Mommy Sez...

... Whatever you are doing that's making her cry, you better stop it right now!

(repeat approximately 15,000 times a day)

Riddle Me This

About once a week Maggie slips out of the kitchen with a cup of some beverage and then leaves it lying around the living room or play room for Kate to pick up, sample, and inevitably take a quick bath in. Today that beverage was juice, the drop point was the couch, and the amount of unsupervised time Kate had to chug half and then dump the rest on the couch and down her front was approximately 30 seconds.

The mystery here unveiled itself as I pulled off her sodden clothes... she had a Cat in the Hat sticker stuck to her chest! I'm POSITIVE that she did not have any decorations when I put the clothes on her this morning, and I definitely had not started drinking yet at that point. And, she was wearing a onesie undershirt with a pair of pants and a long sleeved shirt over it. Pretty much Fort Knox (hey, it's 36 degrees here today), so how did it get there?!?!

I asked her, but she's not telling.

Multimedia Tuesday

Here's a silly video of Kate. This knee scooting/bouncing thing is her favorite form of locomotion at the moment. She has taken a few actual steps and she stands around no-handed quite a bit, but she's still more confident walking on her knees! I think it looks a little like we're pioneering our own new style of baby hip hop dancing (Creep? Crab? Cranky? Crumbcruncher?) in our living room/dance club, especially since you can hear me cheering her on in the background. I feel like I should've been saying, "Go Katie, Go Katie, It's your birthday!"



And in Art news, here's a painting that Maggie did over the weekend. She informed us that she painted it for Kate. Charming, don't you think? So full of sisterly love and joy. I'm not sure if Mike was trying to create a logo for Maggie's future work or if he was just trying to cheer the piece up a bit with the blue bits on the side.

How Not to Achieve The Perfect Holiday Atmosphere

We got our tree today, put it up in the living room, and decorated it, but something is a little lacking. Mike and I both always look forward to the fabulous smell of a live tree at Christmastime (see, I'm not a complete Grinch). My mom is now allergic to evergreen, so they have to have a fake tree these days and it's never quite the same without that lovely, Christmasy, pine tree smell in the house. And then there's the fact that we have been micro-apartment dwellers for most of our married life and always out of town on Christmas and so have only recently begun to decorate for the holidays ourselves. For that reason, having a live tree in our very own living room is a bit of a novelty that we're growing to enjoy. Last year we got a Douglas fir, and although it was very sappy and kind of a mess, it smelled so incredibly perfect. This year we got a balsam, and it doesn't seem to smell as piney. Maybe it's just this particular tree itself, or maybe it's the species...

...OR maybe it's the fact that I burned the CRAP out of a pot roast today and our entire house absolutely reeks of charred meat and onion soup. I don't even know exactly how it happened. I checked it, it looked fine, next thing I know - beef jerky. Kind of hard to bask in the sweet evergreen smell of Christmas when your hair and sweater smell like meat. Pooh pooh to the Whos!

Maggie Sez...

...Katie has a panty hat!



Maggie did this on her own and came to get me so she could show her handiwork off to me. Kate seemed to be enjoying it.

Happy Tuesday Everybody

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--ee cummings

How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation...

Remember this Mother Goose rhyme?

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace;
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go;
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for its living;
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Mike and I really loved it after Maggie was born because she's a Sunday's child, and I had to admit that I was a bit stupidly anxious when I went into labor with Kate on a Tuesday that she'd end up a Wednesday's child: full of woe. Over the weekend we somehow got to talking about it and started looking up our birth days. Very strangely, almost all of us were Thursdays except for Amy (Monday), Maggie, and Kate! We also decided to interpret "has far to go" as meaning that we all have lots of adventures ahead of us instead of that our lives are one long slog! Luckily, we never did uncover any Wednesday's children.

Anyway, curious? What day are you? Anybody full of woe?
http://www.progenealogists.com/dayborn.htm