Category Archives: The Girl

In Which She Tries Not To Laugh

Owlet is sick. She’d been moody and prone to bursting into tears over tiny things in the latter half of last week, but Friday she manifested a full-blown, terrible cold. Friday bedtime and Saturday nap were awful experiences for everyone. She was so sick she just moaned and screamed for ages, stuck in that cycle that toddlers can’t break sometimes, and once she was asleep Friday night she woke up pretty much every hour moaning, “Noses running, noses running.” Poor bunny.

Then, of course, the clocks went back on Saturday night. She’s old enough now that we don’t have to spend the week leading up to a time change shifting the schedule by ten minutes every day to be in line with the new settings. Still, the first nap of Daylight Savings Time is always tricky. We put Owlet to bed, and she kept getting up. (I would like to blame the time shift for this, but she does it often.) I’d put her back to bed four times, and told Sparky to be quiet half a dozen times. I heard a bang from her room, then silence. Maybe she just whacked her hand into the wall while turning over, I thought. It was quiet for a little while longer, and then bang again; it sounded like she was hitting a drawer or something. I opened her door with a little more power than I should have, because I was getting cross with both kids… and there she was, sitting on her little potty, falling asleep with her head nodding to the side, where it was hitting the side of her dresser.

I picked her up, pulled up her leggings, and tucked her into bed. I don’t think she even woke up. It was all I could do not to laugh; she was so determined not to sleep, and she looked so funny.

It was adorable. I still feel bad for her, though; she’s just knackered by this horrible cold, coughing so hard that she sounds like her lungs are being ripped out by the roots, and while she’s getting a bit better, I suspect she’ll be home on Monday, too.

Owlet: Thirty Months Old!

Owlet is going through another level-up in language; it’s just more precise in general. (Except for ‘pinnanose.’ “Play pinnanose, Mummy?” I almost don’t want to teach her to say pee-yan-oh, because hearing her ask to play “pinnanose” makes me giggle inside every time.) She’s slimming a bit (thank goodness), and her legs look longer as a result. She looks more like a little girl now than a chubby toddler. I had to buy her a new snowsuit (the second one this winter) one size bigger, with longer sleeves and legs. She’s wearing size 4 jeans and tops, and I have no idea what her shoe size is; she’s worn size 9 boots all winter, but I bought them large on purpose. Her two-year-old molars are finally IN, thank goodness.

Her favourite colour is “pupple.” Her favourite foods are yoghurt (‘yodirt’), gravy (on anything — I have to keep a container of it in the fridge to pour over anything at a moment’s notice), her Shreddies and Ohs (her word for Cheerios) with milk in the morning, and “TANDIES!” after supper. (She gets two M&Ms for dessert after dinner. She tries to ask for them after breakfast and lunch, too, but that’s not happening.) She dips her whole hand into HRH’s coffee and licks it off. He caught her gently putting my wineglass down the other day. She looked at him and kind of smacked her lips quietly.

She’s working on issuing commands, often at inappropriate times. She occasionally tries to put people, things, or cats into time outs at random moments, or scolds them sternly for something they did ages ago that she suddenly needs to work through again in her mind.

She is very into Hide and Seek. Like most toddlers, she is somewhat unclear on the concept, but loves what she does anyway. She’ll hide in the same place that she found Sparky just about every time, and of course he finds her right away. We had to explain to him that he needed to pretend to look. “Why? I know where she is,” he said. Well, buddy, we knew exactly where you were when you played it at her age, too, but we played along.

She is also very into playing babies: rocking them, giving them bottles, and burping them. Her imaginative play with her Fisher Price animals and her ponies is starting to take off, too. There are general storylines that are followed: one pony gets a crown or something, runs to everypony one by one and says, “Look! Look!” and the other pony says, “Oh, you look so pretty!” Then they run to the next pony together, and so on. With the farm animals, one of them comes running to me and says, “So-and-so pushed me.” We have to go through the process of calling the offending party over, asking if it pushed the aggrieved party, reminding it that we don’t push our friends, and requesting an apology.

