Seven Quick Takes

I
Two-isms:

"No, no! Don't say 'hmm hmm hmm!' Say real words!" (Singing to him at bedtime)

"But, how am I going to wash this beautiful red strawberry when you're sitting on the step stool, Mama?" (The tenth strawberry he'd liberated from the fridge in a half hour)

II
A little while back, our pastor started having us sing the Agnus Dei in Latin instead of English. I love it! And he has done a great job of explaining the importance of including Latin because of its universality to the Church; even while the majority of the Mass is in the vernacular, we still do have a common language shared by the entire Church around the world. Using a bit of that common language is a reminder of our communion with the rest of the Church. And the Kyrie (Greek) and Agnus Dei (Latin) are the only diversions we make from the vernacular, so it's nothing super complicated. Case in point: 2-year-old Little Bear (who obviously can't read words or music) picked it up all on his own just from hearing it at Mass; I didn't even know that he knew it until yesterday, when I'd been singing other things from a chant book he'd brought me, and he took the book and flipped until he saw something starting with an A and started singing the Agnus Dei all by himself!

III
I don't think there's anything quite like the realization that you've been counting wrong and the baby could safely arrive in two weeks. Little Bear was 38 weeks 2 days, and I'd been counting to 38 again as the early end of when this baby could arrive, but yesterday my midwife said that it would be fine, and not too terribly unlikely given this pregnancy and my history, if baby Kit arrived at 37-something. Oh. Um, okay, that's exciting... There are baby clothes in a box somewhere, and we really should get our act together on picking out and ordering a car seat...

IV
It is ridiculously hot here. Hot for here, that is; I suppose I have to qualify that. I'm not sure how hot it got today, but it's still slightly above 70 degrees outside now, at 11 pm, which means that despite me not turning on the oven or stove all day, it's 80 degrees inside. Which makes it kiiiiind of impossible for the very pregnant lady to sleep. Houses don't have AC here, because why would Alaska need AC? It took two hours to get Little Bear to sleep tonight because he was uncomfortably warm, and unfortunately we can't figure out a way to cool his room: putting a fan in the room is too loud (we can't hear him over the monitor, only a loud static-like sound from the fan), and if we open his window the shade will bang against the sill from even the slightest breeze outside (we learned this last summer). We have a fan in the hall pointing at his door, and once he's asleep and we're headed to bed we can open his door and let the fan blow in, but before that it lets in too much light. And it's only supposed to get hotter for the foreseeable future. Anyone have a recommendation of a really, really quiet fan?

V
I have been meaning to write about our Mothers Day afternoon, but holding off until I could get photos from my mom's camera, which still hasn't happened. Maybe I'll get some of them soon, but in case I don't, here's the elevator-speech version: We spent the afternoon on a gravel bar in the middle of nowhere, shooting guns and roasting hot dogs.

I was laughing earlier about the fact that Matt was clearly meant to marry an Alaskan, because I don't think that would fly as an appropriate Mothers Day celebration in many other places! We had a great time, though; we drove about an hour and a half north of town with my family, found a pull-off on a small river, hiked through the woods to a gravel bar around the bend (very slowly, in my case), and set up folding chairs and enjoyed the sunny afternoon. Matt and my dad sighted in some guns down at one end of the gravel bar, and the kids threw rocks and sticks into the river at the other end. The highlight of the afternoon was probably the annual boat race, in which Dad's entry was a still-smoking log from the fire and Matt's was basically half of a tree that'd been pounded smooth from being washed downriver; the dog grabbed Matt's "boat" right after they all threw them into the river, and he got her to chase him down the length of the gravel bar, still pulling the boat, and almost made it to the finish line before the boats that were traveling by water.

VI
After letting my body get used to taking in eight to ten 16 oz glasses of water a day, it's incredible how badly I react when I don't make it up to my target eight glasses. Today was crazy, in town from 9 am to 4 pm then back in to pick Matt up at 5, and I'm only now finishing my eighth glass; two hours ago, at five glasses, I was having so much pain... and now it's almost completely gone. My ankles are still letting me know what they think of today, but they'll get over it. Actually, now that I think about it, they're probably mostly complaining about the heat; I think I did more sitting/laying down today than I would have if we'd stayed at home: chiropractor, reading stories at the library for an hour and a half, Mass, a picnic where I sat down the entire time (much of it with my feet up) and let Little Bear run around with my siblings and their friends... The few stores I had to stop at took up only a tiny percentage of the day.

VII
With summer moving in, weekends, especially Saturdays, are getting so full of things we could be doing! Last week, we took Little Bear and my youngest sister to the Alaska Railroad's open house at the train depot: we explored the cars of a real train including the engine, the kids got balloons, and we watched their elaborate model train display of many of the towns and cities the railroad runs through. They were offering free 20-minute rides on the train as well, but the line was definitely too long! The kids had fun anyway.

This Saturday, there's more than we could possibly do even if Matt didn't still have seasonal allergies and I wasn't 35 weeks pregnant: Aviation Day at the airport, the (huge) post-wide garage sale, Kids' Day at the Dept of Fish and Game (trout fishing, archery, animal identification and lots more), the annual Really Free Market on campus (anyone can drop off anything they want to get rid of at 8 am, volunteers sort of organize stuff, and then they open the gates at 10 am and anyone can take anything they want), the Farmer's Market will be open... And I don't know that we'll make it to any of that, sadly, thanks to our mutual not-up-for-walking-around-ness. I think we're going to try to at least stop at a garage sale or two, the thrift store, and maybe a greenhouse for soil.

Have a good weekend! Do you have anything exciting planned? Don't forget to swing by This Ain't the Lyceum for more quick takes.