Sit!

Office Chair

We bought this crazy chair that holds up a baby who can’t sit up alone into a sitting position. Now Tillie can finally boss us (and her toys) around like the CEO of a tiny company. The power is going to her head.

Let’s get down to business.

Tillie ordered Karin to make the ravioli into heart shapes for Valentine’s Day.

Cupid is a Cu'e Pie

I love valentines. They are a great excuse to use stickers and stamps and pinking shears and glitter and pipe cleaners and...

Haute Cousine

Tillie now has a new baby girl cousin who was just born to my brother and his wife early this morning. (Excitement!) I tried to explain to Tillie the significance of the event, but she is either playing it cool or hasn't quite figured out how awesome this is. My brother will now get to do what I do all day, which is make tutus for my daughter and then dress her up in silly outfits for baby fashion shoots.

A brilliantly crafty friend Liz made this adorable sweater vest that the tutu matches.

What fabric is this? Tulle is cool!

Yes, I've sealed the deal: Tillie will definitely end up a punk-rock P.I.B. vampire with many piercings as a direct response to this ridiculously fruffy pastime, but I don't care!

Doesn't she look like the Russian Princess Mathilde Romanova-Krasinskaya, who also wore tutus?

[Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathilde]

The Growl of the Juvenile Tillisaurus

Sadly, I have not been lucky enough to catch it on film, but Tillie has been practicing her low notes recently. If I were easily spooked, I would have thought her possessed. Perhaps she learned this growl noise from the dogs? I've never heard a baby make the sound. As soon as I capture this elusive tune, I will share with y'all.

Caught on film:

1040-I.O.U.

People say that you finally have to grow up when you have a kid. Yes, someone has to change the dirty diapers, mop up the puke, endure the screaming, and clip the little fingernails. But all this is fun parenting. The hard part for me is the money stress.

I’m a parent now, so suddenly, it is not okay to skimp on retirement savings, rack up student loans for useless degrees, experiment with not having electricity, tease the goddess of home foreclosure, be passive-aggressive with the IRS, and play Russian roulette with crappy health insurance.

The health insurance thing is rearing its ugly head once more. This time, they are acting like they will gladly insure me (hooray for no longer being pregnant!) but they just can’t decide how big a wad they want to extract from my sad little wallet. They are sizing us up, picking through our health histories, and threatening to make us pay royally for not-so-royal coverage. I want to just quit. I want my mommy—no actually, I want my HR person. Every day, I consider throwing in the towel and applying for some job, any job, one that comes with cheap and automatic health insurance, paid sick days, a regular paycheck, a sweet 401K, routine tax withholding, and the occasional free donut.

Lunchbreak!

Postprandial window gazing

Baby Camouflage

She wore an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, pink polka-dot onsie...except it's not so teeny, because SHE's not so teeny anymore. My goodness, she is growing fast. I can't even keep track of what she fits into anymore. There's a certain reason that we call her The Tillsbury Doughgirl, and it has to do with a certain pair of giant thighs--so deliciously fat that I really want to soak them in barbecue sauce and take a bite. And, I think the reason that she is so advanced at holding her head up is that she has a little peach spare tire of a double chin that goes ALL THE WAY around her neck. This little roll collects some of the nastiest baby cheese, which leads to another favorite moniker: Tillie con Queso.

Okay, now I must list them all:

Tillie con Carne
Tillie Cheese Burger
Tillie Dog
Tillie Bean
4-Alarm Tillie (for when she's really cranking out)
Red Hot Tillie Peppers
Tilliedactyl (if you must know, it's cuz of the screech)
Meatball (goes with her cousin Raphaella's nickname: Ravioli)
Tee Pearl
Tills
Tilber
Tillstrom
Tillium (the cutest element)
Rototiller

Cutefits

Orange jammies make baby extra cuddly.

Who wears the pants in this household?

