When I was offered a spot here at Working Mother, I was in a particular frame of mind that night and lacked neither the energy nor capacity for any form of remotely creative thought as it came time to choose my blog name. I went with my standard, Mom on Reserve, not realizing that of course, I already maintain such a blog and really, what's the point of posting the same over and over?

But life happened too quickly for me to take it all back and I went out with my unit on a field training exercise for what felt like 5 months, but was really only a week. I am only now recovering back to reality.

As my brain reverts back to Normal Operations, I thought about this space and the family that it's chronicling, and it hit me (what? oh, that random inspiration particle that happened to be shooting in my direction). The Wee Bean Feegle was galloping through the house, followed closely by her father, my dear husband who, for the purposes of this blog shall simply be called Thor. I live with a 2 foot and 6 foot tall viking, respectively. There's no escaping this fact. Heck, even her nickname, "Wee Bean Feegle", is something of an homage to this.

Etymology of Wee Bean Feegle: Wee - Referring to her 2-foot tall stature; Bean - Nickname earned from her approximate size at our very first ultrasound; Feegle - An imagined race of 6-inch high pictsies who are ridiculously entertaining in their rowdy innocence and will fight anything and everything, including each other with vim. It started when she was wee-er than she is now, but her nickname is a tribute to author Terry Pratchett's creation, The Nac Mac Feegle.

We might have thought it up when we were watching her at 14 months old, run down the street yelling, "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and carrying a stick like a sabre, as though she was charging into battle. It may also have occurred to me when, at less than 14 months of age, she had sorted out what her pockets were for and I found myself inadvertently washing snails, worms, smashed bugs, rocks, and interesting bits of what I can only assume were once leaves - by accident of course. Perhaps most telling was her fly-away hair, her penchant for head butting anything and everything, and her ardent dislike of anything resembling a rule.

If this were a thousand years ago, she would have run away to live with the Picts instead of the more traditional (if slightly dated), running away to join the circus.

Now, at just 2 years old (really - she just turned 2 less than a month ago), these things all still apply. Better yet, she now crosses regularly into fairy land (last night it was to raid an underwater grocery store with mermaids) as her imagination grows larger than life and has also informed us that she wants to learn karate. Ever the Feegle, ever the Viking. This is my daughter, my world, my life.