Today is a busy day!! I was a hostess at Deidre‘s baby shower this morning, and am a hostess at Esther’s wedding reception (remember, the event that I made 300 invitations for?) tonight!! I am at the moment resting while Ali naps.

Since Kendall is already 15 months old (she is being adopted), it was fun to buy presents for her – I could actually buy toys and she’ll actually use them – soon!! She is going to make a WONDERFUL addition to Ali and AJ’s little best friends club – it will be so cute!! Ali is already talking about “tendall”. Here are Kendall’s presents from Ali and AJ:

I was responsible for chicken salad, but I wanted to do something a little differently than the usual sandwiches or little pie cups, so what do you do when you need a dose of culinary inspiration? Ask Ann Marie, of course!! She gave me the idea of putting it on cucumber rounds. To further spice it up, I soaked the cucumbers in Nabeel’s Greek dressing for a few minutes, and put a cherry tomato (from my Mom’s garden – I even put a sign on them saying they were safe!!) on top. Here’s our entire food table:

Here’s Deidre opening Kendall’s presents! Doesn’t she look AWESOME for being 15 months pregnant?!?!?! Best looking Mommy-To-Be that I’ve ever seen!!!

All of you who are on facebook, I’m sure, are aware of that relationship status option. I’ve decided that “it’s complicated” is the best way to describe how Ali feels about her new cousin Eli. She talks about him ALL the time, and 98% of of the time when we ask her who she wants to pray for, she says, “Pray Eli!”.

BUT, when it comes to face to face encounters, she avoids him. We’ll be driving up to their house, and she’ll be chanting in the backseat, “Eli House! Eli House!”, but as soon as we get inside, she’s like a little opposing magnet – keeping her eye on him so that she can keep as much distance between them as possible. As soon as she hears the word “home” come from my mouth, she is saying “bye bye Eli”, and heading for the door. And, if we force the issue of her getting nearer to Eli, we get frightened and horrified looks like the one I showed you earlier this week:

Yesterday morning: Ali woke up on the 2 Year Old Side of the Bed. It was so weird, because she is usually so sweet and compliant. She did the opposite of what I told her, then would just STARE at me – she has quite a stare when she is being belligerent. Here’s a picture that I got of “the look” a couple of weeks ago:Chilling, isn’t it? She would hit whatever was nearest to her in frustration when I said “no” about anything, and she would not do what I asked her to do until she got disciplined. Her attitude was such a new thing, that it didn’t frustrate me too badly, I was more just amazed at how quickly it came on!!

The other day, I noticed that I had a whole bunch of bright blue gunk on my car’s splashguard. It looked like really brightly colored silly string. Wierd. Wouldn’t come off, either.

Later that afternoon, Chris is pumping gas, and I happen to look at the wall of the gas station: Bright GREEN silly string!!!
Was there a local silly string war and I didn’t get the memo???

You know how when you hear a word you’ve never heard before, you then hear that word 5 more times in the same week? You know how you can sometimes manage to keep bumping into the same person in random places over and over (like the random woman that I saw at lunch on one side of town and then at dinner at another side of town on Tuesday)? I have had that experience, over a period of many years, with Jesus in a Box.

I was first introduced to Jesus in a Box (JIB) shortly after I joined facebook several years ago. There was a facebook account set up with a picture of a statue of Jesus, encased in a glass box with wood panes through it (making it look more like a jail cell). It was intriguing to me, because it was a “UAB” account – so I was quite curious if this statue was on UAB’s campus, or if it was just a random statue. Every now and then, I would see the facebook account again, and my curiosity would once again be piqued.

