Cherry blossoms

Soon I'll be taking our Annual Photo of Veeka Standing by the Backyard Cherry Tree *if* my repaired camera gets shipped back to me on time. Unfortunately I must have put something on it (I know, dumb) and I broke part of it. Meanwhile the weather here is so warm - the warmest March I've seen in 16 winters here - that the cherry blossoms are blooming about 10 days too early which has upset the Cherry Blossom Festival organizers to no end.And I have no camera so am relying on friends to supply photos, which one kind friend has done when she took a picture of Veeka and her godparents when they were celebrating the birthday of their little boy. We were there til at least 10:30 and we have lots of fun. The balloons were Veeka's favorite part. And the wonderful guests of course. My little one has turned into quite the little girl - today she and her friends were experimenting with Mommy's old eye shadow and wandering around looking like Dracula but all was erased thanks to some eye makeup remover. The little princess still has a hard time going to sleep so I've unearthed a huge brown book that was old when I was a child (published in 1935) with photos by N.C. Wyeth. It is "The Anthology of Children's Literature" which I have used to introduce Veeka to all sorts of fairytales. So she's listening to "Thumbelina," "The Wild Swans" and "The Ugly Duckling." Some of those tales are a bit too exciting to induce sleep so I've turned to the poetry section from which I've been intoning rhymes I've not read in 45 years. Tonight I was chanting "Sweet and Low" and "Wynken, Blynken and Nod." I've also unearthed William Cullen Bryant's "To a Fringed Gentian" which was my favorite poem when I was young. Once we run out of fables and fairytales, we'll start on "The Hobbit" in time for the movie at the end of the year. We've already read all seven of the Narnia Chronicles, btw.