Genevieve is 8 months old!

I love her little profile:

(That toy is really cool, by the way. The wooden balls are all held in a mass by a cord, but they move around when manipulated. I think I'm more fascinated by it than she is. Heh.)

G is getting to be such a big girl! Her hair is getting longer. Please pause a moment to admire the nearly vertical "Who puff".



Her face seems to be maturing to me. I think she looks vastly different than she did as a newborn. I can always see Payne in his pictures, even when he was just a few minutes old, but I can't do the same for Genevieve. Her face has just totally morphed.


(Oh, and OshKosh has the best.leggings.ever. I bought her these in two sizes and they are The Awesome.)

She is a huge talker and wiggle worm lately. A few days ago she woke up from her afternoon nap suddenly babbling tons of consonants "Da da" and "za za" are her favorites. She is rolling and squirming her away around large spaces. I've seen her army crawl a bit here and there, but she seems determined to figure out how to crawl on all fours, and spends a lot of time on tip toes with her butt straight up in the air. Ha!

She has started trying to pull up on objects as well:

Girlie is exclusively eating finger foods at meal times. I'm incredibly grateful to leave pureed foods behind, as I personally believe spoon feeding babies should be used as a criminal interrogation method.

I know everyone says it, but I can't believe how fast her babyhood is flying by. I'm going to blink and she'll be a year old. (sniffle)

Yesterday.

I don't thematically dress my children for outings.



Nope.

Doing that would reveal both a certain level of materialism and an odd fixation on things that don't matter.

Neither of which I possess...

Right.

I think it best not to reveal the level of satisfaction it brought me to actually see the giraffes AND the ant eater that morning.


And then,



Godzirra baby strikes again!

Genevieve will soon be starring in a new release made for DVD movie "Thomas hauls some stuff that will save Sodor from the drool monster, somehow messes it up, somehow patches things up, and again avoids the ire of the weirdly sinister Sr. Toppam Hat."

Thomas the Train is strange, guys.

Genevieve may have the right idea.

When did my baby boy,

turn into a child?

I refuse to believe this.

Tomorrow I will be putting him in a collared romper with a giant turtle applique, damn it.

Bluebonnets!

The theme of the day ended up being "Two kids are infinitely more difficult to photograph than one".

Dan, myself, and two of my close friends all schlepped ourselves and our kids to Brenham for a playdate (i.e. workdate) in the bluebonnets. The other husbands were unavailable, so Dan got to be the token male for the day.

A lot of the shoot went like this:

Two out of three ain't bad, right?

Maryn was our star model of the day.


The rest of the kids just wanted to play in the mounds of dirt next to the field of flowers.




For every 900 shots of boys fighting over trucks we'd get one of these!


Whoever says dressing boys is boring hasn't stumbled across seersucker vests.

I mean really...

This would be an awesome shot of Brody, except for my whiny kid trying to steal his truck.

(sigh)

I love little herds of boys.


Awwww!


Then we realized she was trying to steal his truck:


Then HE realized she was trying to steal his truck:


Babies are so much easier to photograph than three year olds!





She's getting so big!


After an hour of chaos and pollen, we went to Chili's for lunch. The waitress was awesome and patient with our gaggle of three women, six kids, and one man. It wasn't until she seemed sort of confused about whether or not to ask about seperate checks and Dan made a joke that I realized we looked somewhat convincingly like polygamists. Ha!

Aimee and Mikel, I could totally share a back yard with y'all. In fact, I think my landscaping would improve as a result.

After lunch we went for a tour at the Bluebell Ice Cream factory, which involved more hard work. Aimee very accurately observed "Now I understand why my parents never seemed to be having much fun on family vacations.". Seriously, showing kids a good time is exhausting! Payne did love watching all of the factory machinery and the "mans" working though.

All in all, I think it was worth it. Maybe. Heh.

So, uh, she likes bananas.

I should have known, considering her history of requiring banana puree to be mixed into any of her vegetable purees.


Here she can be seen eating two thirds of a banana by herself. The remaining third was only spared because it became too slimy to grasp.

