Elizabeth- the best alarm clock

This morning when I put Elizabeth next to Linda in bed to wake her up, Linda just smiled and put her arm around Elizabeth, kissed her cheek, and went back to sleep. It took a good couple of minutes to get Linda awake and the first thing she said was, "I love you Elizabeth because we're friends." And the cutie chub bucket was of course all smiles as long as she could see Linda's face.

New Camera

we snapped a few shots with the new camera last night. They're posted over at the Flickr account.

New Photos

Superwife took a very sleepy Elizabeth to the photo studio this past weekend to have some professional pictures taken. Somehow the photographer and Terry were able to get some fantastic images taken between Elizabeth's protests. That is one adorable baby.

Terry Email

Terry usually gives me an email when she gets in to let me know how the morning went. Every now and again she puts together a gem that needs to be seen by more eyes than just hers and mine. Take a look at the highlight from this mornings message:

We were all ready to go this morning, I was just going to give Elizabeth 5 minutes to nurse while Linda finished up her cereal when (after about 90 seconds of nursing), Elizabeth had a watery poop that shot out the back all over her and onto my pants. So we both had to get changed and as I carried her downstairs the second time she spit up down my shirt. I just wiped it off, but now there's a stain, so I think the spit up had some of her vitamin D oil in it.

Brilliant stuff from Superwife.

Consumer Electronics

This weekend Superwife used some money we got for Christmas (thank you everybody) to purchase a new Nikon L11 digital camera. This will replace our original Nikon digital that Linda threw out and will compliment the Nikon N70 SLR that we also own. (I like Nikons.) It shows up at my office this Wednesday and I am thrilled. You can all expect a Linda and Elizabeth picture extravaganza later on this week.

Night Terrors

Linda gave Terry the scare of her life last night.

Elizabeth has been having some trouble sleeping lately because of a very stuffy nose. She woke up sniffing and snorting and in need of a late nite snack at about 3:45. Terry and I usually try to calm her down as quick as possible when she wakes up because we don't want her cries to wake Linda up. Terry brought Elizabeth into our bed and was laying down feeding her when, unbeknownst to us, Linda heard the commotion and tiptoed into our room to investigate. We didn't hear her get out of bed on the baby monitor, and she's so light that floorboards didn't even creak when she walked over them. I was laying down and facing Terry when Linda came up behind her and put her hand on Terry's waist. She's so tiny that I didn't even see her behind Terry's silhouette. The terror on Terry's face and the yelp she let out made me jump.

Boy Crazy

We're in trouble. Elizabeth is following in her sister's footsteps. Linda always seemed to pick the boys to be her bestest friends, even in the infant room (Harry, Christian, Connor, Hudson). She likes to play with the girls, but she's always talking about the boys in her class (and the older ones too). So I was burping Elizabeth on my lap and she started staring at James, who was playing in a bouncy exersaucer type seat across from us. He started smiling and Elizabeth just burst out with giggles, coos, spit bubbles, and smiles. She even did that mouth smacking thing that sounds like she's trying to suck her lips in (or maybe she's blowing kisses??). The whole time their eyes were locked. I couldn't even get her to look at me. When I put her down on the play mat she got so aggravated bending over backwards to look at him that I had to sit her in the Bumbo seat with a toy next to James so she could occasionally look away from the flashing lights at his snotty face. That's not said to be mean- all the boys in Elizabeth's class have running noses, hacking coughs and are receiving albuterol treatments through nebulizers. So they're all snotty. But I digress.

Come to think of it, Linda also this morning told me all the boys names in the room- TJ, Tyreece, Michael, Naseem- and didn't bother to introduce me to Diana, Andrea or Piper. But she did want to sit next to Piper and eat the same kind of muffin (she pushed a blueberry one away so she could have a "brown' (bran) one).

