The kids and I love smoothies and drink them all the time, but for the most part I just use the same general ingredients: frozen mixed berries, orange juice, plain yogurt, flax oil, and a little bit of whatever veggies or green leafies I have on hand. Over the weekend I saw a book called The Smoothies Bible and after leafing through and looking at all the various smoothie recipes, I decided to buy it. It seems like a cool book because in addition to the smoothie recipes, there is a whole section with different ailments and conditions such as migraines, exhaustion, pregnancy, etc. and it tells you which smoothies would be especially helpful for each particular condition. This morning we tested out the first recipe, which included the juice from one lemon, two kiwis, an orange, and a grapefruit. We all thought it was pretty tasty, so so far the book is a success.

When Emma potty learned, I thought (hoped?) that I'd never again have two kids in diapers, so I sold off half of our diapers. Turns out that is not to be the case, unless Noah suddenly turns into some sort of toilet training prodigy. Since the chances of that are probably nil, I figured I'd better buy some more diapers and I decided to go ahead and do it now so we can get more use out of them. Oh, and also because I think buying diapers is really fun. Who doesn't love getting packages in the mail? A few of the ones I bought aren't going to work for us so I'm going to resell them, but for the most part I think I'm set for diapering two babies again.

Emma seems to have been growing up so quickly lately. She'll have conversations with me and I find myself looking at her and thinking, "Who are you???" The other day she told me she couldn't wait until she learned to drive so I would have to buy her a car. I told her that Papa and I don't believe in buying cars for kids, but that we would probably sell her an older car that we already owned. She replied, "Okay, that's fine. I'll take the Grand Caravan, but I hope you don't try to rip me off!" Then tonight at dinner she brought it up again, telling Steve that when she is old enough I am going to sell her my car. I pointed out that I won't be driving my car anymore by then, and when Steve asked what I thought I would be driving, I said, "I dunno. A Honda Odyssey?" Nodding her head and gesturing with her hands, Emma said, "Oh yes, Papa! She has to have a Honda Odyssey. They are amazing! I mean really fabulous!" Where does she get this stuff?One more random thing...today at our appointment my midwife brought me a Pregnancy magazine, just because it contained an article in which two people I know were quoted. Later this afternoon I was paging through it and I saw an article called The Value-Added Dad, which was supposed to instruct dads-to-be on how to be helpful during childbirth. I didn't read the article, but at the end I saw a box with some "Do" and "Do Not" instructions. The "Do Nots" all seemed reasonable enough, but then it said

DO discreetly tell your partner if she looks particularly bad or has crazed bed-head. She'll want to know; she won't mind when you discreetly hand her a hairbrush.

Seriously? Is this for real? If I were in the middle of giving birth and Steve said to me, "Hey, your hair doesn't look so good," and tried to give me a brush, I'm pretty sure I'd hold that against him for the rest of our lives together! I almost can't even believe somebody wrote that!