Happy Halloween!

It's quite "tricky" to get an almost 15-month-old and a pug into their Halloween costumes. It's even trickier to get a picture of the pair. I did my best, so enjoy the treat. Happy Halloween from the cutest dinosaur on the planet and a repeat Marti the Moose!



The dinosaur is on the prowl and about to eat a delicious moose for lunch.



Walking in costume proved a little tricky for a new toddler.



The moose head never cooperates and I don't have a third hand.



One suspicious dinosaur.



And finally, a smile.



Make up your own sound effect for this one.


Happy Halloween!

Babies are Cute, but...

I love babies. That's why I'm having another. But seriously? This new stage is way, way more fun. That hard work starts to pay off, you start to see personality and communication and interaction. It's like a light bulb went off in Avery's head recently and she just became so smart. So funny. So cute. And smart. Like genius-caliber human on our hands here. She's stacking donuts and sorting blocks. And not just chewing on them.


Anecdotes more for my future reference than for anyone's enjoyment, although feel free to enjoy:

At 14 months exactly, Avery took her first tentative steps. She’s still wobbly but now seems to prefer being upright and looks less like a drunk by the day.

A few weeks ago feeling much steadier with Daddy Daddy Daddy. Love her hiked up britches.

She knows where her toes, belly button, tummy, ears, nose and hair are. She loves to try to eat her feet and when I tell her "Don't eat your toes, you're going to need them later, I swear" she giggles and tries even harder to get them into her mouth.

You name it, she'll point to the right object much of the time. Balloon? Baby? Ball? Dog? Cat? She'll nail it.

Signs in her vocab include fan, dog, milk, more, baby, ball, banana. She sees us with any food whatsoever and will immediately sign "more." "I'll have what she's having."

Favorite words are Daddy (which I'm now convinced she uses for either of us), dog, and yum yum. She said "nigh nigh" (night night) the other night, and you probably could have heard our hearts breaking.

She’s using objects for their intended purpose—she'll brush her hair with her brush, try to put her socks and shoes on, or will hold my phone to her ear (which is funny because that’s what I do with my phone the least).

She loves her walk-behind dinosaur but will also push her music table around like it's a walker. It ends up all over the place.

She’ll pick something up from the floor, something teeny tiny—fuzz, a piece of dirt—pinch it between her fingers and either give it to me or bring it to her mouth. Sometimes she genuinely wants to put it in her mouth; other times she just wants me to react and grab it from her. This is hilarious.

She crawls into our laps. Usually brings a book. It’s one of her favorite spots.

She can entertain herself with books for an hour. There's nothing that breaks my heart more than looking out and seeing her flipping contently through a book.

She’s super friendly with other people. At story time at the library, she’ll crawl over to another kid, smile hugely right in their face, and then quickly crawl back to me to check in.

She's increasingly fascinated with the toilet and wants to flush it. And grab the toilet paper off the roll.

She loves to beat me to the dog dish and splash in the water.

She loves Marti and looooves that she can get Marti to react. It's hilarious to throw food off the high chair and hear Marti scramble to snarf it up. And she just learned that she can lean over and give food directly to the dog; this is the best thing since sliced banana.

Here Avery has discovered that extra Cheerios sometimes pop out of her snack bowl and fall to Marti. She can hardly contain herself.

She loves being "scared" of Marti. If Marti comes racing in, she loves to come to me like she needs to take cover. Which, let's be honest, sometimes she does.

If you have her on your hip, sometimes she'll lean to the side to get right in your face and give you a huge smile.

And now a few pics for fun.

Checking out pony rides recently on the farm.

Not entirely sure how I managed to hold her up to the cow.

Her pictures should come with sound.

Strike a pose.

A Bonus Lesson from CPR Class

New Jersey is far from the stereotype of Snookis running amok and gold chains and track suits everywhere. But every now and then you see someone who fits the bill or experience what I call an "only in Jersey" moment. Like the road rage incident where a guy got out of his car to gesture madly to us to back up. Or a fight almost breaking out in an infant CPR class. Where would you see that kind of business? Only in Jersey.

So I signed up for a child CPR class. I meant to do it a long time ago, but I figured with another kiddo on the way and one who loves to eat, it would be a good idea if I had some basic knowledge of choking and CPR and such. The class started innocently enough. We made it through adult CPR and learning how to use a defibrillator before shit got tense.

We were in the infant portion of the class, with a table full of baby mannequins laid out before us. My half of the class was taking its turn practicing dislodging an obstruction by smacking our babies upside down and doing chest compressions. The teacher had gotten flustered explaining something to us, confusing his rights and lefts and which hand was to do what. And that's where the tension started.


