out of Kadesh

…or maybe that’s the point. I guess since it is a sexually transmitted disease it is actually sort of appropriate.

Ok so I really, really don’t like Valentine’s Day… first of all because it all just seems so cheesy. Seriously, who expresses love with a bunch of pink and red heart-shaped things and fluffy stuffed animals? What are we, in second grade? Secondly, because I don’t like the idea of expressing love for someone on a day when it’s expected. Like, Target told me I should care about you today, so here’s a piece of shit stuffed dog holding a heart that says “You’re cuddly.” Cause that’s how much YOU mean to me. And because it’s Valentine’s Day, I’m going to throw in a card I picked off the shelf in which someone else was paid to write a very long, sappy poem, and all I have to do is put “Love, Schmoopsie-Poo” at the bottom of all those words no one would ever actually take time to read (including me).

But I am surprising myself by feeling a little more into it this year. I think it’s because I remembered how much fun it was for me when I was a kid, and I want to share that with Noah. Mostly it was fun because we got a heart-shaped box full of candy from our parents, and then we had a party at school that included cupcakes. This is not really a holiday about love… it’s a holiday about CHOCOLATE. And I’m down with that, y’all.

So to celebrate, Noah and I will be spending the day cutting out cookies from the dough I made last night, baking them, and then eating them. We might even get creative and color on some pink paper. But for now I’d like to say….

Happy Valentine’s Day to my sweet Bubbs. I love the way you scrunch your face up when you’re fake-crying about something. I love the way you call the liner of your hard hat a “robot hat.” I love the way you throw books at me and climb in my lap shouting WEAD IT. I love the way you say “Bye-bye-I-love-you-Mommy.” I love the way you kiss my boo-boos (even the ones you cause). I love the way you dance all the time, even when someone just starts humming. I love the way you haul that huge stuffed monkey around by the neck. I love the way you try to cuddle with the kitty and the way you yell at the dog to “GO, WEE-SEE!” (translation: Lucy) when she’s trying to kiss your face. I love the way you say “Uh-oh-no!” when something goes wrong and “Bess you” when someone sneezes. I love the way you slide down off the bed in the morning and hand me my glasses and my phone, then grab my hand and start trying to pull me out of bed, too. I love your real laugh AND your fake, I’m-totally-in-on-this-joke-grown-ups laugh. I love the way you’d rather have cheese crackers and hummus for dessert than a cookie. I love the way you always want to be home more than anywhere else in the entire world. I love EVERYTHING about you, even when you’re being a pain in the ass. I love so much more about you than I can put into a blog post.

In fact, I love you so much that you’re making me like Valentine’s Day again, just because it might be something fun we can do together, and an occasion for me to tell you that I love you by stuffing you full of sugar.

Me: What’s this?

Noah: Peppah!

Me: And what color is this pepper?

Noah: Wed!

Me: Green.

Noah: Gween!

Me: That’s right. And what is this letter?

Noah: G!

Me: Yes. G for green. And what’s this letter?

Noah: P!

Me: That’s right, Bubbs! P for pepper. Now what is this vegetable?

Noah: ………..

Me: Do you remember what it’s called?

Noah: ……….Wabbit eat it.

Me: That’s right, rabbits DO eat it. People can eat it too. It’s called a carrot.

Noah: Cay-witt.

Me: Yes. And what color is the carrot?

Noah: Oh-wange!

Me: Yep, it’s orange. And what is this letter?

Noah: G!

Me: Close, but it doesn’t have the line coming out of it. It’s a C, remember?

Noah: C!

Me: That’s right. C for carrot. C-c-carrot. C actually has two sounds, kuh and suh. Kuh like carrot, and suh like….. um…. gosh I can’t think of a soft c word. Oh, cereal! Suh like cereal.

Noah: Suh-we-uhl!

Me: Yes.

Noah: No, suh-we-uhl ee muhk.

Me: What?

Noah: Suh-we-uhl! Ee muhk! Peese! (heads to the table, pointing)

Me: You would like some cereal with milk right now?

Noah: (nods, climbs onto chair and settles in)

Me: Oh. Power of suggestion, huh?

Noah: …..(nods) Eat it. Eat suh-we-uhl.

Me: Right, got it. Peanut butter balls or O’s?

Noah: Pee-nut-butt-uh? Bahhs? Peese?

