contortionist

money is tight this holiday season, so we're thinking about renting bebe out to the circus.

behold! the amazing human baby pretzel!

five months old!

beatrix was so excited about being five months old that she woke up for the day at 4 a.m.

she is handling it much better than i am. yawn.

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and the hats just keep on coming

bebe has slowly but surely been outgrowing the clothes she's been wearing for the past few months. yesterday i finally undertook the project of sorting and washing the next size and packing up the old ones. my sadness at putting away so many adorable things she'll never wear again was tempered, somewhat, by the appearance of yet another contender for the "cutest bebe hat" award:

as i am currently doing research on the 1920s i find it especially enjoyable to have a flapper for a baby.

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he cracks her up -- EDITED

yesterday we spent the afternoon with our friend jonathan. i was his nanny long ago and his mom asked if we could come over and hang out with him since she was out of town. bebe thought he was just about the funniest person she'd ever seen -- she has never laughed like this for anyone other than josh or me before.

{edit: my sister reminds me that, in fact, bebe has laughed like this for her aunt marge several times. ok, i was being a bit hyperbolic. she doesn't often laugh this hard for people other than her parents, is what i should have said.}

new hat

as faithful readers of the daily bebe know, beatrix has one really cute winter hat. it turns out, though, that one hat just isn't enough, especially when that hat goes under the chin of a baby who spits up a lot. when she desperately needs another hat, who's a baby to turn to?

her knitter extraordinaire grammy, of course!

thanks grammy!!!

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it's tubba time!

no relation to rudolph

every year at this time, i make a whole bunch of cookies -- four different varieties, usually -- to give to people. i make a trip down to school with a big bag full of plates of cookies for my faculty, the women who work in our department's office, and friends.

although everyone asked how on earth i had time to bake, it was actually a lot easier this year, with a baby who's happy to entertain herself in the walker for stretches of time, so long as she has toys to gum and then throw on the floor, than it was last year when i was two months pregnant, nauseous and exhausted.

last night, i was up late frosting sugar cookies

and this morning i packaged them up.

then i collected my trusty holiday sidekick, chunk-a-lunk, the reindeer who was too bottom heavy to fly*, and we headed down to providence.

*nickname courtesy of her father

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double barreled

after her bath tonight, bebe refined her wrestling moves.

he's making a list

we went over to jack and katie and will's house last night. they (and their mom gina) had a few presents for bebe. a really sweet "baby's first christmas" tree ornament, a christmas onesie, and this perfect hat.

it says "i've been good, mostly"

and that right there is the face of a mostly good baby... with a little mischief thrown in.

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saturday morning

on saturdays, josh and i split up the day. he gets bebe for the morning and i get her for the afternoon. this is supposed to give us each time to do our own things, although this is not so much the case for me as my breasts are required every couple of hours for feeding. so i hang out at home, trying to get some work done on my dissertation in between nursing beebs and, of course, taking pictures of her. she's just so cute! despite the three different outfits, all of these pics are from this morning. (i'll leave it up to you to imagine why she might have needed three changes of clothes.)

her new favorite activity: standing!

helping daddy put the lights on our christmas tree:

snuggling:

and being "superface" (josh is whistling the superman movie theme song, which never fails to crack her up):

skulls

we have a couple prints by mister reusch on the wall in bebe's room. they are spooky illustrations of skeletons which are left over from when the room was josh's, and we kept them up because we think every child should have a healthy fear of death. no, just kidding, we kept them up because we think if she grows up around those kinds of images, they won't be scary for her.

anyway, today she noticed them for the first time and spent ten minutes staring at them and smiling . that's my girl! her interest in them prompted me to take these pictures of her with the skelanimals that josh got for me and the baby-to-be for christmas last year. they are a bunny and a kitty, and the company's motto is "because dead animals need love too." beatrix was happy to oblige.

beatrix is on the move!

for the past couple weeks now, bebe's preferred position is standing. unfortunately, despite all the pilates she's been doing, her core still isn't strong enough to hold herself upright unassisted, which means lots of assistance from mommy and daddy. and sometimes we have other things to do. since bebe's other favorite thing to do these days is practice "walking," i decided to get her a walker to play in. (don't worry, we don't have any stairs in our apartment, so it's perfectly safe.) i found one yesterday on craigslist, and i'm pretty sure this was the best $10 i ever spent:

walk like an egyptian

mems and teed are leaving today for an exciting adventure.

bebe says: have fun, and bring me back some hieroglyphics!

and some food, too, i'm starving over here.

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getting a head start

bebe is boning up on her numbers. preschool is right around the corner!

totally nude laughing

over the summer, when bebe was only about a month old, we were driving up to the beach in hampton, NH and we passed an "adult" store that always cracks us up because it advertises "TOTALLY NUDE LADIES!!!" ever since then, when bebe's naked we call her a totally nude lady. she loves being naked and now she loves hearing the phrase, too. today while having some naked bottom time she peed all over her shirts and in no time flat was a TNL. i think this was her plan all along. see her look of glee, like she got away with something?

and in this video, not only can you hear her squeals of delight, you can also see her signature wrestling move, where she pumps her arm up and down and whacks herself menacingly in the hip. beatrix's wrestling alter ego is bebe the bruiser, a.k.a. "the portuguese thunder thighs." her great-grandmother was fondly known as "the portuguese thunder" due to her amazing ability, despite being only about five feet tall and under a hundred pounds, to wrestle her rambunctious great-grandchildren into submission. we sure wish she had lived to meet bebe -- this little lady would have given her a run for her money.

kicking back

after a long hard day of eating, napping, and growing, bebe marie likes to relax on the couch and watch the celtics pregame show with daddy.

le bebe de les etoiles

this morning when he was getting her dressed, josh put bebe in one of the shirts that nolan and andrew made for her, and i realized i hadn't posted a picture of this one before. we love it.

thanksgiving

we had a great thanksgiving. despite our worries about how bebe would handle the journey to long island and having to sleep in unfamiliar surroundings, she did great. while she didn't sleep as well as she normally does, you never would have known from her demeanor. she was, as she always seems to be when placed in a room full of people cooing at her, utterly charming and delightful. it was a real treat to see her with all of my mom's cousins. as usual when josh has his camera out, i barely took any pictures at all, but i do have a bit of documentation of beebs's first thanksgiving.

after spending the night at my nana's house, we took a ferry from new london, CT, to long island on thursday morning. bebe amused herself (and us!) on the car ride from orient point, where the ferry docked, to massapequa, where my mom's cousin mary and her husband laz live, by chattering away for almost the entire 90 minute drive:

then, after the great poop debacle of thanksgiving '08, wherein bebe pooped all over her adorable dress and tights (this, i might add, while wearing a disposable diaper -- we have NEVER had such a mess in cloth), we put her in a sweater and jeans and she hung out happily in a bouncy seat while we all ate dinner.

the next morning, she was completely mesmerized watching mary play this xylophone. she couldn't take her eyes off mary's hand, and every so often a particular combination of notes would make her smile.

we went out to breakfast, where daddy had french toast and bebe had breast milk.

and then we drove back to nana's, where we relaxed for a few hours before heading back home again.

i am bothered by the thanksgiving holiday -- the myth of happy pilgrims and helpful indians sharing a meal together that we all learned in grade school serves to obscure the years of violence and near genocide that ensued after europeans' contact with the native peoples of america. if you really want to know what i'm most thankful for this year, though, in place of the thousand words i could easily write, i give you this:

and i am thankful, too, for the support of family and friends that helped bring her here and now help keep her healthy, happy, and clothed. thank you all.

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