Sorry for the crickets.

Let's see. Quick recap since Steve is on his way as I type to pick up Marmousch from the airport (!!!) and I still have to clean the bathroom before she arrives. What is it about mothers coming that make you want to have a flawless, so-clean-you-could-eat-off-the-floor home? At any rate, the gig is up tonight. The tiny yet mighty love of my life is nothing short of amazing. Every day I'm hearing new words (or as often the case, hearing her try to say new words)--today it was piedi (feet) and I could have sworn she attempted saying edamame at dinner. Dada is Mila's word for gato (cat) and her obsession. Ob-SESSION. We are slightly concerned that we're raising this, but when I see her love up on Hoodes I just melt. She is perfect in every way. Today in a store she had her first mini-tantrum...I say 'mini' because she was in the ergo so she wasn't flailing or anything like that (there's time for that, I'm sure), but I'm classifying it as 'tantrum' since she wanted something that I refused and wouldn't stop crying until we left the store. And the object in question....BARBECUED NUTS! Mind you she has never eaten nuts, not bbq'ed or any other flavor. But the Wugs wants what the Wugs wants. Too bad Mama gets in the way sometimes.

What else...one of my dearest friends in this world is having her baby this week. I wish we didn't live so far away but am still so thrilled for her! To be having your first baby, those first few days and weeks running on adrenaline and clumsily trying to figure it all out--some of life's best moments are bottled up in that little window of time.

• I already have Christmas music playing in the house when it's just Wugs and I. It's too early for Steve, when he's home it's still 70's music and classic rock, but I figure it's never too early to start embedding those carols into Wugs' head. 

• Am trying to finagle an early Christmas present out of Steve in the shape of a sewing machine.  

• Scrapped my original plans for Mila's stocking to be sewn and just cast on last night for a knitted one. I hope I can get it done in time. The last time I knitted a stocking it was done 2 months later, in time for...Valentine's. 

• Is it wrong to covet both physical features and material things of your daughter? I want her eyes (including those lashes, thankyouverymuch), new moccasins, and beautiful handmade dress that my wonderful friend Sarah sent her. It has a wide yellow sash that ties around the waist. Sigh.  

• It will be just the 3 of us on Thanksgiving so we are keeping things simple. I think that sounds kinda perfect and dreamy, actually. 

• This Saturday I am putting on heels and going out with my husband on a date. Just the two of us. For our seven-year anniversary. For the first time in ten months. I think I am most excited about that. That, and getting to spend the week with Marmousch.

And now I really have to get on that bathroom.