Everything is invented

{Maria Kalman}
I love this. Oh yes. How true it is. The opportunities we make for ourselves; the parameters we define, achieve, exceed.

How many times do you find yourself circling in the small circumference of your day: your world defined by the limitations of work, by small children with sticky hands; by whatever it is that you see as the perimeter for what is possible?

“There are so many things that you’re told you can’t do. So many things that can stop you. You can either be like the elephant that is hobbled it’s whole life—so it doesn’t know that it is free once the hobble is removed, or you can do things your own way. You cannot live a life of fear.”

The woman telling me this is the flight attendant on the last of my three flights. She is beautiful, in her late forties, with milky chocolate skin and sparkling eyes. She wears a flower diamond ring on her finger, and her eyes light up when I ask her if she’s ever been sky diving.

“No,” she says, “but it’s something I’m thinking of doing. I’m afraid of heights.”

Then she tells me, “I went parasailing in Mexico and it was incredible. The air was fresh, and the world was so quiet up there above the water. It was like I was an angel.”

I can’t help grinning. I love that every single assumption I’ve had about this woman has just been shattered into a million pieces.

“Hang gliding has always been on my bucket list,” I tell her.

And she looks at me then, head tilted to the side, and in that moment we both get it. We’re two of a kind. The kind of women with bucket lists; with wanderlust; with adventure bursting from the drawers of our hearts.

“What is the number one thing on your bucket list?” she asks.

“To publish the book I’m working on,” I tell her and her eyes light up.

“I’ve always wanted to write,” she says.

So I say, “Tell me. Tell me about your life.”

And so she tells me how until two months ago she worked as a successful registered nurse. How she climbed the rungs of success in her field; spent her career traveling: starting a hospital in Nicaragua, bringing medical supplies to villages in Africa; exploring the streets of Rome.

“Resilience is about being able to change,” she tells me, when I ask her how she got from that to this; to being a flight attendant.

“Change is what makes people thrive. It’s when they get stuck in the same patterns for too long, when they’re afraid to change that they become unhealthy.” And because she wanted more wanted more balance in her life, she quite nursing and became a flight attendant.

I want to ask more, but the plane is already in its descent. We exchange email addresses, and she smiles as she presses hers into my hand.

When the plane hits the runway with a thud, I'm still smiling.

Yes for resilience. Yes for adventure. Yes for living your life without fear.

+++

What do you believe is possible? What would you do if limitations didn't exist?

Flight + Fruition

It was fascinating to start the new year in the sky. To watch the curve of the earth appear below, as the plane lifted off, at once heavy and weightless as it cut the clouds and traveled upward improbably into the wide expanse of atmosphere above the earth.

It’s a wonder to feel the way anything is possible this very instant, always and again.

Right now.

Today.

In this new year.

I left before dawn, after the requisite security line removal of belt and shoes, jackets, laptop and toiletries laid bare for the world to see, and then no coffee because the kiosk was closed, I was off. The sky was ink, the runway lit by lamplight, the cabin dark.

I held my breath: waiting for the feeling of air catching under the wings. I used to love airports. They meant adventure and freedom: Italy, Germany, New York, Puerto Rico. I loved the bustle, and energy I felt at airports, the way everyone was coming and going, the expectation and possibility that was almost palpable in the air. But now the world of airports is defined by orange alerts and leaving. Leaving my two sweet boys and T, who woke with me and carried my bags to the door and kissed me softly on the lips before I left for a week to visit my sister and her new sweet little baby boy.

In the air the earth grows small and spectacular at once. The land stretches out in an intricate pattern of rivers and mountain ranges overlayed with the persistent geometry of human life: grids of roads and fields and buildings that look, before dawn like twinkling circuit boards; light bordered by dark, by deserts, by lakes, by the black of pine forests and mountain ranges, white-capped volcanoes rising up above the clouds.

Three flights later I was in Oregon, circling then landing next to a field of grazing sheep. Live oaks, and mossy sycamores; hills steep and rolling under wide West Coast skies. I walk out into the bright afternoon sun disoriented by the time change, and hug my sister who looks beautiful and tired and happy all at once.