Me: Ok then. Good lesson today, huh?

Noah: EAT IT! SUH-WE-UHL!

Ok, I know it’s Sunday, but I’m so psyched about my menu plan this week that I decided to post it today. Plus I’m actually doing a Sunday through Friday menu as of the beginning of this year, with only Saturday nights up for grabs. Usually we walk down the street for dinner at one of the local East Nashville restaurants or we order a pizza and watch a family movie together, but last night we had cabin fever and decided to go out and have an adventure.

And let me tell you where that got us. We began discussing our dinner plans around 3:30pm, and we still hadn’t decided on a place when we left the house at 6:15pm. We wanted a place that would be kid-friendly but still have delicious food and a non-Chuck-E-Cheese atmosphere… is that too much to ask, really? We still didn’t know where the hell we were going as we pulled out of our neighborhood and slowed to a stop at the first intersection. “What do you feel like?” “I don’t know, what do you feel like?” “I don’t know. Noah, what do you feel like?” “Noooooo! Go hooome! Train table, train table!” ……… “So what do you NOT feel like?” Finally we discussed our desire for country cooking, which we don’t have very often, and we ended up going to a place we’d never been called Monell’s, which is apparently a Nashville tradition. We sat around a big table with people we didn’t know and the servers brought out bowl after bowl of delicious southern fare, which we passed around to each other, and we ate a feast of biscuits, cornbread, peach preserves, hush puppies, fried catfish, squash, mashed potatoes, corn pudding, green beans, turnip greens, and banana pudding. Oh man oh man, it was good. (Oh man oh man, I farted it up like a pregnant lady when we got home.)

Saturdays are a crapshoot, in other words. Which is why I like having a menu planned for the rest of the week.

Also, I’ve started making double portions of whatever I’m cooking so I can freeze half of it. I’m looking forward to Lance heating up some of these home-cooked meals after New Baby arrives. I wish I’d been this prepared when Noah was born. (Of course, I’m also looking forward to lots and lots of sushi takeout. I miss you sushi. Come back to me.)

So here’s the menu this week, y’all. I hope you make something from it and your toddler doesn’t scream EW NO! at you when you put it down in front of him. Because that’s what I have to look forward to every night this week. ANYWAY.

Sunday: Tomato-cheese risotto cakes (recipe in a follow-up post), roasted broccoli, homemade cranberry sauce (If it is shaped like a can please do not call it cranberry sauce in my presence. Thank you.)
Monday: Vegetable tostadas
Tuesday: (Valentine’s Day Special, y’all. In honor of my least favorite, Hallmark-made-up, obligatory, consumer-driven “holiday.”) Cheese and chocolate fondue (use apples and bread for the cheese, and lots of fresh fruit for the chocolate)
Wednesday: Salad with roasted corn and goat cheese, corn chowder, bread
Thursday: Tetrazzini (Minus turkey, add peppers, substitute veggie broth for chicken broth… in short, this recipe is really forgiving. Do what you like with it.)
Friday: Baked potato bar (use this link as a guide but basically use whatever toppings you feel like), baked cinnamon apples

Hunker down and eat well this week, y’all.

Before we were parents, we were such good parents. Kids only EAT chicken fingers and pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches because that’s all parents FEED them, we said. If you FEED kids vegetables, they’ll eat vegetables! We were so smart.

When we had Noah, I was all, I’ma feed him smashed up vegetables and other smashed up food from our own plates so that he will have a wide variety of tastes. Cause I was so smart.

Now Noah is two. Every week I plan a list of vegetable-heavy menu items that I will painstakingly shop for, prepare, and set in front of him. And every week he will ignore what I have set in front of him and ask for “mo’ bread peese.” Every time we sit down to dinner I try to mask a green bean or pepper or vegetable in some rice or cheese and feed him a forkful, only to watch him roll it around in his mouth and spit out the healthy part. He’ll glare at me and say “EW” or “NO.” And then he will refuse to eat another bite.

What happened? We don’t eat fast food; we don’t eat junk. We eat only organic fruits and vegetables, homemade, whole grain breads, organic dairy, and very occasionally, lean meats like chicken or fish. His sugar intake is extremely limited. If we go out to a restaurant and they have all beige foods on the kid’s menu, we just order a healthy side for him and share off our own plates.

