Update

Just wanted to update you on Winter of Discontent 2008. I have made the decision with the support of my husband and Baby Girl's pediatrician to wean the little sucktopus onto formula until she is 12 months, at which point she can wear one of those helmets with the two long straws piping two big bottles of the bovine milk into her system. Or soymilk if she likes. Either way, it does a body good. So for the present, we're still doing a couple of boobfeedings a day and I do my best to distract her and offer her the sippy cup o' powdered nutrish even when she is pawing at my chest like a lion cub wanting to play tetherball. She is a good little girl, and very snugglicious and cute, so this is a bit of a hard thing to deny her. Still, I'm ready to go on my meds, I think it is the best thing for everyone, so I am doing my best to advance the process.

At this point, though, we're still conducting creative negotiations with the Sucktopus, whom we love very much.

***

Hey, you, come over here. Just because it's in a sippy cup doesn't mean it's poison.

Give it a try. Whaddayou say?

I'll give you a cupcake bath bomb if you drink 2 ounces....

Don't look at me like bribing is something you're all above now.

Well, now or later, kid. Either way, you're okay with us.

'Tis the Season

I've been busy about the house, festooning mantles and bookshelves with lights and faux frost and snowpeople whom Baby Girl waves at every morning, like, "Hey, guys! Just in time for breakfast!" It's been great fun, but I think I got a little overzealous because I took a short trip down the spiral staircase yesterday and bungled up my tailbone and knee pretty bad. It hurts to pick up Baby Girl, so I'm trying to take it easy. Whatever that means. Look at me. I'm crazy about Christmas! In other news, I'm totally saddened about so many people losing jobs and losing healthcare and losing humor over the whole roiling recession afoot. However, if paper reindeer antlers aren't the short-term answer, then I just don't know what is.

See, even my tree agrees. Antlers are the answer.

Taking a self-portrait on carousel. Mad skillz yo.

Yeah, she's eating a nail file. She's still been a good girl [photo subject] all year.

Love Actually is All Around

I must have unconsciously picked the right side of the wish bone to pull because Thanksgiving entailed three 1-2-3 count 'em 3 full days of Loverpants, no pager, no interruption, all Loverpants all the time, and I was thankful indeed. I surmised that even Baby Girl was flourishing with her papa around to nuzzle noses and read all of the Sandra Boynton books in voices that mommy can't simulate. And that right there, folks, is why Adam got hisself an Eve. It was largely because Adam would be lonely, but also! God knew that Eve just couldn't do all the clever voices for Cain n' Abel. Adam would need to school her in storytime. However, because I subsist on self-invented neurosis and can't sit back and actually fully enjoy time with my husband, I was thinking about my mother-in-law and how she told me that she discovered that her own father had a brain tumor. She began to notice that he started doing peculiar, childish things like getting huffy when his grandsons would win in board games, and not closing the door to the bathroom. So of course Loverpants goes and gets all miffy when Baby Girl won't give him a smooch on the cheek and later on he falls when walking down the basement steps and I'm springing up in bed OMG LOVERPANTS! GO GET A CAT SCAN IMMEDIATELY!!!!

I pulled myself together, though, as Loverpants had to go back to work and I had to do some roving around downtown with Baby Girl so she could experience full-on the season of wonder and lights. We took many pictures over the last few days, such that if it were a crime, I'd be held in the slammer for life, with no chance of parole.

*** We also attempted to take our yuppie family holiday picture. You can see how successful we were. Take Two.