It stuns me to realize how I’ve already forgotten how newborn time is alternate to the reality of the rest of the world. How time is defined by the moments of feeding, and the moments of sleep in between. How life exists entirely within the circumference of doing nothing but holding the baby, and doing small things: running the dishwasher, or righting coats on the rack; the world soft and quiet and wrapped in the cocoon of a now that the rest of us forget, caught up in the plummet and pull of a faster pace.

I’ve already forgotten the way this is everything. Small sighs, milk down your shirt, toasted cheese, and the gift that is five consecutive hours of sleep. It’s a time out of time: the moments of falling in love and being split open. It is the beginning of everything.

I sit with my nephew in the crook of my knee and write; body memory returning, time traveling backwards to that newborn time with Sprout, new and warm and dreaming.

I try to explain how this is now and then it’s over, forever.

+++

Last year my word was action.

And it was fulfilled again and again with steps taken and decisions made towards a life more fulfilling, sustainable, and full.

It was an incredible year: T quit his job and found new work that he loves; I went back to school and launched A Field Guide To Now (still holding my breath on this....More (good) news and rewards—finally—to be sent out in February!) and my boys learned to play together: moving through the house in a tornado of action, transforming couch cushions into forts and blocks into castles.

This year my word is fruition.

Fruition (n.) 1) attainment of anything desired; realization; accomplishment: 2) enjoyment, as of something attained or realized. 3) the state of bearing fruit.

Yes.

+++

I loved reading your comments in your last post; loved to feel the force of your intention being put out into the world. I'm so looking forward to what this year brings. To the adventures, the discoveries, the things that will come to fruition.

Manifesting (+ a giveaway!)

Today there is coffee from three hours ago, milky sunlight, and feathers strewn telltale on the snow. The neighbor’s dog: a black, curly, stupid thing came again, her tongue lolling, killing hens. I chased her in socked feet across the snow, shrieking. Then pulled on boots, and called my friend who came with his quiet farmer hands, and his shotgun (just in case) together we found the hurt birds, and the scared ones.

In one of the pines along the drive, a Rhode island red; I scooted in among the sharp twigs, collected her akimbo wings and splayed yellow feet, then pressed the plumpness of her soft body up against my chest. She buried her face in my hair, and I could hear her breath coming fast and steady. It always surprises me to hear birds breathing. Like the sound of wings; fluttery, raspy, faint.

Today Bean is building a cardboard box fort with the empty boxes from Christmas and Sprout is napping after smashing his chin on his brother’s bunk bed, and coming up with a mouthful of blood. Today there is a broken glass jar pushed accidentally off a windowsill. There is laundry in haphazard stacks; strawberries cut lengthwise in a bowl on the counter; marbles scattered across the slightly sloping floor.

Today there is the chapter outline of my book waiting for me like a jigsaw puzzle shaken in a box without a lid. My desk is strewn, my fingers already stained with white paint and gel medium from setting up a few paintings for later work.

Today is almost the end of the year. The last day. And this is my messy, ordinary, glorious life. I am so grateful.

It’s been an amazing year, and you’ve helped to make it so. Truly.

Today I want to know: what your words and dreams are for the year that will begin tomorrow. One word, or a list. What do you want to manifest?

I believe in this. I believe in it deeply. I have found again and again and again that the things I ask for manifest when I ask clearly, when I put my greatest, deepest wishes into the palms of the universe to hold.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans.

That the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred.

A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now. ~Goethe

So. What do you wish to begin this year? What is the wildest, truest thing that you want to have happen?

Leave your answer here, or link back here with a post on your own blog, and two of you will be the (random) recipients of these pieces of orignal art!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

(*Leave a comment by midnight, January 1st, 2011 to be eligible for the giveaway.)

UPDATED: I selected the winners using the random number generator at random.org. CONGRATULATIONS Ashley and KitKat! Please email me with your address & I'll ship these off when I get back next week! xo, Christina

beautiful words + wondering:

Yes. Answer this. What do you want the universe to manifest?

And some words today to bring you closer to an answer, or inspiration, or delight:

Begin here.

So, how are you?

Everything is going to be alright.

