22 weeks old and a mind dump

Okay, so I'm a bit behind with my blogging lately. My excuse? I'm going to blame the mosquito that violently attacked me when I got home today. No, wait, wait, wait. I'm blaming Irene. Anyway.

Lexi's 22 (almost 23) weeks old. And clearly happy about it.


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Lexi spends the majority of her time munching on her fists, arm, toys, us...pretty much anything nearby that she can get her mouth on.


When she's not doing that, she's doing all sorts of ninja moves.


I didn't say she was good at it.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd, drum roll please.................she's working on sitting up and can sit on her own for 10 seconds (without the boppy). She can tripod for much longer, but ends up toppling over because she tries to eat her feet while she's sitting up.



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Sassy Pants has gotten pretty good about cleaning up when she makes a mess before getting out a new toy (although she insists that we help her clean up, thanks clean up song). She's really been into building castles lately and does a damn good job for a 2 1/2 year old, in my opinion. 

Of course what goes up must come down. Demolition is much more fun than building.

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What do you do with 3 over ripe bananas? Make banana bread...Mmmmm...banana bread. With lemon sugar icing.

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HAPPY BABY!

Fashionista-in-the-making

Most of you know we let Stasa choose her own outfits now, which has been trying since she can take a long time to pick the perfect pieces, but we're all about choices and independence these days. And this girl comes up with some whackadoo ensembles most days (of course there is the rare day when she chooses a mostly normal outfit). Here are some of my favorites.

Sister, sister

Brain too tired to write. Look at cute pictures instead.

21 Weeks Old

Conversation with Stasa

First, her OOTD (outfit of the day):


Yep, that there is what we like to call "personal style" and she's got it in spades. Whatever that means.

Now, on to a Conversation at Bedtime.

Me: Stasa, what did you do this weekend?
Stasa, thinking: I sleep at Mimi's!
Me: That's right, you did sleep at Mimi's. What else did you do?
Stasa: I see choo-choo! I see blue choo-choo! I see black train!
Me, to Tom: Did she really see a train?
Tom: TWO trains.
Stasa: I cry at the food house.
(she did cry at Kilroy's because I left to get food from the buffet and she wanted me to stay with her)
Stasa: I cry and then up up Daddy.
Me: What?
Tom: She wasn't listening so I picked her up.
Me: Ooooh. What else did you do?
Stasa: I no listena mommy and 2 minutes. I cry in my princess dress.
(she sat in timeout in one of her princess dresses)
Me: What are you going to do tomorrow?
Stasa: Gonna go school. I hit Karma. I hit 'Leena. I no hit Marcus.
Me: We don't hit anyone, Stasa.
Stasa: NO hit.

I'm so amazed at what she's able to remember from an entire weekend of events. The kid's memory is sharp.

Throwing it all out there

I had a massive headache most of the day and decided to rest on the couch while Tom made dinner. Lexi was hanging out in the kitchen with Tom (or at least I think that's where she was because she wasn't in the living room with me and I was too tired to get up to check). So as I'm laying on the couch, dying, there's Stasa chugging along on her Little People car thing - through the living room, into the kitchen, past the dining table, and back into the living room. And she's singing. At first I wasn't sure what she was saying, but as she made her next pass through the room I picked up a few lines and realized she's singing this. The kid picks up all sorts of songs now.

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The other day I was picking the girls up from daycare and there was another mom walking out with her baby as I was walking into Stasa's room. Stasa ran up to her, crying hysterically, and yelling "my Lexi! my baby!"- convinced that this woman was stealing her baby sister. I couldn't apologize enough to this poor woman, who very nicely stopped to let Stasa see that she wasn't taking Lexi and that her baby, little Elizabeth, was her own. I finally convinced Stasa to go to Lexi's room so I could prove that this lady didn't steal her sister. And of course, they were changing Lexi so Stas didn't see her right away and she freaked out all over again.

Who knew she was so attached to her baby sister? And Baby Sister loves Big Sister. Like seriously. Love. She lights up when Stasa walks in the room. Quiets down when Stasa talks to her or plays with her or does tummy time with her. She's always smiling that big gummy grin at her.



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Stasa still loves dressing up as a pretty pretty princess. She's always coming down from her playroom with some sort of princess outfit on. This pretty pretty princess likes to read.

And eat.

