Oh, What a Beautiful Morning

This morning has reminded me of why I love fall. We woke up to crisp, cool air and clear skies, and it just made me want to soak up every minute. I put the boys in the stroller and walked to the bagel store, just up the street from us. Although it was just up the street, after about 20 steps I was huffing and puffing from being a. out of shape and b. 38 weeks along. Anyway we all enjoyed being out and getting warm bagels. We returned home, puttered around for a while, got dressed, and headed back outside to run off some steam. I hope you can see some of the beauty of this day from the pics! We live on a corner and a dead end street runs along the side of the house, which is perfect for the boys to play in! (well supervised of course... don't go freaking out on me here) As I watched them play I was overcome with gratitude for the goodness of God. He has showered us with blessing again and again, and this morning was just a sweet taste of that.

Of course he found the one muddy spot on the whole street... "Puddle Mama!!"

Couldn't resist. Just had to get in there.

Here you can watch Howie display his razor skills. He and Justy loved the fact that you could take a movie on the camera and watch it right away!!

Look How Far They've Come

A Memorable Trip To Whole Foods

We had a lovely morning- it's beautiful outside with just a hint of fall in the air, which is so reassuring that roasting outdoors and swatting mosquitoes will soon be a thing of the past for the next few months (although you know by January I'll be pining away for roasting outside!). We played in the faithful old crabbie sandbox, one of the greatest birthday gifts we've ever given. It was for Howie's 1st birthday right after we moved to St Louis, and it has paid for itself many times over! It entertained us yet again this morning. We passed the morning doing this or that and finally about 10:45 left for Whole Foods to get some random groceries. I'm sure it is no surprise to anyone that Justice refuses to ride in the cart anymore. He wants to be on foot, which has given me a few heart attacks from time to time when he disappears momentarily, but generally works out ok. Today we got some lovely looking grapes and Honeycrisp apples and were ready to get some pears when disaster struck- Howie climbed on the side of the cart to hold on and it tipped over on him, spilling grapes everywhere and sending an apple rolling. At first I was afraid he was hurt since that was a big cart falling on his legs, but he was actually fine and apologized profusely. The huge crash obviously attracted lots of attention and I'm so grateful for a kind shopper who saw my predicament... cart smashing little boy, another toddler ready to run at a moment's notice, hugely pregnant, and grapes everywhere. She came to my rescue, pulled the cart off of Howie, and helped me pick up the grapes. Justy also came to my rescue by not only staying put but also picking up grapes! Wow! Turning over a new leaf! Usually that would have been the perfect opportunity to make a break for it! But anyway we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and kept moving. A man shopper gave me some marginally dirty looks which I did my best to ignore. It's so funny to look at our cart when I'm shopping with the boys- maybe I should be a tougher mom but I usually don't have the energy to refuse every last thing the boys ask for and/or put in the cart. A bagillion pounds of grapes? Sure. A carton of the summer's last raspberries? Why not? A jug of pink lemonade? Of course. Animal cookies? Thanks for asking, yes! Occasionally something ends up in the cart that is just too random or unjustifiable and then I stand my ground (a pound of artisan pasta that costs $6.99? I think not. I'm all about food, but that seems a bit much to me.), but if it's marginally explainable, not horribly unhealthy, and useful, what the heck? I'm a pushover... I'll say no in other contexts, but I love food, so why shouldn't they too? Sometimes I think about what little control children have over their own food choices- it's not like they can go buy something they want on their own. So if they can pick something sometimes that's a little bit special I'm happy for them. Anyway, we made it to the checkout without incident, paid the bill, and left. Happy ending.

I Can't Believe What Just Happened...

... Justice and I just dropped Howie off at preschool. As I watched him enter the room filled with kids he didn't know and get settled for lunch, I was overcome with emotion and close to tears. I am so proud of my boy. He has been looking forward to today for several weeks and this morning was ready to pack his lunch at 8:00 even though we didn't need to leave the house for over 3 hours. I am so eager to hear about his day and get his impressions of his new classroom, but for now, I have one sweet boy napping upstairs and one at school. Things will all change again in a matter of weeks as we welcome Baby Girl, but for now I'm enjoying my boys and reflecting on how fast they're growing.

excited on the ride to school

look at this big boy!

not one to be left out, Justy also posed for a pic

almost there...

can you pick him out?

