[YAAAAAAAWWWWWWN]
Friday, January 29th, 2010If you’ve ever watched Planet Earth, which I understand is the world’s first and only nature documentary, you know that many creatures do this thing in the winter known as “hibernating.” Basically, they eat a ton of food in the fall, buy a new house to renovate, find a comfortable hole or cave somewhere, and then drop off the face of the earth and do nothing for a few months. Up here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re really into nature, so I thought I’d try a similar thing with my blog.* But now I’m pretty much back.
The fact is, I haven’t played any new board games in a while, I haven’t cooked anything weird, and since Bank of America is the worst**, there are way fewer changes to the house than I wish I could report. It’s just been a slow news day in a lot of ways. With the sun out about 17 minutes a day at this point of the year, it’s like life itself has sort of gone into hibernation up here. Although that’s starting to get a little better too. (And I’ll still take 8 months of vitamin D-deficient grey in exchange for a reasonable summer. That Mid-Atlantic August just ain’t Christian.)
So what have we been up to? Well, obviously, Greta’s been growing up, and I do have the pictures to prove it. My goal with the weekly pictures was to get one a week for the whole first year, and I pulled it off. There were a few times when I went to bed on a Saturday and realized I’d forgotten, so I took a great picture on Sunday. And there were two times when a picture from Monday was just so much better than one from the weekend that it supplanted the Official Weekly Picture from Saturday. But for the most part, mission accomplished. So here are the last several for you.
Halloween. If you haven’t seen the pictures from this, check out Kirsten’s blog for more.
I think this will have to be my second favorite weekly picture, behind this one. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s like some Escherian staircase with her, where you can always find an even better picture.
Hanging out with her CA cousins Ethan (left) and Remy (middle; just kidding! right). She looks like kind of a bruiser between those two microtykes. Also one of the last recorded sightings of The Boots.
She had so much fun climbing in and out of this basket at my parents’ house in VA. It was a new skill at the time, and it led, of course, to her fascination with her current toyboat.
I love this picture, even though we both look a little tired. It’s at the little garden shop in Colonial Williamsburg. And we were, in fact, both a little tired.
I really have no explanation for this picture. I look ridiculous, Greta’s kind of a mess. We were on the way out to the Windows Christmas Winter in Seattle party, realized we hadn’t gotten a weekly picture yet, and even though Greta was in rough shape, took what we could get. And then we forgot to take better ones the next day. Also, Edward Munch in the door window. Eek.
Erm… So, about that two weeks in a row of bad pictures…
The crazy thing is, we took probably 100 pictures that night. It was the Christmas concert. I think our photographic priorities were elsewhere. Sorry, Greta…
…and just like that, the cupcake was no more. Finding the best of the pictures from her birthday party really involves combing an embarrassment of riches. Tons and tons of great pictures. Yes, she really did eat the whole cupcake. She practically ate it all at once, actually. We put it down, and she looked at it, turned it over, turned it back over, prodded it, patted it, shook her hands to try to get the frosting unstuck from them, and then finally gave up, ripped off about a third of it, and put the rest in her mouth as completely as possible. Fingers poking to stuff it in, eyes watering, cheeks bulging, breath held, but she she got it in there. And then she was just like “chubby bunny” and then swallowed it all and came back around to mop up the other piece. It was awesome.
Silly girl is standing just fine on her own now, which is great, and she claps proudly for herself every time, which is unbearably cute, but she still doesn’t have a lot of interest in walking. I can understand that, really. She can crawl and get where she’s going, or she could try to walk and fall down. Fair enough. It’s why I initially had such a difficult time when I made the transition to getting around my workplace via Pogo Ball rather than walking. But I made my transition, and I’m confident that Greta will make hers.
Skills!
On the other hand, teeth. This one is just getting ridiculous. There’s no really no advantage to having only two teeth, but try as I might to impress this on Greta (I read her some stats and averages the other day), she insists on sticking with what she’s got. She mentioned her concerns with teeth crowding one another and eventually needing braces, and what about head gear and blah blah blah. I told her that headgear more or less went away around the time Zubaz did***, but she’s still concerned. Again, though, I do have some sympathy here, as one year olds are normally pretty nervous creatures. I don’t want to make light of her concerns. Really, though. No walking, no more teeth… I’d be more concerned about being boring than wearing headgear.
The house hasn’t sat entirely unchanged for four whole months. Closer to it than we’d like, for sure (did I mention Bank of America being the worst?), but there has been progress. We have new cabinets and appliances in the kitchen, and we have so much fun baking with convection in an oven that doesn’t look like it once baked a dog (I’m talking about fur here), washing dishes in a real functioning dishwasher, and drinking water that comes out of a clean refrigerator. Seriously, sometimes I’ll turn the oven on just to watch it convect. Next up will be new floors downstairs (the last vestiges of pet urine will be gone!) and countertops (no more sketchy boards from the garage!), and then we put baseboards and trim up (down?) and head outside to fix up stuff out there. Considering the shape of things when we moved in, we really are coming along. I’ve been forbidden from putting up the before and after until we have a Very Special Presentation of all of them, but stay tuned, because it will happen.
Spring may not really start for a few more weeks (7?), but hopefully I’m emerging from my cozy cave ready to both eat and update every so often. Check back to see how it goes. I’ve also been in a sort writerly mood lately, so I may try to get something good up in the Writing section. And that really never happens. So 2010 could very well be full of good things. In any case, thanks for waiting.
* I hear the animals come out of this hibernation considerably more lean as well, but with very few exceptions, wild animals do not tend to get married, which is probably related. Myself, I’m not getting any less married day by day, so it will be interesting to see how this works out. I can say that I’m hungry at the moment, which is the other thing I hear about animals coming out of hibernation.
** Seriously, the worst! Long story short: our unusual loan for purchase + rehab was supposed to get us the + rehab part in 10-15 days. We’re at four months and counting.
*** No, Zubaz, they are not Baaaaacckk!! I could put my toenail clippings up for sale (in fact, if my Craigslist stuff doesn’t sell, I might), but if there’s not a market, there’s not a product. Now hit the showers and come back when you’ve invented something.