FIVE CUPCAKES. I deserve them.

Eleanor is five months old and she can go ahead and stay this age. Somewhere in the last month she morphed from Fairly Contented Baby Who Laughs At Times to Deliriously Happy Baby Always Except When Put Down For Naps. She is seriously like HAAAAA, EVERYTHING!

With her, as always, are her thighs.

teeny chopsticks

lubby drumsticks

She's come a long way, baby. Especially in this last week. New crib!

New plaything!

New nutrition source!

Eventually she is going to learn to talk AND that she has a right to personal space, and she is going to be like, Stop putting your face all up in my face. But for now she LIKES it. (You can tell because she tries to bite you.)

I feel like I'll keep saying this until she learns to crawl, and then I'll be like, GO BACK, but she can go ahead and stay like this forever. I just keep LIKING her.

fresh new baby doesn't like anything, and isn't really sure what 'liking' IS

delighted baby likes EVERYTHING and likes it VERY MUCH THANKS

I will remind her of this when she is two and is like, Yuck.

I don't always eat human food, but when I do I GO TO IT WITH EMPHASIS.



Bananas are pretty good and mango is alright but BROCCOLI, that stuff is the shit.

She's not just an extension of my body any more.

If there's one thing Eleanor is valedictorian of, it is getting things into her mouth.

She is COMMITTED and RELENTLESS in her attempts to taste Whatever That Thing Is You're Holding.

Were you eating from that bowl? Why don't I just wipe my gums on the edge.

Oh, is that your knee? I'm going to just TASTE it for you.

Are these your hair extensions? Do they taste like REAL hair? Why don't I check?

If there are TWO things Eleanor is valedictorian at, the second one is feeding. She suckles like a champ. (No photos of same, due to my previously-established No-Nakkies policy.)

We figured it was time to combine her two skills into a Super Skill.

 yesss, finally

 huh

welp

pretty alright, I guess

YOU HAVE MORE?!

In real time:



You can pinpoint the exact second that she realizes holy shit they have given me FOOD. (It's at 0:19.)

Babyless for a day.

My baby went to Chilliwack without me! Joel was heading to his parents' for the day to get his car fixed, and I was like, SOMEONE TINY WANTS TO ACCOMPANY YOU, so Eleanor went to hang with her G-parents and I lolled around the house, babyless.

This is my new favorite thing, you guys. Because when she goes down for a nap, I think of all the things I want to get done and how little time I have and then I panic and end up just reading The Internet until she wakes up. But when she is GONE FOR SEVEN HOURS I am so productive.

Also, I drink a lot of coffee.

So I read a book and had a coffee. And then I pootled around on the internet running boring but necessary blog errands. And THEN I turned this:

into this:

And THEN I fixed my orange high-waisted jeans, which I got maybe 15 lbs ago when mom got super-depressed by my wardrobe and took me shopping and which are now -waisted jeans on account of I misplaced those 15 lbs.

High-waisted jeans sitting at your natural waist give you the longest crotch. But so I FIXED them, is the point.

And then I made some serious headway in a project I've been working on for Eleanor's Eventual Room (as in, eventually she will have a room, and it won't be A Corner Of Our Room Where I Can STILL HEAR HER).

And then I took a coffee and my book and went to the park.

And then Eleanor came home and I was like *sigh* but I was also like *snorgle*

It's almost like walking a puppy.

Kelly and would I always talk about how, when we go out with just our own bodies, no one is quite as stoked to see us as they were when we were pregnant or as they are when we go out with our babies. I mean, EVERYONE loves a pregnant woman. LOOK AT THAT PREGNANT WOMAN OVER THERE!

And then babies. We are almost never in a hurry anywhere, so we totally don't mind when people stop us to coo at Eleanor and squish her feeties, which they do all the time. Only, unless I have her entirely in pink, they'll be like, Your baby boy is so darling. And I'm just like, Thanks, because they're being sweet and whatever, she does kind of look like a boy.

But even dressing her in frills and bows doesn't always help. A woman the other day told me that he was adorable, even though this was us:

So close, strange woman. Then another woman, who wasn't even OLD, she was, like, in her 40s, and had no vision problems that I could see, got right down in Eleanor's face and was like, You have the most beautiful blue eyes! To which:

srsly?

I mean, right? She had her sunglasses off by this point, and we weren't even in a dimly-lit foyer or anything.

And then the other day an old Chinese man stops me to read my baby's face, like a Victorian phrenologist. Apparently her large brow means she will be intelligent, which is kinder than saying THAT CHILD WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO FIND HATS THAT FIT, which is what I say to her a lot. And then he said her eyes were pure and sincere, which is about the nicest thing in the history of ever.

The grad things, they proliferate.

So Joel had a Grad Thing on the Island last week that I couldn't go to because I had the flu and was begging for death, and then he had a Grad Thing yesterday where he got his MD Hood and Shingle.

I am like, What? This must be code for something doctory. But it is a literal shingle, it turns out.