She had a bad cold at the end of January that had her home from school for a week, and triggered a nasty round of croup. If I’d known her entire class was coughing, I’d have sent her back two days earlier; I was doing the good parent thing and keeping her home to avoid infecting anyone else, but it turned out they were all sick already. Oh, well. We had fun doing groceries, and watching Sesame Street, and making lunches and scones together. One day I had to drop off a round of daycare cheques for the next couple of months, and they sent home a craft for her to do that the other kids had done earlier in the week. She loved doing her “homework” while Sparky did his. She played with the iPad way too much while she was ill, and I had to institute a detox when she went back to school; that did not go over well at all. There was about a week of screaming before and after school, but then everything settled, and now she’s back to books and toys in her down time, thank goodness.

Her favourite books at the moment are Thomas’ Snowsuit by Robert Munsch, and the Oliver Jeffers books, particularly The Way Back Home. Her favourite song is “Let It Go” from Frozen, which she sings remarkably clearly, surprisingly on-key for a toddler, and does all the motions she’s seen in the video. Her favourite parts to play out are when Elsa builds the ice palace, and when she pulls off her crown and throws it away. (Sparky is also in love with this song, and sings it particularly well.) She is going to absolutely love the film when we get it on DVD.

Owlet: Twenty-Nine Months Old!

This past month, Owlet learned how to play hide and seek. I tripped across this while some of Sparky’s godsisters were playing it with him while they were visiting, and found Owlet sitting under the chair at my sewing table. “What are you doing there?’ I asked. “Ssh,” she said. “She’s playing hide and seek,” HRH explained, who was helping. It was rather adorable. So now she has added “hidaseek?” to her game of “chase me, chase me!” It’s nice to have a wider range of games to choose from.

She learned “Jingle Bells” and “Frosty the Snowman” at daycare, and sang them all December long with great gusto. Or rather, she sang the first verse of each over and over. Sparky and I managed to teach her the “fa la la” bits of “Deck the Halls,” which provided some relief for our ears.

This holiday season she finally got the concept of parties, too. The first one was the daycare party. “Par tee?” she said. “Chrissmass par tee? Chrissmass par tee, yay!” “More par tee,” she cried when we had to leave to take her home for her nap, an hour later than usual. We promised her more par tees throughout the month, and she grudgingly agreed to leave.

The laid-back “Shuuure!” has returned to her vocabulary, which has levelled up again in an undefinable way. Maybe it’s just that her pronunciation has sharpened a bit, making what she says generally less fuzzy and easier to understand. Maybe it’s the new and as-of-yet still occasional use of the pronoun “I.” Maybe it’s that she’s putting concepts into words more easily than she used to. All I know is that not understanding her is now a rarity, and when she does say something that is gibberish-like to our ears, it’s more frustrating than ever for everyone involved because we’re all so used to communicating clearly.

She has similarly levelled up in her physical self. Suddenly a bunch of her leggings and pants are too short (speaking of which, Sparky’s jeans all suddenly all too short as well, argh); suddenly the sleeves of her snowsuit are just barely long enough; suddenly half her socks are only good for wearing to bed now. She can put her hands into her mittens and get her thumbs into the mittens’ thumbs on the first try. (WOO! We worked really hard on that this winter, let me tell you.) She can go up and down the stairs without a death grip on the railing or an adult’s hand. And I’m just going to come out and say it: She’s toilet trained. We were holding off confirming it until we knew she was night trained, and she’s mostly fine then. She wears a pull-up just in case, but they’re dry in the morning. During the day she takes herself off to use her small potty whenever she needs to and often doesn’t tell us, which means we have to remember to check it periodically.

Her two-year-old molars are finally coming in, after a couple of months of irritation. The lower left one is in, and the lower right has finally broken through. She’s old enough to stick her fingers in her mouth and say, “Mouth hurts, Ty Knoll, pease.”

Her current favourite books are In a People House, her Frozen storybook, and the Sofia the First book she got for Christmas.

Bedtime has become a kerfuffle of sorts. She goes to bed nicely for her dad, not so much for me. So we’ve split up the bedtime routine: I do the reading part, and HRH takes over for the cuddle. It makes me a bit sad, because I love the cuddle part of bedtime, and I miss singing to her, but this way it’s over in half an hour as opposed to two hours. She just thinks it’s playtime if I’m cuddling her, and still hasn’t figured out that if she’s quiet I’ll stay, but if she continues to bounce around our time together will be over, and then we have to go through the crying and the repeated returning her to her bed.

