My toddler has a first name: it's O-S-C-A-R

Four years into this blog, everyone knows the drill: I neglect this space.

It's okay! I use my free time wisely. I'm a little over a quarter of the way through The Dead Rise (version 3). It's more than a revision at this point: 95% of this thing is totally new plot. Think Seven Samurai versus The Magnificent Seven: same basic story, but Kurosawa didn't have the stones to cast Steve McQueen.

In other words, it's becoming a much, much better book,  and I can't wait for people read it. I'm so happy every chance I get to work on it. Yay!

A while back, I had the idea to write Audrey regular letters, or emails, or something, and post them to this blog. That never happened, because after a baby comes into the world, time becomes a super premium luxury. Also, who'd want to read that? Even Future Audrey's eyes glaze over at the idea!

So, instead, let's do a quick update. Audrey is now twenty-one months old. Her hair has finally started to grow out. Right now, it's sort of a  fine downy blonde mullet. For a while, she wanted me to style it into a mohawk every day, but I think she's over it.

She can sing a handful of songs (itsy-bitsy spider, ten in the bed, and most of the ABC song). She also can sing "What's Going On" by the 4 Non Blondes.

She can recognize most of the alphabet. She knows all of her primary and secondary colors. She can point out circles, squares, and triangles. She can name numbers up to thirteen,  but she can't actually count - quantities are either three or ten, nothing in-between. She has three ears and ten crayons. 

The other day, she spent forty minutes pretending to cook. She shook crayons into a bowl like salt shakers, making the shh-shh sounds of tiny grains falling into a bowl. She mixed and transferred from one bowl to another. She poured imaginary liquid from a teaspoon into a tablespoon. After a long while, she opened the microwave. She slid the plastic bowl in and tried to turn it on. That is when we decided to unplug it.

She's memorized most of her books and will sit still for like, a solid hour while we read. Right now, she's trying to put herself to sleep. I hear her muttering and singing to herself, and so I'm typing extra quiet.

It's pretty good. She gets intense expressions a lot, like her brain is overheating from effort. I hope she likes Legos, because I'm planning to use Audrey as a Lego-buying excuse a lot over the next few years.