The sound of two hands clapping

This is nothing but an adorable baby post. But what an adorable baby he is! He just learned how to clap, and, as you can see, is absolutely bursting with pride.

Cave people

One of the most vivid memories I have of summertime as a child is how dark everything always was. I grew up in northern California--hardly a sunless place, which is precisely the point. My mom, always keen to conserve energy (and money) wherever possible, worked hard to beat the typically scorching California sun through a careful combination of air circulation, darkness, and occasional mania. The air conditioner, as a result, ran comparatively little, considering that midsummer temperatures often soared past 100.

The process went something like this: open windows and fans in the relative cool of the night brought interior temperatures down to a manageable comfort level. As soon as the sun dared show its ugly mug and start to heat up the house, we'd all be ordered to run around and close the windows and the curtains, and most of the day we would spend in the comfortable darkness of our downstairs family room. After reluctantly running the air conditioner for a few of the hottest afternoon hours, my mom would begin her vigil of periodically opening the front door to determine when the outside air was more pleasant than the inside air. Evidently, once this occurred there was literally no time to waste, which we gathered when my mom's frantic, "Open the house! OPEN THE HOUSE!!" would ring through the air. We kids knew better than to delay our response to the call, so we'd scurry through the house again, this time opening the windows to allow the evening breezes (and a blessed taste of late-day sunshine) inside.

We still tease my mom for her comfort-keeping, cost-cutting obsession with temperature, but I must confess that my apple hasn't fallen far at all from her tree. At present, we live in a city with very mild summers, meaning that relatively few people have air conditioning. Night air is typically quite cool, so this works out fairly well.

Except for when it doesn't.

We are currently in one of those "doesn't" times. The average high temperature in July here is a mere 83 degrees, which sounds so spectacular right now I can scarcely bring myself to think about it. We are currently ending our second week of highs in the mid-nineties, and the forecast shows much of the same for the week ahead, including two days where the forecast high is 98. Ninety-eight degrees and no air conditioning. Perish the thought.

But it's probably not the thought that will perish, but rather just me and my poor sweaty family. We are shoulder season kind of people, and strongly prefer to neither sweat nor shiver too much. There must be a lesson to be learned here (I'll let you know when I discover it). In the meantime, I'll just keep doing my best to make Jonathan and Clara's memories of their childhood summers as dark as my own (though I do try to let them out of the house occasionally, as did my own dear mother). And as soon as the temperature cools down, I'll definitely open the house.

Ten months

Jonathan marked the end of his tenth month on July 6th. For some reason I have not been able to reconcile how fast Jonathan's first year is passing with how slowly Clara's first year passed. Then it hit me: since Clara was a preemie, she and I basically did not leave the house for the first five months of her life. That can make anything drag on a bit.

Jonathan, on the other hand, has been dragged to every corner of hither and yon in the last ten months, which probably explains why he has had so many colds. The two weeks leading up to his ten-month birthday were marked by a general pallor and a whole lot of this:


Other than lots of juicy snot rockets, his tenth month was full of firsts. He learned to sit himself up, crawl, and pull to standing within the space of about three weeks. This has required adjustments for everyone, since before than he was basically just a stationary cupcake of love. Homeboy barely even rolled, even though I liked to pretend to think that he knew how.

Aside from his physical achievements, he also witnessed his first thunderstorm, crawled through is first play tunnel, got tied with yarn to a toy for the first time, and enjoyed his first Independence Day. It's been a big month.

Thirty

Happy Birthday to Jeremy! He's been waiting 30 years to turn 30, so this is a big day for all of us. That's a long time to wait.


Here's a list of thirty things I love about Jeremy, in no particular order:

1. He is a super hard worker.
2. He is pretty good looking.
3. He is curious and genuine--two of the qualities I most admire in people.
4. He loves his children and is an excellent father.
5. He loves me.
6. He wakes up early in the morning, and he's always awake when the kids wake up. He gets them ready for the morning and often doesn't wake me until 6:30! There are times in my life when that would not have felt like sleeping in. This is not one of those times.
7. He loves to set goals and have something to work toward.
8. His every move is guided by an underlying philosophy. Sometimes that's exhausting, but he is a deliberate fellow.
9. He is reflective.


10. He loves to see new places. Few things thrill him like the call of the open road--even with our kids in tow.
11. He has a keen sense of humor and keeps me laughing.
12. He tends to see the most positive options available.
13. He is a very appreciative eater. There are few pleasures in life equal to putting food in front of someone who will truly love it and be grateful for it.
14. He likes to run.
15. He is a diligent student of life and the gospel.
16. He has pure faith.
17. He is extremely good at ironing. Once we went to a little gathering in exquisitely pressed button-down shirts. One of the guys there said to his wife, "You should really learn to iron like Rachel does." Imagine how shocked he was to learn that all those sharp creases were a result of Jeremy's meticulous nature!
18. He thinks hard about everything.
19. He is really good at geography.
20. He mows the lawn, even though he doesn't like to.

21. He is tender-hearted.
22. He is sentimental, in the best sense: He keeps a small collection of rocks on his desk, and it wasn't until we'd been married for quite some time when I finally asked why all those rocks were on his desk. He picked them up one by one and said, "This is the rock I picked up when I prayed to know whether I should ask you to marry me. This is a rock I found on the beach on our honeymoon..." Each rock had a story, and for someone who doesn't feel the need to keep many things, those rocks say a lot about his character and what matters to him.
23. He is affectionate.
24. He loves music.
25. He gets excited about new opportunities.
26. He writes in his journal.
27. He does the laundry--at least our laundry. Apparently, tiny children's clothes aren't really his "thing."
28. He is a great partner.
29. He had the good sense to ask me to marry him.
30. He is my very best friend.


I love you, Jeremy. Happy Birthday!

Art Education

Earlier this week I realized that I have a significant gap in my cultural education: art. I appreciate art, I like art, but I don't feel like I really know much about it. Other than a surface knowledge of major styles and a slightly more in-depth knowledge of modernism, I am a hopeless case.

Once I realized my deficiency, I of course headed straight to the library, where I got this book for myself:


and this book for Clara:


I have yet to read my book, but Jeremy has read Clara's to her several times. Of course, the best part was before the second reading, when Clara said, "Dad, I need to go outside and paint on the ground. Like Jackson Pollock."

Yes, Clara has a deep and abiding ardor for the art of Jackson Pollock. If pressed, she can also point out the Mona Lisa, Picasso, and Van Gogh, and she likes Monet's water lilies. But it's Pollock she likes the most. Perhaps it's his methods:


Any other art or art history aficionados out there? I'd love a good book recommendation--for me. I don't want Clara getting any more ideas just yet.