Joan: Acute Cute

She helps me load the wet clothes to the dryer. She helps me take the dry clothes out of the dryer. She would love to sort the dirty clothes to the proper hampers, but I draw the line at that.

Joan Maria loves retail adventures. Tractor Supply for horse feed, Trader Joe's for cheddar cheese and lettuce, Target for paper products, Lowe's for hardware -- any of those are her cup of tea. The sights! The sounds! The free samples!

She hangs around in the kitchen when we're cooking, using her own personal language to explain when she wants to taste or eat. She has started trying to say "Up" to be picked up to see what's going on in the pans on the stove. She knows where all her favorite foods are kept, be it freezer or pantry or fridge.

When in my studio, she has certain things that are "hers" to play with: a big coffee can (which may either be a drum or a repository, or a ballistic missile to roll down the driveway onto the street) and two rolls of masking tape from beneath my work table. In this picture, she was taking the lid off the can, adding the two tapes, putting the lid on. Over and over again.

Which was cute in itself.

But her mother, hoping to secure my early demise, put Joan's hair into two wispy pigtails.

Death by cuteness, that's how I'm going to go.