Behind the curtain

Just a peek at some of the thing that go on ‘behind the curtain', so to speak. I’m sorry, I don’t have a photo of my sink full of dishes or the pizza boxes on the table as a direct result of ‘I don’t feel like making supper’-itis today. (Although I must confess, I have mostly stayed on top of the housework lately, except when I was feeling crummy the other day.) We’ve been having a nasty heatwave, like so many of you, so I’ve been staying inside my air conditioned house and doing housework. (ew) Or off swimming and such and not making a mess of the house.

Anyways, I digress. Here’s some reality.

I shared some pretty Watermelon Eating photos the other day. Here’s some that did not make the cut.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eating watermelon is apparently kind of depressing.

Quite a charmer, isn’t she? Tonight we read one of her favourite books, The Paper Bag Princess. At the end, the princess doesn’t marry Ronald after all. Nicole pointed out that I am married. Then she told me she was going to marry Papa. I told her he was taken. Well, Grandpa, then. Sorry, he’s married to Grandma. Hmm. I suggested she marry one of her friends. She said they were too little, then thought about it for a moment, and I guess she remembered she was talking about when she grew up. “I will marry Colten, maybe, if he eats lots of food and grows up really big like me.”

You might notice that Olivia looks a bit younger here, I’ve sat on this picture for at least a month now. My husband giggles like a little girl every time he flips through my ipod and finds this. Okay, so do I. I debated sharing it but it just makes me laugh, just look at that face! Or maybe it’s just funnier when seen in progression with the other shots where she starts happy and gets progressively sicker of the photos. ;)

 

This baby is fast and sneaky. Little bit like a ninja, except she hyperventilates loudly when she’s up to no good. She did several awesome things today.

1) she finally dove headfirst off our rather tall bed. I say finally because on several occasions I have done a mad dive and caught her literally by the ankle and dragged her back, giggling away. She gets faster daily, though, and today I put her on the bed, grabbed a hanger off the bed so she couldn’t play with it, turned around to hang it in my closet, and THUNK. I didn’t even have time to hang it, I realized later. I dropped it when I heard her fall. She was giggling again a few minutes later, and probably did not learn anything of value.

2) She re-evaluated her stance on walking. She took her first steps a bit ago and then decided walking was slow and thusly overrated and stopped trying. She’s been walking around furniture, though, because it allows her to grab Things She Shouldn’t. I half-heartedly encouraged her to walk to me a few times, including this morning, but she always just drops and crawls. However, for no apparent reason, she walked from the coffee table to the middle of the room a few times today.

3) As a barely-noticeable but rather effective babyproofing method that Nicole can still get around, I have been using a white hair elastic to babyproof my pantry against Olivia. Today I was lying on the loveseat ordering pizza (ha) and Olivia proudly brought me that hair elastic. And laughed about it. My brother (who moved into our basement at the beginning of the month) figured out that if you twist it around the one handle twice, she can’t get it off. She screeched angrily at him for that one. She makes me laugh when she gets frustrated… she either lets out one quick irritated shriek, or she does this very brief whine-cry. And then she either finds a way to get around her obstacle, or finds something worse to do.

Me, hunched over in the dark, working on the blog. Sorry if you picture me on a sunny terrace, sipping wine and smiling whimsically at my children while I type up a blog post. More often than not, I’m hunched over in the dark shooting back a glass of wine after an evening of whine, typing up pre-scheduled posts. Like I am right now. Except I don’t have my wine yet.

My brother AJ (center), my most recent sibling to graduate. That’s 5/6 kids graduated (kids… are we still kids? Probably not. Only the youngest is still at home, and he is ten years my junior.) He is the one living in my basement. Free babysitter! HAHAHAHA. No, I’m not joking. We don’t leave him with the baby, the poor lad. We aren’t that mean. I’m still pretty chained to her, she’s not one for the bottle. Anyways, AJ does not have a real name. He is just AJ.

Who wouldn’t be okay with being chained to that. Aww, teary eyes but smiling. I’m not sure if Nicole was bullying her or comforting her. Don’t pity the baby, you guys. As my brother astutely observed earlier today, if her personality doesn’t change she will be bossing Nicole around within a few years, despite the three year age difference.