Killer Babies

A new chapter in my ongoing drama with the dogs: I worry for their lives. In all my fretting over dog problems before Tillie’s birth, and believe me I thought of MANY, I never thought that the dogs would be in any danger from the baby. But recently they have discovered how tasty bottles are, and they love to snatch them behind our backs and hide them for a good chew later on. Today, Zephyr walked into my office and barfed up a partially chewed nipple. Not only was this disgusting, but it foreshadowed something much worse. I do not want to have to surgically remove any plastic baby items from my dog’s intestine. We already had to do this two months ago, when the culprit was a produce bag and the victim was Zephyr. It involved major surgery. It cost us $2000. Now let’s see, what would I rather have spent that money on?

Mommy gives Tillie a stern talking to about her murderous bottles.

Daddy is hypnotized by her wily smile.

Innocently playing with Poppie, or conniving to take us down one by one?

Reading Is Fun

Tillie read her first book last night. Well, her wonderful babysitters and good friends Alex and Camile read it to her. I’m not quite sure how I haven’t managed to read to Tillie yet, but it is true. Thank goodness we have friends to pick up the slack in her education!

Molly Jr. vs. Scott Jr.

The big question when you combine your genes to make a baby is: who does she look like? When she first came out, Tillie looked just like baby pictures of me. See what I’m saying:
Baby Molly:

Baby Tillie:

Then, for the first two months, she seemed to be a clone of my mother, always giving me very thoughtful mother-like looks. This kind of weirded me out--not because I don’t want her to be like my mother (I would love that!)--but because it made me feel a little less like HER mother. It was confusing. Okay, maybe this is perhaps something I should discuss with a psychotherapist…but in the meantime, please compare:
Baby Ruth (yum!):

Baby Tillie:

Anyway, Scott keeps insisting that she looks like his side of the family, but I couldn’t see it. I knew she was getting away from looking like my mom and her sister and instead starting to have Scott’s mother’s coloring. But this week, I finally captured a moment where she looked EXACTLY like Scott. It was very exciting! Check it out:
Baby Scott:

Baby Tillie:

Of course, she just looks like herself really…and I love that!

Felt Good

Every Wednesday evening a magical event occurs: Craft Night. I [heart]love[heart] Craft Night! A group of my friends have been doing this for about a year now, and I cannot get enough of it. I usually quilt, but lately I’ve been informally touring other peoples crafts, taking a stab at them if you may. The most recent project I've completed was a set of felt alphabet blocks for Tillie. I loved the way they turned out.

Tillie likes them and she has great taste:

Chomp!

On display in Tillie’s room:

The backs:

The inspiration—a felt book with pull out characters, called Jungle Fun, by amazing crafter Corrie:

Clothes Colt

I finally went for-fun clothes shopping for Tillie (as opposed to oh-my-god-poop’s-blasting-out-of-her-too-tight-onsie-we-must-go-to-target clothes shopping). Sadly, I discovered that it is not only possible, but actually quite easy, to spend the same amount of money on an outfit for an infant as it is for yourself. (I saw an adorable sweater dress just her size for $58—ouch!) Instead of spending her college tuition on things she will burst out of in only three months, I hit the bargain rack. Wow, in babyland, they actually mark things down to $0.99. I even got some deals on off season prints, such as thanksgiving pumpkin tights, Easter lamb socks, an autumn-harvest tomato hat, and a summer-time giraffes onsie. Because her fashion seasons are so fleeting, I’ve decided that her outfits must be catalogued for my later enjoyment. This ensemble includes a little something hand-me-down (purple shift and matching bloomers) and a little something cowboy (trompe l'oeil boot booties). She's not yet able to walk down the baby runway I'm constructing, so here's a snapshot with her dapper pal Cat.

Two Tots

You don’t really know what’s baby about your baby (and what’s their personality) until you hold them up to another baby that is exactly their age. Comparing the two cousins (who are only 1 day apart in age) has helped me get to know just what makes Tillie Tillie. Disposition-wise, she is a bit more intense than her bubbly cousin. More powerful looks and fewer gurgly giggles. She eats sloppier—Writer is tidy and methodical in his bottle feeding, while Tillie slurps a lot and drools. Also, she holds her back a little more firmly when you sit her up. Writer is a lot floppier when you try to burp him. They are nearly the same weight, but Writer carries his chunk in his tummy, while Tillie stores hers in her marvelous thighs.