Over the Christmas break, Janice brought us the stunning quilt that she has been working on since before Owlet was born, and it’s simply beautiful. Back when she proposed doing it, I gave her a general colour palette, and we discussed patterns. I wanted something that looked like a Brigid’s cross, and we found a pinwheel variation that looked perfect with the right piecing. The guild acquaintance whom Jan had lined up to do the actual quilting got through her queue of other work and finished it up this fall. It’s crib sized, and I was worried that the switch to the big-girl bed meant we wouldn’t see it very often, but it’s folded and lying across the foot of her bed so we can see it every day, and the colours work perfectly both against the coverlet and in her room.

Look how gorgeous this is.

And look how the feathery quilting motif softens the right angles of the pieced quilt top.

(The quilt is straight. My photos and how the quilt was laid on the bed are not.)

The soft green flannel of the back complements it perfectly, and I cannot get over how perfect the binding and border fabric is; the brown and gold pulls everything together. You can see the quilting motif really well on this side.

Both my children are very, very fortunate to have heirloom-quality quilts made for them with love by family friends, along with the heirloom-quality knitted items. Someday they’ll know just how wonderful all that stuff is. For now, they just know joy because we have friends who love them, whether they bear gifts or not.

Stuff I Did In 2013

Wow. Busy year.

Knitted two and a half pairs of socks. No, actually, if we’re adding up individual socks I knit three full pairs, because I knit three for Sparky’s Gryffindor socks, two for my slipper socks, and one so far for my own pair of regular socks. Ha ha! Six socks! (Too bad that’s not how it actually works. Sigh.)

I knit a complete child’s pullover sweater. How crazy is that. It was also my first test knit for someone.

I knit one and a half cap-sleeve sweaters for myself. The half is because I had a half-done one languishing in my cupboard since something like 2006, I finished it, realized it wouldn’t fit, frogged it all, and reknit it. It’s technically finished, but I need to undo the bindoff and add an inch to the bottom. I should add that I made some original modifications to the neck and sleeves that actually worked. I think I’m getting this knitting thing.

I knit a lot of blanket squares for my friends in my online mums group. And then I seamed two of those blankets together and knit the borders on each from yarn spun especially for them.

I spun twelve ounces of yarn for a friend’s project. I spun a similarly crazy amount for my mother’s stunning cabled wrap, and then dyed it, too. And I wonder why I don’t have a lot to show for my spinning time this year. Most of it belongs to other people!

In other areas of my life, I switched the bread recipe I use, and I’m liking the more artisanal loaf we get from it. I also started making my own yogurt, which is a big thing because I loathe yogurt. HRH and Owlet adore it, though.

I stopped using commercial cleansers and moisturizers on my face, observing how much happier and healthier my hair and scalp were when I quit using sodium lauryl/laureth-laden shampoos and silicone-sibling conditioners, and thinking that my face would probably react in a similarly positive fashion. Turns out my face is much happier not being stripped of everything (good and bad) and then having stuff smoothed back on to rehydrate it. I’m using the oil-cleansing method, and my tricky-to-handle, acne-prone face has never been happier. So happy, in fact, that I only have to do it every two days. So yeah, colour me impressed. (Also appalled at the ruthlessly-strip-then-requires-deep-moisturizing-with-unhappy-stuff-that-needs-to-be-stripped cycle that our consumer society has tricked us into repeating endlessly.)

I cut my hair, a lot. I’m hacking off three-quarters of an inch every four to five weeks. It’s nuts. I thought a couple of times that I’d grow it longer again, but I look so tired when it’s shoulder length that snip, off it comes, and I look so much healthier and brighter with it at about chin length again.

I was pretty healthy overall, the trip to the dermatologist and his concern over one of my moles aside. (That’s being taken off and sent for analysis next June. It’s difficult to reconcile “concern” with an eight-month wait for removal and analysis, but whatever.) The other health scare that had me sent a specialist also ended up fine, so another deep sigh of relief and hurrah for that. (Also, I now have a gynaecologist who is awfully nice.) I went back on my fibro medication this summer, and after a two-month period where it felt like it wasn’t doing anything, things suddenly clicked into place and the pain is manageable and energy levels are more consistent. Sleep is less of an issue, although still a big sensitive spot for me.

I kept up with Downton Abbey and Sherlock, we discovered the My Little Pony reboot, and I dropped Game of Thrones because the level of depicted violence and sex turned me off. I know, I know; I’ve read all the books. But the way HBO is portraying it is different, and it’s not enjoyable to watch for me. And life is too short to make myself read crappy books or watch TV that I don’t enjoy. I’m getting very good at cutting stuff like that out of my life.

