A Girl and Her Papa

The Doodle loves spending time with her papa. Sometimes when he comes home from work she's not prepared for the transition - she cries and tells him to go away. But I've been reminding her right before he gets home that she needs to be nice to Papa, and she always is if she's reminded. The weekends are glorious - Papa is way more fun than Mama, probably merely by virtue of being gone more often. I also think, though, that My Hero has the ability to Play with this little human of ours more readily than I do. I'm all about the chores and the tasks - "put the little toy girl on the merry-go-round where she belongs (see in the picture on the box?)", as opposed to "let's pretend the little girl's in timeout; now give her a hug and let her get up."

He has taught her the merits of eating snow; I stress out about parasites and dog pee.



He sits with her in front of the fire and teaches her how to warm her hands; I make supper.



Obviously this isn't a super-balanced picture of how things are in our house - I happen to make superior kitties out of Play Doh, for instance - but I love how they play together.

His grandmother is dying; she's 101, so it's been a good life. It's hard to watch her die, though. We went to the hospice tonight to see her, but she's unconscious and her systems are shutting down. We'll miss her.

Cardigan

I knew it.

You Are a Cardigan

You are traditional, old-fashioned, and even a little conservative. More than anything else, you are a creature of habit. You haven't changed much over the years. You shy away from flashy ideas, people, fashion, and foods. You have simple tastes. You go for established quality and longevity every time.

What Kind of Sweater Are You?

I particularly like the juxtaposition of the photo with the first line of text. I'd like to say right now that I never wear my cardigans that way.

Chicks for the Chick

When we were in Illinois in October, my mom and brother and I took the Doodle to a farm to pick up some apples, and they also had a few animals you could check out. The Doodle thought the chickens were terrific:

Can you see it in her body language? Big smile on the other side of that head.

I'm glad she likes chickens, because I've been reading this guy's books. He's convincing me that if we only had a little yard, we could raise our own pasture-fed chickens. Someday...

Acquisitions

So I just learned how to schedule posts to be published, and can now do a whole bunch of them in one sitting, instead of laboring over a gigantic one for a week and then dropping off the face of the planet for four months. Annie should be proud!

This summer I made a couple of purchases that I'm particularly pleased with. The first was my Mother's Day gift to myself: a refurbished KitchenAid 5 quart mixer! I bought it off Ebay - a first for me - and although I don't use it nearly as much as I wish I did, it's become very handy with all the bread-baking I'm doing using this book. Now I need to go buy more yeast...

I also succumbed to Ravelry and bought a couple of pint glasses from their store - one says "ripped" and one says "frogged", the idea being if you have to do either, you'll need a pint nearby. I found it appropriate that the glasses were packed in newspaper that had an article about beer.

Crossed Ankles

This kid is so freaking cute. She sits like this all the time, with her little ankles crossed. In this picture, she is wearing her new (at the time - a month or two ago) pink trench coat which she refused to take off for several hours. She gets tons of compliments on it; I wish trench coats looked so cute on me. She is also watching Disney's Cinderella, her favorite movie. She calls Cinderella "Toolas", for reasons we cannot understand. She'll watch the whole thing in one go if I let her, but usually it's just 20 or 30 minutes at a time while I'm working on dinner or something like that.