I don't have balls to slow me down.

This is Ari, eating cereal. I did a lot of house cleaning yesterday and the day before. By house cleaning, read, playing HoMMV and picking stuff up in the in betweens. Anyway, so, as you can see, things look relatively picked up.

Ari is much better with her spoon use. Also, she came up to me after cereal today with a cloth to help her wipe the wayward milk off. :D

So, last night, we played a game called Scheherezade. Last fall, when I was in my not-blogging funk (to be fair, it was a funk that affected all my life, not just the blogging), we went to Con on the Cob. We had a fantastic time, I sold almost all of my weird critters, and we had some really phenomenal gaming. Including, but not limited to, this game Scheherezade. It's a cooperative storytelling game where you draw characters out of a hat, and everyone works together to make a cool story.


Alas, I cannot link to a place where you could buy this game, because it isn't on the market. The fine gentleman who made it ran it for us at the Con, but isn't selling it yet. He did send us his materials to play with, though, so we totally made an evening of it, with themed food and a costume box for all the character changes. And, as you can see above, fake mustaches.

It was good times for all, really. There's more pictures here, if you're interested.

Random strung together things

We've been mostly at Origins this weekend, as previously mentioned. Couple of thoughts:

1. We are more than ever determined not to take a two-year-old to a serious con (ala D*Con).
2. Ari liked wearing her badge. And her dice necklace. And she liked the Pokeball someone gave her.
   
3. Poor Ari took a beating this weekend- on Thursday, a kid bit her at COSI. Like, grabbed her arm and chomped down with his whole set of teeth! She still has the marks, days later. Poor bean. And then today, she got her head whacked, too.
4. Ari got into my cornstarch yesterday. I was cooking, and when I turned around and saw the cloud o' cornstarch, I said, "Ari!" in a loud, startled voice. Ari jumped, and got up and ran away. But a moment later, she reappeared with a rag. She was trying to clean up her mess!
5. Ari has a game lately of claiming that other people are Ari. We'll say, "Where's Ari?" and she'll point at me, or Thad or Brooke or whoever. And then giggle.
   

Orc blood

This is me and Ari, watching the fireworks today. Ari wasn't scared in the least, and she seemed to really enjoy watching the lights in the sky.

It's been a busy holiday day for us. First, Thad was feeling ill- he had a terrible headache. So, he slept in a while, and came to feel better.

Then, we went over to Origins to get our badges- two teacher's badges (free) and a child's badge, also free. Since Origins is held downtown in our hideously ugly convention center, we just biked there. On our way back, we had to skirt through the Doo Dah parade. Fortunately, it was just getting started, so we were able to cross through a gap.

This is Ari and me painting. She was into the watercolors, and really seemed to get the gist of how to use them (wet brush in cup, dip in paints, put on paper). Much of the time she thought it was more fun to smush the paints around on the tray than paint them onto paper, but that's cool. Those paints are in my "kid art supplies" box. All alone, for the moment- I should take her crayons out of the heater intake and put them there- also, I want to get her fingerpaints.

And this is Ari playing in a puddle. After we got back from Origins, Ari took a nap, and it started raining pretty hard, which nixed our plans to barbecue with R&B in the park before the fireworks. We ended up just staying in and cooking the food at home- pork ribs, corn on the cob, chips (with Mom's famous dip) and cherry pie for dessert. The cherry pie was particularly excellent- flaky crust, sweet cherries, good filling ingredients.

Thad had to work tonight, which is total suck, so he missed the fireworks. They were lovely. At least he got cherry pie...

Very belated

This weekend was Marcon... check us out. I didn't take nearly as many pictures as last year- probably because I spent most of the con running after a certain little someone, and didn't have proper time to pull out a camera.

This is a picture of her, napping under one of the tables in the gaming room.

We pretty much spent the whole con in the gaming room, with one of us gaming and the other running after the girl. Ari had great fun seeing all the sights- including escalators, which she enjoyed going up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down.

This is Miss Ari deciding that the Icehouse pieces are her personal playthings. The rep from Looney Labs was nice enough about it, and I had her come away when they were actually ready to play. Brooke, who actually knows how to play the game, said that she was making some pretty good plays.

Matt McFarland (aka Black Hat Matt) brought his wife and daughter to the con, and Ari enjoyed playing with her. She's 10 months older than Ari is. She was really interested in other kids and babies, and every time she saw any, she'd run right up, saying "Bay-ee! Bay-ee!" One girl (maybe 5 or 6?) was getting really frustrated with her, saying, "I'M NOT A BABY!" But anyone not-adult is a "bay-ee" as far as Ari is concerned. :)

Oh, one kinda cool thing- there was a maybe 8 or 10 year-old girl there, dressed up all pretty and with a cat-fairy plushy. Ari kept pointing at her, saying "Seh-ee! Seh-ee! Seh-ee!" I told the girl that Ari thought she was a fairy (that being what "seh-ee" means in Ari-speak), and she held out the plushy, saying, "no, this is the fairy".

So, Ari pointed at the plushy, and said, "Dat!" and pointed at the girl and said, "Seh-ee!" She knew what she knew. :)