109

Well, y'all, it has been hot here in Texas. (Not that this is a shocking statement, since anyone who reads this blog either lives here or generally watches the news.) We're in a severe drought, and the dryness and heat are perpetuating one another, which means it is just getting hotter and hotter.

My car thermometer on Sunday:

A ridiculous happenstance: the rubber on the handle that you grip when you open the back of our minivan has been getting softer and softer in the heat this summer. The other day, I walked out to the car and saw this:

It had dripped right off.

It's August--the hottest month, anyway--and it has come on full force. We set a record last Saturday: the high was 109F. The last time it was that hot was during the first week of classes at Rice in 2000. Nathan's roommate had skipped breakfast, given blood that morning, and walked clear across campus to our college for lunch, then fainted in the lunch line and knocked his head on a table on the way down. For as long as I've known him, he has always been in good shape, but even he couldn't hold up to being out in that heat after skipping breakfast and giving blood.

Every place in Texas is hot, but I think good old Wichita Falls (near the Oklahoma border) set a major record with the number of triple-digit days they had in a row--I don't know how many it's been now, but I do know that as of mid-August, it was at least 80. I watched a little clip of their local forecast, and the meteorologist said that when all is said and done, their average daily temperature for the entire summer will probably be around 105.5F. Excuse me?! That is nuts! That's the worst account of heat I've heard, but other Texas cities have had it bad, too: Dallas had at least 40 consecutive triple-digit days, and Houston has beaten its previous record with 24. Given that 30 of the 31 days this month alone were 100+, Houston has also easily set (and continues to add to) a record total number of triple-digit days. This is the worst one-year drought on record for Houston. My garden didn't really stand a chance.

You know what's funny, though? For a girl who does not like the heat, I've been doing okay. In fact, I was out running errands the other day when it was 109, and I didn't know it was that hot. Sure, walking out of Target feels like walking into an oven, but it is actually not as oppressive as most summers in Houston. I was about to start thinking that perhaps some elemental change had happened to me (I've always abhorred August in Houston) when I realized that the reason it feels a little more bearable is because it's not humid.

And there you have it. The Upside.

Jane Lately

Oh my. Dearest Jane. She is a handful these days. We are experiencing a burst of curiosity and exploration from this girl, and it is leading her into some interesting territory. And by "interesting," I really mean "dangerous," "annoying," and "messy."

For example, before 9am yesterday, the girl had found the drawer where I keep the crayons and colored on one of the dining room chairs, dragged an open bag of flour halfway across the house, and climbed one level up on the pantry shelves and was hanging precariously until I rescued her. And she was delighted with each transgression. This morning, she dumped out a bag of pasta onto the pantry floor (the pantry, by the way, is her favorite room), pulled out the stickers and made extensive use of them, pulled all the spoons out of the silverware drawer and dumped them all on the floor, and did some beautiful artwork on her legs with a marker that Nathan and I thought was out of reach--and almost all of that was accomplished while I was in the shower.

I would just like to take a moment to point out that my active little boy never did these things. Only my sweet little girl.

She is still a girly girl, though. She loves dresses, shoes, purses, and jewelry. She still loves to give kisses, and her teddy bear is always by her side in bed and just after she wakes up.

Here are two pictures of the Vaseline Incident, which occurred about a week ago. She rubbed half a jar of Vaseline into her hair.

As I discovered (and should have known beforehand), a bath does not get Vaseline out of hair, because Vaseline is not water soluble. It took a couple of days for it to work itself out.

Janey loves stickers.

A trip to the snow cone stand.

Jane's new camera smile.

Another exhibition of the camera smile.

Did you see my bow? I just now have enough hair for one!

We love that Jane Elisabeth, but she sure is a handful these days!

There's a Reason for It

Home buying process = fewer blog posts.

We'll be back soon!

Noah Lately

Some things Noah has said over the last couple of days:

• "Look! A water mountain!" (fountain)
• "Noah, did you get a haircut?" "No, not this year."
• To me: "You a Momster!"
• To no one in particular: "Hey! Get out of my mind!"

A picture he took of himself (there were many, including of the inside of his mouth):

He is still hilarious and highly energetic. He is entirely potty trained, but he still tries to get some of the old rewards out of it. At the moment, he is trying to get me to take him to go get a donut. He is the slowest eater in the family and is consistently left at the table with two thirds of his dinner left after the rest of us have gotten up. A lot of it has to do with the fact that he is easily distracted during meal times, but the truth is that he has always been a very slow eater. He loves Curious George and Phineas & Ferb. And he loves movies, which he has started narrating all the way through as he watches them--I think it's that toddler/preschooler fondness for reiterating familiar stories. Lately, he has discovered an intense fascination with Play Doh, which is wonderful. I like that we have finally found something that captures his attention for more than ten minutes at a time.

And he is ever a ham!
Here he is standing like a flamingo, making a . . . flamingo face?

Silliness!We sure do love that Noah Thomas!