Riddle me this.

"Cece we need to cut your nails
What can I do to convince you to let me?"
"Solve my banana riddle!"
"Ok, what is your banana riddle?"
"Can I have a banana?"

stories

"mumma, do giants have mommies?"
"i think so, where else would they come from?"
"matagonia."

Friendship

C-I will just wait for kieran.
Me- It might be a long wait baby..
C-I will wait TEN MINUTES.
M-It might be more like two hours.
C-Oh. Two hours. (Whispers) I will wait 2 hours). Or maybe TEN HOURS.

That is friendship.

a lullaby for cece

lullaby, and good night, my sweet little cece,
say good night, have sweet dreams, dream of birdies in the trees.
i love you, and ruby too, yes i love you and love you,
i love you, and daddy too, yes you're my family.

There is probably a lesson here

Or just a funny.

"I want to wear these socks when we go see daddy"
"They don't match baby, let's see if we can find a pair that match.."
"mumma. Look at me. I'm beautiful and so are these socks."

peanut free ruby

i got to talk to ruby's allergist this evening after seeing her test results online. whatever the factor is that they test is apparently pretty low- (Positive: Peanut IgE 1.05) i don't know what that means in regards to the severity of it, but the dr seemed optimistic that she might outgrow it.  she said that they are finding more kids are outgrowing the peanut allergy then they previously thought, and some of the statements found about it being an allergy that is never outgrown might not really apply because she is so young.  obviously this is optimism and speculation, not anything guaranteed. 

she said based on the immediacy of ruby's response to being exposed to pb that avoidance is the way to go at this point.  avoiding all things peanut related, and tree nuts (those have a high risk of cross contamination). the good news in all of this is i've given up eating peanuts and ruby's eczema that we've been struggling with for months has cleared up entirely, and the dr said tree nuts are safe for me to eat.

in a year we will retest and they will do the skin test, depending on the results of that maybe another blood test and if the numbers are different then try re-exposing her. 

Happy Fathers Day

All About my Daddy
answers by Cece:

my daddy's name is: Andrew & Andy & Daddy.
my dad is: 32 years old
his hair is: brown and his eyes are: brown
my dad's favorite food is: "letters" (to which i said letters?) and she said "no.... um. MEAT!"
daddy's favorite color is: brown
my dad likes to wear: yellow
my dad's job is: painting
he loves to eat: meat & meat
he's smart because he knows: more meat
my dad works hard at: work
daddy always tells me: ooooooooooooooohhhhhhh (rofl, which is the noise you make when someone get's 'burned')
i'm happy when daddy: he puts ruby and me in the middle
i love my daddy because: i'm love him!

Thanks for everything, daddy pig. i'm glad you're my partner in crime i mean parenting.

Garden watch: fruits

Not much to report, it's been rain rain raining all the time lately. Monday we had some sunshine so I moved the strawberry plants I had in a pot over to the official gardening area. It was a long overdue move judging by number of plants I got.

A could of weeks ago I impulsively picked up a blueberry bush, do that's in the ground too. I've also got a raspberry plant (bush?) in a container- that's getting rather unwieldy and, as it turns out raspberry bushes are covered in crazy spikes, so I'm not quite sure what I am going to do with that, but for now it looks like its getting some fruit! So that's exciting.

Hopefully the sun peeks out of the clouds and the veggies start peeking out of the dirt!

and butterflies.

we've been having quite the conversation this morning.

"cece what should we do today?"
"um. JUMP. ON THE COUCH!!!!"
"haha. ok. that's something."
"and... rake outside!!"
"oh! that's a good idea, but it's raining today."
"oh no!"
"it's ok, it's good for our seeds."
"yes. and the trees. and erin & mark's trees. and neighbors trees."

***
she's playing this gingerbread cookie app on the ipad right now, and she always picks circles for the cookie's eyes, nose & buttons. so i asked her if circles were her favorite. and she said "yes. and butterflies."

<3

The seeds are in!!

Well that was a challenge. The smallest helper quite hated gardening. Especially since the blanket I picked was too small & she fell on her face in the dirt. Poor kid. Lucky for everyone, uncle Matt was home & came out to keep Ruby Rubes company.

Cece helped me dig some holes & plant all the seeds. Should be interesting to see where carrots grow besides the rows ;). I'm also thinking I might get some short fencing to make it clearer where the garden is.

