super scary

The scariest things at our house:

1. the vacuum

2. the Rody

3. the coffee grinder

4. the red rubber playground ball

The vacuum has always been an issue. M starts crying when we take it out of the closet. She doesn't even wait for us to turn it on.

She's starting to get over the coffee grinder, especially because she associates it with the Daddy person.

The Rody is actually kind of scary. It stares at you in an expectant way. Plus, when M sits on it, it bounces, which is incredibly suspicious.

The ball, though? Not that scary, in my book. I made the mistake of thinking it would be fun to roll the ball across the floor, which resulted in several fits of crying, shaking limbs, and attempts to climb Mama's leg. Rather than putting it away--because that would have been waaay too easy--I decided to just leave the ball lying around the living room so that everyone could get used to seeing it.

A few days later, M and Finch came across the ball and spent the next ten or fifteen minutes trying to decide what to do about it.

They finally got up the nerve to approach the ball.

M summoned all her courage and actually touched the ball. Very slowly. With one finger.

Still not entirely sure what to think of the thing, she tried smacking it a little harder.

When the ball started moving, the baby and the cat both decided to give it some space...

...and then ultimately chose to ignore it for the rest of the afternoon.

where we've been, part 3

In this final installment of catch-up posts, here are a few more moments I couldn't resist sharing with you. This will be the last dive into the archives for awhile. We'll try our best to keep things more current from now on...

Standing on the couch to look out the windows is the new cool thing. We watch the crows, recycling trucks and bicycles. Random people walking by have been known to wave at us. It's kind of great.

Funny. Daddy gets the same look on his face when he finds there's no coffee in his mug.

Somebody has to keep an eye on Grandpa R. That guy is trouble.

Rocking her fancy cat hat from Auntie Meg.

We've recently instituted family dinners, which makes this Mama incredibly happy. We get to gang up on M, and she gets to see both of us at the same time for more than two minutes. There's also some pretty entertaining eating. Favorite foods: hard-boiled egg yolks, cottage cheese, sardines. Least favorite foods: bananas and, um, bananas.

Although she loves both of the cats, Finch seems to be M's regular playmate. It's possible that they have the same number of brain cells. They are both prone to getting stuck in boxes.

One of our favorite new hangouts is the zoo, although M could care less about the animals there. The toddler play area, though, is definitely her cup of tea. She's especially fond of harassing and abusing the bigger kids and trying to climb in places I wish she wouldn't.

Doing the can-can? Showing off her new legwarmers? Just generally being awesome.

Until next time, Earthlings!

where we've been, part two

We left for Ohio with a baby and returned home with a toddler. We knew on the flight back that this was the case, but it took a good week for us to really wrap our heads around the idea. The end result was a mad dash of babyproofing, a project that still continues on a daily basis, as our small person gets smarter and bigger and faster.

As it turns out, it's not the crawling that causes all the trouble. For us, at least, it's been the standing. A few days after our return from Ohio looked like this:

And not long after that, the most interesting game in the world became Clear the Coffee Table. It was a really long game and would probably have continued on for the past few weeks, except for the fact that Mama got tired of re-stocking the game board every five minutes.

Clear the Coffee Table Champ of 2013!

Of course, it hasn't all been fun and games. Somebody, for instance, has to taste test the laundry.

It's thankless work, people. Fortunately, the laundry basket is prone to falling over, which apparently signals quitting time.

And then there was the discovery of the DVD library.

Those sliding cabinet doors are, it turns out, rather intuitive.

Having another small creature to collaborate with was a dream come true for the cats, who'd been trying to master the door thing for awhile. M, on the other hand, seemed surprisingly unwilling to share the fruits of her labor.

After a couple of days of this and lots of DVDs piled on the floor, we rearranged most of our living room. The coffee table is now serving as a barricade in front of the movie library. M, of course, has moved on to bigger and better things...