Thursday, November 08, 2007

Busy, busy

Man it's getting tough to get it all done in a day. Hence the lack of blogging lately. But we're all doing well. Roan's keeping us busy of course. Now that she's more mobile and eating solids she gets dirtier and I'm endlessly trying to keep the floor gunk and dog hair off of her. There's more cleaning to do and more stain fighting to do in the laundry. There are also more minutes of the day devoted to feeding her, since we're up to 3 meals a day of solid foods in addition to her normal milk intake. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before but besides rice cereal Roan only likes to eat orange things. Sweet potatos, carrots, corn, and butternut squash are all on the menu. But don't even think about trying to get anything green in her mouth. Or even fruits for that matter. I still try though. Every night I feed her what she likes as well as a couple of bites of something she doesn't. So far it hasn't resulted in an expansion of her menu, but I'll keep making new things available to her.

On Tuesday this week we went and had family portraits made at JC Penny. Can't wait to share them with you! With Beryl's amazing talents in the family I've hesitated to do that till now (Note, this picture and the next one were taken by Beryl, NOT Penny's) but with the holidays coming up I figured what the heck. Plus I've been getting awfully sentimental about the fact that Roan is 7 months now and over halfway done being a baby. It's really feels like her baby days are slipping away like sand running through my fingers. Even though we have a million snapshots of her, it's comforting somehow to have a traditional set of portraits. That she will grow up is inevitable. It's a good thing. But at least we will have these reminders at the waypoints in her journey.

What was funny was that while I found getting family portraits a necessary and comforting act, Arwen was rather disconcerted by it. It wasn't just having to shave, wear a button up and forgo his usual socks with sandals. I think he was questioning whether this was the beginning of me trying to make us into the picture-perfect 1950's type of family. He also wasn't thrilled with the fact that I put her in a pretty white dress with a white bow in her hair. "How is she ever going to be a tomboy if we dress her like that?" he wanted to know. I guess I don't have an answer for him on that one.

Maybe it's a case of me rolling my eyes back in my head and going into Mommy Autopilot, but this was really important to me. It has always meant so much to have the annual family pictures from when I was a kid. I could look at those things endlessly, thinking about how Mom was so beautiful or how funny Dad looked in his 1970's suit. I want Roan to be able to look back and see all of us as we are now and draw her own conclusions.

So this week has also been about baby proofing. We still have a long way to go, but at least we've gotten started. Roan is into absolutely everything. The other morning I caught her chewing on the edge of the dog's bowl, which totally freaked me out. She is constantly on the move and she's most interested in anything that is not a toy. To her delight, she found the tupperware in the kitchen. I'm happy to have her make a mess or make noise as long as she's not going to kill herself with whatever she's into, so as far as I'm concerned the tupperware cabinet might as well have her name on it.

I am still amazed at what a happy baby she is overall. She just smiles and smiles all the time. She'll be crawling around the house just cracking herself up at what I can't tell. Or she looks over at the dogs and goes into hysterics just because puppies are so funny I guess. Except at the moment she's going through a cranky spell. She woke up grumpy from her nap yesterday afternoon and she's still a grump. This morning she woke up with a green runny nose, so she's probably coming down with something. Or maybe it's teething. At least I can say that when she's fussy it's because there's something wrong. Even if I can't figure out what that something is.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OMG those shoes! That smile. GPops says it's a sign she's a genius - he says the 1st sign is going into kitchen cabinets. Apparently, this is a Hall theory. His mom had 6 children so I think he thinks that makes him an expert. We love that little angel. LOve Lolli & Gpops