What??? March????

...and here I am, bringing you Valentine's Day cookies. I don't even know how many monthly Kumi updates I've missed.

That bit about things slowing down that I mentioned? Total lie. Things have been crazier than usual. I even got a job.

Before I launch into that, I need to show you more v-day cookies. These were really scrumptious. I made a ton -- some for Kumi's friends, some for MF, some just because. It's your basic butter cookie recipe with an outrageously yummy cream cheese frosting. Dangerously good.

And I need to show you the cool potato stamp Kumi and I used for our Valentine's this year. We punched holes in them and made them into necklaces.

The job is still not fully finalized, but apparently I am now a photo editor. I'm actually still kind of reeling from the speed of this new development. One minute I'm sipping coffee in my favorite coffee shop, the next minute I'm chatting with an ex-co-worker who's started a company and was interviewing a candidate in that very same coffee shop. Had my name not been called out by the barista at the very moment when my friend happened to step into the coffee shop, I would not have a job that I didn't even know I wanted. Weird, right?

It reminded me that my life has been propelled forward with these kinds of coincidences. And these coincidences seem to happen frequently in coffee shops. In my senior year in college, I had a brief chat with a friend in the campus coffee shop; she told me about the JET program -- this led me to apply for the program a year later and I found myself in a small rural town in Japan, teaching English to high school students.

I met my husband in a San Francisco coffee shop. Caffe Trieste: what a great place. The only reason I met him was because I sat next to a couple who had been watching his computer while he made a phone call outside. The couple had to leave and asked me to watch the computer instead. Ten years later, we have a child and live in a city dominated by coffee shops.

Kumi is already groomed as a coffee shop connoisseur. She knows which cafe has the best sprinkles for her steamers, and most of the baristas in the area greet her by name. I imagine her future will be filled with serendipitous events filled with the aroma of espresso beans.

I'm not quite sure what month we're on now, but Kumi seems to have gotten over the extreme tantrum phase. Thank goodness. We spend a lot of time making up stories together and she is turning out to be quite the artist. Her favorite stories involve mean witches and princesses. She is much more independent and sometimes barely notices me when I have my preschool work days and stay with her in the classroom. When she imitates me, she uses a screechy falsetto and it makes me laugh and laugh. She is WAY into butt jokes, which is so incongruous with her tiara-wearing, princess outfit-clad appearance. She adores her friends. And they adore her. It's a wondrous thing to see three and four-year-olds hugging each other hello and goodbye, unprompted.

She revels in life. (That's a lollipop stick in her mouth, not a cigarette).