Let's put this into perspective. Her eating two thirds of a banana is like me eating a banana as long as the distance from my elbow to the tips of my fingers. Dude...

After dinner I kept hearing her make excited noises and then start crying directly afterwards. I went to investigate and discovered this:

Payne would get near her with his banana, which would cause (the girl who had just eaten a huge meal of banana) to become intensly excited. She was reaching up to grab it from his hands.

Then Payne would wander away, the banana necessarily following, and Genevieve would express her great dismay.

Wow.

The word banana was used seven (well, make that eight) times in this post. I know you were wondering.

Payne on vacation....

It was that time of year again. The kids and I made our annual sojourn to Kentucky to see all of my relatives.

Sorry to disappoint, but very fortunately my sister was able to fly with me this year, making the trip fairly smooth and lacking in comic material. I consider this a fair trade as I get to retain a few more weeks of my life, and possibly a longer run with brown hair.

Everything went very well in general, actually.

By the end of the trip Payne was pooped:

On the way home he took a break from studying the in flight safety manual to introduce himself to the lady across the aisle:

She was charmed, naturally.

He also found the ground transportation options at the airport perfectly sufficient:

Who needs a moving sidewalk when you've got rolling luggage and an able bodied Uncle?

I introduce you to,

The girl:


and the legend:

(the booty legend!)

I've been wanting to find a way to write a tasteful post about this for awhile, and honestly, there's no way to do it. Being myself, I decided that the awesomeness must be shared regardless of how many silly little social conventions must be trampled on in the process. Sorry Genevieve!

Homegirl has an enormous butt. It's hilarious and adorable. I find it so amusing that I will sort of chase guests in our home around with my naked baby right before her bath so they can see it. I texted a photo of it to my Grandmother. I'm fairly certain that I'm treating this situation all sorts of wrong, but I can't stop. I'm addicted to showing my baby's butt to people.

It's especially shocking because Payne pretty much has nothing going on back there. We used to call him "frog butt" when he was a baby. He just sort of tapered down from his shoulders to nothing.

So yeah. Maybe Genevieve's booty is far more normal than I think, but by comparison its pretty impressive.

When she's standing she's got cellulite from hip to ankle. It's glorious.

I often think she's got a full diaper, check her, and realize the only thing making her diaper look puffy is her butt.

Patterned leggings are not her friends.

I still firmly believe that her sizeable base is the reason she started sitting up early-ish.

Ok, I'm going to stop now.

The poor kitty applique is woefully insufficient.

Ok. OKAY! I'm done.

Payne's newest defense technique:

While sitting in time out, he will openly sob and at regular intervals moan "I'm dust (just) a boooooy!".

I was really concerned about his burgeoning manipulative genius until I realized he pulled the line from Finding Nemo.

So much for positive reinforcement...

Tonight Payne was an angel in church. He was positively perfect in his behavior. This is probably due to the fact that he was nearly comatose after the wedding on Saturday, but I'll take it.

So, on the way out of the church parking lot I was going on and on about how he was such a good boy and I was so proud of him etc....

He responded with "No! My NOT a good boy! Poop! Dat means I poop on you!".

So, there's that.

By the way, he didn't assault anyone with his pillow on Saturday. He actually carried it all the way down the aisle, and even tried to soothe the poor little flower girl that got scared and started crying. He was talking to her and patting her back all the way down.

Let's have a group "awwww", shall we?

And then he joined forces with the other children at the reception. They appeared to form a sort of new social structure, and Payne ninja thwacked people in the back of the knees with balloons for the rest of the evening.

Genevieve partied hard:

I mean, we had drive her back to the hotel room and tuck her in and everything. She's such a lightweight...

My kids' feet are going to make me millions.

Both of them have the same foot skin.

It is the most puzzling substance I've ever encountered. I've complained before about the difficulty of getting pants on the boy, but the girl is no different. Their feet are the most skid resistant material known to man. I break a sweat trying to get socks on them. If they're hot? Forget it. Nothing is going on or past the feet until they've cooled off.

