See what I mean?

This baby is just adorable!

Love letter to Ruth

Here, in no particular order, are some things that I love about this gorgeous baby:

*The way she crinkles her nose when she smiles.
*Her long, dark eyelashes that literally sweep over her cheeks when she closes them.
*The way Ruth laughs in her sleep, almost every day.  It is the most adorable thing I have ever seen, the sight of her sleeping little face breaking into a huge gummy smile, and then hearing the gurgle of an absolutely delighted laugh.  She isn't laughing yet while awake, which makes these sleep-giggles all the more precious.  It makes me happy to know that her dreams are good ones.
*The way, when she is fussy, Ruth immediately calms down when she hears my voice.  The girls find this amazing, which has reminded me that it is amazing.  Beth said to me recently, "I like the way that babies and their Mommies are just best friends!"
*When I go into Ruth's room in the middle of the night, she immediately stops crying and will give me a huge smile.  It doesn't matter how much she was fussing before, it's instantly forgotten in her happiness at seeing me.  If everyone could let go of their own unhappiness so quickly, the world would be a much better place.
*I love the feel of her warm little head on my shoulder.  There is something so sweet and touching about the way an infant leans on you with such complete abandon.
*The way Ruth loves her family.  She is fascinated by watching everyone interact, and the girls will often be holding her and talking to each other when they realize that Ruth is looking up at them as they talk and smiling wildly.
*The sweet way Ruth is crazy about her Daddy.  He was the first to get big smiles from her, and nothing elicits her interest like the sound of Chris' voice coming into a room.  She's already trying to push her stomach out in an attempt to follow him as he moves around.
*The way she crinkles her nose when she smiles.  Have I already said this?  It needed to be said again!

This baby is just so sweet, and calming, and fun.  We are so blessed to have her with us, I can't believe our luck!

Lucy, dominating

Lucy:  Boo, can you get me a drink?
Beth:  Say the magic word!
Lucy: You will get me a drink.

Lucy at Mass

Lucy to Chris after the Consecration:  There it is!  Look!  The creepy bread that has Jesus in it!

Ruth smiles for Abbie

It must be pretty neat to come into the world so surrounded by adoring sisters.  Ruth certainly seems to think so.

Halloween part III

More from Halloween

They're creepy and they're kooky

Mysterious and spooky

They're altogether ooky

The Addams Family

Da da da da (click click)!

*Accompanied by their 'pet', an extremely stubborn and go-along-with-the-crowd-resistant Hello Kitty.

How I manage to make dinner

These are the moments I live for lately: onions sauteing on the stove, good music in the background, surrounded by the girls playing peacefully.

And now for something completely different

Here is Claire doing her "Irish accent."
It makes me smile.

Whoever coined the phrase...

..."Sleeping like a baby" was a blithering idiot who obviously never spent any time around an actual baby.

What any parent of a newborn knows (and what I somehow manage to forget right before getting pregnant, every single time) is this: babies don't sleep.

Babies don't sleep. Ever. Unless, of course, you count the times when they sleep through feedings, and the times when they sleep snugly in your arms. Sleep, though, in the way most humans view it - consisting of even breathing, solitude, and unconsciousness for more than 15 minutes at a time - yeah, newborns don't do that

Luckily for me, Lucy has been sleeping through the night for a while now so I did not blunder into this "No Sleep for You!" thing pre-exhausted. Unluckily for me, the recovery from my c-section has been a little trickier this time and I have not been able to nurse the baby in bed, nor hold her while I lay down. These two things mean: I'm in pretty good spirits, but I am tired as all get out.

Chris took Ruth when he came home from work today, so that I could get a few hours of sleep before my next all-night-infomercial marathon (have you seen the YUDU? That thing looks awesome!) And you know what? I did not sleep like a baby.
I slept much, much better.

Ruth sucks her thumb

None of our other babies have done this, but it is pretty adorable.

Introducing Ruth Miriam!!!!

Well, this post is very overdue! Baby Ruth, however, was not - born a week early, weighing in at a teensy (for our kids) 6lbs 9 oz. She came into the world quietly and intensely alert, casting a surprised and bewildered look around her, a look that she has not yet lost. She spends her very few times of wakefulness each day looking around her with a, "Where in the world am I? How did I get here?" kind of curiosity.

