As the World Whirls

I know, it's been too long! Many things have happened.

• Birthday! The pictures are up, but I haven't commented. The weather turned out to be as beautiful as the beginning of August could possibly be. We had a break in the temperature and the humidity, and, bestest of all, the neighbors with the aggressive barking dog finally put up the privacy fence they started last year. Woo! A peaceful and lovely time was had by all. Gaz had a great time with the cupcakes and presents, especially, and she scored many awesome gifts, including some that came all the way from Norway and Iceland (courtesy of Grandma Judy and Grandpa Will's recent travels). The only thing we forgot was the enormous pink burro pinata, a last-second request from Gaz that she forgot as soon as she demanded it. It's still sitting in the library, and she likes to go in and take care of it. She does still want to break it, though. Might have to wait until we visit someone who's got a tree on on their property, as we have none.
  
• Cooking! She loves helping whenever I'll let her, which must be often. I am getting better at figuring out busy work for her so that she doesn't try to do any helping that involves grabbing a knife. If I cut up veggies in the dining room instead of the kitchen, for instance, then I can distract her by sending her to the fridge for all the other veggies I "forgot." She had the best time making corn tortillas with me the other day because I let her operate the tortilla press. She was so focused, I was very impressed by her attention span. It wasn't quite long enough to last through the whole batch of dough, but it was good. The tortillas were tasty and Gaz was very proud, as well she should be.
  
• Art! Another thing I've learned is that if I bring her art easel into the kitchen, she will happily paint pictures while I wash dishes. Usually she wants to "help" with that chore, which of course, makes it take twice as long, and if it's been a few days since I've really been on top of getting the dishes done . . . you see where I'm going with this. The Play-doh Fun Factory also works wonders for getting various things done (except keeping the room with the Play-doh clean).
• Smartening! As I type this, Gaz is typing words with Daddy on his laptop. They're sounding out words together and finding letters and having a great time. Earlier today she had me making words with alphabet blocks: cat, fat, keep (she insisted we use the K and P), and then chair. Then she added U and P to cat, and we laughed over UPCAT, and then the teachable moment devolved into an orgy of stringing random letters together and making me try to pronounce the five-foot words. She's been doing this for a goodly while now, but today she used more vowels. Progress!
  

In addition to these things, she's said and sung so many pithy, random, insightful, and hilarious things. I can't remember them, now that I sit down to record them for posterity, but I assure you that you would be mightily impressed by her giant brain and how well she uses it. We still have our RDA of tantrums and frustrations, but considering that just after her second birthday she became a complete monster, this year we're not doing so badly.

More updateyness as I remember things!