a true austin-ite

Check it out, locals-- Sean got some ink.

Our gate latch tattooed him with what we're calling a black hole supernova.

same mammal, different tree

Varmint update:

That raccoon was still up in the tree this morning. Then around 8:10 or so, I watched him carefully climb down to the fence, as I expected, and trot along the top beam of the fence. I was surprised he didn't just go for solid ground out in the retention field behind our yard, where I would guess his home is. He had multiple safe tree trunks available to him for this purpose. Instead, he ran all along our fence, turned the corner, and started to descend a tree into our other neighbor's yard. I held my breath, knowing that almost certainly their lab would be in their backyard. Sure enough, not two seconds passed before ferocious barking kicked in, and that raccoon scrambled right up to the top of a tree three times bigger than what he's been sitting in the last 36 hours.

So here he resides for the indefinite future:

Poor thing. I'm actually starting to feel bad for him. He is not having a good week so far.

last weekend

My parents and Janell came down last weekend! It was a great visit that allowed Sean and I good bit of time off... we rediscovered how very rusty we are at tennis and went on a relaxing date Sunday night (Blue Dahlia and Vino Vino). The weekend, which also included a fun family outing to Uncle Billy's Brew and Cue, culminated with an entire day of playing with Julien, my friend's son, who is about 6 months younger than Josephine and a total delight. (His day care was closed Monday.) It was generally just a fabulous weekend. I took a hundred pictures, but REALLY challenged myself this time to narrow them down to a reasonable number. You're welcome.

Here's a standard photo of The Josephine and Janell Mutual Admiration Society. You could generally find them gawking at each other at any given moment. Janell shared her colored pencils with Josephine; in return, Josephine elevated the pedestal she has Janell on at least another few meters. Janell cheered for Josephine every time she used the potty; Josephine pumped up that pedestal a little more. Josephine, while playing hard to get with the rest of us, literally ran up to Janell begging for kisses on a regular basis.

What a pair.

Pa helping the kiddos with blocks:






We enlisted Julien to do a bit of gardening. He should have known this was coming.
It turns out Julien runs forward at a pace far faster than Josephine can run backwards. So this game didn't last long. :-)


They hung out on this stoop a bit, watching Sean empty the compost bin (from a safe distance). Well, kind of. Mostly they just ignored Sean and played with the rocks. I tried to upload a little video to the blog, but it failed. So it's on youtube instead. If you want to watch it, click on this underlined phrase.

So that was last weekend.

The previous one, Sean took Josephine to San Antonio to visit with his mom and grandmother. I, stressed and tired from the previous potty training week, shamelessly chickened out of taking a newly trained toddler on a road trip. So I sadly have no photos of what sounded like a really rewarding day trip. I can't believe I didn't even remember to send the camera.

Next weekend we head to Atlanta. I haven't been since Josephine was 2 months old and am really looking forward to seeing my friends and their kids-- some of which I've yet to meet! I'm anxious about how it'll go with the potty training and all. She's doing really well, even nights, with me facilitating one mid-slumber run. But traveling will obviously pose some challenges; she and I will both be more distracted, less vigilant, and less aware of where the closest potty even IS, at times. So a couple extra prayers for sanity, patience, and presence of mind would be well appreciated.

done.

The built-in display cabinets and plate rack are finally finished. Wish I could show you a picture of them filled with their intended inhabitants, but I actually had to fill them with other articles from the kitchen, so I can start to work on THOSE cabinets now. The kitchen cabinets are currently just flat panels of tan painted wood. We want them to be the same color as these (white, basically. Mythic paint's Grace's Smile, technically) and with the same Shaker-style trim and brushed nickel knobs.

Eventually these will function as a china hutch, holding mostly light-colored stuff like white and silver china, crystal, wine glasses, a couple glass bowls, the occasional metal thing, etc. But it will be mostly light and airy, maybe with a bit of color here and there if we can do it right. The space it's in is small, though, so too much color is very cluttering to your peripheral vision, I think. (I REALLY think that right now because they're crammed with all kinds of stuff and quite visually cluttering! Ah well. Just that much more incentive to get the kitchen done, I guess!)

Anyway, I'm rambling.

Glad it's done.

same tree, different mammal

Last week it was a possum that our neighbor's dogs treed. Poor thing was up there most of the day.

Today, it's a raccoon. As I write this tonight, he's still there. Josephine's gotten fairly good at saying "ahkoon schtuck up tee." (Translation: "The raccoon is stuck up in the tree." She typically doesn't mess with piddly things like articles, verbs, and prepositions-- unless it's "up." She loves "up" and it's pretty surprising how many verbs tie in with "up"... stuck up, push up, pull up, stand up, pick up, clean up, zip up, button up, tie up, put up, get up... just off the top of my head.)

Like Sean said, if we knew this were going to be a weekly phenomenon we'd have photographed the possum.

Looking forward to next week. Hoping for a platypus.

(For you varmint lovers out there: if I sound heartless, don't worry. The tree is right next to the fence. Once they ever do venture down, they certainly just go down the side of the fence that isn't in the dog's yard. I don't think they get eaten. I think they just get scared and stranded for a bit. Which is sad, yes. But really.)

Oh, and since we're on the topic of varmints in trees, here's a squirrel that was having a face off with Josephine when she was playing outside today. I got concerned enough to go out and intervene (images of a rabid squirrel pouncing on my darling's eager face had started to cross my mind and make me nervous). Took a picture first. Who knows what she'd done to make it so angry, but boy was it chattering at her!

