Obsessions

Five things Beth is obsessed with:

1. TV/video characters, including Elmo, the Wonder Pets, and Nemo


2. Being up high. This includes standing on her stepstool to help me make meals (she stirs pretty well), climbing into her high chair by herself, and sitting on the arm of the sofa to watch the above-listed TV characters.


3. Stickers


4. Where her parents are at any given moment. "Where's my daddy? Where he is? Oh, there he is."


5. Making sure that anything that belongs to her isn't being used or touched or breathed on by anyone else, especially baby Sarah.

Five things Sarah is obsessed with:

1. Milk


2. Watching Beth. If she's lying on the floor and Beth is behind her, she'll even crane her little neck around so she can see what Beth is doing.


3. Watching anyone eat food


4. Kicking her legs and arching her back. This is going to get her in trouble if we forget to strap her in her bouncy seat or the swing — she's pretty good at kicking and arching herself out of anything we put her in.


5. The crinkly fabric block Scott bought her over the weekend

The (un)talent show

I'm doing this to the music of "76 Trombones Lead the Big Parade," since watching me blog has got to be the most boring thing EVER.

We're at the family reunion, in Colorado, and it's been fun — and tonight's the talent show. Or untalent show. The big announcement is that Ryan's working toward dental school. I'll have TWO brothers-in-law who are dentists, lucky me.

So Rebecca made balloon animals for all the kids, and Alan's kids sang to Grandma, who reciprocated by reading the kids a story, and we even got Beth to sing "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." (She did a good job, too.)

After putting the kids to bed, and dealing with the excessive whispering that ensued, we came back for more: rice pudding, poorly told jokes, Ryan actually participating (juggling smooshed dinner rolls), and David singing (over and over). David and Alan sang a great song about Scott getting stuck on the T in Boston. We're getting it all on video, again, and someone (hopefully not us, this time) will put it on a DVD for posterity. It's all pretty cool. And this is a pretty talented crew, even when they're un-talents. Me? I'm blogging, as a spectator event.

Zoo!

We're in Colorado for the annual Boss Family Reunion, and it's a zoo. Really: Ten adults, seven kids, and two more on the way. It takes us four (full) cars to go anywhere. So today we took all seventeen people in all four cars down to Colorado Springs, had lunch at a picnic area in the Garden of the Gods, and spent the afternoon at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

Wow. Wow.

This isn't a huge zoo, and it's probably under-funded. But it's a great, great zoo. The animals look healthy and well cared-for, and they're so close to visitors! Bethie got to feed a giraffe, which alone would have made my afternoon. ($1 for three giraffe crackers, walkways right at the giraffes' eye level, so they're up close and personal for kiddies. And adults.) I remember briefly petting a giraffe once at Hogle Zoo when I was a kid. The long tongue! The long eyelashes! Today we stood and talked with one, and felt its horns (they're called ossicones — I looked it up), and petted its nose. Such a treat. We took Sarah out of the stroller to have her meet one of the giraffes too. She's about as big as its head.

There were great signs up to tell about the animals (I've been looking at the spectacled bear at the Pittsburgh Zoo for a couple of years now, but just found out today he's native to South America), and zookeepers who stood and talked with all of us about the four 19-month-old mountain lion cubs, and gorgeous peacocks strutting around. I wasn't about to do the petting zoo with Beth (she's terrified of the big old mangy goats in Pittsburgh), but her cousins were doing it, sooooo...we washed her hands and I went in with her. Two clean, dainty pygmy goats — not much bigger than Beth — were in there with a keeper, and when I held my hand out they licked it and nibbled curiously. I held Beth's hand in mine and they licked her hand, then tried to nibble her sleeve and raincoat. Instead of freaking out (this is the third day this week she hasn't taken an afternoon nap) she took it all in stride. "Again, Mommy! Do it again!"

My favorite moment, though, was walking through the wallaby enclosure and getting to pet a motherless baby wallaby that a zookeeper was carrying in a denim pouch. (I have neither the vocabulary nor the italics to describe this.) So little, so soft, and when it curled up its big legs and feet wrapped all the way around to its little head. I thought: This is like carrying Sarah in a sling, or in her Snugli, and right now she is just as little and soft and vulnerable as this baby is.

