LLL Conference

I went to the La Leche League conference this past weekend, and had a great time! It's so nice to be surrounded by people who love babies and children as much as we do, and who value mothering and responding to a baby's needs. My favorite favorite favorite thing that I heard all weekend was, "Society has changed, but the needs of a baby have not." I was reminded again and again that this work I do is so important and that my girlies will only be little once. All of the leaders who have moved beyond the baby stage are so encouraging! Here are some pictures of our weekend!

My friend Adrianne was just recently accredited as Ohio's newest LLL leader ~ go Adrianne!

My friend Sierra and "Baby Isaac" (yes, THE baby Isaac! The one that Maya names her dolls after!). She is also one of my coleaders in LLL.

Baby Isaac preparing for his big fight...

I love how his little mittens make him look like a boxer :)

My LLL posse

Maya getting ready to swim in the hotel pool

Getting ready for the pajama party...avoiding BO is apparently a very important part of this regimen!

Charlotte played happily for quite a while at the pajama party!

Michael and Isabella being silly

Maya playing with one of her prizes from the evening (which she keeps trying to give to Charlotte as a "hat")

And finally, family pictures from the weekend :)

Baby Food

We don't have baby food in our house. I don't make my own baby food, either. Charlotte eats what we eat, and has since she started eating solids at about 6 or 7 months. Of course she eats things that are soft and mashable (avocado and banana to start with, as you can see in most of the pictures of her eating!) but we basically put chunks or slices of food on her tray and let her go to it. The theory behind this is that, if you wait until a baby shows all the signs of being ready for solids, and is able to feed him or herself solid foods, you shouldn't need to start with mashed up food or purees. You skip the feeding-them-with-a-spoon stage, they control their own intake, and you never have to transition away from purees. Plus, the food tastes like what you eat as a family because it IS the food you eat as a family. I've tasted baby food before. Let's just say that it might say "green beans" on the jar, but I'd never know that if I couldn't read :P

But on the way to TN, Charlotte screamed. The.Entire.Time. At one point, I broke down, made Michael find a Wal-Mart, and went in to stock up on the pureed food in a jar that most babies know and love. I thought that maybe, just maybe she was hungry. Nevermind that I had nursed her more on the 12-hour-trip-that-should-have-taken-8-hours than I had ever nursed her before. But of course she wouldn't eat it. I've been so concerned that she feed herself and control her own food intake that she will NOT let me feed her. And a 10 month old (who isn't great with a spoon) feeding herself baby food (which she's never had) in a moving vehicle? Not happening. The spoon kept her occupied for about 15 minutes, though.

We gave her the food at the hotel over the past couple of days.

At first she was confused by the container.

Then she had to figure out the spoon.

And then she wasn't so sure about the texture.

But once she figured the whole thing out she was pretty happy with it.

And I have to say, I don't know if it's the brand of food, or the fact that it was bananas, but it didn't actually taste half bad ~ Charlotte agreed (and required a bath after her meal...though that is nothing new! :)).

Unrelated, these are Maya's babies. She carries them around pretty much everywhere, and takes wonderful care of them. She set them up on the bed like this, and made sure that they all had part of the blanket for naptime.

In case you were curious, from left to right (all named by Maya, of course), you have:

My Puppy Janer, Isabella, Baby Isaac, Princess, Baby Isaac, The Easter Bunny, and The Easter Bunny's Friend.

No, there are no typos ~ she has two babies named "Baby Isaac". In real life, baby Isaac is Isabella's younger brother (and in real life, Isabella is a person and not a monkey :)). Isaac and Isabella's mom is Sierra, which is the alternate name for "The Easter Bunny's Friend". And "My Puppy Janer" is not a puppy. Apparently you have to use your imagination to figure that one out :P

She Can Count Linearly!

