By and large, there hasn't been anything entertaining to say. She's just about three-and-a-half. She gets frustrated easily, gets overstimulated easily, throws tantrums at the drop of a hat, and generally needs plenty of work, but not of the sort that is really that much fun to read about or hear tell of over the phone. Actually, if you try to call here and have a conversation, it's likely to involve many asides to tell Gaz to "stop doing that, I said STOP DOING THAT. RIGHT NOW. I have to go." Fun! But there's an almost equal number of times when she'll insist that we make a card or paint a picture for someone, or give me a big hug and kisses all over my face and tell me she loves me.

Which is actually fun, but gets repetitive when it's written down. So here's a few little strange things that aren't about tantrums, diapers, her inability to cover her nose when she sneezes (so, so, SO sorry about your lunch, Tamara!), or even any of the glurge. I hope that in the future it won't take me a month to gather this much shareable stuff.

In amongst the usual bundles of "why" questions, Gaz has had a few weird ones that she's been asking. While out having some quality time with Mark, the subject of our wedding photo came up, and from there sprang, "Where was I before I was born?" And then she pretended to eat Mark's brains (he was carrying her on his shoulders at the time). She gets the uterus thing, and she gets the being born thing as much as she can, but she's always wondering what she was doing when Mom and Dad kissed that one day in the picture, and what was she doing when we went to Italy? Thankfully, she is not insisting on immediate, concise answers.

Gaz likes to "shave" (with a play razor and foamy soap) her face lately, so this is now a component of every bath time. I'm guessing that she'll outgrow this well before puberty, but if not I don't know how I'll break it to her that she won't be growing a beard any time soon. In true Gaz fashion, she has named her razor Captain Wookiee--formerly Mr. Wookiee, but it turns out that the razor is a girl, and she didn't want her to feel bad about being called "mister." No, she hasn't seen any Star Wars movies yet, but she has seen a documentary about the movies, which is where I think the Wookiee bit came from.

So last night she's putting foam on her face and she starts to sing: "It's your mom and your dad and they're SHAVING!" And I couldn't stop laughing. I still laugh when I think of it. It's a surreal show tune sort of song, and it's coming out of my daughter. I don't know where she gets this stuff. Shaving I get, but parents shaving and this being a song-worthy event is something I would never have considered. The songs pop up all the time and tend to involve riffing on the "you can do anyting you want to do" theme. You can jump on the bed if you want to, or you can not jump on the bed if you want to, or you can jump on the bed and then get a snack if you want to . . .

But now mama's going to go to sleep because she wants to.

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.)