My Version of "Seven Up!"

Here is a picture of EB's latest masterpiece, descriptively titled: "My Favorites Wheel." In it, she documents her absolute favorite items in several categories.

As you can see, her handwriting skills are still a work in progress. To translate the scribbles, here are her favorite items as of January 2013.

• Favorite book: Captain Underpants
• Favorite animal: Lion
• Favorite food at McDonald’s (kind of a narrow, specific category): Chicken nuggets and chocolate milk
• Favorite food: Spinach (NOTE: For those keeping score at home, spinach has been displaced as of mid-March for a food to be named later.)
• Favorite color: Blue and black
• Favorite game: Angry Birds
• Favorite jewelry (not sure where this one stemmed from): Diamonds and silver
• Favorite funniest thing that happened: "When I put the 'hit me' sign on Daddy's back and I hit his back."

I think it would be interesting to have her update this every year so that I can track her changes—kind of like an annual version of the “Seven Up!” documentary series that has been tracking the development of a group of British people every seven years. Except, of course, my documentary would not really be a documentary—just a short little blog post on one girl's interests. And while my subject (singular, not plural) is infinitely interesting to me and K, it is just mildly amusing to our friends, and about as interesting as an ant on the sidewalk for strangers.

Binky in the Bottle

In the past few years, I have become more and more lax about list-making and "control" in general. The reason for this regression is that I've wizened to the fact that the concept of control is mostly an illusion. Sure, I can drive myself crazy and be all sorts of control freak--making lists, fretting, obsessing--but in the end, it really makes not an ounce of difference.

Besides, for the most part, K and I are pretty good at improvising when things go awry. As a case in point, we recently took the kids to Branson, MO for a weekend getaway. A few hours before we left, we ran around collecting various toiletries and last minute items. We were pretty proud at how quickly we were able to round up all of our things (and with two kids, we certainly had lots and lots of things), until we realized, upon reaching our destination, that we forgot to bring B's pack-n-play. And of course, this particular hotel did not lend out any sleep furniture for the kids-- no cribs, no pack-n-plays, no cages. We were left to fend for ourselves.

K and I scratched our heads, but figured we'd make do. We surveyed the room, and decided to surround the bottom of the kids' bunk bed with three chairs and a couple of suitcases. The effort earned us A+ in efforts but D- in safety. B was ecstatic; he thought that we had built him his personal jungle gym. Instead of sleeping, he climbed around the chairs, laughing like a drunken little troll. After an hour of cajoling and a near-nose dive from his bunk bed, K ended up driving to the nearest Walmart, where he become the proud owner of yet another pack-n-play.


Despite our minor memory lapse, we did remember to bring this:

...along with a couple of bottles of this: (it's the important stuff, right?)

Later that night, we realized that we forgot to bring a cork stop to keep our remaining bottle of wine fresh. But fear not, as K managed to improvise with this:

Gives a whole new meaning to the concept of nightcap.