Still processing

On Saturday morning I had the pleasure of helping to field dress, drag and hang a buck that our friend Cindy shot. I was hunting on her land, and I'd been sitting in a stand for a little over 2 hours, basically just freezing my tail off. She got home after an overnight shift, saw the buck grazing in her back yard, grabbed her bow, walked right up to it and shot him from 10 yards away. Then she texted me to come help.


Life is not fair. Doesn't she look happy, though?

In any case, Kat and I thought this would be a good chance to learn how to process deer. So we went over Sunday afternoon and processed it with Carl & Cindy. It was an all night afair (we didn't get home until after 11:00). But we did have fun, and we learned a lot.

We decided to go ahead and bring Nora with. We figured it would be a good chance for her to learn where our food comes from. We don't want to scare her or make her a vegetarian, but we do want her to understand that the meat we eat comes from a living creature and that it should be respected.

Whatever our intentions, this is the picture that will be forever singed into my brain when I think about the whole experience.

We're either really good parents, or really, really, truly awful parents. The jury is still out.

Milestones

Nora's growing up (she said with a mix of delight and dismay). She has kept me busy and guessing the last week or so. Just when I think that I know what to expect, she goes and poops on the potty. Then, of course, she refuses to even try for the next week. It's toddlerdom at it's finest.

She did an aboutface on the whole water issue, too. I was beginning to think that she had seen "The Wizard of Oz" when I wasn't around and had a phobia of being melted by a sacchriny girl from Kansas. Now, suddenly, we're in for a tantrum if she doesn't get her bath. She likes to dnk her head, put her whole face in the water, splash, blow bubbles....I attribute this to that one page at the end of "Green Eggs and Ham" where Sam-I-Am and the unnamed guy are submerged.

Water and pooping are fine now and then, but Nora's new all-around obsession is letters. She likes picking them out of books, finding them on stop signs and attempting to draw them. "O" is clearly superior- and I'm sure that has nothing to do with how easy it is to draw....She has these Eric Carle cards with letters on one side and animals on the back. She likes to point to each letter and "spell" what the animal is. Most entertaining for me as a mother are "U" (which is known exclusively as "umbrella"- as in "o-c-t-o-p-umbrella-s") and "Q" (known as "O-with-a-tail").

Oops! The toddler in question is home. Back to parenting, while it lasts.