Always On the Go

It's been very busy around here. With Mama starting at her new restaurant and Daddy working on the first iteration of an enormous project at work, both feel like they don't see each other and time with Tickle Bug is at a premium.

This weekend, Mama went to Savannah for a bachelorette party while Daddy stayed home with Sweet Girl. On Friday, Daddy and Madeleine went to Mama's restaurant (even though she wasn't there) to see how the place had changed and to meet up with Madeleine's friend Oliver as well as Daddy's friends Joddie, Eric, and Nicole. Little Monster ate several handfuls of tater tots, and then also weaseled her way into some of Oliver's fruit bar. After that, she dashed back and forth across the booth seat and climbed on Daddy like he was a jungle gym.

Speaking of jungle gyms, on Saturday, Little Werewolf went to the playground at Peachtree-Dekalb Airport, where she met up with Oliver, Kasper, and Spencer. After some serious playing (involving climbing up on the big slide in the center and making Daddy chase her), Baby Girl retired to the restaurant on the deck, where she watched the jets and small-prop planes take off and ate a grilled cheese sandwich. Spencer gave her a flower, which she sniffed and put behind her ear — such a sweet girl!

Snowstorm!

They say the East Coast has been pummeled by wintry weather. Well, we haven't seen much of it, but we did have a surprise visit from Old Man Winter yesterday afternoon. Snow started falling about one o'clock and didn't let up until the wee hours of the morning. Mama had a day shift, so Daddy took the opportunity to work from home with Miss Fuss in his keeping. She was certainly excited about the day, so much so that she took off her shoes and socks in the car, just to spite him. After all, it's not like you can quickly get in and out of the car when you have to put a Tickle Bug's shows and socks on at every stop.

Even when it was dark last night, it was very bright, as the blanket of white reflected all the light from everywhere. Even when the house woke up this morning, the snow still pretended to be a winter wonderland. While Mama got ready to go see a family friend this afternoon, Daddy and Baby Girl horsed around in the back yard, making little snow castles and teasing the cat with snowballs.

The snow didn't last long, however. Even now, it's mostly gone, leaving only muddy residue and the sheepish impression among Atlantans of this being some kind of snowpocalypse. Daddy's office was supposed to have a party last night, but it was canceled, so Tickle Bug had an evening at home with both Mama and Daddy instead of spending it with the babysitter as originally planned. Still, even with the night in, it's been a busy week for Little Werewolf, who went to a Super Bowl party on Sunday and has been fighting off a cold. Don't worry, friends and family; Sweet Girl was bundled up and much better before playing in the snow.

A Girl for All Seasons

The life of a Baby Girl is action-packed! It's an adventure of tasting new foods, playing in new playgrounds, scowling when it's too cold to go outside, and whooping it up when it's warm enough to play outside. For example, one of Sweet Girl's favorite new foods is the humble olive, which she wastes no time placing on her finger and popping into her mouth, as all kids do. Still, finding out how to do this is an exercise in applied Tickle Bug world observation, so it's neat to see in action.

Another part of the adventure is creative re-purposing of toys, as with Little Monster's tent (or "nunt" in her patois). A tent isn't always a tent — sometimes it's a Daddy-trap, sometimes it's a reading room, and sometimes it's a dinosaur ranch. Sometimes a tent is its own sleeping bag, or some sort of bizarre hamster-wheel type of perpetual motion machine. In this regard, Sweet Girl is less like a baby girl and more like a mad scientist. This week, Daddy had a half-day at work on Wednesday, so he spent the afternoon strolling with Little Werewolf in her wagon and even let her pick the direction of the route she wanted to take.

And then, of course, are the habits she picks up from her parents. After a hard day of adventures, Wee Goblin likes to take a book to bed and read until she falls asleep. Hop On Pop remains a crib favorite, but Tickle Bug is ever on the prowl for more books to sate her voracious reading appetites. And though she's not yet really reading, she retains a lot of her read-aloud book sequences, so she can recite the pages to you when you help her read them. She's quite the continental, in fact, and can often be found engrossed in her book after a meal at a restaurant or in the waning hours before bedtime.

Tell It Like It Is

As Daddy was doing the taxes, he shuffled little bits of paper all over the place and it drove Mama nuts with all the "important" piles of papers he made. But as he was going through various piles and pads, he came across a list he and Mama have been keeping of the words Tickle Bug has been saying. It's an incomplete and ever-growing list, but Sweet Girl says:

Train, choo-choo, closed, pee-pee, bite, brush (short for toothbrush), bubble, Totoro, Porco, cold, Gigi, eat, tent, cow, tail, bunny, Manny, cuddle, shoes, up, boots, bok-bok (what a chicken says), apple, cereal, cheese, book, uh-oh (frequently), rock, baby, bye-bye, EEW!, hat, juice, hi, night-night, ball, car, truck, stretch (performed with grandiose accompanying movements), socks, and snack.

That's quite a mouthful!

With her extensive vocabulary, Little Werewolf plans to attend Spencer's birthday party this weekend and dazzle all her friends with an extemporaneous discourse on the various trials and tribulations of being an amazingly sweet girl in a fast-paced, modern world.

Story Time

As promised, here's a video of Sweet Girl keeping herself entertained with the year's most lauded title in academia, Hop On Pop.



STOP! You must not hop on pop.

Where Has Baby Girl Been?

There's been so much going on, Sweet Girl has been too busy to find a spare moment in which Mama and Daddy could update her blog. Between the snow, the cold, the playoffs, busy work schedules, getting in shape with the Wii Fit, Mama's doctor visit, and the everyday adventures of being a Tickle Bug, there just hasn't been any time! But now, as it's warming up a bit, Daddy's back on his regular schedule at work, and Mama is over her cold, things should be getting back to normal.

Little Monster did enjoy the snow, of course, and had a few chances to play in it before it became too bitterly cold to spend any time outside. More than the snow itself, though, Baby Girl loved wearing her Disney princess boots, which have Cinderella, Jasmine, and Belle on them. They also pulse little red lights at the toes and heels when Madeleine walks in them. They're big and clompy, too, so Sweet Goblin has practice wearing the sorts of clothing that stormtroopers wear on the Death Star.

No one should be surprised to learn that Sweet Girl is teething again. She sometimes sounds like a little werewolf as she trundles around the house, and with a new set of fangs poking through, she'll probably be terrifying the Scottish moors in no time. She also has Gigi the cat a little wary, which is probably some sort of primal reaction among animals how can sense when terrifying predators have claimed a territory. Daddy spends some of his time hollering at the squirrels in the roof, but a far more monstrous creature stalks the halls of this house.

iMovie is grinding through the thumbnails of the video clips right now, so expect another blog posts soon, featuring Sweet Girl reading to herself on the rocking chair in her room. Even though she's not really "reading," she definitely has a strong memory a,d a desire to get more out of her books. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?

Snow Goblins!