In Short...

In short,

This girl

would starve

without these foods....

And for the record, there is absolutely nothing cut on her face-- 

merely the bandage location du jour.

He's one!

Saul turns one!

Happy birthday to the boy

who might just be the sweetest baby ever.

He had balloons.

He had a bath by himself.
(free from a big sister complaining about his excellent splashing)

He had a free-for-all with a tissue box.
(you know, the magical kind where the tissue just reappears!)

He was allowed to play
I-will-keep-dropping-this-toy-from-my-highchair
over and over.

And he discovered sugar.
(in a very delicious piece of cake that was very quickly devoured) 

If he could talk, I have no doubt that he would have said
that this was the best day of his entire life. 

Still Learning

Even though so many of you were so complimentary on my fantastic good looks in the previous post's family picture, there are some days when I feel like maybe I could use a lesson or two in how to be a mom to daughters.  I mean, my own learning curve in figuring out the what's and how's of modern American womanhood has been especially (and sometimes embarassingly) late and long.  And while I'm infinitely grateful for my eventual education in underwire, and the roundbrush, and the tampon, not all of modern American womanhood has been a happy discovery.  Little did I know that ignorace was bliss when it came to figuring out that not all eyebrows are created equal.  I can't help but feel sorry for poor Susan Boyle, because no one tells you that once you start some kind of plucking regimen, that you have to do it again; like the next day. And then again....and then again....and then again...and again.  And that from then on you will stop looking at people in the eye when talking with them because you'll be too distracted and frustrated by wondering how they get their own eyebrows to look so symmetrical and clean, when save for a pact with the Devil, you can't.  Maybe she rues the day that someone forced her hostage with an incredibly sharp pair of tweezers aimed only inches from her eyeballs, or perhaps the millions of dollars in royalties has eased the pain of that transition; but personally, I'm doubtful. 

I'm thinking that I eventually I'm going to need a much bigger grooming budget when my own daughters come of age to have to learn this stuff, because it might be better for all of us if I could just hire it out to a well-equipped professional. Until then, I will own up that I still have not the first idea about how to properly apply any kind of eye makeup (or that I am usally trying to learn in the car on the way to church), that I deliberately keep Olivia's hair short so that I'm relieved from a daily, grueling hair-fixing duty, and that most days find Isabel with her hair fixed from the day or two before when she had her last bath giving her that overall orphan appearance.  But I have to document the times when I at least try. Even when the braids turn out as asymmetrical as my eyebrows.

or