What Brain Space? Where?

Today I had a thought. Just one, but it was there. Remember all those things I used to know? So many things! I compiled a list for you. And for me, to prove to myself that I can still make lists.

A Sampling of Things That Used To Take Up My Brain Space (with only a few exaggerations)

·         Exact time the bell rang for each class period

·         Which settings I used on the elliptical machine

·         Grammar rules and spelling for most words

·         Catalogue of recipes for sit–down meals for two

·         The 505 bus timetable, both weekdays and weekends

·         All the prepositions in alphabetical order (oh wait, that’s still in there)

·         The Major League Baseball standings in the NL East Division on any given day

·         Names of all the Canterbury Tales, and which were didactic, which were not

·         Hamlet’s soliloquies

·          MLA style guide

A Sampling of Things That Have Replaced Those Other Things in My Brain Space

·         Exactly how much the stroller pockets will contain without spilling over (it’s science, people!)

·         Sight recognition of night diapers vs. day diapers

·         Curious George is on PBS at 8:30am, followed by Cat In The Hat

·         The garbage man comes on Monday and Friday mornings and is best seen from the boys’ window

·         Start at the top right side and work clockwise to put on a fitted crib sheet and don’t do it right after eating

·         Oddly, Playtex makes the best sippy cups

·         Tonka trucks can all go to H-E-double hockey sticks for making such loud sounds at such duration

·         Working list of which restaurants have the best: mac ‘n cheese, high chairs, ceiling fans, and the most durable crayons

·         An acute sense for when the noise tolerance threshold of the lady in the kids section at the bookstore has been reached

·         Storytimes at various local establishments

·         Exactly how much time I have until the boys wake up

And another thing: a catalogue of play food and how long since it's been cleaned

Reveling in Art, Nature, and Lollipops

This past week we’ve been able enjoy the neighborhood and the weather here. We strolled over to the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival last weekend. It’s a big festival with a lot of high end art and some middle-of-the-road art. I think my favorite was the “found object robots” (here is an article about them), which are made of all kinds of old things like bottles and tins and baseballs. Not because I want them decorating my house but because I think they would be fun to make. I suppose that’s the gingerbread architect in me speaking.

Clark and a lot of nut-juice taking in some festival music

For the boys the highlight was the roasted and candied pecans that they ate with abandon while letting the juices dribble down their chins, in their ears, up their noses, under their fingernails, etc. They liked watching the lady roast and coat the nuts because she did it in a big bowl that went “‘round and ‘round like a ceiling fan and a mixer.” Fortunately for me a woman was handing out free hand sanitizer with little bungee clips that hook onto my stroller, so that made the whole nut-juice thing much easier to deal with and I’m pretty excited to have that nifty bottle.


A couple days ago we went to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens with Aimee and Nick and another mom and 2 year-old son. What a beautiful place! In the main building there are four ceiling fans whose blades look like giant leaves, so it took awhile to pull the boys out of the building and into the gorgeous gardens. There is a lot of room for wily youngsters to run and beautiful plants and flowers, lazy butterflies, unnaturally large goldfish, tiny tadpoles, moderately-sized turtles…you get the idea. It’s a place we’ll return to, even though Cal did a face plant in the mud and had to go change mid-visit. 

giant ceramic ants in the gardens!

watching tadpoles and a baby turtle

the Fearsome Threesome with their fearless (and sightless) leader

walking to Lake Anne

We made it over to the Lake Anne farm market yesterday morning. The weather was beautiful, without that thick Virginia sweat that characterizes most of the summer here. (Today, on the other hand, the humidity is 82 %) The four of us got to enjoy the walk through the trees, ran into both an old friend and the executive director of Reston Community Center who we happen to know through her nephew, bought some plump sweet peas and a basil plant, and donated to the Herndon Braves Little League team, which, in turn awarded Cal and Clark with their first lollipop experience. It was a very long experience, I might add, whose end I brought early because they had:

1. stained their white shirts with purple splotches
2. started eating the paper sticks
3. transferred sticky grapeness to their hands and stroller parts

Cal in a grape lollipop haze

I’m loving life in our neighborhood these days! So much constant green and bright flowers. I have only one beef with nature: I’ve been attacked by an overly protective momma bird on the way to the library TWICE. I swing my computer bag at her and run. It’s terrifying! So now I walk to the library another way, which incidentally takes me past the coffee shop where it is hard to deny myself an iced cup of joe on the way to tutor.