(I'll get pictures up, I promise. I'm blogging in the dark while the girls are asleep back at our hotel. But in the meantime, you can check out the zoo's giraffe cam.)

Later this evening, headed north on I-25, in the past-bedtime dark, we heard Beth murmuring something to herself. I turned around. "What's that, Bethie?"

"Goat eat my shirt. Goat eat my shirt."

"Yes, Bethie, the goat tried to eat your shirt."

From the back seat, a moment later, a giggle. "That's funny!"

Househunt v2.0

We have a house! Probably. We all know what happened last time. Caveats aside, though, it's a very neat place in a terrific neighborhood: a two-story condo built in 1920 and redone in 2000. Photos are here.

So the whirlwind househunting tour has been a success. I don't think I ever want to do it again, but I haven't felt this much like a superhero since 1978 and the Wonder Woman Underoos.

And Bethie has been just fine. Truly. I've talked to her over the phone several times, and she sounds like she's having a blast: trips to the library and Phipps Conservatory, time alone with Daddy, and the company of her little buddies Daniel and Eleanor. I miss her so much!

(Okay, I miss Scott too. But Scott doesn't need me to put his hair in "bunny rabbit ears" — Beth's term for pigtails — in the morning.)

Stripped of the (Sunset) Strip

I've been ignoring this for months, hoping the bad reports were premature or wrong or something...but I guess I have to face facts: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is gone.

*Sniff.*

Scott claims that if he watches a TV show from the pilot episode and likes it, the show's doomed. He may be right about this (remember Firefly? Love Monkey? Even, eventually, Enterprise?) I doubt it's a gypsy curse — the more likely explanation is that what we like and what the rest of the country likes just doesn't jive. I mean, how many CSI spinoffs are out there?

I'm really bitter about this, though. (Yes, more bitter than about the house: see below.) I'm not a Sorkin-head; I never got into West Wing; I liked the show on its own merits. Studio 60 was funny, smart, and had a good sense of its own non-history (my favorite episode is the one where Cal meets the old guy who was a writer on the show before he got blacklisted). People complained that the show was too self-consciously L.A., but that's the very reason I wanted to watch it.

Guess one of these days I'll have to take down my link to the (long-since-deceased) blog about the show...just not yet...I'm still bummed out about this.

Home (bitter, bitter, bitter)

Okay, okay, it's not that bad. But we had an inspection done of the house we planned to buy, and it turned out that it needed $11,000 (yes, that's three zeroes) of repair work done before we could even move in. The furnace doesn't work; there's a crack in the foundation; the darling sunroom has dry rot in the floorboards; there's carpenter ant damage. The list goes on: a bunch of must-do small-ticket items that add up pretty fast. The sellers refuse to pay for any of it (in fact, they insist that the furnace works fine and the home inspector didn't know what he was talking about). So we backed out of the deal, and we're only out $400 for a good home inspection.

So I'm going back up to Boston this week to find us all a place to live. Sarah, sweet baby, is coming with me; Beth is going to split time between Daddy and hanging out with her buddy Daniel (Margaret, you're my hero). Scott and I had a very good, very realistic talk about yard work (i.e., how much of it we're actually willing to do vs. how much we want him to get tenure) and decided that we'll probably go the condo route for the first few years. (Condos, by the way, are amazing! — old houses, newly renovated, split upstairs/downstairs into huge flats.) Cross your fingers for us, y'all: we need a place to live, and I have two and a half days to do it in.

I feel so, so conflicted about leaving Beth for three days/two nights. On one hand, I know she needs to learn that there are lots of people out there who love her and will take care of her, people she can rely on and trust. Truly, I shouldn't worry about this. She's been known to bypass me when she hurts herself and go to Margaret for hugs and kisses. But on the other hand, she's been so clingy and whiny and needy and just-turned-two-ish recently that it gives me a sick feeling to think about how dreadful her few days without Mommy will be.

And then there's an even odder fear: will she be just fine without me? Would that make me feel worse?

Home. Sweet!

I learned something new about myself in the last week. I've always known that I bite my fingernails when I get stressed out. What I didn't know is that when the stress passes a certain level I stop biting them. Yikes.

