Night night Papa for the third time

Look what Ray brought to contribute to game night dinner. :D

Ari has been into decorating herself lately. She found where we had our Sharpie markers- thank god, she was mostly interested in drawing on herself. Yesterday, she had to have two baths due to close encounters with food dyes and some washable markers.

Mind, I've been writing this entry over several days, so "yesterday" in the prior paragraph is like, Sunday.

Today, on the other hand, has been a pretty exciting day. Ari cooked with me for the first time today. It was a pretty mixed success. :) She had been having kind of a rough, tantrumy day, and when I started cooking soup, she was really interested. I went ahead and got out a chair for her so she could see what I was doing, and I gave her a spoon to stir the broth, and so on.


Then I started seasoning the broth, and she was super interested in that, so I started aliquoting herbs and spices into a little cup, and letting her dump them into the broth. She was having a great time.

Then I had to go upstairs. Then, when I came downstairs, I discovered that, in cooking the five pounds of brisket that I cooked yesterday, I left the celery salt out on the table. I discovered this by finding the empty celery salt jar next to my beautifully seasoned beef broth! There wasn't much in the jar, but she'd still dumped about a tablespoon and a half of it into the now-incredibly-oversalted broth. I was able to rescue it with two more cups of unsalted broth and some tomato juice, but still. It just wasn't quite the same.

It was really cool cooking with her, though. I hope I get to do it LOTS more. :D

Second exciting thing is that Ari has- at long last- started to show interest in the potty. We went out and got one of those potty seats that goes on your big toilet, and she was very taken with it. She spent about an hour sitting on it this evening.

She has definitely not progressed to knowing what to use the potty for, mind. But this is still a big jump up from the little girl who didn't seem to notice that the potty existed at all or what we did with it.

Couple of other things: we taught Ari how to blow on dandelions for wishes. She really digs it. She's been really tantrumy of late. I choose to hope that this heralds the cusp of a new developmental stage.

Oh, and she's been really freaking me out on the playground. I try hard to stand back and let her find her own boundaries- which she's really quite good at- but she's constantly attempting things I don't think she should be able to do. She's always either succeeded at them safely, or turned back if she didn't think she could do it. And I really do want her to learn to not do things because she knows they're not safe, not because I told her so.

But still. She's climbed to the top of the jungle gym, and I don't think she can get down without falling. I'm there biting my nails and making myself wait until she asks for help. She doesn't, though. She always climbs down on her own.

Cordon bleu rolls in puff pastry

I'm here, trying to remember what in hell I've been doing for the last two weeks. Teaching... working on the dissertation. Trying to read French (a whole long article; too long to try to impose on Rebecca to translate for me), and hoping to get a computer thing going to help gather some data for my dissertation. Everything is going slower than expected, which is- as I understand it- the nature of the beast.

This weekend, we went to the Viking Festival, now an annual favorite (Ari's been every year she's been alive, thus far). Miss Ariadne had the Good, Good Times there, as you can see.

The Viking Festival is pretty low-key and relaxed, and not terribly crowded, so it was easy for Miss Ari to run around. Everyone was pretty nice about it, too, on the occasions on which she went running into someone's booth or tent or whatever. :)

She also had loads of fun with the music. We listened to this band composed of a dude playing a German bagpipe (did you know that the Germans had bagpipes? Apparently, most of Europe did) and another dude playing various kinds of drums. Ari, as you can see, had a good time dancing.

Then, they asked if anyone in the audience wanted to come play drums, since they had alot of drums. We got Rick up there playing, and Ari and I danced until I was too tired. Then, as the next number was starting, Ari ran up and started playing with a free drum. The guys in the band didn't mind her messing with it, so Thad came up and held it for her while she played. :D

Then we went home and ate pamcakes and played Munchkin and watched a little Doctor Who.

Flopping around like a pig with his head cut off

I can't believe that it's already nearly half-way through April. We've been amusing ourselves right enough. The weather's been lovely (save for the last few days that have been rainy and cold and miserable). Last weekend we had Cookbook Party Club, but I haven't managed to write it up yet. The food was really lovely, though.

This is Ari, making her dinosaur drink from her cup. Ari had good times at Cookbook Party Club. Thad took her to parks and whatnot while we cooked, and then she got to play with Jeff and "Book" and "Tabbus", three of her very favoritest people.

This is Ari in our new papasan. Our last papasan crumpled one day and is currently being used as a pillow nest/landing pad by a little miss upstairs. Rick saw one at a thrift store, though, and got it for us as a replacement. Ari approved it.

She's been a bit more verbal now. She parrots alot, but also talks about things. She asks for "Sammy Hooogs" alot (her way of pronouncing "family hugs", which is when we all three get in a group hug-and-kiss session).

