A Slough of Maybes

You were awake from 4:00-5:00am last night.  We aren't sure why.  Maybe because we got home late last night and your sleep was broken.  Maybe because you are learning to say "buh," lips forming a tight line and brow furrowed to send vibrations through that seam.  Maybe because you are trying to very hard to roll from your back to your front.  Sadly, you don't seem to realize you need to turn to your side first.  Instead you dig your heels into the ground and arch your back and shriek.  When you're in a better mood, your favorite new trick is dancing.  While on your back you move your top half side to side as though you were trying to scratch off a lottery ticket with your shoulder blades.  You wiggle your hips and kick your feet at the same time and look very much like a happy John Travolta doing Jazzercise.

We've just returned from sledding.  I made hot cocoa with steamed milk and Thisbe ate tapioca pudding with thawed berries on top.  Grandma Gail sat beside her in the breakfast nook and whisked soy sauce and peanut butter and sesame oil in a glass bowl for the pork fried rice she's making tonight.  The St. Olaf hill was slick today.  We haven't had fresh snow for ages and the snow we do have has hardened into an inhospitable crust.  The temperature was over 30 degrees and there must have been 50 people swarming over the white.  Dark bodies in snow suits turning slowly front to back as the sleds descended.  Figures trudging up the sides of the hill, over leaves and shards of broken sleds and cardboard rectangles.  We watched a girl sled directly into an adult male's crotch.  Thisbe got to ride with me and with Grandma Gail and with Daddy and even with you.  I thought that Daddy strapping you to his chest and then traveling at high velocities down a hill was unwise--but he and Gail thought I was being a sissy and so you went.  Your facial expression barely changed;

I don't think the sensation of sledding was much different to you than the sensation of being swung into the air or saddled on a hip or jiggled on our thighs.  Par for the course.

Tonight Daddy and I are actually going out on the town; drinks with friends followed by a band's CD release party.  Maybe I will wear something that isn't made of fleece and doesn't have snot smeared across the shoulder region.  Maybe we will talk about something other than nap routines and the Montessori philosophy and teeth breaking the gum line.  Maybe we will dance.