little people live here

Little people make the house noisy. They fill it up with crumbs. They leave artwork on the refrigerator door and on the wall in the foyer.

And they do things like this:

An interesting discovery I made while turning off the bathroom light before bed that made me smile and enjoy her Katie-ness just a bit more.

There is an even littler little person in this house who discovered she can do things like climb on top of the kids table,

stand on top of stools to see what is out of view,

and climb on top of the kitchen table when she needs to study the nutritional value of a Happy Meal.

(She realized that sadly, the food standards in this household have taken a turn for the worse since my stomach got all weird and icky with the pregnancy. Hopefully we'll be back to normal in a couple weeks.)

And, alas, I am stuck with no clever way to finish this post.

I will blame that on being pregnant too; which, I guess, is the result of a little person living inside of me, so there's my ending after all. :)

So, what have your little people been up to lately?

(update: I just re-read this post at 9:50 and found a typo in each of the first three sentences. Arg! What is wrong with me?!)

ponder

Why is the thing with a thousand choking-hazard-make-a-mess pieces...




...the very thing they want to play with?

"it wasn't me"

fever and dots

Lizzie had a fever Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and today she has spots--

Can you name that illness?

Ding! Ding! Ding!

If you said "Roseola" you are correct!

So that is what I have been doing this week: tending to a fussy girl, helping a fussy girl with high-spiking fevers get back to bed a few times each night, bringing the fussy girl into bed with me so I could get some rest, taking the fussy girl to the doctor yesterday to be sure it wasn't ear infections, and holding a fussy girl who feels much better today but has grown quite fond of the arrangement where I hold her all day.

I'm a little tired. But all the rest of us are healthy, we managed to do schoolwork each day, and at least it is roseola and not leprosy, which is what the kids keep calling it.

There is always something (well, lots of things) to smile about.

(& feel free to share some of your reasons to smile)

when you give a baby a bowl of yogurt...

...you get a mess.



A big girl mess.



A "where did all my yogurt go?" mess.



A too cute mess.



A get your cute blueberry-scented self into the tub mess.

I'll show you

See, I told you she walks.

Oh, yes she does.


What? You don't have a bottle of washer fluid sitting on your kitchen floor?

Oh, yes I do.

step by step

On January 1st, after hardly staying awake long enough to kiss my love as the new year came in, I was up "celebrating" with Katie and the toilet at three a.m. Lizzie woke up with a mess leftover from the "celebrating" she did in her crib by herself sometime in the night.

After a day of cleaning up sick messes and tending to sick bellies, Adam told me to take a break and get out of the house and go shopping. After just a couple hours out, I came home around the kids' bedtime. I found Adam and all the kids upstairs in Joey's room. Adam avoided eye contact and confessed:

"While you were gone...Lizzie took her first step."

Of course she did! That little stinker waited until I was gone to teach me a lesson about skipping out on her. But before she went to bed, as though sensing my utter disappointment, she took one more little step just for me. All was forgiven. :)


She is so chubby and short, it is just the cutest thing to watch her place each foot down as she makes every shaky, but purposeful step. By January sixth she had put ten of those cute steps in a row. And here we are, only 18 days after her first, and she has figured out how to put a long enough sequence of steps together to walk herself into the bathroom and play in the toilet water.

Baby steps. Baby steps that have opened up a whole new world of adventure.

one whole year

My little, tiny, baby girl turned one on Tuesday. She wanted nothing to do with opening presents or eating icing-covered, sugary treats. But she is still one. Apparently, lack of birthday enthusiasm does not stop a child from turning a year older. Which is good, because then the reverse would mean extra birthday enthusiasm would age you faster, in which case, Joey would be about 87 by now.

So, she is one; and not walking yet because she wants to wait just like her big brother and sister did, which is fine with me, because her recent fascination with stair climbing is enough to manage. Hmmm, if only they made some sort of gate that fastened to the wall, to keep a baby from going where you don't want them to go...

The journey to two begins, and it is such a fun year. My babies finally sleep through the night sometime in the coming year, as well as learn to walk, and the language explosion is awesome. I like the year from one to two very much. And I like Lizzie very much. Actually, I am quite smitten.

If you knew her, you would understand. She just drips of ooshygooshygooey wonderfulness.

Happy Birthday, Lizzie.



(photo from November and completely unrelated to birthday post. But still cute:) )

bedheads

I love the hair that comes perched upon the bleary-eyed heads that wake up each morning.
There are so many different looks to enjoy:

The mussy-mop.


(do you like the foot peeking out?)

The spiney-pokey.


(that may be a look of slight displeasure at mother shooting his picture first thing in the morning while his mouth is full of breakfast)

And the teased-to-please.


