La la la la lots of little things la la la la la

- Ari smiles now!  Actual social smiles, not just reflexes.  It's the cutest thing ever.  And at my six-week postpartum checkup yesterday, the midwife weighed him: 11 pounds 6 ounces.  The kid likes to eat.

- Xander's new favorite books are close to my heart: Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat.  He asks for at least one of them every night.  I feel closer to my own childhood when I read them.

- It is HOT all of a sudden.  We had to put on the air conditioner because it reached 87 degrees in our bedroom.  Ugh.

- For Mother's Day, Jonathan and Xander brought me lunch in bed.  (They're way too smart to bring me breakfast in bed... if it's a day celebrating me, I'm always going to sleep through breakfast!)  Then we took turns trying out the new fabulous foot massager.  Fill it with water and it vibrates our feet.

- I passed my history class!  This is the one where I missed 5 weeks of it then took the final anyway.  Hooray for other people's notes and my cramming ability. :)

- Xander planted sunflower seeds in a pot with my mom before she left.  And then his Mother's Day gift to me from school was a painted pot with a flower that he planted himself.  I'll have to take pictures of them. They're both blooming like crazy.  We have them on our kitchen table so we can look at them at every meal and keep a close eye on their growth.

- And yet another way I know that spring, aka allergy season, is in full force: yesterday I saw what looked like a small white cloud of ash blowing down the street toward our house.  Alarmed, I turned to Jonathan and asked him if he saw a fire anywhere.  He started to laugh.  I realized what had happened right as he said it - our neighbor a few houses down had mowed his lawn... and all the dandelion seeds were now free and moving through the air.

- All my friends at the NY HUC campus, the ones I started the program with, were ordained last weekend.  Next weekend is LA ordination, I believe, and the 21st is Cincinnati.  I'm happy for everyone, and a little wistful.  I thought I'd be more sad, but I truly do recognize that I had a good trade-off.  One extra year for two kids ain't bad!