Please don't look at the dishes

One of Mary Grace's new favorite activities is playing in a sink full of bubbles. This is strange on many levels. First of all, she doesn't like bubbles in the bath, but she likes them in the sink. Second, this is an activity that closely resembles housework, and I happen to know that she inherited her aversion to housework from me, so why would she be voluntarily doing something that looks so much like washing dishes? Third, when she plays in the sink her hands get really clean, and we all know that toddlers aren't happy if they aren't sticky and/or filthy and/or germy.

So, today she dragged the pink chair over to the sink, in an effort to convince me that it was no big deal at all to fill it up with bubbles for her. I obliged, but didn't bother to return the chair to its home when I replaced it with the safer, taller blue chair. You can guess what happened as soon as I turned my back for three seconds...

OOPS.

And, of course, being the crap mother that I am, instead of plucking Claire from the jaws of danger, I grab the camera.

She is such a monkey. And she wants so badly to be just like her big sister.

I made the best French toast this morning out of the cherry cobbler bread I got for yesterday's dinner. It was amazing. Hence the dishes. Sweet mother of calories, it was good.

The experimental glaze on last night's ham was okay. Not as astonishingly good as I expected it to be. I used pineapple juice concentrate, a little bit of maple flavoring, brown sugar, some salt, minced crystalized ginger, and ground cloves. I think it would've been better if I'd used crushed pineapple instead of pineapple juice. The ginger was nice, but it needed some more. It kind of got lost in all the other flavors. Oh well, maybe next year.

Thanks for the really sweet comments on yesterday's post. You make me smile. I am working on the book, actually. You know, in all my free time. Thank God I type 100 words per minute, or nothing would ever get done around here.