Counting the days

Helena was flipping through the pages of her calendar, and before I could think up an excuse to be elsewhere, she had me listening (feigned attentively) to her count every single effing day of every single effing month of the whole effing year. She knows how many days till her uncle's birthday (a handful), and how many to her own (very many). (My brain had glazed over and I'm unable to recall the exact numbers.)

Yesterday we played in the snow. Here Helena ceremoniously presents an emissary with a symbolic chunk of snow to appease the gods of winter, that the winds will not make ice statues of us, that the polar bears will not take us for popsicles.