I Turn My Back For ONE Second and They Grow Up On Me

I was away from the girls for a whole 24 hours this weekend, and when we got them back already I could see them with fresh eyes. And the fresh eyes have this report: These kids are growing up.

Nutmeg was able to rein in a couple of tantrums that threatened to overtake her and behave herself during a quick shopping trip to the Kenosha Woodmans (wow! what an awesome store! Woodmans has changed since college!)

Now that she has mastered writing most of the letters (she struggles with a few, like G and J), she has spontaneously moved on to writing things down. This weekend she took a discarded envelope and wrote on it: FREM CARE TOO (NUTMEG). Then, since this was obviously a letter from me to her, she asked me to deliver it to her. Which I did, along with a hug the likes of which you don't usually get from the mail carrier, unless you're like me and your mail carrier was your dad.

Coming soon: A picture of one of Nutmeg's little missives.

As for Pebbles, she managed to get to sleep pretty well without me at her grandparents' house overnight. She woke up at the usual times but didn't stay awake too long once she realized there was going to be no nana.

She's also communicating pretty well with pointing, facial expressions, insistent grunts and the occasional word. Her favorite words all sound pretty much the same: "balloon," "ball" and "belly button." But we know which she means because that's the thing she'll be pointing to. Or, if there's no balloon handy (rue the day!) she'll hold up her hand in a fist as if she's clutching one.

She's also transitioning from two naps to one, a greatly anticipated development for me because it will free up my mornings for gym visits this spring, and allow me to bring both kids to the local drop-in daycare a few days a week in summer.

For now, though, it turns every day into a not-all-that-fun guessing game. Morning nap? No? Today, I decided to skip the gym and put her down.

Guess what? She's been fussing up there for an hour. Gar. Now we have just an hour before Nutmeg pick-up. I guess a trip to Bed Bath and Beyond for new pillows and mite-proof cases would fit.

Interesting Learning About Atopic Disease

Today I emailed an author who had been looking for bloggers to read and perhaps blog about her book. I mentioned the blogs I'm writing for -- Wise Bread, ParentingSqud, this one, Chicago Moms Blog, and my new frugal living blog, which I'm not quite ready to reveal.

How do you have time for all that? she wanted to know.

Heh. How, indeed? Just like the toddler who is learning two or more languages simultaneously, I just make less progress on each blog. And yes, the freelancing comes hella slow. Today I got a really nice rejection from a great magazine, though, which put me in a great mood. Like, you get our readers, send us more pitches, that kind of rejection.

The girls are having a blast this week because their grandparents are here three days in a row instead of the usual one-morning stay. We took the folks out to dinner and to Second City for a consolidated two-anniversary gift. It was fun.

I also took advantage of my parents' visit to go to my new regular doctor, who I LOVE, and to an allergist she referred me to. The new regular doctor has also convinced me to get an IUD, partly with her testimony that she loves her own IUD. Yeah, I'm terrified but it Googles well.

The allergist was this fast-talking, witty type, which is funny because the allergist I interviewed about kids and food allergies was just exactly like that. They both had this attitude of, sigh, no one properly understands allergies, ahem, atopic disease, least of all general practitioners and pediatricians.

He sent the nurse in to stick me with 30 different plastic spikes smeared with allergens. The nurse and I speculated on where they acquire all these allergens -- boiling cat dander down to its essence? Superheated and subliminated dust? She left me with an informative information sheet (over-the-counter nose sprays are a waste of money and Claritin is crap, people), and told me to wait 15 minutes. Within 5 I had a couple of major welts on each arm, threatening to grow so large they'd join into one megawelt. And my arm got red and scratchy. The torment was slight compared to my raging curiosity over what on earth was in vials number 24 and 25, not to mention vials 11 - 15.

Turns out my biggest allergy is dust and dust mites. No huge surprise there. The other megaspot was "northern grasses," which the doctor said probably were the source of my allergic problems during San Francisco winters.