A pensive moment with Madame Tills

“Really Mother, how droll!”

Compare and save!

Side by side cousin antics

Aw, how sweet!

Happy New Ears

A few pictures of what has been going on Chez Tillie the last couple of weeks:

Aunt Violet and Uncle Honus introduce Tillie to the wonderful world of football.

Cousins Writer and Tillie meet for the first time.

First game of footsies

Tillie meets Santa. What did she ask him for?

Molly gets a pasta-maker attachment for Christmas.

Torturing the Wee One

When you’re a baby, people can do what they want with your helpless little body. They can pull your striped nerd pants up to your chest and dance you around like a pirate and say things like, “Yahr, clean the poop deck, matey!” and pretend that it is you saying that.

I love babies.

Capn’ Tillie

A first for everyone

Tills and Daddy napping

Glue Factory Supplier

“My name is Molly and I am a dog hater.”

Yes, it’s true—dogs really get my goat. I can’t stand them. I just hate the way that they get in my space, and they smell, and they destroy my things, and they make my house messy, and they jump at my face, and they scratch me, and they bark really loudly, and they leave hair everywhere, and they make it impossible for me to leave food unattended for even a moment while I go to the bathroom or get a beverage, and they sometimes bite my friends or my friends’ dogs, and they dig up my garden, and they hump on each other, and they make the yard unusable due to their crap, and they track crap in the house…. I really can’t stand all of these things. If a person did any of this to me, I would not be friends with them. Or, perhaps I would give money to the charitable cause that helped keep them away from me in some humane way.

It’s funny, because when we were kids, my brothers and sisters and I would always ask for a dog, and my dad would say no way and describe how much he hated dogs—and I used to get really annoyed with him for this. Here I am, 20 years later, and I myself am a self-proclaimed dog hater. But there is a key difference between me and my dad: I actually have two dogs. I live with them. I feed them. I take them to the vet to get their shots. I spend a lot of money on them. I let them lick my kid. Sometimes, I think they are cute. How did I get here?

Right before the baby was born, I really panicked about my feelings about the dogs. I just knew that I would no longer have tolerance for them. I thought that the baby would make me draw new, tighter boundaries on what I would be willing to do with my time, money, and energy. I thought, oh god, I am going to be that despicable person who neglects their dogs once the kids arrive. Or, I might say to Scott, “It’s me or the dogs.” Or, I might even secretly and evilly send them away to a farm or a rendering plant when he wasn’t looking. Well, the baby is here and I haven’t yet sent the mongrels to the glue factory.

Oddly, now that she is here, I have a new understanding about dog people. Before now, I never could figure out why their souls seemed so much more open than mine to that stinky, drooly kind of love. But, now I understand. They love their dogs in the EXACT same way that I love my baby. I finally get it. Tillie can puke on me, poop on my clothes, eat my food, and scream at my friends. And, I just giggle at how cute she is while she’s doing it. There are people, friends of mine even, who never want to be a parent and who say they hate kids. I finally get these people, too. I guess having all this cuteness (and baby filth) in my life is softening me up. Maybe I’ll even come to love dogs one day.

Or, maybe not.

[Image from: http://www.allposters.com/]

Belated Birthday Yummies

Scott bought me a Kitchen-Aid mixer as a belated birthday present. It’s pink! It’s lovely! Hypnotized by her rosy curves into a state of drunken domesticity, I whipped up a delicioso batch of mushroom and onion tartlets as well as some pear tartlets. Why so many small baked things? I dunno—perhaps it’s because miniature means fancy and I wouldn’t want my new mixer to think that I’m low-brow. (She’s so hoity-toity!)

Snuggles by Molly

There is nothing I love better than getting pictures of babies enjoying the quilts that I make. Now that I’m a mom myself, I am fully aware of how hard it is to set up a photo shoot that a) avoids puke fountains spilling onto said snuggly gift and b) gives the impression that the wee babe is enjoying his or herself. I just completed two robot quilts: one for my precious new nephew, Writer, and the other for Miss Tillie. Hurray—I finally get to keep one without feeling like a weirdo. Behold the cuteness!