We've been home a little over a week now, and although we haven't really settled into a routine yet (mostly due to the pain-killer stupor I've been in) everyone is doing great. Not to sound too Pollyanna, but the girls are all very excited about the new baby, and are handling the off-kilter routine really well. Lucy is nuts about Ruth, insisting on giving her sloppy/slimy kisses every few minutes and taking on "diaper duty" (bringing new ones and throwing the old ones away) with gusto. Woe to anyone who has the audacity to change a diaper without her assistance!

It is weird for us to have such a tiny baby this time around. Ruth was born a week before her due-date, which puts her five weeks earlier than Abbie and three weeks earlier than almost everyone else. We've realized that we aren't actually used to newborns, since most of our other babies were so overdue, born with clear eyes and chubby, chubby legs and a fluidity of movement that Ruth can't quite muster yet. She is so small, and moves her head and arms in such a herky-jerky way that it is sometimes hard to believe she is real. She looks more like an animatronic baby than a real one. To boot, she has this habit of holding her hands up to her face and with the mittens she wears to protect her skin from her tiny nails, she looks exactly like Henrietta Pussycat from Mr. Rogers - small and adorable and cuddly and vulnerable. We all can't help but dissolve into puddles at her feet.



Ruth has not been around for a full two weeks yet, but somehow it is already impossible to imagine life, or our family, without her. This is one of the miraculous things about having babies that I will never get over - that instantaneous, gut-wrenching love that binds you to this tiny stranger, this minature, barely responsive person who somehow causes you to feel the most intense kind of protectiveness just by the way she opens her mouth, trusting that someone will love her enough to place some kind of food in there.

I'll be posting more pictures and videos over the next few days, but I don't think I can be blamed if I choose, instead, to spend my free time looking down at the even breathing of this new, amazing little baby who has come to help us become, as a family, who we were meant to be.


*By the way - yes, that blue curtain in the first picture is hiding the fact that my guts were at that moment still splayed all over the table. Isn't that a weird thought?

End of Pregnancy Hijinks

I'm eight days away from having a baby, and life is interesting.

Chris gave me a sweet surprise last week, mysteriously requesting as he left for work that I be wearing a specific outfit by a certain time. When the time came, we dropped Lucy off at my sister-in-law's and then headed out for one last nice meal. (Hence the outfit request: he wanted me to feel comfortable in a fancier restaurant without telling me that was where we were going.) We went to a new place with great atmosphere and even better food, and had a very pleasant and peaceful lunch. Until I had to go and break the peace, quite literally. In some random spastic move I, instead of gently setting my goblet of water on the table as I intended, shattered it into about million peices, soaking the tablecloth and sending shards of glass in all directions.

I have no idea what happened. I think my hand must have just stopped working or something. This at least backs up my assertion that the three cameras I have broken in the last nine months are not entirely my fault - it's this baby, who is making me really, really clumsy.

Aside from extreme physical incompetence, late pregnancy seems to have given me some weird aura of voodoo. We went to DC this weekend to meet up with some friends, and as we ushered the girls across the street toward the Washington Monument a woman stopped me to ask if they were all mine. I get this all the time, so I gave my standard answer. Instead of the standard response ("Wow! You must have so much energy!," "Were you hoping for a boy?" or the super-standard, "Are you done now?") the woman told me that she herself was hoping for a baby, and asked me to give her luck. I don't generally think of myself as a walking fertility goddess so I was somewhat taken aback, and ended up just wishing her good luck before taking off to catch up with my family. I guess I should be grateful that she didn't ask to rub my belly (a pregnancy phenomenon that I really, really hate.) The whole thing left me feeling weird and uncomfortable, though.

Only eight more days to go, though. Here's hoping I make it through without either breaking anything of value or finding myself accidentally participating in pagan rituals.

I love a parade!

Beth, Claire and Abbie all joined Girl Scouts this year. Their first official Scouting activity was.......to march in a parade and toss candy!

Here we are at the very start of the parade yesterday, where the candy-throwing enthusiasm began.



I have pictures, too, now that we have a new camera, but I haven't bothered to figure out yet how to get them on the computer. In the meantime, here's another video. It's not great, but it shows the constant refrain of the day: DON'T THROW ALL YOUR CANDY AT ONCE! The kids had a really hard time with this - it was just too much fun. At one point policemen on motorcycles rode by, and we had to bodily restrain the girls from pelting them with candy. It was a frenzy of candy throwing, and what I loved the most about it was the way the littlest girls couldn't actually reach the sidewalk, so most of their candy just ended up getting trampled in the middle of the road.




