Kids Are Weird, Part 809

Brigid lives on nothing but string cheese and air. She will eat chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese from a box, and every once in awhile I can get her to eat green beans by referring to them as green french fries and letting her dip them in ketchup.

Beyond that? She won't eat much at all. If I'm making chicken for dinner, hers has to be plain and include the ketchup dipping sauce. Even if the chicken is basically plain, but it was cooked in some kind of green herb? She won't eat it unless I've picked every last speck of green off of it. Green flecks on pizza? Won't eat it. Green flecks on noodles? Nope.

She won't eat rice or anything that resembles rice. No veggies, no spices, nothing interesting at all.

If it's something that would appeal to almost anyone else in the world, she is not going to eat it.

Which is what makes living with Caitlin so much more strange, because that kid? She will eat pretty much anything you put in front of her. I've seen her eat sushi, pork belly, plain spinach leaves, and various spicy sauces. She just likes food. She eats more variety than Steve and I do, now that I think about it, because I won't touch pork belly, and Steve wouldn't be caught dead with a piece of spinach.

She actively chooses bell peppers for snacks. It's depressing when you realize that your still-nonverbal-2yr-old makes better life choices than you do some days.

Of course, today when I went to get her up from her nap, I found her standing up in her crib, completely naked, after she'd taken all of her clothes and her diaper off in protest of how long it took me to get to her. So maybe I shouldn't feel too bad about her life choices?

Stylish

Hipster Brigid wants you to know she liked Frozen before it was cool...

Mixed Loyalties

Raising a Notre Dame fan in the heart of SEC country can be tough, but we've done a pretty good job of it, I'd say. When Notre Dame and Georgia played in back-to-back bowl games about a month ago, Brigid was dressed appropriately for each game. But underneath each jersey was the same ND t-shirt, because even if we cheer for Georgia every once in awhile, we're still Irish underneath it all...

(I just can't get over how old she looks now. She is just such a little PERSON, and I'm not entirely sure I approve.)

What Was Happening While I Was Gone

Life got more than a little busy around here at the end of the year, between work deadlines, holiday activities, traveling, and the general mess of Christmas preparations, and as a result, I took an accidental break from blogging that went longer than I'd expected. And even though I missed it (and even though my mom and dad missed it enough to ask me when I would be getting back to it...), I'm glad I took the break.

But I still need to document my fun times, because if a family has fun, but it doesn't appear on the internet, did the fun actually happen? I don't want to test that theory.

First, we Fall-ed and Halloween-ed. We made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch, (reluctantly, in Brigid's case) carved the pumpkins we picked up there, and trick-or-treated with the other 15 kids in our cul-de-sac on Halloween, dressed as Vampire-Elsa, of course.

Oh. And I had this guy watching me through my office window all fall. So, that was something...

For Thanksgiving, we drove up to Indiana for the week, which I think will become our new annual tradition, so that we can be at our own home with the girls for Christmas morning every year. Plus, this gives us a chance to celebrate Caitlin's birthday with my family during the years when Thanksgiving falls later in November. I would like it noted that I did a MUCH better job on Caitlin's second birthday than I did on her first, and I think I should get points for that. (Even if I did just recycle Brigid's 5th birthday theme from two months earlier...)

And we went ahead and visited Santa Claus, while we were up there, for the annual picture my sisters and I have taken for our parents. It's kind of funny to think about how the number in our group has doubled since the first time we did this together, maybe 10 years ago. And yet, it's still nothing but girls in my family... 

When we returned from Indiana, there was Baby's First Dance Recital (and if you try to tell me that Brigid doesn't still qualify as a baby, I will tell you to shut your mouth right this very moment...) waiting for us. I have never, ever seen Brigid look as cute as she did in that dance recital costume, and considering just how cute she is all of the time, that's really saying something.

Oh, hey. Then we went to Disney for a few days. We hadn't been since we were there last year during the home-sale crisis of 2013, so I was excited to get back, at Christmas time, when I was in a better frame of mind. And I was in a better frame of mind...until Caitlin spiked a fever and had another febrile seizure AS WE WERE WALKING IN TO HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS. That was not the best time.

But, uh, the rest of the trip was good...

Then there was Christmas, involving a trip to see Santa (again) (and apparently Shrek and Donkey live in the North Pole, now? I don't even know.) and more presents than my two little stinkers probably deserved. 

And that was the rest of our 2014. I think maybe I'm caught up now? Here's to staying a little more on top of things in 2015...

I Refuse to Lose Twice

Since almost the day she was born, Steve has been dressing Brigid in the orange and black of the Bengals every Sunday of the NFL season. I didn't fight it, because I didn't think I needed to fight it. I thought, as Brigid got older, she'd realize that the Colts were the far superior team, and she'd do the fighting for me. 

As it turns out, I was wrong, and Steve's propaganda campaign has been strong and successful. As Brigid told me on Sunday, when she refused to put her Colts shirt on until gametime, even though if the Bengals had been good enough to still be playing in the postseason, we all knew she'd have had that shirt on all day, "I do like the Colts, Mommy, unless they're cheating against the Bengals. I just don't want to wear that shirt."

I will not make the same mistake twice.

(Ordinarily, I would be fundamentally opposed to the pinkifying of sports shirts for girls, but LOOKIT HER!!!! She is adorable, and I'll make an exception this one time.)