Abundant Recompense Copy

Baking Vacuuming Setting the table All at a mere 15 months of age. Not bad.

It was between 60 and 70 degrees for most of last week, but winter decided to give us another poke in the eye today before it gives up. Our little Addison has become quite the outdoorsman over the past couple weeks. He'd stay outside all day and night if we'd let him. So he and I decided that snow or no snow, it's officially spring, and we're going outside. Add loves to eat snow. (The camera battery was dying, so you have to look at these two as if they were one.)

How can you not be happy in the morning when you have this little guy in monkey jammies to wake up to?

Addison and I spent some time yesterday shoveling gravel out of what is hopefully going to become our garden spot. And growing right in the middle of the gravel was a fun little St. Patrick's Day surprise.

Our little guy is quite the conversationalist these days. Besides knowing essential words such as "fish," "kitty," "Daddy," and "cookie," (he actually learned that one today) he can shoot the breeze with the best of 'em.

If there's one thing Mingledorffs know, it's how to eat. Therefore, I fret when my son refuses to do so. Is it too cold? Are you sick? If you liked it a week ago how can you not like it now? Etc. Nate assures me that he knows how to eat and he'll do it when he's hungry. My friend Diana who is a mom and also a dietitian has explained a million times that toddlers grow at a slower pace than infants, therefore they're not going to hog down everything in sight like they used to. I am fully aware that they are both 100% correct. But I just want him to eat food when it's time to eat food and I want him to like it!!! Is that too much to ask? That said, we had a bright shining lunchtime a day or so ago that I felt to record for posterity (but mainly for myself so I can remember that it occasionally does work). He ate: lunchmeat, cheese, crackers, juice, beans and rice, yogurt and a bottle! In one sitting. YEAH!!!!! I like to think that I was sly by giving him the bottle...

We have a tendency to throw around the term “Once in a lifetime opportunity” rather freely. Everything from amusement park visits to furniture sales are touted as ONCE IN A LIFETIME EVENTS YOU CAN’T MISS!!! Well, on Thursday night, Michelle and I had an honest-to-goodness once-in-a-lifetime experience. We met Wendell Berry at a book signing and heard him read his work. Wendell Berry is one of my heroes. I’d put him the list of five most important living writers. He wrote about the health of the land and environmental sustainability long before it was in vogue to do so. The man has got it figured out. Reading him makes me want to plant a garden, make my community a better place, spend more quality time with my family, and SAVE THE WORLD! Somehow, this crotchety old 75-year-old Kentucky-farmer-turned-Stanford-trained-scholar-turned-Kentucky-farmer-again manages to fire me up about doing right and doing good by the environment and each other. And not just me - the crowd at the reading was...

Apparently the destroying angel has taken up temporary residence at our house: Addison has croup, and the boy sounds awfully pitiful with his cough. Besides being a little extra whiney and clingy, he’s taking it like a champ, and still sleeps through the night. Michelle is kind of coming down with it too, but we’re hoping it won’t take. She's 2 weeks into the second trimester, and does well healthwise. Nate is a mess, period. His incision is healing quite well, thank you, but the rest of him is falling apart. He had a sore develop on his abdomen which of course he scratched and irritated until it grew to the size of an RV, and when his doctor saw it, she panicked about infection and gave him not one but two shots in the bottom end. Shoulda listened to Michelle one of the 40,000 times she said, “Leave it alone!” Nate also developed what he thought was just an embarrassingly severe case of acne on the right side of his face. Then his nurse told him it wasn’t acne. See, Nate takes an ...

I’m about to commit what I’m sure is a blogging faux pas - I’m putting up three posts in a row. Sorry. If you’ve ever spent any time at the Mingledorff house, you start to realize that a prime pastime is telling (and retelling and retelling) family stories. More often than not, the climax of the story is that the storyteller wet his or her pants, but there is enough variety that even when you hear the same story, it’s good for side-splitting laughter. So last year, Michelle had the idea to immortalize these stories and have them printed up as a Christmas present for Mom and Dad Mingledorff. She spent February to October pestering us all to write down our memories, and everybody really came through. Somebody transcribed stories told by Ryan and Kaylyn, and even Russell contributed from the mission field. We ended up with over 60 stories. Then Michelle and I found a short-run printer online, and we edited and typeset all the stories, and we published Around the Kitchen Table: Mingledorff...

Dear Little Yellow Flowers, I hope you know how happy it made me when you suddenly appeared by the front walk last week. You're so cute and small and I wasn't expecting anything like you for at least a few more months. I get worried every time the temperature drops below 30 or so or when it snows that you won't make it. But every time I peek out the window you're still there looking happy. I guess I'm just trying to say that you make it possible for me to believe that we won't be in an arctic tundra forever. Thanks. P.S. You're awfully nice for letting Addison smell you 50 times a day.

The day after Christmas Nate and I got an awesome present. I think this is the lowest-quality ultrasound print-out ever, by the way. We're still waiting for it to be delivered. We hear it'll be sometime around August 23rd.