The Brave and the Bold

Is it *STILL* Two Years a Papa?...

*Sigh* it is indeed. Julia was hoping to be done by now, but is still feverishly plugging away.
We tried to go over and give her a pep-up last night, but it was slushing so bad and the tires on our car are so worn that it felt unsafe to drive so I brought Ari home. Today we went and brought her hugs and junk food to cheer her up. Our favorite wings place (Zaxbys) is opening a location near our house, but they're not open yet so she had to settle for fries and a burger.

Now, presenting:
Ariadne Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Toybox!

Its true that they grow up so fast...
Today Ari was reading with me and repeated the whole phrase "Eeek! Its a mouse!" She's been getting quite verbal lately and is more and more able to make herself understood.
She's also been acting like a teenager! She'll contentedly spend over an hour hanging out in her room and has even pushed me out of the room and shut the door in my face!
Although she does tend to giggle like mad if I open the door and come in growling like a monster. We'll see if she still likes that ten years from now.

In other silly Ari news...
We have a box of things that we're collecting to send to Theresa, mostly books and the like, but I also put in one of those Cadbury Creme eggs. I'm not very fond of them myself, but Theresa seems to like them. Sometime when I wasn't looking though Ari swiped the candy from the box, brought it up to her room, and unwrapped it. When I went to check on her the chocolate egg was sitting unmolested on a chair while she happily gnawed on the wrapper.
I took the wrapper away and split her ill-gotten gains with her.

It is tough taking on the roll of a single parent, even briefly, but no matter how big the shoes are that I've got to fill Ari is willing to help...

I need to wrap this up as it is late and Ari and I have gotten into the bad habit of sleeping-in. It's just awfully hard to get up when you've got a snuggly little two year old in the bed. Especially one who likes to play peek-a-boo with the covers.

You don't believe in magic? What kind of witch are you??

Aw shucks, it's Two Years a Papa...

Blah blah...went to the library...yada yada.. did some role playing...

Anyway, here's Ari being cute in one of her mama's hats.



And THIS ladies and gentleman, THIS is a little girl who put HERSELF to bed!

She took off her shirt, pulled up the covers, and just lay there until she was asleep.

No more Scots, please. One is enough.

Who'da thunk it? More Two Years a Papa...

I really like having fresh baked bread. It was something I always enjoyed (and still appreciate) at my parents' house. Lately, I've been trying to perfect my own home recipe from the Fanny Farmer cookbook. My first two attempts came out denser than I would like (a regular problem with my yeasty baking), but over all okay.
*Huh, evidently Blogger doesn't recognize "okay" as a word. "OK" is okay though.*
Back to bread- I was looking forward to trying a variant tonight. It involved minced garlic, basil, and a whole cup of parmesan cheese, which I had to especially purchase. It would have gone great with the pizza we were having. Unfortunately, I got so caught up in the Unhallowed Metropolis game (we were attacked by ghouls right away!) that I totally forgot the loaves of bread until they were thoroughly burned.
:-(
UnMet was lots of fun though. Julia took her one big break from working to come play. We even did a little photo session beforehand.Travis didn't dress up so he got to be the photographer. Actually, I didn't dress up either, this is basically how I dress these days; although not always in so much sepia. If I had realized we'd be doing a little photo shoot I'd have worn the spiffy vest and hat that I got for my birthday.

It was very nice to have people over. Ari and I hadn't had any real interaction with others since the playgroup that we went to on Tuesday. Ari was so very sad when her mama had to leave again. The last slice of pizza was barely enough to consul her.

Speaking of Ari, I haven't forgotten that she is the star of this blog. Here she is wearing a silly thing on her head and trying to get in on the gaming.

Tomorrow we have another gaming night and then Julia will be back on Thursday.
For her birthday back in August Theresa gave Julia a certificate for a free message. Julia never used it and it hasn't expired yet so we figure that will be a nice thing for her to do as soon as she turns in her exams.

It's a Drow Gargoyle

Could it be...Two Years a Papa?Or maybe it's just a sleepy little bean.

Yesterday I took Ari to the Franklin Park Conservatory, where they charge admission for two-year olds. *harumph* Ari had a grand old time running around looking at the funny plants and toy train displays they had set up throughout much of the conservatory. Unfortunately, the battery on my camera died the first time I tried to take a picture of her. So you'll have to make do with a photo flash-back from when she went to the conservatory with her grandpa Marcus nearly a year ago.This morning Ari was kinda sick, throwing up a little and running a low fever. I let her get lots of sleep today and she is doing so much better. She's also up and bouncy at 4 in the morning because she slept so much during the day. Papa, who had to get up early so repair men could fix our screen door and clean up Ari puke isn't quite so bouncy. She's climbing on me as I write this and is saying something or other about monkeys.

