Gaz sez, "One day when I'm bigger, but not as big as you and Dad, I'm going to have long, long hair and a long, long dress, and I'm going to sing a perfect song." This will, she says, take place on a stage upon which she has put up a lot of Christmas lights.

We've both been upgraded from "Mommy" and "Daddy" to just Mom and Dad. It seems too soon in some ways, but is perhaps evidence that she is thinking more about the things she says now.

She's also taken to saying "muh" instead of "my," as in, "Mom! There's poop in muh diaper!" It's funny the first five times, but after that just gets kinda weird. Are we the victim of a hillbilly changeling?

Last night she woke up and called for me, "Mom. MOM." Not panicked or whining, just insistent. I went in to check on her and found her sitting up in bed. I reached out for her and she grabbed my arm, held it close to her chest, and relaxed back onto the bed, face-first. I stayed bent over the bed rail (fun!), rubbing her back with my free hand, until she fell back asleep. From that vantage point, I saw that sometime before summoning me, she'd retrieved her sippy cup from the bedside table and had a drink of water. It was not so long ago that it took a lot of work to get her back to sleep if she woke up enough to call for me, and really not so long ago that she would thrash about in bed, crying for her cup of water to be brought to her. Now she remembers where the cup is, and she knows that I'll come, and she doesn't need quite so much to soothe her back down. There will be days when she does need more, but I do appreciate these days of relative ease.

I think 2009 is going to be a good year, full of lots of good new growth. Speaking of which, she's grown another half inch. Not much longer for some of those 4T clothes. And she wants everyone to know that she's "getting this snapping thing." Maybe for next Halloween I'll dress her up as a little Beatnik.

New photos up!

Pretty, pretty pirate
Originally uploaded by georgiegrrrrl

Lovely new images of life from just before and just after the move.

Happy holidays, everyone!

success!

We have ironed out our technical problems, which are a whole long tale of woe that I won't get into here, and so there will be updateyness more regular now. Also, photos will be uploaded here in a bit. We've got some from our first scouting mission, I think, that still haven't been uploaded, so there are some shots of the new neighborhood in somewhat warmer times.

The weather here, as I'm sure you all know, is not so pleasant. We've got icy steps out the back, and all our lumber from the old place that used to be shelves are now vaguely woodish icicles on the back porch two floors down. But our neighbors there are very generously not using them for frozen firewood. Huzzah!

How's Gaz handling the move? Not quite how I expected. I was waiting for sleep disturbances, because that's historically how she's handled routine disruption in the past (also grumpiness, but I'd always just filed that with the sleep issues). She's sleeping like a rock, but she spends a lot of the day screaming and getting mad at me for various random things. I would not trade this for the night terrors, though. Those have taken years off my life.

Some days, Gaz wants to go outside without coat or even pants:

Me: If you go outside without pants today, you'll freeze your legs right off!
Gaz: Then I will walk around on my blood!

[Insert stern glance at Auntie Aiiiiiieeeee for starting the whole blood thing.]

But pants have prevailed more or less. Gaz even wore the scarf I crocheted for her yesterday. It wasn't even a very scarf-worthy day! I glow! I think this is the first time she's worn something I made from yarn since she was small enough to wear the baby hats on which I ruined my tendons.

But anyway. We are here, we are sorting through boxes and contemplating exciting new shelving arrangements to accomodate all of the box contents. And now we can do some comparison shopping for needful things with the awesome power of the Internet. Most importantly, Gaz can play games on pbskids.org now. We know where our priorities are in this family.

Right now, the Gaz priority is explaining to Mark about proper application of (imaginary) perfume. I still don't know where she gets this stuff.

we're all still alive

Just technologically impaired at the moment. This will hopefully be corrected on Monday. ::crosses fingers:: We have new address and phone number, so drop us an email somewhere and one of these days we'll actually be able to access it. Or call one of us on a cell phone, because those were not affected by the relocation.

We're mostly moved in, mostly unpacked, and barely sane. Gaz loves her new room and all her "new" toys. She has been ordering me to call various people so that she can tell them endless and surreal knock-knock jokes that she makes up on the spot.

We're all a little worn out and grumpy, so there's not much else to report, except that we've been having a mighty laugh at our governor's expense. Ah, Illinois, where corruption reaches across the aisle! (And that's all the politics you'll get here, so enjoy.)