I thought I was allergic to mold. But mold didn't react at all. Weird.

His explaination: Since mold is toxic, it can cause non-allergic reactions. It can irritate your eyes. Some people are more sensitive than others. So it could be that my miserable eye condition last summer was the result of toxins we were all exposed to, but only I am bothered by.

However, I am hoping it was just allergies to those dust mites and northern grasses. The condition first got bad with me when I was exposed to a ton of dust, first sweeping out the basement of the new house, then packing and cleaning out the old apartment.

The doctor said that a major exposure could sort of trip your allergy wires and make you react more extremely to any other allergens you encounter, extending the original attack for weeks or even months. Is that what happened to me? Hmm.

Anyway, I have new drugs to try. A prescription nasal spray that is, oddly, supposed to make my eyes feel better. Some Patanol, which didn't help before but he claims may help once the reaction is more under control. Allegra, which he said is the only truly non-drowsy antihistimine.

Oh, and by the way, according to him, I do not have asthma.

I Made Bread!

I have been wanting a bread machine for awhile, and today I went to Goodwill with my grandma and found one for $5. Tried it out tonight. Very easy, very easy to clean, and there is nothing like the taste and aroma of fresh-made bread.

The bread was a little dense, not fluffy, and I can think of several correctable reasons: The yeast I used was several YEARS old, we used the "quick" setting, didn't use bread flour.

The bread machine has a little window in the top that Nutmeg (and the rest of us) can look through. She was much enamored with the whole process, especially when I brought a buttered piece of hot bread up to her in bed (I knew she wasn't asleep yet).

Wait till she finds out we can make raisin bread.

Happy Easter

Yes, it's the egg tree Charlie Brown would have if Charlie Brown had an egg tree. It originally had four blown-out eggs, but one fell and broke on the way to the table.

Sugar Snow

By the time we went to see the Easter Bunny at 11:30 this morning, there was already an inch of snow on the ground. This afternoon, it snowed more and harder. Yes, yesterday was the first day of spring. Yet I am not at all surprised because most of my Easter memories involve freezing in spring clothes, and we have several pictures of actual snowflakes on Easter Sunday. Looks like this year is going to be one of those.

In "Little House in the Big Woods," Pa called a spring snow a sugar snow, and when it fell, he went off to help Grandpa tap the maples. That make Nutmeg and I think about the Christmastime when Laura and Mary make sugar-and-molasses candy on the snow. We'd been meaning to do it all winter, and here was -- let's hope -- our last chance.

Here's the molasses candy viewed from inside. In the foreground is the little tree we sprouted from a tangerine seed.



Here are the taste test results:

Pebbles, Leadbelly

Pebbles had a so-so doctor's appointment today. Her weight was 16 pounds 10 ounces, which they told me was up 3 ounces from her last visit. The doctor was ok with that, because she showed me on the chart that she was keeping up a consistent growth curve, since her illness. We'll be back again in May to make sure that is happening.

Her 1-year lead test came up at 4.7, which the doctor also said was fine, since anything under 10 is considered ok, but I was not thrilled with it. Nutmeg's had always been described as "too low to measure," "as low as the scale goes," etc.

In fact, a quick Google search yields this page, which says the 5 mcg/dl level should actually be considered the "level of awareness" and goes on to call kids who tested 5 or above "lead poisoned."

Great.

Two paragraphs from a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story first raised, then dashed my hopes of complacency on this subject:

Happy quote:

Before 1970, anything less than 60 micrograms was considered safe. The U.S. surgeon general changed the threshold to 40 in 1970, followed by change by the Center for Disease Control to 30 in 1978. The standard was lowered again to 25 in 1985 and finally to 10 in 1991.

Sad quote:

A 2003 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that there was a greater drop in IQ - a surprising 7.4 points - between children with 1 and 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood than between 10 and 20 micrograms, or 20 and 30 micrograms and so forth. The study, which adjusted for factors such as maternal IQ and the quality of the home environment, found drops of just 4.6 points for each 10 microgram increase above the federal threshold.

