Halloween Preview

This past weekend Adeline's dad and I went to a Halloween party thing, and got dressed up.  My smartest parenting move thus far was letting her watch us get ready so we didn't scare the ever-loving snot out of her once she saw us all wigged and make-uped and whatnot.

It still did not help a lot in regards to how she felt about her father's wolf costume.

Oh my gosh I wish that picture hadn't gotten cut off, but even still the look on her face - hahahahaha!  So.  Not.  Ok.  With.  Dad.

She gave a very similar look to my friend Beth while we were in Catalina over the summer.  

Hahahaha.  Oh my gosh the joy that picture brings me will never end.  IT WILL NEVER END.

To be all Halloween-y we went to a pumpkin patch where Adeline was not happy with the pumpkin selections.

Shortly after this she pooped so bad the ONE TIME I didn't have any wipes left and I was seconds away from using stray pumpkins to wipe her with before a friend came to my rescue.  Unfortunately, I was still changing her diaper in a pumpkin patch and she ended up with so much hay stuck to her little butt it looked like I was preforming some sort of medieval ritual on her backside.  There was so much hay I found some in my underwear later that night.

The farm boasted a lot about a hay maze, and I was all excited picturing the labyrinth from the movie, The Labyrinth   What?  You haven't seen it?!  This conversation is over until you get a copy of it and watch the magic that is David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.

                              


Unfortunately, this was not a maze with talking muppets.  It looked like this.

A few hay bales for which to trap my daughter with.  She was not happy about it.

When we got home I changed her clothes and sat her on the sink, because I prefer a life of danger.  Also, if I'm brushing my teeth or doing anything that involves the counter girlfriend loses her sh*t until I pick her up and let her dance with trouble five feet off the ground.  So, for the two seconds I couldn't see while I was taking out my contacts my little lady got herself in this here position:

Sink bath!  She got in there and turned the water on herself and has never been happier in her life!  She played in there for like a half an hour. I'm sure it wasted a lot of water, but it was so dang cute I could not bring myself to lecture her on water shortages or mommy and daddy's budget.

Then she had a cuddle sesh with the Dog.  Her new bff.  Well, she's not his bff, but he's hers.  You know how these things work.  She'll wear him down though.  Girlfriend is determined to make him love her.

Fourteen Months Old And Counting

Ugh, I'm sorry about my lack of posting.  My computer exploded and then all of the internet went out in Montana, and then a raven flew into the house and nested in the corner of my bedroom and every night I tried to write a blog it would scream, "Nevermore" so I couldn't write anything.

Ok, none of that happened, but how creepy would the raven thing be?

Truth is I've been sick and Adeline has been busy being a teenager.  Girlfriend is SO BIG all of a sudden!



                                                       

Hi Mom, can I borrow the car?

I mean, look at that sweater.  Eat-her-face-off cute.

Every day she does something new and I think, "I have to write that down so I'll remember it!" and then I fall asleep watching Friends and remember nothing.  But for a quick list, here are the new things she's doing:

1. Talking!  Well, sort of.  She says Bob (the dog's name), and ball (the dog's toy), and bottle (her favorite thing although it has nothing to do with the dog), and pumpkin.  To the lay person they probably all sound like "Ba!"  But I know the difference!  She has no interest in saying mom or dad.  None at all.  Why would she when all she has to do is grunt at us and we pick her up?  Names are for special things.

Oh, and her Montana Grandma taught her to say, "No, no, no" while shaking her finger at something.  It's super cute until she starts doing it at us.

2. She eats apples whole.  Like a real human.

Don't you dare cut up my apple Mama, or I'll cut you up.

3.  She thinks its hysterical to lift up our shirts and poke our bellies.  Especially in public.  The people of Target are probably sick of me exposing myself in the grocery aisle.

4. She also thinks its hysterical to look down my shirt, find my nipple (it takes a while), and poke and/or squeeze it.  I try to stay cool about it and say, "Yes that's mommy's nipple." But then she tries to repeat the word, which she can't quite do yet and instead just sort of flicks her tongue in and out of her mouth really fast  like she's saying the "-pple" part of nipple over and over again, but silently.  And then I lose it.

5. She wants to climb on everything.  Like, everything.

I climb on this very movable toy?  A toy with wheels on a hardwood floor?

No, no you can't climb on that Adeline.

But look now I'm riding it Mama!  I got up here all by myself!

Get down.

LOOK NOW I'M STANDING ON IT!  BEST! TOY! EVER!

*sigh*

Yes, I risked her safety to take pictures of it.  I'm not ashamed. 

6. I've been eating a lot of Burger King.

That has nothing to do with Adeline, I just thought you should know.