He's 2

Who can believe that Justice turns 2 today?? This day two years ago (09/09/09, mind you) Justice entered our family and he has brought so much joy into our lives. He is a little bundle of boundless energy, laughter, mischief, and delight. He lives each day brimming over with joy and excitement. Though that often channels itself in questionable ways (hence Dennis the Menace), there is never a day that passes that he doesn't live life to the fullest. We are so thankful for him. I had some time this afternoon to look through some old pics of Justy's life and here are some of my favorites.

Remember his fauxhawk?

(obviously not Justy but who could possibly resist posting this face??)

We wanted to do some special things to celebrate Justy's birthday and also our Howie starts preschool Monday! He's going Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 11:40-3:15. I've realized in the past few days that that's obviously going to change our schedule quite a bit but we're soo excited for Howie and I know that he's going to love it and do so well! Anyway this morning I took the boys to a zoo that's close to our house and they had a wonderful time! (All you STL people... this is nowhere near as big as the STL zoo and you have to pay for it!! Don't even know how to process after being spoiled for 3 years!!)

Straining to see the bald eagles- those were pretty awesome! We got to hear them screeching and that was crrraaazy!!

You know this was the highlight of the day- I'm grateful the Lord sent us to another place that has a zoo train! This was obviously a huge hit. Justy kept walking around the zoo after we got off saying "all aboard!!"

Look at this handsome boy... waiting for the train to come into the station.

The big 2 year old

The birthday boy eating breakfast... chocolate milk and a bagel. Does life get any better?? I think not.

We have birthday cupcakes and more partymaking to be had later!!

Obsessions

• Laura Story's new album Blessings, particularly the song entitled "Blessings." If you haven't heard it yet, I hope that you will somehow ASAP. I love Laura Story, and this song is probably my favorite ever. It expresses so much truth about life's hardships and our walk with the Lord.
• Apples. It is again that time of year. I'm overjoyed!! Watermelon, it's been great, but it's time for you to move out of the spotlight. Bring on the apples!
• Real NYC style bagels. I didn't know bagels were so good until we moved to New Jersey. Panera doesn't hold a candle to the bagels they make up here. Yummmmmmm.

• My new coffee machine. Josh and I have been hardcore French press people for the last 4 1/2 years or so, but we decided to get a coffeemaker for a few reasons, particularly entertaining. Have you ever attempted to make coffee for a crowd in a French press? This is how it goes: "Here you go, friend who wants coffee- please savor your 2 sips" or "Friend waiting for coffee, I have served 2 other people and thus the press is empty. Your coffee will be ready in a short 20 minutes." Obviously neither is ideal! So we got a coffee machine and I'm rediscovering how easy it is to put in a filter, measure the water, dump in the coffee, and push the button. Voila!! I'm loving it! And it tastes AMAZING. I'm still a huge French press person, but we could usually find a large amount of sludge at the bottom of a mug of coffee, so we're marveling at the smoothness of this coffee. All right, enough about that.
• 
  Girl pacifiers. I've never bought pink ones before and now I'm stocking up in preparation for later this month (I hope, though of course it will probably be well into October. Who am I kidding?).
• 
  

And of course Howie and Justice. That goes without saying.

Overdue Talking Points

Friends, forgive me for my long blog silence... it's been a long time with much craziness since our last post! Here goes...