We flew up to Boston for a five-day househunting trip — told ourselves that we'd look around, get a feel for what was available, and if we found something that looked good we'd make an offer on it. If not, we'd rent for six months to a year and see what turned up. And we found it: a 1963-vintage split-entry raised ranch, hardwood floors, big backyard, two-car attached garage. It needs work, beginning with a new circuit breaker box (I said the house was of 1963 vintage!) and a good coat of (white) paint in the (otherwise gloomy) downstairs den. Then the kitchen, which may or may not even be functional (my guess is not) since the appliances are as old as the house is. I mean, the in-wall oven is yellow. So I've just spent half an hour looking at Ikea kitchen ideas.

I feel like such an adult. Yikes. All of a sudden I have weird homeowner-type questions floating through my head: Are there French drains to keep water out of the basement? How soon will the furnace need to be replaced, and is it worth it to convert to a geothermal system when it does? Do the garage door openers work? ('Cause we forgot to check.) How much will the fact that the commuter rail line passes right behind our backyard affect the resale value of the house?

But we're happy with this. A little freaked out, but happy. Beth is in love with the bathroom in the new house. Everything is pink: bathtub, sink, toilet, all the tile. All the fixtures in the bathroom (and in the tiny tan half-bath off the master bedroom) are the exact same make and model as all the fixtures in the bathroom of our first apartment, which were pale blue. Eerie.

The house is in Belmont. Boston neighborhood names still mean nothing to me; likewise with Boston college names, other than the obvious ones. But every time I told someone we were looking for houses in Belmont, they said, "Oh, Belmont," just as every time Scott said he was going to be teaching at Bentley the reaction was, "Oh, Bentley." Anyway. The house is 2.4 miles from Scott's office, and 1.3 miles from church and the temple, and four blocks from the elementary school. The town is unbelievably Mormon (two wards in the town; neighboring areas have four towns to a ward), has excellent schools, and feels, you know, friendly. Homey. People wave to each other from their cars. Road signs at the town borders say, "Welcome to Belmont. Please be courteous and obey all traffic laws."

Beth and Sarah were angels during the trip — even with the missed naps and the hours in airports and our real estate agent's car and the random stops to eat. Beth complained a bit in the car, especially if I had forgotten to bring along her newest Babybug magazine, but was thrilled to sit down and play with the temporarily abandoned toys belonging to kids who actually lived in the houses we were touring. (She threw up at dinner one night, but that's another story — and at least it wasn't while we were on an airplane.) Sarah grinned at everyone and let us subject her to the car seat for hours on end and slept through the night every night. And we took them on the swan boats — the swan boats! — Sunday afternoon when we went downtown. I loved it. Beth was thrilled. And Sarah, placid Sarah, hung onto her daddy and smiled.

Pictures to follow (I'll embed them in this post), so check back in a day or so. Shots of the house are on our Flickr page.

Sunshine

We have a new nickname for Sarah: Sarah Sunshine. It's true. She's a bright little happy ray of golden sunshine, and "Ray" is already taken as a (somewhat ironic) nickname for my mom. I just wish we were getting as much sunshine outside as we're getting inside.

Oh, and Sarah only comes in snuggly.

Happy Bethday #2

Today was the second annual celebration of Bethday — which to you uninitiated folks is also known as Bethie's second birthday. Cute kid! She had so much fun helping me decorate her cake (purple frosting, purple writing, pink and blue sprinkles she put on herself, and lots of frosting tastes)...and fun eating it...and fun with her myriad fascinating presents. Christmas all over again: she couldn't stand to put something down to unwrap the next box. The big hit (and this may change by tomorrow when she and Scott put together her Ikea table and chairs) was a Razor tricycle scooter.

Oh, the Ikea trip. Where do I start?

1. Beth really, really wants a big-girl bed. (To tell the truth, I want this for her too. But the matching little day beds I want for the girls are a bit more than I can afford right now, and they're bulky, and I don't want to include yet another item in the Boston move. Sigh.) She climbed all over the toddler beds in the children's section, and put her head down and pretended to go night-night, and made sure she inbethtigated all of the kid-friendly room mockups they'd put together.
   


2. She was fascinated by the tables and chairs. We tried out a bunch of them, made a decision, and Scott headed out to the furniture pickup area to wrangle a big cardboard box — and Beth was positive we were leaving without the great things she'd just been playing on. Oh, the plaintive cries of "Table and chairs! Please! Oh-kay!"


