My “little” brother turns 30 today. Which makes me…older than 30. ;)
He’s on vacation someplace warm right now. I hope he brings home some sunshine!
Year: 2009
Shadows and Light
We went to the museum today. One of Carrie’s favorite parts was actually in the planetarium, where they had a huge screen and colored lights set up to show how cyan, magenta and yelow light could combine to make the other colors.
Carrie definitely had fun making her colorful shadows dance!
I think we’ll stick with the children’s museum for a few more years, though. While it was a mostly enjoyable trip I felt pretty stressed with all the much older children who were there. Many were not well supervised and there were several times that Carrie got shoved out of the way by older kids while she was patiently waiting her turn to look at or do something. I never know what to do in that situation…if their “responsible” adult is standing right there and doesn’t say anything, I kind of feel like I can’t say anything either.
I am slightly jealous that she got to go in to the planetarium show featuring Stomp! with Sammy and Lisa while Anna and I stayed outside, but really, Anna needed a bit of quiet down time by then anyway. I’m sure there will be many more planetarium shows in our future!
Bumbo Baby
I found a used Bumbo seat on craigslist a week or so ago. Anna seems to like it, and it’s especially useful when we take Carrie to dance class – I don’t have to either carry a stroller down to the basement or juggle holding Anna while changing Carrie into her dance things. I just carry this very light seat down with us and plop Anna in it.
Somehow I can’t see it lasting for too long – she can already lean all the way over and get at stuff on the floor – but if it gets us through to when Anna can stay on her feet when put down for a bit that will be good enough.
Anna’s First Valentine’s Day!
(I’m aware that it’s technically the day after Valentine’s Day…)
Yes, that is a shirt with a sheep that says “I (heart) ewe”. A Christmas gift from Uncle Dan and Aunt Genevra. Though I would totally have bought it myself if I had seen it! After all, that’s what mommy knitters do!
Would you believe this little girl has been mistaken for a boy every. single. time. she’s worn this shirt?!? What, only boys can wear green?
Old School Valentines
This morning I sent Carrie off to school with her hand-made Valentines:
These can be summed up in one word: MESSY. Good gracious, I think I’m going to be finding glitter from these for the next several months! And I think I’d get card stock for next time. We used construction paper, pre-cut heart doilies, little heart confetti bits and glitter, but the amount of glue involved caused the construction paper to curl a lot. Maybe card stock would stay flatter?
I traced the hearts, Carrie cut them out. I applied the glue, she stuck on the doily and added more glue on top to help the confetti and glitter stick. Oh, and before the whole messy gluing bit I wrote the recipient’s name on the back, along with “Love,” and Carrie alternated between writing “Carrie” and “Carolyn” depending on her mood. Except for one or two that are signed “Carriolyn” because she just couldn’t decide…
Seven Months Old!
Dear Anna,
Today you are seven months old. That sounds so much older than six months, though of course it’s not really that much older! It’s been quite a day – Mommy’s car has gone over 50,000 miles and we refinanced the house. You had your first breakfast out today – you were so proud to sit in the restaurant high chair like a big girl!
You’ve entirely skipped pureed food. You hate it. (Except peas.) But the pears and peaches you spat out like we were trying to poison you? You love them as little bits of cut up canned pears and peaches. I’m trying to convince myself that nutritionally it’s not much different, since they’re just canned in pear juice. Your favorite foods are now: freeze dried apple bits, puffed rice cereal, bits of canned pears and peaches, diced cooked carrots, and bits of banana. I’m struggling to find other finger foods that are age appropriate – I guess maybe we could retry sweet potatoes and squash cut up instead of mashed.
You are also on the move. You roll, pivot and inch yourself forward. And new as of today: you get all the way up on your hands and knees and rock back and forth. Your big sister did this just days before learning how to crawl, so I bet you’re pretty close. You can sit in the “tripod” pose for a while before you fall over, and you love this new way you can play with your toys.
You still don’t babble. At all. But I’m about 99% sure you’ve signed “milk” a few times – although you don’t do it all that consistently yet. I’m not too worried about the babbling, as you are a very vocal baby and definitely respond to sounds. Actually, I think you’re starting to connect words to people and things. If I ask you where “the big sister” is, you look around until you find Carrie.
Sometimes it seems like you’re growing faster than I can keep up – I just finally got all the 3-6 month clothes out of your dresser and put in the 6-9 month clothes…and some of those are already too small! And we installed your new convertible car seat and put the infant seat away. You love your new seat! Whenever anyone looks at you in your new seat you grin at them like “Look at me! Look how big I am!” Same with the “new” stroller that lets you sit forward and look out at the world instead of just laying there and watching me. You just seem to really be blossoming and loving every minute of becoming a big girl. Seeing how much you enjoy every new thing makes me look forward to all the new things you’ll get to experience in the next few years!
Love, Mommy
Procrastination.
Yep, that’s right, six weeks of posts just suddenly appeared in your RSS reader (all 5 of you still reading this, that is.) I could blame it on the kids, or I could blame it on playing Animal Crossing for a bit each night, or I could blame it on the knitting…
But the reality is that I’m just too good at procrastinating. I could blog on time. Honestly, I do actually write the posts out on the day they say they’re from, for the most part. But then sometimes the posts need pictures and the idea of finding the camera, taking the pictures (if they’re not already taken), finding the card reader, importing the pictures, editing them, uploading them and putting them in the posts? Not so appealing.
And then what happens? I get disgusted with the lack of updates and finally decide to just bite the bullet and do all the posts at once, which involves piecing together which pictures were really meant to go with each post (and deciding that some just don’t need pictures after all) and then all the photo editing, which altogether takes much longer than it really needs to. (And that last sentence was really much longer than it needed to be as well.)
However, since this blog has become my children’s baby books – as the likelihood of those ever getting done is slim-to-none – I need to be better about maintaining it. So, maybe we’ll call it a Valentine’s Day resolution? (Not that it’s Valentine’s Day yet…I’ll just start early for once.)
Only Six More Weeks?!?
Oh, come on, we live in Rochester. Was there ever any doubt that the groundhog would see his shadow? There’s always six more weeks of winter from today. It’s just whether there will be six more weeks after those that’s in question.
Superbowl Party
I always feel like such a neglectful mother, keeping my kid (now kids) out late at a superbowl party, but since Anna fell asleep while we were there and Carrie wouldn’t be sleeping until 10 or so at home anyway, we decided to stay for the whole game and hang out with friends we don’t get to see very often.
My favorite commercial? The Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head one. (Was it for tires or brakes or something?) Oh, and the game was good too. (I was, as always, rooting for the Bills. We all know how that turned out.)
And we brought our new favorite potluck dish and addicted a few more people to the yumminess that is the soy-ginger dressing.
Peas, Glorious Peas
Anna is a very strange baby. So far, she has tolerated avocado and sweet potato, turned up her nose at rice cereal (who wouldn’t?) and oatmeal, and outright hated applesauce. She likes butternut squash. And she loves puffed brown rice cereal (she can feed herself this, but prefers it when I stick the pieces in her mouth for her so she can gum them)…and peas.
Yep. Peas are her new favorite food:
…Peas. Tasty and good for your skin!
(All jokes about pea-encrusted babies aside, who has ever heard of a kid who liked peas and not apples?!?)