But every time, he will pick out the mac-n-cheese. Chicken. Bread, bread, bread. Rice. Pizza. Cheese. A tortilla, PLAIN. Pasta, PLAIN. ICE CREAM. I made vegetable pad thai the other night, which turned out REALLY delicious, I must say, and he spit it out and was all “NO NO NO EWWW NO!” What the??? (And while we’re on the subject, where did this behavior come from? I certainly have never done that when I’ve tasted something. Maybe I’d do that if I accidentally ate poop or something, but I can’t envision ever having such a violent reaction to FOOD.) I had to rinse the pasta and the veggies so that he would eat it because he wanted it PLAIN, for God’s sake. It was ridiculous!

It’s like toddlers just know they’re supposed to be picky eaters who refuse food that is not pure starch. They learn it all during their stay in the womb, and then they send each other eye messages when they’re passing at the playground. I think the bestseller is called the Post-Uterus Bible or something, but I’m not sure because I’m a grown-up and not allowed to see it. (I’ll tell you a secret, Reader: I’m still smart, though. For lunch I feed him frozen “chicken nuggets” which are actually made out of like mushrooms or something. He only THINKS he’s getting toddler food, HA-HA!) (If you see him, please don’t tell him.) (Unless you want him at your house for lunch every day.)

Now here’s where he displays the oddest dinner behavior of all, y’all. Two nights ago we were sitting down to dinner and he was beginning his usual pre-meal protest. He looked at the plate that I set in front of him, which was devoid of pizza and ice cream and full of broccoli and carrots and other things that came straight from Hell, picked up his fork, and began prodding the contents with a look of utmost displeasure. Then came the “Nooooooooooo! No! No! No!”s as he searched, unsuccessfully, for a piece of cheese or bread underneath the offending vegetables. Then, as Lance and I sat down, he set down his fork, bowed his head low over his plate, and held out his hands: one to Lance and one to me.

Lance and I were nonplussed. What the heck was this kid doing now? Witchcraft, to rid his plate of miserable health? Was he prostrating himself before us in an effort to win our mercy? We stared at him for a few seconds, waiting to see what was to come next, but he just stayed still like that, head bowed, hands outstretched. “Um…. do you…. want to pray or something?” we asked him. “Yeah,” came his muffled reply.

Ok, freeze frame. Lance and I pray together over most meals, and obviously Noah is present for those. But our prayer is a memorized one that we say together. We never hold hands, and we NEVER bow heads. We usually look at each other and, in turn, at Noah. So the thought that is flying through both our heads is something like, “What the fuuuuh???”

“You know, Buddy, you don’t have to bow your head like that in order to talk to God…” No reply. No movement. Just chin tucked serenely onto chest, and waiting, outstretched little hands.

He wants to pray! He wants to…pray? Not only does he want to pray, he wants to pray like this? All, fundamental-like? (He saw this in a book, Lance thinks? Or maybe he remembers seeing his grandparents do this?) So… sure, then, I guess? (Yes, that is how many question marks are necessary, because that’s how many were hovering over our heads that night.) We all hold hands to pray and I say something like, “Dear God, Please help Noah to love this delicious dinner and eat it all up, amen.” Just as a joke, y’all. But I swear to God he says, “Ay-mee-uhn,” like he’s from Nashville, picks up his fork, and starts shoveling food into his face.

ZOMG, that prayer WORKED!? IT WAS LIKE MAGIC. Of course, a couple of forkfuls in, he realized what he was doing and starting spitting food out and acting normal again, but at first IT WAS LIKE MAGIC.

It’s been a terrible, awful, no good, very bad… week. (It’s not really that bad, I’m just alluding to a great piece of literature here. Zero points if you can name that book!)

It started with my shitty hair cut on Saturday. I specifically asked for a trim, and I asked her to keep the sides long. I ended up looking like the mom from the Brady Bunch. It’s sort of like a short bowl-cut on the top layer, and a long flippy layer on the bottom. I can’t even put it all back in a ponytail. The sides fall down, which makes me look like a colonial soldier.

I found out at my last midwife appointment that I weigh almost 200 pounds now, which isn’t really that big of a deal to me, but now with my weird hair my face looks even more bloated than before. This pregnancy has given me a bad case of acne, but the weather has made my skin major dry. So I have weird hair that nicely accentuates my fat, acne-covered, flaky face. Try looking in the mirror at that and not bursting into tears. If you’re able to do it I’d love any tips.

