The annual celebration of me!

Just shy of a whole year late, or just in time to start the next one.  Depends how you look at it.

Remy: Year One

With the new year approaching and the start of birthday season in our family, my mom has felt the pressure of the mounting backlog of annual movies upon her.  While I am closing in on two years of undocumented activity, Remy didn't have a single movie to show for all her efforts and hard-earned milestones.  

Almost one year's worth of procrastination in the movie-making department increases the nostalgia factor exponentially. Hard to believe it's been nearly two years since Remy was her tiniest self!

Bringing the outerwear in

If there's one thing we can say with certainty about Remy, it's that the kid knows what she wants.  And generally what she wants is to wear her outerwear indoors.

It started with the cheetah coat, which she was very disconcerted to learn was not an option for wearing into the tub.

The coat obsession expanded to shoes.

Anybody and everybody's shoes.

Attempts to convince her that certain shoes are too large are met with a particularly fierce form of toddler rage and an insistence that we find a way (i.e., tie them tighter).

This week, the mayhem expanded to include hats.

Trying to convince her of the lack of necessity and overall impracticality of her newfound obsession is futile, which is why at any given time during the day, you may find Mom or Remy's teachers hiding coats or shoes. Because underneath a lot of outerwear, sometimes it's hard to hear a little logic.

Particularly when you're one.

Thanks-Kim-ing

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Rowan and I were thankful for an impromptu visit from our cousin Kimmy.  After meeting her for the first time last year in New York, we deemed her to be a small slice of awesome and have been calling her on "Face Phone" every now and then to catch up (or stare at our tonsils in the tiny corner screen -- she's cool with that, too).

Since she'd never been to Chicago before, we committed to showing her all the beauty, culture and culinary brilliance our hometown has to offer -- including the theatrical magic of "Pinkalicious" at the local community children's theater, dinner at the restaurant where they pitch broccoli into your mouth, brunch and shopping on the Magnificent Mile and a farewell dinner at our favorite glorified hot dog stand.

It's worth mentioning that Kimmy's idea of a good trip is one in which she defies death at least once -- whether it's jumping out of an airplane or bungeeing off a bridge.  And in thinking through the weekend carefully, she did sit for an hour in a theater filled predominantly with preschoolers, so I'm pretty sure this trip qualified.