fun at the playground

today, after some oatmeal with a side of attitude,

we went out to meet jill and nora jane for a walk. i settled beebs into her stroller and she paused to adjust her hat,

and then she was ready to go!

after a very breezy walk around the pond, we stopped at the "tot lot" nearby to push the girls on the swings.

bebe had a great time.

swinging at the playground is her new favorite thing!

favorite

it probably won't come as any surprise to you that i take lots of photos of bebe. on any given day, i take at least 20 or 30. sometimes it's hard to pick my favorite -- those are usually the days i post a whole bunch. other days, like today, it's not hard at all.

catch up

gotta catch you up on the past few days, since i never found time to post yesterday.

on friday night, bebe tried yogurt for the first time.

unfortunately, when i cleaned her up, all the skin that the yogurt had been touching was bright pink, almost like a sunburn. after talking with the pediatrician on call, i dashed out to get some children's benadryl (note: obtain antihistamine before giving baby potential allergen), but by the time i got back home again the redness was fading on its own. we'll be waiting a while before we try any more dairy, though.

here is beebs yesterday, playing with some toys, wearing her celtics hat... and some sparkly legwarmers. what?!? her legs were cold!

yesterday afternoon we spent a long time looking out the window. there's a little park across the street where people from our neighborhood take their dogs, and every time we saw a dog bebe got really excited. i found it interesting that even from all that distance (we are on the third floor, so things all the way down on the ground, across the street, are pretty far away from our window) she could still tell the interesting creatures (animals) from the less interesting ones (their owners).

and today, bebe was pretty sure she had died and gone to heaven. since she has been getting increasingly testy about the fact that she's not allowed to use our laptops, josh went down to the basement and got one of our ollllllld powerbooks. which, you know, we're keeping around just in case it ever comes back into style.* now bebe has her very own computer, on which to file our taxes and write my dissertation. we don't keep her around for her good looks, people.

*actually because we are INCAPABLE of throwing anything out. ever.

here is a picture that indisputably demonstrates the presence of the tooth. are you happy now, dr. steve?

and, finally, some video that i shot the other night, when josh and bebe were in the bathroom after her bath. ever since she was born, they have had some fun games that they play just the two of them. this one is the newest -- getting her into her PJs becomes "building the baby of the future." because every family needs a robot baby.

it's really just for the audio, so take a listen. didn't i pick the best daddy for my beebs?

bebe watching bebe

ok, this one's kind of meta. here is bebe watching a video of herself (the one where she pulls up to standing on the side of her crib). she loves to watch herself! what i should have done was film her watching me make this video -- she loved watching herself watch herself, too.

and then my heart exploded with love

just like her friend nolan

the family that i used to babysit for in western mass (now too old to need a babysitter but still very good friends of ours) had a picture on their fridge of their older son, nolan, as a baby, eating a lemon. his mom beth told me the story (which happened before i knew them), how they had been out to eat and nolan ended up with a lemon wedge, and to their surprise he really liked it.

i wasn't thinking about that picture this afternoon, when i was holding a freshly-up-from-her-nap bebe in one arm while finishing up a marinade for dinner with my other hand (ah, multitasking, thy name is motherhood). i was juicing some lemons and bebe reached for an already-juiced half. i let her take it, thinking that i'd get a funny, "oooh boy that's sour!" expression out of her.

wrong. she loooooooved it. she spent 20 minutes chomping on it, and would gladly have kept right at it if her mean mommy hadn't taken it away upon noticing that she was getting a little rash around her mouth from the citric acid. since bebe had about 36 hours of health before coming down with a brand new cold, i figured that a nice big dose of vitamin C wasn't such a bad idea.

wheee!

bebe's first trip to a playground:

these pictures utterly fail to convey how excited she was. she squealed and screamed with delight on the swings and had a huge smile as i slid her down the slide.

_

bebe and grammy

yesterday afternoon we went to visit bebe's grammy and grampa glen and aunties and uncles. bebe always loves to see her grammy and spends lots of time snuggling with her.

grammy sent us home with some yummy cinnamon raisin bread which bebe enjoyed for breakfast this morning. she couldn't get enough!

thanks for all the snuggles and the tasty bread, grammy!

_

happy girl

sometimes people who are hanging out with us and beebs will ask, "is she really this happy all the time?" the answer is: pretty much. if she's healthy, and we time eating and sleeping right, she'll often go an entire day without crying or fussing.* here are a few pics from today -- bebe's cold is finally gone and she is all smiles.

* i suspect these days are coming to a close, though, as mobility -- and its attendant bumps and falls, to say nothing of all the times each day she's going to hear "no!" -- looms.

_

afternoon with mems and teed

mems and teed drove out for the afternoon to visit bebe. she was pretty excited to see them! after a wicked xylophone concert, she and daddy sat down to show off her passing skills.

then she showed teed her piano, pausing every now and again to gaze up at mems adoringly.

we finished off the day by going out for an early dinner, where bebe chewed on pizza crust and grooved to live music.

thanks for coming to see us, mems & teed!!!

_