Lately I've been reading a book called Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire I am finding it quite compelling although also entirely depressing at times. I suppose that I would describe it as "folkloristic gothic horror". It's not entirely dissimilar in feel to Unhallowed Metropolis, which we get to play tomorrow. Yay!

7/9ths of an Elephant!

Yes indeedy, it's Two Years a Papa...

So, Shutterfly doesn't work the way I thought it did and the link that I provided for the pictures of Ari taking a walk in the snow is useless. However, if you click on "Family Photos" here or under "Links of Interest" it should take you to Julia's shared albums, including the one I tried to link to the other day.

Speaking of Ari taking a walk in the snow...

This is a snow suit that Ari was given at the start of Winter. It is a hand-me-down from a girl younger than Ari who had outgrown it. That's right, younger.
Ari actually wore her mittens most of the time we were out. She kept taking her hands out then deciding it really was too cold and put them back inside the mittens.
It was a lot colder today than it was when we went to Glen Echo. Tomorrow looks at least as bad and it has snowed some more. They're fairly likely to close the schools again tomorrow.
Today I just went to the park across the street with Ari and she had great fun just tromping in the snow and on the poor neglected playground equipment. She even enjoyed playing on the swings, although her cheeks are still a little red from that.
There are some great wooden structures on the playground that look PERFECT for snowball fights to my mind. The utter lack of footprints in the several day-old snow says that the Youth of America disagrees. Ah well, unspoiled snow for my little girl.

Last Summer I was practically forced by a "volunteen" at the local library to sign Ari up for their Summer reading program. Evidently just her looking at books or having them read to her counted. This over-lapped with our trip to Maine and Maryanne can verify that Ari had those Richard Scarry books read to her so often that the binding started to come undone. Anyway as part of her reward for completing the program the library let her pick out a book to keep. She went for the one with a duck on the cover. The book is called "Wiggle Waggle" and it gives silly sounds for some of the ways that different animals walk. "How does a cat walk? Pish~posh, pish~posh."
I mention all this just because the last couple of nights Ari and I have been reading the book and acting out some of the animal motions. Which is to say... Ari is awfully cute.
I'll try to get a video of her doing this, but it's hard to orchestrate that sort of thing with just the two of us.

Someone is WRONG on the internet!

Still Two Years a Papa...

Um, Ari's still a little sweety.

This is Ari with pigtails.
This is also the only time that she's left them in long enough for me to take a picture.
She's not too fond of hair clips either.

Today we went to a play group, but there wasn't that many kids her own age there. Even so she had fun either following the bigger kids around or playing by herself. In any case I think it was good for her to get a change of scenery.

I've started trying to sell some of my old comic books on Ebay. I've no idea how well it's going to work, but getting some sort of money in would be nice.

We've been reduced to keeping Ari in a red folding hamper!

















At least she still has her dignity.

Could it be Butter?

Good Grief More Two Years a Papa...

Well Ari actually seems to be on a reasonable sleep schedule these days, I hope that it continues.
Today Julia asked me how I liked being a "house husband", I replied that it was just fine except for all the guilt about not brining in any money.
Being home with Ari does give us time to do things like read books, sword fight, play with puzzles, go for walks and even take up baking.
This is Ari "helping" papa make some gingerbread cookies on Valentine's Day. We sneaked into Julia's department and surprised her with the cookies while she was working.

Yesterday the ground was still all snow and ice, but it had warmed up just a little so I thought that I would take Ari for a walk in Glen Echo, the nice little ravine/park near Rick & Brooke's place.

It was pretty much a Winter Wonderland and all that jazz.

We took a whole bunch of pictures of little miss tromping about in the snow. I posted a few of them here. Ari simply had a blast, she loves feeling the snow beneath her boots and giggled like crazy when she found herself sliding on an icy patch. Naturally I spent the whole time wishing that Ari would wear her mittens.
Of course she'd just loose her mittens and we all know what that means...
No pie.
And that's just sad.

Aggressive Rhubarb

More from Two Years a Papa...

Lately Julia is spending about 13 hours a day at school working on her exam questions while Ari and I hangout at home. I'd like take Ari out to explore the wide-world of Columbus, but we've just been plagued with all manner of bad weather.
Last week it rained nearly non-stop and over the weekend we had arctic winds that blew so hard our screen door was destroyed by them. Today, freezing sleet and icy rain.