Oh, and she is way into "nopples". Comes of being a breastfed baby, I suppose.

She also likes to play dress up, which she comes by honestly. Lately, she really digs wearing other people's clothes- especially mine. She keeps stealing my shoes from my room upstairs, and walking around in them. Here, she's wearing my leather gloves and the swimsuit top I just bought.

She wandered around in it, saying "my nopples!" for a while, which cracked me up. She clearly knows what that top is about.

Tonight, we played UnMet again. I very dig that game. For dinner, I roasted a chicken, and made mashed potatoes and steamed asparagus (asparagus was on cheap at the store). Then, for dessert, I made this fantastic devil's food cake, and put strawberries in the middle, and cream cheese frosting on top. It was fairly phenomenal, in my opinion.

Tea for six and a half

Here is Ari, finally liking her bike helmet. You may remember that she used to didn't like it, but now she's super into wearing it. We couldn't hardly get her to put it down.

We've been having a lovely set of spring breaks. I was off, and then Thad was off for my first week of classes, so that was nice. Oh, and I bought a bike again. My last one got stole at the end of fall (more or less) out of our backyard, which I was upset about. I like the new bike, though. It's super light (I think the lightest bike I've ever owned) and it rides really nice. I got it at Once Ridden, which, as far as I can tell, is the only used bike shop in the C-Bus. I approve of good used bikes. It's like recycling. Also, those guys are so the best bike mechanics. When you recondition old bikes, you really know your way around a frikkin' bike, you know?

Saturday, we had a whole road trip with us and R&B and also Kira and Travis. I was just wondering if I'd ever actually mentioned Kira and Travis in this blog, and I see that I haven't. Thad sort of mentioned that Kira wasn't a cat once, and that we game with them. Anyway, they moved here last fall, and we have been hanging out. They like my baby. In fact, because they like my baby, they read this blog, so I feel weird talking about them. However, I suspect they're like to show up here again, so I thought I'd explain who they are and all. Sort of. Yeah. So.

Right! Road trip! We've been wanting to do a little steampunk crafting, but oh noes! We had no appropriately steampunky bits and bobs. So, Rick recommended us to go to this place in Dayton called Mendelson's. It was this crazy enormous warehouse full of weird crap. I giggled like a schoolgirl. Literally, I'm not joking about that. I mean, this place had an entire room just for vacuum tubes. I said, get in my ray guns! and bought seven.

After Mendelson's, we went over to the Der Dutchman and ate us some broasted freakin' chicken. I have gone to the Der Dutchman twice before (and yes, I noticed the double article there, thanks ;) ) and I highly approve of it.

It has a buffet, where you can eat as much broasted chicken and beef and turkey roast as you want. And also, you can have mashed potatoes and corn and green beans and amishy noodles. And they bring you as much rolls as you want. I ate and ate and ate. Ari had pizza, actually. I'm glad Thad was paying attention to her fooding, because I was paying attention to the fine, fine eating I was doing. I think he knew that he was going to have to look after her for the duration of that meal. Because, I mean, broasted chicken.

Then there was pie afterwards.

We always knew you was a whoopsy...

R&B have had the last two days off for spring break, and we've been hanging out. Tuesday, they came over. We had dinner and watched movies and worked on craft projects (Rick's faaabulous leather tophat, the armored collar Brooke and I are working on, and my lab apron). Rick cried at the end of The Iron Giant, but claims to still be a man. (To be fair, we all cried at the end of The Iron Giant. "Superman...")

Anyway, yesterday, we went to Landoll's Mohican Castle and had a look around and some lunch. It's a fantastically expensive B&B, which used to be a retreat which a rich dude built for himself out in the woods. It's all... neo-medieval. Pretty, though, and there's a nice restaurant attached. We had lunch there, and it was tasty. I had tasty crab cakes, and Thad had a pork loin. Ari had french fries. Have I ever mentioned that my child loves french fries seemingly more than any other food? She does. She will only eat other food if the french fries are gone.

Unfortunately, it was raining while we were there. And cold. Then, it got colder. Brooke wanted us to go for a nature walk, but she was crazy. :) We went to this gorge overlook, and that was about good enough for us. Ari had a great time, though. There were puddles! And ice! And Miss Brooke!

Then, on the way home, it got even colder. Then it started to hail. Then, it started to snow. Then, the roads got really horrible. Ech. Anyway, we got home and I made scones (I love scones) and we played 4x4 HoMMV and worked on our craft projects. Apron: done, and also a copper mesh surgical mask. Now I have to make that blouse. I'm a little frightened. Tailoring is hard.

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.

Not for me. Only Gileta!

Tonight was our Gary Gygax Memorial Dungeon Crawl.

