so big!

*new words
up-eye-down (for upside down.)
swing
sly(slide)
tubbies (for those horrid teletubbies)
E.T. (said with her index finger extended, as in, phone home)
MeNa (which is the current iteration of grandma.)
don't be up there (said, while climbing on the furniture i tell her not to climb on)
stars (complete with pointing upwards at the night sky)
noors (nurse. soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cute!)
button (as in, belly)
piggies (as in toes)
pick me up
hey come here
wait
stop
mine
bum
diaper
poot (which i say after she poots, and now, she says it too, after she poots)


when she was tiny, she'd rub her hands together in this deliciously evil way, like mr. burns on the simpsons. you could almost hear her murmur 'exxxxxxxcellent.' and today, the baby i sit for did it, and i thought, i should blog about how she used to do that, so i don't forget.

i love this kid.

bumGenius!

i know i just talked about these in an earlier post. but i need to talk about them some more. because i love them. i love them more than i love pie. and i love pie. these diapers are so friggin convienient! i mean, yeah, stuffing pockets is a pain, but these ones are nice, because the gathered elastic at the leg means you can stuff, pull the diaper straight, and ta-da! easy as a sposie for putting on. supposedly, they're coming out with more 'girly' colors. i hope this doesn't mean a million variations on pink. i hope this means purple, and orange, and teal. because if it means pink only, i might have to write a letter. but in anycase, i love the colors they have now. the yellow and the green are super gender neutral, and i really like the blue color too! i think it's smokey enough in hue to not be 'baby blue' which is good. since i'm ordering more. this will bring my stash up to 11 total. and, god love her, jenn over at cottonbabies has come up with bumGenius! all in ones. so, those are out this week...and i'm torn between trying them, or sticking with the pockets, and buying more of those.

anyhoo. it's cool too, because i think i'm hipping more mamas to the CD groove by evangilizing about the bG!s. and my local health food store lady said she was going to look into carrying them, if cottonbabies will wholesale to 'real' stores. i'm totally keeping my fingers crossed for that. it'd be awesome to know that i was supporting a mama, and my local economy, while also supporting my habit. but it's funny. i got into the whole CD thing, because a mama friend of mine passed on some prefolds, some bummis covers, and a snappi, totally free. and now, i'm passing some prefolds, a bummis cover, and a wool cover, and a snappi on to another mama who is considering CDing. and i hope that, once she's made the transition, and has found her niche in the wide wide world of CDing, she'll pass on the stuff, and convert another mama.

my only cloth regret? not starting sooner.

i am not a hippie.

i might be weird, but i hate it when my sustainable behaviors are automatically lumped under hippie. yeah, i breastfeed. i'm lazy. formula and solids take a lot of friggin effort. whippin a boob out, not so much. yeah, i cloth diaper. i hate elmo and all those little sesame street bastards, and i don't want them on my kids ass. plus, i prefer cloth on my bum, so i can only imagine that peanut does too. i mean, sitting around in perfumey plastic might sound like fun to a few fetishists out there, but to me, it sounds like a pain in the ass, no pun intended. i buy as much organic stuff as i can afford, but that's a new thing for me too. i mean, all of this 'crunch' happened post-peanut. i'm a grown ass woman, so if i wanna litter my body with pesticides and phthalates, it's my choice. but right now, i'm feeding someone else, with the stuff that i put into my body. so, yeah, i'm avoiding beef, and commercial shampoos, but it's for the peanut, more than the earth. i appreciate that my ecological footprint will be substantially smaller now, and i like the idea that i'm living healthier, so that i can live longer, so that i can be around for the peanut when she's more of a walnut, or some other larger sized nut. but i hate patchouli. i bathe on a regular basis. i don't like the grateful dead (except for casey jones, and who doesn't love that song?) and i've never thought to myself, 'isn't it a great day for a game of hackeysack?' i'm easily irritated. i like hip hop music, and cargo pants with no quilty bits. i don't enjoy hugging people i don't know. i've no desire to travel anywhere, at anytime, in a VW bus, and especially not to any concerts entailing dancing frigging bears. i don't own a bicycle. or birkenstocks. or anything with tyedye on it. (well. i did just buy peanut an embellished prefold, but the main part was this cool tribal applique..i think the tyedye takes away from it, but it was only five bucks, so...)

i am not a hippie. i am crunchier than cornnuts though, and i'm damn proud of it.

hello? anybody there?

or have you all (3) given up hope of my ever posting again?

i had. i really thought i'd been struck by some sort of blogging ennui, i just couldn't quite get it up for a posting, y'know? peanut would do something funny, or the ACLU would sue toys r us over breastfeeding, and i'd think, i should blog this, and then...nothing.

the good news is, i already boycott toys r us for their blatant gender stereotyping, and the fact that you have to go to the blue 'boy' section to buy legos or chemistry kits. the bad news is, it does kinda look like the ACLU maybe jumped the gun on the toys r us people. but it still works for bringing the issue to the forefront. i'm entirely to lazy to link anything, but those of you who actually give a crap, can check out thecowgoddess.com and see her blog, cuz she's got all the deets.

