My new favorite drink

I love hot cocoa--YUM! However, sometimes I want that hot-cocoa-snuggly-socks-cozy-blanket feeling without spending my calories on hot cocoa. You know. So, this is my new favorite thing. Warm 8 to 12 oz. of skim (1%, whatever) milk in the microwave for a minute and a half. Add one teaspoon flavored creamer (my new favorite is vanilla caramel) and one teaspoon sugar. Stir it well and hold that warm cup in your hands as you smell the deliciousness. Drink up with no guilt. And save your calories for when you can really splurge on AMAZING cocoa, instead of that crappy Wal-Mart brand instant stuff you buy for your kids. :)

Haircuts all around.

Maddie got her first haircut today.  Normally, I wait a little longer, reveling in the glory that is old-man-hair-on-a-tiny-baby, but when I had to comb the tangles out of her back hair in the morning, I decided that I fight that battle enough already in my life (with four other heads of hair to brush), and we were going to remedy the situation STAT.

Here she is, with both bouffant top and mullet bottom.  Is that a winning combination or what?

Mullet bottom mostly gone.  I piled the hair on her back so I could have a record of how much I cut off.

Haircut complete.  She looks older now, unfortunately.  And I loved playing with all that mullet hair when I was holding her in church.  *sniff*  My baby's growing up.  :)

And you know, I really ought to retitle this blog to be either "137 Reasons to Closely Supervise Your Toddler" or "My Incompetence as a Mother."  Because this is Bella's most recent haircut.

Let's start with her new fashionable turkey tail.  That little tuft is right at the crown of her head.  This beautiful feature is highlighted when I pull her hair into her usual style of two pigtails.  We're experimenting with different options when we would rather she didn't look like barnyard fowl.

She also added stylish asymetrical bangs.  They might look fairly mainstream in this photo here, but I assure you, in real life, this look is very avant garde.  

And to show what she was working with before, I add this picture of the great Moses costume she assembled using the towel rack from our recently remodeled bathroom and my Moby wrap.  This is the only picture I could find with her bangs shown full-length, since we normally had them pulled or clipped up.  I had been carefully trimming the rest of her hair so we could grow her bangs all the way out.  Serves me right for doing anything carefully that involves the human disaster.  

Bella's setting up shop in the basement and she's looking for clients who may want to mimic her new style.  Her rates for haircuts are very reasonable (two juice boxes or a ziploc of goldfish crackers), and you'll certainly be original.

Twins?

Our friend Matt Brady pointed out that Maddie is a dead ringer for the lead singer of GreenDay, Billy Joe Armstrong.

What do you think?

A little product in the hair, a little eyeliner, and WHABAM!  Perfect, right?

We Love Halloween!

I thought John would capture a full-body shot of my fabulous self in an orange pindot polyester leisure suit.  Can you believe he only got this?

"How blessed the day when the lamb and the lion shall lie down together without any ire."  I don't think we're quite there yet, do you?

From left:  Mary (of Mary Had a Little Lamb) not to be confused with Little Bo-Peep  (you can see she still has her sheep, right?)
Jaguar (she refused the elephant costume I had planned, but the jaguar fit.  Who am I to argue?)
She-Ra (store-bought costume not available since 1985, so this is what we put together on our own)

Close up on the Princess of Power.  Check out those sassy hips.

This costume was sewn in 2004 for Olivia.  As I was re-examining it this year, I was quite pleased with all the progress I've made in my sewing since then.  

We broke the plastic outdoor candy cane we had planned to use for a shepherd's crook, and drama ensued.  John came to the rescue with this pipe-insulation substitute.  And then Olivia refused to use it at the Trunk-or-Treat because she was sure people would think she was Bo Peep if she had a crook.  At the end of the evening, she indignantly proclaimed, "I didn't even carry my stick, and they still thought I was Little Bo Peep." 

The U.P.

Subtitled:  Best Vacation Yet

or

Why Didn't We Do This Earlier?

After blessing Maddie last month, we got down to the real business of the visit, which was to head up north and see Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  My grandpa has been talking about doing this since he first visited us in our apartment in Toledo, and I honestly wish we would have done it sooner.  It was gorgeous.  I think (with all the arrogance of a first-time visitor) that September has to be the best time to go, for these reasons:  1) it's off season, so all the accommodations were much cheaper, 2) the leaves were turning, and the color was gorgeous, and 3) it was just warm enough and just cool enough.  Perfect.

I don't have the patience to create a narrative from these pictures, so I am simply going to caption them.  

