a curious babymoon

this family online journal is rarely written in these days, as we pack up our house & prepare for a move, a tour, a new home, & a new baby*.

this is sheppy doing his favorite thing--playing with cars.  from dawn to dusk, matchbox cars.  he even chooses a new one to sleep with every night, & constantly takes inventory of each car's whereabouts.  at the playground, rather than running & climbing, he plays with his cars on the sidelines, in the wood chips.  all day he asks, "which car do you wanna be, mama?" and asks for a bedtime song or a story about the particular car he's chosen to sleep with that night.  the other day he was asking for another matchbox car, so we emptied out his little mason jar bank of its $3 contents & headed to target for three $.97 cars--a forest service SUV, a white racing bmw, & a black 80s pontiac firebird.

heron emptied her bank for some target toys, too.  money earned from chores & watering our neighbor's garden : $9.23.  after fifteen minutes on the princess aisle, then the fairies & the my-little-ponies, i asked, "do you see anything here, or do you want to buy some more art supplies?"  to my delight she awakened, as if from some deep, disney-induced slumber, & shouted, "art supplies!  i want to buy art supplies!"  oh, heron.  it's a pleasure to see you making wise choices at age four!  there is some serious princess peer-pressure everywhere these days.

right now josh is driving heron & shepherd up to grandma & grandpa's for three days.  we will be here, childless & quiet, packing up our house during the day, going out on dates at night, before the littlest garrels arrives.  not quite the pre-baby (babymoon?) trip to peru we'd imagined, but we are thankful for a few days, just the two of us, before we're five.

*also, in the name of complete transparency i must confess my other pastime over the past week--all 644 pages of this book.  that's right--this english lit. major has scarcely read a novel in five years.  truly what is always on my bedside table for late evening, early morning, fifteen-minute breaks throughout the day, & middle-of-the-night-pregnancy-insomnia, is a missionary biography or autobiography.  it's the only inspiring read for me these days.  (though i wouldn't recommend this particular book to all my friends--it is really kind of all about the Holy Spirit, it's the best autobiography i've read since "chasing the dragon")