riding in cars with m'boy

like some cruel game of tetris, because of the size of our car, layla's big carseat and base HAS to go in the middle of the backseat unless the front seat passenger wants his gut stowed in the glove compartment. that means judah is sitting within arms reach of his little sister.

we've tried to tell him not to touch her while we're in the car since his favorite activity is pointing our her "eeeeeeyes" by sticking his finger straight into her pupil. poor little thing's slow newborn reflexes never see it coming and just keep her eye wide open as he parks his dirty toddler fingertip right on in there. he is also obsessed with taking her hats off while manically saying "hat, hat, hat, hat," stealing her blanket and flipping her canopy up and down up and down.

when i am alone with both of them in the car, i am helpless to stop him. luckily his arms are too short to do anything really bad, his fingertip barely reaches her face, and mostly he just wants to stick is hand inside the carseat in her lap or try to hold her hand. i would rather him accidentally hurt her a few times but feel like we encourage his love for his sister than to have him never make her cry but also have him be afraid to touch her. she'll be tough. the better for digging 50 mph volleyballs later in life.

hereare two classic shots of car behavior that i snapped this morning on my phone:

yeah judah, we've pretty much let you coast these first 18 months, but it's time to pull your own weight around here and contribute, buddy. feed the baby!

ha! not. we all had to leave the house super early today to go pick up the other car and so i had to give her a pumped bottle on the road cause there was no time to breastfeed at home. um, judah would NOT let me hold it by myself and had to support the back end of the bottle with his freakishly strong grip. when i let go to grab my phone, he actually held it just right for almost a minute all by himself before deciding to tip it completely vertically which jerked it right out of her mouth with a satisfying "POP" that he then tried to recreate. she was not amused since my boobs don't usually exhibit this behavior.

and then the cutest thing i have ever seen occurred:

100% unprompted. swearsies. this is what i catch him at most of the time when he's being "bad" and messing with her. love explosion.

mind: blown

we are on a roll today with both parents at home and both kids napping for uncharacteristically long periods. so i am gonna blog my heart out until exhaustion claims me.

pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and the early days with a new baby constantly blow my mind. its like you're this walking museum of the miraculous. i mean, i think we all know where babies come from, but the fact that just doing that once at just the right time results in a chain reaction of about a billion miracles that results in a perfect tiny human life is fairly incredible.

i am a great lover of science, and evolution in particular. i also happen to believe the bible's creation account pretty literally too. this may make me seem flaky and not to faithful to either since most people vehemently hold to one or another. but i get by with this because god is was smarter than me and invented science as well as the bible. if i'm down with the notion that he created, um, everything, then i think i can mentally give him the power to create it all in 7 literal days while leaving 5 billion years of natural science behind...even if i don't really understand how. hopefully i haven't offended the science community OR the jesus community with these beliefs (tea party folks, i'm cool with offending). anyway, all that is to say that the combination of the scientifically explicable and the logic-defying miraculous that makes up bringing a baby in to the world is something i could just sit around and ponder for years.

here is a list of some of the most recent truth-bombs that have been exploding in my hormone-ravaged brain that send me into awe-fests of double-rainbow proportions.

1. when i was pregnant with judah, my decidedly female body somehow had the instructions, materials and know-how to make a penis from scratch. what the what?!?!

2. in the natural childbirth books they talk about how nature/god was kind in the design of labor in that the pain is bad but it isn't constant. you always get a break in between contractions: a few minutes (or seconds if you're under the influence of pitocin) that are completely pain-free. i used to think, "yeah, big whoop, it still hurts like hell after the breaks," but i was thinking about this the other day and the fact is: you are moving a fully formed human being from inside your body, where it started as 2 cells, to the outside world where it will live independently. or just think of the idea of moving an 8 lb mass from inside of you to outside of you. um, that should hurt NONSTOP. while childbirth is no picnic and, according to genesis, is actually a consequence of the fall, god is merciful even in that because even in labor we get a few pain free minutes for every minute of agony. cool, right?

3. i have to run because another miracle just presented itself in my chesticle region and i need to unload. and speaking of amazing creation: hello, breastmilk? i could drink nothing but blue kool aid all day long and my body would still know how to turn it into awesome-packed milk (and it wouldn't even be blue!). this stuff is a perfect genetic match for my one specific baby and it delivers nutrition, antibodies and comfort all in one suckle. AMAZING!

do you have any favorite biological mind-blowers of your own? do share. thinking about all of this stuff and how improbable and ordained it all is really makes me love my little creations and my awesome creator even more.

dear jesus,

thank you so much

for letting me borrow these little nuglets of yours. they are sincerely awesome. love, keight

so who does she look like?

the subject:

layla..first bath 15 days old after cord stump FINALLY fell off

the lookalike contestants:

big bro at the same age

mom as baby

daddy as baby

in my mind there is only one acceptable answer because, to me, she looks IDENTICAL to one of these people. let's see if yall agree.