I promise I don't wear pearls and sweater sets

This is who we have talking about stay-at-home-mommyhood to the world? No wonder people think I' m crazy. Plus, I'm not sure she understands the irony of Stephen Colbert fully.....

There Will Be Poop

I know there are those of you that can't stand the topic of poop, but in our household it's a big topic de jeur. It fascinates me to the extent that up till now I only believed people with weird fetishes were capable of. We discuss the color and size and shape and smell. What solid foods cause the different color, size, etc. Our blow-out to regular movement ratio has increased exponentially and luckily, mostly on Buzzkill's watch. I feel like one of those doctors in The Last Emperor or in The Madness of King George inspecting the royal movement - I guess Punkinhead is our little princess.

On the developmental front, Punkinhead revealed to us last night during the Oscars......her first tooth! It's just barely pushed through the gum on her bottom front right, but it is most definitely a tooth and sharp too! As soon as it's all the way out I'll take a picture.

She's also clapping now. It's really sweet to watch. Basically she slaps one palm down onto her other, but HotMommy is going to claim this as one in the developmental win column.

Yum, puffed vegetable things and pureed turkey. Is this like Thanksgiving?

We got the go-ahead at Punkinhead's 9-month check-up to give her more solid foods. She'd been given rice cereal and pureed vegies & fruits, but her doc said she was good to go on pureed meats, Cheerios, those dissolving puffed vegies & fruits and we can also do oatmeal and barley cereals.

Me being me, I set up color-coded notecards (oh, I love me some notecards) that have a meal time and meal "receipe" for each of her feedings.

Mornings: She still gets a formula-only feeding but I upped her to 10 oz. from 8 oz. She definately is more settled after her morning nap now. She'll play happily instead of screaming immediately for me to feed her right that second.

Mid-morning: She does a rice cereal, fruit serving with a follow-up bottle. I'm going to start trying the oatmeal cereal at this feeding as well.

Mid-afternon: I do the meat and a vegie serving along with rice cereal here. She gets a follow-up bottle too. Once I know for sure that she's not allergic to oatmeal, I'll change the rice cereal here to barley cereal.

Evening: Punkinhead gets rice cereal and a fruit & vegie serving along with, you guessed it, a follow-up bottle.

She gets some puffs or Cheerios to play around with on her tray at the 3 solids feedings. It helps her practice her pincer moves, but she really doesn't get any nutrition from it.

We all really love the whole process now - can't ya tell?

Nine months down, only 17 and 1/2 years until she leaves for college.

Times a flyin' by. HotMommy and Buzzkill are proud to report that at Punkinhead's 9-month check-up she weighed 18 lbs 10.5 oz (50th percentile), is 28 inches long (70th percentile), has a head 17.5 inches in circumfrence (60th percentile), and didn't have to get ANY shots!

With all the shots she gets between her vaccines, Synagis RSV, and flu shots, when I lay her down on the paper in the exam rooms, she screams because she anticipates a poking. So, it was nice to get a break.

Buzzkill is abso-blanking-lutely going to her 1-year appointment so I don't have to go through what I'm told is the hardest check-up until her 4-year check-up. He hasn't had to go to any doctory things since her appointment the week after she came home from the hospital. And I get bonus points for having to take her to all the eye doctor appointments where they used that horrible little tool to hold her eye open.

We are going to have to bring in a physical therapist since she isn't sitting up on her own yet, but all in all, we had a really good report from her ped!

We now pause for a brief tantrum....

All this just because HotMommy stopped holding her for a bathroom break. Or maybe it was because she hasn't gotten any new text messages on her play cellphone?

Also, please don't zoom into the picture and judge me by my dirty carpet. Some days I don't get to vacuum it. Deal with that! But don't zoom and judge...

I jinxed it

Just by talking about how wonderful it was to have Jesse L. Martin and Jeremy Sisto teamed up on Law & Order, I've destroyed the casting perfection.

Jesse L. Martin is leaving the show. He'll film one more episode to explain his character's departure and then, alas, gone.

And they're not going to even give me a Lenny Briscoe (aka Baby's Daddy aka Jerry Orbach) - type partner. Word is it's going to be Anthony Anderson from that rejected Fox cop show set in New Orleans.

First the strike, now this....what did I do to anger the tv gods?

Also the pedi seemed okay with learning that we let Punkinhead watch tv once I told her it was Meet The Press with her dad on Sundays.

Mr. Poopypants

Tonight I heard a plaintive wail from Punkinhead's room, "Can I get some help?" And no, verbal as she increasingly is, it was not Punkinhead, but Buzzkill.

Apparently he was on the phone with a former co-worker, and since I was online, he had physical custody of the Punkinhead. He heard her "tooting" and then realized there was probably actually poop involved due to the smell. Man-style, he figured he could finish his phone call and then give her a change, but alas, when he glanced down poop was spilling out of the back of her pants onto his lap. This is one of the few days I had her in an actual top instead of a onesie, so the poop was free to escape.

Jump to the plaintive wail.....I give instructions on getting her hosed down and into clean clothes and then have the pleasure of telling him....."Go change your poopy pants!"

So much joy....

Does something smell fishy to you?

We took a little outing to the aquarium recently, meeting up with some other mommies and baby friends. Punkinhead was fantastically mesmerized by the shark and fish tanks you can walk under and I of course, was in terror of the birds in the "rain forest" portion. Why on earth is there an aviary at an aquarium? We were a little disappointed the outdoor penguin exhibit was closed, but we can go back later with Daddy/Buzzkill.

Additionally, thank you to Montana's auntie for remembering her camera or we'd have none of the great pictures to post!

The waterfall was very noisy and I liked it!

She loves that shark tank.......

Delish

Okay, so after watching American Idol tonight, I have one thing to say about the Aussie dude.............YUMMY!




He reminds me a little of Jeremy Sisto from Six Feet Under and now Law & Order. Speaking of which, I just need to comment on how happy I am to watch Mr. Sisto AND Jesse L. Martin on the screen together. It means I can combine the time I spend drooling over both of them.

First Playdate

Our Sunday school class is having a baby boom right now. It's really great to have a circle of friends with little girls in the same age range as Punkinhead. A couple of weeks ago, we went over to visit one of the newest cuties and her mom along with one of Punkinhead's oldest friends - we'll call her Montana - and Montana's mommy. Montana's mommy picked up delish Starbucks stuff and we all caught up while the babies got to know each other.

Combined DNA

So, one HotMommy plus one Buzzkill equals a beautiful Punkinhead. Does the math add up? She seems way more beautiful than the sum of our parts. Incidently, check out the Buddha belly on Baby Buzzkill in the middle photo. Don't you just want to poke it to see if he'll Pillsbury Doughboy giggle?

I think we've found a new "Old Blue Eyes"

Errr, maybe Young Blue Eyes? Anyway, I'm so glad she got Buzzkill's eye color. Please also note how successfully she's sitting up in her Bumbo seat. Go Punkinhead!

Our Comedy Central shows hosting team

As many of you know, our dog Stephen Colbert recently got her (yeah, yeah, we know about the gender mix-up. blame Buzzkill) dog. He's another terrier mix that a friend of a friend rescued and we've named him, what else? Jon Stewart. So check out the photos above for the required ahhing. Jon's the tiny, soon-to-be neutered male on the right and Stephen's the girl on the left. At least, the gender is right this time.