HUGE-o!

Happy Birthday Hugo! You're seven weeks old today. The sages called this the age of reason (OK, so maybe that's seven years, but clearly you have no concept of time or you wouldn't pick 3:26 a.m. to serenade us with La Boobeme) so let me try to reason with you: Mommy is so much nicer, and prettier, with more than sixty-seven minutes of sleep per night. If you woke up every three or four hours, instead of every hour and a half, Mommy would get more sleep and be sooo much prettier and nicer to everyone (sorry Josie). She might have time to, I don't know, brush her hair or cobble together an ensemble that doesn't involve stretch pants. She might have the brainpower to update this blog more than twice a year.

That's right, at the ripe old age of seven weeks, or three minutes for the dogs in my readership, Hugo is still up every 1.5-2 hours to feed, as they say here (which makes him sounds like a vampire, but this is the land of Bram Stoker, after all... and I really don't mind the comparison, actually). I need to catch up on my Dr. Phil, because I suspect he's some kind of emotional binge eater who needs to find other outlets for his insecurities. But clearly he knows what he's doing, because his six-week weigh-in last week showed he gained more than TWO POUNDS in three weeks! He's a real boy. The wrinkly red legs have been replaced with chubby(esque) little thighs. His ruby, furrowed little face has transformed into rosy cheeks and a double chin. He's not a Reubens cherub yet, but at 8 lbs, 10 oz. he's on his way! My goal is to fatten him up to the point where he can't crawl for a few months – in other words, something like this:


When the health visitor weighed Hugo, she said "right, so he's hanging right in there at the ninth percentile." I plucked the dust from my ear and said "exsqueeze me? Did you say ninetieth (Josie's rank at 5 weeks) or ninth?" "Ninth." "Meaning, 89, no, 90... well, whatever percentage of babies..." "are BIGGER than Hugo." Got it. Well, that's why he's up all night. He's hungry, little Niney Ninerson. We have quite a way to go.

Help! Cowabunga! Tidal wave of blue cotton!

In addition to being skeeny, he's still crabby, too. 48% of the time Hugo looks like this:


49% of the time he looks like this:


But as of last week, .0362% of the time he looks like this, and that makes it alllll worthwhile:

How you doin'?

Yes, we love our little man, but let's not forget our little lady. Josie is doing her best to stay in the spotlight, and her little brain is still forming and spinning at a dizzying speed. First, there's her puzzling syntax; she frequently serves up Sarah Palinesque word salads like, "I can't wear this shirt, it's too perchance." "I fell and hurt my arm, and now it's quite sensible." Then there's her critical thinking skills. Our doula Helen, the best wife I'll ever have, who comes several times a week to help with whichever child is in danger that day of being left on a bench in Henrietta Park with a sign that reads "Fox Food" (shout-out to Miami Spice for that great joke), told me when she was taking Josie to holiday club last week, the kid, whilst toting her lunch, a hummus and cucumber sandwich, said "well, if I eat a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, I'll never get married!"

That had me scratching my head for a few minutes. Then I put together the jagged little pieces of Josie's marital puzzle: after the 1,438th reading of Sleeping Beauty, Josie declared she'd really like to be betrothed to her besty E, who sadly has myriad allergies including egg, shellfish, and sesame. Then, last weekend, when she announced that her new favorite food is sesame bagels with cucumber and cream cheese, we informed her that should she marry E, she would have to give them up, along with shrimp spread and French toast. THEN, when I was packing her lunch for holiday club (the sane parent's antidote to the dreaded and oft-aforementioned half-term) Jeff asked why I was making her a cucumber sandwich and I told him how we were asked to send nut-free lunches because one of the children had a nut allergy. So, Josie, always hovering in the background listening and computing, puts one and one together and gets... one, the loneliest spinster number. Thus matrimony is in, and America's classic lunchtime delight is out. What kind of budding feminist am I raising here?

Ohhh, right... that kind.

To make sure Josie didn't feel like we devote every hour of every day to her little brother, we hopped in the car last weekend and headed for the brand new Peppa Pig World near Southampton. For our money, it was better than Disney! Closer, cheaper, lower-key, and we never once had to hear "It's a Small World." It was quite crowded, being a Bank Holiday weekend, so we didn't get to go on everything, but Jeff did take Josie on several vomitous rides, including a spinning "Castle in a Cloud" number, while Josie and I rode Mr. Dinosaur around the track, a bouncy trip that induced uproarious laughter in us both.

Dinosaur...rrowrr!

Cute and Clean and No Caffeine

If you haven't yet become acquainted with Peppa, George, Daddy and Mummy Pig and the rest of the gang – and especially if you have young children – I highly recommend you add Peppa to your DVD collection. It's so well-written, usually teaches a nice lesson, and ends with the whole Pig Family falling on their backs in collective laughter. It's really good stuff.

Well, on that note, I hear the Meatball growling for his pre-dinner snack. I have yet to reap the rumored weight-loss benefits of breastfeeding (hence the preponderance of stretch pants in my clothing repertoire), but the weight-gain benefits for Hugo are undeniable. Eyes on the prize, baby:

ohhhhhhh yeah.