Une Envie de Sel

 Remember how I was just saying that motherhood is the best thing pretty much ever in the entire world?

 Well, this sequence of photos is a good case in point. 

This evening, my husband went to the opera house with his dad to see Rusalka, which left Q and I to find a way to occupy our evening in the most entertaining way possible (so as to prevent her from missing her daddy too much).

 Let's just say that it involved the craft store (for Valentine supplies), the nextdoor Old Navy (she calls it "the ball store" because they always have bins of balls in the kids section, and balls are basically her favorite thing in the entire world).
As we left the store, she stopped on the doormat with its oversized "Old Navy" logo, and pronounced very deliberately: "O-L-D-N-A-V...."
She got stuck on the "Y", but I was blown away. Every once in a while I am bowled over by one of Q's brand new advancements. I'd never heard her spell like that before. Don't forget, she's just three and a half.

Next on our agenda was a trip to the icecream parlour, which was curiously PACKED with teenagers dressed in prom-like getup (Is it prom season already?)

 I had been talking up this trip to the icecream parlour for days, since I knew I would have to come up with something good for daddy's night out. She was not very happy about having to wait behind a line of ten or twelve highschoolers ordering banana splits and sundaes, and wished aloud that she had brought her freeze ray ;)

 Happy at last with her double chocolate brownie frogurt (her own choice) topped with rainbow sprinkles!

 Once she had her icecream, she wanted to sit at one of the sidewalk tables (in spite of the evening cold) and eat like big girls out for a girl's night out. Who can blame the kid?

 Once the teenagers moved on to greener pastures, she deigned to take an indoor seat at Jamba Juice, where mommy ordered a smoothie...

 ...and Q proceeded to set up a well-appointed tea party, during which she poured me imaginary tea and hand-fed me Pirate Booty from a spoon.

The girl is serious about her tea-party etiquette. You've gotta hand it to her.

In between tea ceremonies, she would stand up and dance for a while to the soundtrack on the speakers, because that's just the kind of joy she lives with each and every day.

And that's a girl's night out with mommy and Q.