My Pantry:

My pantry thanks to Megan:

This weeks dinner menu:

The real trick would be to get daddy to spend the entire day with both kids to show how much he loves them while mommy goes out for a manicure.  But instead we settle for an office floor filled with balloons and home made cards.  Oh, and dinner.  That was fun for me  Daddy.

They had matching outfits which I should have just bought one of and switched it for the pictures and you would never of known because oh my goodness just be in one picture with your sister darn it.  As you can see I now have to put Megan on top of tall things that she thinks she will fall off of in order to get a picture. Hmpfffff...

Many kisses to a wonderful daddy.  We could never ask for more!  Well, maybe to change a diaper.

Yesterday Emily was crying and Megan came over to her and patted her on the head and said, "Em-wah-dee, it okay.... Em-wah-dee... okay."   She repeated her patting and soft words until I was able to pick her little sister up.  It is the first time she said her name so clearly.  She had called her Eye-eee-eee a few times but this was a really distinct try. 

Megan calls the trash can a "kit can." I don't know why I find that funny but I do.  

We talk about going to Mickey-D's for dinner.  We then talk about going to McDonald's for dinner.  All she hears is the "Mickey" and the "Donald" part and then is really and truly sad when we don't actually go to Mickey and Donald's for dinner.  

Emily will look at me and wildly flail her arms until they hit my face and then, with a huge open mouth, pull my face towards hers and suck on what ever part lands in her mouth.  Her version of kisses.  Disgusting.  Adorable.

Megan used to want us to wrap her blanket around her chest as we chanted, "Toga! Toga!" but when we tried it yesterday it was waaaay to small.  Now we have to wrap it around her neck and call it a cape.  Sigh.

That is all.  Really. Go about your day.

Asking price was, well... free and in today's market we thought that was fair.

It is a bit of a fixer-upper with slight structural damage.

but during the final walk-through, Megan decided it would be "cozy."

 She started moving her furniture in.

 and when she learned that the front door sticks a little, she found another way to enter.

She then invited some friends over

 and enjoyed some time on the front porch.

She plans on staying until the market goes up and she can sell or until bedtime when we have to use the stairs...

Lets go to sleep!

Not in mommy's arms.

We are going to eat steak for dinner!

You get milk because you have no teeth.

We are going to the mall!

The toy store is closed.

Who wants ice cream!

It all melted, plus they don't have sprinkles. Or caramel topping.

We are buying a pony!

It's for your sister.

We're buying a car!

It's a GM.

You've been accepted into the NFL Draft!!! You're gonna play for a real football team!

It's the Raiders.

(Man! She looks fat in these pictures!)

(Sung to the tune of On Top of Spaghetti.)

(Creative License taken.)

(Whatever, if you can do better go ahead and send me some verses. I'll add them in, smartypants.)

High-maintenance baaaaaby,

What do you need?

Your high-pitched squeeeeeling

Is making my ears bleed.

Look at these neat tooooys,

We bought them for you.

Don’t they look fun?

Now hush that noise.

Mamma’s arms are not maaaagical,

Daddy can rock you too.

Your making my brain

Kind of fragical.

High-maintenance baaaaaby,

Why do you sob?

You're making me look

Very inept at my job.

You want nothing but booooobies,

All day and all night.

But they haven’t left you,

Just ‘cuz I’m out of sight.

High-maintenance baaaaby,

Why do you fuss?

Something, something, something

Duck billed platypus.

Everyone says how sweeeet you are,

And it is so true.

As long as I

Am holding you.

High-maintenance baaaaby,

You do love the sling.

But look at this contraption,

Its called a swing…

High-maintenance baaaby,

All covered with cheese.

I think I will eat you,

I’ll start with your knees.

(Yes, that is a burp cloth covering her face. She calms down when her eyes are covered... just like an alligator.)

(No. She isn't really asleep. Don't let her fool you.)

The evolution of this blog has been on my mind.  Hearkening back to the early days of blogging makes me feel like adding "whippersnapper" to the end of every sentence and uttering  the "up hill both ways in snow" stories of  yesteryear as I shake a finger at you.  But back in the dawn of blogging time there was a lot of controversy over the safety of publishing stories or photographs of kids on the "Internets."  I thought long and hard over my decision to offer up pictures of Beebo.  I thought for sure that predators would flip through blogs like the Sears Roebuck catalog of victims and simply pick out the ones they wanted. I was careful to offer no personal information. 

There are still people who think this form of social media was sent by the devil to destroy newspapers, spread disease, and eat small children. And although I will always be careful as to what I post about my children, I have concluded that they are no more at risk now that they are on this blog than when I yell their names in public. Those people hear Beebo's full name as I bellow it at the top of my lungs so she stops running down the isle at the grocery store or out the door at Target. And I have never, not even once, used a nickname to protect her. I am what protects her.  Her mommy that loves her.

Children are vulnerable anywhere.  If you have some, you need to watch them.

Go check on them now.  I'll wait.

I am paranoid beyond belief when it comes to their safety.  I try to balance the importance of the story, as a mother, to the perspective of their privacy. Some times the reconciling of sharing and privacy intersect and I am always improvising as to how much is too much.  The borders around the territory of "mine" and "theirs" is a shifting one and will change as the grow. 

They are my life. I want nothing more than to protect them. At the same time, I want to share them with those family members and friends whom we don't see often.  I never meant to be a mommy-blogger and hope to never become popular enough to need to worry about the safety of the very people that make my heart beat and world spin.  I am glad my audience is small.

To date, I have kept their names out of the blog.  My protective mind was certain it was too much information. But because the central focus of this blog is my children, I am beginning to think that maybe it isn't fair to withhold that information from you. I want you to connect to us as a family and using nicknames is a hard way to do so.  Plus, I stopped calling Beebo by that nickname when she was a baby.  Poor Bellybeebo still doesnt have a nickname and well, she isn't a BellyBeebo any longer.  

 
I feel like the handful of visitors that read my posts deserve to read about my children with no restraint. That's where I am with it today, anyway. Other blogging parents have arrived at different decisions. Like every other judgement call you make as a parent I will be left to decide if I made the right decision. But I made this one out of the bonds of safety, love and respect.

And now the short ending to such a long-winded post.

Meet Megan:

and Emily:

My Loves. My Life. My Daughters.

Beebo walked around the house today with a plastic bin on her

head yelling, "Whoa-bot!"  Not sure about the sock on her hand.

My child. Our sweet wee daughter turns four months old today.  Four Months?  I can hardly believe it.  Many things have happened in the last four months, including my newborn rag-doll baby slowly transforming into what is apparently going to be a  chunky infant. I can not even account for the whole four months.  It doesn't seem like four months have past since I first saw her face and heard her newborn wails.

There has been lots of gazing into her deep blue eyes; she has a small mark of dark blue on the outer side of her left eye that always pulls me in.  It looks a little like Italy.  There has been singing and dancing and kissing her chubby little feet and lots and lots of nursing.  There have been smiles upon smiles and excited little yells when I leave for two minutes and then COME BACK! She likes to be held while she is awake and held while she is  asleep and during any transition between the two. 

A perfectly happy little girl. 

We have been feeling growing pains.  Sure.  All four of us. Balancing the needs of an infant with the needs of a toddler with the needs of a Husband has been a challenge and just when I think I have the hang of it something makes me feel like a failure.  But the challenge has so many sweet rewards. I wouldn't trade anything, not even a million showers by myself with the door shut, for one moment staring at this sweet baby.

Four Months Old.

and double folds where there are...