Lessons Learned

About Lillian

Choose to wear any colour but purple. If you wear purple, and you feed her while wearing purple, she'll projectile vomit all over it, and then you'll have to change everything, including your underwear.

Number of times it took me to learn this lesson?

4 events + 1 test = 5

About Morgen

Bedtime is not a good time to try parenting solo. Toddler routines do not mesh well with newborn spontaneity.

Number of times it took me to learn this lesson?

1 (45-minute screaming session is pretty hard to miss).

Two Months

Lillian is two months old today! She smiles, coos, wiggles, and wears clothes that Morgen couldn't wear until she was almost a year old. She's pretty amazing.

An update following Lillian's two month well baby appointment:

Here are Lillian's fighting stats

Height: 62cm (95 percentile)

Head: 41 cm (95 percentile)

Weight: 6.2 kg (97 percentile)

It appears that we have an over achiever. If this keeps up, Morgen had better be really nice to her little sister or she'll have her butt kicked.

For Mr. Fun

At this moment, Gavin is off with Morgen, on a walk to the library. The library isn't open today, but we have books to return, the rain seems to have stopped, and we thought it would be good for Morgen to get out while she can. So, even though he'd probably prefer to be reading some op-ed piece online, Gavin has donned his alter ego, and Morgen is out with her Daddy - aka Mr. Fun.

Mr. Fun spends a lot of time and energy with his children, and with their friends, and on household chores, or maintaining the strollers, bikes, car, light fixtures. It goes on - he left the relatively comfortable walls of academia to work a full time job to support his children, and their strollers, bikes, car, etc. He gets precious little time to himself these days, and what time he does have he tries to spend on his dissertation.

When we were dating, my parents called him Gavin Maggot-Bane, or Good Boy Gavin (long stories - you'll have to ask me sometime if you are curious) - but those names faded with the onset of parental responsibility. Mr. Fun - this post is for you, and for all the sanity you bring me at the expense of your own.

Choo-Choo Hair Do

The Before Pic: playing with Grandma behind a curtain of toddler locks.

During: Driving a Choo-Choo Train and watching two large TV screens. Because two screens are obviously necessary for toddler hair trimming.

After: Riding home in Daddy's arms (because strollers are for babies who can't walk yet and who don't have pretty hair cuts) with a new friend. One quarter buys you a stretchy beetle bug toy, and twenty bucks gets you a new girl with a page-boy bob.

Not so Terrible to be Two

I'm behind on posting this week. Again. But since you are all friends and relatives, I'm guessing it hasn't ruined your internet explorations. If it had, you would have told me, right?

Watch the blog for all the things I didn't tell you about that happened over the last few days. But maybe don't watch too closely, I'm not making any promises to post very promptly - the latest daycare plague has taken Morgen by surprise and so they're both at home for the next little while. Thankfully, Grandma Lovett is also here, helping me to keep my sanity and making fevers as fun as possible.

Morgen turned two years old today, and a few days ago we celebrated with a party. This year it featured helium-filled balloons (did you know you can pick up recyclable tanks of helium fairly cheaply?), many copies of Phoebe Gilman's The Balloon Tree, lots of friends and friends' parents, and a mildly embarassing children's music moment. Embarassing, because in between organizing lists and getting the menu and party gear ready, I never did practise any of my songs or learn any new ones. There were cadences, but not many that fell in the right places. Whatever. The important thing is that Morgen had a great time, we took terrible pictures, and spent some time playing despite the start of the heat wave. Lillian dressed up for it, and so did I, although about one hour in we both had to change into much less flattering outfits as a result of a gigantic baby vomit. Lillian is already learning how to steal her mother's attention from big sister, oh, yes she is. As I recall, the first time Lillian's outfit made an appearance, it was on Morgen, and she didn't wear it for very long either. So maybe Lillian is just following in big sister's footsteps.

And now those steps are big indeed. Morgen is two years old. Two years old today. What's so terrible about two? (Tantrums? No!! Unreasonable demands? Never!!). She's still soooo advanced for her age, and she's still my baby girl. When she wakes up from her nap and refuses to have her temperature taken and kicks the tylenol out of my hand, I might be inclined to see a shade of terrible in her latest developmental stage. But for now, she's just my little big girl.