Odessa, you are magically, wonderfully, lovably delicious. I have a hard time not wanting to kiss those cheeks all the time. I am constantly amazed by you. This may be the one of the most important parental roles: we all, at some point, have had someone just blown-away by exactly who we are.
I feel like your cognitive development and language have just taken off like a rocket in the last few months or so. You understand and say so much! You get humor (arm in sleeve trick), you know how to use a fake cry to get what you want, or put things behind your back that you don't want us to see. You are very good at communicating what you want and what you don't want ("no, night-night, no!") When you read books, you often see things that I hadn't noticed and often tell me what they are.
I do have to say that I curse Dr. Suess with all the whosits and whatsits and things that you can think. One of your favourite phrases is "what's that?" and you won't stop repeating it until you get a response that meets your satisfaction. Normally that is an easy enough task. But when you read Dr. Suess (over and over and over and over) I don't know what those non-sensical things are and you are not impressed with the repeated response of "I have no idea." Nor does my "thats a whosit, thats a whatsit, thats a thingamajigee" seem to impress you either. Eventually I just attempted to have a serious conversation with you about Dr. Seuss and his imaginative perversion, I mean genious, but it didn't go very well. So, a few books may be disappearing for awhile. You will appreciate this when you have a two-year-old of your own.
This afternoon we layed down for a nap. It was quickly obvious that you were disinterested in sleep. But you had been acting SO tired that I decided to stick with the plan of getting you to go to sleep. I am keeping my eyes closed but sensing that you are moving around. Ever-so-slowly you are getting off the bed. Your feet are barely touching the carpeting when I open my eyes and say "Dessa..." in, you know, that tone. You had a very guilty look on your sweet little face. Ever so sly, so say in your sweet sing-song voice "I love you" and then creep back onto the bed. A few minutes later the whole scenario repeats and this time instead of spouting off your love, you said "shake your body." Maybe that was just to throw me totally off track.
A post is not complete without an update on sleep: I am happy to report that 9 out of 10 times you wake up ZERO times a night. Again, a day that I thought would never arrive. I get better sleep now than I have in YEARS. What is funny too is that this lack of night-awakening happened very much spontaneously no coaching necessary. A couple months back you still woke up regularly through the night and now I put you down for the night and you are officially out till morning. Crazy.
And on that note, good night.
Step 2. Peek out to make sure that someone is watching.
Step 3: Look damn cute until one of two things happen: 1) be "rescued" by nearby mom/dad/other or 2) become distrated by the cookie you now see that is on the floor, and therefore no longer need to be rescued...because you can't remember the reason behind the crumple in the first place. 
I love you my addorable, little drama queen!
While I was taking my shower, Odessa wheeled in both her shopping cart and her baby stroller. Pablo in the shopping cart and not-yet-named asian baby was in the stroller. From there she spent quite a bit of time "taking care" of each of the babies. It is so sweet to watch. I hope that some of my mommy-skills pass on to her (but not all! :)
We had plans to stay at a cabin this christmas but the weather didn't cooperate and so we stayed home instead. 
Question from Kalina to me:
Here are a few pictures of Odessa in the wintery wonderland that we have been calling home this week. She really is not all that thrilled about it. She does like to look at the snow but she doesn't want to walk in it or touch it. Like mama, she prefers to view the outdoors from the confines of a warm bookstore or coffee shop :)
Odessa calls this picture "princess mommy". She will be very dissapointed in her lack of royal heritage when she gets a little older.
Here is Odessa using the internet and doing some writing, all at the same time. It is so cute seeing her look so grown-up, hard-at-work.
This is definitely the most fun Halloween we have had with Odessa. I don't think you can really blame her for the last two years -- she was just too little to be all that excited about traditions. It is a lot more fun though now that she actually kind of "gets it".
Perfect weather for a day at the pumpkin patch. It was really busy there -- obviously not a novel idea -- but we had a really nice time! Odessa was very into choosing "her" pumpkin (I had to steer her towards the smallish ones), loved the hay ride, and at about a thousand grapes on the car ride home.
I think our tomatos were planted too late, so far we only have one small, red fruit to call our own. I think the fact that Odessa is obsessed with picking the green ones doesn't help.
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