ermintrude turns two

Shocked by the horrific cold brought about by dressing up in a huge puffy pink snow suit, boots, hat, mittens and scarf and standing in the true nightmare that is a foot of snow for three and a half minutes, Big Fatty Lumpkin is this moment siting on my lap piercing the otherwise relative quiet with shrieks and trying to shove both her plump fists in her mouth to warm them up. I agree with her. Going out there is a bad idea. The wind, the ice...it's just not that pretty.

Instead maybe, once she's recovered, she can help me do laundry and then have a lie down while I bake some kind of cake.

I'm fairly ambivalent about this birthday moment. On the one hand, the sooner a baby stops being a baby the better, otherwise we would all die from never sleeping ever. On the other hand, it would be nice if she would slow down for a few minutes and not rush from one stage to the next. She's trying to keep up with the others. She doesn't want anyone to do anything for her. The moments of sitting on my lap sucking on her fists are becoming more and more rare. She weighs the same and is nearly as tall as Marigold. Only her fat cheeks and fat neck and cry give her away as a whole year younger.

So, congratulations to you, baby Ermintrude. This may be the year we stop calling you baby and start calling you by your name. Or, perhaps not. Perhaps one more year of being Baby.