[Mom took this photo of Mt. Hood from Kelley Pt. the Sunday after Thanksgiving.]

[Kelley Pt. in that beautiful glowing light right before the sun set at like noon or some shit.]

My mom finally made it to Portland to soak up some of that rain we get here. Thanksgiving day really dished it out with a steady drizzle from sunup to sundown and then all through the night. Otherwise though it has been clear and even sunny. Kind of amazing since I can’t even remember the last time we had sun. Oh wait I do actually—it was the day I had my face irradiated for skin cancer and I wasn’t allowed outside for 48 hours. It was nice that day.

Ronin is much better for Oma Peggy than she is for us. Typically she shrieks and squirms like mad when I try to put a barrette in her hair. I came trudging out early one morning and Ronin’s hair was pulled back out of her eyes in A BRAID. Braided. With a rubber band. Mom looked innocent and said she sat just fine for her and had so far not even tried to pull it out. I was utterly shocked.

[Punk Rock Girl is a current favorite amongst the stuffed crew. Ronin has been taking her everywhere we go lately and frequently requests to hear her theme song.]

Mom gets up early and so does Ronin so we had a full week of sleeping in; it was awesome. As soon as Ronin popped up out of bed with her little baby agenda (read ‘Sheep and a Jeep’ six or seven times, then maybe a meatball for breakfast) we shooed her out of the room with the promise of grandma attention: Maybe Oma Peggy can nuke you a meatball in the kitchen! She would stomp off in hot pursuit and we wouldn’t hear from her until mid-morning when she pooped her pants. Heaven.

[Pre-turkey caviar and champagne.]

For three days straight we ate nothing but turkey, stuffing, etc. washed down with boutique gin from Ashland. On the fourth day we emerged blinking into the sunlight and drove out to a Sauvie Island for some holiday accouterments.

Ronin had a field day running amongst the trees and we had the satisfaction of picking ours out of thousands. We got a noble fir because I liked the needles and color and the doug firs were all way too shorn (think furry pyramid). We (Joshua) carried our tree up to the front and they put it in a special tree vibrating machine, secured it in a festive net, and we were on our merry way.

[This isn’t our tree; we went to a public ‘tree lighting’ thing and Ronin transformed instantly into a Toddler Obsessed. We’re just lucky we didn’t have to crawl down underneath the tree to retrieve her.]

We chose a smaller tree for our own living room because we have never done this before and own only one ornament (thanks Michelle!) so far. I made some more and plan on making still more. Currently we have it decorated with twinkly lights, Ronin’s finger puppets, and various lightweight toys. Ronin thinks the tree is about the best thing she’s ever seen in her life and spends a great deal of time poking at it, touching the lights (licking them too when we’re not looking), destroying my paper ball, and removing/replacing the nesting bird ornaments I made.

Oma Peggy returned home yesterday and Ronin asks where she is and what she is doing about a hundred million times per day. Hopefully we’ll see you again soon mom!

We interrupt the usual baby photos and poop stories to brag about my new website. I drew the pretty pictures and Joshua made it all happen. After much trial and setback and extensive persnickety requests from me, it is finally live and I think it looks lovely. I also put together an etsy shop if you are looking for an online shopping experience…

Michelle was here a few weeks ago and did some shoe shopping. Ronin thought her new boots were about the coolest thing ever.

When I worked in Kharkov, the office next door was a mail order bride agency. They gave me a brochure… This picture reminds me it. So sweet, so Russian, so ready to disco.

Last year around halloween, Grandpa Jeff included this little stuffed thing in one of his packages. It was a tiny teddy bear dressed in a “spooky” bat costume, purple with orange wings. Ronin immediately loved it and has been unusually attached to Batbear, as he is called. Batbear has always been Ronin’s choice when we go on outings (partly because we refuse to let her take Nigel out of the house; we are too afraid of what might happen if he were to be lost) and accompanies us on walks, to the park, to the grocery store, etc.

We decided it would be cute to make her a Batbear costume of her own. I figured she would understand what she was dressing as and be really into it.

Here’s Batbear. He’s looking a little scruffy (probably needs a bath; Batbear takes baths with Ronin as well). I used a pair of pajamas to quickly draw a pattern with orange crayon. Ronin was VERY interested in this step. Joshua had to drag her screaming away from me so I could finish my outline; let’s just say it was hastily drawn. Then I cut out the body from purple fleece—also very interested for babies.

Here’s the body sewn together. I ended up having to re-do the arms. After attaching the first one, it was clear that half-assed crayon sketches were not the way to go when it came to armhole and sleeve tailoring. I cut it off and re-designed them raglan style. This was much easier to attach and happened to match the real Batbear better anyway.

The pattern against the costume body. Ronin is helping.

Ronin was pretty excited about the Batbear costume although I’m not sure that she really understood that it was for her initially. She wanted to put it on Batbear (too big) and Nigel (still too big).

I was a little worried about how to deal with the hat part. I knew what I wanted to do but wasn’t sure how to go about making a pattern for a full head thing. Luckily, the random sketch I made worked well enough and I had Ronin’s batbear hat together in no time. There was still some purple felt left over and since Joshua and I had not come up with any ideas for ourselves, I used the rest of it to make us matching Batbear hats.

[Ronin was not impressed with the hat at first but she got used to it and consented to wearing it about 50% of the time.]

We ended up going to McMenamins’ Kennedy School for their annual halloween gig. As expected, it was total freaking chaos and Ronin was mostly bewildered by it but we had fun. Nothing beats being able to chase your kid around trick-or-treating with a pint of Hammerhead in hand. Joshua observed a couple arrive with their amped-up offspring and the moment they crossed the threshold, the wife turned to her husband and told him, “you’re on kids, I’m on beer,” and split.

The big moment came when Ronin had her first chance to trick-or-treat. She was given a package of sour patch kids and immediately asked us to “open open open.” We both thought, foolishly, that maybe she wouldn’t even like them; they are after all super sour at first. Unfortunately for us, she thought they were the best thing ever and after that, she was on a singular mission to eat candy. When given a choice, she will always choose the Snickers.

[By the time we left, she was pretty crazed; she kept wanting to roll around in the mud and wet leaves. I was not keen on this.]

When we got home, our friends Brett and Ernesta and their toddler, Saule (only a couple of months older than Ronin) stopped by as well as our neighbors Cami, Norm, and Clive (who just turned 4). It gave us a taste of just how small our house really is to have three kids and six adults milling around. (We have been considering inviting FOUR kids and their EIGHT parents to Ronin’s second birthday party. We may need something stronger than beer on hand…) All kids were basically going apeshit, with the exception of Saule (who still hasn’t figured out what was in the shiny wrappers), parental units were self-medicating with fermented beverages, and the time was nigh for REAL trick-or-treating.

We tore up the block basically between Ronin Batbear and Clive Turtle (Saule Princess and entourage bowed out early in favor of more healthy nourishment. Hippies). Mostly Ronin was interested in the glowing pumpkins on the porches and Clive was pretty into pushing the doorbells. They gave us candy just to make us leave. We covered one or two blocks and still came back with a decent haul. One house was giving out full-sized Snickers (that’s the real Fun Size); another house was giving out boxes or raisins (totally rejected by Ronin). Another house was lit up like Christmas but they didn’t have anything for trick-or-treaters; they scrounged up some cookies for us. “You guys aren’t weirdos, are you?” shouted Cami from the street. They were weirdos (but the good kind) and we continued on down the block with both kids munching oreos.