So we drove the few hours, through a dark morning up to Duluth, Ess sleeping in the backseat after a few miles of sleepy babble. We were bound for a dance competition for mama’s work, and like she always does on long trips, Ess woke up just as we were turning into the slow roads between freeway and competition. Once there, Ess received a little ladybug from Robin. Meant to be good-luck disposable hand-outs for the dancers, our daughter took her particular ladybug to be rather different than that.

Now these ladybugs are, I suppose, about five times larger than a real ladybug, albino in coloring (since they glow in the dark) with red spots. This large bug brings about a sense of creepy-crawliness in the observer, but as if to remind you it is harmless, bounces when thrown. This was one of the first things Ess found out about her bug. With the staccato wind-up and pitch of a toddler’s throw, she would throw the bug repeatedly, to watch the random bounces.

That was nearly two weeks ago, and Ess has decided her bug (“bugg-ah” as she says) should always be with her. Frequently, she’ll have clutched it so tightly in her little hand that if we try to see if she has it, we can barely tell she’s holding it. Buggah is a friend, a talisman, a toy, and now bears the marks of life with a toddler. Since insect-styled, chemiluminescent, thermoplastic trinkets aren’t really engineered with durability in mind, buggah is down to two of her original six legs. Her antennae are gone. And a soup dinner at Nannie’s has permanently colored her once-white body in a stew-colored muted orange.

Mykala devised a bed for buggah on my bedside table, so Ess can put her to bed positioned just-so on her Little Pea book. This is the only way to separate them without tears: to put the bug to bed for the night. Upon waking up, buggah is the first thing Ess asks to see. Together, they go on walks, in the car, through the house, through meals.

Ess took blocks over at Nannie’s and built what my dad called BuggahTown, a place to walk and “op-op-op” (hop) around, if you are five times the size of a lady bug, and not far from the color of the wood blocks around you.

In Ess’s toddler actions, I see budding empathy: dedication and caring and love.

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Inadvertent confirmation of war’s futility, from a Wikipedia article about American Samoa:

In March 1889, a German naval force invaded a village on Samoa, and by doing so destroyed some American property. Three American warships then entered the Apia harbor and prepared to engage three German warships found there. Before guns were fired, a typhoon wrecked both the American and German ships. A compulsory armistice was called because of the lack of warships.

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Ess bowled two strikes in a row (with the help of a ramp to launch her ball) on her first day bowling.

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The first 60° day of of 2016, so we headed out for a walk in the stroller.

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Reading Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia.

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Dancing and eating. Eating and dancing.

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This book has six pages—it’s one of those indestructible, untearable books, which is a good thing considering that Ess carries it with her wherever she goes. It came from Nannie’s, and Ess currently has it out on loan. It goes in the car with her, she plays with it during the day, she shares it with George, but she can’t take it in the store anymore because she isn’t great at holding on to it for long periods of time and the last thing we want is to lose it.

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Ess loves to put food out for George and watch him eat. It has taken a while to get her to leave him enough space to eat; before, she was scaring him away trying to show him so much affection while he was trying to eat. They’re figuring it out.

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