Not fair, not fair, not fair. I lost a pound from last week, and spent four days straight at that weight, and then this morning - for the weekly weigh-in - I popped up two pounds.

Not fair.

Not that I didn't probably deserve it. Matt and I kind of went a bit overboard yesterday. I made chili to eat while we were watching the Super Bowl commercials (diet-legal), and some apple-pecan bread (not diet-legal), and at the store we picked up a box of low-carb ice cream (barely legal) and a bag of dark chocolate Hershey's kisses (definitely not legal).

So I'm only getting my just desserts. Still, it doesn't seem fair.

But it was a good weekend. Penny was in a really fantastic mood for most of it. We took her to visit my parents (who confided they were within about 24 hours of coming up to visit us for their baby fix) and aside from some Sadness on Sunday when we tried to take her to the playground only to discover that some asshats had utterly destroyed the toddler swings, a good time was had by all.

Penny has discovered that Matt and I will laugh if she puts something unconventional on her head and calls it a hat. Yesterday morning, she combined this with her game of opening her sock drawer and pulling out her socks. She got her her only pair of tights and held them up to her forehead. "Hat?"

I laughed and said, "No, silly! That is not a hat!"

"Hat!"

"No!"

Matt's voice wafted in from another part of the house. "Um... I might've put her tights on her head earlier, while you were in the shower..."

I can just feel the poor kid's therapy bills mounting, can't you?

Penny's new obsession is other people's bodies. She gets big kicks out of sticking her finger in Matt's or my bellybuttons, or manipulating our hands. When I let her look at the stored pictures on my digital camera, sometimes instead of mashing the "Next" button with her own fingers, she'll grab my finger and use it to hit the buttons.

Last night during the Super Bowl's opening ceremonies, she took my hands and made me clap. I thought that would be the story of the day, but then...

I was multitasking hard. Watching the TV out of the corner of my eye so I wouldn't miss the change to commercial. I had my computer balanced on the arm of the couch, and was chatting with Karen in IM, trying to explain one of the commercials to her. But I was doing it one-handed, because I also had Penny on my lap, and she was holding a book from which I was singing nursery rhymes.

And I admit I was doing a half-assed job with the nursery rhymes, and Penny could tell. She very deliberately put her little hand on the side of my face, and gently turned my head until I was looking at her, instead of the computer screen. Then she nodded, put her hand back in her lap, and waited expectantly for me to get back to the "Itsy Bitsy Spider."

I wished to heck Matt had been there to see it, because it was funny as all hell. But Matt was in the kitchen, getting himself some Hershey kisses.

When we'd brought the groceries in, I'd tossed the bag of kisses on the counter, and gone on about my business. A little bit later, while I was working on the chili, Matt came in and crinkled the bag, and came up with a kiss.

I hadn't seen him open it. "You put a stealth opening in the bag?" I said.

"It's not a stealth opening!" he protested. "It's a perfectly normal opening! Just 'cause I don't gut the bag down the middle like some people!"

"It's okay," I assured him. "You can have stealthy chocolate."

"But...!" Matt grabbed up a knife, and sliced open the bag from seam to seam. "There! Now they are not stealthy!"

--Liz