Greg and Heather!

Marty went to Denver last week to see our dear friends Greg and Heather get hitched. Pics up now in the July album at Shutterfly. This is my favorite. They are beautiful!

That's me between Peter Mayle and Stephen King!

Check it out. S P R A W L front and center in the McNally Jackson Bookstore in NYC! And with a "Recommended" sticker to boot.

Noises

This is a picture of Elijah trying out a goose honk. He's a very good honker. It's quite enthusiastic, quite life-like. In a way, the animal noises are names. When he sees an animal in life or in a book he points and makes its noise-name: mmmmm (cow), ney ney (horse), ssssssssss (snake), da ha ha (sheep and my favorite, crazy, maniacal, sheep-laughter), hon hon (goose), a guttural trill (pigeon), a snort (pig), zsa zsa (bee), panting (dog), two soft blowing o's (owl), etc. For cat, he's been saying kee ca (and his meow goes: dadn dadn, for whatever reason). He also says raw raw raw (for rocks), ba (for ball), rou rou (for round and for things that spin), dick (for stick), dir (for dirt), guch (for truck), ou (for outside), dee da (for up), duh (for down), wa wa (water), bbbbbb (for bubbles), hoh (for hot), boom (balloon), hah (hat), guh ou (go out), mama, dada. And there are still the Momo noises: deegadeegadeegadeega, duhguyduhguyduhguyduhguy, meenumeenumeenumeenu. It's clearly starting to get really frustrating for him that we don't always understand what he means. We often don't. Last night when we were doing our bedtime routine, he kept raising his arms (a kind of existential pointing-at-everything) and saying dis (which is what he normally says when he wants you to read a book, but it's usually when he has a particular book in his hands). I kept showing him books and he'd shake his head to say no and do the whole thing over. I still have no idea what he wanted. Maybe he didn't either? Anyway, sitting at breakfast just now and he's going hm hm hm hm and making the sign for more. More strawberries, please.

Walker

I've had some requests for walking vids. Here he is in Chicago O'Hare airport on our way back from Denver two weeks ago. Before you tell me to cut his hair, it's usually curly, what with summertime in Illinois, so not just laying there on his face like that. He had flat Rocky Mtn hair that day. But cute, you know, no matter what. Enjoy.

Catching Up

We're been busy lately, which seems wrong, somehow, since it's summertime. It's so hot here today, hot and sticky and tornado-warningy. Makes me tired, cranky, lazy. But there's no time for any of that! I'm busy getting Dorothy's second book to the printer this week, and working on publicity stuff for our first book, and some stuff for my own book(s), and we spent a week in Boulder at Naropa where I taught a class called Performances of the Everyday, and gave a reading, and moderated a panel on small press publishing. And of course there is always Dalkey work. Always! Meanwhile, Elijah is busy in all his own ways . . . he started walking the first morning in Boulder. Maybe he needed a change of pace? Or a truly different altitude? He just woke up and walked. Done. And he's started obviously mimicking our speech. He had on a shirt today with a duck another duck and a goose and he walked around saying (sort of) Duck Duck Goose, which I'd said when I dressed him. He also makes a whole zoo's worth of truly adorable animal sounds. Newest additions: goose, snake, rooster. And his pigeon is getting really good. Uncle Ethan would be so proud. He's just so communicative lately. He points and gestures a lot and this morning, after clearly asking to go out for about an hour (we were really busy doing Dorothy stuff and waking up and making breakfast, etc.), he waddled into the kitchen with his sandals in his hands and held them up to me. Kid knows what he wants! He is a very sweet boy. Gives lots of kisses. Has started trying to pick up and hug the cat. Loves his mom and dad very much. And is loved, ridiculously, totally, resoundingly, in return. Yesterday we went to a little petting farm with Katrin and Anton and a goat started to nibble the hem of my skirt (actually, I was a little scared too), and Elijah got so upset. He was pretty obviously afraid the goat would eat his mom and also it seemed he wanted to defend me but wasn't sure how, since the goat was about an inch taller than him, and had horns. Okay, M is getting him to sleep and I'm going to brush my teeth and read. I'm working my way through Anna Karenina during naps. Pictures soon.

I finally put up new pics at Shutterfly. Also . . .

You may have noticed a lot of vegan-type websites and blogs popping up under my links over there. We've officially made the switch. There's been a little back and forth (from vegetarian to vegan) and I still sometimes eat vegetarian when I'm at a friend's house and they've cooked me something but not cooked vegan. Anyway, we're getting there and I'm feeling so happy about the decision! If you ever want to talk about it with me--the food/recipes, the animal rights issues, the environmental issues, the love--I'd be thrilled to!

Also over in the links: Dorothy, a publishing project! Not sure when you last checked it out, but it's pretty close to a f'reals website now. Or, actually, yeah, it's f'reals. We just got two advance finished copies of our first book back from the printer. It's pretty. So pretty.

And: Siglio. The book page for S P R A W L is now up. The book had its first review, at Publishers Weekly. It was neither good nor bad, which I'll decide to think of as good. Really, I think it tipped more to the good, but it was largely descriptive. But the two reviews under mine (the only other ones I glanced at) were kinda brutal, so all in all, you know, huzzah.

xoxo-D

PS: Here's a teaser: