There was a little girl
who had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was bad
she was horrid … still so very cute.

When I was a kid, my hair curled like Abby’s. Then over time it started straightening out … until I hit puberty, when it started curling again …. until I had Abby, when it lost most all of its curl again.

Will Abby keep the curls she stole from me? Hard to say at this point. But at least I know there was no mixup at the hospital.

For quite a while, Abby refered to both Paco and Honey as “Honey”, which amused us since they look nothing alike.

At first we assumed she thought that “Honey” was the word for dog, but we quickly realized she actually knew the words “pug” and “doggie” and “Paco”, and could apply the first two correctly, she just chose not to use Paco’s name. She could say Paco, she just didn’t call him that. Slowly, she started to use Paco’s name and now rhymes both names off with no effort (although she does say that Honey is a “bad boy” sometimes).

The cats, however, are not so lucky. Abby still, more often than not, refers to Logan and Bailey as “Bailey” and “More Bailey”, which is almost even more amusing than the pug naming as it seems that she can recognize that they are not the same cat – which is a feat in itself since most of our family and friends have to use the collar colour to figure out which is which – but for some reason she still calls them almost the same name. Again, she can say Logan, so it isn’t that.

Same window, different cats. Really, if she called them both “Bailey” it would make more sense.

Our holidays weren’t all about our kitchen, although I did get a waffle maker in addition to our new pantry. We also indulged in a few of our favourite traditions.

Although we skipped our usual trek to the tree farm to cut our own tree and instead opted for a pre-cut one, we continued our tradition of the 12 days of Starbucks (and even stretched it to 13 14 15 days), and Abby joined in this year with her own little steamed milk. We had family visit us, and we visited family. We took both kids to the festival of lights – this time Abby actually even seemed to enjoy it, and Evelyn at least stayed awake for it. We hung mistletoe (“kissletoe”) and stood under it every chance we got.

Abby seranaded us for days with her rendition of Jingle Bells. We ate chestnuts. We drank eggnog. Evelyn seemed to enjoy her first Christmas, particularly the lights on our tree. Charles bought me another little baby bird to celebrate the addition of Evelyn to our family.

Charles also continued his tradition of buying me a garden gnome, although he insists that it was just a coincidence that he bought me a gnome last year as well, and that two years in a row does not a tradition make. While last year’s gnome (the white one below) certainly is unique, it is a gnome by name, so I think it counts. Maybe he’s just afraid that he has started something he doesn’t really want to finish. Or I guess more precisely something he’s afraid that I will never finish. My gnome count may be at three, but my “garden ornament” count is much (much) higher.

Maybe “Santa” will bring me another gnome next year. Three years in a row must make a tradition, right?

Four and a half years ago when we walked into the house we would eventually call ours, I immediately saw the cupboards hanging over the counter and thought “They would have to come down”.

When we finally did buy the house, I mentioned this to Charles and he said “But we need the cupboard space”. He was right, and yet I still plotted the demise of those cupboards for four and a half years. I tried to figure out what we could store in the basement to lessen our kitchen storage needs, but most things that went down just came back up eventually. I tried to thin out our kitchen requirements entirely, but that too was unsuccessful. I’m pretty sure I investigated the idea of a pantry on the wall beside our bay window, but the space is not very deep so no standard pantry would fit. I finally resigned myself to waiting for whenever we fully remodel our kitchen (although functional, some parts of it ain’t pretty. Thankfully the yellow stove went away the day we moved in).

A few weeks ago, Charles mentioned a “crazy” idea he had about buying a pantry to put against the free wall and tearing down the hanging cupboards. I don’t think he had even finished his sentence before I jumped in with my response (“YES!”) and no more than an hour passed before I was online to see what I could find. The odd size of the space and the busy-ness of Christmas delayed the plan for a few weeks, but on New Years Eve we finally bought a pantry that (mostly) fit, and I woke up to banging on New Years Day as Charles hammered it together. By noon the pantry was up and secured to the wall and the cupboards were down.

And then there was LIGHT!

For the past two days, we’ve marvelled at why we didn’t do it earlier. Perhaps 2012 is the year of getting things done.