Pools opened this weekend so we’ll get the boys out soon, and there’s a live bug display at the Natural History Museum so we plan to get downtown soon too. Last night Brian and I got to dress up and go on a date to the Kennedy Center while Uncle A watched the boys. Fun stuff!

Fan-cakes and Pancakes

Cal checks out the fan-cakes

A few cool food moments lately:


1. Yesterday Aimee brought over custom-made ceiling fan cupcakes for the boys. It was so sweet of her and of course the boys loved eating fans.  (Also, the latest thing that they are calling a ceiling fan is the big foam letter X and they make it go around and around in their hands. Weirdos.)

folding in fluffy egg whites

2. I found a whole grain pancake recipe that I’m pretty happy about. The boys love pancakes and since the white flour pancakes are basically nutritionally empty, I stuffed these pancakes with barley, whole wheat, and buckwheat flours. The recipe calls for a thinly-sliced banana also, but since none of my bananas were ripe enough the two times I made the pancakes, I used little apple slices the first time and little blueberry slices the second time. The apples were the best I think, and I’m anxious to taste a banana version. With using agave syrup instead of maple syrup, and blueberries and strawberries alongside the pancakes, we had a pretty healthy meal. Also, these go a lot farther. The boys eat only about one and a half pancakes and they’re full. High five for healthy eating!

Clark enjoys the pancakes and fruit

Clark the Shark and His Textbook Twos

Clark the Shark

Clark has been pulling some real great stunts lately. And by “real great” I mean spectacular displays of red hot anger. It’s been shorts weather off and on here for awhile, but I haven’t put the boys in shorts that often because when I put them on Clark he explodes in senseless rage. You see, he wants them to be pants. (Duh!) He tugs and yanks on them maniacally to try to stretch them into pants. He throws his head back, he screams, he kicks, he yells things like, “no!” or “pants!” or worse, “hurts! hurts!” My poor fragile Clarky must have done some textbook reading on child development and taken notes, because he is Two with a capital T lately.

Other things that have elicited gigantic meltdowns for Clark this past week:

Identical Blankets: I covered Cal up with the exact same matching comforter that I then covered Clark up with. Clark yelled “other one!” repeatedly in between giant sobs and screams and kicking that lasted 20 minutes and really jacked up bedtime and any semblance of composure I had struggled to make stretch the whole day.

Sandals: Clearly evil in intention, The Sandal does the unthinkable…that’s right. It separates the big toe from the second-to-biggest toe. Really pisses Clark off. He does the whole tugging and screaming and stomping routine that he pulls with the shorts, topped off by high-pitch wailing and sweating. Oh, wait, that’s me sweating.

The Wrong Cup: Handing Clark’s cup to Calvin or vice versa usually sets off some serious shock waves until the swap is made. It even made Brian pull the car over last week, because I wasn’t there to figure out what was wrong while he kept the van on the road, and Clark had flipped his Two switch into full gear.

Putting Scratchy Cat The Wrong Way: Obviously Scratchy Cat needs to be snuggled in the blanket gazing AT Clark when he is ready to go to sleep, rather than nonchalantly looking at the crib bars. And obviously Clark can’t move Scratchy himself!

Oh You Did NOT Give Me The Un-Blue Bowl: The only acceptable bowl color for Clark is blue.

Clark’s Turn: The length and intensity of the scream is directly proportionate with the blue-ness, and awesomeness of the toy being grabbed at with two sets of grubby hands.  They then yell in the third person, “Clark’s turn!” and “Calvin’s turn!”

Baby sounds: Clark has a broad vocabulary. But he gets in his baby mood, like he did this morning, and refuses to say words or make signs to say what he wants. I usually know what he wants but I will not respond to grunts and whines and screams from a child who can politely articulate what he so desperately needs. There were flying strawberries and a case of upside-down-on-the-carpet toast this morning while he flung his body around wanting me to pour him juice without saying or signing please or even saying juice.

Cal Being Charming

What’s nice about this is that Cal has been a perfect little angel despite Clark’s week of raging episodes. I think I’d rather they spread out the Two-ness, so I can appreciate the non-ranting child, than give me a double dose, but who knows. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of double doses as well.


