If You Pray...

...please remember Jennifer and Jody today (and until this is settled). Their case is on-hold until their file is found in Ethiopia. They are the final stages of the adoption of their son and somehow the file with all the original paperwork got lost. Please pray that this lost file will be found and that their son can come home with them soon.

Cornmeal Crepes and Hipster Art

A week late, we finally got to celebrate our anniversary. We got Abe settled in all snug and cozy with Ted's nephew D and his wife S, along with cousins L and E and the delightful friend L as an added bonus. We then settled ourselves in snug and cozy at the restaurant Lovely Hula Hands, which I'd heard fantastic things about.

We had drinks (mine a "chambord kamikaze"--too sweet, not recommended) and foccaccia bread with olive oil and olives as an appetizer. It looked like this:
Pretty tasty, though Ted didn't care for the salt on top.

Ted ordered a chicken dish that he liked but that I thought was weird tasting (how's that for a sophisticated review?). I had the cornmeal crepes, which were really tasty. Notice the butter on the bottom of the plate these are nestled in all snug and cozy? Mmmm...butter.
About halfway through our meal, a loud-talker arrived, sitting right next to us. Across from them was a pair of Germans whom Ted had been eavesdropping on here and there, commenting on how they were speaking "high German," very articulate. The Germans were two tables away and talked in at a normal level, so Ted had to really strain to hear them. The loud-talker ruined Ted's listening practice.

He and the woman he was with ordered right away, then leaned over towards us when they noticed I was eating the crepes, asking how they were. It's not that I'm anti-social; it's just that this is our anniversary dinner, and it's sort of a fancy-schmancy place, and I don't want a jeans-wearing loud-talker directing his bullhorn my direction. So I sort of shrugged and said that I was enjoying them though I am not a connoisseur of cornmeal crepes. He nodded and went back to telling the whole room about his house remodel.

(And yeah, I guess it may have been considered impolite that Ted was listening to the Germans. In his defense, he really enjoys practicing his German, plus it was a mother and daughter talking very politely about today's rain and the color of the drapes in the room.)

We ended our dinner by taking what I thought would look sweet but that ended up looking like a bout of after-dinner arm-wrestling:
We then took a walk down the street where, what? there's a shop selling specialty gourmet salt? Really? Really:
The owner gave us a sample of salt-infused caramels. It was all we could do not so spit it out on her floor. Sorry, lady, but we're not fancy enough yet for that kind of thing.

We then walked past a children's shop that was closed for the day, but I looked in the windows and was horrified at what some Portland hipsters consider appropriate (i.e. non-nightmare inducing) artwork for kids:
Excuse me, but what the hell is that? It looks like some warped Dr. Suess blue snake with no eyes ate a sad man with a sharp nose who managed to work his way almost to freedom but who gave up right at the end, thinking droopily to himself, "Eh, I'll just let my lower half get digested slowly by this scary blue worm...can't hurt that bad, right? They're only legs and internal organs." This clipboard art can be yours for only $75. Hurry, there's sure to be a mad rush on this happy character!

I turned around and saw the partner for half-digested worm-eaten man:
I'm not sure where to begin. This horned monster looks snug and cozy compared to the freakishly scary plastic snowman in a red hat below him. Notice how angry the snowman looks? And how about the sweet fuzzy sheep with devilish red eyes? What kind of childhood do the demented parents who buy this stuff intend for their children to have?

When we got back to pick up Abe, we found this wholesome stuff going on:
This was the first time we'd left Abe that he didn't cry even once. And how fun is it to watch your child turn from his play when he hears mom's familiar voice to put down every fun toy so he can scoot across that floor as quick as possible for a welcome-back snuggle? Aah, man, that gets me, especially when it comes with a welcome-back pat-pat-pat and exclamation of "Mom!"

As Elton said, "I thank the Lord for the people I have found," people who lovingly care for our son so we can celebrate our anniversary by being grossed out by salty caramels and freaked out a little by hipster kids' boutiques.
Abe told us on the way home that he likes anniversaries and thinks we should have them really often, especially if he gets to hang out with those guys you see above, nice people who only have pretty artwork with pictures of kitties that he can exclaim "kee-ee" at (he's moved on to two syllables now)
Now to start packing tomorrow for Blog Union '08. Woot. Woot.

