Verbal development continues apace.

I still get monthly emails from BabyCenter about Eleanor's development, and today the update on my 30-month-old (what the heck even) was like,

'Your toddler is becoming increasingly good at matching words with the objects they describe. She can name a few body parts, some colours and even a friend or two. You can help her improve her verbal skills by giving her details. If she says, "Dog sleep," for example, you might say, "Yes, Spot is curled up and fast asleep." She can't imitate your complex language patterns just yet but she's learning more all the time.' 

and I'm like, LOL FOREVER because yesterday Eleanor was chasing Joel around the house going, I'm grabbing you with my talons because I am a seagull. Which, I think she meant eagle, so I take your point, BabyCenter email.

The best thing about her right now (besides the talons) is that she doesn't think ahead, her sentences just arrive to her in dribs and drabs. You can hear each thought as it bubbles to the surface and then falls out of her mouth, because she hasn't got a filter either. 'I'm going to the village! To buy some money. For the king. Because the king has NO money.' 'I went to the zoo! And there was FIVE hippos. And they didn't have any...soup...in their homes. So we dug a garden.' It's like that game where each person in a circle supplies the next sentence of the story, only it's all coming out of one person.

The day her inner monologue becomes inner will be a tragic one.

A weekend in four parts.

Group naps,

yogurt al fresco,

swings,

monkey bars,

books,

Josie's house.

~~~~~~~

Food trucks,

spicy queso corn,

steamed pork buns,

splash parks,

free donuts,

vegan burritos,

Jazz Festival.