I know it's because Pebbles has spent most of her life in our new old house, where the walls have been continually open or being opened due to Epu's project to wire the whole place for Ethernet. Fortunately he has sealed the final hole on that project. I also noticed several paint chips lying on the dining room floor today; they had come off the heating grate which does have some peeling paint on it. Yes, great, old, peeling paint on a part of the house through which air is forced out into the room. Epu suggested removing all the grates this summer and stripping them down to bare metal before refinishing; I suggested new damn vintage-style heating grates. They don't open and close, anyway, because they have been painted shut probably 10 times over.

That said, Pebbles sure doesn't seem like a lead-poisoned kid. She once again wowed the doctor, this time by successfully pointing out her belly button.

She's also been joking around and playing lately, which is so much fun. One thing she likes to do if she is set on a bed, or today, the exam table, is to put down her head and say, "Nigh-nigh." A couple days ago, I put her on Nutmeg's bed to get her into her pajamas, and she grabbed Nutmeg's turtle, which Nutmeg sleeps with, laid her head on the pillow, pulled up the blanket, and laughed and laughed. She was "being" Nutmeg.

Yesterday she also got to play with a Mylar balloon at a Nutmeg playdate. She loved it, as babies that age do, and kept saying ba, ba, lala. Then, on our way back from a little walk to CVS, Pebbles saw a woman and a kid getting into a car across the street with a couple balloons. She stopped in her tracks, pointed, and began shouting, "ba, ba, lala." So loud that the woman looked over at her, and I had to laugh and explain what was attracting her attention.

Guess the Easter Bunny's going to have to hop on over to Jewel after bedtime Saturday night, to make an addition to the Easter basket for our little leadbelly.

Shamrock Eggnog

As you can see, Pebbles was quite pumped about yesterday's holiday (even though she apparently thinks it's a Mexican one). She is, after all, probably 1/16 or 1/32 Irish. Well, "Scotch-Irish," as they called it in my dad's family. Others probably called it, "dregs."

Nutmeg, on the other hand, is full-tilt focused on Easter, even if she did wear her shamrock crown all day long. We have invented a new Easter legend here: You put your empty plastic eggs out for the bunny the night before, and she fills them, puts them in your basket, and hides all. This new legend was invented because 1) Nutmeg was just dying to buy some plastic eggs from CVS and start playing with them and 2) Said plastic eggs were free after instant rebate at CVS yesterday and Sunday only, and I didn't get a chance to slip away without her, so I had to buy them in her presence. Viola! New family tradition!



Speaking of Easter baskets and CVS, I overheard this exchange between clerks there yesterday as we bought the eggs:

Clerk 1: Are you making Easter baskets for your kids?
Clerk 2: I don't know how to do that! I'm gonna buy them.

Clerk 1 and I looked at her in amazement as Clerk 1 explained how easy it was to "make" an Easter basket. Actually, her instructions I think involved some kind of plastic around it, which seems to me as unnecessarily complicated. But Clerk 2 apparently had only SEEN commercially prepared Easter baskets, and she believed that you had to make everything stand up so the brand names on the packages showed through the plastic wrap. She didn't know how she could attach everything to the basket like that and make it stand up.

Sad.

Community Chest

We had a big community weekend, and we are tard. Like, too tard to moddle, that's fer sure.

On Saturday morning Epu took Nutmeg to her Parks District ballet class, and then to the Easter Egg hunt at a different park. According to Epu, it was more of an Easter egg grab, with a bunch of plastic eggs strewn about a field and a zillion kiddies turned loose upon the treat-loaded eggs. This is Nutmeg's idea of a fabulous time, so there were no complaints there.



