Natalie is sitting up pretty well these days, but she still does a lot of over-correcting. As long as she doesn’t get hurt, it’s pretty hilarious.

Over the weekend, I had her sitting on Sammy’s bed while I was putting clothes away. She and Sammy were both sitting there, looking at a book together. Well, mostly Sammy was looking at the book, and every time Natalie would try to touch it, Sammy would say, “No touch, Nye. My book.” and yank it away from her. But at least they were both occupied and no one was crying.

I turned around to see Natalie hanging headfirst off the bed. I lunged and grabbed her in time before the rest of her slid off. I had set her well away from the edge of the bed, but I always underestimate how long she is. She didn’t even seem to realize what had happened, so all was well.

That reminded me of something that happened when Sammy was around the same age. I set him on the floor in the hall outside the bathroom, and Anya came running over. That poor cat never did figure out that she was more likely to get her fur pulled by him than petted.

First, I need to explain the “fall-down” trick. Both of our cats were very good at this trick. It was one of the only two tricks in their repertoire – the other one being the “lie on the newspaper to get your human’s attention” trick. The fall-down trick involved me patting the floor, and the cat coming over and flopping down on top of my hand.

Sammy must have done something with his hand that reminded Anya of this trick. She put her head down on Sammy’s hand, and executed her trick flawlessly. Sammy went butt-over-teakettle backwards, cat on top of him.

I rushed into the hall, laughing so hard I couldn’t hardly catch a breath, and removed the cat so she wouldn’t end up clawing him as she tried to get off.

I wasn’t finished in the bathroom yet, so after sitting Sammy back up in the hall, I went back to the bathroom.

Along came Anya for round two. She sauntered past Sammy, twitching her tail in invitation – come on, you know you want to pet me was what she was thinking. Sammy was thinking, I wonder what will happen if I pull this? He reached out and grabbed her tail, and she tried to take off running. That was enough to yank Sammy out of his precarious sitting position, and he landed squarely on top of Anya. They called it even and went on to other pursuits.

Pictures are a lazy blogger's best friend

When Natalie was a month old, we thought maybe we could save a little money by doing her 1-month pictures ourselves. That, and we didn't want to try to ensure that both kids would be fed, clean, and happy at the same time. I think that's only happened once in the last five months. It was January 24, 1:35 p.m. And it ended a minute later when Sammy chucked his sippy cup at Natalie's head.

First, we got this picture of Natalie.

Then we rearranged things to take some pictures of Sammy. But he had his own ideas.

The pillow he's lying on? It was underneath the white blanket in Natalie's picture. And it's hard to tell, but he has the green blanket pulled halfway up his back. Yes, he was posing himself exactly like we'd posed her.

Mother's little helper

Sammy loves to help out with his little sister.

Here, Natalie was fussing so Sammy brought her a few toys to play with. This picture was taken early on - by the time he was done, you couldn't hardly see her face behind the mound of stuffed animals. That white fuzzy thing is actually one of my cat slippers that Sammy dug out from the closet.

Here, he was "holding da baby".

And here he was "pumpa milk for da baby". He couldn't figure out why no milk was coming out.

After posting yesterday, I realized that it sounds like I’m making fun of a mentally handicapped man. To set the record straight – while Nehborhood Gofhur is not exactly the brightest cookie in the cookie jar*, he is not handicapped. Just…odd.

We are drowning in snot at our house. Natalie has had a series of colds for the past month. Just as one cold starts easing up, another one starts. I stayed up too late last night doing our taxes. Of course, I had no clue that I was going to end up being awake most of the night with her because she couldn’t breathe, yet again. Taxes and snot. Great fun.

Sammy has developed the really annoying habit of blowing his nose multiple times a day. The bad part? He doesn’t ask for a Kleenex first. There he goes again, rivers of snot running into his mouth, as he takes off running to hide from me and my Kleenex. I’m not really sure why he thinks that’s a fun game, but it sure will be fun to tell his girlfriends about some day.

*I overheard a former coworker say this once. She was a few glowing M&M’s short of a bright cookie herself.