Waiting for the ferry to Mackinac Island.  Windy.  Maddie was treated as luggage, just like any other respectable one-month old.

I wish this picture really showed how funny this hoodie is.  It's one John picked up in Bolivia, and it's darling with the hood down.  With the too-short hood up, her shoulders are permanently raised, and she looks like a dwarf.  Or an Incan midget.

Mackinac Island has no cars.  It's awesome, and the biking was SO much fun.  It's not perfectly clear from this picture, but my parents are on a tandem bike with a trailer rolling behind them.  Awesome, eh?  All the bikes on the island have those cute front baskets functioning kind of like the trunk on a car.  

Little Grandpa loved to tease me about my "Red Baron" scarf.

On one side of the island, there was a big rocky beach with hundreds of stacked rock cairns.  Mimi decided we needed to stop and stack our own cairns.  It's still the part of the vacation she talks about most.

I love Little Grandpa.  It was so fun to have him along.

After Mackinac Island, we drove up through the U.P. to get to Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, and ride the Agawa Canyon train.  My dad and my grandpa both love trains, so it was a perfect fit into our vacation.  Canada may have even been more beautiful than Michigan, and that's saying something.  

Bella wanted to walk under her own power up all 323 stairs to the top of Lookout Point in Agawa Canyon.  That would have taken forever, but she protested her "sack of potatoes" fate anyway.

Don't I have beautiful daughters?

On our way back down, we visited Petoskey, Michigan, famous for Petoskey Stones (which we didn't find) and beautiful beaches (which we found and admired).  We did some hiking in Petoskey State Park.  At least some of us did.

Mimi was carried to the top of "Old Baldy" inside Big Grandpa's sweatshirt.  She loved it.

Ahh.  I loved it.

And she looks like this now.

Those tiny baby pictures in the last post almost made me wish I had that tiny baby back.  But this baby is much happier.  And now that she's two months old, the next time she comes down with a fever, we won't end up in the emergency room getting her urine cathed and blood drawn and chest x-rayed (and talking the ER doc out of a lumbar puncture).  I never before realized how lucky I was to keep my babies healthy for at least the first 60 days.  (She's good now.  It's just hard to keep all those school germs away from the babies.)

 She even smiles.  Well, every so often.  (And her real smile is much more charming and eye-involving and grin-like than this enigmatic smirk.  But sometimes you can only catch the enigmatic smirk on camera and just have to imagine the delightful grin.)

 How does she compare to my other babies?  Well, this Angry Pea is Bella, who rarely cried.  And Maddie cries any time she remembers that she and I have an agreement that she is never EVER to be put down.

 And this is what my Bella really looked like at two months.  Happy all the time.  (Except when dressed as a pea.)  (But do these two girls have the same eyes?  Madeline's are blue, and Bella's are brown, but they have the same shape, yes?)

 And this is the cutest picture I have of Naomi at two months.  (Washcloths for modesty.)

 Most of the pictures look like this one below.  I think her attractiveness was actually somewhere between those two pictures.  Not as cute as the one above, not as frog-like as the one below.  (You know, I really don't ever see it when people tell me that they can "sure tell which kids belong to you."  But looking at these pictures. . . hmmmm. . . there's definitely something they have in common.)

 This is Olivia.  My sweet little bald baby.  Oh, give me a moment to cry about how big she's gotten.

 Moment over.  I actually think she's a lot of fun as a seven-year old, so I won't mourn too long.  (But that round, round head?  And that sweet smile?  I really wish I could kiss that baby one more time.)

What do you think?  Who does baby Maddie look like?  (And I know it's not me.  *Sigh.*  I'm resigned to the fact that the Wells genes are absolutely dominant in the facial features category.  Good thing I married someone who is handsome as a man but also looks darling as a little girl.  :)  

We Blessed Her.

When you live 2000 miles from family, you learn to take advantage of the times they come to visit.  When my dad, my mom, my grandpa (my girls call him "Little Grandpa" since it's confusing to have two Grandpa Andersons), and my brother came to visit (purpose: one week in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan), we had to sign Madeline up for her blessing day.  

And then take 4 generation pictures afterward.  

Because of that crazy thing in the coral dress, these pictures were particular difficult.  We love her anyway.

It was so fun to see the Soelbergs, who came up from Bloomington, just to be with us too, but they had to leave in a crazy rush before we really got to enjoy them.  Sorry, guys!

And this is my girl.  A month ago.  I already miss that tiny baby.

She doesn't really fit in that dolly carseat anymore, but when she did. . . it was the most perfect portable baby seat ever.