Bowled away

My friend Kristen turned 35 last Saturday and decided that it would be fun to go bowling with the kids the celebrate. Lucy had a blast throwing the balls down the lane...no actual pins struck down, but some really amazing gutter balls. Oh and for my readers in parts of the country other than, say, Massachusetts, those little balls are for something we do here in the Bay State called candlepin bowling and yes I know it's weird but it's how we do it here so calm down :)

{me & kristen with our baby girls -- katie & phoebe}

{phoebe indulging in her latest obsession...shoe eating}

{phoebe goofing around with katie}

{phoebe snuggling with daddy}

{i have no idea what she's doing}

{lucy leading the crew in cake booping, as always}

{waiting her turn behind henry}

We're home!

Again I find myself apologizing for my absence from the blogsphere. But I have a really good reason this time -- we just moved to our very first house! We have owned condos before, but now we have an honest to goodness house. No walls shared with anyone but ourselves. It feels really good and a bit scary at the same time. So far, we really really really love our little house -- a yellow Cape celebrating its 50th birthday this year. I'll post more soon, including photos, so stay tuned!

Maybe she's mine afterall

{her}

{me}

This is a follow-up to my last post, in which I said that Lucy doesn't really look much like me. But maybe she does. What do you think?

Daddy's girl?

{phoebe, the other day}

{jeff, 1973-ish}

I know that Lucy doesn't look a lot like me. Well, some people think she does but I don't really see it except maybe in the shape of the face/chin and also in the mouth. I have thought that despite Phoebe's blonde coloring, she looks more like me. But then I unearthed this baby photo of Jeff and I see a strong Phoebe-esque quality in it. What do you think?

Five generations

Cape Cod, August 1973
My grandmother, my mother, my great-grandmother, and me

Cape Cod, May 2007
My Grandmother, my mother, my daughter and me

I just found the first picture above. I remember it from long ago and have regretted many times pulling it out of the photo album it came from. And tonight, I found it, tucked away inside a school project (presumably, the project for which I pulled the photo out of the album) and inside a big box of photos. I feel so lucky to have it back in my life, and to have my scanner so that I now have it digitally. I just had to post it along with a "four generations" photo we took last summer. Now I just need one with Phoebe in it!

hi my name is phoebe

and i may be a ton of work but i SURE AM CUTE!!!!!!

and mommy, i love you, too. sooooooooo much.

Love, continued...

Before Lucy goes to sleep, she gets a story or two read to her in bed. She usually requests to put her head down on the storyteller (me or Jeff) while she listens. Today before her nap, she gave me a book to read and asked to lie down on my stomach, which she said would be ok because "there isn't a muscle there any more." And I still love her anyway. So there, that's love, too.

Love is...

I looked up the definition of love today. It was a bit longer than I had expected. Apparently, love is: when your baby is crying when she should be napping (that's nothing new, so you leave her for a while) and you finally check on her and she is standing there with her diaper off (silly mommy, it's your fault for putting her to bed in only a diaper!) and a HUGE blowout poop is covering the bottom of her crib and approximately 90% of her body, including her entire face, and you try to put her immediately into the bath but she's crying her head off and you realize it's probably because she has the taste of poop in her mouth so you take her out of the bath and nurse her on the bathroom floor so that she can get the taste out of her mouth, while all the while she is pawing you with her poop hands and nudging you with her poop feet. Then you put her back in the bath and clean her up...SCRUB the daylights of out of her...and then clean her crib with vinegar and water spray...SCRUB the daylights of of it...and now you have a very clean crib and a very clean baby who smells like baby wash and perfection. That, apparently, is the definition of love. Who knew?

How to eat a PB&J

Little gymnast

{the proper outfit and hair are essential}

Guess who started gymnastics? (Hint: rhymes with Goosie!) And she loves it. She is going to a "real" gymnastics place and she gets to use actual balance beams, bars, vault, etc. Her favorite parts are the trampoline (of course) and the rings. I haven't broken the news to her yet that rings are a boy thing. Heck, maybe she'll be the first female to compete on the rings...who am I to stop her...at anything!

Ring rot

Sorry if this sounds gross. I have what I believe is called "ring rot" -- an irritation on my wedding ring finger that I think is caused by water getting trapped under my band. I stopped wearing my rings for a while and used an antifungal cream...I thought it cleared up but I started wearing my rings again and it came back (I have started to take them off when I shower and at night hoping it would make a difference). Any advice out there? I miss my rings!

Seven Months Old

Phoebe is seven months old...well, she turned seven months several weeks ago when we were in Italy and I am just getting around to posting about it now!

Phoebe became an official world traveler, spending half of her seventh month of life in Italy. She was a real trouper throughout the trip and was almost always wearing her signature smile. Right before we left for our trip, she started pulling herself up to standing while holding on to something. When we were in Italy, she got very, very good at this and started pulling herself up on absolutely everything she could find. She also started full-on crawling and boy, is she ever fast. She also locates every little scrap of anything on the floor and puts it in her mouth, resulting in many a sticker found in her diaper. All of her developmental milestones are great, but we sure do get worn out chasing after her and making sure she is safe. Of course, being our second baby, we know we don't need to hover over her every minute of the day. Still, I don't remember Lucy putting so many things from the floor in her mouth at this age. Or maybe it's just that when Lucy was a baby, she didn't have an older sister depositing things all over the floor the way that Phoebe does!

