i recently built a bench at the foot of our basement steps. my intention for the seat was to provide a place where kids could undress after playing in the snow/mud before tramping through the house. before the bench could be used a single time, bella commandeered it as her own. and not as a mutli-function and utilitarian staging area but as a long worktable to accommodate her most recent project, dissecting each and every block of styrofoam in our home and surrounding community, one squeaky nodule at a time. she has twelve mason jars lined up on the nearby shelves which she intends to fill with the small white balls and then walk the country feeding hungry animals. when i told her that i didn't think animals ate styrofoam, she made a quizzical face and wordlessly walked away which is pretty much how people at work respond to my insights also.



here she is seen with the new neighbor girl who moved in three days before christmas. it took bella all of three hours to recruit her for the task. the first day the new girl, sofia, came down she was at our house for six hours, five of which was spent toiling at bella's makeshift workshop. listening from the top of the steps, they sounded like two waitresses working the night shift. while much of the banter centered around the pending christmas holiday, sofia at some point informed bella that she was mispronouncing the word breakfast (bella has always called it bresfast). in that this was one of my very favorite bella-isms i was a little miffed that my bench was the glue that made that learning moment possible. oh well, i still have bagina.