"And she'll have fun fun fun until daddy takes the buggy away...cause it's time for bed."

Scarlett got a new toy tonight. I labeled it "the day before her 11-month birthday present," so I didn't feel so guilty about buying her yet another toy. Scarlett's daycare has one of these, and Scarlett loves it. Now that it has warmed up quite a bit, Lesia (her daycare provider) has been bringing the kids outside to play and has discovered that it is necessary for someone to be pushing Scarlett in this at all times...or meltdown central occurs. Ah...my cheeky baby. She likes it so much that we got her one for home too. How could we not? Here is a video of Scarlett first laying her eyes on her new ride, while it still has that "new car" smell. Joe had yet to install the headlights, the radio and cruise control - heck he hadn't even installed the ignition yet, but it ran fine. (The aforementioned are all stickers, of course.)


We drove all the way up to the front of the house...
and back again. Scarlett was so proud of her ride that she insisted we park it out front and blast the newly installed radio so that everyone driving by will think she's cool. I think she got that from the neighbours."Not now mom...I am trying to look cool."Link also liked the new car. We invented a new game of "run over the dachshund," but Link was too quick. We changed the title to "try to keep up with the dachshund" instead. Man we suck at that game.As it started to get dark, we headed inside. This was MUCH to the dismay of Scarlett. (I see what you mean, Lesia.) Hi, meltdown. We had to bring the car inside with us, and Scarlett and dad played with the car inside for a bit. That is, until dad lost his voice from making fake car noises. Yeah...I wish I was kidding.

Happy birthday, Josie!

Scarlett's friend, Josie, turned two today! Scarlett was invited to her first kids birthday party ever! Josie was a lucky girl! She had a pinata, balloons, an ice cream cake, and Dora - as far as the eyes could see! Here are some pictures from Josie's big bash.

Scarlett and William hanging out...Josie's mom, Marie, explained to Joe and I that the world of pinatas has changed drastically since we were children. Pinatas now come with many kid friendly ribbons to pull on - only one of which will open the bottom of the pinata to release the candy. Of course, there is still nothing preventing you from beating the heck out of the pinata with a stick, but now...parents have a more "peaceful" option.

Of the vast pinata contents, Scarlett was allowed about 10 seconds of a blue lollipop. When oceans of blue drool began cascading out of her mouth I decided that was enough. Here's the pretty birthday girl! This baby knows how to party!
Scarlett wanted this pink balloon so badly! You can see it in her face when William drops it. Look at her take off after it as it floats out of his sight over on the other side of the living room. Hey...in her defense - it matched her outfit perfectly.
Scarlett sat and watched as Josie opened her presents, with the eager help of her brother, Javier.Josie loved the "baby" we got her. She came fully attired in a rain jacket and rainboots. Then we started to get tired. (And we do not, in fact, like birthday hats. At all.)

And even more tired - so we had to say goodbye. Scarlett slept the whole way home. But then Aunt Stephanie came over, so...We danced on coffee tables. The end.

Who doesn't like spaghetti?

Scarlett, that's who. Joe and I had initially thought that she might just be having difficulty getting it into her mouth, so we helped her out. Yeah...not so much. She certainly had no trouble taking the spaghetti right back out of her mouth...and off of her high chair. Luckily, I was a smart mom and made some chicken parmigiana to accompany the pasta - of which Scarlett had no qualms with eating. Throughout the meal, the dog was blessed with many handfuls of spaghetti from up above. He was doing his little tap dance around the bottom of her high chair to the song entitled "Spaghetti from Heaven." (It's an original.)

One thing Scarlett does like is her sippy cup. She likes it so much that she has been asking for it at various times throughout her meals. Scarlett has started pointing recently and within two days of learning the trick she realized it could get her stuff. She did this first with her sippy cup, and I have to say - this has been one of my favorite milestones so far. I've been lugging around this baby for the past 11 months and, until now, have had almost no idea what was going on in her head. Now I know...she wants stuff.

The Maritime Aquarium

Yesterday we went to The Maritime Aquarium with Val and Carson. We, as always, had so much fun with them. We put two car seats in the backseat of my car and trucked it all the way to Norwalk - which might be considered a bit of a road trip for some, but is actually just my daily commute to work.
It's been quite some time since Scarlett had last been to The Maritime Aquarium - 8 months, to be exact. Joe and I brought her there when she was just about 3 months old. When I compared pictures from then to the pictures I took yesterday I couldn't believe the difference. Oh time...why do you go so fast? Here are some of the best comparisons of then vs. now...

