Eleanor goes to the park and politely hates it.

Eauch. This is grass? Grass is prickly.

This dandelion tastes awful. Please bring me a fresh one.

I'd be ok going down the slide on my OWN, thanks.

This is degrading.

Swing? No, please. I'd rather chew your hand.

I SAID I'd rather chew your hand. *scuffs air*

She'll end up indoorsy because of this.

Maybe we will nap together today.

Eleanor has been sick or growing or something, because she is Off Her Game. I turn into an absolute hippie when she is sick, comfort nursing her and wearing her around the house in my hippie wrap. I have to keep reminding myself that she's not being scritchy on PURPOSE, and that she is not feeling well.

But her being sick means that she has been ON MY BODY for three days, except for yesterday when I gave her to my mom for an hour and went for a run. And I had book club last night but Joel is working in the ER so sometimes he doesn't get home when he's supposed to and when he walked in the door yesterday I almost cried, I was so desperate to get away and so relieved.

So I went to book club and I was beyond thrilled to be out of Eleanor's personal space and have her out of mine, but also I felt like I had forgotten something very important, like I had left my purse on the bus or neglected to put on pants.

But then it came time to order desserts and we, as per usual, got one of everything.

And I got home and she was sleeping and now I am holding her and typing around her while she sleeps some more.

You just have to time it right.

I used to run a lot of errands. Robyn and I were the Errand-Running Champions of the World. But now, between feeding Eleanor and trying to nap her, I feel like my errandability has been curtailed.

But then yesterday she napped in the car while we went and picked up her new Bumbo seat (which she loves, because now she can SIT UP and WATCH ALL THE THINGS)

and then had brunch with Boo and Darren at IHOP (which Eleanor tolerated because laying on the table omg is one of her favorite activities)

and then went to the mall so Boo and I could get our faces did

during which Eleanor took her midday nap in her wrap. She is my most well-behaved baby.

If she would just stay one size for, like, THREE DAYS.

Our family and friends have been extremely generous clothing-wise (especially, hilariously, my sister's mother-in-law) and Eleanor's wardrobe is VAST and VARIED. She has a lot of very amusing, brightly-colored pants, for example.

But while she has positively boxes of clothes, she only really ever has a handful of things that fit her at any given time. So I tend to start her in things while they are still slightly large (super-large if they are these jammies my aunt Sandy gave her, because HOW SO ADORABLE):

and then sometimes I let the laundry get ahead of me and there's nothing either fitted or large to put her in, so she ends up wearing a onesie so small we can't do up the top button and she looks like a lounge singer.

Which she takes very seriously.

Darling little April fool.

I should be getting THREE cupcakes.

Three months! I am too young to have a babelette so old.

Thigh check! Four-day old thighs:

Three-month thighs!

Oooooh, pinchies! Pinch a-pinch a-pinch!

New superpowers include putting herself to sleep in her own crib LIKE A PERSON, sleeping through the night, exacting tiny baby vengeance for being forced to put herself to sleep by no longer sleeping through the night, LAUGHING OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, and a wide array of dolphin-sounds.

Also, her hands. She's not super-good at directing them (unless it's To The Mouth) but she knows they are hers, and she'll watch them float around in front of her sometimes like, Woah, this is a weird trip.

fresh new baby cannot distinguish you from the surrounding stimuli

three-month-old baby thinks you are a RIOT

In sum, greater awareness + more sleep = grand times. 

Stuff I Have Pinned And Actually Made, Because Otherwise It's Just a Lazy Time-Waster

Pinterest is a lazy time-waster ANYWAY, but at least stuff comes of it. Mostly calories.

Caramelitas. Deviating from the recipe to add nuts because nuts are delicious. These were also SUPER-DELICIOUS. And easy. I am a fan of easy like I can't even.

Bacon cheddar ranch pull-apart bread. It was surprisingly difficult to pull apart, for all that it's IN THE NAME. Will have to re-evaluate serving method. Tasted surprisingly whatever-fine for something covered in cheddar and bacon and drenched in ranch.

November cakes for book club on The Scorpio Races. The recipe is the author's own. The orange extract was completely unnecessary (because untastable), so I would either double it or leave it out next time. Otherwise, MAN THESE WERE A-TASTY.

