Braids and Baby Cobbler

Okay, so they're not yet Anne of Green Gables worthy, but I was very happy that we could plait tiny little braids into Zöe's hair yesterday. She looks so cute and sassy when her hair is short, but it's just so darn pretty with big fat curls that I'm thinking we'll grow it longer for a bit and see how that works out. Perhaps we'll have some bigger, better braids in our future.

Yesterday I took Braids and the Boys out to pick some berries. They love searching the bushes for the perfect fruit, which are so often elusively hiding under a patch of leafy greenery. There usually unfolds all manner of contests between Them and Me, with categories ranging from Most Berries Picked to Berry With The Ugliest Bug . Since I'm a Zone Picker (as in, "yeah, yeah sure...let me just get these few here....and here....and here...") I'm oblivious to much of the contest shenanigans, so I don't win any of them. And boy did it feel a lot like Blueberries for Sal with Zöe puttering along behind me, eating the blueberries as quickly as I could put them in the basket. When she'd sneak some from The Boys they'd scold her, "Zooooooeee, take 'em from the treeeeees, not our baskeeeeeet!" Then she'd just get sneakier.

Once home, Zöe donned her Hello Kitty apron (which was mine long, long ago) and helped me make my very first cobbler with the blueberries and marionberries we picked. As a girl my mom used to play a wrestling game with her big brother, my Uncle Joe, which they called "Mountain Joe and Baby Cobbler." I always loved thinking of them playing their made-up game, and the title used to throw me into fits of giggles when I was small. And so "cobbler" has been one of my favorite words ever since. Oy, you should hear Zoe say it over and over. I swear I could listen to it all day long...So without further ado, here's our Baby Cobbler. I pretty much felt like a Mountain Joe when I was finished eating. Yum. Of course, more pictures here.