Artsy Fartsy

Just finished up a flower painting for my sister.

 

And I found a whole roll of drawings from when I was in college! Weee!!

Lotsa fun!

Them Wild Cookers

Me saying that I love to cook is like birds saying they love to crap on people, Goliath saying he loves Big and Tall, or THE DRESS saying that it loves to freak everyone that's ever been near a computer out.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/28/science/white-or-blue-dress.html?_r=0

(Really NY Times?! REally?!)

We just go together. It just happens.

While I've always loved to cook, I think my obsession really started while we were living in China. China is a great place to eat...wait for it...CHinese food, and not much else. So being a foreigner living there, I had to get inventive to be able to eat some of my old favorite things.

Can't find good bread. I'll make it!
Can't find good pizza. I'll make it!!
Can't find good cheese. I'll make it!!

.....Actually the cheese making ended horribly. I tried to make some Queso Fresco, which you do by just boiling milk and adding vinegar and salt, scraping up the curds, and then draining them in cloth. It ended that we just had a misshapen ball of dry, flaky cheese sitting in our fridge for a month that tasted like nothing but sour milk and no one touched until we noticed it growing mold one day and was thrown with disgust in the trash.

Now that we're back though, I just buy my cheese and have become a weee bit obsessed with Julia Child.

*My favorite episode. She's so adorably scatterbrained*

I'm currently reading my fourth book about/by her and we go through butter in this house like it's nobody's business. I spend my days making her ridiculously long and labor intensive recipes. For example, dinner yesterday was:

Artichokes and Hollandaise sauce (Artichokes are just a way to not be eating the nommy thick, creamy, lemony, butter sauce with a spoon),
Coq au Vin ( A roasting chicken I quartered, browned, bathed in cognac and lit on fire, and then cooked in red wine sauce with onions, mushrooms, and bacon till it's become all beautiful and juicy and a weee bit purple)
Parsley Potatoes (butter. parsley. baby potatoes. yum),
and Mousseline au Chocolat (egg whites, chocolate, butter, orange liqueur, coffee, all beaten and folded together bit by bit until it's frothy and stiff and then chilled till it comes to be this creamy deliciousness that is supposed to serve 6 to 8 people but you end up eating a third of it before your notice).

I've also been dabble-ing in Joy of Cooking for menus and bread recipes.

I've become like this 1950's house wife essentially, cooking all day, and having dinner on the table when my husband comes home. Which isn't a bad thing, I guess, but I instinctually resented it until I found this in the tome that is Joy of Cooking this morning:

Yep. Mrs. Joy of Cooking gave no apology or preamble explaining that only in dire straits would you want to cook up this mess. Beaver Tail and Armadillo were evidently choice bits to cook up for your table during her ol' Stepford Wife days.

Here I was thinking that it was some hicks in the backcountry eating armadillo and keeping leprosy alive in the states,

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42788111/ns/health-infectious_diseases/t/eating-armadillos-blamed-leprosy-south/#.VPZN2SjpeAQ

 but no, turns out it could be some freakishly adventurous Joyful Cookers, sprinting round the country-side in their heels and pearls, hunting down and saute-ing up armadillo steaks to go with their green beans and french-fried potatoes.

Kind of frightening, and kind of inspiring.

~Izzy~

A Vawentines Story

When I was old enough to create permanent memories but still young enough to wear flannel, footed pajamas to bed, Valentines Day was a Big Deal. All week in school we would have prepared, building our little brown paper bag valentines "mailboxes" with the sloppily colored, overly glittered, hearts with our names cut and pasted to the front. We would have tottered down the school hallways, seeing garlands of hearts draped from side to side and judged our peer's beautiful holiday related artwork pinned to the boards in the hallway. I distinctly remember Valentines math problems, and most importantly of all, deciding who we would want to be our Valentine, if only we had the courage to talk to the opposite sex.

I had a monster crush on Thomas Romero. He could run the fastest out of anyone in our class, had a nice buzz haircut, and a sideways, impish smile when he talked to you. Not that I talked to him. I just observed from the opposite side of the room.

Earlier that year, in gym class, we had learned to square dance, because even though I did grow up in the Sin City of liberals (i.e. Austin),  it was still, after all, Texas.

For those of you who didn't grow up in the deep south, it goes a little something like this.

