Sonya doesn’t fear getting hurt, looking stupid, or wasting time. She pulled all the cushions off the couch, piled them up, and started jumping off. Over and over again. Mental note: Don’t overthink the risks. Take a leap of faith more often.

Usually, Sonya landed where she expected. When she didn’t, it wasn’t so bad that she didn’t want to jump again. In fact, couch jumping might become a favorite pasttime. Also: Drex came home from Boston this afternoon. He’ll stay for two days, then leave for Dublin. Tomorrow, he’ll take the girls while I go jumping.

Our friends invited us to their lake house for the weekend. It was amazing. Great weather. Great company. Great food. We ate, slept, lazed, went in the water, and totally unplugged from our city life.

Drex tried windsurfing without the sail. His triumph didn’t last long.

The lake was a magnet and Sonya was drawn to it. She even fell off the board, bobbed up gasping for air, in shock, screaming, but in less than thirty seconds, she proudly called herself a “fishie fish” who had gone under the water! She’s a brave one. She even swam out with Drex to hug a buoy.

I limited my lake activities to the rowboat. One time. The water was too cold for my ankles. But I enjoyed watching everyone else in the water from my lawn chair with a glass of red wine.

At my thirtieth birthday party, my friend Tamsin suggested a Georgia O’Keefe-inspired Ladies Night of Painting at her art studio. My creative soul sisters Molly Ann and Marilene went with me. I’m working on the easel to the right and they’re sitting across from me. It was a lot of fun! It’s nice to do things like this, to tap into that creative reservoir I have inside of me, every once in awhile.

These are our flowers. (Thanks to Tamsin for taking all the lovely pictures!) From left to right, the painters were: Molly Ann, me, and Marilene. We commented how the way we painted our flowers really expresses where we fall in the left-brain/right-brain division of the world.

Molly Ann is on the left. She’s logical, sequential, and analytical. Her painting has clearly defined boundaries. Marilene in on the right. Way on the right. She’s intuitive, random, and a total free spirit. She actually painted her rose by daubing blobs of color, building from the center outwards. It would never have occurred to me to do that.

“We can tell who has a master’s degree in art,” Molly Ann pointed out.

I’m in the middle of these two, but I’m definitely closer to being left-brained like Molly Ann. I like to have nice outlines. But I’m also trying to break free of that. See those leaves? I got inspired by Marilene and took a risk. I got a little carried away. The bottom left of the canvas almost pulls focus from the flower.

Anyway, I had a great deal of fun, and I hope we get ourselves organized again for another art party soon!

While Drex was making breakfast and I was doing damage control on the insurgence of last night’s dirty dishes, Sonya got Eewie set up on a stool in the kitchen. (That’s her nickname for Eeyore now— Eewie, and sometimes Eewie Bean, like Leena Bean). Sonya sat down next to Eewie and informed me that I could take a picture of them.

Then I thought— whoa, like, this would be a mega-great opportunity to attempt that elusive, in-focus, side-by-side sister photo.

So the girls are both in their pajamas sitting on plastic lawn chairs we bought from Dollarama two years ago. The perfect photo, given those constraints, would be a splice of these put back together. But the series of pictures provides an excellent case study for (1) how Sonya’s face evolves from a smile to a grin and (2) how Leena the up-for-anything baby starts to wonder what’s going on.

At Candle Time, Sonya said that the most fun thing she did today was color the fishes and watch them shrink in the oven. Dida sent us a package with Shrinky Dinks sheets and Sharpies.***

The heartwarming story of Shrinky Dinks, which I remember from my childhood in the late 80s, is that two Wisconsin housewives invented it for their sons’ Cub Scout project. It’s basically just sheets of plastic number 6— polystyrene.

Before starting, I did a little self-test to see if I remembered anything from my pre-med organic chemistry class. Then we googled a picture of the polystrene molecule. [Note: The molecule I'd drawn was wildly wrong. It seemed to confirm the long-standing suspicion that I've forgotten close to 100% of what I learned in college. Sonya, on the other hand, was very excited].

“Caterpillar!” she said about polystyrene’s chemical formula. Then we learned our word of the day— polymer. It’s really amazing and gratifying how much Sonya pays attention, listens, and remembers. Her brain isn’t just a sponge. It’s a shamwow.

Sonya made a literary reference about the (inaccurate) molecule I’d drawn. She said it looked like “A Very Hungry Polymer.” So I drew a watermelon for it to eat.