3. Now that she has said table and chairs, there's a darling little porcelain dolly-sized tea set that I can't get out of my head and must go back to get her. Maybe it can be a moving present. Ha. Like I need an excuse to buy cute, cute stuff for my kids.

Sarah — sweet baby Sarah! — has discovered her hands. Finally! She's gotten quite adept, in the last few days, at aiming one of them straight for her mouth, inserting her fist, and sucking like mad on the knuckles of her first finger. It's very, very cute. (She's also a kicker, and managed to kick off and lose her big flannel blanket while we were out shopping Wednesday. Conveniently, she did this in the fabric store — so I just bought three lengths of flannel to hem into more blankets. Frustrating, nonetheless.)

Sarah watches and watches and watches us. I'll be nursing her and talking to someone, or watching Veronica Mars reruns, or playing "Talk to Piglet on the Phone" with Beth, and I'll look down at her and see her eyes absolutely riveted on mine. If she's lying on the floor she's watching Beth. And unless she's asleep (or almost so) she can't stand not to be in the same room with us. Such a social little bear. I swear she was as thrilled as Beth was with the birthday celebration, just because she could tell it made us all so happy.

In your dreams, Gen Xers

Last night I dreamed that Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland told a homeless guy in Pittsburgh several things that a character was going to do in his next book. The guy went out and did them, and since then (in my dream, at least) Coupland has written him into each of his books, because he knows the guy will actually do all the things Coupland dreams up for him.

I could get all metaphysical about this — something about life imitating art, or the fact that I dream about dreams becoming reality, or someone finding purpose to his life through service to someone else's ideas — but it's not that deep. I watched Friday's episode of "Raines" last night, and I'm halfway through JPod.

(Also, in my dream, the guy lived in the alley next to Little's Shoes on Forbes. So maybe I'm just dreaming about shoes...again.)

Proof that every kid, no matter how sweet, is a manipulative little twerp

My friend Jessie watched the girls tonight while Scott and I went out for the evening — chamber music played by the Pacifica Quartet and dessert at Gullifty's, a Pittsburgh institution with acceptable food and out-of-this-world desserts. It was wonderful, really wonderful, especially the part when we realized that Janáček's "Intimate Letters" quartet is a stalker piece. (I knew the title referred to love letters he'd written, but didn't know she was 40 years his junior and there were 700 letters over a ten-year period. Creepy. And kudos to the Pacifica for the fabulous interpretation.) And then we came home and saw that the light in Beth's bedroom was still on. At 11:30.

It occurred to us that though we'd given Jessie a quick rundown on Beth's bedtime routine, we'd neglected to mention that she protests being put in her crib every night and yells about it for a good thirty seconds after we've left the room. It's just a protest on principle; she goes to sleep almost immediately. But Jessie didn't know this, and Beth figured it out fast.

Sorry, Jessie. You've been played. By a not-quite-two-year-old.

Sigh. And she'd been so cute earlier in the day. I was feeding Sarah, and Beth was attending to her own important agenda while wearing her piggy ears, and she ended up putting two of Sarah's stuffed animals on their backs on the couch, pulling out two size 1 diapers, and pretending to change the animals' diapers. So cute. Her afternoon snack (airplane-shaped crackers my dad nabbed from his flight last week) was a hit: she polished off the bowl I'd given her and asked for "Mosh airplane crackers please o-kay" in her low-pitched little voice. And when we went to the playground with friends this morning she scaled the slides and then slid down on her tummy over and over again.

Sarah's going to learn how to do the play-the-babysitter thing too, I'm sure. Right now she's sweet and calm and watchful, but she's changing: there's a sobbing quality to her cry that wasn't there a few days ago, and she's less enthralled (and therefore less easily pacified) by her binky than she has been. She has a big sister who can't wait to teach her absolutely everything, and Sarah will soak it up like a sponge.

This just in: farm overrun by kitty cats

My dad's in town, and we both love to shop at outlet malls, so yesterday he and I took the girls up to the outlets at Grove City. It's an hour's drive up there (and right at naptime to boot!) so Beth and Sarah both snoozed on the way up. But once we got there Sarah decided she needed to eat right now! Dad went to get us some lunch, Beth woke up and wanted to know (in a rather panicked little voice) where Grandpa Wes was going, so while I fed Sarah in the front seat Beth and I sang "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."

