She is napping so I, naturally, am thinking about what all I need to do this week.  I have to scan and file photos that I have been putting off for a year.  (That's right, a  year, don't judge me.)  I have to write one of two papers that will be term papers, although the first one is required in draft form only.  The other will be a bit more involved.  I will have to annotate that one.  I hate annotating about as much as plaigerism so what am I to do?  

Next week is Easter Sunday.  In one month to the day is Xyla's birthday.  She will be two.  

Yet all I can think about is home.  I have two more pay periods before I have enough leave saved to take a break.  My mom might come down for a couple of days, maybe with my grandmother.  I really wish my family got to be a bigger part of my daughter's life.  I know they do too.

Right now I am grateful that I get to roll and play with my baby as I watch her grow, and grow and grow.  I measured her yesterday and she is 34 inches.  I measured her two weeks ago at 33.  She snuck it in there.  She is sleeping in her own bed most of the time.  She is about half potty trained.  She draws what looks like words rather than pictures of things or shapes.  She has pretty much all of her baby teeth.  I love to see her smile and she smiles a lot.  She can recognize and verbalize a variety of colors and objects.  She can and does clearly tell me "yesh" she wants some thing or "noooo" she doesn't.  She is really good at taking medicine when she needs to.  I wish she didn't need to.  She takes books to bed with her.  I found her in her room reading a book of nursery rhymes yesterday.  She has recently discovered a love for Winnie the Pooh, whom she calls "poop".  'Tigger' and 'sticker sound an aweful lot alike but I can usually tell which she means.  

I think it is safe to say we are improving communication almost daily.  I am excited that I will soon be reporting the precoucious things she will come up with.  She has quite the imagination.  She still hasn't really "connected" with any specific thing.  One day she will be best friend with 'poop', then she'll take up with her pen and notebook, the following day she'll want to take her plastic chair everywhere she goes.

I really can't wait to find out what God has in store for the two of us.

Welcome to the NRCS

Have I mentioned that I am loving my job?  It affords me the ability to exercise my talents.

This gentleman was helping monitor a prescribed burn on the Otoe Missouri tribal complex water treatment pond.  In case you think otherwise, that is smoke blowing across the water.  Later in the day I shot video of the prescribed burn that I was actually there to shoot.  Since the Otoe police chief and his crew were going to help on the other fire too I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to use the still camera.

I was really excited when I got this shot.  Most of the others in this sequence weren't framed right or were a little too blurry to turn out this nice.  Prescribed fire, which begins with a fire plan, if you hold to the best practices model you will be able to increase the health of your vegetation and not be at great risk of having the fire run wild.  Prescribed fire is good for controlling certain vegetative diseases, eastern red cedar, and makes it less likely that your property will suffer damage in the event of a wild fire. Prescribed burns reduce fuel loads and increase the population of native grasses that are usually choked out by commercial grasses and agricultural crops.  These burns also return valuable nutrients to the ground.  I think the best thing I heard all day was one of the helpers as he was starting a back fire with a drip torch he said, "I get to start a fire on someone else's property in front of the police chief and the fire chief and I am not going to get into trouble.  This is the best job ever."  Of course I think he is wrong, I think I have the best job ever.

Biggest day of my life.

Today is easily the biggest day of my life.  I didn't even see it coming but it can't be denied.  Single most important significant thing I have ever heard, I heard today.  You'll have to wait just a minute while I lead into this.

You see she usually only makes it to the shelf near the sink when she climbs on stuff in the bathroom.  I don't mind leaving her there to walk out of the room for a second because if she has trouble getting down she calls to me.  I had gone into her room for just a second when I came back around the corner I saw her standing in the sink holding the jar of liquid soap and dispensing it into her hand.  I did what any mother would do.  .  . I turned the water on for her.  She wants clean hands, I will let her do what she has to do.  I ducked into the living room to pick up the camera I wanted to document this just for the fun of it.  When I returned she had abandoned the soap and was making faces into the mirror.  They told me she does this at school and it is fun to watch.  It will serve her well if she decides to take up acting.  Then she started to go through all the little bottles of shampoo, listerine, nail polish that I keep "out of reach" beside the sink.  I suppose I'll be moving those now.  She lost interest in that and did what any nearly-two would do . . . she washed her feet.

Later, after she dumped an entire cup of pop corn on the floor, unloaded all of her unused diapers out of their plastic bag, insisted on watching Winnie the Pooh for the second time and played in the general area where the dog resides . . . we were playing as I was catching up with my mom on face book.  I was typing and she grabbed my face . . . she said, "why-woah-yuuu".

Best day of my life.  Biggest day of my life.  My baby loves me.  And she can tell me.