Toddler nutrition

I just realized that my last 2 posts contained pictures of Amelia eating junk food, and that looks really bad. We're on vacation! Amelia does eat healthy food. Right now her favorite foods are milk and apples (beeples). In fact, today I tricked her into eating a peach by saying it was a beeple.

One thing that she absolutely won't eat is any kind of meat, except for an occasional cheeseburger. If I give her spaghetti in meat sauce, she will pick off the bits of meat and hold her fingers to me with a pained expression until I wipe it off. She used to eat anything we ate...chicken, sausage, steak, etc. She's going through a picky stage right now, and all she wants is crackers, milk, beeples, bananas, grapes, french fries, string cheese, and go-gurts.

Funny!

So my mom makes a comment on my blog asking for more pictures. So I post some from yesterday of Amelia playing. And then I realize that in not one of the pictures that I posted can you see Amelia's face!

So here you go, Sal. This is a picture of Amelia on Saturday night, in our hotel in Gulfport, MS. She got hungry waiting for our pizza to be delivered and started eating Pringles. Then she took a straw, and poked the chips until they shattered and left the mess on the nightstand.

The Good News and the Bad News

The good news is that Amelia definitely inherited her father's ability to tan, and not my sunburning potential. The bad news is that after playing in the Alabama sun for an afternoon, she is rocking a redneck-y farmer's tan.

We honestly can't keep a shirt on Amelia. After wearing one for about an hour, she chose to yank it off. By that time, the farmer's tan was already in place. The cute little baby in the pictures is Briley (hope I'm spelling that right), who is Austin's stepmother Lauren's sister's daughter's baby, so I think that would make her Amelia's step-second cousin? She is 10 months old and already *running*!

Chatterbox

People told me that my kid would start talking all of the sudden and then not stop, and I couldn't see it happening, but it has. She's learned so many words. Let me try to list them...

Hi, Bye Bye, Go, Eat, Cheese, Na (banana), Milk, Mapple (apple), Beeps (grapes), cracker, water, bubble, ball, Hi Kai-Lan, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11, No No No, Come on, Here you go, Daddy, Mama, Stinky (a BIG help because it means she needs her diaper changed), Night, Bath, Dig, and a bunch of other words that I can't think of.

Last night, she was looking at a magazine that had an advertisement for Sea World on the back cover. She kept saying "Way-oh" and we didn't know what she was saying until we looked at the magazine...she was pointing to a picture of Shamu and saying "whale." I said to Austin, "Our kid is a genius!"

I'm a Mama!

No, I'm not pregnant. Gross. What happened is that Amelia finally learned my name! After 2 long years, my kid is calling me "Mama." I should be kind of insulted, since she learned all sorts of complicated words before "Mama," like Jaguar and cracker, but it's so sweet. The other night, Austin said to me, "You just love that, don't you?" And it's awesome.

All the time it's: "Hi Mama," "Thank you Mama," "Come on, Mama," "Here you go, Mama," "Mama Mama Mama"...

And it's AWESOME!

I swear this happened!

Since I turned 33 in August, I've realized two things.

1. I've reached an age where I am going to start lying about my age. So, from now on, I'm actually 31 years old.

2. Next to my handsome younger husband, I look pretty old.

So I went today and bought my first jar of anti-aging night cream. I bought the Neutrogena stuff with active copper.

I'm in Tucson, AZ, until tomorrow, working. Myhotel has a manager's reception every night, so tonight I went down to get my free glass of wine. The bartender, a lovely Spanish woman in her forties, asked for my ID. I told her I left it in the room, but that I could get it. I thought, at this point, she would say, "Oh that's okay, don't worry about it," but she said, "I would really appreciate it."

So I go to my room, get the ID and go back to get my wine. She looks at my ID, does the math, and says, 'Oh my god! I thought you were SEVENTEEN. Your skin is beautiful!"

And sitting there, at sunset, at a table near the pool, drinking my wine, I actually felt that my skin WAS beautiful. And then I went to my room to slather on my new night cream so I will look seventeen even in the bright daylight.