We've been singing in the car since Bethie was in utero. The songs have changed a bit over time. I don't bother to sing along with the radio any more, and Beth's Top 40 include "If You're Happy and You Know It," "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," and "Give, Said the Little Stream." Lately, the more interactive the song is, the better it goes over. She likes to think about what the lyrics should be.

I started with a cow (moo, moo here, moo, moo there, yadda yadda) and then asked her what else was on the farm.

"Ki'cat!"

"Okay. What does the kitty cat say?"

"Mau!"

"Okay:

Old MacDonald had a farm
E-I-E-I-O.
And on that farm he had a kitty cat
E-I-E-I-O.
With a 'meow, meow' here, and a 'meow, meow' there
Here a 'meow'
There a 'meow'
Everywhere a 'meow, meow'
Old MacDonald had a farm
E-I-E-I-O.
And on that farm he had a..."

"Amon ki'cat!"

"Okay, he had another kitty cat..." and I sang the song again. "And on that farm he had a..."

"Um...mama ki'ee cat!"

"Okay, he had a mama kitty cat..." and I sang the song again. More meows.

"Amon mama ki'cat!"

"Another mama kitty cat? Are you sure?"

"Yes!" I sang it again. And again. She eventually threw in a daddy kitty cat, then went back to mama kitty cats. This lasted until Dad came back with a Subway meatball sandwich for the two adults in the car (Beth had eaten at home) and — glorious! — an Orange Julius for me to split with Beth. She was in heaven. So much for fixing the juice addiction.

We did our tour of the outlet mall. I got some good spring clothes, Beth got way-too-cute summer playclothes (how come khaki cargo shorts with flowers embroidered on the pockets don't come in my size?), and Sarah got attention from absolutely everyone who saw us. ("Oh, Martha, look at the little tiny baby! Aww, isn't she sweet!") Sarah took it in stride. I swear she even posed and batted her eyelashes.

By the time we were headed back to Pittsburgh, Sarah had been fed again and Beth was exhausted. And frantic: she'd emit little yelps of "Out! Out!" and "Up! Up!" in the vain hope that we'd stop the car and let her toddle around. So I started singing "The Wheels on the Bus." I went through the wheels that go round and round, the wipers that go swish swish swish, the people who go up and down, and the babies who go "goo goo goo." Then I asked Beth, "What else is on the bus?"

"Money!"

"Okay:

The money on the bus goes clink, clink, clink,
Clink, clink, clink,
Clink, clink, clink.
The money on the bus goes clink, clink, clink,
All through the town.

"What else is on the bus, Bethie?"

"Um...ki'ee cat!"

Here we go again. This went on for miles. I started varying what the mama kitty cats said: less "meow, meow, meow" and more "Wash your paws." Then we switched back to "Old MacDonald" and it it kept going. Kitty cats. Mama kitty cats. More mama kitty cats. (My dad's comment was, "Some tomcat's sure been busy on that farm.") Beth was delighted. So was her grandpa.

Night-night time

Scott usually puts Beth to bed, but we switched kids tonight. I should definitely do this more often, because after we've read books and said prayers and put saline drips in her nose it's prime one-on-one chat time. Here's what I learned about Beth tonight as we chatted:

1. Her favorite book is Ballerina! by Peter Sís.


2. She loves Baby Sarah.
   
   "Why do you love Baby Sarah, Bethie?"
   
   "Bu'fly mat." The butterfly gymini-type mat is a huge hit with both girls. Beth loves playing on it with Sarah.


3. She wants to have hair like Mama's when she's older.


4. Beth loves Mama, Daddy, Baby Sarah, and her two stuffed Pooh bears, "Big Pooh" and "Baby Pooh," both of which, coincidentally, were gifts from Sister Eror at church. (When prompted, she admitted that she also loves her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, and her six cousins.)


5. She's very excited to have her cousin Hannah come visit next weekend.


6. Her favorite thing that we did today? Play with "Baby Sa'a." Never mind that we went out to lunch with one of my friends, that she got to watch a whole bunch of TV shows (yep, it was one of those days), and that she had strawberries — strawberries! — for dinner. This kid loves her little sister.

I love talking with Bethie. She's such a sweet little girl, such a good conversationalist, such a fun friend. How did I survive before she came along?