*except with four people*

Our gym teacher, in anticipation of the rowdy, first generation ADD Spongebob-watchers not listening very well to his instructions, had actually taken out tape and marked the squares on the floor.  Distinct, perfect, hard to ignore, stark white boxes filled the room, a nice contrast to the multi-colored plastic tiled gymnasium floor.

All us little ones had been led single file into the room by our teacher and abandoned for gym class. We huddled in a little group against the wall. Sticking to our besties as the gym teacher assigned individual squares to individual small people.

"You. Over there." "Anne, next to her." "Alex, get in that square." "No, the OTHER square."

Somehow I ended up in a four-person square with Thomas, Alex, and some other boy whose name I don't remember with really pointy eyebrows. The three cutest boys in our class. Then the teacher just walked off and left me there.

I about had a heart attack. Life had not prepared me thus far to be able to handle this smoothly. How do normal people act around boys? They smile right? Smiling is cute!

I pasted a frantic, most likely slightly frightening, smile on my face.

No wait.. that was WRONG! Smiling implies that I'm happy. That I like this. That I like THEM! Unacceptable. They will be able to see right through the smile immediately.

I stopped smiling.

Complaining! Cute girls, popular girls are always complaining! "Too hot." "Too cold." "Too bored." It shows that I'm too super cool for this situation and totally not in love with Thomas!

"Aaawww!" I whined.  "I'm stuck with THESE guys?!" "Maaaaaaaaaaan!!" I stuck my hand on my jutted out hip and rolled my eyes and the rest of my head (for good measure) up to the ceiling to demonstrate how enormously peeved I was for getting stuck there.

"I'll swap with ya."

Huh.

Caitlin Miller peered over at me from the square next to mine. She was sneering at me.

Caitlin was one of those people I prayed for when we learned about heaping coals on your enemies head with kindness in Sunday school. She had a pinched face, orange hair, was covered in a blanket of freckles, and had a personality that made me want to put tacks on her chair and gum in her hair.

Lets just say that when a local news crew came to our school earlier that year for background footage of a school lunchroom for one of their stories, while the rest of us were on our best behavior, trying to get noticed for our goodness and exceptional ability to sit straight and quietly in our chairs, like our teacher assured us we would, Caitlin kneeled on her seat. She leaned way over the table, pounded it with a fist, laughing raucously to herself and waved her sandwich dangerously around in the air to "illustrate a point". She later denied every doing it. Classic Caitlin. One guess as to who filled the 10 second clip on the news that night.

"I'll swap with ya." She repeated, laughing at me with her eyes.

What could I do? I couldn't admit that I wanted the spot and wanted to link elbows with the three cutest boys in our class and skip in circles, laughing, and making significant eye contact. NEVER! Especially after just assuring them that I didn't want to be there.

I hung my head and shuffled over to her spot without even answering and she pranced over to mine with a victorious look on her face.

I had failed.

Now it was the day before Valentines Day and I still hadn't talked to Thomas. Or danced with him for that matter. I had however given up chocolate milk at lunch in favor of the healthier plain milk so that I could impress him by beating him at a race during recess one day. Lance Armstrong said unhealthy foods slow you down and he would know.

I went shopping with my mother at HEB that night. As she picked out the normal milk, eggs, and cereal she needed, I perused the candy aisle and selected a particularly great jumbo bag of blow pops. The cards were a little harder to choose though. After much deliberation, I settled on a box of Tweety Bird valentines cards to attach to the suckers and deposit in people's valentine's bags at school.

I ripped it open back at the house while sitting in my room at my pink, rose covered desk with the manly green office lamp that I had so proudly chosen out myself. I methodically sifted through the pile and sorted them for each classmate.

"Have a weally tewiffic Valentines Day!" That one could go to George. He scratched too much and ate his boogers.

"Ooo What a good fwiend you are!" Eh... Jennifer could have that one.

Etc.

Then I found the gem that I would give to Thomas. It was perfect. It said that I liked him, but was still silly enough that I could pretend it was a joke if backed into a corner. I carefully signed my name to it in pink pen, as cursively and squiggly as I could without knowing cursive, because that's ROMAAANTIC. I slipped it into its matching tweety bird envelope that besides looking super cute hid it from prying Caitlin eyes that would inevitably tell Caitlin lips that would tell everyone in class' ears that I LIKE-liked Thomas.

The next morning was beautiful. My mom had made her usual Valentines Day breakfast: mini sausages, cinnamon rolls, and pieces of cheese she had cookie-cuttered into heart shapes. The house smelled like cinnamon and butter from the rolls baking and there were presents stacked by our plates and big heart balloons hovering behind our chairs (Yes. My mother rocks.)

