Surfacing from a bit of radio silence. A bit? Ok, more than that. I just haven’t felt like writing at all, but I got an urge so here I am.

What’s been happening? In a brief sketch:

Victoria just turned two on May 13th. She is utterly delightful and infuriating in turns, which means she is perfect. She makes me laugh at least once every day.

She’s fascinated with the idea of traffic lights at the moment. When we are out in the truck and come to a light, her little voice pipes up from the back:

“yight! green! go!”
“yight! red! stop!”
“what colour this light?”
“yeyow yight! yeyow yight!”
“where go green?”
“where go yight?”

She will come up to us at home and repeat endlessly “light green! light green! light green!” until you distract her with something else! She even gets especially chatty when it is time for bed, and very seriously tells me about lights and their colours. It is sweet, and she is clever for thinking up such a delaying tactic.

The other huge excitements in her life at the moment are the bulldozers on our street prepping the storm drains etc. for paving (hopefully the paving will be done soon…we’ve been waiting three years for the road to be finished). We have to take her down the street in her wagon in the evening so she can “see alla bulldozers”. In the morning when I walk her down to daycare, she waves at the workmen, and they say hello to her, which makes her both incredibly pleased and incredibly shy.

Her newest obsession is a book of planets. She’s memorised the planet names and wants to read it over and over and over. I love her pronunciation:

Merkwereee! vaynis! ert! mars! saaahtun! jupider! yur-naus! nyeptune! pludooooo!

I have been working a lot in the garden (I’ll post an update about that later) and I am pleased with how it is turning out. I have also managed to tackle a lot of home projects which have been lurking. I don’t know if it is nesting proper/boredom/finally getting fed up but it’s been a good thing.

Finally, baby number two is due end of June. I am at the uncomfortable rib-pushing stage and have to wear compression stockings in this heat…thanks, baby!