Later in the afternoon, she made a train out of blocks and announced, “Look Mom! It’s a polymer!”

It’s ideal to shrink the plastic in a toaster oven, but we don’t have one. Our shrinky dink fish got too warped for me to flatten out of our conventional oven, but Sonya was impressed, anyway. It seemed like magic.

Next, she wants to make tiny robots.

*** Sonya was only exposed to the Sharpies for about ten minutes and she didn’t get to handle the Shrinky Dinks until they were thoroughly cooled. Then I vented the oven. I tried to make the experience as non-toxic as possible.

A few days ago, I finally saw my name in print and I also got my first piece of fan mail from a total stranger! Just goes to show, you never know when your work, however humble, might have an impact on someone! My short story “Liftoff” spans pages 16 to 19 and you can even preview an excerpt on Amazon.com! Woohoo! That makes me feel like a REAL aspiring writer.

Here’s a few snippets from the story:

Ever since I was a little girl, I have dreamed about going into space.

Although on some deep level, I still wanted to be an astronaut, by the time I met Drex my freshman year of college, my career aspirations had become more down-to-earth.

Needless to say, I was very excited when I saw the yellow submarine. It was round with a large Plexiglass viewing bubble in the front, like a giant fishbowl eye where we would sit.

After about twenty minutes, we began our ascent to the surface. Karl turned off the submarine lights, and everything outside our bubble turned inky black. Then, all of a sudden, we were in a field of stars. We were crossing a bioluminescent layer of tiny fish and squid that live in the Cayman Trench. They glow in response to the light from the submarine.

… no matter how ridiculous, unlikely, or out-of-reach they might seem, Drex would always, to the best of his abilities, help make my dreams come true.

Perhaps I’m the most excited by the idea that the girls will be able to read our proposal story in this book some day.

Sonya is tall. She wears 4T clothes now and lots of people mistake her for a preschooler.  However, Leena is rapidly catching up to Big Sister. Each day, the two of them look more and more like each other.

It’s actually quite difficult for me to remember a time when I only had one daughter. They’ve both become such a huge part of my identity and my life and my soul and my aspirations. I don’t know who I’d be without them both.

At work, I now have something to touch with my fingers when I start to miss my girls for a moment, like for instance, when I go to the potty in a quiet stall all by myself. However, the five hours of each workday goes by really fast. I’m enjoying the project that I’ve been given. Before I know it, I’m back home to chat with Molly Ann, brewing her afternoon cup of orange pekoe tea.

As much as I enjoy my time in the office, homecomings are absolutely wonderful. So far, I’ve arrived to a quiet house because both the girls are still asleep for their afternoon naps. I get a little time to transition myself back to the home environment, and then I have groggy smiles and shouts and hugs and exclamations like “I been thinking about you, Mom!” or “I need some milk!” or ”I pooped in the potty all by myself!” A chubby finger will lead me to the kitchen for sippy cups of milk and a snack like juicy melon slices or fresh summer berries.

Later in the evening, when I’m mopping up a puddle of urine, cramming another clean load of laundry in the unfolded basket next to the bed, or picking up the perpetual clutter from the living room floor, I feel spurts of rage quickly dissipate as I remember to be grateful. It is a blessing to have the kind of joyful stress that surrounds a happy, busy, young family. Drex agrees (with the special brand of wit that he has).

Yesterday evening, in my hunt for a clean pair of underwear for Sonya after she wet her pants, I had a catastrophic and humiliating fall. I tripped over a massive watermelon that Sonya and Leena have been pushing around in a cart. My right foot got caught. My big toe nail got pulled back. My left wrist took the impact along with my jaw. Today, I feel sore and chagrined. And I’m taking it easy at home with my S and my L.

A package arrived from Sugar Land with some pretty amazing stuff. I’ll split up my discussion of the contents into three posts. First, we have a little walking Iron Man in Mark VI armor. He has glowing eyes and a button gold-titanium alloy Ark Reaktor. (Yes, we’re big fans of Tony Stark).

While Iron Man did a tour of the living room, Leena carefully studied the instructions for an Iron Man repulsor glove. I beta-tested it. My major discovery was that Iron Man’s armor might be able to withstand Thor’s hammer, but it sure couldn’t withstand Leena’s teeth. She bit down hard on my thumb. I almost dropped the camera. (By the way, check out Leena’s arm tat).

Drex got home and was super excited. He somehow crammed his massive Drex arm into the thing and started firing off foam bullets. That orange blur on the right is one of them veering off toward the space pod.