Three little (big) words

{I want today to end with a chunk of progress made on the chapter outlines for the rest of my book}

The best part of my day

Right this very instant slushy rain is falling hard and downstairs, at the kitchen island my boys are playing drums on an array of kitchen implements. They are loud, they are ruckus, they are delighted with themselves. Bean is singing along at the top of his lungs in his thin, sweet, off-tune little voice. Sprout is mostly quiet except for when something is taken from him, and then he hollers as loud as he possibly can. These boys are the sweetness and marrow of my life.

Every morning T wakes up at about 5:30 and when Bean hears him, he comes skittering down the hall to our room and crawls into bed with me while T showers. Often, as the water starts to run, Sprout wakes up and calls, and T brings him to me, and so I doze in magic. One sweet tousled boy head on each side of me. They root around beneath the covers and snuggle in. And I dream, drift, wake, nuzzle in. It’s my favorite part of the day often: these first moments of barely waking with my boys, when we’re all trailing dreams and dozing.

When T is showered, they follow him downstairs for eggs, toast, and frothy milk and I shower alone, drenched with warmth, with the fragrance of soap, with a few moments all to myself.

Then, always, the day begins. Today: gray on gray on gray. Crows make dark silhouettes among the trees. A squirrel knocks snow from the sleeping branches of a spruce. Birds come and go at the feeder; and outside in the snow bank where Bean and I built a fort yesterday afternoon, water drips silently as the snow melts.

Tell me: what is a moment in your day that you spend with the people you love? What's it like?

Also: go watch this.

in the morning

There is golden light this morning and a dozen blue jays, plumage ruffled, in the lilac out the window. The walls are striped with shadows from the window panes, the trees outside, the angles of furniture illumined by the morning sun. I watch the way heat dances; sunlight revealing the shadows of the invisible. Waves of warmth rising, shimmering, lifting from the wood stove, where logs become embers, and across the clear valley ribbons of smoke lift from solitary houses. Above the sky is the color of robin’s eggs: pale, pale blue.

Snow dresses the world in magic when the sun shines. Frost makes fractal whorls on the glass panes of the windows in the garage, and snowflakes, each one spectacular and individual, glint and sparkle across the wide expanse of field where tracks crisscross, revealing other secrets: the paths of squirrels and foxes going at dusk to the stream.

Today the mercury is shy despite the sun, and breath catches sharp in our lungs and rises up in steamy clouds. Today the boys are home. The house is filled with their clatter, laughter, disagreements, and small storms. They leave behind a trail: marbles, blocks, honey, bread crusts, airplanes. They wear at my patience. They fill me with delight. They are, always and again a lesson in living right now. In shifting gears abruptly. In being here. Right here.

Some days it’s not where I want to be. Some days, like today, I feel myself longing for the unremarkable quiet of an empty house. Instead there are sticky fingers and boys still in pajamas. There is spilled cat food, and snow melting in puddles at the door, and boys who want the things that sustain them: attention and stories and be seen.

And so I do. I turn to Sprout who is climbing into the chair beside me, and press my face into his warm head. I get up from the table and carry my empty cup to the sink; gather things to make bread dough. Rinse my hands. Wipe the counters clear.

Together we will knead the bread and then place it in bowls in the sun. It will rise there all morning in the warmth, and then we’ll shape it into loaves, spreading it with cinnamon and sugar. I’ll let them lick their fingers and I’ll turn the oven light on. They’ll press their faces against the oven door and look. They’ll wait for the timer to ring and then eat slices of bread, fluffy and warm with melting butter for snack.

I’ll let this be the present: warm bread and sticky fingers and sun.

push | pull

There is the bittersweet that comes from having things go exactly as they should and then be over; just as that feeling springs from things going exactly opposite to what was planned and all the loose ends that come from such moments of disappointment and disarray. This was our holiday: joy-filled and tense at turns; full of expectations and sparkly lights and glee, and also frustration. Family drama (his, not mine this time.) Stubborn boys. Heaps of snow, chocolate, caramel corn, and candle light. Singing carols. Good wine. Snowboarding for the first time.

And Bean insisting he knows how to do it already—then hurtling down the mountain at a speed that defines the term break neck, only to throw himself to the ground at frightening angles to stop. Twapity, thwack. And then he’d sit there dazed, distracted, and completely clueless as an entire ski school made a zig zag around him, as though he were the outermost pole in a slalom course.