For now I can just will myself out of a situation by thinking that even though is unbelievably nightmarish, and makes me want to stab myself, it will make great blog material once the silence comes. And it always comes. And when it does it is not unlike rich dark chocolate in all its sweetness and glory.

Balcony Blues

For the last couple months there has been nothing quite as challenging and exhilarating for the boys as seeing me plowing toward them on the balcony yelling, "No, no, no! Don't you drop that!" as they nonchalantly drop the item of the moment, giggle, and elude my clutches. This morning as the second plastic egg fell to its mulchy bed three floors below, I decided to calm myself by creating a list on the topic. I like lists.

Things the Boys Have Happily Thrown Off the Balcony Much to My Chagrin

Clark prepares for a drop

balls
their little watering cans
my big watering can
balls
new sandals they don’t like
shoes they do like
Dan Zanes CD
baseball bat
baseball tee
small vehicles
balls
multiple clumps of potting soil
an unearthed flower
helium balloon
not-helium balloons
balls
juice cups
milk cups
various plastic food, including but not limited to: a pear, eggs, a peach, bacon, ice cream, a carrot
favors from birthday parties: a top, whistle, etc.
various bubble-blowing paraphernalia
balls

Links for Locals

I've decided to compile a list of links for my local readers. I've started with some local Reston links, mostly for parents, but I hope to build on those with suggestions from you all, as well as my astute sense for awesome links. Let me know if you have some ideas!

Ceiling Fans Go 'Round and 'Round

This is Not Normal. Normal boys are infatuated with tractors and bugs. They crane their necks to watch the tractor pull the tree out of the ground. They stare endlessly at bugs. Not my boys. No. The thing that captivates them more than any toy, more than any blue-collar worker’s job, more than nature, is ceiling fans. That’s right. We go over to their friend Nick’s house with tons of toys everywhere and what do they want to do? Stare at the ceiling, drooling, and whispering, “Ceiling fan goes ‘round and ‘round!” to themselves and then saying it to each other and then screaming it to whoever will listen.

I will admit it was cute at first. But now it is seriously troubling. When will they kick this habit?

We had a grand time with sidewalk chalk the other day. I drew flowers and the sun and a rainbow and a hippopotamus (yeah, that’s right, I have talent) and Brian drew a purple dog and a shark, but what did they want? You guessed it. Ceiling fans. So when I drew one they went over to it, squealing with delight, and asked me to turn it on. Not one of their brighter moments. So Brian started running in circles on top of the fan, which they loved, and then that became their version of turning it on.

So each time we went outside they wanted to run over to the ceiling fan and run in circles on it until they fell over. NOT ONLY did they constantly want to be on the drawing of the fan, they constantly wanted to be looking at the drawing of the fan. From their bedroom window they can see the sidewalk. They would constantly be running to the window and proclaiming that they had seen the ceiling fan and that it was yellow. As if the chalk could change color or draw itself or something. The first thing they’d want to talk about in the morning was the ceiling fan that was still down there on the sidewalk and the first thing they’d want to talk about after nap was the ceiling fan they could see through the blinds.

A few days later I took out the orange chalk and drew (gasp) a second ceiling fan on the sidewalk. Well, this was just more than they could handle. They ran back and forth between one fan and the other one, exclaiming their joy over the fans.


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Ceiling fan-gazing with Aunt Bean in Idaho

At Home Depot last weekend I was killing time waiting for Brian to pick us up after choosing some balcony flowers and so I took the boys to the lights and ceiling fan section. Good call in the killing-the-time department, bad call in the keeping-them-sane-and-quiet-department. They have two gigantic aisles dedicated to ceiling fans,  but the problem is that not a single one was turned on. Oh the distress! Oh the agony! “Turn on ceiling fan, Mommy!” Sorry kids, can’t do it. We had to escape quickly while I exchanged glances with people I thought might have had kids and understand…though no one seemed to know why they were wailing about the fans.

When we visited my parents in Idaho, the highlight of the visit was their ceiling fan. It is white, new, and has lights. My dad showed them how to turn it on and off. (The biggest regret of his grandfatherhood to date) Now when we Skype with them, the boys want to have the ceiling fan in the background and of course command my parents to turn it on and off at their whimsy.

