvement from me, he carefully wrote out each friend's name on a Valentine specially chosen for them (all wild animal themed, obvs), along with an individual note like "Dear Iris, you are a really fast runner!" or a carefully colored heart if he didn't know them well enough to comment on their running prowess (or reading, or whatever, I now regret that I didn't read them all because the ones I saw while chopping onions were adorable). Then a lollipop flavor was painstakenly selected (Mom, Iris does not like red flavor) and taped to the wild animal Valentine. He really is an extraordinarily sweet little boy.

(Who also runs really fast.)

Claire is going to play soccer this spring (blergh, after school activities) and picked out her pink soccer ball and hot pink soccer shoes and she is SO EXCITED to play soccer, though I think she has very little understanding of what that means. She does know that her soccer ball does NOT bounce very high and points this out to anyone who steps inside our house. Claire's team is called the Fighting Bees, which makes me inexplicably happy, and Cora has a coordinating soccer-themed headband to wear to games.

I have a new favorite wine: petite sirah. It is delicious and drinks like you can chew it. (Note: probably not how a sommelier would describe it.)

I read a lot of articles, but rarely link to them. Two of my faves from this week are:

(1) This article in Cosmo, which the Fug Girls pointed out to me, as I have not read Cosmo since college, is glorious: I Tried All the Sex in 50 Shades of Grey in 1 Weekend. It's funny and witty enough to make me think I should start reading Cosmo again.

... at this point, he's a shell of the man he once was. His hips are thrusting but there's no light behind his eyes. We give up two minutes in and high-five, pleased to have made it that far.

And (2) this one from National Geographic, via Longform.org: Why Do So Many Reasonable People Doubt Science. It's really good. As is science.

Maybe—except that evolution actually happened. Biology is incomprehensible without it. There aren’t really two sides to all these issues. Climate change is happening. Vaccines really do save lives. Being right does matter—and the science tribe has a long track record of getting things right in the end. Modern society is built on things it got right.

I'm also re-reading the In Death series which I find ridiculously enjoyable. It's like the Babysitter's Club for adults who like House: predictable story arc with slow character growth from book to book, but somehow thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end. A new one just came out on Tuesday and I'm waiting impatiently for my digital library to stock it.

I went to lunch with some coworkers today and ran into two people I know at the restaurant, and then JP walked in partway through our meal. I love living in my small town. It made me smile all afternoon for having seen him for the last 15 minutes of my lunch.

I am baking a dark chocolate cake for Valentine's Day. JP is supplying the champagne. I can't decide if I should frost my cake with classic white buttercream or try a new recipe for dark chocolate buttercream. This will be the most important decision of my Saturday.

It's 11:25 p.m. and JP and I are clearly failing at our nightly plan of "let's go to bed early tomorrow." So, until tomorrow, here's Cora dominating at the nightly wrestling match:

Girl plays to win.