But to be perfectly honest, this is how Katie looks most of the time, not just in the morning.
She is not a well-kept girl. It is not her way. Her mane cannot be tamed!

Lizzie usually gets this mussy mop pulled up into a pebbles-style sometime in the day, but this is basically how her face looks most of the time.


Always smiling and showing of those goofy front teeth of hers.

Morning to night, what a delight.

fall again

It is already October. I really can't believe it. Summer flew by, and here is autumn. Time for cooler weather, sweaters, inappropriate wearing of flip-flops, and spending 30 minutes trying to make your crawling baby sit still so you can get the perfect photo with the pumpkin you cannot believe you grew all by yourself.


( so it isn't perfect, but I was pleased)

And let me just say that two little pumpkin seeds make two really ginormous pumpkin vines. My yard has suffered, but all in the name of homeschooling and watching things grow. It was worth it, as Joey and I have delighted in seeing the vines grow and flower, and produce such magnificently large and orange vegetables. If you have about 200 square feet or so of yard space to spare, I highly recommend you grow some pumpkins.

And if you have 18 months or so to spare, I highly recommend you also grow the much sweeter, less orange variety pictured. :)

so, how's it going?

What's new?

Nothing much happening here.

Today as I went about my motherly business, about five blog posts were written in my brain, and now that it is 11:27 at night, all I have to say is this:

I love these girls.



Good night everybody!

my delicious shrimp

Hello there.

You are my little baby. My tiniest one. What do you think you are doing, learning all these new baby skills?

In the past week:

• I found you sitting up in your crib. Your face was a bit perplexed and scared at the position you had gotten yourself into all by yourself.
  
• You grew a tooth. You don't seem too happy about it, but are pleased to rub it on the tip of the sippy cup you've been trying out.
  
• You thrilled Joey when you pulled yourself up to your knees from a sitting position when he was playing with you in the basement. I don't know who was cuter -- you or Joey ecstatically yelling for us to come see your latest feat.
  

It's like somebody sent you a "grow up" memo and you are taking it seriously.

Don't you know you are my delicious shrimp? You are supposed to stay small for ever.

she drools

She drools a lot. All the time.



I love her soggy chin.

sister sorting

Yesterday the kids were getting on each other's nerves a bit, so I came up with a task to keep their hands and minds busy. I put a different colored flash cards on various squares of our patterned carpet in the play room. Then I gave Katie the wooden block bin, and Joey the car bin, and told them to sort their bins by putting the block or car on the corresponding block of carpet.

They busily worked until the task was complete. Joey excitedly came into the kitchen to tell me to come see the finished product. When I walked in the room, I noticed that Lizzie was not sitting where I had placed her by the pink Boppy pillow, so I asked Joey why he had moved her.



With his face all smiles he replied, "See mama, I put her on the pink square!"

captions

My monkey uses her feet to play as much as she uses her fingers.


Her never-fail, mouth-wide-open smile.


Thigh crease. Sweet, sweet thigh crease. Perfect spot to nestle my fingers when I hold her.


Concentration.


Liz - reaching out to get the camera. Me - pretending to be a photographer.

my baby

My baby is so nice.

My baby only wakes me up once in the night.

My baby has chubby thighs.

My baby likes to share her milk with my shoulder.

My baby loves her tongue.

My baby thinks mommy is the best.

My baby gets mad at the toys on the bouncy seat.

My baby is going bald on the sides of her head.

My baby only moves counter-clockwise in her crib.

My baby is my baby.

proper introductions

"Lizzie, meet fist."
"Fist, meet Lizzie."


Fist doesn't know it yet, but she is about to be assaulted by a toothless, drool-filled mouth.

a little bit of lizzie

So sorry for the simple posts full of photos of my children, which I am sure I find much more appealing and cute than you do because they are mine, after all. Someday I will write something again.

Please forgive the fact that none of the above photos are in perfect focus. I currently lack the photography skills one needs to take an indoor photo without a flash of a baby in a bouncy seat that is not a little fuzzy. (I am sure that the previous sentence could use a re-write because it could possible read that the bouncy seat is fuzzy, when I was trying to say the photo was fuzzy. See, it is just better if I don't write.)

Happy day to you!

with ears

Why do I love hats with ears so much? Why do babies look so cute in them? Why do they require much picture-taking?



One day this week we took Lizzie outside for a few pushes on the swing. I didn't manage to get any photos of that, but I did, of course, get a few shots of her face peeking out of the blue hood with ears.

3 months

I cannot believe this was three months ago. It seems like yesterday.

If Lizzie lives at home for 18 years, I will have 213 more months with her. And I will still probably feel like I just had her yesterday.