Melt away, grandmotherly hearts...

Late this afternoon, I took some pictures of Josephine in a little brown velvet dress passed along to us from my friend.


Like the Christmas portraits, I took a gazillion in hopes of a few good ones. Then, due to maternal tendencies to see adorableness in every possible expression, I find myself with zero ability to narrow the gazillion down to an acceptable number. So you got 20 Christmas portraits, but today I've outdone myself. And I'm not even sure I'm done, because I don't feel like I got that one PERFECT shot. (... Sorry. I kind of feel bad for you. You're going to be really sick of this outfit soon...)

When Sean found us in the backyard, he donated 15 minutes of his Black Star Co-op time to helping out. He tried to keep her hair tame in the wind (impossible)...
... and then pitched in behind the camera, trying to get Josephine to strike different poses.


Yeah, you only think these are funny until you imagine what Sean must have been doing behind me to inspire such artfulness.


Eventually, I had to suggest that he move along to the co-op, as pictures like the one above weren't quite what I was working towards.




Didn't take too long before she was plumb bored with this location, so we moved along to another spot.
Based on the picture below, you might think she was at the point of begging me to stop. But with Josephine, it's actually the other way around. She quite LIKES having pictures taken of herself, she just doesn't want to actually hold still and cooperate (what toddler does?). However, if you suggest being all done, she's adamantly against it. She wants more, more, more.

So really, it was ME begging to be done, especially as she got more and more slapstick and clumsy...

When I caught a picture of my 22 month old looking like an 80 year old grumpy old man hitching up his trousers, I put my foot down and declared an end to the ordeal delightful photo session...

International Diplomacy

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." (Matthew 5:9)

Well, slap me silly and call me Sally a child of God, because here's my holy effort at peace for the day: I am publicly displaying photos of my kid in Canadiens socks, courtesy of our friend Vikram.



YES it's a big deal, and I hope the entire country of Canada recognizes it as such. This marks my sincere effort to forgive all those North American backpackers who sew Canadian flags on their packs in order to be SURE that natives don't mistake them for a horrid American.* I've been bitter since the discovery of this trend first hurt my feelings in Europe, 2002.

But it's been about a decade now... so I suppose I should let it go. I'm still disappointed by the sorry lack of solidarity which I naively expected backpackers to have regardless of nationality. But I'll be the "bigger" one and attempt a congenial spirit once more...

(This child of God is prone to attaching some final needling to her forgiveness).

Of course if I weren't truly aiming for diplomacy, I'd have just posted this picture, which I took last March, and delighted in the disgust on her face:

:-)

*To be clear, I reject blind patriotism-- but also the school of ceaseless ranting. It's like John Wooden says:

"The vast majority of Americans are good: the mothers and fathers, the working people, the children, the vast overwhelming majority-- millions and millions and millions. A small, small percentage are otherwise. They get the attention.

"But we mustn't forget the tremendous good we have within us as a people. I have a very positive opinion of America and our citizens. My opinion of the media and what they try to tell us about ourselves is perhaps not quite as high (although there, too, the majority of them are good and mean well).

"The media play up what's wrong more than what's right, and most of what we have is right. As we work to correct what is wrong, we must always keep in mind all the things that are right with America and Americans."

I have recently developed a full-blown crush on the late John Wooden. You can expect to hear more.

Add an eye-roll to the photo below and you have Sean's exact face when I tell him what Wooden would say:

Anyway, Vik, thanks for the socks.

Happy Valentine's Day... let's talk more about potty training.

Ohhhhh, so my mom was SERIOUS when she said not to drop off the rewards too quickly. And that lady who wrote the book really meant it when she advised to be persistent in praise and rewards...

Here we are on day 8, been doing this quite successfully for what feels like a good while now, and suddenly this morning I've had to change her pants THREE times. :-/ What a blow! Especially following this weekend! Yesterday we went to church and out to eat (she used the public adult toilets six times in that process, without any complaint-- huge relief), and last night she stayed dry again-- even though I only woke up once to take her at 6:40!! So man, when I woke up this morning I was thinking, "We've got this thing nailed!" And I got to enjoy that thought for, oh, about an hour. Then the accidents began.

She's still gotten to the potty successfully at other times this morning, but it's obviously less on her mind. It's less on mine too-- I've done terribly with reminding her, I kept refilling her water bottle without any consideration for how much she'd had, and she hasn't gotten a reward since Saturday morning. (Her chart wouldn't stick back on the wall after we pulled it down for Sean to take with them to San Antonio, and both of us were happy to hide the fruit snacks, just to get that extra sugar out of her system. I was happy to think that maybe those things just weren't needed any more, selfishly trying to streamline the process.)

So I'm feeling pretty guilty and irresponsible. I've grown tired of the whole thing, even though I'm happy with how it's gone; it's just that the enthusiasm is getting kind of hard to feign. But clearly she was being motivated by my involvement (reminders, praise, encouragement, rewards), and me backing out altogether is dumb. So she's napping now, which means I have about an hour left to get that chart back up, rev up my focus, and find my game face again...

charmed

It started with some simple toolset demonstration...

...progressed into studying a seed catalog...

...and eventually worked its way into some full-blown enthusiastic cuddle time.
Josephine found her surprise visit from Uncle Jason a couple weeks ago delightful (and Sean and I enjoyed the company too, of course)! Here's to more architecture seminars in Austin!