Meanwhile, Pebbles and I were at the semiannual consignment sale at our local parenting support center. Pebbles was minded in the childcare room by a sweet high school volunteer while I volunteered with the sale. I got into volunteering for this sale last fall, because volunteers get to shop a preview sale and I got LOTS of great school clothes for the Nut there. It turned out that volunteering is also fun -- there is childcare, and you get to fold and sort all kinds of cute little clothes and hang out with a bunch of cool women.

This year, I got stuck in a little room sorting receipts for the consigners, which was ok as far as chatting with other women went, but I missed the whole sale. Besides the preview sale, the REALLY cool part of this sale is the $5 a bag sale at the very end. When you're volunteering on the sale floor, it's not only fun and bustling, but you also get a good look at what's left in the sizes you want, so when it's time for the bag sale, you know just what to grab.

Oh well. I still got plenty of cute summer clothes for the girls, lots of shorts, frilly tank tops, a couple extra bathing suits, and a larger-size version of the exact same Hello Kitty sneakers that Nutmeg loved from the fall sale but has already outgrown. In all, I got over 100 items for my $51 expenditure. It could have been less, since I bought two bags at the bag sale and I ended up filling them about 1/2 full. But hey, it's for charity, and with these brands (lots of Baby Gap and The Children's Place) and the shape these clothes are in, you cannot do much better.

A couple standout items:

Baby Gap silk dress with angora sweater, size 18 months. Was marked $8, which is a little high for this sale even for something expensive like this. So it was still left at the bag sale, to be snatched up by me. I'm probably going to use it as a Christmas dress for Pebbles this year.



These jeans falling off Pebbles' butt are just Old Navy, but I LOVE the embroidered butterfly:




And then today, I took Nutmeg to the ice show put on by the kids who take skating lessons at the Parks District rink. She was so enraptured and I have to say I was too. There were a few teenage girls who were very good, and seeing all the little kids skate onto the ice in adorable costumes, well, what's not to love? Nutmeg declared that she definitely wants to take ice skating next year so she can be in the show. She'll have her own show next month, with a costume and everything, at the Parks District ballet recital. But I really like ice skating, so I'm totally with her there.

Tibet

The protests and violence in Tibet today make me wonder how those monks, pilgrims and nuns we met back in our 2001 trip are faring.

You never meet people like these -- faces so open and smiles that radiated like sunbursts into deeply creased faces. We'd experienced some of that beauty in other devout Buddhists we'd met -- Mongolians. But Tibet was different, because there was more of a dark side. People had secrets and resentments. Strangely, we as outsiders were made privy to some of those secrets.

Epu, two other friends and I hired a driver with a jeep to take us to a monastery in the countryside outside Lhasa. The monks were used to tourists showing up and they rented us a room of sorts. We sat around on a wall/terrace, basking in the slowest sunset on earth -- it lasted until past 10 p.m. One young monk spent awhile talking with us in Chinese, which was not an easy language for any of us. He listened to music on our headphones.

Another monk showed us a picture of the Dalai Lama tucked inside his robe and told us he had a brother over in India, where the DL lives in exile. One asked us if we'd heard about the World Trade Center attacks, which had happened just days before. They'd heard all about it on the radio here at this remote monastery on the roof of the world. He said some Americans had showed up several days' hiking and he'd been the one to break the news.

Some Tibetans we met -- I remember a in particular monks working at one of the palaces -- refused to speak Chinese with us even if they could barely communicate with us in English. The resentment of the Chinese who were taking over the city was very clear. A lot of the business people there -- taxi drivers, shop owners -- were all Chinese who told us they had come to grab opportunities and make money, even though they hated living there.

As we rode through the countryside in the jeep, peasants stopped scything in the fields to wave at us. We hiked from the monastery to a nunnery, and on the way passed a small settlement from which boys emerged, motioning with their hands that they wanted us to give them pens. I can't remember if we had pens to give. At the nunnery, we bathed in hot springs, in seperate men's and women's enclosures. On my side, I watched a group nuns, about junior high school age, enter the water, still clothed, and wash one another's stubbly hair with bars of soap.

