Little Pink Sock

My mom may be my only reader who knows about Little Pink Sock, so here's a little background information that may be necessary to appreciate these pictures of Frances.

There's a comics strip called Mutts. Mooch, one of its characters, is a cat who has a little pink sock for a lovey, like so:


I love that Mooch loves his Little Pink Sock.

The other day, Frances went out of her way to get a little pink sock for herself. She went head-first into the (clean!) laundry basket.

"Success!"

"Now, how do I get out?"

She got out all by herself, and without bonking herself in the head. Kudos, Frances.

In the name of all things holy!

Holy Toledo!

Holy Mackerel!

Holy Cow!

Holy Moley! We're ready for it to stop snowing now.

But snow it does. The pictures are from Round Three. Round Four is coming down now. Tomorrow: no snow predicted, but negative temperatures expected. And still we love this place.

Snow Day Survivors

Beware apartments described as "garden level" in the Boston area. When it snows and the "garden" is actually a parking lot that needs to be plowed, this is the view:


Frances was not impressed, so she decided to "help" her daddy with his nap.

I missed the picture of Frances taking handfuls of her dad's hair and yanking his head back and forth. I decided we needed to get out of the apartment and I've got this new Ergo carrier I've been eager to use, so we braved snow, ice and wind to go for a walk.

Not my best idea ever. Surprise! Frances does not enjoy having snow blown in her face. So after tramping around with some other desperate souls for a bit, a retreat was in order, thank goodness.

Frances tried on the latest addition to her ever-growing tutu collection (more photos to come, don't worry) and then we called it a day.

Fourteen Months of Toddler Frances!

This month, we used our monthly celebration of Frances's birth as an excuse to go to the Boston Museum of Science. It was a really fun way to spend an afternoon. Frances enjoyed sucking on magnets.

And this snake was interesting, but ultimately not as interesting as the name label on the snake's aquarium.

Some month soon, I will have to stop these monthly summaries but Frances still changes enough month to month to impress us, so here we go.

Fourteen Months Fun Facts

• Firsts: Walking is definitely Frances's primary mode of locomotion these days. She only resorts to crawling on rare occasions. She's imitating us in new ways. The other day she was sitting on the floor near me and flopping her torso down on top of her legs. It took me a minute but I realized she was imitating the way I was stretching after a run. Such a smart bubby!
• Favorite Foods: Veggie Booty still saves the day, but she also discovered her love for meatloaf while we were with her grandparents. Once she gets going on it, fistfuls at a time disappear.
• Frequent Comment: We've heard several descriptions of Frances that all go together: "centered," "dignified," and "self-contained." I like these descriptions. I also like her grandmother Mimi's description: "So sweet!" I find myself frequently saying "What just happened?" Usually Frances has just fallen over in the middle of walking across the room. She'll be walking along just fine and then - plop!- she collapses, so we still have a ways to go on stable walking.
• Favorite Activities: She loves being with people besides her parents. Frances adored playing with her big cousins over Christmas and she adores our friend Michele. Mark thinks it's because Michele is "bubbly" - drat, and I'm so close to mastering bubbly! Maybe by the time she's Fifteen Months.
  
  

It's a Christmas Un-Miracle!

Somehow we made it through our child's second Christmas and captured less than a handful of decent photographs. Here's what happened: we trekked down to Arkansas and alternated spending time with Mark's parents and my family, which includes eight adults, a six year old, a four year old and three one year olds. Throw in a dog and a cat for good measure and you've got a Hayward Family Christmas. This will give you the general idea:

What you see here are Lindsay, Zoe, Nora, Clare and Mark all helping with Frances's bath. You can't see Frances, of course, because she's hiding in the bath hoping to avoid drowning in all the "love."

Frances did love all the new toys to explore. She was particularly pleased with this vacuum.

If only it had been her vacuum, and not her Cousin Zoe's...

We took all the cousins down to the Fayetteville Square to check out the lights and festivities. The big cousins got to ride ponies and the very big cousins got to ride camels. Frances got a cookie (you can see it in her right hand) and a walk around the block.

She was tickled pink.

That's it, folks. Just about all the photos from the trip. No family photos. No shots in front of the tree. Despite the lack of photos, or maybe because we didn't bother trying for happy group shots, we had a great time and are actually looking forward to next year, so not bad!

We Love Our Aunties!

Frances's aunties have been particularly invaluable lately, with their gifts of Advent calendars, hats and clothes. (There was that blue, flashing, plastic, oblong object from Auntie Jocelyn that I wouldn't describe as "invaluable," but on the whole we've been very lucky.) The latest edition to our Auntie Collection comes from Auntie Beth, a Christmas dress that she whipped up for our little elf.





Thank you, Auntie Beth! It fits great and it arrived just in time for a Sing Along party we attended.