Ela came inside from playing and said, "Oh, something smells good - is it chicken stock?"
The Hobbit Wife replied, "No, honey.  It's a different kind of meat."
"Oh!  Is it rat stock?"

Seimi's Naptime

There are four simple yet essential components for Seimi to sleep.  

1. The first is "Lank," his primary blue blanket.  He has an identical backup blanket "Link" that he loves, just not as much.  He started putting Lank's tag in his mouth very early, and later progressed to biting a hunk of Lank as he goes to sleep.  Let us assure you, Lank = rank.  
2. The second component is "Wass," his water bottle.  
3. The third component is "Baa," his sheep pillow.  
4. The fourth and most recent addition to the sleep ritual is "Jesus."  One day recently when he was screaming and distraught, the Hobbit Wife sang him to sleep with "Jesus Loves Me."  Since then, he often insists on one of the other residents of Michael Delving sing that song to him.  It's quite humorous to see an exhausted, cranky 2 year old throwing a fit and screaming for "JESUS!!!!!"

Yes, Seimi, you do need Jesus.

Furniture

At Michael Delving, we saved quite a while and finally purchased a pair of settees that are the start of a hobbit-style living room.

There is a beautiful John Howe painting of the entry of Bag End that served as an inspiration for Michael Delving.

With this painting in mind, the Mayor set about creating a bench for the Michael Delving entryway.  It was the Mayor's first foray into furniture building, so many lessons were learned over a period of about 3 months.  The material was 3/4 stock red oak (Home Depot/Lowe's/Dunn Lumber), which was joined primarily with biscuits, with just enough in the way of rabbets to give the Mayor a taste of the options available.

 Here's the first portion of the bench in the entryway.  The bench was designed to accommodate an additional panel at the end to create a visual "end" to the entryway.  There has been talk of eventually carving dwarven runes with silver leaf, but for now, a simple tung oil finish is doing the trick.

 The Mayor has moved onto the next project, which is to build a new kitchen table.  The material for this project was rough-sawn 5/4 and 8/4 cherry, which the Mayor planed and squared.  So far, the table top is the only piece that has been joined up.  Here one can see the old kitchen table being used as a work surface for the new table.  The Mayor again used biscuits to join the top, but is designing the remainder of the table using more traditional methods and tools.

For the Mayor, these woodworking projects are a delightful fulfillment of a life-long love of carpentry that began down in his grandfathers basement workshop and was fed by many evenings watching Norm Abrams on the New Yankee Workshop.

Happy Birthday, Seimi!

Two years ago today, we were blessed by the arrival of Seimi, the littlest member of the Michael Delving household.  Seimi is genetically predisposed to have a huge head of curly hair, thanks to the Mayor.

He is also the master of getting into messes, particularly in coming in after Brother and Sissy have completed something (in this case, that something was green sidewalk chalk).

He is a tough little boy, and he loves being around the action, although he also plays very well by himself.

 He loves his big brother "Beakie" and his big sister "Ella."  His favorite thing is to be right in the middle of whatever they are up to, laughing and talking Seimi-ese.  An example of Seimi-ese is "Coys."  He carefully explained to the Hobbit Wife: "Cars...toys...Coys!"  He's waiting for the rest of the world to catch on to his language, but in the meantime, he's settling on picking up a second language of English.

Ela has discovered her talent for picking flowers, and there is now a standing rule of only one bouquet per day.

Boookie here is showing off the gap where he's lost his front teeth.