The little angel's mind was recently blown by the appearance of the Christmas tree.  She got so excited she filled her size 5 Cruisers three times in an hour.  Well, it was either the tree or the fact she mowed down a half-bag of dried apples in the Target dollar aisle while my beloved and I grabbed stocking presents.  When we got home, I glanced at the back of the bag, which has been in the diaper bag for a good two weeks.  "Refrigerate after opening," it said.  Hmmm.  Isn't the point of dried fruit that you don't have to refrigerate it?  Maybe I'm missing something.

We have a pre-lit tree, Martha Stewart.  When my beloved and I first got together, we got real trees every year.  I grew up with fake trees and had always wanted a real one.  When I was pregnant, we gave in and got a fake - I had just started to really swell, and the thought of grunting around on the floor amidst sap and needles just about did me in.  I think the fake actually looks okay, but you have to spend about a half hour adjusting all the little boughs so they fill in the gaps.  The little angel had no idea what I was doing, but she busily flitted around the tree messing with the needles as long as I did, stopping only to poo some more apples in glee.

I decided to leave off the bulbs that might crash to the floor and shatter into thousands of angel-cutting and/or choking bits, a good decision considering the little angel is almost three feet tall and has the wing-span of a California condor.  She didn't really understand the concept of leaving stuff ON the tree, so most of the ornaments are now on the floor.  I kept rehanging them for approximately an hour before I realized that this, too, must be acquiesced.  That, the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen now covered in thousands of turkey stickers, etc.  My beautiful little house has been demolished more in the past three months than in the little angel's entire first year of life.  The toddler draweth near.

It was all I could do to drag her away from TWWEEE! TWEEE!  to take the Bubble Party, as we now refer to the hated bath.  Last night, though - was it the tree?  The apple issue?  The end of a developmental phase?  She entered the bubbles standing, as she has for exactly one month, screaming.  My beloved pointed to the duckie on her bathmat.  "Can you stand on the duckie?" he asked.  She extended one  pointed, pudgy toe.  "Duck."

"Can you SIT on the duckie?" he held his breath.  I held mine. We'd been trying to get her to sit in the bath for a month straight.  She squatted, chubby cheeks barely skimming the bubbles...then...plop.  Splash, splash!  The little angel rejoined her bubble friends with much joy. 

"Yeah!" she cried, throwing water all over the bathroom.  My beloved and I paused in shock.  "Bubbles!"

After about ten minutes, she was starting to turn into a red-headed raisin.  "Let's get out," I said.

"NYO!" she replied firmly.  "DUCK."

Well, that much has returned to normal. It was some small comfort when she was up from 3-6 a.m. this morning with a tummy ache.  NO MORE APPLES.  EVER.

Let the season begin.