Earlier in November we started painting the walls in our garage addition out back, and Salome was an eager helper. She painted portraits of our family with a brush while we rolled the paint on, and she really started to look the part of the dedicated artist, sans shirt and splattered with paint.
She also made the most of our sad fall leaves situation (the extreme cold snap in Oct. froze the leaves right onto the trees, where most of them are still clinging to the branches, and none of them changed colors) and went sledding in them, raked them, and jumped in the piles.
She is still drawing every day and getting more detailed in her marks and in her descriptions.
We had a marvelous Thanksgiving Day out in Arlee at Grandpa and Grandma's house, where Salome annihilated a turkey leg and did her best to get in the mix during our traditional game of Cranium. Some of us took a little break to walk off some of the day's feast and trundled up to the Pow Wow grounds. Although the little kids did more running than walking - the feasting didn't seem to make them sluggish...
The next day, Salome and I flew to Cincinnati for a week to visit Auntie Hilly and Uncle Jacob. We got to spend the weekend with them both before Hilly had to get back to school for more study of the law (yikes, may I say.) Jacob prepared a whole second Thanksgiving dinner, not to mention plenty of baked goods, and a feast every night of the week. Salome enjoyed wrestling, reading, and clinging like a monkey to her auntie and uncle and we really had fun being in their neck of the woods. Jacob was also kind enough to chauffer us to Indiana one afternoon to meet our friends Natalia and Spiro and their baby Sofia from Chicago. Salome was nearly dwarfed by 6-month-old Sofia, but that didn't stop her from wanting to hold her.
Suresh was on business in Germany while we were in Cincinnati, but we were lucky enough to get to meet up with him in Minneapolis on the way home, and fly to Missoula as a threesome. It was a great end to the trip.
Last weekend there were plenty of Christmas activities going on in Missoula, so we took Salome to decorate cookies, make crafts at the library, and ended the evening downtown, where we got to see Santa Claus (two actually - one in a meter maid car, one on a sleigh with Mrs. Claus) in a parade. I considered it a good parade because it was cold enough that they threw chocolate...
Anyway, as Salome's Big Sister-dom approaches, she is fully enjoying squeezing, poking, patting and talking to my belly and has big plans for when her baby gets here. She wants to hide the baby's eyes during scary parts in movies, read books with her, and possible even nurse her. (I refer to the baby as "her" because Salome only calls it a sister and now I'm getting really used to it.)
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