7. She has started caring about what she's wearing.  At least on her feet.  I'll have to get a better picture of them, but she is obsessed with these pink sparkly shoes.  She wants them on all the time, and then runs around the house smiling like crazy because they make noise.  That's how I feel when I wear heels once a decade.

8. She's working on her first novel.

It's set in Paris, and it is breathtaking.

Oh, and it's snowing here!  I hear in the rest of the world it's still 80 degrees and to that I say yeah, but we have snowmen and hot cocoa and I'm about the hit the watch-The-Family-Stone-movie-every-day-and-cry-every-time-but-continue-to-repeatedly-watch-it-because-it-feels-so-homey-and-Christmasy-and-I-like-crying-during-the-holidays phase of my year.  Don't be jealous.

Childhood Joys

I talk to my sister every day.  When you talk to someone that often and you don't live in the same town or see the same people, typically what you end up talking about it TV, and then the rest of the time is spent with silence, listening to the other person breathe while you do chores around the house because you don't want to hang up but you have nothing else to talk about.  Well, that's what it's like for us anyway.  We do the standard catch up with our family, did-you-hear-what-your-mother-said sort of stuff, but mainly we end up talking about what happened on Dexter (because OHMYGOD Deb WHAT IS HAPPENING?!), or Grey's Anatomy (I swear Shonda, you make me cry more than anyone has ever made a person cry.  Not even when I went through that horrible breakup and listened to James Blunt on a loop for like a year straight, and then realized I wasn't sad anymore, but James Blunt is pretty much like the vocal equivalent to watching Bambi's mom get shot over and over and over again).

But today was different.  I don't know if it was something in the air or what, but today we didn't even talk about TV, we talked a lot about death, and childhood, and murderers, and childhood murderers, and being taken - like in that Liam Neeson movie where they kidnap the girl and drug her and sell her into slavery.  We started talking about how sad it was that our Grandma's friends and relatives keep dying and how awful that must be and then my sister said:

"Yeah, everything after childhood sucks."

Because she's bright and peppy.

But I knew what she meant.  What she meant was being an adult is hard.  Responsibility and bills and stuff, it sucks sometimes.  And we were very lucky because our parents did a really good job of trying to get us to enjoy our childhood.  Like they repeatedly told me not to wish I was 30, to enjoy the freedom of childhood, but to me childhood was not freedom, it was shackles.  I wanted to pay bills and carry a briefcase and have short terse conversations on the phone, then slam it down and buzz my secretary to get China on the line.  I didn't know what I wanted to do, or how I would get there, I just wanted to be in an office acting important because it seemed so cool.

And when I wasn't wishing I was taking important business calls from other countries, I was too busy being scared most of my childhood to enjoy it.

I'm not sure why, we didn't ever watch scary movies or anything, but for some reason my sister and I both had an unnatural fear of constantly being murdered.  Like, I was terrified of being murdered, probably through High School. Every night was just a battle to make it to morning alive, and every morning was a groggy slog through the day, dreading the impending doom of night.

B: "Maybe it's a kid thing.  Just overactive imaginations."

A: "I don't think every kid was always sure they were about to be murdered by someone in their closet, or hiding in the bathroom, or that Dad wasn't really Dad, he was someone impersonating Dad and he was going to slit our throats at night"

B: "Yeah.  Well, at least we grew out of it.  I mean, I don't think anyone is going to kill me anymore."

A: "Yeah, maybe it is just a kid thing.  Like we grew up and stopped being so self-centered, because really, we're not important enough to be murdered."

B: "Hey!  I'm important!  People wanna kill me all the time."


Anyway, my point in this whole thing is that yes - childhood is a magical time that should be enjoyed because shit does hit the fan once you get older.  Not that getting older sucks, on the contrary, but there is something so fantastic about being a kid that should not be ignored, or wished away.  And the good the about having kids is that you get to kind of have a do-over.  Like, Adeline is so happy most of the time, she laughs at everything.  And she's so excited by little things, and that makes me so happy and excited.  Normally, I would not find it hysterical to poke her father's belly button for a half an hour straight, but because she just discovered it, and won't stop giggling while she's doing it, it cracks me up.  Also, typically I would not find it hysterical to walk the dog around the house on his leash, but watching her do it is the best thing in the whole world because she is so thrilled that he's following her.

So maybe that's what it is for me.  I made it through childhood so I could have kids of my own and enjoy it even more.  Not so scary if you look at it that way.

Discovering that the tissue just KEEPS ON COMING.  It made such a mess, but I didn't stop her because it was too dang cute.

Hysterical laughter after discovering Dad's belly button.  Oh the joy.

Will not let us eat our own popsicles.  Girlfriend takes huge chunks out and then makes a face like she just swallowed a cat because it's so cold and sour, before she dives in for the next bite. (Not that cats are cold and sour, i just mean she made a weird face ok)