Social and Artistic Developments

I've been a bit comatose since the catering event, so apologies for the recent lack of Rosalie blogs. She has been a trouper through the whole thing, including Mommy's recuperation.

Rosalie had a reunion concert with her friend Leah today. You can see their last show here. It's amazing how much maturing can happen in three short months. Leah, who will be one year old in a couple of weeks, is already walking around with great balance and skill.

Rosalie needed some reminders, though, that Leah is younger than her. She was doing some, well, assertive things towards Leah (involving pushing her out of the way) that were probably not pleasant for Leah, and even less pleasant for all the parents. Part of the learning process! Fortunately, Rosalie does not do this often.

Watercolors have been a hit this week. This is one of my favorites of the artist's work:



Michael and I are talking about a class for Rosalie--either gymnastics or dance. We feel pretty confident that she would love either one. There are options for both near our house, too! Decisions, decisions.

Pumpkins and Trick-or-Treating

On Halloween, we decided to get around to carving the pumpkins. A pumpkin has some fascinatingly slimy inside parts, in case you didn't know. Guess how Rosalie reacted to the inside of a pumpkin and its innards? Do you think she shrank away in disgust? Did she scoop the stuff out wholeheartedly and smear it on her extremities? Did she watch from behind our shoulders and view the scene from a safe distance?

Well. Actually, she didn't care much about the pumpkins at all after she found the flashing "candle" lights that were to go into the empty pumpkin cavity. Her main interaction with the pumpkins while we carved them was to see how they looked when she pointed the flashing light on them. Hey, man, at least she wasn't trying to commandeer the knife. Overall it was a highly pleasant experience.

I spent a good portion of the day having philosophical conversations with people about Halloween candy and how to deal with it. Does it really matter what conclusion I came to? The kid had candy. However, it was not a big deal, in the end, nor did she eat a ton of it.

We went to downtown Ballard where most of the store merchants were passing out trick-or-treat candy. Our little fleece butterfly was fascinated by the bustling scene. She seemed overwhelmed by all the costumes and noise, actually. Her energy started to lag pretty quickly.

She was carrying a little bag, but it was really for show, not for carrying anything. It's not like I was pointing out the people who were passing out candy. Why speed that along? She was oblivious to the candy sources. But then I saw some people I knew in one of the shops, and they handed us candy before I could do something distracting. Ha.

So Rosalie was walking around for awhile with one piece of pink and yellow taffy wrapped in wax paper in her little bag. She carried that bag very carefully. Every once in awhile, she would stop walking, open the bag, and peer into it to make sure the candy was still there. Finally, after several stop-and-check pauses, she pulled the thing out and handed it to me. "Hep, peez," she requested. So there you go. I had a feeling that taffy is a choking hazard, so I squatted down right next to her and watched her eat that piece of candy. She took delicate little nibbles and as usual showed me her genius in the eating department.

As Mike says, right after that piece of taffy our tired girl suddenly had a lot of energy to spare. She skipped, she sang, she laughed maniacally. So that's when the "More? MORE?" thing started to happen. We headed home a few pieces--I mean minutes--later.

All in all, it was a Happy Halloween!