good day

--E woke up an hour earlier than usual, which did not work well with my staying up an hour later the night before--but then i put him downstairs with eldest daughter G and went back to bed (thinking she would wake me when he was fussy) and the young Romanian graduate student who lives with my parents helped out and so i ended up getting another hour of sleep! that NEVER happens!

--my parents took us all to visit Amish country--Arthur, IL. Very fun driving around and watching the men and women working in their fields and gardens, draft horses at work plowing and horse-drawn carriages and kids riding their bikes on the country roads--even saw women having a quilting bee on a back porch! Although I must say I had an idea in my head that the Amish--being known for their excellence in hand-made furniture and quilts--would eat a bounty of simple and hearty but fresh gardeny foods much like, of I don't know, the pioneers. You know, fresh-baked bread and fresh sliced tomatoes and fresh corn and spinach. As it turns out, the Amish in Central IL eat pretty much what the rest of middle America eats, if the selection at the Amish-run restaurant we went to for lunch is any indication. It was just like Country Buffet, or Hometown Buffet, or any such restaurants that serve their winter blend vegetables spoon soft and swimming in butter and whose average patron age is 55. Very hearty stuff, and it was fun to eat such traditionally homey food. They even had canned chocolate pudding, which I have a very strange weakness for. But the best "We're Not In California Anymore" moment was reading a label in the puddings section of the salad bar that identified a dark flecked, yellowy offering as "Snickers Salad." Ah, only in the Midwest would anyone call a pudding with candy bar crumbles mixed into it a "salad." (in the cookbook I have at home compiled by ladies at my parents' home church as a fundraiser years back, one "salad" is based on a combination of green jello, canned fruit, marshmallows and Seven Up. Not what we think of in CA when we hear "green salad"!)

--E got really silly right before bath time and belly laughed and shrieked at the antics of his sisters for at least 20 minutes non stop. Then he and I got into the bath together, and I realized we have NEVER bathed together before! My parents' bathtub is a huge antique ceramic one, and the water was something like 15 inches deep, and he was SO cute in it! He was very intent on trying to catch the water in his hands, not just casually splashing and exploring but watching carefully and then trying to grab the spot he had been watching, and bringing up his hands over and over to suck the water off his fingers, again not casually, but seriously, purposefully. He was really trying to figure out this whole water thing in a way I have never seen him do before, and it was so sweet. The water was so deep he had to sit on my lap and then it would still be up to his armpits, so I held him carefully to keep his face out of the water and he just twisted and lunged and was not even afraid the few times he suceeded in getting his face in it.

--Then when I checked my email tonight after getting the kids in bed, I saw that an improptu reunion of some of my college suitemates (our dorm was set up with clusters of three rooms to a small common living area, with two people to a room) is going to happen here at my parents' home on Fri! There were seven of us who were good friends and managed to live in various suites and apartments with one another during our 4 years of college. They all live in different parts of IL, IN, OH and MI, with little ol' me all the way out in CA. So even though they have had "Suite reunions" several times since we all graduated, I have never been able to attend. We have all just recently been in touch again, and now getting to see four of them together is so exciting! The news makes my night.

I could have told you the not so great parts of the day, like making a horrible muck of soup tonight for dinner when I tried to cook with electric burners instead of gas; or G being "eye-sick" (migraines? sinunitis? dr has not yet diagnosed to my satisfaction, but it happens every couple of months) for the fourth day in a row, which is a record; or E being fussy much of the day, etc. But I am sitting here in such contentment, that non of that is worth remembering.

The good times roll on.

Tomorrow, shopping.
Thursday, Land of Lincoln!