My firstborn is not a child who wants to be taught.

At least not by his mama. And I should have known better—swimming lessons have been a disaster two years running. Ice skating had similarly poor outcome. Still, T and I are lovers of the outdoors; of sports; and of doing them together…and Bean asked, no, begged for a snowboard for Christmas.

The scene was set. A perfect white powder day, the day after Christmas, just the three of us on the mountain. Good tunes in the car on the way up. The promise of hot chocolate. New gear.

But he would only do it his way. For two painstaking runs. And then he wanted to stop.

Because it was hard.

Oh expectations.

I am aware that there is a very salient lesson in all of this. Something about letting go of attachment; about not having expectations; about letting things just be, moment by moment.

But there is another fierce, plucky, determined part of me that doesn’t settle for that all of the time. Carpe diem was not a term derived by someone sitting on their laurels.

And I believe there is something mighty to be said for perseverance. For doing something even though it is hard; maybe because it is hard. Willpower is invaluable as an adult. As is self reliance.

The outcome?

He’s going to take some lessons. End of story. (Even though I'm internally waffling: is he ready? Is he big enough for half day lessons? Does he have the stamina? What if I ruin sports for him forever?)

I’m starting to understand that this parenting thing doesn’t ever get easier. Sure, he can dress himself, and poop without assistance and he can be left unattended to clean up his room and he won’t pull every tissue out of the box while doing so. But the emotional complexity is increasing daily. Control. Compassion. Give. Take. And figers crossed: maybe a couple gifted teachers along the way to smooth the rough edges of our attempts.

How do you decide when to push your kid and when to let them call the shots?

here in this life

It’s snowing hard from a pale sky, the kind of snow that makes me grin and want to cry at once: it’s so beautiful, white on white on white.

And I’m back in my life again, after a hiatus of days, weeks, the intensity of a semester behind me and in a few days, Christmas. Family, and plans to make croissants from scratch, and bleary eyes on Saturday morning at 5:30AM when the boys will inevitably wake, eager and wide-eyed with wonder.

The past two nights we’ve watched old movies: Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A Wonderful Life. I’ve never seen either one, and oh, how I love them both. Nostalgia is a funny thing, isn’t it? It’s something inherently human, isn’t it? To want and long for what’s gone by. It’s maybe one of the things that defines our humanity. Our awareness of the past tense, just like our awareness of the future plant’s us squarely in the very fleeting, very mortal moment of the present.

In this moment I’m wearing torn, paint spattered jeans instead of a carefully fitted dress. I’m here in this present of my life, and out the window blue jays and cardinals gather in the lilac hoping for seed. Streaks of blue and read against the landscape of brown and white and gray. By the end of winter their colored plumage is something I cling to in a monochrome world; everything drawn out: the time it takes to leave or arrive an almost endless choreography of outerwear.

Today it’s the solstice. The wondrous darkest day, half a year away from when the light lasted until nearly ten and the fields hummed with crickets and danced with fireflies at dusk.

Tonight we’ll light candles at dinner and sing. We’ll hang the prisms that the Advent Fairy brought in the windows to make the light dance on future sunny days, and maybe we’ll go sledding, all of us on the toboggan hurtling down the driveway in a flash of laughter.

The best way to get a tree

On a sleigh with work horses pulling steadily their breath rising in hot clouds. Snow crunching underfoot, following each other out across fields among balsams. Finding the just-right tree and watching with Sprout as T and Bean sawed the tree down together with a hand saw. Back and forth, back and forth, and then dragging it to the road where the horses could pull the sleigh. Then hot chocolate; cookies; and carols in the car on the way home.

Unwind

Oh hello!

What have you been up to?

The past few days have been my very own Alice in Wonderland gone awry: coding and building a website from the ground up--using all new (to me) tools has made my brain ache and my body long for movement. It's still in it's demo phase, but I'm excited to share it. Go take a peak around.

Outside it keeps snowing: gorgeous dreamy flakes and our Christmas will be white, white, white. In the tree out the dining room window a red cardinal waits, wondering when I'll put the bird feeders out. Things have been on hold around here as the semester came to a symphonic end. Everything colliding with many unexpected technical failures: the learning curve is steep when you're a novice.

