Tomorrow Eleanor will turn 9 months old! I intend to take her 9 month photo and post it tomorrow, but as my track record indicates, it is a little tough for me to find time to update recently. So, since Eleanor is currently napping and the boys are outside playing in the snow (yes, you heard me right, I said snow) I thought I would grab a chance to post a bit about why our family has dropped off the radar.

Since I already mentioned it, yes mother nature is apparently feeling sorry for me that my baby is getting so big so fast so she decided to send a little snow our way to make me feel like it is still winter (see photo of boys with flurries). Fraser could not have been more thrilled to have an excuse to put his snow boots back on (that's my mini-Andy-new englander for you), Hammie was less thrilled with the drop in temperature but willing to go with it anyway.

Eleanor, meanwhile has chosen not to mark the impending arrival of her 9 month birthday with any teeth (we are still at zero on that count) or with learning to crawl (though she does sort of slide herself backwards across the wood floor on her belly) but by steadfastly refusing to eat anything pureed that even resembles baby food. I have pretty much given up in this department (see photo of Eleanor enjoying broccoli, rice and fish for dinner the other night). I still offer her baby food, but she takes maybe 3 bites and throws up her hands in disgust, usually knocking the spoon out of my hand and onto the floor, much to my chagrin and the delight of our hoover-of-a-dog. On the bright side, she seems willing to try most foods and has had carrots with humus, vegi-burger stew, pears, peaches, bananas, cantaloupe, cheerios, sliced turkey and chicken casserole all within the last 24 hours.

Hammie, on the other hand, has decided that he will mark Eleanor's 9 month birthday by cutting some teeth of his own. His two years molars are starting to poke through and he is angry enough to prove it. The screaming/fit throwing level has increased accordingly and yesterday he got so made that I wouldn't let him have cereal when he still hadn't eaten the oatmeal he insisted I make him for breakfast that he actually made himself vomit. Good times. Still, right now (since this "right now" is approximately 4 hours after i started this post) Hammie and Fraser have headlamps on and are in the bathroom with the lights out "fixing the pipes." Really, how can you not find that adorable? I may have posted about that before, since they seem to enjoy that activity on many rainy and snowy days, but in my exhaustion I can't remember if I have mentioned it, so there you go.

We had Eleanor's joint baptism with her cousin Jack in New Jersey on April 11th (see very cute photos of Eleanor with her godparents (PJ and Bethany), my three adorable children doing their best to hide their horns in the church, and Eleanor hanging out with Jack on Saturday). Eleanor was very well behaved during the church service and the reception, though she made it clear she had had quite enough on our very long drive back to Massachusetts. I don't care what anyone says, long car rides with an 8ish month old totally suck for everyone in the car. The boys watched DVDs, which was good, but Hammie also had a screaming fit of "I want to go home!" three quarters of the way back, they argued over which Thomas the train video to watch, they constantly wanted me to climb into the back to hand them snacks, water, toys, change the DVD or just sit back there with them. All in all, it was a verrrry long drive.

Which should also be put in perspective in that we drove home on Sunday and then put everyone back in the car to drive back to New Jersey on Thursday so we could get up on Friday and drive on to Hershey PA. So the trauma of the drive back was magnified knowing we were facing yet another road trip that week. Overall the kids were well behaved for the drive to PA though, and we had a blast in Hershey (Thanks Chessy Bob and Eva! ...see photo of Eva with McBeth clan) The boys loved the chocolate world tour, though Fraser was very disappointed to learn later that it was just pretend and the machines weren't really making chocolate. Fraser also got to have his first sip of wine at dinner on Saturday night. Eva, who is Fraser's age, had a sip from her father's glass and Fraser said, very impressed, "You can drink wine?!" So I offered him a sip from my glass. I wish I had a photo of his expression. Let's just say he wasn't impressed with that.

It was really nice to get out of our box for a long weekend (despite the drive) and I was very motivated after staying in Chessy's very organized and tidy home to embark on a little spring cleaning when we rreturned. It feels good to get the house in order, but it has also left me a little on the emotionally raw side as I start to pack up a lot of the baby things that Eleanor has outgrown. I don't consider myself a materialistic kind of person, but I am way more attached to silly things like the bouncy seat and swing then I probably should be. It breaks my heart to get rid of them, not so much because I am sad about not having another baby (that is a way more complicated feeling) but because I feel like they are old friends I am letting go of. The bouncy seat that Fraser loved so much and i would bounce him in with one foot while I pumped for hours at the kitchen table, or the exercise mat that I have videos of Hammie lying on when he was just a tiny little guy who could barely lift his head. I know, they're just things, but they are my things that remind me of my babies, and I feel like I need to find them a good home before i can let them go like I would need to find good homes for my pets should I ever have to let them go (yeah, like that would ever happen).

So, perhaps it is all the travel, perhaps it is the slight funk of a depression that packing up all Eleanor's baby things has put me in, or perhaps it is the 2 bags of chocolate plus assorted chocolate bars that we brought back from Hershey, but my post-baby-weight loss-journey has screeched to a dead stop this month. I have been trying to psych myself up and re-motivate the journey, but it feels much like trying to lift an elephant up off it's ass and convince it to walk a hundred miles. Difficult, depressing, and a tad infuriating. I also came face to face (or more pointedly face to stomach) with my reflection in a large bathroom mirror recently and was more than a little traumatized by the discovery. You see, as I have begun to drop some of my weight I have realized that my abdominal skin has decided to hold a grudge after this last pregnancy and it is stubbornly refusing to give up the extra real estate it acquired when I stretched it to the point of no return. As a result, the more weight I lose the more my stomach resembles the face of a Neapolitan mastiff. (see photo below... no, I'm kidding. I don't think anyone else needs to be traumatized by this turn of events other than me, and my poor husband of course.)