Take Me to Your Leader

I took Nora in for her 18 month check up yesterday. In the past 6 months, she's gained a grand total of 3, count 'em 3 lbs, bringing her up to a whopping 22 lbs even. Now, considering the fact that she shoves a total of 22 lbs of food in her mouth every 12 hours, this is somewhat impressive. I've come to the conclusion that she has either A) a hollow leg, B) a tapeworm, or C) some sort of alien DNA coursing through her veins. I have never known a human being to shove this sheer amount of food in their mouth on a 23 an hour a day basis and only gain like an ounce a month. She's from another planet. I gave birth to ET's sweet, plucky, teeny-tiny, second cousin or something.

Tate has learned the fine art of lying. We're extremely proud. I keep insisting that Eric take the credit passing down this laudable trait, but he seems to think it's something that can only be passed from a loving mother down to her mentally pliable, impressionable son. The other day Tate and I were coming in from the garage to the house. I had 4000 grocery bags in my arms and Nora hanging off my neck, writhing and squealing as she tried to separate my eyebrows from my forehead. This was our exchange:

Me: "Tate, can you please open the door for Mommy?"

Tate: "No. My hands are full."

Me: "Is it hard work, carrying all that air?? Open the door."

Tate: "I just CANNOT right now. My HANDS are FULL."

Me: "Oh, right. I failed to notice that gigantic speck of lint on your palm. I'm surprised you haven't been reduced to dragging your hand along behind you, grunting and groaning as you strain to take every step. Please, please let me put down my 600 pounds of groceries and stash Nora down my shirt or something so you don't pull a muscle by trying to balance a piece of fuzz in one hand while wrenching open the door with the other."

Tate: "Ok, Mommy."

Then we have the typical situation where he pushes Nora down while standing 3 feet in front of me, then quickly saying "I didn't do anything!" Right. I may be a little slow on the uptake sometimes but I'm pretty sure he's not able to inadvertently knock people over with an innocent flick of his eyeballs.

I took the kids on a hayride this morning. Nora, as usual, was so thrilled she simply lost all expression in her face. It takes a lot to impress this kid.

What the hell, Ma.

Tate and good ol' One Eye.

I may be a liar, but I'm stinkin' cute, too.

It was a really good time, but the whole getting-in-and-out-of-the-car process made me really, really not excited for winter. It takes 45 minutes to get everyone's crap into the car, and then you get where you're going and take another 3 hours to get both kids crammed into their hats and mittens and jackets and boots and other stuff they insist on wearing because they want to be warm or something. After I'm done getting them ready in their 40 layers of clothes, I'm about to strip all mine off because I'm panting and sweating and about to fall over from fatigue. Then Nora poops in her diaper and Tate starts screaming because he doesn't like the way his zipper smells and I start mumbling that this taking the kids out stuff is for the birds and next time we're just staying home and wearing the same clothes for 2 weeks at a time because even though I remember all the kids' clothes I inevitably forget something of mine, like, oh, my shoes. It's good times.

Can't wait for winter. Can. Not. Wait.