My baby doesn’t make sweet “aaaa-boooh” sounds anymore. She grunts. She grunts and grunts and grunts and grunts. You’d think she was having the bowel movement of all bowel movements, but she’s not. She’s just grunting. It’s her favorite noise. She likes to stand up (assisted by mom or in the exersaucer) and furrow her eyebrows and scowl at the floor. Then she growls out this grunting sound as if to say, “Bow down to me, carpet mites. I am the great Baby.” Or maybe she’s trying to bend forks with her willpower. I don’t know.

If you’re wondering why I post so many pictures of Baby Bug in the exersaucer… it is because we have entered the “age of the exersaucer”. Yes, I know vowed never to let brightly colored baby crap enter my house. Yes, I know I said I’d keep the saucer confined to a corner in my room. Yes, I know that I am a parent now and I’m going to eat every last word I ever said as a non-parent. The exersaucer is my hero. Baby Bug loves the exersaucer. I love the exersaucer. The end.

Since we’re talking about family resemblances and I’m so brain dead today I thought I’d post some old photos of Toby as a baby. Some of those happy smiles are looking a bit familiar on Baby Bug. Did I tell you she’s started laughing? I recorded some video of her giggling at her cousin Rapunzel. It’s so cute. Maybe tomorrow I’ll upload it.

On Sunday we had a big dinner at my Grandma’s on my mom’s side. My Aunt Keren made chicken with a delicious secret lemon sauce. Her secret was Splenda. Even though I hate Splenda, I couldn’t even tell it was in the sauce. My Aunt is tricky like that because she is always looking for ways to keep my Grandma healthy. Sugar is forbidden.

As you can see, we are fighting genetics when it comes to weight gain in this family. I hate to even bring this up because I really love my big happy family…why spoil a lovely family portrait by talking about weight issues. Unfortunately, I can’t help myself. It is a big issue in my family. I worry about it all the time. Genetics are a bitch. I think Baby Bug might have a chance of escaping this curse because her Daddy comes from a family with the opposite problem. They are all too skinny. But I don’t know. I think weight gain trumps skinniness just like brown eyes and brown hair dominate over blue eyes and blonde hair. I guess we’ll see. So far I take after my own father who is only moderately over-weight but every day I look in the mirror and I see more and more of my own mother and my mom looks like my grandma just ten years ago.

Enough about that. We are all struggling and doing the best we can. The important thing is that we are happy. Like the pillow on my Grandma’s bed says, “Ewes not fat, ewes just fluffy.” (It has a picture of a female sheep on it.)

I’d been wanting to take a picture of Baby Bug with my Grandma for a while now. It was a perfect sunny day so we took a couple shots out in my Grandma’s garden. (Green thumbs run in the family too.) This is a picture of four generations of first borns. And right above our head was another mother.