I finally get it!

I finally understand why my mother still refers to me as "her baby" even though I'm 32 years old. With the younger child, apparently, it is just difficult to accept they get older and bigger.

I was just going through baby clothes, because Ellie is pretty snug in 9 month items and some 12 month stuff. So I'm taking out all of Charlotte's old 12-18 month and some 18-24 month clothes, and discovered the following:
1) I'm kind of blue because Charlotte LIVED in these super cute little Carters 1 piece dresses her first summer. However, they are ALL size 3-6 months, so none will fit Ellie (Dang opposite seasons!)
2) I'm pulling out these clothes, clothes that will fit my non-crawling baby, my youngest kid, my last kid, my sweet little baby, and remembering when Charlotte wore them. And the fact that Charlotte waa walking and talking and roughhousing in these clothes. PJs from when she scraped half her nose off on a fence at Helen's when she was 1. And I cannot believe Ellie is ready to start wearing them, because to me, she was JUST born, not old enough to be in these "big kid" clothes.

For the record, I do realize that Ellie is a bigger baby than Charlotte was. Charlotte was always perfectly average, Ellie's always close to the top of the charts, size-wise. So I know that she's a size ahead, plus I am likely pushing some of the clothes on her to fit the season, but it was still just weird.

Oh, and 3) I put a bunch of stuff to the side so in 30 years when my girls come over to visit, I can offer them a time capsule care package like Arlene has for me.
Packratters Unite!

Frame of reference

I know I've told people about how the babies would be fed at Helen's when Charlotte was a baby. You'd walk in and 5 babies would be lined up on the floor, on their backs, with their bottles.

For anyone that couldn't visualize it, here you go:

Mariah Carey's clothier

OK, so I have a pipe dream of making an income from ads on my blog. It has not happened yet. But I have 'em up there, but none of you 5 viewers click on them. Why? I imagine because it looks like ads for call girls and stores they shop at. I thought I disabled the ad function for this reason, but apparently not. So I'm going to try to disable it again, so no one has to see the scantily clad women. Or perhaps that's why you tune in? Hmm...

How much do I love this kid?

So it's 11:45pm. I'm on the couch watching some DVRed shows and sitting online. I hear pitter patter of little feet. Out comes Charlotte with her Leo, and she mutters "I have to go potty. Watch Leo please." and off she goes to the bathroom, does her thing, flips the light off, and goes pattering back to her room, saying "good night, mommy. I love you." as she walks past me, holding her hair out of her face.

Funky Butt

In an effort to get less lame music in rotation with the kids as we cruise along in the minivan (or hang in the backyard), I ordered some CDs recently.
One of them, For the Kids is the standard fun kids' music fare - Cake, Barenaked Ladies, Billy Bragg & Wilco doing kid songs. Fun, kind of mellow. BUT the highlight, for me, is Cake doing "Muhna Muhna" aka that catchy little song from the Diet Dr. Pepper commercial a year or two ago. I think it was on another commercial, too, but can't remember what the product was.


But the other CD, the one I find FAR superior and a lot more fun, is called The Bottle Let Me Down: Songs for a Bumpy Wagon Ride

I highly recommend this, if for nothing else but a song sung by Devil in a Woodpile (from Chicago!) called Funky Butt, which is an old old ragtimey/bluesy song featuring lyrics like this:
"See that girl with the pink pants on
She's got the funky butt, stinky butt going on
And I don't like it no how.

Thought I heard little Sophie shout
"Open up the window, let the funk blow out!"
And I don't like it no how."

It's so catchy. There's a semi-sultry (weird for kids?) cover of "Little Red Riding Hood," "Crawdad Hole," "Three Little Fishies," and others. Kind of rockabilly, definitely fun. Cannot recommend it enough. I think you can listen to previews on Amazon.com. So go do it. Now.

Are you cool?

Here's my new lithmus for whether or not someone is cool:
Do you know what a VCR is? No, dork, not the archaic movie viewing device. Mark yourself NERD if that's what you thought.

I went out with my cousins Terry and Jon and some friends to their regular watering hole, and this is their drink of choice, which i believe they made up, and let me tell you, it's damn tasty and I think it is going to be THE new hot drink. TASTY!

However, to counteract the tastiness of this drink, they've come up with possibly the most repulsive shot in the universe: Cheeseburger Shot. It's 3 shots, coordinated to be drinken quickly and taste like a McDonald's burger. But you know what? I get my burgers plain, and I don't need to drink them. So I think doing that once is more than enough for me. I just tasted pickles the whole night. (In part because Mike wouldn't make me cheese sticks at 3 am when I came storming into the house demanding them).