Of course, I love every minute: I'm like that. But honestly, this last week was really hard. I really started to miss all the things that define the day to day of my life: wrestling on the floor with my boys; exercise; painting my toenails; making out; going out with friends; decorating for the holidays. Everything was temporarily abandoned as I hunched at the table and produced create a website; two essays; and three art projects.

Now: I'm a free girl for a few days--but I have some serious (and super exciting!) book business that must be attended to, and how! Cannot wait to share--but can't yet. Just grin with me & keep your fingers crossed. And thank you, thank you for your patience with getting rewards and all the rest. I haven't forgotten. Oh no, not at all. It's just: I never do things half way. It's going to be awesome. Oh yes.

Today we are heading out to cut a tree and tonight our neighbors have a Christmas nativity that they've been putting on with the neighborhood kids in their barn for twenty years. It's magical: warmth and caroling and kids with halos and angel wings and donkeys and lamas and lambs all acting out the story of the birth of Jesus. I love it. It's one of my favorite things about the holiday actually: this simple, old fashioned celebration that speaks to the heart and the truth of this holiday. Peace and goodwill and community. And also cookies and sledding after.

Speaking of... we're having some friends for some cookie decorating fun tomorrow and I'm wondering: what is your absolute favorite holiday cookie recipe?

nothing but scraps

Impossibly, I am still awake. Smacking my head into code. Ready, ready, ready for the semester to end. Ready for some time disconnecting from intellectual work and reconnecting with play and this here space. In the meantime: bed, because nothing else makes sense and then tomorrow more work than is possible in less time than is conceivable. Rinse and repeat until Wednesday. Then, no matter what: yoga + dinner with girlfriends and the semester will be more or less complete. Whew.

the very smallest of things

The very smallest of things have made my morning: The internet came back on so I don't have to leave the house early to do work. There was juuust enough milk for my latte. The snow plow guy just came and plowed my driveway so I can get to class this afternoon. It's snowing: fat, fluffy, gorgeous flakes. The fire is warm and snug and my cat is curled at my feet.

This week is go, go, go time. The end of the semester. Super big projects all due. And then a few weeks off--including a week out West visiting my sister and her sweet new babe. Cannot wait for the break. For cookie baking and decorating; for playing with my boys; for cleaning my house. For all the mundane joyful stuff that I've put on hold to push through these final deadlines.

where I've been:

The craziest storm ever. Extremely localized. 75mph winds. Trees snapped everywhere. Needless to say, no power. We're at the inlaws, waiting it out. Likely no power until Sunday. Just in time for three major deadlines. Oh yes.

Tell me something to cheer me up! What tradition are you most looking forward to for the holidays?

Thankful*

I took these pictures yesterday, out my front door. Like heaven, the way the storm came through spreading the arc of a double rainbow and then left the world golden and blue and vermillion with the setting sun. I'm so thankful for this place that I call home--and also this place here, where I can connect with all of you ( hit m 1,000 post here just last week!) Also today I got lovely, really super awesome news about my book--that is still not in stone enough to share details on, but enough to grin about big time and to be thankful for.

I've spent the last three days working intensely on digital projects: Flash, After Effects, video. By this afternoon I felt a little like a wild animal, and when the golden afternoon light filled up the sky again I pulled on running close and fled the house for a long run while the shadows grew long and blue across the road.

Tomorrow I'm taking a digital break to be with family... I'm craving that: a reason not to check in and be in front of the screen for a day.

Happy Thanksgiving! xo, C

Code switching

It always goes poorly when I fail to make a clean break. When I try to eek out just a little more productivity: finish a paragraph, or a bit of code, while my kids close in, wanting things. “Mommy look! Can I have some crackers Mommy? I’m hungry. When are we having snack?” And it’s as though my boys feel that I’m trying to do something else; as though they have a radar on for when I’m only partway present.

And it’s then the milk spills. TWICE in one sitting. It’s then that they fight over every single thing. Then that the bigger one crashes into the littler one, and the little one comes to me wailing, his mouth full of blood.

It’s then that tears are inevitable—from me, if not from them. [More...]

