Little Peeps

Nope. Not the marshmallow kind.

We have real actual chicks! I've wanted chickens for some time now, but we just finally got ourselves together enough to do it. We got baby chicks on Wednesday, and Seville is totally enamored of them (as am I. I mean, really, who wouldn't be?)

They're really unbearably cute. They are so soft and fuzzy and weigh about as much as a paperclip and do nothing but peep and poop all day. Believe it or not, the constant pooping is a commodity I was looking forward to. I want the fertilizer. But obviously I'll be even more excited about eggs, when they come. It will be a while yet.

In the meantime, we need to find names for them (which means we can't eat them, as I understand it. You can't eat something that has a name.). Our neighbor, who has long teased us about our cat's name (Richard Parker - after the tiger in "The Life of Pi" - we always use both the first and last name, as in the book) says he fully expects sophisticated first and last names for the chickens as well. We'll see.

New York City - Auntie x11

My sister, who lives in Manhattan, just had a baby. She's sooooo cute and tiny! Dutiful aunt that I am trying to be, I went out to visit her. I didn't bring a camera because Delta charges for every bag (even your first one! jerks!), and so I was trying to cram the trip into a carry-on. (My sister gave me a hard time all weekend about how I looked like a tourist with all my multi-purpose clothes and shoes - there is apparently no worse insult in Manhattan. Like how in Germany the worst thing you can do is call someone a pig-dog. oooooooh.)

Anyway, there are a total of two pictures of me in New York, both taken from my brother-in-law's cell phone, so the quality is great, as you'd imagine. This one is in some fancy hotel where we asked if we could change a diaper...

And this one holding the baby in the Theater District before bidding my sister and her hubby farewell for the evening. (They went to a Broadway show, while I took the baby back home via subway and bus and took care of her until they got back.)

I didn't really do anything New York-ish while I was there. It would have been more or less the same if we'd been in some po-dunk town in Iowa (sorry, Iowans). But Manhattan is definitely its own thing. We were running errands one day and I went to pick something up at the drugstore. I'm crossing the street to the Walgreens when I look up and realize I'm on Times Square. Everyone around me is dressed up, hustling and bustling, taking pictures, full of energy. Meanwhile I'm here just buying diapers. Funny.

Kids' Questionnaire

This little questionnaire has been floating around my extended family for a few weeks. You can get pretty hilarious answers from kids when you ask them questions about their mom. Anyway we finally took the time to ask Seville the questions. She's a little young for this, and we skipped some of them, but some of what she said was pretty cute. Jared did the asking, while I was sitting there:


1. What is something Mommy always says to you?

“Um.... [gasp!]... that’s MY chair!!!” [she made me get out of her chair before we continued]

2. What makes Mommy happy?

“I make mommy happy.”

3. What makes Mommy sad?

“The bunny makes mommy sad.” [there was this Easter Bunny in the room we had been playing with. I think she was just searching for something to say, since obviously I'm NEVER sad.]

4. How does Mommy make you laugh?

“...um... yeah..”

[Asked again, in different ways]

“...um... the bunny... [laugh]... um... tickle me on my tummy.”

6. How old is mommy?

Uh.. 2

7. How tall is mommy?

Seville addressing Daddy: “Um... you make mommy taller and taller.”

Daddy: “Oh really?”

Seville addressing Mommy: “Mommy... do you... daddy makes you taller and taller?”

8. What is your mommy's favorite thing to do?

“She likes to do me if I will be gone in the toilet.”

Mommy: “...uh...what was that, will you say that again?”

Seville: “you won’t put me in the toilet.”

Mommy, laughing: “That’s true. I won’t.”

11. What is your mommy really good at?

“Mommy is really really good at to me.”

12. What is your mom not very good at?

“Um... She...She’s not getting the bunny.”

13. What does daddy do for work?

“Um... he drives.”

13. What does mommy do for work?

“She drives too.”

14. What is your mommy's favorite food?

“Um... salad.”

17. What do you and mommy do together?

“Um... we are gonna make things.”

20. How do you know that mommy loves you?

“She loves somebody.”

[Daddy asks the question several ways, trying to get a response, and eventually Seville, understanding that we must want her to say something different, gets creative:]

“She bites me in the morning.”

Easter & Fake Easter

So I got this hat at an estate sale last summer. I thought it was to die for, and it fits Seville, so it was to be her Easter Hat for this year. The rest of her outfit was made to match, including the organza silk shawl.

Here she is enthusiastically running around looking for Easter goodies.

And taking a break to devour a peep.

And swinging, as she is wont to do every time we step foot out of doors.

The funny thing is, none of these pictures is really of Easter. We staged a fake Easter today (which was beautiful) because actual Easter Sunday was a day of torrential rains and cold. After taking Seville's dress off for her nap last week, I couldn't bear to make her wear it again for the hunt afterward, lest she freeze. We used the same easter eggs (she's 2. She doesn't know the difference ;). We even used the same real, dyed eggs. Are those edible after a week? I'm scared)

Here are the rest of our pictures, for those interested:

Seville Thinks Cows suck on Pacifiers

Here is a picture from one of her favorite books.