Breakfast was eaten. Presents were opened. I made it to the bus on time and chatted happily on the drive with my seat buddy. Today was a great and magical day. Things were going to happen. I just knew it.

When I made it to the classroom, I could feel the excitement in the air. I put my backpack on the hook and my lunch in my cubby and joined the rest of the class flittering from valentines bag to valentines bag.

This one went to Melody. This one to Laurel. This one to Caitlin. I dropped hers into her bag from head height. Maybe it'd break.

I made it to Thomas' desk. I saw his badly decorated Valentines "Mailbox". In went the valentine. The brown paper bag made a soft, pleasant, crinkling noise as it fell in on top of the mound of others. He would soon open it and see the little Tweety Bird lying all topsy turvy below his cage with the ingenious "I sure fell hard for you..VAWENTINE" written inside a large red heart. It was romantic. It was funny. It couldn't fail.

I went back to my desk to wait and sneak candy off the valentines I'd collected so far.

No love was declared back to me that day in the valentines. No "I love you"s or "Be Mine"s from any guys. Though I did get a couple along the lines of "I think you're great!" that I could choose to misinterpret later if I wanted to.

At recess, while helping me make fake bear tracks in the sand, Lauren told me that Thomas had brought a 16 kt gold necklace to school and given it to Stephanie as a Valentines Day gift.

"He must not have got my Valentine", I thought, and continued pressing bear pad marks with my thumb.


*Some names have been changed, other than that, this story all happened. I too am now astounded, looking back, that some little little kid's parents allowed him to bring a gold necklace to school as a present for a little girl. Back then though it only looked like disappointment to me.*


HAPPY VALENTINES DAY EVERYONE!!
~Izzy~

Dallas. Shiny Dallas.

We're in Dallas now. I didn't realize how much I missed the city till we came here and were surrounded by all this blessed beautiful concrete and shining glass. The dirt and shrubs of the New Braunfel's countryside just doesn't compare sometimes.

I grew up in the suburbs of Austin. Not nearly as picturesque a skyline as say, New York or Hangzhou, China, to name a few of our recent haunts, but I still feel most at home where there's a comfortable silence and the plant life is in a calculated spot; Where your feet burn in a pleasant way from playing on hot concrete without shoes and the streets at night are lit by gently humming street lamps, making pools of yellow light.

New York was like that at night. Calm and quiet. At least on the Upper East side where I lived. I used to take walks to get that serene feeling back. I'd walk up and down the streets and through the trails of Central Park at 2 am, smoking a cigarette and listening to pop rock on my phone, counting on being mistaken for a tall man to keep me safe... I used to be an idiot. A very lucky, manly looking, idiot.

So you can imagine why I was excited to get to visit Dallas with Lark and small kiddos. YAAY (relatively) large city!

The first two days were great. We got some shopping in, relaxed in our room that magically cleaned itself each day, drove on freeways, saw our reflexions in glass covered buildings, and hit up the Perot Museum. Larkin climbed some frogs:

and feigned mild interest in the dinosaur exhibit till he figured out they weren't going to fight.
"Dinosaurs RAAWWR!! Dinosaurs fight! Dinosaurs fight!"
"No Larkin, they're stuck that way. They can't fight."

*Larkin runs away from me and said dinosaurs and around a corner.*

*This blurry mess is the best picture I could get before Mr. ADD ran off to the next thing*

Fun times.

The next day was the worst though. Lark and I had maybe eaten a bad burger the night before, or maybe had Malaria that decided to go away in 24 hours. Either way, we were knocked out. I lay like a lump in bed, trying to become one with the comforter when I wasn't running to the bathroom or jumping up to stop a small person from hurting itself. Poor Lark still had to go to school though and ran laps to the bathroom and back from class where they were practicing their auctioneering monologues (I have 10, now 20, can you give me 20? I have 20, can you give me 30? I've got 30)  

*I think their final is to sing this song.*

Being sick is the worst. Being sick and having to still do stuff is even worser though. It might be the worst worst of all the worsts. 

So other than spending a day turning our guts inside out and contemplating setting fire to the burger joint, it was a pretty jolly day. Definitely one for the books. Books that we would burn. Along with the burger joint.

Everything turned out well though. We woke up bright and shiny today. Dallas was still here, although a little less sparkly and both of us can stand straight and eat food! And coffee. That's the important one. I even have plans to venture out to the zoo after small people's nap time. 

