Happy New Year!

India's New Year's Day dinner consisted of: squash-prune-apple, Cheerios, and avocado. As you can see.

All of which she insisted on eating ALL BY HERSELF. As you can also see.

Now if you try to feed her, she waves her arms frantically in front of her face, batting away your spoon and sending food flying. She's also generous about offering food to others. Jordan got a cheerily proffered cheek- and noseful of yogurt yesterday.

And when she is done, she is soooo over it, like, right now, stat, get me out of here, done!

We have a bath every night to get the food out of her hair, ears, chub chub creases. I'm constantly finding Cheerios in unexpected places.

As for me, my dinner consisted of Jordan's uneaten fish sticks. Which, hand to God, I kind of love. Sometimes he, my mom, and I all have fish sticks for dinner. Betty makes tartar sauce with her homemade bread and butter pickles, and it is great.

Fish sticks are a new food for me. I grew up with chapatis and dahl. Not macaroni and cheese, not fish sticks. And so, at the ripe old age of 43, I've discovered my love of this popular childhood staple.

Fish sticks, by the way, are significantly better with beer than red wine. I'm not proud of this knowledge.

But in case you share my interest, Costco has delicious ones. They're big rectangles of Cod, very crispy, but not too much breading. You kind of need Betty's pickles, though, to make them awesome.

As for my Jordan, he's suddenly very grown up. Look, look at this!

The babyness is gone. He's such a boy.

He is thoughtful. He can express himself well, and have interesting conversations. He's doing puzzles! We got this as a gift, and it's just now that he's at a point where he can handle it.

When we first started trying to put the puzzle together, I suggested that he start with the corners.

"Here, let's put in a corner. Why don't we put the corners in first?"

"I don't know what a corner is, Mama."

Oh.

But now he knows what a corner is, and he is loving piecing the picture together.

He's been on winter break, staying home with my mom on the days I'm at the office. They've been up to a variety of adventures.

Today she had a doctor's appointment. So I told him he'd be going to the doctor with Nanna.

Instant drama trauma. Face screwed up, ready for a huge wail. "I don't want to go to the doctor!!!"

"No, no, honey. You're not going to the doctor. Nanna is going. And we need you to go with her to keep her company."

Well, then. This totally made sense to him. Nobody goes to the doctor alone.

This morning he said, "Nanna, I'm going to the doctor with you so you don't cry."

Awwww.

Pretty sure this year is going to be great.