Calm, wet and snowy

Calm
I was able to speak more extensively with my wife, and I no longer feel the urgent need to put my daughter in hour long time-outs on a daily basis, which is much better for everyone. Genevieve and I have not yet had our moderated talk, and I can't say as though everything is smooth, but we are both .... a little more careful with each other?

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Wet
Tonight, the girls wanted to sleep in their mermaid den instead of their beds. They've had a mermaid infatuation for the past two weeks, thanks to the Backyardigans. Most special sleeping dens have been located in their closet as of late. It turns out that a clean closet has room to be favorite play spot, and their closet has been a number of places, from a house to a restaurant to a secret hiding spot.

Anyway, their mermaid den was not the closet. They wanted to spend the night in the bathtub. Maybe tomorrow night I'll let them try that experiment, but I wasn't up for it tonight.

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Snowy
Winter brings small, brief moments of wonder to me on my mile-long walk home from the bus. On Christmas week, I came upon an owl in the tree next to a native American burial mound. I stopped and looked at her for a while and then, perhaps tired of being stared at, she launched and flew on.

Last night, I took a detour to stand out on the lake. The snow was falling heavily, weighing down the city noises across the lake and putting the nearby bay shores in fuzzy grey. Suddenly, I was surprised to see a fox running perpendicular to my line of travel across the bay, 50 yards on, moving at a steady gallop toward on whatever destination that was suddenly more secretly accessible over the ice and through the snow.