While I am thinking about it.

So that I don't forget, here is a V vocab update for today. She has used these words (or an approximation thereof) repeatedly in context with no prompting :

Mom
Dad
Elmo
Elephant (sounds the same as "Elmo," have to figure out which she is referring to by context)
No
Up (as in "please change the state of this thing to what I want it to be--pick me up, put me down, open this box, etc.)
Down (not very often used, see "up")
Out (as in "go out")
Carseat (as in, what she climbs into when she would like to go out)
Circle
Yum (as in "yummmmmmmmm" I am STARVING WHY HAVE YOU NOT FED ME??--this usually is used when she has been happily playing and someone else starts to do anything in the kitchen)
More & "more" sign, although sign is used to mean "eat" quite a bit and she uses the "eat" sign to mean "nurse"
Book
Cat
Fishie (she has a fish kite in her room)
Hi
Bye

That is what I have for the moment, although I feel like I am forgetting some.

I am not in charge here.

Last night Matter-Eater Lad was reading in the recliner and I was stretched out on the sofa while V puttered around playing. She was happy to amuse herself, and we were happy to let her do so. Then she found a little frog prince finger puppet she likes--not even something we have played with a lot lately. She picked it up, toddled over to me, straightened one of my fingers, and put the finger puppet on my finger.

I guess she wanted to play with the finger puppet.

Perspectives

March was hard for me the first couple of years after I moved to Minnesota. In Washington, D.C., where I had lived before, by the end of March it is firmly Spring, with the cherry blossoms blooming and all. In Minnesota, March is not what I would have called the beginning of Spring. Sure, it is no longer subzero. Sure, the snow has started to melt. Sure, we see liquid precipitation for the first time in *months*. However, 45 and rainy wasn't Spring to me. In D.C., that would be called "winter." I love living in Minnesota, but March was hard.

It is funny how one acclimates. This year I realized that it has been several years since I thought of March in that way. March *is* the beginning of Spring here--the beginning of Spring just means something different than being able to go outside in a light jacket. It means that the harshest part of winter is over, that the snow has started to melt, and that the temperatures are no longer subzero. The promise of the long, lovely actual Spring and the mellow Upper-Midwestern summer is there*. The days are getting lighter and lighter. The promise of easier weather is still there, and that is what Spring is about, here.

Even today, when it is wet and 45 degrees.

*Everyone who has not lived in a place like D.C. in the summer who lives in Minnesota can shut up right now about how "hot" the summers here get. They are just lovely, and not generally very hot or humid at all. The days are pleasingly warm, and the evening are pleasingly cool. And the other people who agree with me but wish for "real" summers? You are insane. I bet you have mostly encountered "real" heat in places that don't get very humid.

It's about damn time.

The Executive Branch has a lot of control over how laws are implemented. No matter how well- or clearly-written a bill is (and they are rarely either), rules have to be promulgated based on the law and there is a whole, long process between the passage of a bill and the implementation of that bill, during which there is a whole lot of room for interpretation.

However. The use of signing statements to guide that implementation as a regular step has not only ended, Bush's signing statements are being undermined as much as is possible.

(What? You thought I would just be throwing up baby pictures and videos forever? Sometimes my brain still works.)

Heh.

My child? Looks like Plastic Man in this (crappy, cellphone) picture: