the happy homewrecker

I can hardly believe it myself, that Ginger Belle turned 18 months old yesterday. To celebrate, she had several shots of amoxicillin and put on a mouse nose.

. . . . and Ginger has an ear infection. Which sucks, but now we can treat it. And it completely explains why she's been so crabby and inconsolable for the past three days, totally freaking out over everything and not wanting to do anything. Gah.

Guess who started walking with her walker last night!

Good grief, I didn't think it would be this hard to find a pair of non-patent leather red shoes for Ginger for our holiday photos. I've been everywhere with no luck. Well, that's not completely true; Stride Rite had some, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $44 for a pair of shoes for a toddler who doesn't walk yet. I found a very nice pair of secondhand Stride Rites on Ebay but got outbid. Pooh.

Ginger is taking the rings from her ring-stacking toy and wearing them on her arm like bangle bracelets. WHO TAUGHT HER TO ACCESSORIZE? Lord knows it wasn't me.

The croup sucks.

Last night as I sat watching Agassi and Blake battle it out in the U.S. Open, I glanced at the clock on the VCR and saw that it was a little past 11 p.m., and I smiled to myself. It was exactly a year ago that I'd gone into labor with Ginger.

Baby Ginger's first birthday is rapidly approaching, and while I've got the party plans underway, we've done nothing as far as her gifts. On one hand, we have a ton of age-appropriate toys for her handed down from Spencer; on the other hand, I'd like to give her something for her birthday. We're thinking we'll get her something small and use any other funds to (finally) fix up her bedroom. I have a wooden rocking chair that was mine when I was small; I want to paint it to match her room and give it to her for her birthday, too. She's too little to be "into" anything, but I'm totally out of the loop when it comes to toys for one year olds. Ideas?

So, a question for moms of really skinny babies: where do you go to buy pants? Ginger is very slender (she hasn't yet hit 17 pounds; at this same age, Spencer was somewhere around 23 pounds) but tall (28 inches? 29? something like that). We're going to a big kids' rummage sale this weekend and I was hoping to fill out her fall/winter wardrobe, but after trying on some size 12-mos pants, I'm thinking I shouldn't buy her anything until it's been tried on. She needs the length of 12 months, but they were all several inches too big around the waist. I tried a bunch of jeans on her, everything from Babies R' Us to Old Navy, and everything was just huge. We had the opposite problem with Spencer (he was a chunk but we always had to roll up his pants) and so I'm totally lost. I fear she'll have to spend an entire season or two wearing dresses.