Noah decided he never needs to sleep again. He can just whine and complain and cry and whine some more instead. Sleeping is for babies. Big boys piss and moan but stay awake. Big, whale-like mamas with zero energy plop their big boys down in front of Sesame Street while they catch up on their ass-sitting. (They also quickly switch over to Thomas the Tank Engine when they get an earful of pissiness at the lack of creepy talking trains in Sesame Street.)

He’s also decided I should be with him at all moments of the day. “MAMA COMING!” is his constant refrain. I’m all, “Noah, I’m using the potty, I’ll be out in a minute, ok?” And he’s all, “MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA” until he opens the bathroom door, comes up to my knees, and says, “Mama hold you?” And I’m like, “Bubba, I’ll hold you in a minute ok? I’m kind of trying to poop here.” And he’s all like “Mama HOOOOLDYOOOOU!!!!” And I’m like, “Sure thing, just hand me those nail scissors so I can try and mortally wound myself first.”

This clinginess might actually be part of the not-sleeping thing. He finally goes to sleep around 10pm, after utterly exhausting himself. I stumble into bed and then, what feels like a minute later, he’s awake. It’s actually 5:30am, and he wants me again. So Lance brings him in bed with us, and if I’m lucky he falls back asleep with his feet in the small of my back. If I move or breathe, he wakes up and crawls on top of me, moaning “MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA,” like I’m anywhere but buried underneath his head.

Then my stomach starts growling. Literally, growling like it’s an angry tiger who’s going to kill you. At 5:45 in the morning. What is it thinking?! And then the baby starts kicking my insides out, as if reminding me that my stomach is hungry and that means so is she, and can I please get up and start feeding her now?

If you want to put your marriage through the ringer, which I know EVERYONE wants to do, go a month without sleeping. Also, one of you be pregnant. Fights break out over things like, “Could you walk across the floor any louder? JESUS!” or “Did you just put that tissue in the waste basket? I JUST emptied it, what the hell is wrong with you?” You start tallying up who has had more sleep on what day, too. So when you’re 3 minutes behind your partner, suddenly everything that has ever gone wrong ever is his fault. He’s so well-fucking-rested, why can’t he just…?

And Noah is seriously TRYING to make me crazy. On top of not sleeping, he’s complaining more than ever, which I just really feel is unfair. Today, for instance, I told him we were going to play with his friend. He was all, Yeah! until he realized that entailed putting on pants and socks and (the last straw) SHOES. By the time I had his coat on and he was outside he was seriously pissed off. I’m like gently explaining that he’s being a baby douche bag and he should stop now, but he’s just so mad at me he doesn’t even want to walk down to the car. Also he doesn’t want me to hold him or touch him in any way. He just wants to stand still and scowl. When we’d waited a really long time for him to stop acting his age, and I’d tried every good-parent-who-reasons-with-her-toddler trick I know, I finally picked him up bodily and hoisted him down to the car and wrestled his angry self into the car seat. So now we were both really pissed off (and sweaty) (and my carefully pinned weird hair had come undone) and all I could think was, why is this the treatment I’m getting for taking him on a play date? It’s just not right, y’all.

The cat drank Noah’s leftover cereal milk this morning and then barfed all over the floor. So before I cleaned that up I threw him (jeez, not really, ok?) (nope, can’t lie, I threw him) out the door, then an hour later I let him back in, thinking he’d have gotten all that lactose out of his intolerant little body, but he sure enough barfed again once he was inside. JUST TO FUCK WITH ME.

Then the DOG is like, Let me out let me out! So I let her out and then she’s like, Let me in let me in! So I roll my eyes and let her in and she RUNS into the living room and gets muddy paw prints all over the yellow rug and I’m seriously one thing away from a long, drawn-out, eardrum-splitting scream that sends everyone in the house running outside in terror so I can get a nap.

What I’m saying, y’all, is I’m extremely white and I’m having some serious first-world-people problems here. This shit is real.

Me: “Can you say Noah Roggendorff?”

Noah: “Noah!”

Me: “Rogg-en-dorff.”

Noah: “Rogg-en-Noah!”

Me: “Interesting time-saver… Rogg-en-dorff.”

Noah: “Rogg-en.”

Me: “Dorff.”

