Five Things

1. The current mosquito situation in Michigan is HORRIBLE. They are everywhere. They follow you in from the outside and bite you while you're sitting on the couch. We keep waking up with new bites, including the nickel-sized bite on the bottom of my foot I woke up with yesterday. This may be the worst location for a bug bite, ever! They have been so bad they've kept us inside, away from the gorgeous weather we've been having lately, and I am sick of it. There was enough of a breeze last night that we could actually spend some time outside without getting about 15 bites apiece in 10 minutes, and it was lovely. I hope those little suckers die off soon!

Poor Gabbie got a bite on her face in the car the other day while we were driving downtown (they follow us everywhere!), and now it looks like her eye is a little swollen. Poor baby! See that pink spot on her cheek? That's all a bite. There's one on her nose, too.

(Also, she really liked that pizza!)

2. I went to Minneapolis for work last week, and, surprisingly, the world did not end. I was completely stressed out and worried about the actual travel (I'm not a huge fan of flying, to say the very least), and about leaving Sophie, who was (and still is) in the midst of teething. (Last time I travelled she was in the middle of a growth spurt. I am not looking forward to whatever she has planned for when I travel in October.) I have to give mad props, though, to my wonderful husband. All I had to do (and really I didn't have to do this, but it was nice of me to do), was stock up the fridge with essentials, and he was good to go. My mom was telling me about how she used to have to cook, leave a schedule, do all the laundry, and get basically everything prepared for every day she was gone in order to leave to go anywhere. And my dad was pretty with it as far as dads go. Aaron, hands down, is the best dad I know. He helps me with all the girls' stuff every day, and so it wasn't too far of a stretch to remove me from the situation for a couple days.

So what if the girls didn't get baths at all while I was gone. They may have been a little stinky, but that didn't make me any less excited to see them when I got home.

3. Sophie is getting huge. Seriously. When Gabbie was a baby she didn't wear a size until she was whatever age was on the label, and sometimes even those things were a little big (although, length-wise, my poor girl is forever in flood pants just so her pants fit around her waist (she still can fit comfortably into size 24 months shorts)). Sophie, however, is already comfortably in nine month size clothing and she doesn't turn 8 months until tomorrow. She even has two teeth now, and sits up all by herself! We went out for dinner the other night (me being gone kind of ruined the whole "no eating out in August" thing a little, because we were all still so worn out from the busy week), and she sat in a high chair all by herself:

She thought she was big stuff, for sure! The blur (because she never, ever stops moving. Seriously never.) was a coaster that she nabbed as soon as I sat her down (she's fast and has amazing aim), so I inserted the pacifier to keep the coaster out of her mouth. She dropped it a couple of times and screamed at the top of her lungs until I crawled under the table to retrieve it and handed it back to her. She is not quite the well-behaved-angel-in-public that her big sister has always been. I just can't believe how big she's getting these days and how fast it's happening. I swear she was just a newborn.

4. One cool/scary thing I saw in Minneapolis was a sink hole. It opened up sometime in the hour between when we got to an event and when we left the event. It was right in the middle of a (thankfully quiet) intersection, and was probably about 8 feet across. There were a few guys right up next to it taking pictures, but I was not quite that brave. (Aaron gave me crap, because he would have loved to see pictures.) I mean, seriously. There was a large hole in the earth that wasn't there minutes prior. Does it make any sense at all to go stand at the edge? Ever since I saw pictures of this massive sinkhole in Guatamala that looks like crazy CGI, but isn't, I've been wary of sinkholes. Nice, normal fear, right?

5. Last night at dinner we were coming up with topics to discuss with Gabbie to keep her from singing (no singing at the table, especially when we're in public, is a new dinnertime rule). Aaron asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. After a few, thoughtful seconds of reflection, she announced, "A mom. With noobs." (Apparently that's Gabbie's shorthand for "nursing b00bs.") I about choked I was laughing so hard. Hilarious, and adorable. And I'm glad she thinks so much of me that her life goal is to be just like me.