72°

I know this will horrify my husband — the guy who likes the drugged-out-and-enigmatic later-years Beatles — but my favorite, favorite Beatles song is "Here Comes the Sun." It just makes me happy. So does actual live sun, so getting outside today after a horrible and tearful morning helped tremendously.

One of these days I'm going to have to compile a blog must: a "100 things I love" list. It isn't going to happen today. But on the list I'll have to put "unexpected sunny days in early spring," "my tandem stroller," and "lunch with friends after storytime."

Potty time

Beth, Beth, the amazing girl Beth! She used the potty yesterday. Actually sat down and waited for a few minutes and then peed right into her little potty.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a picnic — the whole thing started when she woke up yesterday morning and I was changing her diaper (as she was standing up, insistent girl) and she let a few dribbles onto the floor. Eww. I got another diaper and held it under her, but as soon as I asked, "Do you want to go do this in the potty?" she trotted off to the bathroom quite happily. Yeeha. She got a sticker. She gets a sticker every time she sits on the potty, whether it's a productive sit or not. We've used up a whole row of puffy sea creature stickers this way.

Is every little kid as fascinated with stickers as Beth is? She loves the fact that they, well, stick. She'll stick one onto something — usually her shirt — and then, after a "Look at me!" grin, immediately pull it off and stick it someplace else. Ten minutes later all the stickiness is gone and the poor bedraggled sticker is covered with fibers from clothes, the couch, the carpet and goodness knows what else. These little puffy stickers have taken it especially hard — they're little, for starters, and Beth can't seem to let them go. I don't know if they're so very enchanting because they're puffy and sparkly (could be?) or if it's because she earned them by sitting on the potty.

I'd love to get inside her little head and figure it out, because the things she does that seem weird and random to me apparently make perfect sense to her: the mattress in the doll cradle goes on top of the stuffed animals, for example. Yesterday she climbed up on her stepstool and emptied everything out of the kitchen utensil drawer, starting with the baby spoons and measuring spoons and working through meat thermometers (how did we end up with three of them?), the nutmeg grater, and eventually a bunch of knives that I thought were safely hidden in the back (guess not). She was good about the knives — carefully handed each of them to me with a serious, "Thank you, Mama" — before pulling out the wire organizer baskets at the bottom of the drawer. Okay, I thought, she emptied a drawer. Good for her. Then she trundled off to the living room and brought back Regina the frog princess and one of Sarah's diapers, placed them up on the counter next to the pile of utensils, looked at them all with a pleased little expression on her face, then wandered off to do something else. I was left with the inverse of the Sesame Street puzzle: not "one of these things is not like the others" but "what on earth do these things have in common?" I'm still wondering.

Speaking of...we checked the "Elmo's Potty Time" DVD out of the library last week, and I sat Beth in front of it this morning while I took a shower. It wasn't the same format as Sesame Street, so she was a little weirded out. I watched the very end of it with her. Guess what? It's "brought to you by the letter P and the number 2." Heaven help us.

Book tag

I've been tagged! What a great game. I don't even mind being "it." Thanks, Rebecca. Here are the rules:

1. Find the nearest book to you.


2. Name the book and author.


3. Turn to page 123.


4. Go to the fifth sentence on the page.


5. Copy out the next 3 sentences and post to your blog.


6. Tag someone else.

Here goes, then.

From Every Living Thing, by James Herriot:

"This is a condition that often affects neutered toms like your Peter. I'll be able to clear it up with a hormone injection and a course of tablets." Peter didn't stop purring as I inserted the needle under his skin — he was a cat who appreciated any kind of attention — but I noticed that his owners looked a little uneasy.

I love the Herriot books! And I found out a few years ago that my friend Andi actually met their author. Very cool.

Tag, Sarah — you're it!

Toadlet

I love Sarah's new hat. And the matching little shoes, which unfortunately didn't make it in the picture. That said...she does bear a striking resemblance to the Super Mario Bros character Toad.

Cute little Toadlet! She's a month old now and starting to be more alert. She's blissfully happy lying on her blanket and watching all the activity around her. She'll squawk if she's hungry or she needs a diaper change, but most of the time she just pays rapt attention to whatever is within range: the ducks and mirror above her swing, Beth trying to push a binky in her mouth, me rubbing noses with her.

