Public housing funny

This is giving me the giggles.

I stumbled across a story about how Barack Obama has a paternal aunt who is living illegally in the US in public housing in Boston. And there is a photo of where she was living. Here is the photo.

What's funny is that I used to see a family in that very same building in the D Street projects for YEARS. One of my first EI cases in Boston was in this building with a family I loooooooved, and I saw that child from 2004 until she turned 3, and her younger brother until I left the agency and moved. I used to sit in the courtyard of that building and wait for them, or hang out with the family, all the time. Week after week. For years.

How funny to see that front door again in presidential "news."

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the cutest toddler in the Northeast:




(I am teaching her the fine art of candy selection. She avoided all of those nasty blue Almond Joys!)

My most incredible creation

I love seeing her little mind working. It is such an amazing thing. I enjoy watching clients learn new things, but since I only see them week to week (or less), I don't get the full effect. Watching Punk, I see that things just happen - suddenly, randomly - or that they've happened somehow under my nose.

I find it so awesome that a little person who has a couple of handfuls of words can understand everything. And I do mean everything. She understands things I didn't even know she knew! Case in point, I often ask her to go and get a particular book. Usually I do this when she has made me read the latest issue of Babybug so many times that I'm ready to kick Kim and Carrots right out the window, but sometimes for fun. I first tried it with Hey, Wake Up! because that is a particular fave of hers, but I have been adding to the list of books I ask for.

This evening, as we were winding down, I told her to "get the underwear book." Now the book in question is actually called Underwear Do's and Don'ts but I don't know that I've ever said that to her - I typically just jump right in. ("Do have lots of different kinds of underwear. Don't wear them all at once.") I fully expected her to look at me, confused. But no, she flipped through the books on the shelf and emerged with the underwear book in hand.

I am fascinated by this little creature and watching her mind expand with every waking (and sleeping) moment. She used to be a tiny baby content to blink and coo. Today she is an active little person who can "throw the diaper in the trash," "go to the bath," "pick up that book off the floor," "put the toys away," and find 'the underwear book' in a bin of at least 30 books.

Today she is 16 months old.