Gentlemen, start your engines!

Elijah loves food. There's just no getting around it.

A few weeks ago, I figured Eli would be crawling within the week. He was just SO CLOSE! I would surround him with his favorite toys and wonder why he just sat there crying. Last week Brent figured out that I was using the wrong kind of bait. FOOD. In one afternoon spent with his dad, Elijah crawled to cookies, crackers, and cheese. The only times he didn't get there were when Miriam took pity on him and moved the food closer so he didn't have to struggle so much. The next day, a mom got goldfish out for her kid during storytime at the library. Eli honed in on it and took off. Now he can go pretty much anywhere he wants to and he is simply pleased as punch about the whole thing. He is so much more content and happy and it is so fun hearing squeals of delight when he gets to something he's been working on. He has a hitch-in-the-get-along technique that we call the Gollum Crawl. He crawls on one knee, but uses his foot on the other leg. He cruises along at a pretty good clip considering that last week he couldn't even hold himself in crawling position. Eli's cousin Henry was the first kid I ever saw use the Gollum Crawl and I was fascinated with it. When Eli started doing it I was thrilled! It's definately hereditary. Anyway, I was going to put on a little clip of Elijah going after a goldfish. It's completely adorable. But I can't find the camera right now and don't want to look for it. When it shows up, however, you'll be the first to know!

Things I Love #4: Orson Scott Card

In celebration of Columbus Day, there was an article in the paper this morning about how kids these days are getting a more rounded view of Christopher Columbus, such as that he really didn't know where he was going or getting into and that through his efforts he brought smallpox to the Americas and killed off thousands of Native Americans. Quite frankly, the most I remember about my Columbus lessons was the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria and that we got banana boats with our school lunch. But between the Columbus article and today's celebration of Columbus Day, I remember one of my all-time favorite books by one of my all-time favorite authors. "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus," by Orson Scott Card tells of a future where people have invented a machine that lets a person see what happened in the past. They are the researchers of the future watching past actions and listening to past conversations, discovering how things came to be the way the are. When these people of the future find that the resources of the world can no longer sustain life and that their future will not exist beyond two generations, the pastwatchers decide to intervene in the past. They choose Christopher Columbus' search for a water passage to the east and ultimate "discovery" of America as the key event that will make the future happy and healthy for all humanity. It is a fascinating voyage both through the histories of Europe and Latin America and through "what would have been if..." I love the research that Orson Scott Card shows by the detailed historical references that are laced throughout his writing both in this book and many others. Another thing I love is his focus on interpersonal relationships and how many of his characters' thought processes include how they should word or phrase an idea for the receiver to understand it in the way it was meant. This makes the characters much deeper. It helps me to consider how my tone may be taken by others, as well as considering that the way I initially take somebody else's mean tone may not be the way he meant it. It also makes for fascinating parallel books, where the same interaction is shown from another character's point of view and the whole meaning of the conversation is different. It makes for quite enjoyable reading. Orson Scott Card is on my personal list of fascinating people I would like to meet. I am just amazed at his ability to depict history and its influences on the future, his understanding of the human character and how we relate to each other, his imagination of how the future could be, and the manner in which he combines it all. There are some Orson Scott Card books that I didn't like (Magic Street, Songmaster, and Homebody for some), and some that I enjoyed but don't recommend highly (the Alvin Maker series, Empire, and Saints), but I think that makes my enthusiastic recommendation of others even stronger. The Ender series (starting with Ender's Game, then following through Ender's lifetime with Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, then starting over with Ender's Shadow [taking place at the same time as Ender's Game but focusing on a different character], and following the lives of the other battle school kids in Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant) is wonderful albeit a bit tedious if you take them all back to back. The Women of Genesis trilogy (Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah) and Stone Tables, the story of Moses, are interesting and thought-provoking takes on Bible prophets and events. Enchantment is a delightful dip into fairy tales and fantasy whose main character is a distance runner. I read this one for the first time while I was dating Brent who is also a distance runner, so my view of it could be clouded by rosy glasses of happy happy times, but it only enhances the joy. And Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is simply fascinating. I highly recommend it. Oh, and Happy Columbus Day!