~~~~~~

Face holes,

hiking trails,

piggy back rides,

beaver dams,

beaver puppets,

Beaver Creek.

~~~~~~~

House to myself for an hour,

a basket of garbage and dollar store doodads,

water wall,

home front.

(You do you, Geneva. You continue to do you.)

Sisters do as sisters should.

Total Eleanor-face, am I right?

I am right.

Come a long way, baby.

There's so much that's hideous about the newborn stage - the not sleeping, the inability to amuse themselves, the constant spitting up. Joel told me to treasure this because I'm going to miss it one day, and I was like, HAHAHA I don't think any woman in her right mind misses the newborn stage. It's nice to hold OTHER people's newborns, but having your own is kind of hellish. I'm nostalgic for, like, six-month-old Eleanor, and one-year-old and eighteen-month-old Eleanor, but I am so glad to see the distant back of newborn-Eleanor.

THAT BEING SAID. I'm trying to appreciate what is excellent about this age as well - the tininess, the fuzzy baby-deer head, the smell, the sleeping. Because when the Geneva Wren sleeps, she sleeps a LOT. There are days when we walk down to the park and Geneva falls asleep on the way and then I just stash her under a tree and check on her every few minutes. Still alive!

She's coming up on seven weeks old. My sister's due date was exactly a month after my surgery date, but then they moved her due date back three days. I know it's just an estimate, but when you're nine months pregnant, you're hanging all your hopes on that day. So that was crushing, and when she'd gone a week past THAT day, they decided to induce her. Only they were too busy that morning, maybe that afternoon. Maybe tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. Three days after a week after her second due date, they induced her, and yesterday my third niece was born.

Rosey Joy, what a bean. I can't wait to bite her face. She's my sister's first baby, and looking at her I realize how far we've come. I'm always all like,  Geneva can't do anything, but Rosey REALLY CAN'T DO ANNNNNNNYTHING. Geneva can (as of, like, today) wallop her parrot, kind of half on purpose, and she is always like, WOAH LOOK AT HIM GO.

With your first baby, you're hyper aware of their development, but your second (and, I'm assuming, any subsequent) is just sort of a helpless newborn until suddenly they're not. You'll be eating ice cream sandwiches in no time, Genny Wren.

You can't get from the garage to the house without Eleanor stopping to weed the garden. 'Eleanor, it is raining. Let's go.' 'I'm just going to do a little bit of weeding. Weed, weed, weed.'

This afternoon the sun broke out, so we went in the back to do some actual, proper, sanctioned weeding. She is surprisingly good at knowing what's a weed.

My garden is coming along. About a third of Squash City died straight away, because I've planted it in what is basically clay, but the rest of it looks like making a recovery. I'll chalk those pattypan squash plants on the left up to learning (in particular learning to research) because they are bush plants, not vining plants. The trellis is no use to them. My pea plants are having a go, though.

Both of my watermelon plants are dead, and one of my basils. Eleanor keeps trying to resurrect it by adding dirt to the pot.

You also can't make it into the house without Eleanor wanting to 'eat a taste of a herb.' I had to cut her down to one herb per day, and if we're having wraps for lunch I let her pick one to put in her wrap. Today I let her have TWO mint leaves because that plant is going WILD.

Geneva just hangs out, doing baby stuff.

Until it's time to make supper, and then she's all squawking and impatient and I have to put her in the wrap and I can't see what I'm chopping.

I bite that chin, though. I bite it often.

Covering it up.

I got asked to cover my boob up at the play place the other day. I was feeding Geneva, and one mom was like, Do you want me to get you your blanket? Because I notice that one boy is really curious about what you're doing.

And I usually cover up if there's family or friends around, or we're in a small gathering, or a busy public area, or BASICALLY REALLY ANYWHERE, but in this tiny play place full of moms and kids, I wasn't going to give myself the headache.

And I always thought I'd be so poised about this, ready with my answer about how what I was doing was natural and normal, and if that six-year-old boy who is too young to be looking at my top-third of a boob sexually was curious about what I was doing, he could ask his own mom about it, for LEARNING. Besides which, Geneva was, like, three weeks old and TERRIBLE at latching, and fell off the boob a lot. Feeding her while she was covered up was an ORDEAL for both of us.

But I was so flustered by this other woman, this other mom asking me to inconvenience myself for no real reason, that I was just like, Well I'm not bothered but if it will make you feel better, I have a blanket right here.

There's no real moral to this story. I was just annoyed, and when you are annoyed, there's no better place to turn to than the internets. (Rainy day zoo pics instead of pics of this conversation for obvious reasons.)

The Great Baby Compare, Vol. 1

I keep meaning to write an enormous Compare and Contrast post, because what's the point of HAVING two children if you can't use them as foils for each other? But I'm obviously never going to be that comprehensive, so let's begin a series.

Have at it.

Geneva has the longest, thinnest feet of any feet, ever. My sister calls them little rat feet. Eleanor's calves just sort of become toes, which is why it took her so long to walk, and why it was so hard to keep shoes on her. It was like trying to keep shoes on a table leg. Geneva has absolute paddles, which Joel and I think mean she'll be enormously tall. Certainly she'll start walking before 17 1/2 months.

Eleanor was the best eater of any baby, ever. That child came out of the womb latching on to anything that moved, even if she had just eaten, like, ten minutes ago. If it wasn't a boob, though, she would spit it out after a second and look at you OFFENDEDLY, which is why she only ever took a soother or a bottle with reluctance and suspicion. Newborn Geneva couldn't latch worth a damn. She's still terrible at it, and 'HNNNNNH's at me in frustration because she can't find the nipple that is in her mouth. And then sometimes I'm like, Second boob? And she's all, I'll pass. ELEANOR WOULD NEVER HAVE PASSED ON A SECOND BOOB. That being said, if she's hungry, Geneva will suck on anything for as long as it's there. A hungry Eleanor was COMPLETELY UNSOOTHEABLE but Geneva will take a pacifier or a finger or whatever and just hang out until a boob becomes available.

I don't so much swaddle my babies as attack them with blankets until they can't move their arms. All babies hate the swaddling process, but Eleanor would give in as soon as you had one arm pinned, like, Ahhhh, you got me. Geneva fights it to the last, all DON'T TREAD ON ME, and even once she's completely immobile you can see her little fists working to get out, even after she's asleep. Geneva has a two-blanket minimum or she is out of there so fast.

Both my babies balded/are balding like dudes. 

Such foxy ladies.

Summer descends in two days, calendar-wise.

We've been picnicking like fiends.

We have to. It's on our summer bucket list (to picnic like fiends).

Also on that list:

Get ice cream from the bus
Make our own ice cream
Go to the River Landing Splash Park
Go to a Taste of Saskatoon (also Ribfest. Also the Ex)
Go camping at Waskesiu
Run through the sprinklers
Make watermelon juice
Go to the zoo
Visit the pelican statue that is literally half a block from our house
Go to the Berry Barn. Also strawberry picking

What else should we do?

Soggy to the bone, but looking up.

We're having some seriously Vancouvery weather over here. 

But I've gotten Geneva to nap in her own chair and off of my body THREE TIMES in the last two days

which means that Eleanor and I get to actually Do Fun Things together 

and then today Geneva smiled at me. 

Things aren't so terrible.