Adventures. Adventures.

I hope we get to see a platypus.

~Izzy~

My Snotty Sweet Musical Boy

Recently Larkin has started requesting that we sing him songs. In the house. In the car. He wants to hear "Tinkle Sar, "Jindle ah de way", and "Row, Row, Row". One after another after another. When singing "Jindle ah de way" (i.e. "Jingle Bells") I've noticed that no matter how hard I try, I end up spouting the tune in minor and sounding like Tim Burton's characters playing their carols in Halloween Land.

It's beautiful.

It's got me thinking about what weird quirks and habits of mine the little man is going to pick up on.
Is he going to be a grown up singing Christmas carols like bad omens? Will he pronounce "Valentines" as "Valentimes"? Will he have an affinity for anything sugary, procrastinate like the plague, and be scared of touching raw meat and other people's dirty dishes?

It crazy to think that someone is looking to little 25 year old me for his perspective on life. I feel like I left highschool yesterday, not like someone who's qualified to direct another person on how to live.

The little person in question is now crawling onto my lap, to cuddle while he barks like a dog in his  small soprano voice and tries to lick me, but manages only to wipe his snot on my face.

Being a mother is surreal.

~Izzy~

Holy Patootie (add cliche about time here)!

Sooo it's been almost two years since I posted on here. Good gravy things have happened.

My sister had a baby.
Lark's sister had a baby.
I got all fat again and had a baby.

 *The absolute cuteness right? I'm too lazy to ask for permission to post pictures of her new cousins, so just imagine more cuteness in baby form*


There's a lot of babies.
We moved back to America and rediscovered the joys of cheese and enforced safety regulations/codes.
Settled on a ranch in Texas and started working for Lark's dad's company.

*That's Lark working. He doesn't always work on top of vans. Just on good days.*

Larkin's grown up and become a walking, talking 3 year old.

The earth has continued to revolve around the sun and I continue to eat candy like it's going out of style.

It's been a crazy two years. If this were Family Guy, there would be a humorous flashback here, probably involving a lot of baby poop since that's what we've been up to our elbows in. Potty training is a five letter word beginning with a "B" and no, not "bread" or "board". Good guesses though.

We're trying every strategy we can think of. Begging, pleading, redirecting, distracting, bribing, but poor little Larkin just hates the toilet and runs screaming if we catch him trying to go and want to put him on the toilet. He's at the point now where he goes and hides behind chairs to go to the bathroom. I'm thinking eventually he'll get potty trained. He'll probably get embarrassed of the diapers when he's changing in the locker room in middle school and will just potty train himself. At least that's what I'm hoping.

*It'll be this little girl's turn soon enough. Hoooooray!*

Life is good. God is good. We're set up for the zombie apocalypse when it inevitably happens. We're living a good 20 minutes from any store and 40 from any small town worth mentioning. Our seclusion will serve us well when it comes time to avoid the noxious people eaters. Also, we've been working on our gardening and hunting skills, so if you know us and like us enough, it'd probably be to your benefit to give us a shout to get added to the screening list of peoples who can come chill at our country fort when the zombies take over. It's a good idea. Just saying.

Lark is as fantastically silly and hardworking and eccentrically, charmingly, wonderful as he usually is. He's recently taken up brewing his own beer and reading as many Chinese art books at once as he can carry from one room to the next at the same time. He's crazy busy photographing and putting online the odds and ends that are collected for the website (ex: these mummy death shrouds!!)

I believe it's next week that he's scooting off to Dallas for crazy intensive auctioneer training. He will learn very important things for the fine antique business, like the different cuts of beef...Yeah.. It's required by the state...

Not much has changed for me since I've been back. Except I have more hair. For a while it was pink. Then purple. Now an odd sort of red.

It's evidently how I entertain myself now.
 Side note: If it was possible to take coffee intravenously, I would be all about that shiz. Small babies with small stomachs eat too often to allow tired moms to sleep like normal human beings.

More later.
Izzy

Welcoming in the Year of the Snake

Chinese New Years is BIG. 
Bigger than Big. 
Bigger than Big Bird. 

Blindingly big... Literally. 
Also Lung-suckingly big. Is that a word? No? 

Maybe it's a Chinese word.

No?

Well it should be.