Maya has been able to say her numbers, in order, from one to thirteen for a long time. I naturally assumed that this meant she could count, but about three months ago, Michael came home excited to show me a new "trick" he learned about on the RadioLab podcast. Apparently when babies are born, their brains count logarithmically. We teach them, over time, to count linearly. He asked Maya (2.5 years old) to hand him one piece of dog food. She did. Then he asked her to hand him two pieces of dog food. She reached in, grabbed a whole handful, and gave it to him. I know it doesn't seem very interesting, but we're kinda dorky and this whole toddler brain development thing is pretty fascinating. Apparently when she said the numbers from one to thirteen she was just repeating the pattern of counting without actually understanding it. So on Thursday of this week we were visiting Michael's family. They are all pretty much equally dorky (sorry guys ~ but you know it's true :D) so we wanted to show them. Michael asked Maya to hand him one m&m, and she did. Then he asked her to hand him two m&ms...and she handed him TWO!!! We repeated the "experiment" a couple times to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and lo and behold, she has moved beyond the infant-built-in-counting-method and onto linear counting. Dude. This stuff is so cool.

On a related note ~ I was searching for that RadioLab link, so I typed "babies count logarithmically" into Google. Michael's blog came up as the number 8 search result ~ you should check it out!

I don't have pictures of Maya counting dog food or m&ms, but here is an unrelated pic of the girlies eating breakfast for ya (and in case you are curious, Maya is eating chocolate chip walnut pancakes ~ yum!)

Hush Little Baby

Our Day in Pictures

We got a new dishwasher on Wednesday, which means that the girls got a new box! I don't have any pictures of them in the box together, because one of the two girlies is a little protective of "her" box. We're still working on the sharing thing. Also, look closely at the carpet, and you'll see the pink and blue remains of the acrylic paint incident!

Maya has become quite the fashionista these days! She loves to accessorize. The rain boots are a good choice, because they are both fashionable and functional (haha :)).

We've been hanging out in our backyard the last couple weeks, and when Maya isn't freaking out over "bees" (read: gnats and other tiny bugs or dirt that she thinks are bees), she is having a grand old time climbing, sliding, and exploring. Charlotte, on the other hand, just enjoys crawling around...

... and eating grass!

My girlies were both blessed (ha!) with my pale skin, so we attempt to protect them from the sun. Problem is, Charlotte will NOT keep a hat on her poor little head.

The hat is on her head...

...and it's going...

...going...

...going...

...gone!

Hats are much more fun to play with than to wear!

Because my posts are usually so Maya-heavy, here are a few more pictures of Charlotte, for good measure :D

The End!

The One With Lots Of Babies!

Michael and I visited our friends Bryan and Tiffany on Saturday. Maya and Carter (their almost-2-year-old) played in their awesome playroom, and since Charlotte thinks she is quite the big girl these days, she decided to play with them rather than hang out with me. She's much too cool to be seen with her mom, apparently :P Carter, it would seem, loves to give kisses!

In total boy fashion, Carter took a spill a couple weeks ago and got his first stitches. He took it like a champ and definitely seems no worse for the wear.

I asked Michael if he thought that Maya or Charlotte would be the first to require stitches. He answered "Maya" so fast that I actually thought he didn't hear the question! When my follow-up was, "do you think it will be a sports related injury" he just sorta chuckled and said, "no". And I agree. Unless sports ability skips a generation, our kidlets will be sadly uncoordinated (which I suppose means that a sports injury is quite likely! Unless they just don't play at all...). But they'll rock at computer programming!

Anyway, back to our friends! A month ago they had twins, and then just 2 or 3 weeks after that they moved into a new house! Holy moly! So we were visiting the new house for the first time, and we got to see the twins ~ squee! They are so squishable and cuddly and I just want to eat them up! All of the pictures of me holding them look like this ~ I would start with them up at my shoulder and then they would migrate down until they were comfy against each other on my belly!

After a fun time and yummy lunch and lots and lots of running and jumping for the girlies (they have a trampoline!), we came home and the girls passed out in the car. Thanks for exhausting them, guys! :)

And I'll leave you with this picture ~ I mean, it requires no words, right? Tif says this is the only way they'll sleep for any length of time.