We threw Sarah a tiny family one-month birthday party on Sunday. I made cupcakes, which Beth helped me decorate with purple frosting and green sprinkles. Beth had a ball: I'd finish frosting a cupcake, then she'd dump sprinkles on top. Any sprinkles that landed on the kitchen counter were fair game for her to stick her wet little fingers in and lick off. Beth also made Sarah a birthday card. And we sang to her. And then the three of us who can eat solid food enjoyed the cupcakes, and Beth freaked out because the frosting got all over her fingers, and then she kind of got into the groove of having cupcake everywhere, and she started to enjoy herself. Since the birthday girl slept through the whole thing, I'm glad her big sister could have a good time for her.

Sticky situation?

Scott sent me the superhero dating quiz from comicvine.com, so it's with his blessing (or at least it's his fault) that I can say I'm apparently compatible with Spider-Man. Now, if only I made a better redhead...that henna experiment in college turned out pretty badly.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Jealousy

The big scaly green-eyed monster reared its hideous head today. I guess it was inevitable, but it's come at the end of such a long and surreal week that I really wasn't sure what to do about it. The grandmas are gone, I still can't drive, and we've had single-digit temperatures all week, so leaving the house and getting a change of scenery hasn't been an option. It's starting to take a toll on the toddler and her mommy. Sarah, of course, is blissfully unaware of any of this.

Beth isn't a princess — at all — she would far rather get her own sippy cup from the fridge than have us bring it to her, and she loves being in the middle of doing things, "helping" Scott and me as we cook and straighten up the house and check our e-mail. And until recently she's been such a good helper with Sarah that I've gotten scarily dependent on it. ("Bethie, we need to change baby Sarah's diaper. Can you bring me one of her tiny diapers? Wow, thanks! What a helper you are.")

Within a few days this cabin-feverish week she's gone from beaming at the praise to saying "No!" when I ask her to bring over the baby wipes or (gasp!) throw away a baby diaper. I haven't made a big deal about it at all — it's my job, not hers, and we both know it. And I've tried to give her lots of extra hugs and kisses and (her favorite, favorite thing) reading time. I think we've read Where's My Teddy? about two dozen times this week. But bit by bit the little jealous creepies are taking hold of her. After her nap today (granted, not her best time of day) when we were sitting and talking and Sarah woke up hungry, and I asked, "Bethie, should we take baby Sarah downstairs with us?" and her answer was a defiant and hurt "Nooooo!" — I just didn't know what to do. I couldn't leave Sarah crying forever, and distracting Beth with promises of snacks and apple juice wasn't working, so I ended up going downstairs to change and nurse the Small One, with Beth sitting pitifully on the top stair crying and saying, "No, no, Mama, no, no, baby Sarah, no, no" over and over.

I feel like such a heel. Beth loves sitting on the top stair and talking with me. Of course I've been second-guessing everything: Why didn't I just nurse Sarah there? Why didn't I try some other form of distracting her, like having her bring Bo the transgender teddy bear downstairs for a stroller ride? We've both been a teary mess today at some point or another (Sarah, amazingly, has had a terrific day). I guess we're both jealous: Beth wants her mommy back, and her mommy wants to be back. Somehow we're going to have to figure this out.

(Oh, and kudos to Margaret for pointing out that there's a feminine precedent for the name Bo — Bo Derek, of course — so we won't have to rechristen the bear. Huge relief.)

Pat-a-cake

Bethie is learning clapping games! We've tried them a few times, but this week they caught her attention and she's been having a ball. Scott taught her "Pease porridge hot" and "Pat-a-cake," and tonight after prayers, completely unprompted, she started playing pat-a-cake with her teddy bear. Right after the "amen," she started into "pa-cake, pa-cake" and clapped Bo's hands together. After she got to "trow in oven baby and me" she clapped the bear's hands again and said, "Yay Bo!"

Bo, by the way, is undergoing some gender confusion. He started out as a boy bear (Scott, who's in charge of naming stuffed animals around here, named him Beauregarde Q. Bear) and we did just fine in that vein...until a package arrived today from the girls' aunts. Meg and Gigi had found, among other adorable things, matching dresses for a toddler and her doll. Since the doll belonging to the toddler in question is much too small for the dress, it got transferred to Bo — who, by the way, looks just adorable in it.

Maybe a girl needs a bear who'll play tea parties with her, instead of one who'll hide out in the garage talking about table saws with his buddies.