For those of you who don't know, or weren't aware, Gary Gygax- the man behind Dungeons and Dragons- died last week. The geek community has gone into mourning. Seriously. And, while it's true that Thad and I don't actually like Dungeons and Dragons, the fact remains that we would not be who we are or where we are if Gary Gygax had not lived his life as he did. The least we could do was buy some pizza, some Cheetos, and some Mountain Dew, and play his freakin' game for one night.

So, Thad dug out the infamous Red Box (retrieved from his 'rents over Christmas), and we rolled up characters by the most old school of RPG rules. 3d6 6 times in order, no rerolls or dropping ones or nothing! Then, we went into a dungeon, and crawled all over it. PC's died. Jeff alone went through three. We killed goblins, and skeletons, and rats. And more skeletons. One of our number popped his RPG cherry on the Red Box tonight, just like so many of us have in the past. It was a glorious game night, TPK or no.

We even rolled to see if we were getting drunk.

PS: Ari asked for something today. She put the bag of bagels in my hand, and- quite clearly- said, "I want a bagel, please". Well, it might have sounded more like "A wan' boggle pease. Boggle pease." Nevertheless, my baby asked for something. With words. For like, the first time ever. :D

This is so my child. I'm not sure what it is, but she is super into wearing big people shoes. Like, she got Rick's big ol' stompin' boots and was clompin' around the house in 'em like a little crazy person.

Anyway, it occurs to me that I haven't talked at all about my absence from my life here, or the outcome of anything. So, well, first of all: I passed.

Let me just say that again. I passed.

I only found out yesterday, because yesterday was the oral defense, which was really scary to contemplate beforehand, but not actually so scary in real life. It turns out that when you spend three weeks locked in an attic doing nothing but read stuff about a set of topics, you actually have opinions and thoughts about those topics afterwards. Who knew?

Let me just take a quick break to show you my daughter, in a shirt I made for her. Well, Janessa dyed the shirt, but I put the TARDIS on it. This was not staged, by the by. She went and got the Doctor to play with all on her own.

Anyhow, so I was locked in an attic*. I planned to stay with R&B for a week, and stayed for two. Lovely people that they are, they fed me lunch and breakfast and dinner and let me put enormous stacks of books on their dining table and play my 82-song "work" playlist over and over again. And they let me talk at them- at length- about analogy and grammaticalization and theories of contact-induced change. They even went "uh huh" and "yeah" and "bitch is crazy!" at the appropriate moments, and didn't complain when I seemed like I might just be staying indefinitely.

It was this huge, crazy thing, of me coming face to face with the work. Do or die, moment, right? No excuses, no putting it off. In theory.

So, my exam was due the 27th (a Wednesday) and it became clear by Monday that I just wasn't going to make that deadline. Brian told me I had to have it in by the morning of Monday the 3rd at the absolute latest. And there I am, on Sunday morning. I had 8 pages of question 1 and 5 pages of question 2 and 4 pages of question 3 and no pages at all of my dissertation proposal. At all.

After three weeks of not being able to write much at all, I suddenly went into overdrive. The final version of the exam was in the vicinity of 30 pages, and the proposal (written in about 4 hours straight on Sunday) was 28 pages long. It's been years since I wrote that much in one place. Hopefully it bodes well for the future. I've certainly been in a funk as far as work is concerned.

Anyway, I turned in the exam at about 3:30 in the morning on Monday. Then I went to bed around 5, and got up at 8 and taught. Thank god, I wasn't lecturing- it was presentations from the students.

Then, I didn't think about the exam for a solid week. Didn't read over my answers, didn't even look at a book. I moved back into my own house again. Then, after months and months of not feeling motivated to do anything except mess around on the internet, I suddenly felt like making stuff. So, I did that shirt applique, and started making myself costume pieces for Unhallowed Metropolis, and cooked a five course gourmet Victorian dinner for game night, and planned all kinds of fun stuff for upcoming days. Like Friday, when we're going to play Sheherezade and have a delicious Middle Eastern dinner that I've planned. There will be pastry involved.

Then, it was time for the defense, and I hadn't looked at or thought about my exam for a week. I ended up just reading over my answers in the morning. And, shockingly enough, when they asked me questions, I knew the answers- or at least, I knew things to say. I had ideas and responses. The exam was two hours long, and it was 15 minutes shy of over before I even noticed the time.

I turned my paper in to the Graduate School yesterday afternoon, so it's official. I swear, I didn't know whether or not I was going to finish the exam until that Sunday morning. It was that close, and there were moments when I thought it might well kill me. But here I am, and I passed.

There's the dissertation, now, of course, but I refuse to think about that for a while now. I have creative food to cook, and Victorian clothing to sew.
____________________
*To be fair, it was a lovely attic. It had a nice desk, and shelves, and a comfy chair next to the window where I did part of my reading. It also had an enormous bathroom with a gorgeous clawfooted tub, which is where I did most of my reading- with my sonic screwdriver and my postit notes balanced on the edge of the tub.