After the big hurrah of fireworks went off on Chinese New Years, we literally couldn't see the buildings across the street from our apartment because the smoke was so thick. We opened a window to try and better take a video of the flashes of light coming through the smoke (why did we think this would help? I don't know? Stop asking intelligent questions, Internet!) and let in a big plume of purple smoke. 

The light show with accompanying percussion continued all night and then all of the next day… and most of the next… and the next….

*This picture is deceptive because it makes it look like most of the fireworks are above the buildings. Ha! How the whole city is not set on fire on New Years, I have no idea.*

February 9th was Chinese New Year (or New Year's Eve… still not too sure. The differences between the Chinese Lunar calendar and the Roman one make it difficult).

However the Chinese don't honor the Chinese New Year and Chinese New Years Eve, two days of celebrating, thing that we do with our New Years in the States.

*A man and the candles he's made in a Buddhist temple in preparation for New Years*

Their exuberance for the New Year and all it's wonderful new possibilities cannot be contained to just two days, so they start setting off fireworks at the beginning of February. Just as often in the middle of the day as in the middle of the night. They don't discriminate.

It just gets bigger and louder and more frequent as you get closer to the actual holiday.

Everything is Red and Gold.

It's the 16th of February here and the celebration still hasn't stopped. Children throw poppers at each other. Grown men excitingly line up trails of firecrackers on the sidewalk to later send screaming into the sky, just barely out of reach of store fronts, or simply chunk them from the windows of buses to add a little excitement to their transit ride.

*Not really sure what ringing this big bell was supposed to do for the New Year, probably bring good luck or something, but it was free to do and looked like fun.*

You can't walk anywhere without bumping into a festive paper lantern. The gutters are filled with red crepe paper from used lanterns and fireworks and you'll see small piles that have accumulated where the wind has carried them.

It's beautiful.

We spent our Chinese New Year with friends and family.

LARK'S PARENTS CAME TO VISIT!!!!

*That's Lark's estranged brother, Norbert, in the center.*

WOOOHOOO!!!!

The crazy's flew all the way to China and were here just in time for the holiday.

*The charming result of a freak snow storm, beautiful West Lake, and New Years lights*

Lark's and my friend Mathew, a radio dj here in Hangzhou, invited us all, for a traditional Chinese New Years at his house.

Unfortunately, because of the baby, we had to arrive late and leave early. We still got to participate in a lot of the awesome though.

*Some locals in a small town we visited bringing home the traditional red bags full of gifts of nuts, fruits, pajamas, or something of the sort for their family.*

We made jiaozi (dumplings) leaving a coin in one for someone to find and receive good luck, or a broken tooth, and then all sat down on stools around a banquet of a meal that his mom had prepared for us. It included such Chinese delicacies as pig's ears, tofu with wood ears and cabbage, bamboo shoots, chicken legs, and a surprisingly sweet and mild rice wine that his dad made and served to us out of a Sprite bottle.

*So much China in one picture. It's kind of overwhelming.*

After all that we braved the cold to set off an arsenal of fireworks and then retreated upstairs into a heated, 5 star hotel lit, room of his house to shout things like, "Stupid Idiot-Face! Why would you leave your wife all alone with guys who are clearly going to cut her into bite sized pieces?!" at the television as it played Taken 2.

We then said our goodbyes and spent a car ride showering Matthew with too many thanks as he drove us back to our apartments. 

*The surprisingly fireproof city of Hangzhou*

Side note: Did y'all know that the Chinese have a saying that goes something like, "Good friends don't say thank you." Also, I've been told there's an expression about Westerners that translates to "Too many thanks." Their thinking is that if your friend is really a good friend, then of course they would do this favor or nicety for you, just as you would do it for them. Where as, us Westerners have it engrained in us from infancy to say "thank you" on any and all occasions it could possibly be applicable. A couple examples from the evening:

"Thank you for inviting us."

"Thank you for passing the peas." 

"Thank you for sharing your special home made wine with us."

"Thank you for introducing us to your neighbors who just wondered in through the guest room during dinner. They seemed so entertained that there were foreigners in the house and by my husbands and my height differences. It was great to be able to be a little side show/ zoo exhibit without having to learn any entertaining skills."

 "Thank you for such a lovely dinner. "

"Thank you for being so gracious when Lark almost set your house on fire with that firecracker."

"Thank you for shutting the doors against the cold."

"Thank you for laughing at the corny jokes we were loudly shouting at the TV screen and then giggling about."

"Thank you for giving us a ride home."

