Yes, we're still here

I know, I need to update the blog. I've taken a bunch of video in the past couple days trying to capture some of Elijah's funny just playing around things for you all to enjoy, but it's going to take some time to edit it all down to something reasonable to post.

In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures from today (sorry about the fuzziness).

Elijah sitting at the table in a grown-up chair, while Mama ate breakfast (again).

Wearing my maternity puffer vest like some sort of arctic king

Also, Melissa at Our Side of the Mountain tagged me to do this silly thing:

Rules -

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages.)
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

So, while I'll not tag anyone else (but feel free to do this too, if you think it's fun) here's mine. "Nearest" is a bit hard - I am sitting next to a very large and very full bookcase, so Patrick and I each grabbed a book off the shelf. I picked Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom.

"The essence of Berowne is in that insouciant line, uttered upon meeting a French lady-in-waiting in Navarre: "Did I not dance with you in Brabant once?"

Love's Labour's Lost is a superb and exact title, but Did I Not Dance with You in Brabant Once? would have done almost as well, since it conveys the outrageously high sophistication of this comedy. The play's opening speech, addressed by the King of Navarre to his fellow "scholars" - Berowne, Longaville, Dumain - has all the stigmata of a comic Baroque: (long quote from the play here)."

Patrick picked up Rick Steves' Ireland 2004.

"However, his chief surveyor, William Petty, knew good land when he saw it and took a quarter of what is now County Kerry as payment for his valuable services marking the "lands down" on maps. His heirs, the Landsdownes, created Kenmare as a model 18th century estate town and developed it's distinctive "X" street plan. William Petty-Fitzmaurice, the first Marquis of Landsdowne, and landlord of Kenmare, became the British Prime Minister who negotiated the peace that ended the American War of Independence in 1783."

As I typed this, I realized that I do actually have a couple of books "nearest" to me right here - Toddler Bargains by Denise and Alan Fields, which is a very useful book in it's way, but not written in a traditional paragraph style that I could even try to do this little exercise on, and A Godward Life by John Piper, which is also just a bit odd on page 123, but here it is:

"Paul: Take what, Timothy?
Timothy: Your words, what you say in your letters.
Paul: Do you mean the black marks on the parchment?"

Personally, I love all of these books and would recommend any of them. (OK, maybe I would recommend Rick Steves' current Ireland book if you were planning a trip, rather than using the 2004 edition endlessly. I am just attached to it because of the reminder of the trip that it took with us.) Yes, we have a strange and interesting collection of books around this place. I guess that reflects a bit on the person collecting the books - ha!