for the love of baguette

It's a good thing that I do not grocery shop more than once a week. Or at least that I do not bring home a baguette on a daily basis, like the French. Ed and Snowdrop -- they would live on that crusty bread alone if they could.

Because there is no baguette in the morning, I am able to put out foods for Ed that I have to believe have more nutritional value. (Or maybe it's one of those things that we'll learn decades from now, like we learned about the virtues of red wine and olive oil: maybe baguettes are what keep the French happy and socially inclined!)

Here's our breakfast today. No baguette.






But then I do go grocery shopping and after, I rush to pick up Snowdrop. As she walks toward the farmhouse, she pauses for a conversation with the snowman but I am not sure he can fully appreciate her discourse, because, well, it's sounding a bit muffled.





it is such a freezing day!

Once she learns there is a fresh baguette on the counter, nothing can hold her back.
Wait, Snowdrop, I have to change your clothing -- you're a little tomatoey right now! Okay, gaga, but only if I can keep on eating my slice of baguette.






Ed comes over to survey her lunch leftovers. You can always tell when she is greeting him in a photo because her head has to tilt up, up up...






He melts some cheese slices on the baguette while she admires (for the nth time) the "tree."






And then they set to their baguette. (Looking at books while munching baguette with melted cheese -- heaven!)






By the time they're done, there is only a tiny end piece of baguette left, but both Snowdrop and Ed are very content, in the way you get when you've had just the right amount of baguette.

(How about a sweater, Snowdrop? It's a little cool without one. Okay!)






She naps. I study the play of sunlight on the farmette path just outside the kitchen window.






When she wakes up, I give her a little gift that I am deliberately downplaying. She has a doll at home. I'm not one who would be a good doll playing compatriot. Why push her in this direction when she is now hell bento on building towers and deconstructing every construction within reach?

I'll tell you why: Snowdrop is not one to be pigeonholed. She may love rockets, trains, lego blocks, but she also really loves babies. In a way that I'd never seen in my girls when they were her age.

Here, at the farmhouse, all that I have offered her has been a one inch piece of plastic -- a Duplo baby that is barely recognizable as a baby.  Pathetic really. And yet she loves it. She loves giving it "mulk" and putting it in its "strollr" and you hear the word "baby" in her vocabulary so often that you begin to wonder -- where is she getting it from?

Baby dolls are cheap on Amazon and I finally order one for the farmhouse.

She takes to it as if nurturing a small one is somehow in her blood.






And she keeps speaking those reassuring words over and over -- words that she certainly hasn't heard me say:
It's okay, baby! It's okay.






I tell her it's a baby doll, but she is not happy with that characterization. No, not doll! It's a baby!
Okay Snowdrop.






We listen to Raffi's holiday music as we play and she perks up at Jingle Bells. She tries to sing along and I can tell that this is something they must be singing at school.
I want jingle bells song again! -- she tells me when it's over.

I read her books about snow and forests and bears and snow and children and sleds and snowmen and snow and quite suddenly, she has this epiphany -- like there is something she needs to adjust outside to the farmette snowman.  A scarf and hat, that's it!






Once outdoors, she wants to play with the sled. Not to be pulled in it but to do the pulling.





Snowdrop, we can't go on the road with the sled, we just cannot!
She is disappointed but she is a girl who quickly recovers.

At home, she picks up the TV remote which she likes to pretend is her own personal cell phone.
Hi this is Snowdrop, adios! She sounds so earnest!

Oh, for the love of farmette life! For the love of Snowdrop! (When I heard it, I nearly stopped dead in my tracks. In the car: I wuv gaga! What did you say? I wuv gaga!) For the love of love! For the love of baguettes!