A Question...

Which do you think is more important: persistence, or intelligence/talent?

Sometimes I wonder this as I teach. Sometimes I wonder this as I write.

I know you need some of both to be successful...but if you had to choose one as more important for school, life, and artistic pursuits, which would you choose and why?

(This is a video that has nothing to do with the question--think of it as a bribe to comment! Or maybe as just something cool that I posted so I can find it easy when my five-year-old asks for it...)

Proof of baby-ness

I promised pictures, and after much struggling with various drivers, I finally got some off of my phone, onto my computer, and uploaded to this very blog! So here it is...proof that I came home with something worthwhile from the hospital, and that I might, just might, be tired for a cute reason...

Look! Here he is in all of his four-pound hospital-stay glory!

I am outnumbered four to one. Most everyone is happy about this, although the two-year-old is still figuring out how he feels...

Oldest, youngest, and me! I love this robe in the winter. Especially when it is negative degrees outside!

Someday I'll have to post about having three kids instead of two, and my current writing/teaching/mothering life balance (hint: it's crazy, but it'll get easier), and books and doodles and ponies and witches. But it is not this day.

New Year's Eve and a new baby!

Okay. So. We had a new baby on December 16th. He is tiny (under five pounds!) and dark-haired and cute as anything. This means, of course, that my blog went silent, and I haven't written much (read: anything) recently, and there have been many tantrums from a certain two-year-old who wasn't prepared at all for this intrusion, thank you very much. But things are normalizing, and I know from experience that I will someday get more sleep and everything will be a little less crazy. I would show you a picture or two, but that will have to wait until I find my phone, so in the meantime, here is a cute older baby laughing at tearing paper.

Someday my youngest son will laugh, too!

Cats!

I shall post this video, instead of something more productive, because it is a celebration of surviving a dentist appointment! Also because wet cats are funny. You should've seen what our cat, Scout, did when she accidentally jumped into a full bathtub--she can leap really high, and my poor husband had a pretty scratched-up leg (he was in the aforementioned full bathtub, and it was our other cat, Ophelia, who chased her there). Anyway, happy wet cat watching!

Pictures

My four-year-old (who is less than a month shy of five!) drew some new pictures this week. He asked me to share. So here they are, in all their glory:

This one is titled "Lots of Lasers and Arrows"

...and this one is "ghhhhhhuuuu"

I think he misses the A-Z blogfest, when I posted pictures of monsters every day. I'll have to draw something some afternoon and post it because he is awesome. (Once my lap shrinks and he can fit on it again, which should be soon!)

My First Kickstarter

So I've never supported a Kickstarter project before (shameful!), but here's my first: To Be or Not To Be, by Ryan North. I've always liked Dinosaur Comics, because I think the writing is hilarious, and a choose-your-own-adventure version of Hamlet is just too awesome to pass up. Especially when proceeds go to cancer research. And...three great books for fifteen or twenty dollars? Sign me up!

Looky! Pictures by Kate Beaton! You can't buy this kind of coolness. Well, I guess technically you can, and that makes me happy!

Must...start...submitting...

Here is a secret: I don't like submitting my manuscript. I don't have a neat time of the day for it (I teach in the morning, watch two very cute children, write during nap time, and do chores-ish stuff after bedtime), which makes it like grading (no neat time for that, either), and I hate spending my writing time on queries. But this means that even though I love my second book I've only submitted it a little over a dozen places, and some of those places were referrals. So...I'd better get going! I DID suck it up and work on my query Saturday, and this means I will go and look up submission guidelines and get some queries out there. Right now. I'm going, I swear!

But I will leave you with this:

Yay for balloons!