Would you like to be my neighbor?

There’s this guy who obsessively walks (or bikes, in the summer) the road that goes by our house. I’ve driven past him when I leave for work at 6:00 a.m., and I’ve driven past him when coming home from doing errands at 9:00 p.m. He’s always given me an odd feeling, just because I don’t really know what his deal is. He stops at the side of the road when he sees a car coming, and then watches it drive by. When I look in my rearview mirror, I can see him turned around, still watching me.

A couple of years ago, when I first noticed him, I made a point of driving past our house if he was around, because I didn’t want him to see where I turned in. After awhile, that got to be too much trouble so I gave it up. I figure, if anyone breaks into our house, I have a prime suspect and everyone who lives on our road would be able to give a good description of him. I think maybe a little chocolate would taste good with my paranoia.

Last summer, Ron, Sammy, and I went for a walk down our street. It’s a winding, two-mile road, and at one end it is very secluded and woodsy. We rounded a bend to see a deer lying in the road. That’s not all that unusual in our neck of the woods, but as we got closer, I could see her stomach heaving. She was still alive, and obviously in a lot of pain. It was a really hot day besides, and she was lying in full sun. Every few seconds, she’d fling her legs and try to stand up, to no avail. It was especially tragic because it was obvious she was still nursing a little one, so the baby was most likely going to die too, when its mother didn’t come home.

Neither Ron nor I had brought our cell phones with, and there were no occupied houses close by. Lo and behold, who should come biking down the road but Creepy Guy. Ron went over to talk to him, while I kept my distance. Pretty soon, Ron came back with a business card, of all things. Apparently Creepy Guy goes by the title of “Nehborhod gofhur”. He had the number for the sheriff on his cell phone (don’t we all?) and placed the call.

I’m not really sure why we need a Nehborhod Gofhur, but I should find out when the election is coming up. I'm working on a slogan. Maybe, “More gofhuring with less creepiness.”

How did it get to be Friday already? Sorry for the lack of posts this week. Work has been insanely busy, and it's always insanely busy at home. Something had to go to the back burner - and did you really think I'd give up my 2-hour massages or my pedicures? Ha.

Just to set the record straight, I have NO IDEA what color the mailman's hair is. In fact, I don't even know if he's actually a "he". I don't have any idea why everyone's been asking me that lately.

I may be blonde but I kick butt at peekaboo.

When you have a four-month-old baby, one of the most common questions people ask is, “Does s/he sleep through the night yet?” My answer to that is a maniacal laugh. Sammy didn’t sleep through the night until he was 15 months old, so I don’t have high hopes that Natalie will be any different. She doesn’t even consistently sleep the 5-hour stretch that the experts call “sleeping through the night” (and my night is a lot longer than 5 hours).

If she ever does sleep a long stretch, I always wake up in panic – OMG the baby hasn’t woken yet OMG SIDS OMG – just to hear her start crying 2 minutes later. I’m sure that has nothing to do with me poking at her and peering in her face to see if I can hear her breathing. I’m guessing maybe that is maybe why my babies don’t learn to sleep through the night for a long time - they’ve learned to expect a rude awakening if they sleep too long.

On Friday night, we moved Sammy into a twin bed. It was pretty much a non-event. The only thing that has changed is that instead of waking up to the sound of Sammy crying in his crib, begging to be sprung from jail, we’ve woken up the past three mornings to the quiet “click” of his door opening, followed by the proclamation, “I’m awake!”

Now the crib is available for Natalie, but I’m not ready to move her yet. There are pros and cons to having her in our room. It would be nice to turn the light on at night, so I could read awhile before going to sleep, but on the other hand – I really like my sleep. It’s so much easier to deal with her by reaching over than it is trekking across the hall to get her every time she wakes up. And I’ll miss hearing the small noises she makes as she sleeps. Or when she wakes up during the night, ready to play (like she did at 4:00 a.m. this morning). If anyone else woke me up at that ungodly hour, they’d hear about my displeasure – but listening to her laugh and chatter makes it impossible to be grouchy.