Yes, You're Very Smart. Shut Up.

Ah, my darling Nibblet all fancy for church. Joy!

Pathetic how often I find it absolutely necessary to crop myself out of pictures. I looked ... I don't know ... old or something in this one. And oily. I have been hoping all this oil that continues to make me break out (even though I'm in my blasted 30's for crying out loud!) was going to at least prove useful in warding off the old thing. Sigh. Whatever. Looking young and beautiful is stupid.

On a much more interesting note, Andrew has developed an imagination! It happened suddenly, right after Christmas. He has only ever used his play kitchen to push buttons and see what pieces of plastic food he could squeeze into the refrigerator through the hole under the handle, and out of nowhere he began baking me cookies and cakes, cleaning up imaginary juice spills with imaginary paper towels, and driving imaginary cars to purchase tires for his imaginary tractor! It's so stinkin' adorable, I just don't know what to do with myself. I just wish I could pause it while he eats. It took him 6 1/2 hours to finish supper tonight. Who cares about eating when you're handing out invisible balloons and playing imaginary golf with your slice of red pepper?

Below is a house we built out of those fun foam squares (thanks, Aunt Gayle!) He felt it necessary that we build something he could actually get inside, then spent considerable time cutting the grass on his front lawn.

Yesterday he was nibbling on a square of chocolate carefully selected from the basket of leftover Christmas stocking happiness. He turned to me and held up his half-eaten treat and declared, "It looks like Minnesota!" Now I wouldn't know a Minnesotian shape if it knocked me down and stole my handbag, so I was pretty sure my 3-year-old was just pulling this out of the air. But just to be sure, I pulled out the US map. That piece of candy looked freakishly like Minnesota. What the heck?!

Here's my wacky Precious, dressed to the nines for gymnastics.


In Nibblet news, she's started eating! Sort of. A couple weeks ago she began getting up in the night to eat again, so I decided to give the whole solid food thing another go. I have learned that she wants it to be quite thin (I hand-mashed an avocado to within an inch of it's life and added water but allowed a few microscopic beads to remain - she gagged like I'd spooned gravel into her mouth). She also wants it to be heated to exactly 86 degrees. I tried some cold pears on her and she looked at me like, "I don't know what you're trying to pull here, but I've got 9 months experience with nice warm food and I'm not about to go lowering my standards now."

I also think she's going to be crawling soon. She likes to sit with her feet clasped in front of her, then lean waaay over forward to try to get something.


She doesn't really know what to do with her feet and legs, so she'll either give up and sit back up, go nose first into the carpet, or (most often) end up on her stomach pushing herself backwards with her arms. Watching her prize get farther and farther away really ticks her off, which is quite understandable, but me trying to help her learn to crawl is apparently much more annoying. Even Andrew's fabulous crawling demonstrations haven't fixed the problem, though I have enjoyed them tremendously. Guess it's just one of those things you've got to work out on your own.

Simon, Bennett, Robbins, Oppenheim & Taft

Look at my boy and his bling. On the way out the door to the booty mall, Andrew found this gold cross necklace and felt it added a little something special to his outfit. I put on his jacket over top thinking no one would ever see it, but as soon as we got inside he made sure to pull the chain out so everyone could admire his flyness. He's so much cooler than me. I wonder how much longer I have before he asks me to walk 6 feet behind him when we're out.

New topic: Big neighborhood news! We've been living next to a mesmerisingly craptaculous house for years. The people living there moved on several months ago and we've been waiting anxiously to see what would come of it. Saturday we had the thrill of watching a giant backhoe smash it to bits and haul it off!!!

Before:



During:


(Andrew watching the backhoe fill a giant dumpster)


After:

Merry Christmas to me!

Andrew was both fascinated and frightened by the backhoe. It hadn't occurred to me that it would scare him, so I grabbed him up and we watched it work for a while. I ended up needing to talk with him over and over again throughout the day about why that house was being torn down and, more importantly, why ours wasn't next. After they finished and I finally convinced him the house-eating machine wasn't coming back, he was OK.

New Topic: Elsbeth handled our Christmas travels amazingly well and gets 20,000 points for all of her fabulous car riding! She decided Nannie and Papa's house was far too exciting to sleep in, so we had one serious meltdown after 2 napless days, but other than that, she was happy as a lark. Andrew loved all of the festivities and has become quite the impressive present opener, ripping through all his packages with superhuman speed, then going back after the dust has settled to appreciate what he opened. I think the best moment was him sitting in the middle of his stocking innards, lovingly caressing a fancy milkshake straw from Nannie and saying, "This is wonderful!"

I think Elsbeth has started calling me, "Mama." !! :-) When she's not being held and I walk by, she'll look at me pitifully and wail, "Mamamamamama!" and reach up. This, as you can see, is why I hold her almost all the time. Occasionally she will also bat at the light switch and say, "Mamama," which makes me momentarily insecure, but I still think most of the time it means me.

AND (I know, the mind reels that there could be more) ... she's clapping.