Last Post of the Year

Another year, another New Year's Eve that finds me frantically cleaning and cooking for friends to arrive this evening.

(Resolution #1: Declutter so that having friends over doesn't require hours of "where should we shove this random thing that we never use and has no place within our chaotic organization so that people don't see it" action.)

As such, I don't have a lot of time to blog, but I thought I should do something to round out the year, at least while EJ is happily occupied with her Wall-E book and I am not being asked to surrender the computer so she can "type [her] words." Yes, those are actual words by the way, mixed in with gibberish---she has around 15 words that she can easily type on her own, as evidenced by the fact that she frequently:

a) wakes up before us
b) crawls out of bed without us hearing her with the baby monitor
c) climbs up on a dining room table chair
d) opens the laptop sitting on the table
e) finds Textedit in the dock
f) double clicks it and opens the application
g) hits shift+command+plus multiple times to increase the font size
h) types words from memory, including her name, friends' names, mama, daddy, ada, lovey, (her beloved blanket) pickles (her stuffed animal bunny), puppy (her stuffed animal dog), spot (her stuffed animal dalmatian), Chicago, her grandparents' names...there are more but those are the current favorites
i) hits command+p to print
j) follows the print prompt and hits return
k) runs to our room and screams, "Mommy, can I print???"
l) goes to the office and picks up the page (that she printed before asking) from the printer
m) runs to our room and screams, "Look what I typed, Mommy! Mommy, are you getting up?"
m) remembers to ask about printing before she hits command+p (prompted by my sleepy reminder muttered from my bed)
n) repeats process over and over, asking before each print-out if she is allowed to hit print, sprinting down the hallway from computer to printer, generally convincing us to crawl out of bed with her screamed question-sprint-screamed "look what I typed" activity

(Resolution #2: Hide laptop better at night, or find some freebie computer on Freecycle for her to pound on.)

It is interesting to think that, while she is still unable to completely master writing all her letters (some are really recognizable now, others are toast), she can actually spell, nonetheless. Santa, aided by some parental elves, figured out that she might enjoy a toy that capitalized on this new found love---spelling and counting---and he brought her a Tag for Christmas. Say what you will about keeping kids with natural, non-computerized toys---she has plenty of blocks and plenty of imagination, but she is also absolutely loving this reader. We find her in bed at night with all of her regular books, "reading" them aloud to her stuffed animals, and this has not waned since we introduced the Tag.

Christmas was wonderful---Mike and I got to spend some great time with our parents, our brothers & sisters-in-law (one brother is still unmarried, but boy, do we love his girlfriend), and our aunts, uncles, and cousins. EJ had a grand ol' time, as evidenced by this photo:



We had one sad farewell this Christmas---we traded in our very loved, memory-filled Honda CR-V. Mike and I purchased Harriet, the Red Car Wonder, in April of 2000, 9 months into our marriage and a few months before we would purchase our first home together (although we didn't know that at the time.) We drove that car back and forth from our home in Virginia to Wisconsin to visit family countless times, and it was also the vehicle that brought us down to the Outer Banks for our first anniversary, to the woods of West Virginia for a weekend get-away, to Williamsburg and Monticello with visiting guests...I could go on and on. When it was time to say goodbye to DC and move to Chicago, Harriet brought us across country, packed to the gills but still as reliable as ever on those sometimes treacherous stretches of Pennsylvania highway. When we had EJ, Harriet converted from young-married-couple car into baby-carrier extraordinaire, managing to still look sporty from the outside even as she was crudded up with fallen cheerios and spilled milk bottles.

Unfortunately, across the past couple of Chicago winters, Harriet stopped being a reliable defroster. Case in point---even as we were feeling melancholy the day we were bringing her for trade, she iced up on the inside of the vehicle, and we laughed as we scraped little bits of snow all over us in the front seats. It was time.

Thanks to the generosity of my parents, we now own a minivan. Pros: the inside of it is a parents dream. Cons: It is exceedingly hard to park in our parking lot, in the city, etc. Thankfully, we already discovered that if you back into a snowbank in the alley while trying to maneuver through the tiny parking lot gate and the bumper unhinges, it can be snapped right back into place. I'm sure we'll learn other exciting lessons along the way.

(Resolution #3: Practice parking minivan, over and over and over and over.)

So, with a new car in the back and a whole lot of New Year's Eve sushi-making to prep for, I'll close by saying here's wishing everyone a great new year. May it be as active and happy as a three-and-a-half year old. Well, maybe not quite that active.