Ahh...my giant baby. Well, getting back to yesterday's trip...we got there just in time to see the seals eating.

Val and I pushed our way up to the front so that Carson and Scarlett had a great view. They were very interested in the seals.Then we were on our way to see the rest of the aquarium...if we could only find it. We wandered aimlessly to the Ancient Sea Monsters exhibit, which wound up just being the hallway to get to the IMAX theater. Val and I, along with our 2 strollers, braved the wheelchair elevators to get up and down the floors. Long story short - it was a ten minute procedure to walk down a 10 foot hallway containing hand drawn pictures of ancient sea monsters - pictures that I, literally, could have drawn myself. Slightly disappointing...but I guess the odds of them having real life ancient sea monsters on location were slim to none. Okay...this picture was next to impossible to get. I thought that I could hold both babies and line them up perfectly with their respective lobster and tarantula heads...I thought wrong. I think I threw out my back in the process. There was a lady standing behind us who offered to take the picture - she may have been cued by the fact that Val and I were laughing hysterically while trying to accomplish this mission impossible. For some reason, she took about 20 pictures of Scarlett only, and then just this one of them both - which, as you can see, is pretty comical. I think she was more interested in her reflection than the fish.Scarlett and Carson hung out in the Jellyfish room. Then we moved on to the creepy, open mouth fish room. The Maritime Aquarium had a new playspace set up for children under 5. Unfortunately, they had no staff member monitoring whether the children using the playspace were actually under 5 or not...which most were not. Val and I politely found the one corner of the space where no children were playing. Go figure, about 2 minutes later it was a crazy mosh pit of older than 5-ers. They did have fun while it lasted, but we moved on after that. There was also a frog exhibit set up there...and in honor of the frogs we saw (and because I thought Scarlett "had" to have something from the gift shop despite the fact that she was practically asleep in her stroller by this point and didn't give two diaper-fulls whether she got something or not), I bought Scarlett a "frog with noise" which ribbits when you squeeze its stomach. I'm not sure if "frog with noise" is its scientific name, but that's what the tag on it said...so we'll go with that"Frog with noise" would get loved, then thrown, then picked up by me, then loved and thrown (repeat...repeat, but with less and less love).Scarlett got tired of the game quickly and was completely over "frog with noise" despite the fact that I wanted her to love him and all of his $8 dollar-ness. I instead got this priceless look. "Frog with noise" was then tossed into one of the dozens of baskets of toys this child has. That's it...that was our day.

"Scarlett and Link sitting in a tree" (okay, not really)

I long for the day when Scarlett and Link will frolic amongst the daisies in lush green fields; when they will sit, hand in paw, contemplating cloud shapes and favorite ice cream flavors - but even more so, I long for this to occur without a mother's oh-so tender voice in the background shrieking (so tenderly), "Gentle...BE GENTLE!!," which is then immediately followed by a mother's tender dive across the room and then a mother's tender touch as she removes clumps of dachschund fur, and occasionally dachshund himself, from her daughter's not so tender kung fu grip. As you can see in this video, we're getting there folks. Link has succumbed to Scarlett's violent ways. He's waving the white flag. It's apparent that he's so starved for attention he is finally seeking it out from the same 10 month old who beats the crap out of him. But all that's changed now. Observe...

A not so quiet time before bed

Some seriously crazy baby hair

Okay...look at this craziness. Seriously folks, people would pay good money for this kind of style - style which apparently comes to her royal cheekiness naturally. This
mohawk-esque do was accomplished with absolutely no product whatsoever - just a little towel-drying and a touch of the crazies, compliments of Miss Cheeky herself. I actually shed a tear when brushing this out. It's too bad so-much-style has an 8 o'clock bedtime and can't hit up the town for the evening. Actually, so-much-style doesn't even know what the town is yet, which would even further prevent her from "hitting it up."


Now...here in lies the real test. Scarlett's hair isn't crazy until Nick Nolte says it's crazy. Well Nick...whadda ya say?
"I say it's crazy," says Nick, "I say it's cra-zy."