Monday, October 23, 2006

More Scary Things...

...just in time for Halloween.

First, Clementine's imagination has started kicking in. This actually started maybe 2 months ago, she would pretend to be her toy chicken. As in, bounce it up and down and say, "Bawk, bawk, bawk." Quite cute. Lately her imagination has gotten much more active. She crawls into my body pillow and wraps it around her to close the "door", then says, "bye-bye" and waves and pretends to drive. (When pressed, she admits she's headed to the park.) She also spends time in her crib pretending her hand is an airplane. Anyway, amazingly quickly, she decided that the space under her crib is "scary." Imagine her sprawled, frog-style, on the floor, looking under her crib with her daddy. We put a few bears on patrol under there and she declared herself, "safe." It's only happened the once and, knock wood, it wasn't a big issue. But interesting how quickly the imagination turns that way.

Second, canning on Saturday night I poured some boiling water on my belly. It's not as bad as it sounds. After trying for an hour or so to do as our book advises and "rest burned area in cool water," we called for help. (Though I'm proud to say we were resourceful enough to figure that out without dunking me in a cold bath -- try to imagine that!) We are lucky to have a friend here who I've known my whole life and who is a doctor. He declared it a 2nd degree burn, and came by for two housecalls. After sleeping for two nights with huge split leaves of Aunt Karen's fabulous aloe vera Ace-bandaged to my belly, it feels much better, and Doctor Scott says I'll be fine. I wander around the house with my belly out -- I'm sure the neighbors are thrilled. The burn looks like Africa. Maybe this can give us some name pointers? Grannus is a celtic name meaning "boiling". Paphos is a biblical name meaning "which boils, or is very hot." Ahhh... maybe not.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Scary Monster Face

Finally got the video camera hooked up. This isn't exactly Clementine at her scariest (a-hem), but if will give you a sense of the terror we live with every day. ;-)

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Chocolate Wisk

On Sunday we made chocolate cupcakes and Clementine got her first crack at a chocolate beater (er... whisk). And daddy got his first crack at a chocolate Clementine. Video shows before and after. :)

Friday, October 06, 2006

Rolling Downhill

During their visit, Kimber and Kenna took time to teach Clementine how to roll down the hill in the back yard (video from the window over the kitchen sink).

Three things of note

1. It's Ryan's birthday, in case someone is reading this who's forgotten.

2. Brad sent an article with uncanny relevance to the bow-totin' conservative we met on our hike, about the west moving towards the Democratic Party, "Schweitzer said he came to realize that Montanans were perfectly willing to vote for a pro-choice, pro-environment candidate who talked about expanding health care so long as he communicated such ideas while he sat on a horse. Preferably with a gun in his hand."

3. Ryan rode 100 miles in the Durango Blaze last weekend. With practically no training. He's pretty cool. :)