A Birthday Letter to Boo

Dear Boo,

On the last day of February, you turned eight years old, much to the chagrin and shock of your Mum. You'd think it wouldn't have been a surprise, and yet it was - how did you get so old?

Boo helping me out by modelling some finished knitting.

The past year has seen you do a number of quite impressive things. You sailed through the end of one school and into the next (although there were a few blips along the way) with hardly a wobble. You have gone from a small, extrememely nurturing private school environment into a large, busy and chaotic state school with the rock steadiness that you have always had. Your ability to be certain and content in yourself is something I admire greatly, and I wish I had come to that point much earlier in life then I actually did (i.e. sometime in my twenties). You have always been there, and it is an amazing thing to see.

The intrepid explorer in Norway

You have shot up like a weed - I can't believe that my adorable little cuddle bug is now this tall, gorgeous girl, but there you are. You're still a cuddle bug, thankfully, you just have more sharp corners and take up more space in the bed. And have developed a horrific predilection for Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, but that's another blog post...

One of the marvels being a parent to siblings is to see and acknowledge the differences between two children who have the same parents and have grown up in more-or-less the same environment. You and I had a talk last week about your sister's friends expecting you to behave in a certain way because, well, you're her sister and that's how she reacts. You were quite certain that you and Devil are very different, even though you look very much alike. I couldn't agree more. And I'm afraid this is going to be an ongoing challenge for you, particularly if the two of you continue in the same schools: everyone from peers to teachers to parents are going to think they know what they're getting when you come along, simply by virtue of you being D's younger sibling. It's further complicated by the fact that you are both girls - if one of you had been a boy, that expectation might be tempered a bit - but I am confident that you will have absolutely no problems setting people straight as to your existence as a completely independent entity.

Home cloning experiment

Watching you do math warms my geeky heart to its very cockles: in your ability to recognize patterns seemingly without effort, I see something of myself, and it is further evidence (in my mind at least) of the wonder of genetics. I may be a neuroscientist, but my expertise runs to the cellular and molecular rather then cognitive systems. The fact that I can see in you traits that your father and I have is an ongoing revelation. And it is a window on to myself that is hard to escape.

Thank you for who you are and what you bring to my life. You are my sunshine, Sunshine.

Love,

Mumma

Boo-tooth equipped times three

I noticed this morning that Boo has a new tooth. Sort of. It's just barely broken through her top gum, but it's definitely there. That makes three chompers, and ushers in a new era in the mother-daughter-lactation paradigm. Devil had four teeth by the time she was six months old, but thankfully never got too in to biting me. We'll see how Boo does - since she's hell on putting absolutely everything she can get her hands on into her mouth, I'm a bit concerned that the boobie is going to become the next thing she tries to macerate into oblivion. Needless to say, Mama will not be impressed by such machinations.

She's also crawling...and I've realized that any babyproofing we did for Devil has long since fallen by the wayside. Boo's new favorite thing to do is to make for the router sitting on the floor in the living room, grab it, pull the cables out and chew on them. Not a good call sweetie, Daddy needs the internet so he can peruse the Times editorials.

As for knitting content...I'm hoping to update later today with an FO hat trick, but there needs to be some serious blocking done first. If not today, I'll get it up over the weekend, so stay tuned.

Monkey girls

Picture-heavy post with no yarn, and lots of kid pix. Consider yourself warned.

Last year we took Devil trick or treating on Halloween with our neighbors, who also have two small girls approximately the same age as Devil and Boo. Devil and her buddy A rode in the wagon, while A's sister slept comfortably in a stroller (being all of 2 months old at the time, she was not particularly interested in, nor impressed by, Halloween). The girls were a bit underwhelmed by the whole process (why are we going for a walk in the dark?), but the highlights of the night included:

1) Devil and A absentmindedly chewing on their candy without taking the wrappers off, and the realizing that there was chocolate in there! A actually ate an entire Hershey's Kiss with the foil still on. (The foil was rescued before it could be swallowed).

2) Some wonderful soul leaving a cooler outside their front door with a sign saying "Parents Trick or Treat". It was full of beer. Budweiser, but beer nonetheless. Porpoise was quite peeved at being pregnant and therefore the only parental figure not imbibing.

This year, we did it right. There was Devil-assisted costume production,

That sweater is the one I mentioned at the end of this post

Jack o' lantern carving (Boo was more interested in eating newspaper),

and finally, Devil and Boo were properly outfitted to head off to daycare in their matching monkey suits.

They had lots of fun trick-or-treating at Daddy's office.

Big spider!

Last night we headed out with A and T (princess and leopard respectively), and raked in the loot. No more were these girls content to sit in the wagon and be wheeled around. Oh no. "Mama, let's go to that house!", "Mama, let's get more candy!", "Mama, can you open this lollypop for me pleeeeeeease!" Unfortunately, the parental treats were not in evidence, but we got supplied at A and T's house and set off to wander the neighborhood for hours. Or so it seemed...

And at the end of the night, there were lollypops.

Uh oh

Notice: due to the impending arrival of All Hallow's Eve, and the fact that knitting and fiber play have pushed out vital costume construction activities, all fiber-related projects are hereby banned until such time as A) Porpoise has completed one (1) blue monkey costume and one (1) matching purple monkey costume (thankfully in a smaller size), or B) it's Halloween and my kids trick-or-treat nekkid.

Which, given the fact that we are in The South, is maybe not such a bad idea.

PS - Thanks Red Sox!

Boo-tooth equipped*

Right deity last week, wrong patient. Boo did manage to escape the wrath of the tummy bug from hell, but yours truly did not. By mid-afternoon last Tuesday I was starting to feel kind of wonky, and by the time I needed to be on the road to go see the Harlot, driving did not seem like a good idea. Particularly not an hour of driving through Houston's o-so-lovely rush hour traffic. So, crushingly, I stayed home instead of getting to see her. A great disappointment, since I really enjoy

her blog

and I knew it would be a good talk. In fact, I like her blog a lot more then I like her books (of which I own two). So be it. I'll get her the next time she comes to town.

My picking up the tummy bug from hell, plus Devil's somewhat inconsistent (hah!) attendance at daycare last week has made for not-so-much-progress on the knitting front. And even less on the spinning front - part II of the Tour de Wool posts is languishing with 1.5 samples left to finish, so I'm aiming to get that done this week and posted on Friday.

In other news, as the title indicates, Boo's first teeth have finally come in and she is a much happier little girl for it. When I walked into her class to pick her up on Friday, one of the teachers said "Ooooo, the good girl's mommy is here!" Apparently she'd been smiles, lightness and joy all day. Which made me wonder a) what is she like there normally? (gulp) and b) who else's child was the spawn of Satan that day to make her look so good in comparison?

*all credit for this pun has to go to Daddy Ironman, who is quite pleased with himself for coming up with it.