Char & Mack

My cousin Beth's little guy is Mack. He's a riot, and I like having him around because then you don't even have to pay any attention to Charlotte because the two of them just go play for hours together. Well, don't pay attention if you don't mind every toy being taken out, mud pies splattered all over them, and water all over the bathroom.

Anyway, Beth's husband Tim came by to do some electrical work in our basement, and so Mack came, too. He and Charlotte were playing quietly, which is a big red flag for us, so I go up to the girls' room, and this is what I see:

Apparently they got into the costume trunk and had some fun. I love this picture! They're so stinking cute!!

Eleanor - 9 months!!

How on earth is she 9 months old? How have I been home with my girls for 9 months already?

The time is just flying by, despite the longest winter ever.

Here's the stats:
Weight: 20 lbs (75th percentile)
Length: 29.5 inches (95th percentile)
Head: 18 inches (90th percentile)

Her two top front teeth are in now, and she has the trademark O'Connor gap. She looks so big now! Her two front side teeth are about to break through soon, too, which will bring her tooth total up to 6 when they come in.

She's lukewarm on solids - some days she scarfs 'em down, other days she couldn't care less. I'm still pumping away and she's getting about 1/3 - 1/2 of her bottles as breastmilk, the rest is formula. My supply is tanking, and I'm not making any heroic efforts to keep it going at this point, I feel we made it to the 8 month mark on pretty much all milk, so I'm comfortable with things tapering off.

She is SO close to crawling - rocks on all 4s, just can't seem to get over that heel to do the crawl. When she does get over it, she kind of topples and then freaks out. She's starting to pull up on me if I'm on the floor with her. And then she cracks up.

Her social skills are quirky right now. She's leery of strangers, and often gives them a death stare for a while before warming up (much to the chagrin of the nanogenarians at Jewel). She's into waving and clapping, and more recently, she's all about laughing when one of us laughs, just to be "in" on the joke. Love her! Her chattering is also starting to take conversational tones and if you ignore her, she'll make her presence known. Ugh, will she ever.



She and Charlotte are so different (Charlotte at 9 months, that is). I know every kid is different, and then add to that that Charlotte was with Helen at Ellie's age and I've been home with Ellie since she was born, and you have some glaring differences. The ones that strike me most (because they annoy me): Ellie will not hold her own bottle, or drink from a sippy cup, and is not so into feeding herself finger food (but she's all about picking up food and delivering it to Millie's mouth). She's way more clingy to me than Charlotte was, but I think that's a given since I'm with her all day. Charlotte was always like "Smell ya later, Mom!" (she still is, in fact). She is such a daddy's girl, too. Michael comes home and she flaps her arms like a baby bird trying to take flight and she gets a weird gleeful wheezing noise. And sometimes she clasps her hands together in pure joy.
So that's Ellie, in a nutshell, at the 9 months mark.

I can't decide which of these two pictures most resembles what I think she'll look like as a college kid after a few drinks:

Sister Sister (without the Mowry girls)

Eleanor and Charlotte are starting to interact a bit more lately. Which is to say, Charlotte is ignoring Ellie less as of late. There's still some really sweet moments, but now that Ellie kind of pushes some of Charlotte's doll cars around, etc., Charlotte will sometimes make sure to bring an extra one out for Ellie to play with. She also digs making her laugh like crazy (more on that later). Here's some shots of the girls hanging together. Pardon their appearances. I swear I do bathe them and brush Charlotte's hair.

Mother's Tea at Pre-School

Charlotte's school hosted a Mother's Tea in honor of Mother's Day a few weeks ago. All the moms (there's 9 kids in the class) came in, and we had tea and snacks and the kids played and sang songs for us and, well, it was one of those "Wow. I'm really a mom" moments. These moments kind of sneak up on you every once in awhile, because even though I'm with the kids 24/7 now, it still strikes me as weird that I'm a mom. (It likely doesn't help that I still go out until 4 am from time to time, and get blitzed.)

Anyway, one of the songs they were singing was a patriotic number. You'll see below that the teacher handed out flags for the kids to wave while singing the song.

Then you'll see that Charlotte doesn't like her flag, which is defective.

So she pouts and mopes.


And then just says, "Nuts to this!" and storms off altogether. Total DIVA!

I really hope this doesn't scar her from flag waving, as we all know I bully patriotism from everyone in my section at a parade...