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This is my beautiful daughter, at 2 AM, sitting in the middle of a pile of rice crispies, compounded by a pile of cornstarch. She was eating the rice crispies, but I think she was just playing with the corn starch. I kind of hope she was just playing with it, because otherwise, it reveals some really disturbing things about my child's tastebuds. Ech, I got a face full of it when I was changing her jammies.

I haven't had the motivation to clean it up yet; I expect that'll come tomorrow. In my defense, I do get kind of zoned out when it's the wee hours and my girl still isn't to bed. I really ought to try to do something to get her on a more even schedule, but I've been too lazy- and her staying up so late all the time (which she has been, lately) isn't as suck as it might be, really.

Today, I got home, and Ari started asking for "sammy hugs"- which is to say, "family hugs", wherein she gets to be in the middle of a mama and papa sandwich. She also beeped my nose repeatedly and played "peetaboo" with me. It was freakin' adorable. Oh, and lately, when Thad goes to bed, she wants to snuggle under the covers. I can hardly get her away so he can sleep. Sometimes she asks for "sammy hugs" then, too.

The first outings for some of the cookbooks I got at the xmas are up at the Cookbook Party Club blog, if anyone cares. There is even pictures.

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.
   

Maine: 1

We recently went to Maine, to visit Thad's grandparents. They have a lovely (gorgeous, stunning) house in Thomaston, and we spent the week touristing around the area and generally getting to spend time with Thad's extended and immediate family. It was a great trip, and here's some pictures. I picked the ones I liked the very very best, and I figured I'd take the time to write some stuff about what I remember about the trip. It'll probably take a while (a number of entries, anyhow) but if you don't want to, no one is making you read. ;)

This is Ari playing with pots and pans. She very much liked going in the kitchen and playing in the cupboards there- perhaps because she has no cupboards at home? Eventually, we had to tie the cupboard with the bleach and cleaning supplies in it shut- although, all she seemed to want from there was the scrub brush. Go figure.

Also, the liquor was kept in one of the cupboards, and she thought it was great fun to grab the bottles out! Marcus had hopes for getting her to bring them to him, but it didn't work out that way. ;)

This is where we slept on the trip- in the music room. It's one of the few cat-free rooms in the house, which was nice. It was full of windows and beautiful plants.

If you look closer at this picture, you'll notice that Ari and Thad both have pen marks all over them. Thad stayed up with her the night before this, and she apparently got hold of a pen and went to town. I snuck in and took these pictures for posterity.

This is Ari with Bunny, a very tolerant Manx cat (hence her name). Ari loved the cats at Nancy and Francis's, but most of them decided that this loud little creature was too much for them, and they were steering clear. Bunny was most willing to put up with Ari.

Not that she was too bad, as toddlers go. She was generally very gentle and reasonably respectful of the cats- but in that loud, clumsy toddler sort of way. Anyway, Ari liked to lie on the ground with Bunny or pet her or follow her around. This is her pointing at Bunny and saying "dat! dat!"

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Guess what this is? This is us not having couscous for dinner on Wednesday. I think we need to get some more locking canisters to keep that sort of thing in.

Ari had a great time, anyhow. At one point, she even laid down on her tummy and made couscous angels. I went ahead and let her play with it, until she was napping and it was bugging me. And lo, I had a vacuum canister full of dirty couscous.

I meant us to go to the downtown library today, but one of my shoes was irrevocably lost, so we stayed home and cleaned up instead- after Thad woke up, he took her to the park at least, though.

She helped me sort laundry. She figured out that I was throwing clothes, and thought that sounded like a good time, anyhow. Most of the clothes ended up in their proper piles at the end...