"Thank you for inviting us for such a lovely meal again! We never would have gotten to experience something like this otherwise!"

"Thank you for dodging that car driving the wrong way on a one way road so carefully."

"Thanks."

I just can't help it. It's like word vomit. Any "thank you" that I hold in weighs me down and makes me feel incredibly rude until it burst out, usually accompanied by many more thanks and in much more grandiose terms.

"Why thank you for such a bountiful spread, dear Mathew. Without your good humor and plentiful felicity and generosity, this evening would be Oh, so ever more mundane, Your fantastic sacrifice and general awesomeness will be remembered forever in our hearts. Huzzah!"

It's a problem.

*We were told these were the Gods to pray to if we wanted good luck and riches in the New Year*

Anyways, Mathew, if you're reading this, thanks again. You made our Chinese New Years fantastic. HUZZAH!

And Lark Senior and Erica, you're the best. THANK YOU for being so fantastic to put off your work and come all the way to China to hang out with us. Love you guys.

And any readers out there, Thanks. You're pretty cool.

Thanks.

~Izzy~

Chinglish and Harry Plopper

Hello again fellow internet users! 
I've been neglectful.
Lots of stuffs been happening.
Like Christmas. And my family visiting. And me being lazy.
That laziness has really been filling up my schedule.

Anyways, I'm sure you've been wondering if I have any awesome Chinglish pictures that I could share with you.
And I do! Surprise!

#1
This seems like a pretty good warning sign right?
"Don't fish for power lines" seems like pretty sound advice!

However, look where it is.

 Such a bad name. Such a bad, painful name.

Can't figure out how to eat your batteries with chopsticks? Have no fear! Complimentary utensils are here!

Saw this walking back home the other night. Now, I know what you're thinking, "Slavery's still legal in China??! Quick! Let's use our military force and go abolish that!"  You guys are jumping the gun a bit though. This is OBVIOUSLY a makeup shop. Obviously.

Should I be insulted?

The coffee shop around the corner from us sells this gem. YUm!

Since everyone in China happens to be the same size (No joke. The Walmart equivalent near me sells one size of dress.. which happens to be a long shirt on super tall me.) I guess this is necessary for the few exceptions. I just thought it was hilarious how blunt they were and that Peter Griffin decided to endorse it.

 The emblem says Ralph Lauren. The tag does not.

Italian Chinese man selling street pizza?!! Yes please!!
Side note, this vendor doesn't actually sell pizza. Why do they have the pictures then? ...Good question!

 Teehee!

Double Teehee!

The first hotel we stayed at when we got to China had these two beauties. 

This one was on a door right by the elevator that couldn't have been a full sized room.

Was it a broom or janitor's closet? The smallest Staff Room ever? Or another elevator shaft that they only use to throw dead bodies into?

We'll never know...

I'm thinking there must be some sort of Harry Potter-esque corridor between these two. I didn't have enough faith to try running full speed between them tho. Pity.

Speaking of Harry Potter, we are now on break for Spring Festival (woop woop!), and since the hotel where we live closes for the break, they put us up in a fancy shmansy place downtown!

This morning, for almost the entirety of my block long walk to the coffee place, I was serenaded by one of the street cleaning trucks that drives around spraying down and scrubbing the streets with a Scarborough Fair/Harry Potter theme hybrid and the acoustics from the super tall, widely spaced, concrete buildings in the intersection made it echo.

I had a super serene, "I'm a self-empowered being, I can conquer this mountain, this place looks so beautiful when I'm floating above it," moment before I remembered that there were 20ish Chinese people staring at me and if the light changes, that truck could pass me and spray some of the baby poop off the street onto me. I then sprinted across the street and became less involved in the music and more in preserving my poop-free pants.

I love China.

More soon!

No, Really!

~Izzy~

Little Munchkin's A Little Less Little

Larkin turned One today!!!
This was him a year ago today:

And here's him this morning

He's all big, wiggly and WALKING! 

He's amazing.

We love the little munchkin to bits.

Can't wait to see how much he's going to change and grow in this upcoming year!

~Izzy~

Yeah, I'm Tardy, But My Baby's Cute

Almost done with a big post with a gazillion cartoon self portraits in it. Think that'll make up for all the days I've skipped. I'll post it in the next few days.

In other news, Larkin's' new helmet came in the mail! Thanks mom! Now little man can ride our scooter with us all protected like! Woohoo!

We quickly found out that he's not the biggest fan of it. 

~Izzy~