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*Someone* has discovered her feet. 'Nuf said.

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I had a *brilliant* idea the other night. Earlier in the week I had gone through this month's copy of Parents magazine and ripped out pages with things I wanted to try and one of the pages had a recipe for homemade ectoplasm (aka slime). I knew we had made this when I was working at University View, but couldn't for the life of me remember how. I wanted to slap myself when I saw the recipe because, my God, it couldn't be more simple. Corn starch and water. Plus a tad of food coloring. 

Sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime

Introducing the Notorious S.T.A.S.

And this is what you do when your child poses as a thug for their ID card.

Why aren't weekends like 5 days long?

Last weekend we went shopping with Katie and we stopped in at Claire's to check out their children's hair accessories. While we were in there I spied a display of children's sunglasses and in the midst of those were these fabulous faux glasses. *Of course* we had to get them. She's my mini-me and since mommy wears glasses, Stasa must wear glasses. And how cute is she?!


Friday night was the first Redskins pre-season home game, so the girls and I were on our own for dinner. When I picked up Stasa from daycare I found out that she went potty TWICE. For the first time ever at school. Twice in one day? At school? That certainly was an occasion for ice cream before dinner. At the mall.

Tom and I were both up late on Friday night (although he was up much later that I). Needless to say we were both exhausted the next morning and not at all motivated to get out of bed. This was the first morning Stasa got up without waking us up. We woke up to her in the bathroom, flushing the toilet and yelling "I POO POOED!" Immediate thought: craaaaaaaaaaaap. Tom went in and found out that she had indeed pooped in the potty all on her own. Upon further inspection we found that she had peed in her Pull Up, taken it off in her room, attempted and failed to put on a clean one, peed on her Poang (thankfully it's super easy to wash), then ran to the potty to do the rest of her business. I was sure this was the switch that we had been waiting to be flipped.

I was wrong.

She wasn't at all interested in the potty for the rest of the weekend. Oh well. Progress is progress. I'll take what I can get.

We didn't do much the rest of the day, though Tom managed to get a couple of shots of me with the girls and I attempted to snap a few of them together. Of course neither wanted to cooperate until I put the camera away.

20 Weeks Old

Singing Stasa

I really need to try to sneak a video of Stasa while she's singing - she has so many new songs now. And she's actually singing the entire ABCs, which is a nice change from A, B, C, D, E, 6, 6, twinkle twinkle leeeeeetle stah!

So, now she's got quite the repertoire. We get to hear the real ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle, Pat-a-Cake, 10 Little Monkeys, and she's starting to really get Happy Birthday. And what kills me is we'll be driving home from daycare and all of a sudden she's singing an entire song I've never heard from her before. It's like she keeps it under wraps until she's got it down.

Okay, I promise to try to get her on camera this weekend.

Her first mug shot

I mean, really, do I need to say more?

Big feet, little feet

We were actually productive this weekend

Okay, maybe not so much the whole weekend, but we definitely got a ton accomplished on Sunday. Tom installed a new door lock on one of our closets and put up a ceiling fan in Stasa's room. I hemmed Stasa's curtains that she ripped off her wall and anchored the curtain rod back in the wall - no way those suckers are coming down now. While the munchkins were napping, I fooled around with some old clothes and made Stasa a new denim skirt. It's a little big, but it's still cute and she'll be able to wear it for the rest of the year.




Once Stasa woke up, she and Tom made zucchini bread muffins. Well, really Tom made them. Stasa helped a little, but she was hungry and fussy, so she mostly just stood around whining.



After she got some food in her gullet, she was a much happier kid...not to mention a goofy one. She quite literally wore me out. Okay, she only partially wore me out. I, like the idiot I can be, decided that it would be fun to show her how to crab walk and chased her around the playroom like that. FYI to those of you that don't crab walk on a regular basis: it's not the best idea. Man, oh man, am I sore now.



(Oh, did I mention that she full-on pouts now? Yeah, it's kinda hilarious because she does it all the time now when we tell her no and then a second later she's cracking up because she can't keep the pout on.)






And we even managed to goof off a bit in the mirrors.


Oh and I didn't forget about little Lexi. She was such a fusspot and then was totally quiet and chill when I put her down on the floor. Probably the chaos around her kept her entertained. Either way, I wasn't rocking that boat, so I left her there, to take it all in.