April Showers (and Baths!)

You know you're a parent of a newborn when the most exciting event in your life is "the falling off of the cord!" For some reason, Scout's umbilical cord remnants have been extremely interesting to her siblings, especially Finley. The first thing she asks every morning is whether Scout's cord fell off during the night. The presence of this little shriveled up brown bit on her baby sister's tummy apparently occupies her little two year old brain much of the time. It took a good week or so to convince her that is was not, in fact, poo on Scout's belly. Now we use it as a calendar of sorts - as in "We'll go on Spring Break after Scout's cord falls off," or "The Easter Bunny will come after Scout's cord falls off." Hey, whatever works... So of course last night was the much anticipated "First Real Bath" in celebration of no more cord. It fell off on Wednesday, and Trace asked me if I was just playing an April Fool's joke on him when Finley announced it as he walked in the door after school. Though I realize I spend most of my time with the under 9 crowd, I like to think I could've come up with a better April Fools joke than that, had I been so inclined. I am a college-educated woman after all, though there are many days I wonder why. My class load from college translates roughly into:

Mass Media (aka "The Overwhelming Frequency of Ads for Bendaroos and Blendy Pens on Nickelodeon") 

Radio 1 (aka "How Quickly can Mom Turn Down the Volume Before the Kids ask what it means to be "Bringing SexyBack")

Religion (aka"The Divine Mystery of How One Hour in Church with 5 Kids Feels like a Month")

American Lit (aka "The Joy of Reading Dr. Seuss Six Times and how even Toddlers Know When You're Skipping Pages")

French (aka "Oui, I'd Love to Watch Another Annoying Episode of Caillou")

Logic (aka "Peaceful Negotiations In Regards to the Division of Marshmallows in the Breakfast Cereal")

All this just to have my 8-year-old tell me last year that her teacher knew better than me about how to wiggle a loose tooth because she was a teacher and I was "just a mom." When I tried my rebuttal, I was told it was true, that she had in fact "gone to special school." I think I went there too, but heck, what do I know???

So anyhow, April looks to be bringing us more snow before anything else, but it can't last forever,right. Hope everyone has a great weekend! Here's a few pictures of Scout's first bath, and Piper snuggling her afterwards. The towel that Scout is wrapped in is the same one we used to wrap Piper in! And look at her now- she's such a big helper!