Noah: “Doff.”

Me: “Ok now, all together. Rogg-en-dorff.”

Noah: “Rogg-en-doff!”

Me: “Yay! Now can you say the whole thing? No-ah-Rogg-en-dorff.”

Noah: “No-ah-Rogg-en-baby!”

Me: “Close enough.”

Lance: “So apparently there’s some big sports game on tonight.”

Me: “How do you know?”

Lance: “My usually very geeky twitter feed is full of sports talk?”

Me: “Oh, huh. Is it the Superbowl?”

Lance: “Oh, yeah, maybe! That does happen around this time of year, doesn’t it?”

Me: “Wait, no… I think it’s on a Sunday. You know, ‘Superbowl Sunday’?”

Lance: “Oh, right. Maybe it’s like the game that decides who plays the Superbowl.”

Me: “They have those?”

Lance: “Yeah, don’t they?”

Me: “Okay then.”

……..

Me: “Let’s hope to God our son is into theatre or music or computers or something.”

Why the heck don’t kids sleep? If someone turned off all your lights, put on some soft white noise, read you a story, gave you some milk, laid you in bed, and rubbed your back and hummed to you, would you not be all, SHIT YEAH IT’S DREAMIN’ TIME ? I think I would be asleep in point four seconds.

You know what my son is doing right now, at 9:49pm? Sitting on the rug, eating grapes, and playing with trains. Every once in a while he brings me the bowl of grapes, says “done!” and starts doing an energetic little Buffalo Shuffle across the room. And I say “Are you ready to go to bed yet?” and he says “NOPE! Mo’ gapes!” and sits back down with the bowl of grapes.

Do you know what we did for an hour before finally giving up and letting him come out of his room? PARAGRAPH A.

Now there are two schools of thought happening as you read this, and the two schools are currently having a competition to see who can out-judge my parenting. Before I assign the medal to the winner, you should know that I’ve already heard it, so you can cram it.

SCHOOL A) Attachment Judgement: He’s going through separation anxiety. He doesn’t want to go in a crib all by himself and be separated from his parents. If you lived in an African tribe, you’d be with him all the time. You would sleep in the same bed with him. You would never be apart. This is the natural way of things. SUCK IT, SCHOOL A. Noah HATES being in bed with us. He squirms and fusses and climbs me until I can’t take it any more and I say, “Do you want to go in your own bed?” and I hear a desperate, muffled little “yyyeeessss” from beneath the covers. The only time he’s remotely happy being in bed with us is at 5am when he dozes off and on, mumbling things like “bread” and “choca muka” in his sleep, until he wakes me up by putting his nose to mine two hours later. OR if Lance gives up and decides to sleep on the couch so that he can get a few hours without tiny feet up his nose before the sun comes up, and Noah takes full advantage of the empty space by imitating the shape of a starfish. Bubbs needs his space, is what I’m sayin’.

SCHOOL B) Cry-it-out (aka Self-Soothe) Judgment: I disagree with you. But I hear you laughing at me as your peacefully sleeping children snore in the next room, and my wide-awake-ass son begs me to play with his train table and rocks on his rocking horse and sings loud nonsense songs at 10:15pm. I HEAR YOU LAUGHING. (I’ll stand by my convictions, bitches!) (…For at least one more hour.)

The big problem is that as a stay-at-home-mom, I crave delicious alone time, where I don’t have to keep a toddler from harming himself or breaking things. The only time I get that is during his nap, which is shorter and shorter every day, and after he goes to bed at night.

The following is a list of things I can’t do when Noah stays up until 10:30:
1. Watch an adult movie.
2. Watch ANY MOVIE IN THE WORLD that does not feature Thomas, the Fucking Tank Engine.
3. Read a book.
4. Have nasty ass sex on the dining room table.
5. Have quiet, courteous, Christian sex underneath the covers.
6. Take a shower.
7. Eat a cookie.
8. Sit here and stare at the opposite wall in silence.

And now the problem is, Noah is so tired that he has started throwing fits over things like, his knee touching his train track or the dog looking at him. And I have to pick up that sobbing mess from the floor and carry him into his room and repeat Paragraph A for the fourth time tonight, and pray to God that this time it’ll take, not so I can do any of the eight items on my above wish list, but so that I can hurl my exhausted pregnant ass into bed and hope that dawn is somehow delayed by six hours.