In fact, I’ve looked back over the past couple of years, and I’ve done a better job at releasing toxic friendships and limiting contact with people who stress me out. I have a limited amount of energy to keep myself going. I need to protect it. I’m doing a pretty good job at saying no and focusing on the most important things in my life.

I’ve done some editing work that I’m very proud of, both private and through the publisher I work with. I’ve had the privilege of reading some great stuff before its release and helping to make it even better. I love my work, even when it drives me to excessive chocolate consumption like the most recent ones did. (Oh dear gods. You will never know, because the resulting books have correct facts and dates and are stronger in general. That’s what I do, and I’m fine being anonymous.)

I didn’t have a lot of time for cello, but I seem to be doing okay in that area. Just getting out once a week and carrying through on the orchestral commitment was a priority. We played some great stuff in orchestra, and I’m proud of my Suzuki work, too.

I read much less than I usually do (hmm, I should start including the books I edit; those totally count, why do I not do that already?). Although “usually” has taken a hit these past threeish years, so maybe this new lower finished frequency is the new normal. Standouts for me were the second in Elizabeth Bear’s Steles of the Sky trilogy and Kerstin Gier’s entire Ruby Red trilogy. I finally got around to reading Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, which was lovely. And courtesy of Tamu, I got to attend Neil Gaiman’s only Montreal book signing/reading tour stop ever (it’s hard to believe, but his previous stops here have been con-related, and he retired from touring after The Ocean at the End of the Lane one ended).

Music-wise I discovered The Doubleclicks, who should adopt me, because wow, it’s like they know everything inside my head. Also, cello.

Christmas 2013

Christmas was busy, and it was snow, and it was family. And it was tiny new additions to the family. More on that later.

We decorated the tree the same day we had the photos with Santa done. The only drawback was that the tree we’d chosen (all tied upon the lot, of course) was lovely and full and bushy. So full, in fact, that it took up a quarter of our tiny living room. My spinning wheel needed to be moved into the hallway for the holidays, and the furniture had to be Tetris-ed in. But as ginormous as the tree is, it smelled and looked fabulous! And there was plenty of room for all our lovely ornaments.

On the night before the winter solstice we told the kids they’d each get a Yule present to open the next day, and we talked about welcoming back the sun. We talked about how it was the longest night, and how once upon a time people must have despaired that the sun would ever come back as the nights got longer and longer. We said that we lit candles to shine like little suns to help the sun find its way through the dark on that longest night and return to us the next dawn. Then we lit our candles before they went to bed and said a prayer for the sun to be strong and brave, and Owlet was terribly excited. I’d forgotten how much Sparky loved doing candles for things when he was her age. (She was so excited that she asked to do it for her nap the next day, and the next two nights at bedtime, as well.)

The next morning, we all got up, blew out the candles and said “Yay, sun! You did it! Thank you, sun!” and Owlet wandered around while we made breakfast, randomly shouting, “Yay, sun!” and “Thank you, sun!”

After breakfast Sparky asked if they could open their presents. They each had a wrapped book under the tree. Owlet got a Sandra Boynton Christmas book (with Pookie in it! Well, it isn’t identified as Pookie, but it’s totally Pookie). Sparky got a handbook for taking care of rabbits. He was very pleased, saying that now he could be ready when he got his rabbit once he turned ten, which was the going deal.

But I asked him if he thought he could read it in five minutes instead, to be ready. He looked at me, not understanding. So we told him he was going to visit one of HRH’s students to choose a rabbit of his very own, and he couldn’t quite believe it. We all piled in the car and drove over, and we all sat on the floor with a litter of ten eight-week-old dwarf Netherland bunnies hopping around and over us, grey and cinnamon and black and tan, and it was the best fun. They were so very well socialized that they hopped right into our laps and cuddled, and didn’t freak out a bit when Owlet picked them up and carried them around the way toddlers all pick up four-legged beasties, around the chest and tummy. After much deliberation and interacting with each one to see whose temperament was best suited to him, Sparky came home with this one, who was the smallest of them all.

Meet Solstice, everyone. His back is dark like the night, and his tummy is light like the sun. He is calm and loving, and I don’t think Sparky put him down all day after we got home. Which is fine by Solstice, apparently, who is happy to snuggle.