Hay-Maze-ing

Last year I discovered that Engh Gardens on 7th East in Sandy has an amazing setup for kids in October. They have a hay maze, a pirate ship, all sorts of put-your-face-in cutouts, and it's all for free. FREE! My kind of place. If you live in the Salt Lake area and have kids, you absolutely should go. We spent the afternoon there with our whole family, plus Shauna and Charlee, and had a great time. Charlee loved the pirate ship, but my kids were all about the maze. I have had my share of corn mazes, and they're one thing that I can honestly say I don't like and I don't want to like them. But hay mazes are definately the way to go. We went through this one a lot. And I never once felt trapped, exasperated, anxious, bored, or even mildly irritated!

Elijah is becoming quite the walker. After being carried and flown through many times, he fought and struggled to get on the ground and in charge of himself. He is a very determined little boy in many many ways. Brent held his fingers through the first half and I tagged teamed to save Brent's aching back and held him up through the second. I can attest that he chose where and when to turn. If I tried to make him go down an aisle he didn't want to, he dug in deep with his heels and gritted his gums together. He only made one wrong turn and that was when he followed Miriam (who had lapped us) go down a dead end. I'm fairly certain he did just for fun and completely on purpose. When they got to the end, Miriam put her hands on her cheeks and said "OH NO!" Elijah laughed, turned, and headed straight out the end. What a boy! And just to glimpse the joy of the hay maze journey for him...

And one more thing... what happened to my cute little baby? This kid is practically a toddler-adolescent-adult!!

Let the celebrations commence!

The grand annual Moore Family Halloween Party took place last night. It sure felt early, but here we are weeks from Halloween and we already have all our costumes not only decided on, but gathered and prepared.

This is us having a great time at the party. I'm a bat (the wings are made from an umbrella and though you can't see them are fabulous), Brent is Grandpa Moore (who when we went through his closet after he died had innumerable white button up shirts and about fifty virtually identical v-neck sweaters varying only in the weave and slight shades-of-gray/blue changes), Miriam is a doctor (notice the no-nonsense aura of efficiency and competency), Eli is a frog (and not quite sure about the whole experience).

A month ago, Miriam told Brent that she wanted to be a doctor for Halloween. I'm sure not going to disuade her from such a noble aspiration, but when I found a CareBear costume at my new favorite thrift store for $2, I grabbed it. She loved it and wore it for two days straight, but it never entered her mind to change from Doctor to Care Bear. She got so excited as we prepared her doctor costume, and even at one time said "I AM DOCTOR VILLALOBOS!" Who is in fact, our family doctor. When we arrived at the shindig, her cousin Carter was a surgeon. Ah the flurries of cameras catching the two pint-sized doctors before the discardment of stethoscopes and lab coats! Does anybody else look at this little series and have nightmarish flashbacks of those awkward-corsage-pinning-high-school-dance shots?

Elijah decided to be a frog. Frankly I think he has a definately frog-like smile, in the nicest frog-like way possible. It may be in the genes: Miriam had a definate frog-look to her during those early months although I haven't noticed it for a while. The decision to be a frog came last Spring when my mom called and said there was a frog costume at a garage sale. Good going mom! But have you ever seen a cuter frog? With Eli is cousin Avery. She sadly got scooted out of the doctor shot, but Elijah the Frog thought Avery the Witch was great. Although he was highly attracted to Avery's golden white hair and had to be untangled from it more than once throughout the duration of the evening. The stuffing actually made him feel like a big old teddy bear. He's usually squishy and cuddly, but that extra padding really enhanced the effect.

Although I have never been a huge Halloween fan, I find myself getting more and more into it. Strange how two little people can change your life so much! Miriam has been talking about the party all day, reviewing who was dressed as what and all the things we did. At dinner she gave a big sigh and said "that was a fun party last night." HAPPY HALLOWEEN!