Still No Camera

Sorry for the lack of pictures. We're working on it though, and hopefully it won't be too much longer. Till then, here's the week's highlights:

I'd been having a rough day with Paige not eating much, and I guess it was starting to rub off on her: when she spilled a handful of craisins on the floor, she dropped to her knees, sighed, and said, "Oh, Paige! No!"

Paige and I were in Walmart the other day. I pulled out a shirt and asked her if she thought it was cute. She locked eyes with me and very seriously responded, "No." She said that about pretty much everything else I showed her too. I thought she was just in a contrary mood, but as we passed the Valentines day stuff, she said, "Pretty! I like it!" Apparently, I just have bad taste.

I threw away one of my two pairs of England shoes yesterday. Both shoes were leaking water, there was a 1-inch hole in one of the toes, and I'd superglued the heels back on to keep them from flapping. It was time. Luckily, I found some red patent flats to replace them. I'm pretty excited.

Speaking of shoes, Paige got some baby flip-flops from Old Navy this week too (they were on sale). She wants to wear them everywhere. Morphing into my own parents, I tell her No, she has to wear real shoes in the snow or her feet will freeze. Sheesh, kids these days.

A friend of mine had her second baby boy a little over a week ago. I took Paige over for a playdate with Taylor, who is just younger than Paige, and I got to hold new little Zachary. It made me realize how much of a baby Paige isn't anymore. She walks, talks, dances, makes jokes, plays games, and has opinions. *sniff sniff* My baby is growing up.

Wow. Sorry for being so sappy. We now return you to your non-maternal programming...

We made mozzarella cheese yesterday! It's been our to-make list for a while, and I got Jeff all the materials for Christmas, so we set up the kitchen and made it happen. It turned out really well! We have not quite 2 pounds of cheese in our fridge, and tonight we're making margarita pizzas. Mmmmm.

Um... I think that's it from our little corner. Happy Sunday!

Blast from the Past

One of the effects of living in London, where there is so so much history, was that Jeff and I had a running conversation about all the people who had lived in where we lived, shopped where we shopped, and saw everything we saw on a daily basis. Sometimes we'd imagine us living in that time period--sidestepping horses in the street, lighting coal in our fireplace, worrying through world wars, getting electricity installed, watching Princess Di's story unfold--it was a fun game.

The conversation had lulled since we'd been Stateside, but it came up again tonight as I was browsing web images of London and happened to come up on some photos from the 1940s. This one struck a peculiar cord.


It was the shop sign that caught me originally: 266 Ashley Trunk Store. Our flat address was 262, and was right next to Ashley Mansions.



The clincher though, is the windows. I know the view of those windows from both sides. The only difference is that the 1940's photo windows are flat 14's (far left middle in the modern photo) and we lived in flat 10 (far right middle in the modern). But the windows are the same. And I suddenly feel like the house next door got bombed.

The after-bath

There was a little girl
who had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead,
and when she was good,
she was very very good,
but when she was bad,
she was horrid.



Things are pretty quiet over here...if you couldn't already tell.

Twice Packed Tight

We spent Christmas with Jeff's family in Maryland this year, meaning we actually had access to a working digital camera for a week! Mine is broken, and Jeff's is half broken and missing a charger. The packing and the flights were mediocre, both tighter than we'd hoped, which is pretty normal. It was worth it to see Grandma and Grandpa Tucker though, plus all the aunts, uncles and cousins she's never really been around.

This is Paige's cousin Lily, who is just over two. The closeness in age led to an interesting dynamic between the two of them as they oscillated between being sharing and competing for the same toys. They also went back and forth on whether or not Lily was old enough to "help" Paige and boss her around (usually not).

For church on Sunday we borrowed some hairbands from Lily, and tried putting Paige's hair into pigtails for the first time. They don't stay in long, but they are adorable! In case you can't tell, Jeff is saying,"So Cute!"




We didn't get pictures of much else since we were having so much fun. Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa for a wonderful Christmas vacation!! We sure love you.

More than Words

Jeff and Paige were having a discussion last night about whether one of the animals in Paige's picture book was a pony or a cow, and whether another one was a bunny or a doggie. It got me thinking that it might be good to write down all the words Paige knows right now. It's growing pretty long--43 words! In case you're curious (and since we haven't taken any pictures lately):

mama
dada
grandma
baby
hi
hello
go
cuppy
yellow
bye-bye
car
no
wow
bum
cool
key
eye
nose
ball
pretty
home
Jesus
please
cheese (Jesus and please both sound similar to cheese)
juice
banana ('nana)
apple
yummy
tasty
coat
hat
shoes
boo
cow
doggie
fish
bear
pooh
night-night
"what's that"
"what's this"
"it's a..."
and
Rawr!

Jeff says that kids are ideally supposed to have around 200 words in their vocabulary by age 2. At this rate, I think we're a shoe-in!

Better Late

In honor of Thanksgiving, I give you: Paige's Halloween costume! Happy holidays!

In Lieu of Costume Pics

We realized after the fact that the only picture that we took of Paige (Piglet) on Halloween was at the Ancestry carnival photo booth thing, and those pictures haven't been posted to the company network yet. I would put her in her costume again, but she got some food on it, the lines were drawn in washable marker, and the ears have gone missing. So we'll just have to wait.

However, Mom finally decided it was time to take the knife to her pumpkins. She only grew three of them because they turned out to be...large. Paige gives me this face a lot. She must feel threatened by the squash that's four times her size.

Literally, four times. The pumpkin was over 70 pounds.

Grandma was pretty excited. Paige was too.

Of course, we had to take the opportunity to shoot some pictures of our little princess before going off to the ball, aka: fondue party at the Cooper's. We sure love this girl.