I got Veronica's holiday portrait taken at Target tonight. Little did I know, when scheduling this task, that it would become an epic adventure.

First off, I buy Veronica little black boots for her portrait on my lunch break today; the suggestion had been made to buy patent leather Mary Janes, but that would've required socks too, plus she can wear the boots with more outfits. In fact, she owns nothing that the Mary Janes would look good with. As baby shoes are way more expensive than they should be, I buy only the pairs that I need.

Also, Jason drops her off at the babysitter's this morning with three instructions for the babysitter:

1. Load Veronica up with food before I come get her, so she won't be all hungry and cranky for the photo shoot. This was done.
2. Get her dressed in her little outfit for the photo shoot right before I come to pick her up, a pair of black velour pants with a matching red velour top that has a heart and says "Little Angel." I found this ensemble at Once Upon a Child, a children's resale store. This was done as well.
3. Fix her hair up pretty, because I'm awful at it and Debbie does a wonderful job at it. This was done too; when I showed up, Veronica had one little ponytail on top of her head (the Pebbles ponytail is what I call it) and a little pink barrette that almost looked red, so it matched well enough. I was thrilled. She looked great.

That was the last moment before everything fell apart.

I had to stop for gas on my way home, and Veronica used that opportunity to rip her hair decorations out of her hair. I get home and see her fiddling with the barrette. I don't even want to know what happened to the ponytail elastic; I still haven't found it.

I get her inside and, for the first time ever, cartoons fail to keep her still while I try to replace the ponytail. I get it to look OK though, but don't even try to get that barrette back in.

Off we go to Target. We get there a little early before the appointment because I want to find some little holiday hair doohickey for her Pebbles ponytail. I figure, it's Target, they HAVE to have something like that. Well, if I need holiday socks, holiday party costume jewelry, and gloves, I know where to go. But holiday hair accessories? NADA. I ended up getting a pack of fuzzy hair elastics; two were red, two were black, I figured they'd look all right.

We get back to the portrait studio, which is very busy with moms, dads, and kids of various ages. I check in, then put a red fuzzy elastic over her plain one to spruce up her outfit. She doesn't like it and tries to take it out. As this is screwing up her hair royally, I try to make peace by handing her the other red scrunchie and the two black ones. She proceeds to try to put them onto her ponytail as well, which also messes up her hair. She's already looking positively scruffy next to all the other kids, in brand-new velvet dresses, patent leather shoes, and perfect little blonde curls. I wish for a moment that I could've afforded a new outfit for her, but as we don't go to church on Christmas and probably won't go visiting family, I found it to be an expense we didn't need.

I decide to get her mind off the hair things by walking her around the store a little, in the nearby aisles. Lucky me, they stuck the damn portrait studio in the middle of the toy department. However, Veronica is in wonderful spirits and is smiling, giggling, and watching people. This goes on for about a half hour.

It's finally our turn, and a very friendly young blonde lady is going to take Veronica's pictures. I pick out a couple backdrops and suggest some props. Veronica loves books and teddy bears, she had a copy of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and a holiday bear on hand, why don't we use those? Veronica looks around in great interest.

The lady gets the props ready. I lift Veronica onto the platform to pose. She cries. She throws the book off the platform. She throws the teddy bear off the platform. I want her to finally have a portrait where she standing, since she couldn't do so the last time we took her in; every time I lift her up, she plops back down on her butt. She does smile for a few shots, but not big enough so you can see some of those teeth that have finally come in. Plus in two shots, even though she's smiling, her nose is so red and her eyes so watery that you can tell she'd been bawling mere seconds before. I keep telling the nice blonde lady "she's never like this!" and the woman says "it's 18 months, they're all like this at this age." Lucky lucky me. :-P

I finally get back out to the waiting area to pick out poses, prints, and Christmas cards. Now Veronica is in great spirits again. She sees another little girl with a teddy bear, starts pointing, and says "Bear!" with great interest. She starts giggling with little provocation. She's on cloud nine. Great timing there, kid. :-P

So I get home again and finally open the package that had been sitting outside my house and had been delivered in the mail. I knew it was from my mom, and it was something for Veronica. It contained some new socks. A three-pack of white onesies. A little Christmas sweatsuit. And, right on top, a red velvet Christmas dress. With a matching headband. The type of dress that can only be worn with a pair of black patent leather Mary Janes.

After spewing out more expletives than I'd wanted to at the awful timing of this package, I call my folks to let them know of the massive irony of this postal delivery. They think it's funny. I just get all the more infuriated that my mom wouldn't let me know ahead of time what she was sending, and that according to her, it would've been sent a day earlier had she not run out of tape that day. (The grocery store is a mile away! And there's a CVS half a mile from that! And my dad works at the POST OFFICE for crying out loud!!! ACK!) My dad says maybe I should take Veronica to church so she has someplace to wear the dress. The conversation abruptly ends there.