Phoebe has also become quite the good little eater -- she loves sweet potatoes, prunes, peaches (LOVES peaches), you name it. She is such a better eater than Lucy was at this age. She also loves to munch on hard teething biscuits, bread, pizza crust, etc. I am glad that she likes to eat because I love to make homemade organic baby food and it's nice to know I have a receptive audience.

I could mention her sleep patterns, but really this month they were just too frustrating to mention. Italy threw us all for a loop in that area. She actually did really great sleeping all night, but she nursed so many times during the night that I can't really consider her to be "sleeping through the night," so to speak. Things are a bit better now, but I will save that for her eight month update in under two weeks!

Happy seven months, Phoebe G. We love our bambina!

I know

I know I know I know...I have been a bad, bad blogger. Well, actually, I have been pretty good about creating my Italy blog. So hop on over there and check it out! I will be posting more here soon. I've just been so short on time lately, what with getting unpacked from the trip (ok, done with that finally!), getting our new house ready, getting our old house packed up, and keeping track of two VERY active children (paper-eating baby, anyone?).

In the meantime, if you want a good laugh, check this out. I rarely laugh at things I read, but this had me roaring.

She's giving it a chance

There are many days when having a two-year-old is just a completely gut-wrenchingly difficult thing. Like this morning, when she woke up at approximately 3:30 am and refused to go back to sleep. But then, she goes and does something that just blows me away completely. Proof that angels do exist and that she is one of them because she has a knack for giving me the boost I need when I need it the most.

She was watching her little PBS Kids shows this morning...she had not seen them since we were away. There was a new show, Sid the Science Kid, that replaced one her regular favorites, Clifford the Big Red Dog. Sid seems like a higher-level show than a two year old would be interested in, plus Lucy is a huge creature of habit so, predictably, she told me she wanted a different show. I left it on for a while but I swear I didn't say anything to her about it. Well, as the show was ending, I could see that she was actually watching it. So I asked her, "Lucy, do you like this science show?" And she looked up at me with her big green eyes and said, with her cute little kitten voice, "I'm giving it a chance."

We're ba-aaaaaack

Here's a quick summary of our trip:

{trevi fountain}

{coliseum}

Ok, so these are clearly not the highlights, but they sure are funny! We had an amazing time and just an unbelievable travel experience.

We are home and we are exhausted. I don't know who has it worse -- Jeff, who had to go to work today, or me, who has to stay home with two jetlagged little girls. We traveled ALL day yesterday, finally arriving home close to midnight (thanks, Delta, we really enjoyed our two and a half hour delay for the 40 minute flight from NY to Boston!). It was the kind of day where you just want to go home and have your head hit the pillow like a brick. Only our girls had other plans. Phoebe was uninterested in sleeping, preferring to either cry or to show off her new-found standing and climbing skills. Lucy fared better, though I had to take her to the kitchen at 3am for a snack because she was hungry. I can't blame them, of course, and they were total troupers during the whole trip and honestly were just perfect on the flights. Hopefully we'll have the sleep issues straightened out in a few days...we need to, because I think I will just collapse if we don't.

We took approximately 1,800 photos. I am not kidding. I tried to upload them all to my computer this morning but literally ran out of hard drive space. Anyway I want to post lots of them, but I also don't want to clog up this blog. So I started a new blog and will hopefully be adding lots of posts to it in the coming days and weeks to document our trip. The address is http://lucyandphoebegotoitaly.blogspot.com. Check it out!

We missed everyone and although our trip was great, we are glad to be home!

Home tomorrow!

We are at a hotel in Rome near the airport...coming home tomorrow! Stay tuned for lots and lots of photos from our fantastic trip to Italy...

An interview with the lovely Miss Lucy Elise

I conducted a little interview with Lucy. Here are the answers I got.

Favorite color? Orange.
Favorite TV show? Bob (the Builder).
Favorite book? Angelina Ballerina.
Favorite juice? Pig juice (aka apple juice...don't ask, I don't know why).
Favorite thing to wear? An outfit. (Duh.)
Favorite thing to wear on your feet? Ballet shoes.
Crayons, paint or chalk? Paint.
Who cooks better, Mommy or Daddy? Nonno.

So now you know more about our girl. Feel free to ask her a question of your own! Just leave it in the comments. (She'll get back to you after our trip.)

What a faker

As I explained in a recent post, I haven't had a lot of Lucy-centric posts lately because she's just not the most willing participant in my photo sessions. Phoebe often gives me a great big genuine smile. But Lucy, well, lately most of her on-camera smiles are complete fabrications. Oh she's a very happy girl all right, but when the camera is out she seems to either look away or do her "fake smile." Here's that smile, in all its cheesy glory...

{someone please give this kid an academy award already}

The Luumba

You know those Roomba robotic devices that vacuum your floor for you? Well, we don't need one. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Luumba:

Look who's standing

But she's not too happy about it once she gets there...

{baby jail...she hates it in there. having no access to her mama makes her cry.}

Nana, I know I have been a bad blogger this week! I promise to post a bunch of pictures before our trip so that you have lots to look at while we are gone. Oh and I also realize that my recent posts have been very Phoebe-centric. She is simply a more willing participant in my photo sessions than her big sister is. But I will try to post some Lucy-centric things soon.

typical.sunday.morning.