Digression

Allow me, if you will,
a moment of digression—

on digression, of all things, as I
would like to take at least one moment
to defend my own propensity—admittedly
extensive, my tendency toward Latinate
structures with
a half-dozen clauses dangling
subordinate to my point, but really,
one point is never actually enough—as I

was saying, defending that
thrill I get (because I do, really, I do) from
drawing out the entrails of a sentence
line after line, dash after dash,
comma after comma,
semicolon after colon after
semicolon in true
eighteenth-century fashion, since there is always

more to say, always that necesity
of interjection (in the absence of footnotes) to indicate
the complexity of the matter, to note
a historical context, or to suggest
another potentially brilliant
but discardable path (since if it were
truly brilliant, it would deserve
its very own sentence, its own sequence
of asides), which, to be

entirely honest, is
what I thought I’d met that day
when I heard as I walked
to my Latin midterm
your voice asking me
on a date: I thought,

ah, an aside to the sentence of my
semester (or perhaps a mere
minor digression from the aside which
that particular week
was certainly doomed to be); of course

then you went
and became a full-fledged sentence all your own, and then
a paragraph, a chapter
heading toward a tome that with each passing page
delightedly relegated Latin and exams to a state
beyond digression—they (them, theirs, and every antecedent
to every pronoun not “you” or “I” or “we”) became mere

endnotes, marked with a smallish symbol
only vaguely attached to the “s”
in “us”


—because I feel one coming on. 


 (Charisse Stephens in My Best Friend: The Long-Distance Courtship of Cory and Charisse Stephens or, An Autobiography of Us, pg 145-146.)

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Henry on Halloween

Petty Family Reunion

While we were in Utah this summer we got to spend time with the Pettys celebrating Cory's grandpa's 80th birthday. There was a week-long reunion with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews, lots of fun, and quite a few pictures. :)

Henry and Daddy on the swings (more at the bottom)

Family!

Henry! I love the way he folds his hands. That's what he does for prayers, too. :)

Henry, Daddy, and Grandpa Petty's (in)famous truck

Cory's mom and dad, happy grandparents with all their happy grandbabies (Maeve, Tripton, Henry, Rudy, and Bella)

Henry's face is cute. Daddy's face is priceless. :)

Henry, not too interested in sitting with his great-grandpa Petty

Henry? Where'd you go?

I love these ones of Henry and Daddy.

...and the horse. Henry LOVED the horses that belong to Grandma and Grandpa Petty's neighbors. (They also have a zebra. No kidding. And no explanation. Also, peacocks!)

Henry with Granny Stephens

Fourth of July

This fourth of July our friends called and invited us to walk up (literally--two miles of mostly up) to a parade with them. We're so glad we said yes! It was a great parade, tons of candy thrown to the kids, cool old cars, plenty of bagpipes, guys in fat pants dancing with mops, etc. So much fun. And here's the picture proof:

It was a lovely sunny day. Sadly, Henry was very tired (it interfered with naptime).

Guys in fat pants dancing with mops

Bagpipes (there were no less than two bagpipe groups)

And a group celebrating 100 years since California gave women the vote. :)

She was my favorite. And her sign. And her hat.

And then there was this guy at the back of the group. We couldn't decide whether the missing "R" was intentional, but I still lean toward not.

How can you not love a parade that has a Miss Art Deco?

Henry's friends Zoe and Amara ready to run into the street for candy...

And here's what Henry's doing while all this is going on. He's sitting on Dad's lap. Looking tired.

And maybe a little bit confused.

But he got a stuffed shark, so... great? Oh, and his onesie does say "My First 4th of July." (Thanks, Grandma Johnson!)

And most of the time he was shoving Cheerios in his mouth, because the parade also interfered with lunch time. All in all, though, it was so good to be out and about in the sun, and the parade was excellent. There's really nothing like a good parade. :)

Henry's Birthday Party

I thought we'd start with the fun part. Once our house was disease-free we had a few of Henry's friends over for a party. I took advantage of the excuse to bake and went a little overboard, but hey--is there really such a thing as too many cookies? Well, yes, I suppose there could be, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm going to post pictures of the party and then I'm going to post the recipes for the cookies I made. Because I like them. And I can. But first, the pictures! Because I love Henry much more than I love cookies.

Our amazingly adorable birthday boy. I think he looks like a Johnson in this picture. Especially with the curls.

Sugar cookies! I had a lot of fun with these. After Christmas last year I picked up a big box of cookie cutters on clearance and they certainly came in handy. (And yes, those ARE carmelitas in the corner...)

This is what I did with the "1"s that I cut out for the sandwich cookies above. No, the cupcakes were not from scratch. But the frosting and the cookies sure were.

I know what you're thinking: you've never seen anything cuter in your entire life. Not even that sneezing baby panda. Nope, not even close.

You'd think he'd never seen a match before. (Oh wait...)

And then he got to eat his first cupcake ever! Too bad he wasn't that interested, so there are no baby-with-his-face-totally-smeared-in-cake-and-frosting photos. He's not a clean eater by any stretch of the imagination, but the only part he liked was the frosting, and it seemed like it was just too much effort. Oh well.

Opening a card!

New books from his friends! Have I mentioned that he loves books? Books and balls are pretty much his favorite things. (After his parents, of course, I'm sure.) And that's his blurry friend, Chetan, who is just about as blurry in real life but very, very cute.

I keep wanting to say things like "I can't believe he's one!" or "I can't believe it's been so long!" and so on and so forth but while it does seem a little crazy that my boy is a year old now, it doesn't seem all that weird. Don't get me wrong, he was an amazing baby, but I'm not sad that he isn't anymore because he's such an amazing toddler. It's just too much fun watching him do all the new things he can do (or almost do). Speaking of which, I need to post some more videos of his new skills, which include a good-parts-only version of pat-a-cake (i.e. the rolling and the tossing). But first, cookies! Again, because I can. :)

Henry's Birthday!

Our baby turned 1 at the end of last month! He remains (as you shall soon see) ridiculously cute and generally superlative. We didn't do much that was special on the actual day of his birthday, since he and I were both sick, I think. But we did have him open his presents from grandparents, whom he loves (and who love him) very much.

About to open his first present! Clearly I spent hours on the wrapping...

It was a truck! With blocks!

Fun times :) (Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Johnson!)

Opening the push-cart thing. We were hoping it would help his confidence toward walking. So far he's...not so interested. But he does stand up by himself now!

Reading his new book from Grandma and Grandpa Stephens! They also sent him an adorable pirate outfit. I'll have to post a picture of that too. :)

Aaaaaaand here he is reading his book again before bath time. (Couldn't resist.)

And this is the present we got him. He picked it out himself, and he LOVES it. He loves rolling and tossing it around. I think a lot of the fun is the fact that it's as big as he is.

Birthday party pictures coming soon!