We didn't quite follow my carefully measured map, so perhaps the fencing would have been a good place to start. ;). It's pretty close though, and it's promising to be damp for the next few days at least, so I'm cautiously optimistic we might get some plants!!

Intentions. I have them.

We ARE planting a small veggie garden this year. And I hope to blog about it. Since this blog is frequently neglected despite my intentions.

'

(the before)

So 2 weeks ago Cece & I started our peas, watermelons & zucchini seeds in little starter thingies.

Last weekend we had a friends & family flash mob help us renovate the back yard. Conveniently the weather was weird this week & ce & I didn't get to plant our seeds in the ground because it's gone down to freezing this weekend!

The only things that sprouted, anyways, were the peas. And I lost the carrots. So today at lowes we bought some more seeds. Monday we'll get our dig on and hope for better luck.

I made the trellis out of some extra chain link fence that I spray painted. Some of it chipped off putting it all together, but hopefully it holds up to the peas. :).

I'm also working on some signs, but that is slow going with small helpers.

So that's that- I hope to be posting pictures of our gardens progress a lot this spring & summer!!

Be careful neighbors

Sitting, looking out the window watching the neighbors house get a new roof Cece is quietly giving them a pep talk:
Neighbors go up up up! Be careful neighbors. Neighbors go down down down. Neighbors don't fall.

Ceceisms

This is my work computer mumma, don't touch it mumma!

(computer pronounced dwapata)

New tradition (I hope)

Andy took the Monday after Easter off & we had a lot of fun.

4 months!

Ruby was 4 months old this past Sunday. She had her well baby visit Monday and her official stats are 20 lbs, 28" (even!). Everything looked great at the docs, she has some dry skin we're going to try extra hard to moisturize. She even started rolling over Monday morning! She must have wanted to give us something to report.

Hipster babies.

Happy valentines day!

Milestones!

Ruby turned three months yesterday!! She celebrated by graduating by going into size 3 diapers & size 9 months clothes! Andrew & I have spent the day sorting through the boxes I thought I carefully packed from when Cece outgrew them :) but she should be good to go now.











Cece has been a rock star at potty training. After a week of practice she's upgraded to cute Mickey Mouse undies!

Can you tell we are related?

Cece's current obsession is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (probably because we just stocked up on all the Sesame St guys). After pretending her blocks were the various characters I decided to buy her an official set of the sensational six. I hemmed and hawed about it but finally decided on a set I found on Amazon and had them shipped (with a few other things) the slow way.

Monday I got an amazon box, basically all the other things... But when my mom brought up the box, she asked if I had been expecting the package in a way that was curious. I said I had been, why?

She had bought Cece a set of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse guys and she was hoping it might be that.

They of course both arrived today.

and they were of course exactly the same:)

I wish weekends were longer.

dirty carrots

In case you haven't had the pleasure of dining with Cece, I'll start by saying normally she's an excellent eater and will try most things. Tonight, however, was not one of those nights. I made a pot roast in the the crock pot w/potatoes, carrots, onions- the works.  Carrots are her fave, so I gave her just about all of them.  Extra delicious carrots that have been cooking with the roast since about 9am. We all sit down to eat and she's not having ANY of it.  No carrots, No meat, NO MUMMA!!!

After we'd eaten, I had a thought. It took me by surprise- thoughts are hard to come by these days.

"Cece!" I said, "Can you eat a carrot with your eyes CLOSED?! I bet you can't"
What child can resist such a challenge. I know you're wishing for pictures right now, but I couldn't risk the distraction. (very unlike me, but my phone was charging across the room).

Tonight we learned Cece can in fact eat carrots with her eyes closed, and meat, AND a zucchini. (Well, she peeked at the zucchini.) The onion was a no-go, but she gave it a shot.  There was lots of applauding at all these eyes-closed eating skills. This system all worked pretty well until I tried to get her to eat another carrot, with her eyes open.

"No mumma. yuck. dirty."

Oh well, more dirty carrots for the rest of us.

Ruby at two months

Just leaving the pediatricians with news that Ruby is 26" and 16lbs 8ozs!! O_o. Holy moly!

She looked good all around so that is always nice to hear.

the doc's isn't so bad with a friend <3

Crack of dawn party

Normally mellow Ruby hollered her face off this morning until she woke up her big sister and has been smiles & gurgles since. That's when A & I realized its her two month birthday! She just wanted to party.

Happy two months little one.