Miss Marie

Marie is back! She had gone home for the summer and I wasn't sure if we would get to see her anymore, but it turns out that we do. She'll be here until around October when her mama goes on maternity leave and she gets to go home with her new little sister.

She has learned about four hundred words since she left in May. It's like we got a different person back- a total conversationalist. She's told me her little sister is sleeping in Mommy's tummy, not ready to wake up yet. It's so cute. She remembers all the routines and has slipped back into the rhythm of our day very easily. No transition needed at all, which is very nice.

I need to take some new pictures of her because her hair has gotten really long too.

This week begins the season of changes that we have going on- I have eight kids just for this week, then next Monday Belle will go off to kindergarten and I'm back to seven. At the end of September I'm getting a delicious teeny squishy six week old, who is currently one week old. I'll post pictures of her once I get permission from her mama. She's so greasy and wonderful. :)

Marketing

So I pose this question:

If you couldn't read, which of these would you assume is the strawberry cereal?


Why do they insist on putting pictures of strawberries on the spoon when it's a "healthier" kind of cereal? Is it supposed to illustrate that you'll need to add something to make it taste better, or what? I had the hardest time trying to explain to Snow White and Ariel that the OTHER one was strawberry flavored, and that the corn bran doesn't actually have any strawberries in the box. They didn't believe me at all, of course, and why would they? I mean, look at the box. People trying to sell you things are always telling the truth, right?

Say What You Mean

O'Malley: Mo kah-kah!
Me: You need some more crackers, O'Malley?
O: (shaking his head no firmly with a big smile) NO!
Me: Okay. You mean yes.
(I pour him more. He starts to eat.)
Snow White: He say no. Why you give him more?
Me: Well, he doesn't understand sometimes which word to use. He means yes.
Snow: But he say no. He shake his head like THIS. NO!
Me: I know. He's confused.
Snow: He not need crackers! He say NO!

Meanwhile, O'Malley's chomping away happily on the second helping, which he definitely did want. Poor Snow. Confusion is no fun.

Gibberish? Or Not?

I've had a one year old dropping in this week. His family lives in China and they're back for the summer. Most kids this age jabber and make unintelligible noises. However, with this one, I can't stop thinking that he's probably just speaking Mandarin, and that if I only knew how to speak that, I'd know exactly what he wants. I keep listening to every little sound he makes to see if any of them are repeated or could possibly be Chinese words. Not that I would know if they really were, but still. It's interesting.

Greasy, Greasy Babies

I have referred to babies several times in the past as being greasy. I realize that needs explanation.

My sister read somewhere about a study they did on newborns to determine the reasons why some moms never feel like they're finished and always want another baby. Apparently babies emit some sort of pheromone- it's actually kind of like a grease, and it's addictive to adult females of all sorts, but most especially to their moms. It makes you NEED to hug and snuggle and kiss the baby because you need its grease. It's some sort of innate thing to make you want to bond with your baby and hopefully ensure it doesn't have failure to thrive, or I think that was one of the conclusions of the study. The effects of said grease taper off as the baby gets older, and disappear around age three. So, as your child hits age three, the grease wears off, you realize the terrible threes are SO MUCH WORSE than the terrible twos and why did nobody warn you, and you want another baby. Because you are going through grease withdrawals. Crazy, huh? I have no idea who "they" are or where she read about the study, but we have latched onto it because we like the concept, whether it's true or not.

So. When a baby is especially cute and delicious and we want to kiss it, we always talk about how greasy it looks. Nothing to do with hygiene or cooking oil or anything like that. :)