This is for you, Nana!

When Elena came over yesterday, she went to her favorite toy in my house--the porcelain doll Nana gave her.  (We keep it at my house for now because it's breakable--but the baby carriage is at her house.)

"Do you have a stroller?" she asked.  I went and got the stroller I use for her.  "No, the kind of stroller the baby lies down in."

"It's at your house," I said.

"Will you go get it?"  (Thirty miles--I don't think so!)

She went for the doll--on my guest bed--and brought a stack of folded sheets to make a bed for her baby.   Right after this picture was taken, we had the audacity to suggest going to the Farmer's Market, without her baby.

She cried.  She didn't want to stop doing what she was doing now to do the next thing.  "I want to stay here and play with my baby," she said.

Turns out, I let her take the baby--just said she'd have to leave it in the car when we walked around the market.

What if we could be so busy enjoying the now that we weren't interested in moving along to the next thing?

I had a few cupcakes in the freezer--which I took out to let her spread with Nutella.  "Is it my birthday party?" she asked, spreading them with clumps of "icing."

I have a drawer where I keep presents.  She knows which drawer it is. When she opened it and spied a Paddington Bear I'd bought in Boerne last week, she said, "Oh!  A toy for me!" Then she spied a tiny stuffed turtle I'd gotten for Nathan.  "Is that mine, too?"

"No, that's for Nathan for later."

"I'll have them both," she said.  "I love them!"