Elizabeth's Christening

I have been meaning to send an email out, but I keep forgetting. Elizabeth still needs to get rid of her original sin and we'd love to have you all here in Philly to witness it. With everyone being out of town (some more so than others), we wanted to give as much notice to anyone that wanted to and was able to travel for the Christening. We have a bit more flexibility with this baptism as there are no sick great-grandmothers, but I'd like to have it done before Elizabeth, Amazonian that she is, grows out of the beautiful Irish Christening gown we have. So we're thinking sometime in February or early March. We spoke to a priest at our new church and he seemed pretty willing to have the christening during a Saturday evening mass like we did with Linda at our old church (to make it easier for traveling). Are there any dates/weekends that would work best (or ones that are absolute no-go's) for those of you planning on coming to the Christening? The priest said we'd need to give him at least two weeks notice. Hopefully there won't be another national medical conference that books up every hotel in the city of Philadelphia this time around (damned urologists) and we can find something reasonable for everyone. Let me know if you have any opinions on the date. And please pass this request along to anyone without email who may want to come (like Great-Grammie or Nanamay).

Breaking News!

I just checked in on Elizabeth at school and...She drank her whole 4 oz. bottle, wait it gets better, in Ms. Robin's arms (not the bouncy seat), and it only took her, can you believe it, 30 minutes. I think she's getting the hang of this. "So they only give me this bottle thing when I'm hungry? Maybe I should drink the milk in the bottle." What a concept.

New Photos

I just uploaded another set of pictures to the Flickr account. These were taken during the Christmas break. Go on over and have a look.

Chef Linda

Twice last week Linda helped me prepare dinner. She loves standing on the step stool with her hands on the counter right in the middle of the action. On Tuesday Linda helped me make a salad. I chopped the ingredients and she took the individual pieces of vegetable and threw them in the salad bowl. Last night, Linda helped me salt a pot of boiling water, put the potatoes into the water, and then season the potatoes when they were finished. Maybe all these domestic toys we've been getting for her (vacuum cleaner, pots and pans, toy oven) have been rubbing off.

From the mouths of babes...more Linda quotes

"You are all my favorite girl in the whole world!"
"You did a beautiful job, Mommy."
"That was an AWESOME poopy!"
"Carry me. It will be quicker."
"Your poopy is dig-usting, Eeyizabef."
"Mmm, this broccoli is very good." (with the tone of a food critic and tilted head)
"I'm naked and a half!"

My little rays of sunshine

While the setting was less than desirable, this is one of the cutest things ever and the best reason to have more than one child.

This morning Linda woke up while I was still nursing Elizabeth. She yelled for me to come into her room and I went because I thought something must be wrong (she usually will come in to my room if I tell her that I'm feeding Elizabeth). She just wanted to say good morning. So now that we were all up and mobile, we ventured into the bathroom for a morning pee. While on the toilet, Linda leaned over to Elizabeth, who was sitting on my lap as I perched on the edge of the bathtub trying to resume nursing, and pinched her cheek and said, "How you doing, my little sweetie-pie, my little sunshine?" Suddenly a spark went off in Linda's eyes and she started to sing. "You are my sunshine, my little sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You know dear, I must love you. Don't take my sunshine away!", all the while leaning over about two inches from Elizabeth's face, stroking her cheek. Elizabeth loved it and was smiling wildly. She even leaned in and "kissed" Linda's forehead when the song was over. Linda giggled ecstatically Auntie Kristen style with her teeth clenched. All I could do was grin ear to ear and hug my little sunshines. They are so freaking cute and they love each other! Then Linda broke up the sappiness with the exclamation, "Big ploppers, Mommy!" as she finished up her morning pee with a little poo!

No, let ME do it!