Last year, when we moved to our new house, I finally got my answer. I was driving down Overton Road (a road I had been on many times before, but that I now drive on at least 4 times a week), and I happened to look to my left, and there it was – the JIB Statue!! It was in someone’s front yard, as boxed in as ever, and the box was even built on top of bricks!! THAT statue wasn’t going anywhere!! Here it is:

Then I passed it at night, and realized it had spooky uplighting in it:Now that I knew that JIB was in someone’s front yard, it puzzled me even more. What were they trying to say? What was the purpose of JIB? I’m all for sharing Jesus with my neighbors, but is this an effective way of doing so? It’s a little strange and “out there” to me. Do they think that someone is going to drive by their statue of Jesus, encased in a glass box, and all of a sudden want to follow Christ? What about Exodus 20:4, in the ten commandments, that says (In King James version, for effect), “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”?

Then I also wondered: who created the facebook account? Surely its not the people that live in the JIB house. Is it someone that knows them? Or just someone, that, like me, was driving by one day and saw it?

Some time passed, and one day I was in Cahaba Heights (the town right next to the street on which JIB resides, and I was behind this truck:

I have also been aware of this company for quite some time. They bought up a bunch of the Cahaba Heights rental properties from the Landlord of our first townhouse when he retired. So their signs have been around Cahaba Heights for years, and I have seen this truck many times as well. So I’m headed home, and he’s in front of me. Sure enough, he turns into the JIB house!! He is the owner. Makes a little more sense, seeing as I have always thought all of the signs on his truck were a bit outlandish also. It’s not that I don’t agree with his statements, it’s just that I tend to be a little more, shall we say, subtle, about making statements.

Recently, I had one more loose end tied up regarding JIB. Through Eli’s shower and birth and hospital stay, I got to know one of Lindsay’s friends, Julie. One day, via facebook, I found out that she was the co-creator of the Facebook JIB account!! Mystery solved!! She said that she and her friend, like I, happened to be driving down Overton Road one day, looked to the left, and did a U-Turn to go figure out why in the world Jesus was in a box!

So, if you ever happen to be driving down Overton Road, look to the left, and see Jesus in a Box, at least you’ll have more questions answered than I did! But I’m still looking for the answer to the question, “why????”

Ali is officially a one-nap-baby now. Naps had started to become a struggle a few weeks ago, and so while we were on our beach trip last week, I went ahead and swapped her her to one-nap days, since that is what AJ does, and also to try it out while it wasn’t critical (i.e. I didn’t have work to do).

I’ve been very hesitant to go down to one nap since I work only during her nap times. She was napping 3-5 hours a day total, and I didn’t know how long I would get when she just had one nap, so I knew that I would either have to cut back on my work or get creative.

The last three days have been the first “official” work/one-nap days, since we were basically on vacation all week last week (Chris was off all week). It has gone surprisingly well!! She has napped about 3 – 3 1/2 hours each day, and the most amazing part is. . . . she is sleeping TWO WHOLE HOURS LATER every morning!! She used to sleep 7pm-7am, but for the last three days, she has slept 7pm-9am!! So I am still getting up at 7am, taking a shower, having my bible time, and then still working for a little while before she even wakes up! So that is VERY helpful in the transition to one nap. It may not last forever, but I’ll take it as long as it is offered to me!

Oddly enough, I think she is actually sleeping MORE all in all now that I have swapped her to one nap!!!

As usual, things are never as bad as I fear that they will be.

My little fashionista insisted on wearing her sunglasses all day yesterday – indoors or out – because they were pretty, and even, according to her, “gujus” (gorgeous).

These were also her official 18 months-on-the-day photos. For comparison, here she is, in the rocking chair, at 15 months.

My hand is this wierd shade of sickish green with a bit of purple mixed in (from all of the internal bleeding and bruising). But today, I have a new color – my pinkie knuckle is bright magenta! Just the knuckle. Odd.

Ali and I ate lunch with a family with 5 kids – a 5 year old boy, triplet 3 year old girls, and a 1 year old boy. Wow. They are great kids – very well behaved, and cute as can be, but they are still kids. That’s just not good odds to eat out with – 5 on 2. They are so brave. I think I’ll wait awhile before playing russian roulette again. . . sure, the odds of triplets are minisculely (not a word, I know) low, but WOW, what if. . .