Watch Out, Coco Chanel

I may have written once or twice about Pequita's love of clothing and changing outfits. She still changes several times a day, and has made the major concession of layering underneath her filmy princess dresses and ballet outfits. After all, I have reasoned with her, even Cinderella wore warm clothes in winter. She now regularly disappears upstairs only to reappear in a weather appropriate new outfit, with at least two top layers and two bottom layers under her princess dress or ballet garb. How a three year old gets two pairs of leggings on without any bunching (a cardinal sin) is beyond me.

Here are some of the many faces of Pequita. She came up with all of these on her own; she (usually) exhibits innate good sense about color matching and has quite a flair for pattern mixing.





The Christmas face paints are still in heavy rotation. She asked to be the ocean, and this is what I managed. She was pleased. Our pillowcases are being washed a lot, as we don't always manage to get her washed off before bed. Below, her unicorn costume. Everyone knows they are usually purple with pink faces and horns. She loves her hair this way, and all her dolls also have ponytails that stick straight up in the air. The more hair accoutrements required for a 'do the better.

Dry As A Bone

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa. The new coats and boots are spectacular, and we have gotten more use out of them than we EVER expected to this summer.

Dress up

Today was a dress day for Pequita. There are few dresses that I feel the need to clothe her in - this one from Baby Gap is exceptionally cute and very much to our taste. She rebelled when I put her in dresses a couple months ago, since they got in her way crawling. Now, they are only in her way if she is climbing stairs, but I just gather the skirt part all up in a bunch and shove it in the back of her leggings while she is climbing.

Yes, I know we need to refinish our stairs. We'll have to do it in warm weather when we can not use them for a couple days. Not bloody likely, eh? Maybe we'll hire someone to do them while we are on vacation this summer.

Sibling Love

They love love love each other. Here are some shots of their play when they are left to their own devices. Somehow Pequita always ends up on top of Monito.Pequita wanted to nurse and Monito was already doing so, and cheekily taking up all the real estate to boot. In a fit of pique, she bit him on the hand. I wouldn't have known what made him cry out and whimper if I hadn't seen the shine of spit on his hand, and then the teeth marks. I fear that the boy is in for a rough few months.

And this coat? Only $8 and a lovely purple microfiber shearling. It should fit her next year. I love it so much I'm willing to store it. Amusingly, she cannot get up in it when she falls. Am I a bad Mom for letting her struggle for a bit so I could get a good picture? Maybe.

continuity (with a side of baby butt)

i am sitting in my bedroom, in a chair my mother rocked me to sleep in 38 years ago, rocking my son to sleep. he has been experiencing annoying & worrisome (for me) painful & frustrating (for him) gas and spitting up for the last couple days. i was relieved to go to the pediatrician today to ask about it, except i wrote down the wrong day and we all hauled ourselves to the docs for nothing today. we'll go back on friday when they'll actually be expecting us. hysterical mistake with 2 infants, eh? to make it worth all the effort, we weighed the babes. pequita shocked us by only having gained half a pound per week, which means she's on a normal trajectory; she now weighs 22 lbs and a couple ounces (we didn't take off their diapers since it was an unofficial weigh-in.) monito, whose nickname might become brutus, is still gaining a pound a week and is now 12 lbs +. the woman in the waiting room thought he was 2 months old; he turned 9 months two days ago.

the hormones and time have worked - i am as over the moon for our son as i am over pequita. he looks a lot like me and the side of the family that he is named for (his real name, that is; you all know that i didn't really name my kids what i call them here on the blog, right?) monito lools so much like my dad as an infant, too, that it is clear my family genes, blond and blue-eyed though they may be, are sufficiently sturdy as to trump the 4 generations (that we know about) of dark-eyed and -haired donor genes. it is very special. he's got my eyes & eyebrows, nose, crooked pinky fingers, and (sadly) my enormous skull.

we ended our afternoon of errands today at the local university's psych l ab, having volunteered pequita for a linguistics / language acquisition experiment. or so they said - i took enough psych courses in college to know that they don't tell us what the real experiment is about so we don't impact the results. while i nursed an unquiet baby boy behind 2-way mirror, homestead mama played w/ pequita in the lab's playroom to acclimate her to the space. the tester commented that pequita crawled amazingly well for the short time she's been mobile while i beamed and bit my tongue to keep from recounting the 6 million ways in which she manifests her superior intellect and physical prowess. tomorrow we take pequita back for another 30 minutes of play - the first and third 10 minute stretches h-mama will do more free play, and the middle 10 minute stretch h-mama will do what the experimenter tells her to do in an earpiece a la fbi operative. very interesting so far. i've always wanted kids that i could volunteer as lab rats. too many psych electives and too much college town living, i suppose.

a couple days ago the kids has their first experience in a pool. we filled a cheap plastic pool with about 3" of bracingly cold water from our well and eased them out of the 95 degree humid air into the liquid heaven. unsurprisingly, monito (who really only had his toes dipped for a split-second) hated it and squealed in his usual protest sound. pequita fell in love with her pool, cold water, hot summer days and her moms for bringing it all together for her. behold pure bliss:
at this rate, i think our upcoming vacation to the cape cod beach will be a roaring success. and can i just take a little credit for finding the perfect swimsuit for the baby daughter of two dykes? recognizably gay with rainbow stripes but tastefully executed with cute but not frou-frou bows on the hips. and all for $1.50 at the used baby goods store. damn, but i'm good. and pequita's most amazing built-by-breastmilk hunk-a hunk-a burning baby butt & thighs. we are so proud.

Fabulous in-laws

We received some great Christmas presents. From my mother, Boston Grandma, we received the fushia owl suit. Clearly, it was a hit with Pequita.

Then, from Pequita's Oma (my sister's partner's mother), the amazing cat suit. It is warm, fits beautifully, and is so damn cute that we make Pequita wear it more than is proper. You can see the stripes down the back in the pic where she is nursing with Homestead Mama. Now I understand why my Aunt used to let my cousin wear the hand-me-down bunny Halloween costume for months, to preschool, to the grocery store, all over. They are too cute to say no to.