Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Gibbles and bits.

I made Eleanor this festive shaker out of a mostly empty travel shampoo bottle and some Christmas-themed glitter bits, and she loved it so much she carried it around with her for a whole afternoon.


She does this head-tilt thing and then waits for you to do it back. She likes to do it unexpectedly during meal times, which makes them much messier.


It is basically Snow here, now. Eleanor is like, Hmmm.


I made cookies that look like moustaches because it is that month. You know the one. With the moustaches.


I let Eleanor mess about with this pop-up book I bought at the thrift store years ago, and she was being weirdly gentle with it and I was like Awwwww but she is Eleanor to the bone, so.


She still likes to have something over her face while she sleeps, preferably something dense and cloth-like. It's like she wants to smother.


Monday, November 26, 2012

A Lesson On What Some Stuff Is

That is a deer.

This is a pillow.


This here is a book I like.


Those are some people I said 'hi' to earlier.


AND THIS IS A FORK OK?


Thursday, November 22, 2012

She's like Bart Simpson in that episode where he is not smarter than a hamster.

Disclaimer: photos presented in the exact order they were taken.


Hey look, a lime.

OH THAT IS TERRIBLE.


Why would you be like that, lime?


Oh hey look, a lime.


Limes are good, right?


THIS IS A SADNESS FRUIT.


Oh hey look...


FOOL ME THRICE, LIME.


Wednesday, November 21, 2012

This butterfly is SOCIAL.

Eleanor has never really made strange, which is nice for me, especially three hours into a four-and-a-half hour flight when I am sick of her face and she is sick of BOTH OUR FACES and the couple behind us asks to hold her.


When we got her back half an hour later she looked at us like, Ugh, you guys again.

And Eleanor really loves to have people looking at her. It makes her grin, and then people grin back, and then she grins at them grinning and it's a downward spiral of grin and it makes taking the bus a lot of fun. So we'd be in the dining hall and she'd be flashing her teethies at people and they'd be like, Awww, and she'd be like SQUAWK and it was this torturous process to try to feed her because SHE WAS BUSY LOVING PEOPLE.

By, like, the third day she had amassed this fan club and everywhere we went we'd run into people who knew her name and wanted to hold her and exclaim over her in Spanish and kiss her fat cheeks.


And we'd go to the pool and the Mexican kids would gather around and chatter at Joel and I while they stroked Eleanor's arms and face and she was like, Yessssss, the adulation!


One day I was setting her down at the beach and she was like, Hi! Hi! Hi! over my shoulder because she'd spotted these two dumplings


whom she loved beyond all reason and who loved her and were always fighting over who got to let her hold their toy.

Now it's just the two of us, booting around Calgary in the snow, but she doesn't seem to mind.


Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Mexico in a nut shell. A taco shell? A sea shell.

So usually my vacation recaps go like 'And then we and then we and then we ATE and the next day we and then we ATE and then we' but this time around, every day looked pretty gloriously the same.


Eleanor would wake up around 8:30 because Puerto Vallarta is actually east of us and therefore earlier time-zone-wise, who knew, and we'd get dressed and go take forever to eat breakfast and then it would be time for her nap, and then I would read on the patio while Joel went boogie boarding or Joel would read on the patio while I did yoga on the beach or we would BOTH read on the patio while keeping a simultaneous eye out for the muchas iguanas who lived in our foliage.


And then Eleanor would wake up and we'd go to the pool or the beach and if it was the pool, she'd entertain the troops


and if it was the beach, she'd eat the sand. That child, you guys. No thanks on the watermelon, but sand is a salty treat.


And then we'd go have lunch and linger over our coffee until it was time for Eleanor's nap again and see, like, three paragraphs up. And then she'd wake up and if we'd already been to the beach, we'd go to the pool or vice versa, and then we'd go take forever over our dinner and then she'd go to bed and Joel and I would have drinks on the patio.


And there was no internet except in the lobby, so once a day we'd spin down there and let Eleanor free-range while we posted to our instagrams.


And our resort had a ZOO so on the way to and from meals we'd stop to say hi to the ostrich and the monkeys. And the palm trees. And the large boulder. Eleanor hasn't quite refined her 'hi' to things with faces. She scatters them wide and then, like, half the time they are socially appropriate.

Hi, sand!

It has long been a dream of Joel's to go Somewhere Hot In The Month Of November, Which Is The Month That Sucks For Many Reasons, Not The Least Of Which Is The Cold. Mexico was mad hot and tropical, and my poor skin, which has fared horribly in Calgary's dry outdoors and overheated indoors, felt plump and soft and not unlike the baby's. I am warm and flush and I cannot find my doldrums anywhere.


It was good, as vacations go.

Monday, November 19, 2012

A hodge-podge for you.

HAHAHA remember when I was going to post every day in November? THAT didn't happen. We went to Mexico, it turns out, and I was going to schedule a post every day we were gone but packing makes me weep so THEN I was just going to schedule this picture to post every day


because HAHA THAT FACE. It is a face she makes all the time now, for no reason, and we are like, what is up, face?

I will post more about Mexico later, prepare yourself for a lot of this


and an in-depth discussion of all the flan I ate (so much flan). For those of you who have been wondering how the Eleanor-Octopus relationship is playing out (Alice), I am both the worst mother and the most brilliant. We have that plastic stuff on our patio windows that you stick on and then hair-dry and it shrinks and insulates your house and Eleanor loves nothing, NOTHING more than to try to peel off the edges, and the more I'm like, Don't do that, the more she's like HAHA I'M DOING IT so I set a guard


and now she doesn't dare.

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Exposure therapy.

Some of you may remember Eleanor's octopus from these, also known as My Favorite Ever, pictures:


Ugh, it's like she WANTS me to put captions under her and then post them to the internet.


ANYway, the octopus' legs hoot when you squeeze them and I think at one point I hooted them when she wasn't expecting it and now she has this crazy love/fierce distrust relationship with the octopus. He lives on the bottom shelf with a blanket over him, because for a while there she couldn't stand to be left in the same room as him if she could see him, and the other day she was exploring the room and pulled the blanket off and it was every bit as hilarious as I expected it to be.

So now he lives on the bottom shelf with NO blanket, and she won't go near him without me right there so she can climb me when she is overcome with fright, but she also won't leave him alone. She's always crawling over to where she can stare at him.


Today I was like, JUST KISS ALREADY and picked her up and plunked her down in front of him


and she was immediately like, Oh crap


Is he coming?


Oh crap


and she's grinning in that last one because, while she both fears and hates him, she also loves him. She is having a great and terrible time. It's complex. Anyway, we got to about here


and the stove buzzer went off, which is something else she doesn't trust, and the combination of the two was too much for her and now she's gone off the octopus again.

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Next up: opposable thumbs.

Eleanor has found her third hand.


This frees her other two hands up to play with things, or transport her places.


She will show you how it's done.


Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Her feet have a secret life.

Remember when she used to fall asleep in my lap all the time?


I'm not really going anywhere with this, I was just having a bit of a reminisce.


Hahhaha, what a ridiculous face, that face.


Anyway. When I put socks and/or boots on Eleanor, she waves her feet around for the next half hour like, LOOK AT THESE HILARIOUS THINGS ON MY FEET. And then when I take the boots off when we get home, she gets all intense about her feet because where have you guys been.