I think the one encounter that we think of the most is meeting the pilgrims. At the nunnery, we were sitting around after our long hike and we sort of struck up "conversation" with a group of ordinary Tibetans who were making a pilgrimmage from one monastery to another. They do that. I put conversation in quotes because we did not share a common language. What we did was, we got out our Lonely Planet and showed them color pictures of some of the monasteries, and they would get excited and I believe they pointed out to us which ones they were going to or had seen already. They loved looking at the color photos so much that we got out any other books we had on us. I remember Epu's shiny-covered sci-fi-fantasy novel really impressed them.

The pilgrim in the red hat was fascinated by Epu's arm hair. They apparently don't have much body hair. She actually plucked one of his arm hairs and tucked it into her cap. A souvenir.

I hope that woman's back in her home, deep in the countryside somewhere, safe with her souvenir arm hair on display. The monks we met, I worry about more, especially with the news that troops are surrounding the Potala Palace. That was where a monk working at the place stopped us on our tour, touched our elbows, and asked, "Are you Americans?" When we said we were, he looked into our eyes, told us that he was sorry, and draped a white prayer shawl around each of our necks.

Now I'm sorry for them, although even if I were there I could not muster the depth of feeling that emanated from this man.

You know what, though? I would love to see Beijing lose the Olympics over this. If this becomes a bloodbath, how can we let them have the Olympics? It would be like letting a tantrumming toddler have that cookie at the grocery store anyway. No boundaries.

p.s. The photos are from Epu's old Web site, courtesy of the WayBack Machine.

Scattered

Posting has been low lately. I guess I've been kind of scattered and not seeing much of note to report. So here's a scattered post:

1) Pebbles is toddling around pretty well now. That will make for more summer fun compared to last year. Am looking forward to the day when she only takes one nap so we can actually leave the house.

2) We finally got a touch of springlike weather this week and I have persuaded Nutmeg to spend a few minutes outside. She still can't pedal her tricycle well, although I am now thinking that part of the problem is that it needs lube. I also think she's too tall for it at this point. We'll have to think about some kind of new wheels for her upcoming birthday Big Wheel? bike? scooter?)

3) Am dreading taxes. Really need to make accountant appointment, gather documents, and face the music. Very complicated year, and a couple things we did to raise cash for our home purchase will now catch up with us. Here's hoping there will be anything left to redo our upstairs bathroom, which is leaking water into the plaster of our dining room ceiling. Maybe I should apply to be featured on Save My Bath on HGTV?

4) In a similar vein, maybe should apply to be featured on SuperNanny (our kid has become sufficiently bratty, but I'm betting they don't like to shoot in old houses like ours because there's not enough space for their equipment)? To play on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Maybe am watching too much TV?

5) In a more highbrow vein, am wondering whether it is too late to plan for a summer escape to a writer's retreat or seminar.

6) Nutmeg and I planted a tangerine seed, and it sprouted beautifully. Am thinking about what other food seeds we can plant and already mentally writing Wise Bread piece about frugal gardening. In researching same, was disappointed to learn that you can not grow a new carrot from a carrot top. In the words of one "expert," "You got to buy some seeds to grow carrot."

7) Planning to start a new blog chronicling my year of frugal living. Already mentally spending proceeds from film royalties.

8) Could I somehow land a freelance gig that would pay me to attend BlogHer in San Francisco this summer?

9) Volunteer sale for summer consignment sale is tonight! Yay. I have a long shopping list, and a plan: hit the shoes and outwear sections first for both girls, then concentrate on the 4T table because there is usually plenty of baby stuff left over and the baby doesn't need much anyway.

10) Did I tell you Nutmeg got into our preschool of choice for the fall, in the afternoons? It reminds me of the nursery school I went to, which is exactly what I always wanted for my kids.

