December Update

OK, so it's been quite awhile since I posted . . . blame the social whirl at Mom and Dad's (silly me, somehow I thought that I would have MORE time to type on this visit!) We have been enjoying ourselves--especially Lilia, who got to see her cousins both of the last two weekends, to meet her dog cousin Nora, and when these three playmates weren't there, to rope GrandMary and Grandpa John into endless games with Mr. Potato Head (renamed "Hippopotamus" by Lilia for reasons unknown to me).

Here an overheard bit of Mr. Potato Head dialog:

Lilia: "Oh, we're going to eat chocolate noodles for lunch. They're very hot."

Grandpa John (dancing his potato head, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Osama Bin Laden, on the piano bench): "Yuck, chocolate noodles make me puke. I'm going to fly down from here."

L (puzzled): "But you don't have an airplane."

GJ: "I'm going to flap my arms." (He flaps the potato head's arms, which immediately fall off.)

L: "I'm going to go first."

GJ: "No, me."

L: "But I went ALREADY." (She lines the potato heads up under the sofa table.)

GJ (grabbing a dog hand puppet): "Woof, I'm hungry. My favorite food is hippopotamus."

L: "NEIN."

GJ: "Yes, I'm going to eat you up!!"

L: "No!! But we'll make you a tiny hippopotamus to eat."

GJ: "How are you going to do that?"

Me (unable to resist): "How do you THINK they're going to make a tiny hippopotamus!?!"

You see with such fascinating goings-on, how hard it is to tear myself away to sit in front of the computer.

I have also fallen victim to trying to read a couple of books, which couldn't be more different from each other. The first, recommended from Dad, IS PARIS BURNING? is an absolutely incredible historical account of the two weeks preceding the Allied liberation of Paris, demonstrating the razor-thin margin with which Paris escaped destruction. The second, SNOBS, from Mom, is a light read--a fictional novel of manners set in Britain in the 1990s. Ah, reading by the fireside . . . mmmm . . . the luxury . . .