And THIS MORNING he will have a Grad Thing where he gets his Actual Degree and Actually Graduates. Four years of school after four years of pre-school school is INSUFFICIENT YOU MUST ALSO GO TO ALL THE THINGS.

And then tonight we have a Thing and I have to find something Fancy to wear that I can squeeze my boops into.

Meanwhile, Eleanor continues to be single-minded in her quest to get That Thing You Are Holding into her mouth.

She is nothing if not consistent.

Pinterest continues to make me fat: Vol. III

Trish is hosting a Pin It And Do It challenge, wherein you actually DO the pins you pin instead of just pinning them. We all know I am Good At This, but we also know that I like joining challenges for things I would be doing anyway.

Slow-roasted pulled pork! I would slow-roast this again. I mean, you have to weigh the disadvantage of not leaving your house for nine hours because the oven is on against the crispy, crispy edges that you can't get in a crock pot. And I would add less salt and more sugar and make the drippings into a sauce and then add that sauce to the meat. BUT, the real sleeper hit in this meal was this slaw:

For which I googled 'pulled pork slaw' at the last minute and then just ran with. Just sweet enough and slightly mustardy and a little hit from the dijon. I DON'T EVEN LIKE DIJON. But for real, slaw this up. I don't care what you serve it with.

Strawberry-lemonade bars! These went over like a house afire. They are tart and refreshing and best served cold. Because of that, and because they're pretty gooey, they aren't good travelling treats. I'm not going to want to drag them on the bus somewheres, is what I'm saying. But if you're going to a picnic lunch, and travelling there in your air-conditioned car, and not wrangling a bunch of toddlers or whatever, bring these. They are dead easy and EVERYONE WILL COMMENT ON HOW GOOD THEY ARE. I would dust the top with powdered sugar if you're concerned about the pretty, because it browns a bit unattractively.

German pancakes! I made these at the cabin, and they are wonderful for that because they take a brief whisking in a bowl and then you pour them in a pan (OR SKILLET. I recommend skillet) and huck them in the oven and then you aren't hovering over a hot flattop making pancakes for everyone while everyone eats pancakes and chatters cozily in the other room. If I was to do them again, I'd split the batter between two skillets to make a thinner pancake, and I'd add an eensy bit of vanilla and sugar. Basically, I would make them become crepes.

It'll probably be annoying when the thing she figures out is 'no,' but for now it's great.

Every so often she figures out something new she can do with her face or her body, and then she does that thing a LOT. Like when she figured out she could whisper, and now it's like she's always on the verge of telling you a secret, but she never gets past that initial *hey*.

Anyway, she just started doing this with her face:

and now she just DOES IT and DOES IT and we can't stop laughing because THAT IS ABSURD.

Just because you're irreplaceable doesn't mean I won't try.

We are moving in just over a month, but the end has begun already. Eleanor's boyfriend Felix, with whom she has enjoyed many a rag-chew, left for France last week and won't be coming back until after we've packed our bags and hauled.

This is deeply sad to me. I like Felix' mom Kelly so much, I'd hang out with her even if she DIDN'T live just next door and have a baby exactly my baby's age. So.

I had my last book club last week as well. Alas, for that. With whom else am I going to order All The Desserts?

And here's the thing: I love task clips. Only, I have never voiced aloud this love of task clips and all their myriad uses. And yet, a few years ago for Christmas, Robyn got me a batch of clips that say 'Merde' and 'Poop' on them. I use them to hold my bag of chips closed. And then my book club got me a set of clips that say 'Pffft' and 'Ugh' on them. They are keeping my electronic chargers corralled.

And then also they got Eleanor an Elephant. It jingles and she loves it a little bit frantically.

Good-bye, Kelly and Felix. Good-bye, book club.

Setting the standards high.

It was Mother's Day, did you notice? I am a mother now, I'm not sure you're aware.

We were at my aunt and uncle's solar-powered, energy efficient...it's basically the hybrid car of cabins. Also, 'cabin' is a misnomer, as is 'cottage.' 'Château' is getting there.

All of us together in one space let Joel off the hook for making me breakfast because we all made me breakfast. Joel and Darren made the bacon.

Eleanor checked it for done-ness.

Matt made the potato patties.

I made German pancakes.

Mom cut up the fruit and also made the coffee and also PLANNED ALL THE MEALS AND BROUGHT EVERYTHING UP, so, basically did all the hard work.

And then we ATE that hard work.

Having scads of family around means that Joel and I get to kayak across the lake and loll about like walruses

because there's always someone around to hold the baby.

Speaking of the baby, she was aces. She played hard

and napped hard

and had the most luxurious bath of her life, which I will not show you photos of because I have a strict no-nakkies policy on this blog, so instead here she is sitting pretty.

We have many adventures coming up in the next few weeks. Part of me is like, ye gads, adventuring with a baby. And then part of me knows that we'll be just peaches.