Our trip to Oregon was great and included some Nana and Babba time for the kid, as well as an idyllic small-town weekend in Corvallis. Debi, Mike and Sam live on a cul-de-sac in a wonderful house with a lovely lawn. Kids show up and come in and out of the house to play Wii or jump around on the lawn or ride their bikes and scooters in the street. Violet was in HEAVEN. The weather was gorgeous, and to top off the attention from KIDS, she had an endless flow of bubbles, thanks to her Aunt Debi’s embracing of the hyperventilation that can ensue when one wields a bubble wand for too long. I got to do some shopping, and Auggie and Anne took Violet and me to Multnomah Falls.

Coming home, we didn’t have a chance to grocery shop right away. So Vibb got to have peanut butter for lunch, and in case you’re not familiar with the greasy properties of peanut butter, it took a serious cleanup effort, involving TWO BATHS, to combat the haz-mat. Then, yesterday, she pulled a Clif Bar out of the bag of groceries on the floor. She insisted I open it, with the kind of insistence that would make a terrorist divulge all of his secrets and scream PLEASE GOD, WATERBOARD ME BUT NOT THIS, so I opened the package. I was thinking she might take a little bite and move on to more fulfilling destruction, but she ate the WHOLE BAR. For those who don’t know, Clif Bars are energy bars for men. Also, the chocolate ones look enough like poop to cause my neighbor, on his way to the mailboxes, to stop in his tracks and say, “WHAT is she eating?!”

Now it is 4 a.m., and someone is awake. Why, you ask? Well, see, a certain dad who shall remain nameless has a unique ability I call The Magic. He can put Violet to sleep just about any time. I think the chemistry of it has something to do with Steve-Body-Heat PLUS Steveling-Body-Heat EQUALS Nine-Thousand-Degrees. While I took a nice long shower yesterday evening, the kid apparently got grumpy, so the dad used his Magic to put her to sleep for the night at 7:45. Superhero Ethics: Fail.

I’ve been meaning to note on this blog her special little language, as it is the cutest thing I’ve heard in all my life. Her most common “words” right now are “Nn-DIE?”" and “G-zOI?” She seems to have communicative intention, to know what she is saying. We don’t know of course, but when speaking in her own language, her inflections and mannerisms are her own, versus the imitated ones she uses when she sometimes deigns to mirror some word we’ve laboriously suggested she pronounce … although she does say “Hello?” frequently while holding an iPhone up to her ear. She also does this with various other “phones,” like a Wii remote or, yesterday for several aisles in the grocery store, a packaged block of cheddar cheese.