This final video is from before the parade began, while we were lining up. For reasons beyond comprehension, they placed our pack of little girls directly behind a group of ....horses. You can probably guess the challenge this presented! The second refrain of the day was: DON'T STEP IN THE HORSE POOP! The girls actually did a great job, and the only incident involved not a little girl but a very pregnant woman who was paying more attention to the candy her daughter had just dropped than to where she was walking. Ahem.



All in all, though, it was a fantastic way to spend the morning and afternoon. I love the cheesiness of small-town parades, and I loved the feeling of community we had as we walked down the road and were greeted by tons of people we knew (through school, mostly, although my favorite coffee shop gave us a shout-out as well.) And Lucy really enjoyed the way the whole troop showered her and Katie with candy when we passed them.

Congratulations are in order...

...for the Lobers! When we came home from the parade, we found a message on our answering machine announcing the birth of their fifth baby and fourth son, Edward Jerome! We are so happy for you guys! We are doing our best to provide the world with wonderful women and it's a comfort to know that you are doing the same on the other side of the coin. :)

More about Abbie's first day of Kindergarten

We all wanted to hear Abbie's report about her first day of school, so at dinner the conversation mainly revolved around her. She told us about the teacher, who was nice, and the boys in her class, who she feels she could do without, and the other girls, several of whom she thinks could become friends.

She told us that the girls in her class quizzed each other over lunch, looking to see who had similar interests. One kid asked Abbie if she likes to color, which she does. Another girl asked her if she likes American Girl dolls, and Abbie said that she did. When it came time for Abbie to ask questions, though, this is what she did: She turned to the girl she liked the most and innocently asked her, "Do you like The Killers?"

The little girl did not know what she was talking about.

I think it is safe to say that Kindergarten may not be ready for the awesomeness that is Miss Abbie Mlinek. I bet the kids are really going to be impressed when she breaks out her Two Face impersonation:

Today....

* I am exactly three weeks away from having a new baby! Hooray!!! And Eeeek!

*The elementary school had it's back-to-school night, and with each passing year it feels like I am stuck in the circle of hell that's been reserved for obnoxious parents. It is the same thing every single year - the teachers say the same stuff, and then one or two parents badger them as the rest of us sit in increasingly irritated silence. If nothing else, Back-t0-School night leaves you with a feeling of mighty respect for the teachers who have to put up with this (nicely!) every.single.day.

*Chris did the math and realized that with Katie in Middle School now, a period of time has kicked off in which we will be up by 6am for the next 18 years. This was a truly vicious thing to point out, as far as I am concerned. One week down.......an infinity to go.

Yesterday was Abbie's first full day of Kindergarten. She hadn't yet met her teacher, so I decided to walk her to the classroom door in case she was feeling nervous at the thought of spending the entire day in the care of some stranger. We got out of the car, and I took both Abbie's and Lucy's hand as we crossed the crosswalk. The moment we went through the school doors, however, Abbie quietly but purposefully pulled her hand out of mine.

My hands are in general considered pretty hot real estate among the girls. My guess is that the scarce supply (having, as so many mothers like to point out, only two hands) for so much demand has led to most of my kids continuing to have a positive outlook towards hand-holding. The only exception to this is Katie, who at almost 11 has every right to walk around unassisted. Even Beth, though, will still grab my hand if it's free and the other girls all routinely argue over who gets to hold my hand and who has to be the caboose.

So I looked down in some surprise at Abbie when she pulled away. She looked calmly back up at me and just said, "I can walk by myself."

We came to her classroom door, and she walked right in without saying goodbye. Her teacher, taking pity on me as I stood in the doorway, pathetically, urged Abbie to say goodbye and she obeyed with a quick wave behind her back, no eye-contact, as she walked confidently over to her desk.

And that was that. Lucy and I left and went to a park, where we both felt weird spending so much one-on-one time together, and Abbie dominated her first day of Kindergarten. As, of course, I should have known she would.

It has cascading rhinestones

The cable guys just left, after having been here for half an hour or so. As I shut the door behind them, I brushed my hair behind my ear and made a horrible discovery.

I am wearing a sparkly, bedazzled blue hair clip. Lucy insisted that I put it on this morning, and I forgot all about it. Until just now, of course, when it's too late.