Eek! It's a mouse.

It snowed yesterday. And when I say that it snowed yesterday, I mean, it SNOWED yesterday.
This is the front of our house. That big lump of snow in the left of the picture is our car. The lump of pink and purple is our daughter. :) (Thanks, Jen, for the snowsuit!)

So, after something like 14 inches of snow fell out of the sky, what did we do? Well, Brooke got the idea that we should go get ice cream. It's right down the street, after all, and they sent us a message saying they'd be open today. So, we hiked down High street in the snow. This is Rick, bundled up like a snow ninja, standing there on High. The yoga people shoveled their walk. High fives, yoga people!


The hiking was pretty slow going, especially with a toddler, but she had so much fun. She was obviously cold, but she was just grinning ear to ear. Brooke helped her in the snow alot. I had enough trouble getting me through the snow. Did I mention that I wore my snow pants for the very first time? (Thanks, Grandma!) People from Florida shouldn't have to wear snow pants, I say.

And then, we arrived! Jeni's icecream is the best. We made the poor man give us five million samples before we ordered. I got the "Roxbury Road" (Belgian milk chocolate, homemade marshmallows, toasted almonds) and the Forest Berry. It was phenomenal.

Thad had a cheesecake and brownie icecream that was really excellent as well. Ari totally vikinged his cone, though. I told him we should get her her own. Also, check out her spoon use. :D

Then we walked home. There was a snowball fight involved. Just so you know, the reason Ari is sitting in the snow saying "Ooow! Ooow!" is because Thad had shoved me into a snow drift just previous to the snowball fight breaking out, and because cold cold snow HURTS when you shove it up against poor naked flesh. Like the flesh in between the end of my sleeve/jacket and the beginning of my gloves and mittens. So, she'd just got to hear a bunch of mama going "OW! Dammit, OW!" :)

I have inside me blood of kings

The Thrilling Conclusion to...Two Years a Papa...

By my reckoning this will make a full dozen of my proxy blogs since Julia went off the grid. Julia comes home tomorrow!! YAY!!!!
When I last spoke with her she had finished her dissertation proposal and only needed to do the final editing of her exam questions so she should be in good shape when she has to turn them all in tomorrow morning.

As for me, a new release for one of my favorite games came out last week, and so I got to play that some yesterday. Jeff, Ray-Ray, and Jaime all came over for a big four person game last night, which was lots of fun. The game in question is Heroclix, a silly little minis game meant to mimic comic books, but I have fun with it. I consider it to be about the closest thing I have to a vice. (I hear we're all entitled to one of those, right?)

Enough about grad school and little plastic figures, you all want to hear about a little girl.

Evidently I don't do so well learning from experience. Previously I mentioned how my camera ran out of power at the conservatory; well I went galavanting out sans spare battery again. This time it was while at the North Market. I got Ari and myself some slices of pizza and we sat down on a bench to partake of them and she looked so cute sitting on the bench with her little boots dangling in the air while eating a big slice of New York style pizza that I thought I'd take a picture. Well, as mentioned above, I failed to take the desired snapshot. Ari, however, did not fail in snagging my slice of pizza while I was up. What can I say, she's a viking. I have no one to blame but myself, that's what I get for having bought her cheese pizza and pepperoni for myself.
Just like last time, to make up for having failed picture-wise I got Shermy to fire up the Way Back Machine to find an earlier picture of Ari at the North Market. This time though, we really had to turn back the clock.

She's not that easy to carry anymore.

On the trip shown in the photo Grandpa Marcus bought Ari a lovely purple wool coat to keep her warm for her first Winter.
Ari was still wearing that coat this last Winter.
That dragon hat doesn't fit her anymore though. Believe me, I've checked.

I may not have learned to carry a spare camera battery with me, but Ari is definitely learning things, like how to put herself to bed.
The other day I reported on how she had gone to bed by herself. Well, what I left out was that I had been there with her and had lied down beside her until she fell asleep.
Last night, however, she had been up in her room for a while and I thought that she was just playing or reading as she is often want to do, but when I went up to check on her this was what I saw:

There she was, snug as a bug and fast asleep. Fortunately, I had already put her in a night diaper and brushed her teeth.

That's about all I've got. I'll leave you with one last bit of utter sappiness before returning you to your irregularly scheduled Julia blogging.

Today Ari and I spent awhile just sort wrestling and playing around in her room. Something Ari kept doing was pouncing on me and wrapping her arms around me like in a hug and shouting "I gotcha!"
Trapped in her powerful two year old grip all I could do was look down into those big blue eyes and think, "Yes dear, you certainly do."

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.