11) I found out about the coolest farm cooperative to join, near our cabin, and where we'd be able to stay overnight once a year so the kids could see exactly where their produce comes from. Then I emailed them and they never got back to me. Sigh. Guess will try that "telephone" thing.

I Did a Girly Thing

I colored my hair for the first time today. I won't post a photo because I don't think the difference would be noticeable. I was getting a lot of gray around my hairline -- more, it seems, with each baby, surprise, surprise.

The result is ok. I kind of like it. Nutmeg picked out a blond shade at CVS -- yes, my colorist is 3 years old -- and I went with it despite never having longed to be a blonde because a) I thought it was sweet that she so wanted me to have the same color hair as her and b) I've heard it's a good idea to use a dye color a bit lighter than your natural shade.

I warned Nutmeg that since I was not bleaching my brown hair, the dye would not turn my hair very blond. I was right. It came out a bit brighter, maybe a little brassier than my regular shade. The gray is definitely less noticeable although I was disappointed to see some gray still. I guess that's one reason why people spend hundreds of dollars at professional colorists.

Still, for $1.50 (CVS deal) and a half hour of my time, it's a nice little change. I went to a meeting for my babysitting coop and immediately someone told me that my hair looked nice, something I am certainly not used to hearing. Many places on the Internet assured me that not much hair dye ends up in my bloodstream and is not likely to pose a risk to my breastfeeding child. Let's hope that's correct. The stuff certainly smelled nasty enough to be toxic, and it didn't feel great on my scalp.

However, I think if I dye it again in the future, I think something more dramatic would be fun, to spice up this suburban mom lifestyle a bit. A friend suggested Manic Panic. Maybe the After Midnight Blue or Tiger Lily.

It's OK to Call Em Coups

Lately I have been getting into bargain shopping. Those who know me know that when I first get into something new, even something as dull as this, I get giddy and spend a lot of time plotting my next move and celebrating my victories. (Just ask Epu about my AA miles period, when I nearly filled our 750-square-foot apartment with cereal and waffle boxes with miles coupons on them.)

In that spirit, I bring you 16 boxes of free cereal:



This was my haul at Dominick's this morning, a store I normally don't go to just because Jewel is so much closer. But they were having a cereal sale, 5 boxes for $5 of certain brands, $2 a box for others, and you better believe I had coupons.

It actually should have come to $4.50 for the 16 boxes (full price would have been $68.50), but in reality they paid me 50 cents to take them off their hands. I ended up getting the extra $5 off my bill because of a cashier error -- I had a coupon clipped from the paper saying I could get 5 boxes of Life for $5. I think it wouldn't scan properly because you didn't really need the coupon for the deal. But she thought it meant $5 OFF of 5 boxes of cereal, so she manually deducted $5.

I didn't figure that out until I got home, or I would have told her. I'm not out to defraud the Safeway corporation, maker of those lovely O Organics products that will have me going back to Dominick's in the future.

I've been reading this blog, Money Saving Mom, obsessively. The woman (who also publishes a blog called Biblical Womanhood, with links to, among other things, modest swimwear) feeds a family just like mine (except for the biblicality) on $40 a week*.

I can't do that -- partly because of the difference in prices in the Chicago area versus Kansas City where she lives, partly because I am not willing to cut down on our milk consumption like she has -- but she has inspired me to look at my monthly grocery budget. Our budget is definitely tight each month since we went down to one income and bought a home, and with the increasing grocery prices and the high-for-awhile gas prices, well, it's even tighter.

I'm thinking about a weekly grocery budget of $60 to $80 to start with. Maybe $80 including alcoholic beverages. I have a feeling that Biblical womanhood does not include stops at BevMo to stock up on red wine, hard liquor and beer.

Watching what you spend sounds time consuming and boring -- lately I keep asking my mom to save her coupons for me, which makes me feel about 100 years old. But in reality you can make a pretty big difference in household spending with a few changes in habits and a few extra hours a week.

