just add water

Much like her four-legged sister, Charlotte is capable of making a mess anywhere and at any time.

[Mid-January, San Diego. Yes, we're voluntarily leaving this weather behind.] 

love is all around

Happy Valentine's Day!

Cognizant of the romantic importance of this day, Charlotte already started practicing last week: After the explosion in vocabulary over the fall months, she has been saying more and more 2-3 word sentences this winter. So on the eve of her 21 months birthday, Charlotte was ready for her first fully verbal declaration of love... exclaiming:

"I love you, Daddy!" - shortly followed by "I love you, Mama!" and
"I love you, Penny!"

It was one of those melt-your-heart and bring-tears-of-happiness-to-your-eyes parenting moments, at least for Mama. Charlotte whispered it into her ear as Daddy walked away... presumably in response to him giving her one last good night kiss, and to Mama reading her favorite bedtime stories, and to Penny for being - well - Penny.

We love you too Charlotte, so very much.

portrait of the artist as a young girl

Even at an early age, CSK's artistic proclivities were apparent. While contemporaries preferred bold bursts of bright color and abstract forms, CSK always displayed a more spartan approach to her craft. Canvases were left mostly barren, the bleakness punctured only by a simple brushstroke or two. Occasionally a completely blank painting was offered forth in a derring-do of social commentary: the viewer was left to contemplate the absurdity of imparting meaning to a naked, virgin canvas. Her series of paintings in which a heavily coated brush head was violently and repeatedly pressed onto the medium like a drill is thought to capture her rejection of the pointillism en vogue with her peers at the time. 

CSK's intense devotion to experimental art extended into the realm of performance. She viewed the catcalls about the danger of her more avant garde approaches and pieces as misguided and childish. Public viewings of her work often included sideshows in which the artist herself consumed paint by the fistful. By demonstration, art could never be dangerous. 

Her inspiration was rarely clear. When asked, she would sometimes say her only aspiration in life was "Bunga," the term itself belaying a philosophy that was orthodox only in its rejection of orthodoxy. A self-produced documentary about the artist's childhood ended controversially with the protagonist fading out of view while whispers of snow revealed a sled emblazoned only with the word "Penny."

the lion's share

Penny and Charlotte enjoy a symbiotic relationship, especially when it comes to food. [Maybe parasitic is a better description. I'll leave that to the reader to decide.] Charlotte eats, until she's done, and then she graciously distributes her leftovers to the pink tongue emanating periodically from below the table. This actually belies the true depth of Charlotte's concern for Penny's welfare: whenever Penny clears her bowl [which admittedly doesn't happen all that often], Charlotte looks over, points at the empty bowl, and repeatedly exclaims "More food, Penny!" You know, just in case the purveyors of said food weren't paying attention. The attention to Penny's diet even extends to desserts, as Charlotte likes placing cakes [kuchen] in front of Penny's snout. 

looking for me?

And...we're back. Well almost. [We still don't have all of our pictures back on the home computer since HP made a complete mess of the repair. Fortunately and very, very sadly, this was entirely anticipated, so Daddy removed the hard drive and backed up the pictures manually. Kind of makes it curious that HP insists the drive was dead-on-arrival (and hence no data transfer was performed) but that $20 and a trip to Fry's Electronics encountered no such problems. I guess "I'm too inconsiderate/lazy/ignorant to actually try to perform the data migration" does indeed make the drive DOA. But I digress...] More tales and tails to report in the coming days.