tailed bits

Mark went out in the woods yesterday and found our Nova dog with eleven puppies. He put them all in a box and brought them inside, which was a harrowing feat considering where he said he found them at. He said the pile of wood she was inside was collapsing as he tried to move near and among it... He is lucky he is scrawny and muscular - as a regular person would have still been out there with a leg caught in something. So, we have a wiggly mess of tails again in this house. Esme is excited - she has counted them and described them and says 'Nova is a mother dog.' to me a lot this morning.

Esme made me laugh last night. I gave her the newspaper and it had a food ad in it with balloons. She was very excited and was trying to read bits of it. Then she says (think Homer Simpson) 'We can't afford that! What's that. We can't afford that!' about everything with a price tag on it. 'That's two thousand dollars. We can't afford that.' We have a silly child. Her favorite phrase lately has been 'I want to play lots and lots of (candy/dogs/cards/food/bathtub). Come on, let's do lots and lots.' A little while ago she is playing with her checkwriter and saying 'That is twenty cents, just twenty cents. I have seen ALL my life, Mama. I have seen ALL my life.' I think she is trying to mimic someone on tv saying 'that is the worst thing I have seen all my life' but she hasn't remembered all the words.


handmade birthday banner

I spent quite a bit of the morning stringing this together. Esme's birthday party is tomorrow, and we plan to hang this up there with some balloons as very 'simple' decorations. Simple as in not cost much, although the banner took a few hours to make while Esme bounced around saying I was busy and she wanted to be busy, too. She has grown so much this past year, and again during this last spurt as well! Mark is headed to town to get butter and a few other things. Then we will be making cupcakes.. or maybe that will be tomorrow? Probably tonight because I will need to wash her hair also tonight and that will be a tough sell/hard deed because I washed it a few days ago when it really did need it -- and she will negotiate with me claiming it doesn't need it. 'My hair has no bugs, no spiders - don't wash my hair - brush it, I'm gonna cry.' etc etc... I also need to make sure her doggie pants are clean and the blue dress. I told Esme we had to get things ready for her birthday and she said 'oh no mama.. the balloons will POP POP POP' Well, I didn't mean to blow up the balloons today!

Daddy picked me up butter, toothpicks and more cupcake papers - so we're well supplied to go make a mess tonight ;) He also picked up a few more things for me to wrap up for presents. So, now we are officially spoiling her by our standards. A party, and a few 'wow' toys she is going to fall apart over. And there were other little cheap things that just said ESME all over them... Planning to wrap those up in newspaper and curl some colored copy paper with scissors to make it pretty.