Here we all are, smacking upside down babies and doing chest compressions, when the teacher told one man, a nerdish dad type, not to use the heel of his hand to do the compressions. The man insisted he wasn't. The teacher, in what I wouldn't really call "constructive criticism" again insists he not use the heel of his hand. The student, getting understandably defensive, says that he's NOT using the heel of his hand, the heel of his hand isn't even touching the fake baby, he swears. The teacher's all "Yeah, whatever." He may not have rolled his eyes, but that was his tone.

So the student gets a little pissy. And he snaps off at the teacher, saying that "Maybe if you'd show us what to do, we'd have an easier time understanding."

I think he was just sick of being picked on.

So the teacher huffs "FINE" and makes a "give me the baby" type of gesture. Which is when the student tosses the baby at the teacher.

Now, it wasn't a throw that was aiming at the teacher's head, but it wasn't the most friendly "here you go" toss either. The teacher caught it. And then we learned that you never, ever toss a baby mannequin.

"EXCUSE ME? DID YOU JUST THROW A BABY AT ME? YOU NEVER THROW A BABY. NOT EVEN MANNEQUINS."

Teacher went from angry to irate in the amount of time it took that baby to get to him.

Then there was a back and forth between student and teacher where the student is like "Of course I would never throw a baby. I've been a parent for two years" and the teacher is accusing his mannequin-tossing actions of being indicative of how this man parents his child. There's a "Don't you dare question my parenting ability" along with "Oh, I've got a few years of experience on you" in an "Oh, I will dare question your parenting ability" type of tone from the teacher.

Meanwhile, the entire class is uncomfortably shifting around, half of us with our fake babies in hand, waiting for the hostility to pass. After what seemed like an eternity, the teacher decided to carry on with the demonstration. So what does he do? Slams the baby on the table before proceeding to beat the obstruction out of it.

I wanted to shout "YOU NEVER SLAM A BABY ON A TABLE!" But I feared I would get tossed from class. Or punched.

After the teacher gave the baby back, he then pointed hostilely at the student, an "I've got my eye on you, mister" gesture. I swear, if there hadn't been a table of fake babies separating them, they would have come to blows.

After class, the student was the bigger man and went up to the teacher. I heard him say that he didn't mean to throw the baby and that he thought the teacher was making a gesture that he'd catch the baby. It didn't sound like the teacher was super receptive to the apology ("but you did throw it"), but I left quickly just in case it escalated.

Lessons learned at CPR? How to do chest compressions, dislodge a foreign obstruction, use a defibrillator. And that you never, ever, under no circumstances, throw a baby mannequin. But slamming it on a table is perfectly fine.

14 Weeks: Then and Now

Proving the theory that you show earlier with your second pregnancy, here is photographic evidence. Note: I started within a pound of where I started with Avery.

Here I am, 14 weeks pregnant with Avery:

I gave up on those jeans weeks ago.

Here I am, 14 weeks today with No. 2:

Definitely more belly, no? The pants can no longer comfortably button, I'm already wearing a belly band, and I'm about to just give in to maternity jeans. While I look forward to the impending comfort when I make that move, I know that I will be wearing them for an eternity and will be so sick of them, so I'm holding off.

While we're playing games, let's keep playing Spot the Differences, shall we?

Hair
Photo 1: Smooth, sleek, freshly cut and highlighted the day before.
Photo 2: All sorts of a mess, not highlighted in at least a trimester and possibly more like the length of a pregnancy, with 2-inch wisps of hair that make me look like a Totally Crazy Mom when I wear it in a ponytail, which is every day. (The wisps are thanks to regrowth from the massive amount of hair I lost after Avery was born.)

Photographer
Photo 1: Alan, who faithfully took a weekly pic.
Photo 2: Me. Remembering how annoyed Alan got taking weekly pictures by the end of the pregnancy (mostly because I was never happy with them and made him redo), I'm taking matters into my own hands.

Doors
Photo 1: Not hung.
Photo 2: Doors hung. However, bathroom mirror dirty.

Pug
Photo 1: Present.
Photo 2: Missing. Either bored of all my time spent in the bathroom or napping because product of Photo 1 had a rough night and interrupted precious pug beauty sleep.

The good news is that I'm feeling a lot better. Hitting week 13 was magical, and week 14 is treating me well today. The nausea is few and far between, and I've actually gotten a few things done over the last week. Food isn't grossing me out quite as much. In fact, the five pepperoncinis I had as a pre-bedtime snack were quite possibly the most delicious things I've eaten in my entire life.