Playing hard, learning lots

Julian is amazing us these days with his curiosity and developmental skills. No matter how many times your kid does something new, the newness never gets tiring.

He opened the screen door to walk in the house today and then turned around and closed it behind him. Ian said he was pouring his juice from one cup to another and saying "juice," then drinking it and saying "nice." He held on the end of Shiva's leash and repeated "good girl" on a walk today. You ask him his name, he says "Juli." Ask him to play guitar, and he rocks out with an air guitar that would rival any at the Alamo Drafthouse competition.

Did I tell ya about my girl Ruby?

Our adventurous weekend in Houston offered its own learning opportunities. He got to see elephants, turtles, lions and the lot at the Houston Zoo (the monkeys! the birds! it was enough to make a kid's head explode), and he even went to his first beer tasting. Well, he stuck with root beer while Erin and I hit the St. Arnold's sauce. Some Montrose shopping meant he got to run in and out of dressing rooms while mommy was only half clothed. It was hot as hell, but he stuck out one final destination for me: the Menil Collection, where the two of us quietly perused the cool, quiet galleries, taking in the powerful and moving works. He finally fell asleep in the Rothko Chapel and slept most of the way home.

Add to that nap, which was his only one the WHOLE WEEKEND, a full day yesterday with Dad and Corey on the Greenbelt and Barton Springs and an evening of kickball, he was tuckered out enough to sleep until 9 this morning.

I took a few photos and videos of this weekend that I'll hopefully post later this week. Sorry I've been so neglectful to La Vie Dansante. Relish Austin has taken over my life a little, including a column tomorrow about cooking in bulk and freezing food and this video about how to make a great margarita, but I'm starting to really get into food blogging. Happy reading (and eating!)...

A snake and a spoilsport on the Greenbelt

(you'll have to turn your head to watch it. sorry!)

Jules, Shiva and I thought we'd stroll the Greenbelt this morning before it got too hot out and I had to head to work. Not only did a cop on a bike bust me for letting Shiva go without a leash, but I also saw a snake! (Maybe a Texas rat snake?)

So much excitement and it's not even 11.

Take this, bike cop!

Sabotage after the wedding

One post wedding highlight was the discovery of a large insect similar to the one above, but with bigger mandibles and a longer, more swollen abdomen, that Scott bravely caught in Uncle Tom's garage. This bug was massive. Tom said he'd never seen one like it in 20 years living and working outside in Central Texas. No one knew what it was, but termite or ant queen were thrown out there.


It looks like it may have been a female dobsonfly, but we'll never know for sure.


Amid all the excitement about the bug arose the question, "What do we do with it?" About half the crew (not to generalize, but they tended to be vegetarian, with the exception of the overly emotional one who was moreso after a half dozen drinks) wanted to let go back to its business.

Ian and I were in the camp that wanted to keep it not just for posterity, but also for research and art. Ian grew up with a fascination of bugs and bug collections, and Troy introduced me to the study of entomology back in college. We wanted to pin it to a cork board and frame it for Julian's room.

Ian felt particularly strong about keeping it, so he put the argument to rest by pulling the groom card. We all went back to the party. No less than 20 minutes later, we discovered the sabotage that had been had on the bug container. The glasses that had been holding the creature were in the sink; the insect long gone. It quickly turned into a Clue style game of whodunit, with one clear pro-bug-life perpetrator who we'd thought had passed out in her grief-stricken state.


Now all we have are some crappy pictures we took and a memory of the biggest, gnarliest flying bug any of us had seen.

Top photo by kaleidoscope, via flickr.

Julian meows (kindof)

I just got a cell phone (not for the first time; I've had to give them up to overcome a mild cell phone addiction I developed in college.), and it's proving to be pretty super cool. I got it mainly for work, and I went through wirefly.com for both the phone and the cell service. If you are a new customer, you can get mad deals. I ended up with a LG Shine that has a video camera and connects via bluetooth to my computer! I took this little video right before Julian went down for a nap just now. Technology these days...

We're headed to the new fountain park by Lady Bird Lake (Town Lake) to enjoy the perfect May day.

From the vast archival desert...

...I pull this photo of my mom and me from way back in May 2002. We were driving through the Arizona (or hell, it could have been New Mexico, to a Midwestern girl like me, they all looked captivatingly the same), en route to San Diego.

It was the first of two summers I interned at KPBS radio, worked myriad jobs (holla, Kinko's) and got my fill of sweet coastal California life. Uncle Chris invited me out there at the end of his Pioneers and Settlers speech, one of the pivotal invitations I've received in my life. He opened his home and his family to me. I helped grocery shop and cook (and ate plenty, I'm sure. Gez, lay off the Pokey sticks, would ya, Ads?). Mother's and Father's Day. Birthdays. I felt like an adopted daughter. They were so patient as a stumbled and triumphed in my new surrounding. It's still a time period of my life of which I am so proud. Making friends out there. Going to movies, parks, festivals and beaches entirely on my own. Discovering Addie outside Missouri was thrilling. It was the exciting taste of exploration that led to me studying in Spain my junior year of college and, eventually, to move to Austin.

And my mom, literally my life's connection to Missouri, came with me on my journey across the country to drop me off on this new chapter. Neither of us really comprehended the impact of my time out there, which, as a The New York Times article last week concluded, is better. No preachy parting words. No defiance of parental authority (I'd had my fill of that the previous two semesters as a freshman at MU). Just buzzing through the CDs and random truck stops along I-40, observing the now, recalling the past and hinting at the future along the way.

I fell in love a couple of times in San Diego, but fresh out of my chrysalis, I mainly fell in love with me. You're supposed to do that in college. You finally get to make all these concrete decisions based on whatever the hell you want. I'm just so thankful that they gave me the opportunity to do that. The Cooks for providing a home away from home. My parents for the good old '98 Corolla I still drive and for keeping me company along the way.

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Randomly from the archives: Dearest Scott Schnelle, always the animal lover, took in a pair of skunks right before I took off that summer. On one of those trips to Lockwood to visit Troy, he showed them off inside their little cardboard box homes. If I remember correctly, one of the little guys stuck around and, though he lived outside, hung around the house for awhile. Unless I'm getting my animal stories swapped. Scott has so many run-ins with critters, it's hard to keep the tales straight. Ask him about the bobcat sometime. Or maybe the two Jills.

Thought I might showcase a different baby every now and then.