me too!

Ah. All the little sisters are justified! For every one of them who answered the question, "which one do you want?" with "what's Jess/Em/Becca having?", there was a Jess, Em or Becca who asked their parent, "what are you having, Mommy?", U.S. dollars to sand, there was.

What does Brigid want? Brigid wants whatever I'm having! These days, in addition to her healthy diet of breastmilk, veggies, fruit and cereal, she's having sips of my lattes, bites of my egg salad sandwiches and nibbles of my pizza. She also wants to play with whatever I'm doing, especially if I'm reading. She wants to show me how she too has mastered the art of turning pages and knows indeed what a cup is for. (Which is more than I think a cup is for. I just drink out of 'em. Birdy drinks out of them sure, but she also hollars in 'em and splashes in 'em, having figured out that cups are sort of mini wading pools for her hands.)

Now that she's learned to crawl, Brie is much more content to sit on the carpet and play while I pack. It's not so much that she does crawl all over the place, as that she knows she can, and so she's not frustrated to be on her own without secondary locumotion (i.e., Mom.) I've found she'll sit for HOURS (y'know, like fifteen or twenty minutes!) playing with two halves of a plastic Easter egg. I think she's trying to figure out how to fit it back together.

Anyway, this being-happy-on-the-floor-but-not-really-going-anywhere phase is a real boon for packing. Not that there's very far for her to go - our apartment being crowded with boxes as it is right now. I try to get us out every day - yesterday we went to Mom's and today we're headed to the park - just because it's a bit claustrophobic in here, and will be for the next week and a half. But then, ah, then! a backyard! A spacious, bright kitchen! An honest to goodness HALLWAY!

Still, she does run into trouble sometimes. I think it was the day before that I looked down at Brie and noticed some dark stains on her shirt and around her mouth. For all the world, it looked like she'd been eating dirt! But we were inside, so I didn't think that could be right. I smelled it (ah, the joys of being a mom, identifying unknown items by smell, and if that fails - sigh - by taste), and it SMELLED like dirt (you know, that wet sidewalk smell?). So I looked around on the carpet, and found the culprit.

Yep, it was dirt. We were by the bedroom closet, and apparently some dirt from someone's shoes had made it onto the carpet - it was dried in treadmark-shape, and Brie had picked it up and eaten it. I remembered that Becca told us that you're supposed to eat a couple pounds of dirt in your childhood to jumpstart your immunities. Or something like that. And I think she said it in Brigid's hearing. So I suppose Birdy's just taken the advice to heart.

So, the lesson learned is that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you're silly to think it's a penguin, even if you're in Antartica.

That, and never underestimate an eight-month old.