The rest of the evening goes smoothly until feeding time. I give Veronica some Cheerios while warming up some food for her. She tosses them onto the floor for the cat. I feed her a little bit, but she starts asking for green beans ("ghee bees!") so I get out a jar that's already opened and half empty. I spoon them out for her, as she prefers to feed them to herself. She gleefully giggles and starts throwing them on the floor for Pita, who inexplicably eats them all. I continue to feed her the baby food chicken dinner I'd prepared.

A few minutes later, Veronica wants more Cheerios. I oblige by giving her a few; she eats some and throws the rest down to Pita, who is having quite the lucky day. She then eats some more dinner, then says "ghee bees!"

"No, you tossed them on the floor," I said.

"Ghee bees! More! More!" She suddenly starts doing the sign language for "more", hitting her little fists together so hard that I can hear it.

So I go to the fridge and guess what? That was the last of the green beans. Now she won't eat anything else.



Y'know, being the mother of a toddler is great fun in all the moments when you don't want to just rip your hair out. I love her dearly...but man, am I glad she's in bed right now. Time to finally eat some dinner of my own and crash myself.

Jason wanted me to mention Veronica's accomplishments today. So here goes:

1. While taking a bath, she picked up the baby shampoo bottle, pointed to each word of "No More Tears" and said "No, ba, ba." Jason is convinced she can read the word "no" now. At the very least, it looks like she recognizes it.

2. While Jason was loading up the dishwasher this afternoon, Veronica stood aside and watched. When she tried to close the door, Jason said "no, I have one more thing to do." She then placed her finger in the empty soap container and looked up at him expectantly. She knew that the last thing he needed to do was to add the detergent.

She's just becoming so observant anymore and she's soaking in information like a sponge. I can't believe how fast she's growing up. Where did my little infant go?

As typical in children Veronica's age, every day is a new adventure, filled with discovery. So let me share some of Veronica's recent discoveries:

1. The best way to attack Daddy is to head-butt him in the chest. You won't hurt him, but he'll be laughing so hard that he will be totally immobilized.

2. The best way to play with MegaBlocks is to only use two colors at a time, with the same size block. One-peg yellow blocks, for example, go great with one-peg orange blocks. Two-peg green blocks, however, look best with two-peg pink blocks. And if you really want them to look spiffy, take great care in alternating them. If you really work hard at it, you can make a checkerboard pattern up the side of the tower you've built and watch your parents stare in disbelief.

3. The Squirrel Nut Zippers' album "Hot" is the best dance CD ever made. You can get down to every single song on it. A simple foot-stomp and walking around in a circle will suffice, but a little hip wiggle and some arm waving work well too.

4. Poop is stinky, so if you have pooped, you should warn Mommy or Daddy by repeating the word "tink-eee!" over and over while your diaper is being changed.

5. Kitties love presents. In fact, every toy you own must, at some point, be offered to the cat of your house. This is also true of food and drink as well; it is considered rude not to share tasty morsels of whatever you are eating, or your beverage in the sippy cup, with your friendly neighborhood feline. If the kitty balks, and Mommy tells you once more "no honey, it's YOURS once it's been in your mouth, it's no one else's after that", then hold said food item up to the aquarium. That fish hasn't broken through the glass yet to get to the food, but there's a first time for everything.

6. Noses are wonderful things. Try sticking a Cheerio up yours to show your appreciation for such an awesome appendenge.

7. You must be a discerning television watcher. Some things are obvious winners. Blue's Clues, or Dora the Explorer, or Baby Einstein videos - these go without saying. But you also must look for quality programming elsewhere. For example, if MTV 2 is showing their documentary on rapper Chingy, you must watch with rapt attention. The same holds true for episodes of "Jeopardy!" Yes, your mommy may look very confused and keep muttering "huh" under her breath, but that's obviously because she doesn't appreciate fine art.

8. Social mores dictate that high chairs must be placed in kitchens or other dining areas. Why should such a wonderous device be confined to one room? That's what the wheels are for! Living room, hallway, wherever - any room of the house will look that much more stylish with a Chico Mamma high chair gracing its decor.

Conventional wisdom says you can learn a lot from your children. You can see above what I have learned recently from mine. Lord only knows what the next lessons will be. I look forward to them. ;-)

Finally, an online photo album!

http://photos.yahoo.com/maraniewarren

Pictures from my birthday dinner at Brandon and Amanda's house, and from Halloween. :-)