Today we took the little angel to a pumpkin patch in Liberty, Missouri.  It was a world away, and a trip down memory lane.

She did love the goats.  So much that she ran over some other little children, leaving me to apologize to the mother of a one-year-old still bearing the little angel's hoof marks as she raced toward the nearest kid.  Goat kid, that is.  "More, more!" she cried. 

We rode a hayrack pulled by an ancient tractor of the variety my grandfather had - the kind with a yellow sun visor, not a high-tech air-conditioning and stereo system - out to the pumpkin patch.  As I attempted to carry her through the vine-strewn field, the little angel's new independence reared its red head.  "Down, Mama, down!" she cried, running in the air like George Jetson.  I put her down.  Over the pumpkins she flew, determined to find nirvana amidst exploded vegetables and many, many bugs.

When we got our painfully small pumpkin home (she picked out one she could actually lift, much to the amusement of one older lady - "That's a large pumpkin you walked all this way for," she said, taking a drag off an illegal cigarette, ignoring the many "No smoking ANYWHERE" signs), the little angel set to plopping the glow-in-the-dark pumpkin stickers anywhere she could find them. 

When I later took her into the windowless half-bath to show her how they glowed, she ripped off a leering, Cheshire smile and pasted it to my face, then laughed.  "More, Mama, more!"  ha ha ha ha ha

She's becoming a little person.  OOH, went the wind and OUT went the lights.

And one little baby rolled out of sight.