monday miscellany

1) I'm almost finished reading Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood. Parts of it were a little too dry, but it was a nice combination of scientific information woven into the author's story of her own pregnancy, her birth experience, and the experience of nursing her baby. Some of the information is scary and maddening (it's about how environmental pollutants are introduced into babies before they're even born, toxin-related birth defects, and toxins in breast milk due to all the chemicals we're exposed to). The author balances that with beautiful descriptions of her experiences as a mother.

2) We went to visit Chris's parents yesterday to do laundry. Blub broke our washer. That's a story for another time. Anyway, Chris ended up rifling around in the attic and bringing down several boxes of his old toys: Legos, toy cars, helicopter and airplane stuff, stuffed animals. He had a little Snoopy doll that he was apparently very attached to. Snoopy comes with several different outfits- raincoat and hat, Sherlock Holmes, airplane pilot... It's quite a sight. Chris was pretty excited about seeing Snoopy again. Anyway, we took home his old train set and some cars, and he and Celia have been playing.

3) We also took home a monkey puppet who I promptly named Marvin. Celia likes Marvin a lot. In fact, she insisted on taking her nap with Marvin yesterday :)

4) I got Pita a pretty little outfit to wear for Chris's graduation next month. She's gonna look so cute. And will she ever move out of size 24 month clothes?

5) Yesterday Chris took Celia to get the oil changed in my car, and then they went to the playground. Pita is always so cute when she goes on little trips with her Daddy. It's always like an adventure for her and she loves going places with him. Meanwhile, I got to stay home and get a few things done at a very slow and lazy pace.

6) Chris and Celia really are quite a pair. They played outside yesterday, and I looked out the window to see their two folding chairs with their matching water bottles. Pita is definitely Mommy's girl. She's very attached to me. On the other hand, she sure loves being with Daddy and always wants to be just like him. They are two peas in a pod.

7) There's a girl at Celia's daycare who's about half Celia's age and twice her size. She can knock Celia down with her pointer finger. Unfortunately, along with being enormous she's a bit of a brute. Celia is always telling me that the girl hit someone or pulled her hair. It's hard to explain that this kid twice Celia's size is actually just a baby and doesn't know better. As such a tiny little thing, Celia has to be careful not to get knocked around by younger kids who don't have good coordination but are bigger than she is!

8) This weekend we had beautiful weather. It wasn't very warm, but sunny and warm enough for Celia to play outside. I hope we're done with the snow and cold weather. It lasted a long time this year.

9) When we were driving in the car the other day, Celia said: "Mommy, I'm Caillou." I played along and started talking to her as if she were Caillou. Then she said, "No Mommy, I'm not Caillou. I'm Celia! I was only kidding." Haha! Pretty funny stuff for a 2-year-old.

10) The Outfit of the Week demonstrates that we haven't quite caught on to the fact that the weather has warmed up and we don't need hats and mittens anymore (most of the time...). Just going for a drive, all bundled up.