I'm breaking radio silence to regale you with what will no doubt be a mish-mash of seemingly unrelated tidbits, because that's how I roll when I've been laboring over seminar papers nonstop for what seems like weeks. My critical texts have started entering my dreams. Last night in my dreams I was having a conversation about Anzia Yezierska with two dead theorists over cookies. At least the cookies were tasty.

So, Tulip Time was this past weekend. I have much to say about it but like I said I'm saving my coherence for my paper-writing, so all you get is this picture:

Oh my word, the Dutch cuteness is overwhelming me. Also, my baby has fat little feet.

And this one:

This last one deserves a bit of an anecdote. My kids are pictured with my cousin Amy's adorable son and stepdaughter Jack and Joclyn. While we were all gathered around snapping picture after picture, we were attracting a small crowd. Several random tourists wandering through Scholte Gardens were also taking pictures. Of our children. To whom they were not related. I was so busy trying to get the perfect shot that I nearly missed Jeff carefully dictating the kids' names and the spellings of their names to an old lady whose husband was snapping away with his Nikon. She wrote down the names on a tattered envelope above a little map she sketched of the kids' locations in the pictures. I can only imagine my children making their way into this random woman's scrapbook of her trip to Pella for Tulip Time 2009.

Will my children attain fame as archetypal Dutch kids? Only time will tell.

Also, today is this joker's birthday:

That would be the joker at the top, not the dejected-looking sweaty blond joker, or the fat sleeping baby joker.

Happy birthday, dad!

I'll be back as soon as I can crank out some academic genius. Now, to find some cookies and dead theorists...