Paying for College

I’ve got a new plan – see if I can get Margaret signed up with some cosmetics company as a mascara model.  Because honestly, you stick any mascara on these, and you can make extravagant claims about its efficacy.  I mean, look at them. 

I mean, really.  It’s not like she even needs them at this point in her life.

Also, lest there be humorless people out there who think I’m serious, rest assured that I am not trying to get Margaret into kiddie modeling, eyelashes or no eyelashes.  Of course, if someone were to offer me flipping great wadges of money for a picture of her eyelashes, I might be talked into it, if the wadges were great enough.*  But we are in no sense pursuing such an option. 

*And, of course, flipping enough.

Getting Her Good Side

Ellie fell asleep in the middle of her photoshoot, but you can see that she was posing for us very nicely.

See, the angle she’s got her head at minimizes the above-eye cheek bulges.

Also, before I forget, at her 2-month checkup (before she choked on the oral vaccine and STOPPED BREATHING briefly)* she was 12 lbs even and 21.5 inches.**  I didn’t get the number for her head circumference, but she’s in the 50th percentile, so she has an exceptionally average head.  Unlike some people, whose names we won’t mention.  Also, she’s very healthy and lifting her head up in a better than average sort of way.  (See?  My child is BRILLIANT.  She’s got the head-lifting skill of a much older baby.  We should start her in kindergarten early).

*Which was rather shocking, but if you’re going to stop breathing, what better place to do it than at the doctor’s office, right?  And it was very briefly, and she’s fine, and there’s no reason to think that she’ll do it again.  She just breathed at exactly the wrong moment at exactly the wrong angle and whatnot. 

**The doctor thinks that measurement is probably wrong, but there’s no reason to redo it.  But I think she’s taller than that.

She’s Got a Little List

Margaret, when small, was soothed by being sung to, but she had a rather bloodthirsty taste in songs.  She seemed to like them better if people died, or were going to die, or at least suffered.  And so, as a matter of course, I sang her many songs from The Mikado. 

From that experience, she seems to have learned the importance of keeping lists.

But Margaret doesn’t keep a list of people who need to die, but rather people who she loves.*

If you are Caty or Pat, good for you.  If Pete, who the heck are you?  And those of you who are not the car?  You should feel pretty awesome.

Actually, before I got the recording equipment out, she admitted to loving Betsy (said very emphatically), Lea, Mommy, Nana, Daddy and Ellie.  And she opined that Ellie loved Margaret.

As I tried to get her to repeat that performance, we got a section where she was very insistent that she loved Ron, and then went back to Caty, before saying Mommy and turning her back.

So there you have it.  Margaret’s making a list.

*I think.  I mean, if she is looking for people to kill, then those of you who get a shout-out here may want to be a little careful when you’re around her.

Smiling Girl

Ellie has learned how to smile, and has been obligingly doing so for the camera.

And she’s learned how to look goofy.

Though she may just be trying to get her tongue to the pacifier.

She Can Quit Anytime

Does anyone think Margaret has a problem?

I know – no one should have that much fun with a Starbucks bag.  We went to get coffee for Leo this morning, and she asked for banana bread.  Because she loves banana bread.  Desperately.

A Different Route

We went to the Botanical Garden this morning.  We tried to go yesterday morning, but they were having an Easter Egg Hunt, and we don’t like people, so we decided to avoid it.  We went to Forest Park instead, and Margaret made a good dent in the dandelion population.

Anyway, when we go to the Botanical Garden, we have a route which we walk, which is a good route and a decent route, and the sort of route that everyone would follow if only they knew what was good for them.

But this morning, Margaret deviated, and would not be persuaded to go where we wanted her to go. Which meant that we visited all sorts of things that we don’t usually visit.  For example, she found a peacock statue.

And rode on it.

And she went into the Climatron (because what we needed this morning was HIGHER HUMIDITY) where they have a fake hollow tree, which is fun.

She wound her way down to the children’s activity area where they have just gone from forest-themed décor to Chinese-themed décor.  She found a table and some cushions and a kitchen, and was happy as a clam for a while.

 

Then we went back outside, and she found her way to a fountain with raccoons in it, and she decided to join them.

And she spent some time hanging out on a rock with Daddy.

Daddy wasn’t, as it happens, planning on sitting down, but Margaret made it clear that she expected him to, so he did.

Also, this has been a pretty Margaret-heavy post, and that is because on these outings, Ellie hangs out in a very hard-to-photograph place.  I tried, thought.

She mostly sleeps while we walk around.  But she seems to like it.  (And she is wearing a sunhat, but I pulled it back while I took the picture.  Don’t worry – we’re not burning her).

Silence, Like A Poultice Came*

The children are all asleep at the same time.  See?

 

And so I am blogging.  Because when they’re not asleep, they’re so dang busy actually living their lives, that I don’t have time to record them.  It’s a paradox, that’s what it is.**

Weirdly, this post is just about the fact that they’re asleep, and I’ve pretty much covered that.  So I’m going to go and write another post about what we did this morning to tire them out, and if it doesn’t show up until tonight, it’s probably because someone woke up.

*My great-grandmother said that a lot, and so my mother said it, and now I’m saying it.  The full line is “And silence, like a poultice comes, to heal the blows of sound,” and apparently Oliver Wendell Holmes said it as well as my great-grandmother. 

**It’s not really a paradox, but it sounds kind of close to one.