If the nature of their births didn’t give us enough warning of the stubbornness of my two girls- here’s some more anecdotal proof. Elizabeth has spent 5 days at school (daycare) so far and drank a TOTAL of 21 ounces of milk from a bottle. We’re talking like 2 to 3 ounces in a 9 hour period (when it should be more like 9 to 14 ounces). Luckily for her, I go over at lunch and nurse her (no worries as she’s still got two chins, dripping cheeks and multiple rolls on her thighs). We’ve been trying for months to “teach” her to drink from a bottle- different people giving her the bottle, different bottles/nipples, different times of day, different positions, etc. Really the works. I think I’ve thrown out more pumped milk in the last 8 weeks than I ever did in 19 months of nursing Linda. So last night I had her teacher warm a bottle for when I picked her up because I was just not going to be able to nurse her in the car in the 20 degree windy weather. Elizabeth was asleep when I got there and was quite miffed that I woke her up to put her in her snow suit, so, half jokingly, I said to her, “Oh, you must want a bottle” and put the nipple to her lips. She sucked that thing in, slurped down the 3 oz. in 10 minutes and wouldn’t even let me pull it out to burp her. Son of a gun! Not that it does any good that she’ll drink a bottle for the only person on earth that doesn’t need to give her a bottle. So this morning I armed her teachers with the exact same bottle with the same 3 oz. and a receiving blanket that I wore around my torso all night so that whoever fed her would “smell like Mommy”. They tried it for 30 minutes this morning- no go. So they switched to another type of bottle. Nothing. With other infants now requiring attention at this point, the teacher put Elizabeth in a bouncy seat next to her chair (she was going to feed two kids at once) and as she placed the bottle near her face, Elizabeth grabbed the bottom of the bottle and pushed the nipple into her mouth. A little surprised, Ms. Robin let go of the bottle and looked at her- ferociously sucking back the milk and holding the bottle on her own. Ms. Robin bent over again to provide some support of the bottle for my stubborn super-child, but Elizabeth stopped drinking, looked at her and screamed. Ms. Robin let go and Elizabeth resumed drinking. She drank the whole bottle (grunting if anyone else touched it) by herself. The one thing we didn’t try- let the 3-mo old feed herself the bottle! We’ll have to wait and see if this actually solves the bottle-feeding issues.

Deck the halls (& the toilet, the carpet, the bed sheets, &...)

So you kind of expect to have fond memories of your baby’s first Christmas, with them struggling to figure out wrapping paper and wearing a little red suit or Santa bib. Elizabeth’s first Christmas was unfortunately defined, at least for me, by vomit. It started with Steve around noon and by mid afternoon his vomiting was so frequent, violent and loud that even Linda in her present-toy-cookie induced self absorbed state asked why Daddy was ‘yelling’ in the bathroom and if his tummy was going to be all better soon. Needless to say there were minimal pictures taken as I struggled to take care of the girls and keep them at a safe distance from their father. And Christmas dinner never happened. The girls went to bed seemingly unaffected and Steve continued to get sick until about ten o’clock that night. At eleven, Steve called from his bed on the couch, “Terry, what’s that noise?” He walked upstairs into Linda’s room and started hollering for help. I rushed up to find a bewildered Linda covered head to toe in a vomit coating of broccoli and chocolate sauce. I bet you can all smell the holiday cheer right through the computer. I took Linda into the bathroom for a scrub down while Steve resisted the dry heaves as he gathered up the bedding and wiped down the race car. Linda, who thankfully has only had one other throw-up event in her life and it was well over a year ago, kept asking, “What I do all over my blue blanket?” She was in relatively good spirits as we got her back into bed and moved Steve into her room on the air mattress. The sickies were going to sleep together and watch out for each other. I was pretty sure I was in the "well room" until Elizabeth started projectile vomiting after nursing at about 2 AM. I just stood on a pile of dirty laundry in my bedroom and let the regurgitated milk splash off of me and drip down as I wasn’t going to be able to make it down the hallway to the bathroom and the thought of more cleaning at that hour was just too much. Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas to Mommy. It took a few days, but all the dirty clothes/bedding/floors/bodies got cleaned and Linda opened up all of our presents. At least I didn’t have to take care of everyone while throwing up myself. Santa, next year can you leave the viruses outside?