They remember places based on whether or not a ceiling fan exists there. We go to Costco. BAM! They spot the one ceiling fan in the entire warehouse immediately and talk about it and point to it the whole rest of the trip. We go to our friends’ house to see their new baby. BAM! There’s a ceiling fan IN THE MIDDLE OF THEIR LIVING ROOM! We spend the rest of the time trying to play down the fact that they are weirdos and stare at it and want it to be turned on and off the entire visit.

Some places that have ceiling fans offer convenient diversions: the restaurants in the airport that had ceiling fans that worked well for killing time, for instance.

Since ceiling fans really define the world to the boys, everything else looks like ceiling fans to them—the tassels on the top of drawings of birthday hats, flowers, propellers, shamrocks, wheels, windmills, you name it. They love to say, “not ceiling fan. Like ceiling fan!”

What will be next? Or will they be this way forever?

Evolution of the Common Bathroom

First off, let me do a survey of a common bathroom before children.  And by common I don’t necessarily mean your average bathroom, but the bathroom that is shared with your guests, the one near the common area in your house.

In this scenario, the house has only two bathrooms, which makes it necessary to turn the guest bathroom into the kid(s)’ bathroom on his/her arrival. This is the bathroom that, when you’re first nesting, gets the fluffy, monogrammed, high thread-count towels that were wedding gifts. They are probably a light color, providing the openness and tidiness that your guests deserve.

There are some expensive-looking stress relief candles and exotic-smelling room spray artfully displayed on the otherwise bare, spotless counter. Perhaps potpourri is nestled in a delicate basket on top of the toilet and even a tiny carafe of mouthwash stands discreetly next to the room spray. The faucet has been shined and reflects the guests’ faces when they slip into the bathroom during your strictly adult party. The floor is still spotless from when you moved in and scrubbed the grout between the tiles with a toothbrush, what was it, four years ago? Pretty much all the room needs to stay clean is a quick sweeping and brief swipe of the toilet bowl every couple months. The rug is thick and deep and envelops the feet of the guests in foot-hugs upon each visit, evoking contended sighs. The mirrors reflect the bright white lights, the neat paint job, and of course the smiling guest, who feels refreshed after a squeaky-clean bathroom experience.

When you first have the baby or twins, (and from here on I’ll just assume they’re twins, since mine are and it’s easier for me to write that way.) the transformation of the bathroom is gradual. A few precious washcloths appear in a tidy new basket on the back of the toilet, folded. Maybe one time you leave out that blue snot-sucker thing when someone comes over and you get hot with embarrassment and vow to never leave it in plain sight again. You accidentally leave the shower curtain open, exposing the little tub inside the big tub, and the rubber ducky thermometer. Oh well. It’s kind of cute, right? Most people visiting in those first weeks after the birth of the babies are there to see the babies anyway.

Then suddenly they are big enough to sit on their own in the tub and they get one of those faucet covers so when they bonk their heads it doesn’t hurt. It looks like a duck or a frog—friendly. Then there are the primary-colored awkwardly-stacking buckets and the plastic vehicles that squirt water: boat, plane, car, etc.  Soon the squirty purple scooter inevitably ends up behind the toilet just out of view, where it leaks its contents onto the floor to gather dust and you see it every once-in-awhile and are grossed out and reach to pick it up, but one of the twins is about to pee all over the floor and probably the wall while he waits for his clean diaper so you don’t get it or see it until next time and you reach for it just when one of boys falls into the tub in his clothes because he wants the teddy bear back that he threw in that is now swirling around in the water. Soon it’s pointless to even think about the stupid purple scooter and it becomes part of the backdrop of the room.

As the boys become more and more brazen, even downright obnoxious, in the tub, they splash large quantities of water on the floor so it is only natural to lay down a towel and of course you need a stool to sit on next to the tub so your knees don’t explode every time you bathe them. At first you pick up the towel after bathtime but as you learn that there is only so much time in the day (I don’t have time to spend picking the towel  up each time someone is coming over!) you stop that and leave the stool and the towel in front of the bath in the name of time management.

Then there are the washcloths. All the washcloths. Each bathtime you need at least two—one for each kid, and sometimes more. Who could possibly remember to throw them in the laundry after each bath and each handwashing or crusted-booger washing? And furthermore who can always remember there are dirty clothes on the floor and sometimes even dirty diapers? Once the monsters are out of the tub they are rejuvenated, naked forces to be reckoned with and need to get dressed and either into bed or into clothes for the day.

