March News

Matt and I took the kids on a sort of impromptu trip to Baton Rouge last weekend to see my friend Kate and soak up a little bit of the Mardi Gras experience. Kate is my best friend from high school and we had the awesome (unplanned) experience of being pregnant with our first children together. I called her to tell her I was 5 weeks pregnant with Addie, and she said, "Well, I was 5 weeks last Thursday," and much shrieking ensued. Our little girls are 12 days apart and we have already planned out pretty much most of their lives as best friends up until college, where they will be roommates. Whether they like it or not!! Anyway, Kate hadn’t seen Ryan yet and here he was almost 5 months old, so I simply had to go show him off. She’s a teacher, and in Louisiana they got Monday and Tuesday off for Mardi Gras, so we drove out there Sunday morning and stayed till Tuesday.

Addison and Emilyn were so cute together. Emilyn is not as rambunctious (noisy) as Addison, but she is certainly just as silly and naughty! They played together really well most of the time, and mimicked each other constantly. Emmy wore a hat, so Addie had to. They each wore one princess dress-up glove. When Kate held Emmy on the couch, Addison came and grabbed my hand and asked me hold her. I picked her up and she said, "Sit down on couch, Mama," because we had to be just like Emmy and Kate. They cracked us up the whole time. Except when they both wanted a certain toy at the same time – not so funny then. Also, Kate was blessed with the gift of a Disney Princess ride-along truck thing that features princesses twirling to very, very loud music. Every time you touch it, the music starts. There is no volume, and no on/off button. Addison simply adored the truck. The music was the (loud, obnoxious) soundtrack to our visit until finally Uncle Ryan (Kate’s husband) snapped and took the batteries out of it.

Kate and Ryan went for a short while to a party for a co-worker one afternoon, and I got Emmy up from her nap. We played Make-up, and I put eyeliner, mascara, blush, eye shadow, and lipstick on Emilyn while they were gone. Right in the middle of our game, it occurred to me that Kate might not be thrilled with the fact that I was teaching Emmy how to "use" makeup, so I made a special point to tell her that we don’t play with Mommy’s makeup, only Aunt Moo’s (Moo is my old nickname). I started to wipe most of the makeup off, but caught a couple of pictures.

We went to a Mardi Gras parade on Monday night down in the French Quarter, but we were away from most of the less family-friendly activities. There were lots of kids, and it was really a fun time. The girls loved the lights and beads, and we also got lots of stuffed animals and little toys. We were right on the curb and in the street for most of it.

The highlight of the New Orleans trip came on the drive home from the parade. On a narrow street downtown, some girl in a tiny silver sequined skirt was riding a bike of in the middle of the road. It was a really tiny skirt, and no one in our car could be 100% sure that she was even wearing anything underneath – it was pretty hiked up over the bike seat. Ryan jokingly commented on the view in front of us, and Matt said something like, "Yeah, we could drive here allllll night." They laughed, and then Matt said, " Watch it turn out to be a guy, " and we all laughed harder. And then we passed the biker and Kate and I almost died from laughter as we saw the goatee. As Ryan said, that man had the nicest legs we’d ever seen.

We drove home very late Tuesday night, and both kids slept mostly the entire way, which was nice. I slept on and off, and Matt pondered his thoughts for 4 hours while driving across the bayous. He must have had a lot of thoughts. I always make fun of him when he sits silently for so long. There’s an old Seinfeld episode where Elaine gets mad at her boyfriend on the plane because he doesn’t want to listen to music or read or talk during the flight. He just sits there staring at the seat back in front of him and it drives her crazy.

What else has been going on? Ryan is getting more interactive every day. He can go all over the place on the floor now by spinning on his belly and rolling, so he spends a lot of time on the floor "crawling" from place to place. Addison is not thrilled with her brother inadvertently kicking or clawing at her or her toys, so I am being very vigilant in watching her responses to him and to occasionally say things like, "No, Ryan, Addison is playing with that right now, so we’ll play with something else." Usually I have to correct Addison, but I think that sometimes it’s ok to let Addie know that she can play with her toys and that Ryan is the one who needs to be nice and share and not touch her toys while she’s playing.

Ryan is five months old now and has a really funny sounding belly laugh that he’s been doing, and he’s also started one of my favorite parts of babies – when he wake up in the morning, instead of crying or fussing, he rolls over and looks at his mobile and the animals on his crib bumper, and just lays there going " Aaah, ooh, aah," over and over. I can hear him on the monitor and it’s a much pleasanter way to wake up every morning instead of hearing crying. Of course, it would be even better if I was hearing the cooing sounds at 7:30 or 8 instead of 6:30, but oh well.

Addison is getting sillier and smarter and funnier every day. Yesterday she showed a first major sign of playing pretend. She had been talking about Matt’s parent’s farm, and she then grabbed her purse and grabbed my hand (she has learned "Come with me, Mama, " and "Watch me, Mama") and led me into my bedroom. I asked where we were going, and she said," To the farm." We got to my bed and she climbed up and looked around and frowned, and then pointed to the center of the bed and said, "Mama, the farm is right HERE!" And she took 2 deliberate steps to the middle and began jumping up and down and singing ‘Old McDonald’. I know, I know, it’s not the greatest story in the world for the general public to read, but I am documenting it for myself, because it is yet one more significant door opening in her development. Seriously, I could sit here all day and have something new to type every 10 minutes or so as she does/says something she’s never done before or I see a new connection being made in her head. A few days ago, she had a bowl of Goldfish and was very worried that the dog was going to eat them (Casey only eats them if they spill, which is often). After running around yelling at poor Casey for several minutes, she finally said, "Casey, no swiping!" (Dora reference). It made me laugh.

She also wore her mermaid costume yesterday and we decided to let her watch "The Little Mermaid". I had forgotten about the ending with the big octopus/Sea Witch, which could be a little scary, but I watched it with her and said things like, "Wow, look how big she is! She’s using a loud outside voice!" and Addie agreed and seemed fine. After it was over, I was talking to Matt and asked him if we needed to get "It" for her to play with ("It" being an Ariel doll of some sort, which I didn’t want to say out loud, due to the fact that many very sad tears were shed when the movie was over and I didn’t want to bring it up again), and Addison once again reminded us that she listens to every word we say by immediately saying, from the other room, "No, Mama, I don’t want it, I don’t want to play with the octopus." So that shows that a) she eavesdrops, b) she can infer what we were discussing in relation to events that had just passed, and c) that she remembered the big octopus and while she smiled and laughed at the movie, she was able to pick up on the intrinsic scariness of the image and music and knew she did not want the octopus as a toy. Consider this another lesson in TV/Movie exposure. Not that I necessarily wouldn’t have let her watch it, but I might have skipped past some of the scarier parts, since it is the ocean animals and music and mermaids that Addison really likes to watch right now. I still wonder how much of the story she follows in anything she watches.

As usual in springtime, we seem to have a busy schedule ahead of us for the next several weekends. We have several church activities coming up, and the MOPS garage sale is this weekend. I’m working at it and might find some cool stuff, although I don’t’ really need anything else. Next weekend is the big Just Between Friends consignment sale, and I have a bunch to stuff to get tagged and ready for that. Today, I’m taking the dog to the vet and Ryan to the doctor, because Matt has a bloodhound type nose and swears he smells an ear infection setting in (Ryan has been congested for 6 weeks). Matt is also going to plan a night/weekend out with some guy friends, and we might try to go to the Houston Rodeo this year one weekend. Our Google calendar is rapidly filling up!