We’d been sitting on this secret for over a month, buying a huge secondhand cage and the supplies required bit by bit, so we’re pretty thrilled at how it went over. Sparky was warned that because this big present was so big, he wasn’t to expect any of the big things on his Christmas list, and he was so happy it didn’t even make him pause. Sparky and Solstice were pretty much inseparable for the entire Christmas break. If the rabbit wasn’t in his arms or lap, it was next to him in a laundry basket with some toys and hay while Sparky played video games. The rabbit met everyone at the door as soon as they walked in, held out by an excited Sparky who was eager to share his new buddy. He’s a bright and cheerful little thing, who loves to do that neat jump/kick thing happy bunnies do, and to scamper from one end of the bed to the other as fast as he can. He’s fine with the cats, although Minerva is a bit overeager with him, wanting to tussle roughly like she would with a kitten, and Gryff is kind of a bit scared, to be honest. He has visibly grown in just a couple of weeks, and now has a little cinnamon patch between his shoulder blades at the back of his neck, like a little sun. It’s adorable. And Solstice loves just hanging out.

He is very patient, too.

Christmas Day was great. We had both sets of grandparents with us, and it was a genuinely lovely day. I forgot to brine the turkey, but it was acceptably tender despite that. There were new clothes, and books, and video games (including the new Skylanders Swap Force set that Sparky had wanted but had figured wasn’t going to happen since he’d gotten Solstice instead, and which he’d already finished by the end of the holidays, yikes). And Her Owletship’s big gift was a lovely soft cloth doll from Pottery Barn Kids, and a doll bed HRH built for her, with bedding that I sewed for it:

It’s a miniature of her own bed, see?

I was spoiled with cookbooks and new knitting needles and a lovely sweater, a miraculous thermal tumbler that keeps tea hot for hours, and gift certificates for more books and tea. It was hard to focus on things and keep up with the unwrapping, since I spent most of my time facilitating the kids’ experiences, and I ended up with a small pile of gifts to open on my own at the end. One that wasn’t under the tree was the Apple TV that HRH and I bought ourselves on crazy sale halfway through December. We are very impressed with the home network streaming, the cleaner interface with Netflix, and the ability to rent movies from iTunes. It works very well for our needs.

The weather was clear, sunny, and cold, so there were no walks through the neighbourhood, but the company was wonderful, the food supplied by everyone was delicious, the day rolled along smoothly, and we feel very fortunate to be able to spend time with both sides of the family like this. And then we had a few friends over on the Saturday, which was lovely, too, and on the Sunday we gathered with the Preston-LeBlancs in their new house for our annual Yule singalong, and all our wonderful holiday traditions were complete. We feel very, very blessed.

Santa 2013!

Hey, guess what? Owlet’s 28-month post is still not up, because I need pictures that are on HRH’s phone and we are never with it enough when we have a moment to actually download and transfer them from his computer to mine. Yes, that’s right; we have no lives, and are brain-dead a lot of the time when we do have a second to sit down.

In its place, please enjoy the annual Santa photo!

(“What are you going to ask Santa for?” we inquired of Owlet before the visit. “Tea,” she said. Thumbs up, kid.)

For the purposes of comparison and exclaiming at how the children have grown:

– The 2012 Santa photo
– The 2011 Santa photo

Owlet: Twenty-Eight Months Old!

(Yay, finally! I’ll backdate this in a day or two.)

Owlet is two, and we’re seeing that in her behaviour. There are sudden leaps in vocabulary and creative thinking, and wonderful personality quirks emerging, and there are sudden stormy breakdowns over what we think are minor things.

One of her current quirks that I just love is her interest in writing down words. Sometimes she just dictates letters to me and I write them down for her, but other times she will bring a pencil and paper over, hoist herself up on the chesterfield next to me, and say, “Gandma and Papa,” and point to the paper. So I write down Grandma and Papa. Then she says, “Mirva.” And I write down Minerva. “Giffindar,” she says next. I write Gryffindor. “Daddy!” she says, pleased. “Mummy! Nana! Gandad! Eeeyam! Blue! Geen! Pupple!” Then she takes the paper and slides off the chesterfield and carries it around with her for a while. It’s her way of taking the things she loves with her.

Potty training has really taken off, so well that we can pretty much say that she’s done. We keep finding the little potty full of stuff, which means she’s trotting off and taking care of things on her own without telling us. One of her newest phrases is “Clean all day!” And in fact, we have had a couple of dry nights as well, which is pretty awesome.

