Dad vs Lily

Where are you from?

Fair play

So a certain 5-year-old child we shall not name often gives my niece and nephew a hard time, and my sister has a hard time with this child's mom. The child constatly yanks things out of Jake and Marisa's hands and the mother always replies with, "Let's just let her have it. That's one of her/his favorite toys," instead of doing some gosh darn parenting. When Jake or Marisa ask to play with certain toys, this child generally says no, and the mother doesn't encourage sharing (Some times sharing is a crock and kids should be allowed to say no, but this a pretty extreme case). My sister tries to let the kids battle it out themselves and not to say too much (unless things get physical), espcially because if she says anything, the other mom gets upset that someone has criticized the child.

So after an afternoon of having things taken from their hands and being told they couldn't play with anything, when the kids got in the car and my sister asked if they had fun, they immediately complained about this kid. My nephew Jake told his sister, "You know what we should do, Marisa?! When - comes to our house next time, we should put an electric fence around our toys and each time - goes to grab a toy s/he'll get zapped, and then s/he'll learn not to play with OUR toys!"

What a Jake.

Leslie Feist

For those of you who haven't heard, she's delicious:

Mushaboom music video
May 3, 2007 on NPR
July 25, 2005 on NPR
Wikipedia article

PS - I know I'm years behind.

Lily's first birthday!

It's a bit long at over 5 mins, and I know no one actually cares as much as we do, but here it is, enjoy.

Battles and Breakthroughs

Battle
Angela vs. Webshots
I'm currently trying to post all our good pictures online in big albums so we have a system we can just keep adding to. I've opted for Webshots again because there's better organizatonal tools than Facebook, and it has a function where you can share your Webshots photos on Facebook. BUT now Webshots has decided that about 1 out of every 3 of my photos is "in the wrong format" and I for the life of me, despite hours (Oli can attest) of comparing file types and sizes and orginals to renamed version, cannot figure out why. I am going to email Webshots.

Breakthrough
Esther Greenwood = Holden Caulfield = Huck Finn
I re-read the Bell Jar last week and LOVED it. It had depressed me beyond belief when I read it sophomore or junior year of college, probably because I held so many of the same fears as Esther Greenwood. Now that I realize choosing one life path doesn't necessarily exclude all others, I was able to appreciate how well the book is written and the narrator's voice crafted. I even got dorky and wrote out a character sketch of things Esther would and wouldn't do because I wanted to see how well I understood her just from reading her story. Answer: pretty well. Well done to Sylvia Plath; it's just a shame she can't be here to revel in her genius....

Thinking about Esther got me thinking about Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn and I am convinced they are very similar:
1. Their personal opinions don't jive with those of the society around them
2. They all act out and go on personal adventures in relation to their rebellion
3. They all think humorous self-depricating thoughts constantly in relation to 1 and 2 to make things not seem so bad

In any case, I'm half way done re-reading Catcher and will move on to Huck next week. My train rides to and from work are pretty fun lately.

Why did you need to know all that? Just because, I suppose.

She's back, for a limited time only.