Baby and Me

This weekend was Jamboree. Tristan's extensive extended family in all their glory and merriment came to Indianapolis to spend the weekend drinking, eating, laughing and sweating in the Indiana humidity. They also came to admire my children and there was, in my opinion, sufficient admiration and adoration of all three kiddos. Cybele was a hit. Especially in this outfit.

I don't think it hurts that she is incredibly friendly and will happily spend time with any and all of her 8 million relatives. The first night of Jamboree I was busy with preparations and last minute details and I finally realized that hours had gone by and I had no idea where my Smelly Belly was. She was happily being passed from Great Aunt to Great Uncle to Cousin and then finally back to Nana. Doesn't she look pleased.

Well sadly after three nights of celebrations, slides, countless hamburgers, and games of cornhole, the Mitchell family and friends departed. This is how I felt after it was all said and done.

I can't wait until next year!

lindsay lohan could relate

I think Elias has been a bit moody lately. sometimes he is too wild, sometimes he seems glum. he is struggling to get enough attention. when a boy gets to be six, he's expected to be rambunctious and invulnerable. that's not fair. elias supresses a lot of his own desires and needs bcs he's the oldest and needs to help us with the littler ones a lot. he grasps the imprtance of doing this and does it without being asked a lot of the time. but it is not easy. his emotions lie close to the surface, and it seems like he's getting his feelings hurt a lot lately by the strains and obligations of being the oldest one. mostly he needs more one on one attention. it's not easy when the other two make it so patently obvious that they demand HIS attention and companionship for most of their daily walking around time. the high price of popularity.

Cornholio

Recently Elias had a sleepover with his sisters at his Nana's house. Sleepovers with Nana mean late nights of stories of Nana's design, something I have never been able to do. The characters of the stories are near and dear to Tristan's heart as they are the very same from when he was Elias' age. I don't dare speak their names and involve myself in a messy copyright infringement battle. While Elias was listening to homemade stories, I was with Tristan in southeast Indiana learning about Cornhole. How I have managed to be in Indiana for 11 years and not learn about Cornhole is beyond me.

Jamboree is this weekend. Now that I am aware of this game called Cornhole I am trying to make up for lost time and so I bought our family a board and I am currently busy customizing it for this weekend's celebration. Elias was immediately intrigued. First he asked me if I was really crowned Queen Cornholio. I nodded solemnly as all queens do. How he wondered did someone get this crown. After explaining that all four bags need to go in the hole in one round to earn your crown, Elias set off to earn his crown. Cornhole is, as they say, in Elias' genes.

After practicing for a while I decided that Elias was worthy of being on my team. The competition does not stand a chance. I've found my prince.

Seamonkeys

Recently we decided to grow seamonkeys.
If you have never undertaken this endeavor, you should. You buy a little package with three packets. The first has chlorine remover, the second has eggs, and the third has food. The eggs looked like white powder. We put it in and waited. After about a week they looked like this.

You don't have to feed seamonkeys very much, after all they are quite small. Initially you wait a week and then its every other day. All you do is feed them a tiny little scoop, which I let Elias and Sophia do in turn. Sophia really likes to feed the seamonkeys.

Unfortunately, for the seamonkeys, they really like to eat.

"nest-nurturing Barbie"

Sophia is getting more conscientious about handling the baby gently. occassionally. as you can see, she won't wear 2 shoes outside, or anywhere, and prefers none. she has been illicitly picking people's flowers much less lately.
see, she has this natural insolence that makes her seem much tougher than she really is. Don't misunderstand, she is plenty tough, with a host inborn emotional immunities. it's just that it's hard to remember that, like most of us, she gives better than she gets. she has weird ideas abt popular culture and its significance, even at this age. she likes to repeat phrases and idioms she hears on the tv. this means she is paying attention, not letting anything slip past unnoticed, and i love her for it; it also means she too often sounds like the tv. she is a middle child and i understand a lot of what that must mean for her. it should mean for me that i identify more closely with her. but when people lucidly reflect things abt us back to ourselves, it is not always very comfortable.
here she is tending to a nest she created. the one-shoed sophius migratorius.

Cybele the baby-toddler

The other babys had green eyes. The other babys had hair that sat flat onto their heads. The other babys walked a little earlier. But, the other babys turned into baby-toddlers much later. Just three weeks ago Cybele could only stand-step-sit and now she is tearing up the house. She walks like a drunken sailor across entire rooms, finds a surface; table; leg; wall; anything to steady herself, and then moves on to the next room. She owns the floor and demands it readily. She once was likened to a piece of luggage by her father when asked how difficult it was to move from two to three children. That was before she became the baby-toddler. Now she screams for the floor and cork-screws in your lap if you try to make her sit still for a moment.

She moves throughout the entire day with a sense of urgency or panic that somehow she is going to lose this ability to walk and play like her older siblings. She is in constant motion and is supremely difficult to keep up with now. When she falls asleep it is a resignation and she will never admit she needs it, but before she knows it, it is tomorrow and she is running down the hall.

baby-slappin' the man

Cybele has become stronger and more inistent. She insists on her innate entitlement to the floor/ground, wherever we are. Even in the hospital. It seems to me that she enjoys the manual manipulation of toys a great deal. She likes to sit like this ^ and just goes to work. Mary gave her an obsolete remote control ( i am not completely comfortable with where this could lead ), and the baby loves it. It is here sidekick, she rarely feels compelled to lay it down, i'm pretty sure she gesticulates and punctuates her verbal expressions with it. I guess i can understand how she feels. Somehow, either by intuition or observation, she has detected the magical, if latent, powers that are contained within it. The other day she was squirming and demanding the floor, but it wasn't possible; to distract her, i took her hand and smacked my face with it repeatedly. She was distracted, and positively delighted. And the envy of many.