Feeties! Ok this one's not done, I have to stamp her feeties again at 6 months and a year. And for the feetie on the left, she placed each of her painted toes down delicately, but for the feetie on the right, she schmeeered them. Babies: not good at arts.

Lemon bar cookie cups. SOOOO DIFFICULT to get out of the muffin tin intact. I tried, like, eight different strategies, and in the end it was easiest to just follow the recipe's instructions and deal with a bit of breakage. Oh, and I used my own lemon curd. Oh, and it made a mazillion, so next time I would make half of the dough (but the same amount of lemon curd so that I had leftovers to eat with a spoon. LEMOOOON CURD!). These would be excellent for a tea party - so daintylike - and are as good or better the next day. Make aheadsies!

Red velvet whoopie pies. I don't usually whisk together the dry ingredients for things due to excessive laziness and a general mistrust of extra steps, but for this you NEED to. Like, even more so than I actually did. BREAK UP THE COCOA CLUMPS is what I'm saying. And I think I over-mixed the batter as a result, and I think they were toughish as a more further result. But oh man, so delicious. I used this cream cheese frosting as a filling (also found on pinterest).

5-ingredient meltaway cookies. These are just straight-up shortbread, let's not lie to ourselves. Shortbread is the grossest cookie I can think of. My cookie-eating face, it is sad.

Pinterest makes me drunk, so prepare to see more posts in this vein.

The best-laid etc.

When Robyn and I were roommates in college, in between our fort-building

and towel-swaddling

and prowler-scaring

we'd talk about our future children, and how we would have SONS and wouldn't that be AWESOME, our passels of sons, and I would have children FIRST and then Robyn would have children LATER and eventually we would marry them off (although since we were both having SONS they'd have to gay-marry).

Today Robyn and her big-girl daughter came to visit me and my pint-sized daughter and we are both like YES, DAUGHTERS FOR ALL and can't even fathom what we'd do with sons.

certainly not all stick our fists in our mouths, like hams. except for Eleanor, who is busy being a buddha.

I tried to get a picture of the two girls together, but sitting up isn't Eleanor's forte right now.

whoops!

heeee, damn!

And the one time Eleanor stayed upright, Meredith made a break for it.

And we're moving in a few months, so our daughters won't grow up to be best besties. At least, not right now. Maybe in college.

She's a cheap date.

Who needs toys when you have A BLANKET?!

I mean, all the things you can do with a blanket! You can eat it!

You can...you can eat it!

You can eat it?

I suppose you could put it in your mouth and pretend to eat it, but not actually eat it. That might be fun.

Now wait'll I get my mouth hands on a BOX.

Parenting! Like a couple of bosses!

We have been teaching Eleanor to go to sleep at 7:30, like a proper big girl with a bedtime, and it has been stressful. There is much crying (from all parties).

But it's starting to pay off. Tonight she fell asleep promptly at 7:30.

We were, unfortunately, still out for dinner at the time. Sorry, babything. We will be more consistent in future.

Loves the doctor. FOR NOW.

Eleanor has a couple of toys that make crinkly sounds, and she loves them an absurd amount. She is sort of hilarious about them. The elephant ear on her playmat, for example. She'll flail an arm against it by accident, and then you can see her spend the next minute trying to figure out what she did, and how to reproduce it.

And then we went to the doctor for her poke-and-prod (11 lbs 9 oz!) and she's lying on that sheet of paper they pull out for each new patient and she squirms and it crinkles and she is like WAIT A MINUTE. THIS IS AMAZING.

Over the moon, this one.

That's one down...

The cousins, three months ago:

The cousins today:

Come on out, little bean!

Designers...

I watch a lot of tv these days, which means that Eleanor watches a lot of tv (while not wearing a hat! And chewing on exposed wires!). We watch Til Debt Do Us Part and Kitchen Nightmares and it is satisfying to see very messy things (people's financial lives, restaurant kitchens) cleaned up without having to do any of the work.

We also watch Project Runway Allstars (don't spoiler us, we are well behind) and the lack of Tim Gunn concerns us.

She does her little turn on the catwalk.

Sometimes I just stick a camera in her face and go to town.

Work it, gurrrrrl.