Since returning from our trip, I've been working on a new series of pre-cut, articulated paper dolls, and I have my first four sets in the shop as of today!

I'm very excited. I am working on plans for several more backgrounds, as well as several more articulated dolls and characters to go with them. 

 

Also, as a little pre-Valentine's Day gift just for blog friends, I'm offering a discount of 20% off any regularly-priced item in the shop with the coupon code VALENTINE. 

(It's good on your entire purchase if you buy more than one item).

You can enter the coupon code at checkout in my Etsy shop any time between now and February 14th!

 She likes tea.

 Making merry out of doors after the snowstorm in Woodstock.

 Daddy braving the frigid Eastern powder snow to make snow angels for his little Q.

 A Q-vs-LaoLao snowball fight, with Emma that Aussie in the middle. Q may be little, but she has a deadly aim and pitcher's arm!

 My husband (who was inside starting a soup stock) shot these photos out the kitchen window while I was photographing the winter scenery.

I just had to take a small break here and say a few words about this girl. 

I have been reminded several times lately of how I will probably someday regret spending all of my "free" time editing photos of her, and next to no time taking videos and/or keeping a diary of all the funny things she says at this magical age. 

When she was two, I was a great one for saying "What terrible twos? This is the BEST age ever!"

Until, that is, she turned three, and proceeded to become even more awesome by the day, until I can hardly remember how amazing she was at two. 

What will become of me when she turns four, I wonder? 

Her name is Flynn, by the way, for those who don't already know. Or at least Flynn is the name that we decided to give her when we started the process of adopting her. Because others in our family have started out in one country and ended up in another, have changed their names back and forth at different stages of life, we always intended to give her a choice of names. So that legally, she has at least three.

In many ways, Flynn turns out to suit her perfectly. She is an inveterate tomboy, a daredevil, and an honorary pirate. And yet, although we expected to call her Flynn once she came to the US, we started out calling her Q in China, and have called her Q ever since. Q being my blog abbreviation for her Chinese name. Having been born with a cleft, with continuing surgeries, she is unable at this point to pronounce certain sounds, her name being among those. So that for the past year or two she has called herself "Hee-hee" and then "Hoo-hoo" as her pronunciation has evolved.

At this point, I do not see myself calling her anything but Q in the immediate future, even though I can well imagine her calling herself Flynn as she enters her teens or even tweens. 

But I digress. 

My real point in this post is to explain that I am completely and utterly besotted with this girl in every imagineable way. Every day I love her more desperately, and it's more and more difficult to come up with words that express my devotion to her. 

 On an ordinary day, she is like a low-grade fever for me, hovering over my consciousness and exerting her narcotic powers over my limbic brain. 

And then, at odd moments, I am knocked out at the knees by an overwhelming fear of losing her. It's like a dart gun to the back of my spine, and a terrible voice deep inside me screams "I cannot lose this child!" and "Come anywhere near her and I will rip your eyeballs out with my bare hands!"

Yes, I would take a bullet for her. Yes, I would give up all my hopes and dreams for her. In a heartbeat. Without hesitating.

Part of me says that any mother would do that for any child, but another part of me says that no one has ever loved a child this much in the history of mankind. 

Honestly, I don't know what to believe. I am drugged. I am besotted. I will never be the same again.

Somehow, this amazing child came into my life, and I can never do enough to deserve her.

That smile, that voice, that laugh. Greater than gold. Greater than rubies. 

She is a diamond as big as the Ritz.

There are no words.

 One day, while the others napped, my mother and I took a snowy walk through the woods by the Sawkill.

 Always a highpoint of any visit to Woodstock!

 Summer or winter, every turn of the river is gorgeous.

 I had to share this random moment because it's just too funny not to share.

 It hasn't been snowy enough in Denver, and we have been too busy to head into the mountains this winter, so Q hasn't had a chance to try out her snow blades.

 But that hasn't stopped her from learning to use her equipment. 

Q likes to figure things out, and she needed to do several test runs of putting on her boots, easing into her bindings, working the bindings, and finally attaching the safety leashes.

 Only Q knows when she has practiced something enough times to process it properly in her little computer of a brain. She will not stop practicing until she's satisfied that she has it down.

 Ah.........

Success!

 Breakfast chéz LaoLao.

 Surrounded by her beautiful art...

 It's a magical world for a little one.

 Playing "A Paris, A Paris, sur un petit cheval gris" on the couch. The same game my mother and grandmother used to play with me when I was little.

My mother has been working this year on a series of paintings from last year's trip to Africa for a museum show. Aren't they amazing?

Back in Colorado, of course, the weather is much balmier, and we're planning on heading to the National Western Stock Show this afternoon...just for fun!

(btw, yes, that is a "mommy you're walking on thin ice" look in the last photo. Even Q sometimes gets tired of the paparazzi.)

...OK, now back to NY photos...

 What to do on a chilly day in January, but go exploring some old haunts from the past!

Here, the famed Maverick concert hall, where my piano-prodigy of an aunt played when I was small, where we spent so many languid summer afternoons listening to classical music in the dappled shade of the forest.

 Interesting to stomp around here in the deep snow, my mother and I, when all the doors are locked and the benches drawn in for the winter, and not a track but our own footsteps in the blanket of white that shrouds the winter woods.

 A visit home is a time for happy rememberings...

Then a winding drive home past the Ashokan reservoir, with the baby falling asleep in her car seat.

p s - thanks to Julia over at the very fabulous Planet Awesome Kids for featuring our Q again today! Big kiss.

 Heading out in a bitter wind for a Sunday breakfast at local favorite Oriole9.

 I think Q was enjoying herself ;)

 In an everday sense, I am not much of a breakfast eater. More of a dark-chocolate-and-coffee girl. But Oriole9 makes my favorite breakfast, flat out, no contest. I promise you that this plate was clean when I was done!

 In Woodstock on a chilly morning, with snowflakes materializing out of a cloudless sky outside the windows, and the peace and comfort of my mother's home keeping us cozy inside.

 Opening belated Christmas presents with LaoLao.

 No winter too cold for Q and her intrepid sidekick, Keroppi.

Reading "maps" in the car. She considers herself a master navigator.

PS - Stop by one of my favorite blogs, MaandagDaandag, to wish Elvis a happy birthday! You might see some of my prints among her fabulous birthday photos! Daan is one of the coolest (and most creative) moms in the blogosphere, and her kids are the coolest!