All right, Mr DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!*

Ho-LEE Cow! I got over 100 hits on this blog after the last post! I’m verklemt!

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Seriously, thank you everyone who visited (and wanderd back to read this) I hope you check back in every now and then. Please comment if you feel so moved so that I know what your views are (of whatever the topic is) and , well, because I love hearing from folks. Just hit the comment link at the bottom of whatever post. Oh, and any comments may not show up right away. They’ve NOT been lost, I just am having to work out a few bugs. I’m all over Blogger about this.

For those who have commented … I love you! I wanna have your babies! Oh, wait. There’s no room at the inn, as it were. Oh well. I still love ya.

Thanks again, everyone!

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So my youngest just turned 1 year old Tuesday and it seems so weird. Not her (although she’s pretty weird) but not having Little Brother here yet. I mean Bitty Girl was already 2 months old when Tall Girl turned one. I guess I’ll get over it in June, eh?

I’m struck by how small children will make these huge leaps of development. For example Tall Girl, who has been talking in some form since she was 18 months old (as opposed to her brother who waited util he was scaring the hell out of two before he managed anything more than 'mama', 'dada', and 'ball') has suddenly had a word explosion. Her vocabulary a few weeks ago was about 25 words and a lot of babble. This week it’s lept up to 45 words or so and good sentences. Just in the past two weeks she’s offerd up ‘Airplane’, ‘Necklace’, ‘Spider-Man’, and such juicy phrases as ‘Do you hear it?”

Bitty Girl has been just as startling but not so charming. It’s as if she hit one and was suddenly transformed into A Person. This former plump and congenial smiler, usually content to lounge about with mum is On The Move! Heaven help us all if her sibs are out of the room.

Let me pause to explain that these babies have the run of our sprawling 12 room farm house – not counting bathrooms and barring the upstairs. That leaves 9 rooms. Boy and Tall Girl – like electrons - could be anywhere at any time. Bitty Girl, relegated to the much lower orbit of crawling is not pleased. Oh hell no.

(yes, thank you very much, that WAS a cool science analogy. Thank you, thank you, no really you’re embarrassing me…)

(where was I?)

Uh … so anyway in a strange mix of her two sibs, she is exploring the house at race speed. Just a moment ago she took the inevitable first tumble down the steps into the family room.

See, her brother was ultra cautious. When he was born we lived in a single wide mobile home on our land in Lexington (all the better to blend with the White Trash, my dear), and if you’ve ever done the equivilent of 3 pillbugs in a Coors can thing then you know how bloody freakin HOT trailers get in summer. So I’d throw open both doors, but I never had to worry about Boy and the steps. He would, from the get go, crawl cautiously up to the edge and peer over, making no attemt to tackle them until much later.

His big little sister (who was the first to come home to this house we’re in now) had no such inhibitions. When it came to steps, it never crossed her wee mind that she might be hurt, until the was lying in a bruised and angry heap at the bottom. I feel sure she is convinced that she has super powers she's not yet discovered because she’d not only go headfirst down all steps several times a day, but she is STILL of the mind that she’s invincable.

Of course it was she whom her father was holding when he slipped down our pretty-fucking-close-to-verticle staircase and it was she who was on my hip when my bad knee gave out and I fell onto the concrete floor of the family room. Perhaps she thinks she's Falling Girl, toddler SuperHero!

So Bitty girl is somewhere in the middle and after several weeks of crawling managed to go over the steps. She wasn't hurt, just a bumped noggin, but she was plenty outraged! And what was she so miffed about?

I was holding her and cooing at her and she wanted to get down and get to discovering what her sibs were playing with - dang this smoochy, are-you-alright stuff!

So with all these leaps and bounds I'm fearing for my sanity. And on that note, I'll leave you with a brief surreal-but-typical convo I just had with Boy:

Boy: (Studying a windowsill), "Momma?"
Me: (Studying the cupboard, trying to decide what's for supper), "Um-hmm?"
Boy: "Izzat a ladybug?"
Me: "Yep"
(pause)
Boy: "Do ladybugs have eyes?"
Me: "Yep"
Boy" "... is my sandbox outside?"
Me: (thrown off) "Erm ... yes"
Boy: (nonplussed) "Why?"




*quote: Gloria Swanson classic from Sunset Blvd
**pic: Mike Myers as the Coffee Talk lady on SNL. Discuss amongst yourselves.