Also remember that money saved is tax free. Another way to look at that: When you pay $3 for a box of cereal, remember that if you are taxed at 30 percent, you actually have to earn $4 to pay for that cereal.

The biggest part of my bargain shopping obsession lately has been shopping at the CVS very near our home. I found out, also from Money Saving Mom, about the instant rebates program they have there and how it can be used to get merchandise for free. I was lucky enough to download a $5 off any $15 purchase for CVS (it's no longer available online but I can email a copy to anyone who wants one), which can be printed and used again and again until the end of March. Because of this coupon and, well, my craziness, I have stopped into CVS with the girls every single day this week.

I won't repeat the mechanics of CVS "shopping" here, because Money Saving Mom explains it perfectly well. For me, this week was the first one when I spent ZERO dollars out of pocket. (I have spent $40 cash this year so far at CVS, most of it on photo prints for Pebbles' birthday party but some of it on the original items I bought that generated the CVS money I've been using ever since.)

Below is the stuff I brought home from CVS this week. The stuff I starred is the stuff I got because we really needed it right now, other stuff I bought because they generated rebates or were on clearance -- but they were still things we could use. I started with $15 in CVS money, and ended up with $8 in CVS money that I can spend in the future.

- 12 double rolls Charmin*
- 2 3-packs Mach 3 disposables ($10 rebate)
- 1 Venus women's nondisposable razor ($5)
- 3 bottles Excedrine ($10)
- 1 deodorant*
- 2 large bottles kids' sunblock (clearance)
- 6 bags Easter candy (gave to parents) + Whoppers, Cadbury egg ($5)
- 1 bottle Neutrogena makeup (clearance)
- 1 lipstick (clearance)
- 8 Duracell size C, 8 AAs ($5)
- 2 fancy-ass toothbrushes ($10)
- disposable cups*
- Trail Mix Crunch cereal
- gallon milk*

Yes, I may be insane. But I really like cereal, heehee. And as Nutmeg just said, as she counted up the cereal boxes on the table, "It's like we live in a cereal store!"

In a good way, though.

* Believe it or not, she even buys organic milk and eggs.

Pebbles and Brett Favre

One of my father's forlorn comments upon the retirement of Brett Favre was that Pebbles would never remember a time when Brett rode the lonely fences of Lambeau.

OK, he didn't put it quite like that. I chuckled and imagined the place of high importance that the Brett Era would (not) have in Nutmeg's childhood memories. He is probably one of the only public figures that Nutmeg recognizes by photo, but beyond that, I don't think Brett means anything to her. My own only childhood NFL memory involves OJ Simpson. Strange since he wasn't even a Packer.

Brett, please keep your nose clean in retirement. I don't want my child's sports hero memories to be thus tainted.

Anyway, Pebbles is going through that fantastic toddler metamorphosis. I had forgotten what a great age the early ones are. The extreme naughtiness and screechiness that prevented us from entering a restaurant for a good 6 months have not yet set in. Instead, we have a growing ability to express attachment to parents, more interaction with sister, and blossoming motor abilities.

As in, motoring around the house. Last night Pebbles stayed up until Epu's return from work, and she greeted his momentous arrival by walking at least halfway from the kitchen to the front door. She started to go down to a crawl, stopped, and seemed to decide, "No, I'm gonna walk. What will Daddy think of that?"

Daddy loved that.

This morning she blew goodbye kisses to Daddy and Nutmeg as they headed out the door. They were lucky they were air kisses, since Pebbles has a little cold and they were very spitty and snotty kisses. She adorably got the blowing part right, but blew into her hand while keeping it flat against her face. I love that little peanut.

Still doesn't eat, though. Here she is on Fisherman's Wharf, not eating a mini donut.



Who refuses to eat a mini donut??? It was at that moment when I began to wonder if there is actually something wrong with the child.