I was extremely selective about the pictures I chose (except for the food, I just used all of the food pictures).
2012 is over. I have been spending the day with the Twilight Zone on SyFy all day. Thankfully, KrisDi is willing to endure this once a year, possibly in return for me enduring Choose That Wedding Dress and about a half dozen variations on the theme 24 hours a day for the other 364 days.
We did not go anywhere for the break. We had the Popes and the False Alarms over for New Year’s Eve, but all of us are parents of young children, so everyone left by 8:30. I had a new parently experience (and Chilkat had a new childly experience): It’s been a while since Chilkat saw M, and Chilkat was super excited to see her again. She was talking about it all day, we went out and looked through the neighborhood (in 30 degree weather) for her before they arrived. When they finally did arrive, Chilkat wanted to play with M so badly, and she kept bringing her new toys to look at and trying to get her interested, but M just didn’t give a shit. She was off doing her own thing. Chilkat got visibly upset. She started overturning toys, and pouting, and doing all sorts of kidly things. I felt so bad for her, but there wasn’t anything I could do.
Aside from that, in the last six weeks…We had Thanksgiving. We went to Portland. I realized we are food tourists: We went down there (which is a separate story) with a list of restaurants and/or brewpubs we wanted to visit. We had our plan for breakfast, lunch and dinner. During breakfast, we said to each other, “What do you want to do until lunch?” “I dunno. You?”
The trip down? I flew from Seattle to Portland ($80), to get the last 22 miles I needed for Premier Silver status or whatever the hell it is with United. KrisDi and Chilkat drove. Chilkat chose the opportune moment of “completely stopped traffic, in the far left line, miles from the next exit” to vomit prolifically all over the car seat. KrisDi spent the next fifteen minutes trying to get to an exit, and then stripped her naked in a gas station parking lot (while she cried and complained “Chilkat mess!”) and used an entire package of wet wipes to clean her and the car seat off as well as possible. And then she drove the remaining 150 or so miles in a vehicle that reeked of vomit to pick me up at the airport. And then we had a shitty dinner (I learned two things from Paa Dee: [1] Food in Portland can be disappointing, and [2] It is possible to to make bland pork belly). And then I disassembled the carseat and attempted to clean it in a hotel bathtub.
We have an opinionated, bossy daughter, who is now better able to express her commands and/or demands. Her speech is becoming more elaborate, she’s approaching sentences, and she will try to actually communicate stories rather than nouns (see previous post).
She is learning to apologize, but she goes overboard sometimes. Every once in a while (sometimes for reasons we cannot discern), she decides she needs to apologize, and she comes shuffling toward you with huge melodramatic sobs, moaning, “Sorry, Daddy!”, going in for the hug and the kiss, and pet you a little bit for good measure.
She shows motherly tendencies — I have heard this is something KrisDi did a lot when she was a kid. She’ll try to feed her buddies, and she’ll try to put them to sleep, and she’ll try to rub their backs (which is something she requests when we’re trying to put her to sleep).
She decided she loves Kermit. I don’t think she understands the concept of “favorite” yet, so we tried to have a tournament to determine her favorite animal. “Do you like frogs or cats better?” “Frog!” Frog over lion, dog, horse, pig, many other things. And then we got distracted when we got to elephant.
KrisDi got a hair cut. She’ll donate to Locks of Love or something similar again (15-16″ or more). She did the same thing shortly after our wedding.
My older brother got me a Seeeduino Mega. Speaking of which, Chilkat can say, “Microcontroller!” So far all I have done with it is verify that I can write a program and run it on the board. I bought a cheapo radio control car and started taking it apart; eventually I hope to figure out how to command motor forward and reverse, and steering left and right. Then, I can attach some simple switches to the front of it, and make a simple robot that goes forward until it runs into something, and then tries to turn away from whatever obstacle it’s hitting.
I have to go to bed now, because tomorrow is the first work day of the year. It’s already half-booked with meetings.