She Really DOES Eat Like a Bird

Recently I have had trouble getting Sophie to eat. (Hmm, yes, and before you ask, she is STILL nursing. Somebody…HELP…ME!) Rather than say, put her food in her mouth and chew it, she prefers to launch it from her tray into various parts of the house. Thanks to this favorite past time of hers, I had to buy ant traps yesterday. She throws it in places I don’t even find it until much later! So, lately I’ve been repeating the expression, “She eats like a bird” an awful lot. (One of my other favorites is “She eats barely enough to stay alive.”)

Yesterday the kids were playing on the porch and I was out there with them, but talking on the phone with my sister-in-law Elizabeth. We were happily chatting along when I looked up at Sophie and could see she had something in her mouth. “Uh-oh! Soph’s got something in her mouth.” I said to Elizabeth. I ran over to Sophie and dug out the foreign object amidst much indignant protesting.

It was a dead beetle.

“It’s a dead bug!” I exclaimed into the phone, while trying not to VOMIT.

“Ewww!” said Elizabeth.

“What What??” said my nephew upon hearing his mom’s disgust.

“Sophie had a dead bug in her mouth!” she told my nephew James.

“GROSS!” James howled.

“Tell Sophie it’s pretty impressive when a 9-year-old-boy is grossed out,” Elizabeth said back to me.

Yeah. Well. You can’t faze the Soph.

At least it wasn’t a worm. I’m pretty sure birds eat bugs though.

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Nancy Drew and the Case of the Mysterious Turd

The last couple of weeks my kids have been sick, and I have been dee-esperate to get out of the house. So I was thrilled last Wednesday when they were well enough to have a re-scheduled playdate with my friend Bethany and her boys Eban, 3, and Benji, 20 months. (Benji and Sophie are only 13 days apart in age! Aww.)

Bethany was kind enough to make lunch for us and after we got the kids settled in the living room with their food, we finally sat down at the kitchen table to eat. After about thirty seconds of adult conversation, Eban entered the room and said four words no mother ever wants to hear.

“Mommy, smell my hand.”

Bethany and I exchanged a “yikes” look. “Why? What’s it smell like?” she asked warily.

“Poop!” Eban replied. (Poop. Of course poop. What else would it be? I think we both knew he wasn’t going to say “lemons” or “roses”.)

With Beth’s next question, “Why does your hand smell like poop?” our quest to solve The Case of the Mysterious Turd began.

“Baby Sophie throw poop at me!” Eban answered cheerfully. Beth and I both jumped up and ran into the living room. I grabbed Sophie and gave her bum a good sniff. Nothing. I peeked inside her diaper. Also nothing. No clues there! “She’s clean!” I exclaimed. Beth did a similar check of Benji’s diaper, which was also turd-negative. Then we noticed a hard, round, black, thing on the floor. Beth moved in for a closer look. “It’s poop!” was her assessment.

Sophie had by this time began rubbing her face all over my chest so I went ahead and nursed her. After Beth’s turd sighting, I lifted Sophie’s hand to my nose. And screamed.

‘Cause it smelled like POOP!!!!!!!!

“She really did throw the poop!” I gasped, horrified. I put an end to our nursing session and ran her to the bathroom to thoroughly wash her hands.

Then Beth and I began re-enacting the Spanish Inquisition on our older boys.

“Where did Sophie get the poop?”
“Joshua did you poop your pants?”
“Eban did you poop your pants?”
How did Sophie get the poop?”
“Where did the poop come from?”
“WHERE WAS THE POOP?”

After many, many, many “no” and “I don’t know”‘s from both boys, Eban told us that Sophie got the poop from his and Benji’s bedroom. Beth was, of course, mortified. “I swear I don’t just have random poop laying around my house!” she said anxiously.

By this time I was well past being horrified and was just cracking up. None of my playdates ever turn out normal! I was just glad Sophie didn’t friggin’ EAT the Turd of Mysterious Origins!!

So, we still have no idea where the turd came from. One of our kids’ rear-ends? Very probable! But Beth did have friends over the night before who changed their son’s diaper in her boys’ bedroom. So the theory we are most comfortable with is that it fell out of his diaper, unnoticed under the dresser or bed and that Eagle-Eye (or Dog-Nose) Sophie found it (like she finds everythings she shouldn’t have everywhere we go.) Because that’s the theory that makes both Beth and I less culpable in the Great Turd-Throwing Incident of 2008.

But who knows? Nancy Drew and her sleluthy pal Bess we aren’t.

We are way, way, hotter than they are though. And funnier. And our set of novels and subsequent movie are gonna rock so hard, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie will probably become BFF just to play us! Just wait!!

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Double Trouble or Two’s Company?

A couple of weeks ago, Emily posted asking for advice on what she’s in for with having a second baby. A lot of you responded reassuringly that she was going to be just fine! And I’ve no doubt she will be!! Then the other day, I got this query from a reader named Jen:

“I’m halfway through my second pregnancy, so i’m currently contemplating what two kids will really mean (ie. “what the heck was i thinking?!?!?!”) i think you should do a blog about all the little tips for us moms going from one kid to two. =)”

Well, I don’t know if I have any tips per se, but I thought it might be at least interesting to share with you about what it was like for ME to go from having one kid to two. I thought it was pretty challenging. I think that obviously the distance in age between your kids has something to do with it, but I’m not sure what the magic number is as far as age range goes to make it “easier” to go from one kid to two. My kiddos are two years and nine months apart (that’s right, it was “Happy 2nd Birthday Joshua! We just made you a sister!”) and I was realllllyyy hoping to have Joshua potty trained by the time Sophie came along, but that really crashed and burned. So, I had two in diapers for awhile, and then I had the constant fun of trying to get Joshua on & off the potty while I had a baby attached to my boob. This of course happened about 47 times a day. His bladder and her need to nurse were perfectly in sync! I am not exaggerating!! (ok the 47 times part was a bit of an exaggeration. But it was still just about every time he had to pee.)

While the whole nursing-potty thing was logistically difficult, the hardest thing for me to deal with overall was having to care for Joshua’s basic needs when I was SO EXHAUSTED from being up with Sophie all night. I couldn’t nap when Sophie napped during the day, like I did when Joshua was a baby. (Not that he ever kept me up all night. He was way too easy!) I remember one day when Sophie was 4 or 5 weeks old, my friend Megan & her little boy came over to visit and bring Christmas goodies. Well, Sophie had been up every hour on the hour the night before, and I was just a mess. If Megan hadn’t been there I might have just gone out in the cold and laid down in the middle of my busy street and let nature take its course. Those were some tough days, but thankfully I was too out of it to have much of a memory of them now.

Now that Sophie is one, and crazy, and very mobile, my biggest challenge is to keep peace between the two kids. Joshua is constantly getting irritated that his sister is messing up his train track, or chewing on his toys, or something of that nature. But, often, they really enjoy each other and it is so sweet to watch! They love to chase each other around, and every morning when we come downstairs, Sophie howls with laughter as Joshua comes down the steps behind her. It is incredibly heart-warming (sorry that is the only word I can think of to describe it!) It’s nice to know that Joshua will never remember a time when Sophie wasn’t a part of our family. I hope that they will grow up to be good friends, just like my older nerds brothers and I did.

So, there ya go, Jen (and Emily). Once you get over the shock of having a baby that is commpletely and totally different from your first child, it’s pretty great to have two little boogers running around. And Em, just think, it’ll be TWICE the BLOG FODDER!

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