Lizzie's First Encounter with Scissors

Have no fear. I'm not that terrible of a mom- leaving scissors out for a 6 month old to play with. I have been bugging Joe for weeks now to let me snip some of Lizzie's hair. She has a rat tail forming which I don't find very flattering and her bangs are constantly in her eyes. We compromised and I got to cut the rat tail but leave the bangs to continue growing. I'll just have to do better at putting her hair in a piggy tail.

This is the before shot. You can clearly see that the rat tail is reaching an absurd length.


As you probably know if you have tried cutting a small child's hair, they don't like to keep their head still. As you can see, Lizzie was not well pleased with the whole cutting process.


This is the end shot. She's still growing out her newborn hair so there is a patch of really dark hair at the nape of her neck. I am happy to report that it no longer includes a rat tail. The 90s are over, and to me, rat tails were never cool. As you can see, Joe is consoling Lizzie after the traumatic experience.

Balcony Garden Update

The garden is thriving. Gimli has one tomato growing and hopefully Legolas will produce as well. We noticed today he was sporting some not so happy branches so I did some amateur pruning. We have decided to name our 2 pepper plants Pepper Pots and Gwyneth (think Iron Man). Pepper Pots has 3 peppers coming in nicely, but Gwyneth is a bit sickly. However, she has produced one small pepper the size of a cherry tomato. With time, it will probably get bigger.


We got our first meal from the garden. By meal I mean salad. We added grilled chicken and mango and red onion with a homemade vinaigrette. It was quite delicious.

We are also drying our herbs to use them later.


I finally got Joe to transfer some of the plants out back to a place where they can spread their vines without being closed in by our small balcony. He refuses to remove all the pumpkin plants however so we will soon have to use a machete to get through to all of the plants and water them.

We're both ABD!

Today Joe had a comprehensive exam defense and his dissertation proposal (committee members like it when we can combine meetings to avoid having to come in more often than is necessary). Both parts went well, and he is now officially ABD (All But Dissertation). His dissertation will be "Reading the X-Men: Portrayals of Race and Gender in a Popular Comic Book Narrative."

Emily had her comp defense a couple months ago, so she was already ABD. Now all we have to do is write those dissertations...

Daddy and Daughter

In honor of Father's Day, some photos of Joe and Lizzie hanging out:

Sweet Six Months: Hairdo retrospective

Today Lizzie is six months old. She celebrated by going to the doctor and getting shots (not the most exciting way to celebrate). In honor of this event, I offer you a retrospective of 20 hairdos Lizzie has sported in her six months of life. At this rate I don't know what she'll be able to do to her hair when she's a teenager and wants to rebel. I suppose we've never dyed it, but it's had all sorts of styles:

1. Newborn fro - Lizzie was born with a fro, and it was a sign of crazy hair to come


2. Itty Bitty Mohawk - Depending on how her head rested she ended up with a mohawk


3. The Mozart


4. Three Curls - We did a whole post where we styled her hair, this was one of my favorites


5. Speed Demon


6. The Wave - It looks like you could surf right down the side


7. Curly


9. Spiky


10. Straight down


11. Fro with bangs


12. Pebbles Flinstone


13. Straight up


14. Pebbles with stringy bangs


15. Pebbles with side swept bangs - I love it when I get a picture and it looks like she's making a silly face


16. Crazy twist


17. The Rooster


18. The Frohawk


19. Alien Antennae


20. The Sumo Curl


-Joe

Lizzie relaxes to Baby Mozart

I'm not under the misapprehension that the Baby Einstein DVD series will make my daughter a genius. Nor do I believe they will make a drooling zombie with the thinking capacity of a comatose earthworm out of her.

I do firmly believe that they can distract her for a solid fifteen minutes when I need to get something done. And sometimes, I find it hilarious how relaxed she gets when watching Baby Mozart:




-Joe

More proto-communication

You may recall that back on May 1st I posted a little video of Lizzie and myself exchanging spitting sounds (or raspberries as they are sometimes called). Well we've moved passed spitting and into actual vocalizations in our communication:

Balcony Garden

Last year we had a strawberry plant named Darryl, a tomato plant named Hal, and a cucumber plant named Beezlebumber (his little vines kept reaching up and ensnaring Hal and dragging him down to...) that grew out on our balcony. We also had some flower things.

This year we're a little more bold. We have two tomato plants (Gimli and Legolas), two pepper plants (as yet unnamed), cucumber, onions, spinach, lettuce, beans, carrots, cantaloupe, parsley, some other herb (Emily now tells me it's oregano), and pumpkin plants (all as yet unnamed). Goodness...that seems like a lot when it's all written out. Our balcony is going to be crowded.