At this point I have to grab a foot and guide it through the pant leg without allowing it to make contact with any fabric in order to succeed in dressing my children. I have to scrunch up socks and guide them on like a woman puts on pantyhose. It's ridiculous.

I'm pretty sure Payne was first exposed to the phrase "sonsofbitches" while I was holding his full weight above the floor by the waistband of his jeans (at the time wrapped around his thighs), as his feet refused to slide past denim to escape out of the leg holes. His incredigrip foot skin held him up in the air.

Obviously I'm dealing with some sort of freak genetic combination that Dan and I uniquely and consistently make when reproducing. I feel this means we have a biological patent, yes? So here's the plan; I hire someone to clone the foot skin and then I sell it as a pad for the gloves of NFL recievers.

Hell, it could end up under rugs, on a space shuttle, as a little pad under my stupid plastic cutting board that always slides on my kitchen counters...

Wait. Where are you backing slowly away to? I'm just getting started.

An afternoon in photos.

Since we've been home so much (by the way Payne is finally acting a little perkier again!) I've lost control of the nap situation. Without my "preserve Mommy's sanity" activity boot camp, Genevieve has been taking a morning nap and is often awake during Payne's. I'm ready to end this. Optimal development be damned, I need two hours to get my house together (read: stare blindly at the TV) every afternoon.

Soooo, during Payne's nap Genevieve happened to be rolling around the family room. She insisted on rolling to my shoes, over and over again. Like, I'd pry them out of her clammy little palms and throw them across the room. Thirty seconds later I'd hear giggling and shoe soles slapping the floor. Homegirl likes shoes. Well there's a shocker.


Payne still logged a lot of lounging hours today. I guess the couch gets old after awhile.


Payne was laying still and letting Baby Girl grab him and then they would both squeal and giggle.


I die:


Regardless of the time she demands it, and she DEMANDS it, Genevieve's night time bottle renders her comatose.

So comatose she stays asleep when I sit her up for burping. Heh.

I love letting her sleep on my shoulder for a bit right before bed. I know this is so very temporary. Soon she'll be a ball of energy, too big, and too aware of her own surroundings to sleep on her Mama.


We're headed for a busy weekend where Payne is going to make his first appearance as a ring bearer in a wedding. I'm terrified. Do you think I'd be allowed to project Finding Nemo onto the wall of the chapel right behind the officiant? Let's hope the ring pillow doesn't inspire some sort of battleshield fantasy, or the flower girl may suffer...

She looks sweet and innocent enough, yes?

However, she produces "the noise". I'd put in on par with Payne's "the face" in its ability to be simultaneously cute and terrifying. She does it when she's excited, curious, happy, or feeling social. So, I hear it a lot.

It's done in a whisper, and goes "saaaaah. aaaaaah." slowly, and with a sort of hair raising methodic...ness.

I guess now wouldn't be the best time to ask for babysitting volunteers?

It's been slow around here.

We've been stuck at home with a feverish boy for a few days, so I've been a wee bit bored.

This is not staged.

She does this all the time.


Ethel sleeps like a human whenever possible. If you share a bed with her you'll wake to a wee doggy head on your pillow, with the covers drawn up to her chin. Occasionally, she'll have them tucked under her front arm...I mean leg.

And,

She's faster than a speeding sea cucumber!

She can poop through size four diapers in a single grunt!

It's....Superbaby!




The Incredible Hulk never stood a chance.


"Gums SMASH!"

I like how my sofa cushions figure prominently in this post. I totally live life in the fast lane.

Payne says, "If you can't beat 'em...

join 'em.".

A couple of Funny Things My Kid Said.

The other day after nap time I was trying to teach Payne his last name. I asked "Payne, who are you?". He looked at me darkly and responded "Payne M______ is . not . happy.".

Today we were discussing the difference between boys and girls (a frequent and fascinating topic since Genevieve has been around). He told me "Mommy, you don't have weiner.", and I agreed. I suppose this seemed like a sad bit of news to him. He then attempted to soften the blow by suggesting "Maybe you find one at the store".

Oh my.