Behind the curtain...

Add to all this the occasional illness and the plethora of medicines and accompanying dispensers for each of them. Who wants to open the medicine cabinet to daintily finger through everything when you can just leave them there on the counter, roughly evenly spaced, in order to see them quicker and easier for any late-night catastrophes? There are the mini-toothbrushes and toothpaste with Thomas the Tank Engine or Pooh or whatever. No need to put those back in the cabinet of course. This whole routine is all going to happen twice more before you blink your eyes.

And the floor. Good God, the floor. Most likely under the corner of the cupboard you will find a car, a finger puppet, a drumstick for the play drum, a ball of some kind that may or may not have been in the toilet, one of the Buzz Lightyear squirt guns, and probably a small collection of raisins. There's no good time to sweep.


Really the catch-all place for me is the basket that used to contain the various neatly rolled-up hand towels and bath salts. I’m just going to come out and say that right now in the basket is a pair my underwear from when someone was folding laundry and mistook it for a washcloth. Why have I not put it in my drawer? Because when I think of it a boy is slapping at the toilet paper and squealing in delight as it pours to floor in a white flourish, while the other one drops a spoon in the toilet. I mean, that’s the most likely reason.

Also in the basket currently is a sock, powder, Q-tips (clean or dirty? Who’s to say?), bath crayons, nail clippers, regular diapers, night diapers, wipes, baby soap and shampoo, various containers of bubbles, butt cream, a plastic turtle, a cup holder from the stroller (?), Elmo bath books, foamy bath colors, and the other Buzz Lightyear squirt gun. And I didn’t even dig all the way to the bottom on one side because one time liquid baby soap spilled all over inside the basket and I found out by jamming my hand in it and I’m not in the mood to do that again.

Which brings me to further discussion of the floor between the tub and the toilet. It’s probably my least favorite space of all time. The soap easily spills out of the containers as I’m wrestling a boy into submission so I can do the unspeakable horrors of cleaning behind his ears. Each time I set the soap down I set it down there in that space. That unforgiving space. A thick, sticky residue sometimes builds up there, plastering the towel to the floor. Then there’s the cold humidifier the doctor suggested we get when she thought the boys had croupe, which the boys call the “water fan.” We only ever used it a couple nights and don’t have a great place to store it so we have it just around in the bathroom.

The bathroom looks just like it sounds—like a couple aisles at Target threw up all over an already- dirty bathroom. Sometimes I’ll go several days without even noticing the bathroom at all. When I do though, I take a deep breath (but not too deep because there’s probably a dirty diaper lurking) and remember what it used to be like and how predictable it was and that someday I’ll have a bathroom like it again. I might even miss this ridiculous chaos, so I’ll embrace the evolution of my bathroom, wipe down the sink and clean the sticky mystery-clump in the rug before guests come over. Take me or leave me, my bathroom is a maelstrom of well-loved plastic toys, damp lizard towels, and various forgotten fluids of the medicinal and bodily types.

The Negotiator

Cal negotiates for more sandbox time

Probably about a year ago I started telling the boys that they had one minute to sit on the floor and “brush” their teeth after I brushed them first. I use quotation marks around the word brush because really it is them loudly sucking the water and toothpaste off the bristles. Now they also like to sign the word water as they sit there in their jammies. Because of this ritual, they developed an idea of how long a minute was.

 A couple months ago they worked that knowledge into a tool for their own use. One day we were outside our building playing after a walk when I announced that it was time to go up the stairs and into our house. Calvin pointed his one finger at me and then into the air and said, “one minute outside.” Of course it was just too cute to do anything but laugh and agree with. Now when I say “one more minute and then we need to go upstairs” Cal doesn’t skip a beat. He either says, “Five minutes.” Or “Three minutes.”  
It has now spilled over into their sharing squabbles. If Clark is on the rocking horse and Cal wants on it he’ll frantically say, “Calvin’s turn, Calvin’s turn!” and if Clark doesn’t respond, Cal will either comfort himself with, “one minute Sharky’s turn” or freak out screaming more about his rights in the third person. If Cal is on the horse and Clark wants on it (which usually involves Clark muscling his way onto the horse) Cal yells, “one minute Calvin’s turn!” Sometimes they can solve these problems on their own, sometimes Brian or I have to get involved.

