Happy-making things:

- We got a donation of some Bobbsey Twins books at work today, the really classic original ones from 1904. I read them as some of my first chapter books when I was seven or so, but haven't read any in about 25 years. I was paging through the first book and while I had remembered a lot, I had completely forgotten the bit where Nan's foolhardy friends tried to jump rope 100 times in a row and collapsed in a dead faint from the strain. This didn't come as a surprise to Mr. Bobbsey, who had known of multiple little girls who had DIED from jumping too much. I hadn't realized jump rope had such a high fatality rate.

I think I need to read some more of these, because they're entertaining on the same level that a Victorian novel I once read was (or I should say, helped read aloud to friends while we howled with laughter), where a man from a village populated with a freakish number of redheads kills his wife and then develops guilt-induced meningitis. Even as a child, I recognized that things like the book that takes place in Holland, Michigan where they discover everyone there lives in the traditional Dutch fashion (they don't) and prominently featured an abandoned windmill as a plot point (there's one windmill in Holland, and it's a major tourist attraction) was pretty ridiculous, but clearly there's a lot more absurdity to be found by reading these as an adult.

- A new Thai restaurant opened up around the corner from us. One of the more disappointing aspects of where we live in the city is that while there are plenty of takeout and delivery places for food, you have a varied menu available of Italian, Italian, Chinese and Italian. We were excited when the first delivery menu arrived after we moved here, and then the next twelve thousand ninety-six arrived and we discovered that they all had exactly the same menu. We love and really miss Thai food, so it was an exciting day when we spotted the new restaurant to provide something a little different in the sea of cheese steaks that makes up the local restaurant scene. We were both braindead by Friday evening, so we ordered it and it was lovely. They had all of my favorite dishes, with just exactly the right amount of spice. I can handle a lot of spice, but I've actually found with some foods that I prefer it not be too spicy because there are other flavors I like that you can't taste if your tongue is being reduced to a carbon cinder. But my Drunken Noodles were just about perfect. And they even offer some Chinese food, so we were able to order an egg roll for K to make sure she would have something we knew she would eat (sometimes she is quite adventurous with how she eats. And other times, she decides to be four instead).

- I love three day weekends. Of course, in our case that means we only had today off together. But it was still a day off together when normally we would have had to wait until next weekend for that to happen. And since it was today instead of a Sunday when we have to get up for church, I got to sleep in. Bliss. And my mother arrived today for a visit. She was in Oberlin this past weekend for her college reunion, and decided that since she was already halfway here, she might as well come all the way. We're actually planning to be in Michigan at the end of June, but Mom being here now means we can spend less time with her then and take the extra time to go up to B's parents instead. It's a longer trip to them and they're able to travel to us more easily than my mother, so we don't get there nearly as often as we visit my mother. I think it's been three years since I was at their house, so I'm really looking forward to it. Hopefully we can get some good beach time in.

- I hesitate to even say this, but right now, we have two children sleeping in their own beds in their own rooms. FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE ALEC WAS BORN! We had decided to co-sleep with Alec when he was born, with the assumption that like K, he would let us know when it was time for him to sleep on his own. For K, she was always very sensitive to outside stimulus and it was a gradual process of her sleeping less and less if she was in the same room with us, until it became clear that co-sleeping was impossible. Alec, on the other hand, has been our little cuddlebug from the beginning, and for a long, long time wouldn't sleep unless he was in contact with another body. But over time, we've been able to put him down more often, until recently we realized we could put him in the pack and play next to us for naps and in the evening and he was sleeping a nice chunk of time. Long enough that I began to wonder how long he might sleep if there wasn't anything interesting around when he woke up to keep him from getting himself back to sleep. Or if he might be able to get through the night without a bottle if there weren't parents conveniently right there to provide a little snack when he woke up. And sure enough, so far tonight we've heard a few whimpers over the monitor but nothing that required any intervention. I'm really curious how long he's going to go.

We managed to get K back in her room a few weeks ago, after months of her in our bed. It was actually largely my fault, because we usually cuddle her for a while as she's going to sleep, and when I was eight months pregnant it was too difficult to get in her bed. So I would put her in my bed, which somehow turned into her in our bed every night. And once the baby came, we didn't have to energy to try and change it. But like Alec, she started to show signs that she would probably be willing to go back to her bed if we pushed, so we did. And bribed a bit. But it worked, so I'm not arguing.