Dancing

A dear one in our lives sent this to us today. We'd seen it already, as I'm sure a lot of you have also, but I thought I'd post it here anyway as a bit of Sunday inspiration (could this be a new theme after last week's Sunday post?). The link says that most people watching this end up smiling--saps that we are, we both find it impossible to watch without crying. Hope you enjoy:

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Playtime with Templates

Just playing with blogger templates, folks....
um, except that when I go to change the html code, it tries to delete all my widgets. I can't lose my widgets! What do I do? I've found the most rad Chuck Norris template that I'm dying to try out...

Kisses

Abe has a couple of new things he's really into these days. The toilet is still a continuous source of fascination and wonder, as is now the bottom drawer in our cabinets where we keep our extra toothbrushes and floss. Letting him pull all of that out every day (sometimes several times a day) does two things: it keeps him away from the toilet and gives me time to brush my teeth.

He's also moved on from the thousand times a day saying "wow" to now saying "mom." I think it's that he's brilliantly figured out that turning the w's upside down in "wow" created a whole new word. I sort of liked being called "Ma" but it seems that Abe has chosen "Mom" as what he wants to call me. Our conversations throughout the day often go something like this:

Abe: Mom?
Lori: Yes?
Mom?
Mm hmm?
Mom!
Abe!
Mom!?
Yes, Abe?
Woooow.

This is deep stuff, people, real deep.

Thirdly, Abe has discovered kissing. Yeah, he may start off coming at you the normal, decent way that young boys should kiss: But as is true for most one-year-olds, it quickly turns to this slobbery mess: He now kisses every page in his favorite animal book that we read most nights, especially the dog page for some reason. He has this Baby Einstein book with a mirror on each page that he's supposed to use for doing things like making funny faces and "puff and blow" and touch his nose, etc. All Abe want to do though is kiss himself in the mirror.

He's pretty indiscriminate when it comes to who he will kiss. If he has known you more than a couple of hours and you say "Abe, kiss?" with an accompanying kissy-sound, he'll probably grace you with one. For a while there, I thought that I was the only one whose face he'd place both his chubby hands on before coming in for a kiss, but this weekend I caught him kissing his cousin Ezra this way. Oh well, for the time being, at least I'm the only one follows the kiss with by patting the shoulder and saying, "Mom."

*

Now this is in response to Courtney's post this week. Ted was working out of town on our anniversary (boo), so this is what I did in the afternoon:
I'd had this box of Trader Joe's green-tea muffins in the pantry for almost a year. I'd tasted them in the store and thought they were sort of weird, so I'm not sure why I bought them anyway. Well, I baked them and guess what? They tasted weird. So in Elaine Benes-style, I decided to forgo the stumps, going only for the muffin tops (click here if you don't know what I'm talking about).

And so as not to be wasteful, I gave the stump to Abe since he doesn't know any better right now anyway. So because even the best part, the tops, still tasted weird, I fancied them up with butter-spread and strawberry jam:

Green tea muffin stump for Abe, jammy top for Mom. Those stuffed cheeks don't lie--Abe didn't care a bit that he was just getting a stump:More weird green-tea stumps, please.

New Camera

It finally happened. We got a new camera. What joy, what bliss. I am happy. It's a fancy-shmancy one, and I plan on keeping my photo-blog updated now for anyone who might be interested in checking out my ongoing experiment with learning photography sans class (with the help of library books and fellow photography bloggers though).

Thanks to Ted, who tracked down the best new camera, I got to take these today:

And four year ago tomorrow, this happened:

Happy Anniversary, Us.

Newish Abe photo

So it's not a brand new picture, but it's something. Neola sent us this, taken in her backyard at her send-off party last Saturday while I was inside cooking collards with her sweet Mama.
Our anniversary is in four days. I think that's when the new camera might be coming.