Clark considers negotiating with Melina for sand toys

After they did this for awhile, Cal naturally created “Running Minute” which is his last ditch attempt at putting off bedtime at night. This is after he has negotiated for an extra minute or four during teeth-brushing time. So now the four of us run around the house chanting “running minute” over and over for roughly a minute and they love it. Then we plop them into bed.

I’m sure Cal’s negotiating skills will only sharpen as he gets older. I have my eye on him.
p.s. Here are two pictures for those of you who complained about no pictures on the last post. A picture of my bathroom...ha!

This Is Not About Traveling With Toddlers

So it’s been awhile. I see that it has been nearly a month since I got my blog on. I did that thing again that I used to do when I journaled. Because a lot has happened since I last wrote I got all heavy and overwhelmed thinking that I would have to fill my readers in with detailed accounts of the three biggest things that have happened over the past few weeks so I avoided writing. Nope. Not gonna do it. No detailed accounts. Nutshell version: we traveled across the country (four airplane rides with two 2 year-olds on laps) and we had two birthday parties for the boys—one in Idaho and one here. There.

The boys at their Virginia party (cowboy theme)

But in the more recent past: two days ago Calvin hugged my head and patted my hair and told me he loved me, last night a caterpillar fell down my shirt while I was watching a movie, and tonight the mom of a student I tutor paid me a compliment I might never forget.

They were all startling, but in different ways of course. I don’t know why I didn’t scream when I felt the caterpillar wiggle out of my hood and fall. I guess I didn’t want to scare my husband or interrupt the movie. But also, that caterpillar was downright cute. Granted, it was much cuter on the floor than it was in my shirt, but still, its wriggly little scrunchie body made me think of being a little girl and watching them curl up in my hand when I held them. How did I used to do that without smashing them in between my grubby tomboy fingers? I didn’t pick this one up because I didn’t think I could without squishing it. It was one time when having the boys’ toys still strewn around from the day of play was convenient, because Brian just picked up a little pink shovel and let it wriggle onto it and then plopped the critter outside. I wish the little fella luck as he explores the giant tree that is creeping onto our balcony.

And when Calvin did that with his hands and his little voice and smiling face, to be all cliché about it, my heart melted. There is just nothing like having kids. I worry more than I ever have in my life, but I also laugh and love more than ever. Once in a restaurant before one of Cal’s surgeries we overheard a tactlessly loud customer comment to her friend about our twins. The boys were about four months old and in their terribly convenient little carseat bucket things hanging out in our booth. She whispered in a non-whisper something like, “I would never want twins. You’d have to divide your love.” Brian and I just exchanged incredulous looks. I didn’t say anything at the time but later I was thinking that really it’s more like my love multiplied from having twins. Anyway, it was cool to hear Cal say that to me and since then he’s done it a few times.

I have four students who I tutor, primarily in writing. It brings in great money, but I also find that I truly enjoy helping these kids, especially one-on-one. I guess I get my teacher fix from it. The mom tonight told me how much her son’s writing has improved from working with me. She said it was amazing and that she didn’t know that one person could ever help her son so much just from a short meeting once a week. Anyway, it caught me off guard in a good way and made me want to keep helping kids with writing.

Things the boys have been saying lately…

“Calvin and Clark say good morning Mamama!”

“Yucky diapers outside” (this seems to be their twin code for “look at me, brother, here I am and I’m funny”) They kept doing it across the rows of seats on the airplanes when they saw each other on our laps.

Cal saw a 2 year-old girl on an airplane and said, “Girl, girl. Touch it, touch it.”

“ceiling fans go round and round”

“Wild wild west, wild wild west, wild wild wild wild west” (to the tune of Jingle Bells…thank you Elmo’s World)

When asked what his name is, Cal typically responds, “DAWN!” exuberantly, or else “C-A-L. Cal.”

“I sure do like it___fill in the blank___.”

“hands fans” (while twirling their hands around)

“Yeah” Clark says that to everything lately.

Hopefully it will not be weeks until I post again. I feel like I’m back in the swing of my normal routine and can think bloggingly about my experiences for your entertainment. May a caterpillar never fall down your shirt, may your son say he loves you many times, and may unexpected compliments from near strangers make you smile.