moving on. my kid is a friggin genius. i mean, i've sort of always thought she was pretty bright, but last night took the cake. so we get these books in the mail, from dolly parton, because i gave birth in a certain county, and she's promoting southern literacy. far as i know, we get 1 a month till peanut is like, five. now, sometimes these books suck. like minerva louise. this book is quite possibly, the dumbest book EVAR. it even warrants that horrid misspelling. and sometimes they're just propoganda for vaccines, like rupert or somebody, goes to the doctor! where do they get these names? minerva louise, rupert...it's like a jane austin novel gone horribly awry. anyway. so yesterday, we go out and check the mail, (because i'm waiting for some new cloth dipes...more on that later..) and lo! there in shiny plastic is this months book. it's called no biting, and it's a fabulous study in redirection. no biting your friends! what can you bite? apples! so, i like it, since it reinforces our big disciplinary tactic currently. anyway, when we get these new books, (or any new book), peanut makes us read them a zillion times that first day. usually, she just brings them to us, and crawls up in our lap. but last night...she was marching around saying (i thought) nobody! nobody! and i was like, nobody what? nobody knows the trouble you've seen? what?! and then...she picks up the new book, and plops it on the couch next to me, and says, emphatically, NOBODY!

ohhhh. no BITING! i get it. so this is the first time that i've actually understood her requesting a book by title, altho, this makes me wonder if she's been doing it for a while, but i just wasn't getting it. cutely enough, she's also requesting songs. by singing, quite monotonously, a few words. and when we sing the whole song...she cracks up. every single time. it's like she's thinking, 'look what i can make these stupid adults do!'

in other news, i've learned to knit. and i'm making some soakers. w00t! i also learned to crochet, but i make really tight stitches, and it's hard, so i'm trying knitting, because i can do it faster.

speaking of diapers. let me talk, for a minute, about cloth diapers. so, i love my prefolds and wool. i do. but sometimes, it's just not practical for on the road stuff. and we were using the gdiapers for that, but i really wanted an all cloth option, so i looked into pockets. at first, i assumed i'd be on the fuzzi bunz bandwagon, because, well, those were all the rage a year and a half ago when i first looked into cloth. but apparently, the industry has moved forward by leaps and bounds, and now, ladies and gents, there's a new pocket in town. bumGenius! and the exclamation point is part of the name, but even if it weren't, i'd put it there anyway. because, they truely are genius. sure, like most pockets, they've got a waterproof outer, and a stay dry inner. in this instance, it's usually suedecloth, but for a limited time, you can get fleece. anyhoo. we got 3 of the suedecloth ones, and i expected to like them. but i gotta say, i friggin love these things. they've got a super stretchy back, which means that you can adjust them like you can sposies, in that you can make the waist fit, without worrying that you've got the legs too tight. peanut can wear them alllll night, and in the morning, i have to put my hand in the pocket to see if the insert is wet! i love em. and you can koolaid dye the white ones. so your color choices aren't that limited. they're an envelope style pocket dipe, so the insert doesn't creep out the back, and it doesn't touch the baby skin inside the dipe either. so it's really, the best diaper ever. it's all the ease of a disposable, with all the good stuff that goes with cloth. i lurve these diapers. if you're thinking about making the switch, get you some bumGenius! dipes first. best diapers EVER!

and now, i must roll, as the tiny one wakes.

catchin up

we can now say water (waduh) and whoawwhoaw (which is the sound my fathers evil beagle of death makes) and fish (complete with sign language) and all done, i'm done, and all gone. we've perfected the words cracker, book, and piggies. i say we, like i'm doing it for the first time too. that's weird, huh?

anyways, she's in need of yet ANOTHER stinkin hair cut. it's like her nails, it just keeps growing! she's 31.5 inches tall. 24 lbs according to my dads scale, which is not a doctor scale, so i'm giving or taking a pound or two.

she was an absolute angel on the flights to and from. she is, however, going to require her own seat from now on. she is just too long. i was nursing her for take off and landing, and her feet were totally in this drunk guys lap. he was cool about it. he offered to by me a mojito. love flying delta. likker in the economy class. w00t.

we had a brief and unpleasant encounter with airport security, wherein they frisked me, and made me take peanuts cloth diaper off. beeches. and they stole her straw sippy cup because it had 'liquid residue' in it. no shit. i'd just dumped out the 3 remaining ounces of organic effing apple juice and water and stuck it in my bag.

so there ya have it. organic apple juice residue and cloth diapering are subversive, and a threat to national security.

i'd like to move to australia, or some place similar, which is not the US, and which does have killer surfing.

our time away was relaxing, and the most fun i've had all year. the shower was fun, the games were tolerable, altho i'm miffed that we didn't get to do the word scrambles. i effing rawk at those. the party at sydells was almost enough to make me want to move back to pgh. i so miss having a community of people who love my kid as much as i do. and, toilet scrubbing aside, it was fun setting up for said party, as well.

peanut and her pappy got along famously. she bullied him into feeding her chips, and letting her dip her tiny chicken pieces into the barbecue sauce. at some point, hopefully, i will get copies of the picture i took of the two of them sound asleep. it's adorable.

but perhaps the best part of the vacay, was that my wonderful friend, who was blessed that weekend with a patience she normally doesn't possess, took the time to show me how to crochet properly. and now, rather than crocheting one long single chain, i can actually turn the work, and do several rows.

we went to savannah over this weekend, and stopped in at AC Moore, which is a craft store of sorts. and i bought a set of hooks, and a skein of merino wool, creme colored, so that, if i feel like it, i can dye it in koolaid.

in the meantime, sydell has crocheted me a soaker from green wool. she sent pictures of it adorning her snoopy doll. i can't wait to get it and see if it fits the peanut. cuz it's stinkin cute.

i also made a pair of recycled sweater longies, and have a few more cut out that are waiting to be sewn.

eventually. i will post another picture laden blog, so that you may bask in the craftiness that is me and my bitches.