• B reviews,  Buddies,  Stealthy Spy Cooking,  The Hood

    Whoorlpalooza and Cupcakes!

    Baby Bug and I have been hanging with Whoorl and Anders lately. The first day she needed company to run errands (’cause you can’t just leave your baby in the car while you run in and return your hospital breast pump) and the second day we walked the mall backwards and forwards while about 100 real estate agents threw an open house in her home! Her landlord is selling her house right out from underneath her. Talk about stress for a brand new parent. First you have the worry of where you are going to live next and then you find out you can’t even go home for four hours straight. Not exactly what you want to deal with when you’re still trying to figure out the hang of being a parent. Poor Whoorl, it’s been a little scary for her.

    In our bumbling way, Baby Bug and I are doing our best to help make Whoorl feel better. I don’t know if it’s really working since we are walking germ circuses but still at least we can offer some friendly conversation and blow smiley raspberries at her.

    What do you do when you get kicked out of your comfort zone? You eat comfort food of course! We went to Whoorl’s favorite cupcake store, Sprinkles. Actually, it was completely her idea. I didn’t even know this place existed. But if I had, I totally would have taken her there. It is soooo cool. Only a perfectionist like Whoorl would truly appreciate the art that is a cupcake from Sprinkles.

    Why would anyone would pay $3.75 for a cupcake? Because it’s all about design. Every detail from the boxes they pack the perfectly round cupcakes in, to the lightly tinted whipped icing and little belly button top decoration, to the bamboo wooden forks you eat with… everything is thought out and a thing of beauty. Not to mention yummy!

    We took our cupcakes to Whoorl’s house to eat them. While Whoorl fed Ander’s, Baby Bug and I hung out in her living room and took some stealth pictures of her groovy house.

    How cool is Whoorl’s house? It’s like a shrine to good design. This is just the tip of the ice berg. I would have way more pictures but at the time I didn’t have Whoorl’s permission to be taking pictures and I felt kind of bad being a spy. But how can you not take pictures in a house this cool when you have a spy camera and you are just sitting there waiting around? A secret agent’s gotta do what a secret agent’s gotta do. Of course now I do have her permission to post them, so all’s fine and dandy. Just wait until next time I go over there. I’ll be taking a picture of every nook and cranny. I love her house. If I had a couple million dollars, I’d buy it.

    And now because I’m cruel, I’ll finish this post up with a virtual cupcake for you to eat. It’s dark chocolate. Eat up!

  • Bug

    Miss Orneriness

    You might think everything is peaches and cream here in Baby Bugville with all the smiling cutie patootie pictures I post all the time. It is not so. Baby Bug is not all smiles and soft chubby cheeks. She is very very ornery. She has a streak of obstinance the size of a stinky skunk tail running right through her. Her German relatives on both sides would be very proud. She is MISS Orneriness herself. If there was a contest for baby will power, she would win hands down. Thankfully, she has a cheerful disposition most of the time so the orneriness is tolerable. But boy do I have a lot of work ahead of me. I don’t even like to think about the subject of discipline. It gives me a headache.

    This week Baby Bug decided that she no longer wants to eat baby food. She doesn’t even have any teeth yet but she insists that she is a toddler and can eat all of her food with her hands. She likes to feed herself. She has pincer fingers and she can use them. She likes rice crispies and little pieces of cheese and bits of banana. All that other mushy stuff is for babies. She’s too big for pureed beets and green beans and yams. Oh no! Yams are not coming near her lips. If they do, then she spits them out with the wrath of an angry mule. I have made the mistake of feeding her while wearing white two times. If she can reach the bowl that I am holding, she will dump it on the floor with a satisfying splat.

    They should make a video game with the object of the game to get the spoon of baby food into the baby’s mouth. As you progress through the levels of difficulty you could battle the waving arms, the spitting, the sneezing and of course the twisting around in her highchair and grabbing at everything. Sometimes I feel like I’m playing miniature golf and I’m trying to putt my ball into the very last hole where the windmill arms keep whipping in front of the hole and getting in my way. I’m definitely honing my skills in the patience department.

    The eating strike was not all Baby Bug had in her bag of naughty tricks this week. She also decided that she was too big for naps too. I had just finally gotten into the rhythm of two naps a day (it was sooooo nice) and then one day she up and decided that two 15 minute snoozes, while riding in the car, was plenty of shut eye. She says, “I’m already beautiful, I don’t need beauty sleep.” HA! She does need it. She turned into willful flippy worm baby who refused to nurse, who refused to let me change her diaper AND refused to even smile at her Daddy who usually brings grins from ear to ear. Hail to the Queen of Grump.

    Phew!

    Thankfully after a dreadful two days, she seems to have returned to the angel baby that she was before. I finally gave up on the food war and let her starve. Not really starve. I just offered her food and when she refused it, I washed it down the drain with a little tear running down my cheek because I worked so hard to make those little cubes of frozen baby food. Letting her win worked like a charm. After missing a few meals, she nursed heartily and ate all of her dinner last night and breakfast this morning. And currently she’s taking a very nice long nap which is why I am finally having a minute to post this blog.