This Little Girl of Ours

Chiara has become a fount of knowledge and opinions. Overnight. It is so hilarious to me to listen to her talk. I've started writing her quotes down on the fridge so I can remember to tell Eldon when he gets home ... because goodness knows my pregnant brain is unreliable.

She was Abbey Cadabby from Sesame Street for Halloween. Or, that's what I told her since she called the dress-up dress my mom sent her "Abbey Dress." If I'd been thinking I'd have crafted her a little wand ... but I wasn't thinking. Not about Halloween anyway. I think she actually looked like an 80's jazzercise instructor.

Oh my gosh, speaking of 80"s exercise, let me insert a little photo of my nephew Everett who has naturally red, curly hair. I'm so proud of my brother and his wife for this costume:

A baby Richard Simmons. I almost died laughing.

It's so funny to me that I am forced - due to motherhood - to care about such a holiday I dislike so thoroughly. I have always hated Halloween. Get in to the spirit of Halloween and decorate your home with spiders and cobwebs and ugly colors and other beings with deathly connotations. No thanks. I'm lame like that. But ask me if I have already begun decorating for Christmas and the answer is a resounding yes. I'm not anti-festive, I just have priorities. And if it weren't for Chiara this Halloween would have come and gone without so much as a nod in its direction from me. 

She looks 10 to me right here. In this picture she is wearing her "bubble shirt", playing with her "peter" (computer), and showing me her "big girl shoes." Also I tried tying ribbon through her belt loops to keep her pants up. It didn't work.

She was telling me an animated story, so I snapped a picture. She is so anti-photo these days, I can hardly get her to look at me with a camera in my hand. Mostly we do videos, since she will almost always talk for me. Who knew that was genetic?

Also, I made the best rolls I've ever eaten. Except Sister Hopkins' rolls ... they are far and away the best. When I'm making them Chiara pushes a chair to the counter and eats the dough and licks up as much plain flour as I let her have. I'm serious. It's hilarious to me. She's done it since she was tiny, and maybe she'll be like my Mission President and prefer the dough her whole life. :) 

Chiara and Eldon dance in the kitchen together. He taught her some kind of rhythmic, stomp type of shenanigan and she loves it. "Dance me, Daddy?" She loves it.

She loves playing with her plastic fruit and vegetables in the bathtub, and it delights her to "make" things for me in her purple bucket. In this particular picture it was strawberry pancakes. Soup and smoothies are common specials as well. I love her little imagination.

This is how we watched General Conference this past month. Camping chairs and internet. Love it. :) Someday we will have furniture. And someday after that we'll have comfortable furniture. (Yes, that's an untouched sewing project in the background.)

Building forts with Daddy out of Costco boxes. We hardly ever see him, but when he's here he makes it count and I love him for it. Chiara is totally smitten with him. The other day after we kissed him on his way to school she watched him leave and said, "Oh, I lost my Daddy." in her saddest voice. I hugged her and tried to console her that med school isn't forever, but our family is. She sure loves him.

All in all life in Lebanon is good. It's about as podunk as you can imagine, with Walmart being one of the only places to buy something not pre-owned. It's hilarious that there's a med school here. 

Oh, and when we first moved here there were no cows or other livestock. Now there are. False advertising for my future contentedness. But if we didn't live right across the street from the school we'd never see Eldon, so I'm willing to stay here in the land of yard sales and mooing if it's the only way to spend time with him. That is true, true love.

In other news, Chiara has no hair left. 

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YIKES!!! What was I thinking?? I wept and wept and wept all night over this, long after she was sleeping and up until Eldon came home. But it's better for her, because it's quicker to wash and it doesn't get in her face all the time. So I've stopped weeping over it, because it's just hair and it will grow back. And it actually is really cute. Eldon loves it. (Though I think he's going to admit to me in 10 years or so that he cried over it too ... but since I was already a wreck over it he chose to act 100% supportive. Bless him.)

Good thing it's impossible to ruin a child this darling. :)