Diabetes article

I've gotten lots of good info from The New York Times on diabetes. This article wasn't exactly a pick-me-up, but it made me want to be even more vigilant with Graham's care. We are going to start something called Multiple Daily Injections later this summer, and I need to get all the formulas sorted out in my mind. It would probably be a cinch for many of you, but mathematics in my head ... well, not my strength.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/health/01well.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

**I'm sorry. I tried every which way to get the link to work, but it will not cooperate. I'll try again, but here's the URL if you want to clumsily paste it in yourself.

Bedtime talkies

Graham and Annie share a room and a bunk bed. Often, I lay down next to Annie on the bottom bunk and help coax the children to sleep. These moments - after prayers, teeth brushing, snacks, but before actual slumber - yield some pretty fun conversations. When the kids are tired, the conversations tend to go negative ("I never want to go to school again", "Fine, I'll never have any friends for the rest of my life"), but when they're sleepy but happy, I chuckle in the bed.

Tonight's convo yielded two funny moments for me.

This afternoon, Graham and Annie got to play with Gwendolyn, Linus & Baby Casper. Graham was SO excited that Linus had an Arizona T-shirt with a scorpion on it. Not only a scorpion, actually: "A scorpion, Mom, and a tarantula and a horned toad."

For those of you who know Graham, you know that he has several intense interests at any given time. He wants to talk about those interests A LOT. He wants to learn about them. He wants to talk about them again, often saying the same thing. So right now, one of those interests is bugs (insects, arachnids, arthropods, crustaceans - see my earlier post). {FYI: his other interests, as of Right Now, are baseball and chess.}

So tonight (at 9:30 p.m.) he was in his Super Graham mode, talking faster than his tongue can move, raving to me from his top bunk about the t-shirt. (You'll just have to imagine Graham's vocal inflections.)

"Mom, I loved Linus' shirt. It had a scorpion, a tarantula and a horned toad. I mean, I know that the horned toad isn't a bug or an insect, and I'm into bugs. But I'm also into any of these crazy, cool, out-of-their-mind desert creatures."

I'm not kidding nor exaggerating. Those were his words. I almost got up right then to write them down. Because I'm also into crazy, cool, out-of-their-mind creatures, including my own son.

Somehow, the conversation then veered to hot dogs. Hot dogs, hot dogs. Even before I was a vegetarian, I didn't like hot dogs.

"I don't know why they call them hot dogs," wondered Graham. "They aren't made of dog."

"They really should called them killed pig," chirped Annie sweetly from her flowery pillow.

Nighty night, everyone.

Our photag

Annie really loves to take pictures. She tries to get her hands on our digital camera every chance she gets & I often find interesting shots that I didn't take when uploading to iPhoto.

This photo of Graham probably isn't the best indicator of her talent (ha ha).

Now I've taken to encouraging her interest, and I mentioned to her that she could be a professional photographer when she grows up. "Mom, there's just one problem," she said. "I don't already have my ears pierced."

Hmmm. I didn't see the career connection there, but all in good time. (Right along with wearing make-up in public!)

Our neighbor Lucy came over, and the two girls had fun taking pictures of each other.

Lucy did a nice job capturing Annie in the backyard.

Summer scenes

Graham, airborne


Annie, soaked


Kyle, rhythmic

Judith Warner on Hillary Clinton ... and us

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/of-mice-and-women/

I have to admit: Sometimes Judith Warner's NYT blog "Domestic Disturbances" really irks me. There is something self-righteous in her tone that rubs me the wrong way at least every other week.
And I didn't think I was interested in reading anything more on Hillary Clinton.

But after spending a week with just women/girls at our church Girl's Camp, I had some new thoughts about female interaction. I thought Warner's piece was well done.

Funny kidlets

This is what Annie told me as I was putting her to bed last night.

Annie: "I want to see you in my bed when I wake up in the night. I want to see you there, Mom. Do you understand?"

She is a sweet snuggly-bug. When I was at Girl's Camp, I had a hard time falling asleep, especially that first night, because I missed the weight of Annie's head on my shoulder. We call her a tree monkey because she clings to the torso of the person next to her, especially when asleep.

Last week, when Billy & Katharina spent the night, Annie & Katharina shared the pull-out couch. When I walked by them, an hour or so after they fell asleep, I could see that Annie had her arms wrapped around Katharina's knee.

As for my son, well, I have to chuckle at what he must think the internet is ... a magical place where ALL information happily waits to be summoned. While preparing a bug report for his Boys' Book Club, we googled for some pictures and facts on the creature of his choice. When our first search didn't turn up much on African fat-tailed scorpions, Graham clarified the search terms.

Graham: "We need to type, 'Why aren't vigaroons a true scorpion?', Mom. Just look it up on the computer. Just type 'Why aren't vigaroons,' no, wait, 'Why aren't giant vigaroons a true scorpion?' and also type 'All arachnids, arthropods, insects and crustaceans'."

Me: We're not going to get anything from that.

Graham: "Just type 'All social insects of every kind.' I want to see them."

Good news on TV

Kyle was watching a sporting event ... something on NBC or a sister network, I guess, and I happened to notice the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen. Usually, that scrolling text comes off as inane to me, a total waste of scrolling space. It always reads like, "Breaking news. Britney Spears throws Doritos at L.A. paparazzi after an US Weekly launch party dust-up outside Kitson. Stay tuned for comment from Spears' attorney."

+

Not this time.

Instead, the following message scrolled forth: "It's official. Steve Carell has signed on to do at least three more seasons of 'The Office'."


Now who's throwing Doritos in the air?

Or Munchos, come to think of it.