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.

I'm not perfect

{yep, that's me. and phoebe, trying to assist with the photo}

I read a number of blogs...more than I probably even realize or care to admit. Some are of people I actually know, while many other are of people I only know through their blogs. Blogs give us a glimpse into a family's everyday life. They are so addictive because they play into our innate voyeuristic tendencies. They make us laugh and cry and cheer and hope and pray for people we don't even know. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I have to say that I really enjoy peeking into peoples' lives and seeing their families grow. However, I must admit something...blogs also make me a bit insecure. I think that despite the best efforts of well-intentioned mommy bloggers to portray real bits of their lives, blogs often display only the choicest bits when it really comes down to it. Digital photography allows us to take hundreds of pictures in one afternoon, leaving only the best ones & most artistic ones to post for the world to see. So our kids look to the world the way we want them to. And, of course, we write what we want to write...so our lives often look pretty darn great. Even those terribly hard parenting moments can be portrayed with a dose of sarcasm and wit...so easy to do in retrospect and in writing. All of this amounts to what I call "blogger insecurity" -- the feeling that your own family just doesn't measure up to the others you see in bloggy land. Admit it...you have felt the same way, right? That other families do cooler things, that other kids wear nicer clothes, that other houses are nicer, that other moms seem to enjoy their kids more, do nicer crafts...blah blah blah. I swear, it is harder than the normal comparisons that we all make to our friends and our friends' kids, because at least with actual live friends we can see the bad with the good. But with blogs, it is often just the good we see.

Anyway, I was thinking of all this today during a particularly difficult morning with my kids. I won't go into the boring specifics, but let's just say it was the kind of day in which I canceled a playdate and stayed in my pajamas until 2pm because I was just trying to do my best to mind the shop here without losing my mind. So I decided to start something called the "I'm not perfect" post in the hopes of starting something out there in blogland...something that will hopefully peel back some of the layers of our lives and let those people who peek into our lives see the ugliness, and I suppose in that the inherent beauty, of our regular lives. So here's the deal...if you decide you want to do this, too, pick up your camera RIGHT NOW. Go around your house and take a picture of everything that you would normally never, ever show on your blog. Be sure to include a self-portrait. And then post the photos (captions optional) in a post entitled, simply, "I'm not perfect." It is a liberating admission. Feel free to link to this post if you don't feel like explaining to your readers why you're doing this. Oh and if you do this and you don't know if I am a regular reader of your blog, please leave me a comment to let me know you did this. And pass it on...encourage all your readers to do the same. Together, we can start a revolution!

Ok, without further ado, a snapshot of my life from this morning:

{sink full of unwashed dishes}

{dead cell phone...charger couldn't be located for an hour}

{important paperwork? maybe...would help if i ever actually went through it}

{boxes from my birthday presents, given to me 2 weeks ago, still in the hallway}

{my bed, unmade, with my bag and its contents strewn all over it...looking for the cell phone charger}

{jeff's bags from his business trip this week...still on the floor}

{toys}

{tv ON to occupy toddler}

{breakfast dishes still on table well past breakfast}

Old Photo Friday: July 1986

{age 12, almost 13, on the verge of "womanhood"...}

Kimball Farm

We went to Jeff's annual company summer party at Kimball Farm this evening. Lucy had a ton of fun jumping in the bouncy castle...we could barely get her out of there. I even got into the fun activities by taking some swings at the driving range under Jeff's capable tutelage. I actually hit the ball into the air a few times, which as far as I'm concerned is pretty darned impressive (gotta remember...head down, eye on the ball). Of course, I took hundreds of photos...

{she's bearing weight on her legs!}

{what could be better than a bite of ice cream from your big sister?}

{our little tiger-in-training}

{queen of the bouncy castle}

{we're all glad that daddy is home!}

The Summer of '74