• We have moved! The Lord has provided Josh with a job! He is now working as the Pastor of Youth and Family at Grace Redeemer Church in Teaneck, New Jersey! Who knew the Desches would end up in New Jersey?? We are so very grateful for God's tender care and provision for us. The job is so well-suited for Josh and we're very excited to dig into full-time ministry.
• We moved 2 weeks ago, just in time for Hurricane Irene to blow into the area. Talk about excitement. We arrived in Teaneck on Tuesday night with Irene anticipated over the coming weekend. I went to the grocery store sometime Wednesday or Thursday to get some essentials and came home with 3 cases of water, random food that didn't need to refrigerated, toilet paper, etc. It was a sight to behold. There were predictions that power would be knocked out and could be off for a week or more. No batteries, flashlights, or generators within a zillion mile radius. We took anything that could blow around in the yard and put it into the garage and steeled for disaster. Friday and Saturday leading up to the predicted time Irene would come through were eery and weird... then finally came Saturday night. Sunday morning services had already been cancelled in anticipation of what was coming. We all slept downstairs in the basement to ensure that we wouldn't have to make the exodus down in the middle of the night in case things got bad. When we woke Sunday morning we still had power! Miracle of miracles! We were amazed! We went upstairs to assess Irene's progress... a couple big branches down in the back yard, a decent amount of rain but no means torrential (at our house anyway), but we didn't think we were out of the woods yet. Actually the rest of the morning progressed that way. Irene seemed basically gone by 12:30 or so, and we still had power!! Wow, we thought! Unscathed! No water backing up in the basement, no tree limbs on the house, no shattered windows, not even power loss! We took the boys out for a walk just to get out of the house and saw that a couple blocks over a large tree had downed a power line, but nothing like that on our block. Feeling grateful, we returned home. Then 2:30ish rolled around... the lights flickered once... came back on... and then they were gone. Oh, boy, we thought. Here we go. One week of living John Adams style loomed ahead of us. Actually I think I was irrationally optimistic that the power would go right back on within the next few hours, which of course didn't happen. Howie was so confused- he kept asking about the lights. The house we're renting has lots of windows, so the rest of daylight hours were fine, but as darkness set in we saw the gaping holes in our hurricane preparedness... the only sources of light we had were a small Maglite (bought during the supposed blizzard of the century last winter in St Louis... anyone remember that?? Supposed to dump 2 feet or something and instead we got 3 or 4 inches??), a zillion tealight candles, and a random battery-powered nightlight that our landlord had left in a box I came across. My respect for the aforementioned John Adams skyrocketed later that night after the boys were in bed with the battery-powered nightlight in their room when I tried to read by candlelight. That's hard!! I lit probably 10 tealights and I was nowhere near being able to read. Anyway, in very un-John Adams fashion, Josh and I abandoned reading and watched a movie on the battery life of the laptop. We heard dismal reports from a neighbor Monday morning that it could indeed be the following Sunday before power was restored because a substation had flooded, or something like that. So we steeled ourselves to live as those who went before us did and gave up hope of salvaging anything in the refrigerator. But lo and behold, the power came back on about 9 on Monday night! Just when I was getting down with living as Abigail Adams! It was actually a good reminder of the convenience of electricity that we take for granted and that we can survive with quite a bit less than we think. Anyway, that's our Hurricane Irene account. Now we just have a lot of bottled water in the basement.
• Justice, who turns 2 this coming Friday (crazy!!!), is obsessed with the Johnny Cash Children's Album. I could sing that whole thing frontwards and backwards. He frequently requests "Natdy Dan," or Nasty Dan, which is the opening song. As each track comes on he says "I like this one!!" He is also obsessed with Sesame Street Sings the Alphabet. I could do a complete performance of this while asleep, it is so deeply engrained in my subconscious. He and Howie have also discovered the Tom Petty Greatest Hits album, which brings me no end of joy. They love him!! How did I get so lucky?? I'm glad they still don't understand "Let's get to the point, let's roll another joint"... I've got a couple more years before that's an issue, I think. Oh Tom. I guess his old habits die hard.
• I read Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mom, which was just fascinating. I highly recommend it. I thought Ms Chua presented some pointed and accurate criticism of the stereotypical Western/American parent, although I wouldn't dream of mothering how she did. She did highlight that children are much more resilient and capable than we give them credit for, which I think is true. You will never find me harnessing Howie to the piano for practice sessions 2-4 hours a day, but nonetheless I enjoyed the book and found it insightful about some pitfalls of the ways I think about children. It reads like a quick novel and you'll enjoy it!!
• I am currently 36 weeks pregnant with Baby Girl and all seems to be well! We're very much looking forward to her birth but I also know that things will be crazy when she's born, so I'm still enjoying life as it is right now. But unpacking all of the pink has been so fun! Howie is semi-obsessed with his baby sister and I think he'll be sooo happy when she's born. Not sure about Justice... he still has some serious mother attachment issues so I'm not sure how he'll take someone coming into his territory, but he does love babies. So we'll see! Just waiting now. I'm thankful that the move is behind us. Now just a few more weeks of tossing and turning in bed every night, unable to get comfortable. The blight of late pregnancy.
• I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone, but we seem to have lost our camera in the move. I have lots of good pics on my phone, but of course I can't find the card reader right now, so I guess those will have to wait until I come across it!
• I love the Container Store so much. Especially when you have a very small kitchen.

OK I guess that's about it for now. That was much longer than I thought it would be!!