One day, I was reading to her and she pointed at the bull and said, "it have a fafoo!" ("fafoo" is her word for pacifier.) It took me a second to realize what she was talking about, but I looked at her little face (she was sucking on a pacifier herself), then back at the picture, and laughed and laughed.

Now anytime she sees a cow picture in a book, she thinks it is sucking on a pacifier.

Here, finally are our pics of our trip to Hawaii.

"What?!" your saying. "You went to Hawaii?! When did this happen?"

I know. It was sort of last minute. We'd been saving/planning for a trip to Mexico for a long time - the idea being to use our grandparent's timeshare and Seville's passport (that we got when she was an infant - at expedited prices - for a Spain trip that didn't happen - I didn't want to feel like the passport was a total waste), and to go before she turned 2 so we wouldn't have to buy her a plane ticket. The Mexico thing didn't work out, and like dummies we couldn't get ourselves together during the holidays to plan a trip in time. So we went the week AFTER she turned 2 and had to buy her a ticket anyway. Oh well. Despite the fact that she didn't sleep on either flight (8+ hours on a plane, through naptime one way, into midnight the other!) she was totally sweet and fun. I couldn't have been more delighted to have her along the whole time.

Birthday Photos

Here are the rest of the pics from Seville's birthday - and a couple from Jared's and mine too.

2!

Happy Birthday to the sweetest, most dear thing on the planet, my little Seville!

Birthday flowers from Uncle Bryce.
I put her hair in ponytails for the first time ever. It made me giggle over her cuteness, but made me sad too. It's such a "little girl" thing, which made me see that she is undeniably no longer a baby. I can't believe she's growing up so fast (yeah, no other parent has ever said that before)

Singing the Birthday Song (she actually blew out her own candles. It took her a few tries to get the second one. What does this mean for wishes? Is she hosed?)

Seville does this face now every time you point a camera at her. Oh well.
(hey!... I just realized maybe I should get a camera out every time I need to brush her teeth! there's an idea!)

I made her this blanket for her birthday with my new sewing machine. It's that suuuper sickly soft fuzzy material. I figured she wouldn't let go of it for the next couple of years. She liked lying on it and under it as a plaything until it was time for bed, at which point she promplty rejected all my hard work and loving labor in favor of the old raggety thing from Target that she's had since she was born. Figures.

It's all going so fast, this child thing. I'm lost in amazement, and practically drowning in adoration of her.

I'll post an album of birthday pics soon for the die-hards who want to see it all. Check back.

Holiday Slideshow

Pictures of our holidays, for those who want more.

Happy Christmas

(click image to see large version)

Happy Snowy Sunday!

This is what our day has been like so far! Church was canceled, so
we're just playing in snow and drinking hot chocolate and listening to
Christmas music. Hope you're having fun stuck at home too (if you
are)!

Merry Christmas from Seville

Big Girl Bed

Seville's first night in a toddler bed was last week, and when we went to check on her before turning in ourselves, this is where we found her. We sat there cracking up and taking pictures before putting her back in bed (some great parents we are, eh?).

Which reminded me of the story about my older brother, who slept in the top bunk. My parents one night were awakened by a loud "thump," and ran startled into the bedroom to see what was going on. They found him still asleep on the floor. Kids are weird like that. They seem to be able to sleep through anything.

From the Mouths of Babes

As many of you know, my mother doesn't cook in quantifiable "amounts" like normal people. Rather she cooks in a "dump" of this, a "handful" of that, and "however much looks good" of the other. So many of us, her kids, have attempted over the years to capture something akin to "recipes" from the food she makes. On three separate occasions I've tried to observe and write down what the heck she's doing when she makes her famous sweetbread, and thus I have three sets of notes on the subject.

Today I was attempting to make sweetbread for Thanksgiving, and had Seville helping me, complete with stool and apron and sticky hands delving into all my ingredients. In any case, I set my three sets of notes on the counter, leaned over them and said, half to myself, half to Seville, " ...[sigh]... okay, which of these should we follow?"

To which Seville promptly replied, "Follow the Prophet!" :)

Where, oh Where has my little blog gone

Wondering where we've been? See that picture on the right there? Yes, that is a picture of me re-formatting my hard drive. Yes, I reformatted it because my computer totally and completely and irrevocably crashed. Yes, it means I lose all my data.

Lucky for me, I've been backing up my data pretty regularly (actually, luck had nothing to do with it. It was more brilliance and forethought on my part). I still lost some stuff, but nothing too devastating. I have all my pictures and videos and personal documents, stuff like that.

What I don't have is a fully functioning computer yet. I've got an operating system loaded, my internet running, and a browser. I haven't installed drivers and plugins and applications and stuff yet. Nor have I restored my docs from backups, so I don't have pictures yet either. And I've lost all my customization, which is a pain.

So I'll be busy working on that for several days, I'm sure. So probably no blogging (or checking blogs) for me.

(okay, wait a second, am I becoming one of those "blog apologizers"? Like those people who call or write and say... "oh, geez, I've been meaning to call" but never have anything substantial to say? Or those journal entries where they all start with "boy, it's been so long since I've written anything I'm not sure where to start." sigh.)