Goodnight, fellow parents.

As you may or may not know, toddlers love to read the same book over and over and over and over and over and over and over and…. (elipsis indicates infinity) over again. And by “read,” of course, I mean sit in your lap while you read and stare at the pictures and point out objects that have nothing to do with the story, like “Sock!” or “Car!” “Baby eye!”

There are a couple of good methods for avoiding death by boredom as you read The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the seventh time in one day, and these I share with you today. Lance and I both have used them with great success.

1. Affect a Spanish accent. You can, of course, substitute your favorite accent (I recommend Russian or German for maximum entertainment), but Spanish is our favorite. What but an Antonio Banderas accent could make a statement like “Wake up, wake up, good morning! I’ll try my potty again!” sound sexy and alluring?

2. Replace the main character’s name with your child’s name. When “the Poky Little Puppy” becomes “Noah,” funny ensues.

3. Read the story backwards. Lance tried this method the other night. I admit it’s not one of my favorites, because it bothers me that the story makes no sense. From the kitchen I heard him read “Thank you! That would cheer me up! Then she will say… Would you like some of my ice cream? Then I will ask her…”

4. Read it like a play (partner required). As we read to Noah before bed the other night, Lance and I played the roles of the main characters in a story we’d read no less than 3,000 times in the past week. We got really into it, too. Lance does an amazing squirrel, not to mention a killer elephant with a broken trunk. And I do a mean pig, if I do say so myself. Not for nothing did I get that theatre degree!

5. Beg the child to choose a different story. I must confess, this rarely works. For instance, to my delighted surprise, I was able to distract Noah with a new book from the shelf last night. But as I closed the book and said happily, “The End,” he insisted on the backhoe book again anyway. But this morning he brought me the new, distraction book instead of the backhoe book! It might be a step in the right direction. At least, until the distraction book becomes THE book, and then I’ll be begging him to read the backhoe book, but this is the cycle. You pick your poison, is what I’m saying.

6. Don’t actually read the story. Just flip the pages and let the kid point at stuff and practice his vocabulary. This is a great one for early morning or when you need a nap. It requires very little effort on your part. Just close your eyes, lean your head back, say “Mmm-hmm” every once in a while, and don’t forget to turn the pages as often as you remember that you’re holding a book.

Well those are my tried and true methods. I hope they help you the way they help me. Now if you’ll excuse me, Noah is banging Can I Share My Ice Cream against my leg and saying “AH-GWEEN-BOOK!”, and I can feel myself beginning to channel a French accent already…

Right before Christmas, we switched Lance’s office/the guest room with Noah’s little room, so that we’d have space for all the kagillions of toys we got Noah for Christmas, and so one day he can share a room with his baby sister.

(P.S. A bad idea: undertaking a humungous project three days before Christmas.)

Here are some pics of the Bubbs’s new digs. I gotta say, I’m completely in love with it. His old room was a light green color… very baby-ish. I love how these new dark green walls contrast with the bright colored kid stuff. I made yellow curtains to go in there too, to brighten the room up even more. There are a few finishing touches, like we’re going to be swapping Noah’s crib out for a big-boy bed pretty soon, and we want to get some more bright artwork up on the walls, but here’s what it looks like for now.

Possibly my favorite thing about his new room: these custom shelves. All his books and toys are on display and organized so he can reach what he wants or else point to something higher up and I can get it for him. It’s a far better setup than what we had before: a wicker basket overflowing with toys of every kind in the corner of the living room. The day we arranged all of this I had an organization orgasm.

Mom’s corner.

My labor of love: his finally finished quilt. I call it “Less Than Perfect.”

More than any other room in our house, Noah’s is a display of homemade and hand-crafted. This chandelier is one I made from a string of Christmas lights before he was born, and Lance installed it. So of course, it had to make the switch. His room is bigger now though, so it doesn’t light up the whole space like it did before, but it’s still really sweet and pretty in the room. I also made the bird mobile, that pillow in the rocking chair, and the curtains and quilt, like I already said, and I painted the elephant on the toy chest (which is now full of blankets, now that his toys are organized in bins on the shelves). And our good friend Kelly painted the little canvases.

Think New Baby will love it as much as the rest of us do?

Coming up: Lance’s New Tiny Cramped Office Pics. (If I can fit in there to take any pics, that is.)