One way that Ari and I have entertained ourselves is sword fighting. Ari's weapon of choice is the dowel from inside her mama's rolling pin. She does a very good job of making sure that I'm armed before she takes her fightin' stance and starts shouting "Ah gotya!"

Yesterday she prompted me into a dual, but when I looked at her, not only was she holding her "sword" in one hand, but she had also attached two big foam swords to her feet. She cracks me up sometimes.

A Felargo of Unscientific Rubbish

Two Years a Papa continues...

Today Ari somehow opened this picture of Julia on the computer-


I was doing dishes at the time and only noticed that she had done this because she was excitedly pointing at the screen and saying, "Mama! Issa Mama!"

I then put on a slide show with about 65 pictures of Julia for Ari and she asked me to replay several times.
We're missing her something fierce.

I think that a change of scenery will do Ari some good so tomorrow I'm going to take her up to Akron to see Andy Hopp and his daughter Ilyanna.




And now we present:
"Messy-Hair Ari...in a Box!"

5 o'clock is Naked Iroh Time

Two Years a Papa continues...

Julia took our camera with her to Vienna so the majority of pictures that I'll be posting, for this week at least, will be from our extensive Ari photo archives. Tonight, however, you'll be getting a fresh batch of pictures thanks to Brooke.Yesterday I took Ari out to a gaming store and let her run around with Kelly while I got my clix on. Before this weekend I had been on a mad streak and had won the last 5 tournaments that I had attended. Let's just say that the streak is over, still jolly good fun of course. Then Ari and I went shopping at Target and Whole Foods so I could get fixin's for dinner.
I made two pizzas one was sausage (and quite tasty) while the other was...different.
In honor of the Arkham Horror game planned for that evening I made a calamari pizza. It was a tentacular delight and I'm sorry that I wasn't able to get a photo of it.
We (and by "we" I mean "I" as the game is just a little too advanced for Ari) did in fact play Arkham Horror with Jeff, Rick, Jaime, and Kelly and a reasonably good time was had by all. Brooke came over later and we watched City of Death. Good times.

Today we went over to R&B's for a breakfast so late in the day it couldn't properly be called brunch. Then we went over to the Rag-O-Rama for their $1 sale. Which translated to dropping Brooke off to employ her shop-fu while Rick, Ari, and I went and found other ways to occupy ourselves.
Later on it was back to R&B's for dinner and a board game. Evidently tonight was "let's play a really old board game that Brooke owns, but has never played before" night; first we tried to play Murder She Wrote: the Board Game, but then we realized that we didn't have enough players and instead tried out Clue- The Great Museum Caper. None of us had played it before, a few elements didn't make much sense, and I have no idea how it was supposed to be related to the game Clue, but it was still reasonably fun. We'll probably try it again sometime with Julia.

Lately Ari has been in a bit of a "naked phase" and will insist on removing all of her clothes no matter how chilly it is.
She also hasn't been sleeping very well. I've been getting her into bed at a reasonable time, but she keeps waking up and has a hard time getting back to sleep.
Consequently I haven't been sleeping very well either.

The cat in the right-hand picture is Kira (not to be confused with Kira-the-Human who we game with). She was very tolerant of Ari's petting, but not so hot on Ari's repeated attempts to pick her her up. Despite what it looks like here, Ari was not about to jump off the couch after the cat.

Two Years a Papa

I suppose that technically I'm two years and five months a papa, but it's still a good deal more accurate than 6 months. In any case Julia should have just arrived in Vienna at the time of this writing and I thought that while Julia is in the midst of conferencing and examening I'd take on the blogging.

So here goes...
This morning we took Julia to the airport and wished her well on her exciting travels. I wanted to take Ari out to the North Market today, but it commenced with the raining and the snowing so we stayed in and cleaned house instead.

In the evening Rick came over with a bit of Chinese for us and we watched Live Free or Die Hard. It was a pretty good action flick. Then we tried out the game Elfenland that Theresa had given us for Christmas. The game wasn't bad, but not especially exciting either.

Now it's three thirty in the morning and Ari is still awake. Yipee!

In terms of funny Ari-ness... Lately Little Miss has taken to being picky about her clothes and generally prefers to run around the house in just her diaper (sometimes with snow boots) no matter how cold it is.

Well we all know that you're really here to see cute pictures of Ari, so here goes...

Ari pulled out half the stuffed animals in her stufty box, crawled in, curled up, and fell asleep. Oh yeah, she's adorable.