Come On, Vamanos!

Nap hair and summer teeth.

Everybody, let's go! Aaah, Dora. She makes me crazy. Rather, her songs do, but Kate loves her Dora the Explorer. Her face lights up when Map or Boots shows up on the TV screen. She dances to the silly songs that get stuck in my head for days. Her little head bobs back and forth as she smiles, watching Map tell Dora how to get to the high tower.

Is it just me, or does Map sound like that gay actor with the bad teeth? I for the life of me cannot think of his name, or I would have told you who I was talking about. Anyway. Map totally does. Nasal, with an east-coast accent. Odd for a children's cartoon, no?

And does anyone else have this compulsion to root for Swiper the Fox to steal whatever it is that Dora and Boots are holding? Maybe it's just me.

So I survived the scorpion incident. I was lucky; by 36 hours my foot was almost completely back to normal. Now, of course, I'm more freaky about them than ever. Anyone who knows me, I think, knows how obsessed I was with them before this sting. Maybe it was just Tim who knew. I don't know. But now I'm positively OCD about the whole thing. I've got glue traps in the bathroom, in the hall, and I need to call the Orkin guy to bring more out. I've stuck one of those Sylvania sticky LCD lights on the bathroom door so I can light the hallway at night. And every time I get up in the middle of the night, I diligently shake out each slipper before putting it on my foot. If it were convenient, I would make Kate wear shoes in the house at all times. If I knew of some place that sold full-body armor for children (and socks for adults), I'd buy them and make us all wear them. When I'm not wearing shoes, I'm always watching where I step. Paranoid? Yes. Damn scorpions.

McLaren is now 2 months old. I can't believe it. She's just under 12.5 pounds, and is almost sleeping from 10pm till 4am straight. One or 2 more nights of getting up to give her a binky at about 2am, I hope. She's getting pretty good at falling asleep on her own, and does so for most of her naps. She knows where she is and what to expect in some cases here at home; for instance, she knows the mobile over her crib and knows when we put her in there that it means we'll leave and want her to sleep. She knows the mobile over her changing table and knows it means a new diaper. Hence, more crying in the crib than on the changing table. Smart kid, this one. My favorite thing is when you put her down for a nap in her crib and turn the mobile on: often she'll eye it suspiciously out of the corner of one eye, intently watching one of the arms go round and round. The look on her face is priceless.

Kate is 18 months, and is teething (?) again. She has been grumpy, whiny and generally crabby for the past several days. She spent 2 hours at the CDC (daycare) today and cried almost the whole time. Joy. But she's getting smarter every day. Last week she said, "One, two, three" pretty clearly. She can say many letters of the alphabet when you read her ABCs book to her, and she is trying to say her name. She loves dolls, and always wants to burp them, give them a binky or feed them a bottle. I can't imagine where she got those ideas. I think she loves being a big sister, but is struggling sometimes with the diminished attention she gets due to her baby sister being around. Claire, on the other hand, stares wide-eyed at her big sister, and it's so fun to watch them interact.

Tantrum.

2 months.

2 months.