Until today, our baby has been (if I do say so) remarkably
good-looking. He lost his newborn red-and-wrinkly look very early on,
and has in fact looked altogether too mature—more infant than
newborn—for my comfort. Slow down, I want to tell him. He doesn't listen any better than time does.

Today he's doing his best teenager impersonation. The baby acne is
out in full force: Beanie was afraid he had measles. My babies always
break out impressively around four weeks of age. (And, sob, Sean is in
fact four weeks old today.) I remember when Jane was his age; even
though all the baby books had warned me, I was shocked by the profusion
of red bumps on her sweet little face. Still, the books said baby acne
was normal; she was right on schedule for the temporary outbreak,
according to all those authoritative tomes.

So I was not alarmed—until my landlady got a look at her.

"WHAT
is WRONG with the BABY?" cried Mrs. Pappas, an earnest and dramatic
Greek woman in her mid-sixties. She had raised four babies of her own,
and the magnitude of her horror at the sight of Jane's spotty face
shattered my complacency.

"It's baby acne?" I said, asking rather
than asserting, though all the books had been so firm on this point.
"It's normal, right? For babies this age. It's not supposed to last
long."

"Ah," said Mrs. Pappas, nodding sagely. "It must be an Irish thing."

Never fear, Sean Patrick. Sure and you'll be a handsome lad again soon enough.

Despite
the infant's attempt to camouflage himself as a pack of crayons, the
well-equipped observer may be able to spy him at close range.

…the more they stay the same.

Something about this photo

rang a bell, and I went looking through my archives, and found this, from June 2006.

Apart from the fact that Rilla at six weeks was about the same size as her new baby brother at two days, nothing much has changed, eh?

(Psst, sweet friend, see what's on the arm of the couch? The postman
was walking up to our mailbox with your package at the very moment
Scott, baby, and I pulled into the driveway. It's beautiful. Rilla
approves wholeheartedly. Thank you so very much!)

And one last shot, decidedly less than flattering but a little gift for my Twitter pals:

Put the ding-dang camera away, honey, so I can eat my PUDDING!

(I didn't know this photo existed when I was twittering about
pudding this morning. When I uploaded the photos this afternoon, I saw
it and laughed and laughed. Scott must have snapped that during the one
brief moment in time when the pudding was actually still in the bowl.
I'm sure I was licking the dish clean five minutes later.)

My traffic has been through the roof these past few days, and while I'm sure much of that is due to the magnetic allure of Angelica's milk-white shoulders,
it dawned on me that a sizable number of the hits are from friends
dropping by to see if there's any baby news. This became all the more
apparent when I switched the glitchy Twitter widget (which scrolled my
tweets in the sidebar) to a just-plain-Twitter-button, and the outclick
rate to my Twitter page quadrupled. May I just say it is awfully sweet to know how much y'all care? 🙂

But there's nothing to report. Great checkup at the OB on Friday.
Baby's got plenty of fluid, excellent heart rate, is a happy camper. If
nothing happens before Tuesday, I'll go back for another round of
checking up.

BUT SOMETHING IS BOUND TO HAPPEN BEFORE TUESDAY.

Ahem.

Meanwhile, my mama is spoiling me rotten, doing all my household
work PLUS beautifying the backyard in the most magnificent way. She is
a treasure, my mother, let me tell you. My daddy is pretty swell
too—and it's nice of him to part with my mom for two weeks so she could
come entertain my younguns and do my dishes and fill me full of
cornbread and ham.

Anyway, all's well, and I'm in good hands, and we're all hoping this
little person decides to join the party very soon. As in: today would
be nice!

The time has come upon me sooner than I expected. I knew I was going to need a good lightweight double stroller when the baby came, but I figured I could wait until, you know, after the baby was actually born. But the other night I took the kids on an outing, and when I went to pop Rilla into the sling, there was a big old belly in the way. I guess it had been a few weeks since I wore her—I haven’t been out much since the food poisoning nightmare. All of a sudden toddler-wearing is impossible. And because Wonderboy’s developmental disabilities mean he is much more like a two-and-a-half-year-old than a four-and-a-half-year-old, I can’t finesse group outings unless he’s in the stroller. It’s sort of like being six months pregnant with two-year-old twins.

I need a stroller that can contain both twins.

We have an ancient sit-and-stand stroller dating back to our New York days. I have rosy memories of wearing baby Beanie in the sling and pushing Jane and Rose down a steep hill to the little white church at the bottom. I would jog a little and get up some speed, and the tiny girls would hold up their hands and wheeeeee all the way down. (My memories of getting back up the hill after daily Mass are less rosy. Jane’s too, I’ll bet—I always made her walk home. That was one heavy, heavy stroller.)

The sit-and-stand still works and is great for our walks around the neighborhood. But I can’t lift it in and out of the minivan. Pathetic, I know. What can I say? I am a spaghetti-armed weakling.

So: what I’m going to have to find is a double stroller or sit-and-stand that doesn’t weigh very much. And doesn’t cost a fortune. And which can take abuse. Easy-peasy, right?

Any suggestions?