Favorite Photo Fridays - November 14

As if the fact that it's Friday and the weekend starts in approximately 4 hours isn't enough! New favorite photos, coming at you in 3...2...1...

All of these were taken in the latter half of October. In the first two, you can see that Fiona had recently discovered Ollie's bed was awfully fun to hang out in - especially when he was in it. I love the first one because she just looks so damn pleased with her situation. Meanwhile, Ollie is just tolerating it. He's a pain in the ass in a lot of ways, but he's really good with Fi, and I consider us very lucky in that regard.

The other two are from an apple picking trip we took in Franklin, MA, with some dear friends and their one-year-old son, Ethan. What's cuter than two little fall babies hanging out together and eating apples straight off the tree?









Happy weekend, all!

Too tired to eat lunch

In my post yesterday, I mentioned that Fiona managed to sleep through what sounded like a small army of elephants playing cricket on our roof. I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised. I mean, she was really, REALLY tired, as evidenced in this terribly cute and amusing video. Poor little shaver!

Baby + Tired = Not waking up for ANYTHING

I've always known the old adage, "babies can sleep through anything." I'd witnessed the strange ability for babies and toddlers to shut out the noisy world around them and have a nap. It's uncanny, really.

But then of course, there are the times when even the slightest hint of a noise will wake a slumbering child into an upright shrieking banshee. Seriously, how do they do that? Fiona has scared the bejebus out of me more than once when I've walked into her room late at night to check in on her - silently as a cat - only to have her suddenly rise from her prone position - also silently as a cat - staring at me with those big blue eyes of hers. Sometimes I think she must still be asleep when she does that because leaving the room has no ill effect. Other times, naturally, if you're caught sneaking into the baby's room, she will make you pay. She will make your eardrums pay. She will make your own need for sleep pay. This stock-straight standing thing she occasionally does when roused from sleep by a mere whisper of sound reminds me of movies where dead bodies in morgues suddenly sit up with their sheets still over their head. Yeah, it's that creepy.

OK, sorry, I got distracted. So, babies sleep through anything. Yes, back to that. Today Fiona amazed me most of all. I put her down for a nap a little after noon when she was so tired she fell asleep while I was feeding her. And of course, not 10 minutes later, the roofers (expected either today or tomorrow) showed up. And they immediately set up their first ladder directly in front of Fiona's window. And proceeded to clomp all over the roof of the house as they ripped it to shreds.

I cannot emphasize this next part enough: this shit was LOUD, people. LOUD! Had I not known what was going on up there, I would have been scared out of my mind. Actually, even knowing what it was I was a little scared. I think it was only 5 guys, but it sounded like 50. And it went on for nearly three hours. Pounding, pulling, banging, clomping, crashing.

And that baby didn't even so much as peep. I'll grant that she's obviously still under the weather from her cold; and it was significantly later in the day than she's used to taking her first nap (at least on the days she's home with me). I also put a small fan in her room for a bit of extra white noise. But this was the equivalent of a herd of elephants stomping across the roof! Really?? Fiona will pop to life at the sound of the teeny, tiny click her door makes when I come in her room, but will sleep like, well, a baby during the cacophony we heard today? Well. OK, then. Maybe that means I don't need to tiptoe around this joint so much at night.

Baby's First Cold

It had to happen sometime. After almost 15 months of blissfully good health, Fiona finally got her first cold. It came on subtly: last Thursday she was just a little off, not too interested in food, kinda crabby. Friday morning when she woke up, she had a thoroughly crusty nose, and my mother-in-law informed me later that day that Fi was officially a sick little puppy. She was in good spirits, though, and played most of the day with her usual vigor.

Of course, when I showed up to pick her up that evening she took one look at me and remembered that she was sick and demanded some love and attention, which I gladly dispensed to my usually independent child. By Saturday evening, she was still congested but apparently feeling better. Not so on Sunday. More congestion, more crabby. Poor little shaver. As of today, she's on the mend again, but I have her humidifier on full blast to do as much as I can to alleviate the snot block going on in her wee noggin.

The dreaded toddler cold couldn't be held at bay forever. Lots of things conspired against poor Fiona. On Halloween morning, we visited a day care just to check it out, and she naturally got her little hands all over all kinds of stuff that lots of other little hands had been on. Then the day after Halloween we had a party that was overrun with other kids, much to Fi's delight; much toy-sharing and drool exchange transpired. The following Tuesday, I took her to the pediatrician fearing she had an ear infection (no ear infection; apparently, she's an ear tugger). Her immune system - no longer benefiting from the antibodies in breastmilk - just couldn't withstand those voracious germs.

Still, we weathered this first cold pretty well, I think. She has continued to sleep like a champ (14 hours a day!) and still finds great comfort in food. Especially apples, which she enjoys gnawing on while walking around the house. All in all, it could have been worse.