Also in the line of common two-year-old behaviour, we get lots of “SELF!” She insists on getting dressed on her own (even her socks, which amazes me, because Sparky could not get the hang of putting socks on until he was almost four). She does her own shoes and boots, and her Robeez slippers, and when we have come home from school and she has put her own slippers on she enthusiastically puts mine on for me, too. Of course, I have to raise my foot to her eye level, which is kind of hard on my lower back, but it’s worth it to see how proud she is of getting them on my feet.

Bedtime this past month has been a challenge. There has been some raging crying some nights at bedtime, and I’ve had to sit next to her bed and hold her hand until she’s asleep. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde; you don’t know which Owlet you’ll get when you start the bedtime routine. We recently caught on to part of it; she thinks she’s missing something when we put her to bed. So we showed her Sparky in his pyjamas in bed, we got into our jammies early to say goodnight to her, and we turned off all the lights so when she peeks out of her room she sees that the house has gone to bed. It has mostly worked, so I think we finally figured it out. In the weeks leading up to the switch to the big bed we’ve been having a lot of “Sit Mummy, sit” when I put her to bed; she wanted company while she fell asleep. That would have been fine, except when she has company she thinks it’s playtime. It’s one of the reasons we figured it was time for the switch to the bed from the crib. It was kind of a reset of the bedtime routine. Now we curl up in her bed to read together, and snuggle and sing, and she knows she has a defined cuddle time after that.

The biggest news, and the reason this post was delayed a few days, was the introduction of the big girl bed. Owlet is in complete and utter head-over-heels love with it.

The first nap was a bit rough, but after that everything has gone swimmingly. Once we’ve finished stories, songs, and cuddle and we leave, we can hear her patter across the floor and crack open the door to peek out, but then she closes the door and races back and goes to sleep. In fact, we have to wake her up most mornings. She’s sleeping so hard that not even opening her blind and letting in the cat wakes her up…

We are seeing more sudden toddler breakdowns resulting from things like telling her she has to sit at the table to eat peanut butter and crackers, like we always have. No, she wants to eat them on the chesterfield, right here, right now, and the world will end if she does not. Do you want the world to end, Mummy? Of course you don’t. So bring the crackers HERE. Except we keep calmly telling her that if she wants PB crackers she has to come to the table for them, and it’s like we’re telling her that we have to cut off one of her arms before she gets that snack.

Since we’re talking about food, I’ll mention that like Sparky did at her age, she loves gravy on everything. “Dips? Dips?” she’ll ask when she gets served food. Grandma and Papa served applesauce with the ribs the last time we were over for dinner and she was all for it. Maybe we can get away with warming up some applesauce and putting it on her plate to dip everything into, because making quick pan gravy at just about every meal is getting old fast. (I remember making a large batch of gravy and freezing it in an ice cube tray when Sparky was at this stage; maybe Ill have to do that again.) I introduced her to mayonnaise the other day when she demanded dips for her carrot sticks, and I had to give her more three times during that meal alone.

At the end of November my rehearsal with my accompanist was cancelled on a Saturday morning, so I bundled all my equipment back inside, and Owlet decided she needed to come upstairs and that I should play my cello for her. She’s never asked this before. So up we went. I played my recital piece for her, and she was so good! She sat on the chaise longue exactly where I told her she’d have to sit, and I let her hold my Hermione doll while she did. When I was done she slipped down and came over and said, “Help?” So I let her put her hand on my bow hand and push the bow back and forth on the strings, which got her very excited. Then she wanted to do it alone, but I said no. So she grabbed Sparky’s bow and crouched over his cello, trying to play it. I managed to stop her in time there, too. Then I thought… why not?

I asked if she wanted to play her own cello. Yes, yes, Mummy, Owlet cello! So I got her installed in the living room again and went down into the storage room to get the old clunker viola Sparky used to use as his cello. We sat her in one of her tiny chairs, put a box in front of her to rest the viola on, and now we apparently have another cellist in the family.

It’s okay, I don’t think we have to look for a teacher just yet. Besides, we’re still hoping she chooses violin or piano or flute when she’s five and it’s time for music lessons.

As she gains more autonomy, life gets easier. Even with the slowdowns when SELF has to do it, it’s wonderful to be able to give her a direction and let her handle something. And the older she gets, the more easily she plays with Sparky, to both their enjoyment. They love one another very much, and even when they get frustrated with one another, it blows past quickly.