Saturday, June 7, 2008

In Which I Display Photographs

And now, by popular (well, one) request, here are my daughters!

First off, we have more of my spectacular parenting. Except that for this time, unlike last time, it really wasn't my fault. I put Lydia down for her nap, but then she heard Avram come home, and was so excited to see him that I couldn't make her go back down. Instead later on, while having an afternoon snack of cereal in the kitchen, this happened:
By the way, that orange knitted sweater isn't my fault either. It was given to us along with a doll, as a doll sweater, but Lydia has recently decided that it is for her to wear, and puts it on almost every day. It's way too small, of course, and so every time she wears it she looks uncommonly large/chubby for a two year old.

Here's more Lydia:
You may notice that Lydia is wearing the same outfit in all three pictures. This is not because she only owns one outfit, or even that I'm too lazy to dress her in anything but this green shirt and blue jeans. No, instead it's just that I'm too lazy to take pictures all of the time, and so the only real pictures of Lydia I have in the last three weeks are all from yesterday.

I used to think it was funny how often back when film cameras were the norm, many parents would buy a roll of film for a birthday, or Christmas and take basically the whole roll for that one celebration, and then have months and months with no pictures in between. I know that they wanted to get the pictures developed close to when they took them, and also that many people weren't the kind of people the take a picture or two a day or week; it was all feast or famine.

Ironically, although I don't use film, and can immediately upload my pictures, whether I have one or a hundred, I still find myself going weeks and weeks with basically no pictures, and then suddenly taking 50 or so at one sitting.

Here are some of Elisheva:
Yes, shame of all shames, this is her guckie. Avram learned that term for a pacifier on his mission, and likes it because "guck-guck" is the sound a binkie makes whilst being used. Lydia never had one, but Elisheva liked to suck so much that our fingers were getting pruney from her sucking on them. So I caved in and bought a binkie (what I usually call them, heaven only knows why). It's worked great; she likes to use them when she wants to suck, but she doesn't have one in her mouth every breathing moment of her life.

I think mothering is going to be like Anne Shirley's experiences teaching school; when she began she had a whole rainbow of lovely theories about how to do it, and throughout her two year stint she broke every one of them.
And to finish things off, here's me!

4 comments:

  1. Lydia is a funny little sleeper. It was nice to see Elisheva with her eyes open. I love your new picture at the top of your blog.

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  2. In a couple of pictures, Elisheva's eyes remind me of Lydia, but then I'm not sure.... I can't wait to see Elisheva this summer! And the rest of you, too. Last time I saw Lydia, she wasn't even walking, really.

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  3. A "binkie" in the UK is called a "dummie". I know this because there are articles posted all over Jonathan's "nursery" (day care) about "dummie use". Apparently dummie use has found favor (I mean favour) again with the pediatrics as it reduces the likelihood of crib death by some purportedly statistically significant amount. So take that all you superior people who never had a child who took a pacifier anyway.

    PS. I'll need a new blog title myself in a few months, so please pass along any nice rejects.

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  4. Barbara likes to say, "I used to have principles, before I became a mother." My take on it is, even babies have their own agency. We can (sometimes) make them do what we want, but we cannot make them want what we want. Unsolicited advice to young parents: choose your battles wisely; don't die on a hill that's not worth fighting for. This will be especially important ten minutes from now, when you have teenagers.

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