Lovelihood

In college I went through a sweater vest phase. A few years later it was hats. Another couple of years and it was all dress pants all the time. And then, yes, there was the dress over pants look. Of late, I've been rocking what I've been calling my cowgirl librarian style, which this inveterate city girl takes to mean some combination of boots, skirt/dress, cardigan and sweater tight.

Sometimes a photo doesn't take (at 3 bucks a pop) and becomes, instead, the dry-erasable backdrop to an impromptu love note.

I've got big plans to turn one of the Mr.'s old shirts into a decidedly more petite garment for Bear. All part of my master plan to build clothing-sewing confidence on child-sized items, before moving on to the much more intimidating prospect of making wearable clothes for myself. The beauty part of this plan is that Bear makes fashion decision work.

We're not the type to have snack time written into the schedule. But when Bear wanders into the kitchen and demands an orange, we're happy to oblige. And when the kids fight over who gets to sit closer to the dish of pre-peeled slices, well, we just sit back and chuckle at the absurdity of children fighting over fruit.

Bear's pretty much a dump-them-all-out kind of Lego constructionist. The better to find little men, and hats to go on little men, to transport in her custom-built, wheeled conveyances.

It's fitting that the first run of the year would be in out-and-out downpour. Bear was tucked into her many layers and a fleece throw and under a canopy whose functionality has never let me down in five years of rainy day runs, most of them in Seattle, where there is no shortage of runners and cyclysts on the trail on days like this.

My Christmas loot consisted mostly of gift cards, which makes for anticlimactic unwrapping, but allows me the fun of finding little packages on the porch weeks after the fact. Today's package included a much-anticipated Rawwwwwwr!