A list from today:

Hello! It's so easy for me to slip back into not posting--having failed miserably at NaBloPoMo. But I refuse. So here I am with a few highlights from today:

* Alone all day to work on projects with only the cat for company * A phone call with my older sister whose little boy is 2 weeks old today. Love hearing his wee little fusses in the background. * A pomegranate * Starting to 'get' ActionScript 3.0 just a little * Filling this sweet elf house of Bean's with color

What are some highlights from your day?

This moment

At the counter after school. Ramin noodles + scallions in warm broth. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole + his banjo on the stereo. And for a moment we were just there at the counter, the three of us slurping the extra long noodles and giggling and drinking the broth straight from the bowl and I could feel how we were at the eye of every storm that had come or would come: the afternoon ahead of us with its various unravelings and tantrums. But right then, I let myself breathe and unfurl a little into the delicious present...and then I went to get my camera because the stripes and the noodles and the little boy grins were making me want to explode with happiness. Yes.

Emergent Process

Today the first snow. Not really the fat flakes of later winter, but the quiet delicate fluttering of small flecks of snow nonetheless. The sky is gray except for where the clouds are pulled thin, and then the sun shines through with milky light. Out my window birds arrive: chickadees, blackbirds, crows. The alight among the bare twigs, and preen, the slight fleeting snow falling on their feathers. This is as close as I’ve come this week, to being out doors: watching from my window as the world turns to winter outside. And I can hardly believe it: winter, just like that. The days darker, and darker still. Inside, I’m at my desk; an itemized to-do list hanging on the wall in front of me: 34 projects of varying degrees of critical importance to be accomplished by December. Two weeks.

And it’s intense. That’s for certain. Especially with two small boys underfoot. This past week I was doing the solo parent thing which forced every single minute to double in value. Not longer. Just worth more. In every minute I’m mother and student. Writer and novice programmer. Digital artist and researcher. All of it, every minute.

But when people ask me how I’m liking school, often with an “I’m so glad it’s you and not me” tone of voice, I can’t help myself: I love it. {more...}

hump day + systems thinking

By Wednesday night I always feel a little pummeled, like I've been swimming for three days straight, and this week has been particularly intense because T has been away on a trip to California for work and so it's all mama, all the time when the boys are here. Also, Wednesday = six hour straight of class and by the end my mind revolts. Tonight it was all about DVR and recorded Glee episodes (What is it about that show by the way? I want to hate it, but end up kind of digging it every time. Why?) This week I've had a minor breakthrough about myself as a learner. I'm a highly, highly visual learner (right!? Who could have guessed??) But what I didn't realize is that I've overly relied upon my visual capabilities to compensate for organizational shortcomings--and while I can visually tell you where everything is in my studio or on my desktop--once a file gets moved on my computer, I'm at a loss. And truthfully, files are in a state of creative chaos. To make matters worse I harbor unnamed skepticism for burning anything onto a CD and then deleting it from anywhere. But I am determined to reform.

How do you organize your desktop, your photos, your Word files, etc? I'd love, love, love to get some peaks into the way all you creatives organize your work on your computer. Please share!

A snapshot from today:

The light of late autum is gold, gold, gold. It fills our south-west facing dining room all afternoon; honey on the table, honey on the floor, and we’re drawn to it like bees, sitting barefoot, my son drawing while I write. Above the bare branches of the trees, insects swarm; the last warm days a small ellipsis of insect procreation. Out the back door the chickens come, inquisitive, pecky, turning over every crumpled leaf in search of bugs not burrowed down. The shadows fall long, longer, across the valley spreading indigo lace below the trees. Each chicken has a shadow twice her size, imaginary hens on stilts, walking slantwise across the leaf strewn grass.

Sprout is napping and Bean and I are each occupied in our own way. Me: editing. Him: drawing blueprints for gnome houses and prototypes for robotic flying cars.

Suddenly he leaps back from his work table, “AAAAH! Something scary with pinchers just ran behind my desk!” he screams with dramatic flare.

His eyes are genuinely huge, but then he sees me smiling. I cannot hold the laughter back. “Really?” I ask. “Is it going to eat you?”

Now his eyes grow wider. He looks off for a minute into space.

“It cannot eat me.” He concludes hesitantly. “I am bigger than it. I could just…I could just squish it. Right?”

Oh how I love this silly boy of mine.