Snuggler was feeling kind of off this morning, probably because Big Guy was "difficult" last night, and then again this morning. It's wearing. She sat down next to me on the sofa and I held her a bit and then whispered, "Should we have a tea party this afternoon?" She perked right up.

So we went into the kitchen and made vanilla cupcakes with almond-cream cheese frosting. We popped up some maple-peanut popcorn, and Dancer graciously gave us permission to use her Chinese teapot and cups. We moved the drop-leaf end table to the center of the living room and got out the German tablecloth. And we had tea. Green tea in the Chinese pot, Keemun black in the everyday teapot.

Eldest, just before she went back to college

When the kids were littler, sometimes I would make up a tea party and we'd pretend we were all adults, and we'd chitchat about our children. Eldest was Mrs. Brown, and her children were similar ages to my own. Dancer was Mrs. Julia, and I believe she had something like 20 children. Snuggler was Mrs. White, and she had three kids. We talked about the difficulties our offspring were having, and what kinds of things helped them, and what we planned to do in the future. I kind of miss those days. And I kind of missed Eldest, who wasn't here to pretend with us.

I'm guessing that Snuggler feels a bit better, because she got on the computer and started working. I thought perhaps she was writing (she does that), but no -- she was making graphic inventions. Like this: 

Bubble Tapir, by Snuggler