It's full of sparkles!

Well, the Spawn has just discovered the joys of playing dress up. We had some stuff from a long ago yard sale that she unearthed. Yesterday she was wearing a BRIGHT lime green skirt (with green sequins around the waistband with her Elmer the Elephant shirt. Today it was an island girl sort of dress, floor length on her, with a pink velour, sparkly sleeved shirt. This is the perfect attire in which to investigate the properties of fine dust, no? How it feels between the toes, for instance, and running through the fingers.

So, being fond of dress up myself, we went to a thrift store to see if we could find a few other things for the dress up box. Everything was rejected except for a dress with lots of pink sequins and feathers around the hem and a rather odd garment composed of a sequined belt and a very long fringe. I guess the pink thing really is in the genes, 'cause it sure ain't in the environment!

Ah, and butterfly wings, how could I forget the butterfly wings. Those she decided to wear when she was being a streaker Spawn. She was the fastest butterfly in the west. With All Hallow's Eve coming up, perhaps we'll find some more fun stuff for her (and maybe something fun for me too!). I feel sure hers will have sparkles though.

Always Learning

One of the better aspects of having a toddler underfoot is the opportunity to learn new things. The Spawn is obsessed with the written word and constantly asks "What that says?" Well, one of the recent subjects of that inquiry was a page of pictures and names of butterflies and moths. Somehow I really LIKE the name "Achemon Sphinx Moth". It rolls off the tongue nicely.

Of course, you also have the opportunity to learn how little time it takes for said toddler to completely dismantle the living room. The answer, in this case, is about the same amount of time it takes to fill out the patient intake forms for a dentist. It takes a lot longer to reassemble a living room, let me tell you.

Now the Better Half is in the the partially reassembled living room reading to the Spawn. We've just started on sight words--"and" and "the" so far. That means she's got a fifty-fifty chance of guessing right. I do think she gets it right more than fifty percent of the time though. There speaks the fond maternal unit.

Enough rambling, it's almost bed time.

Clark County Fair

So yesterday we went to the county fair. It's a much different experience with an opinionated toddler in tow than with a compliant infant. As a result, the first thing we did was go look at the ferris wheels. She wanted to show them to Tiny Duck and Dizzy Duck, the chosen companions for this expedition. Luckily neither she nor they wanted to ride on the thing, since none of them met the height requirement.

Despite offering such things as a juggler and a jazz band with a full head of hair between all five members (they were really quite good), it was determined that our next stop was the sharks. I know you're probably wondering what kind of county this is, right? It was rather along the lines of a roadside attraction. I don't know how much the fair paid to have the thing there, but it was somewhat sad. The Spawn liked it a lot better than either of us did.

Next stop was the pigs. We managed to go via goats, rabbits, chickens, and cows. Still, it was the pigs that were the big attraction for the Spawn. The feed costs for them all was outrageous. I wonder that they're able to sell the things at auction afterward! Still, for future reference, they generally seemed to be in the 650-700 pounds of grain fed range. When we start trying to determine if pigs are cost effective to raise, we have something to measure against. Any pigs of ours had better not expect to be grain fed though.

The drive home was punctuated by a single, very unhappy vomit in the back seat. While I certainly sympathize, I can't help but be slightly glad that for once she was unable to vomit on Mom. Why did no one tell me that motherhood would involve catching the results of every tummy bug all down my front?

And so it begins....

I suspect I'm doing this largely for myself, but on the off chance that I'm not, I'll start off with a quick rundown of the household. There's me, Mom-in-chief. There's the Better Half. There's the Spawn, approaching her 2 and a half birthday, who keeps us all on our toes. There are two goats names Big Goat and Little Goat. The Spawn named them. They're currently clearing the brush in our woods. We plan to eat them when they're done. There are six turkeys, unnamed. We plan to eat them when they get a bit bigger. There are ten chickens, nine hens and one rooster. Once the hens are done laying, we plan to eat them. There's Caruso, the cat. We don't plan to eat him.

We're currently renting a house on a 3/4 acre lot, most of which is covered with trees. In one of the few marginally sunny spots, we have a garden. We also have two much sunnier plots at a community garden. In all of these, we practice better gardening through neglect. Despite this, we get a reasonable amount of produce out of them. Perhaps we'll be a bit more organized about it all next year. Perhaps not.

The Better Half works in the exciting world of prepare-to-be-outsourced-at-moment IT. I'm very close to getting a very expensive piece of paper that says I know how to fake my way through talking about China. Otherwise I try and keep the Spawn on track. One day, if civilization doesn't collapse, she'll be able to read all this and wonder why she turned out as well as she did.