Amusement.

Our new going to bed routine has really been working well for all of us. Ellie gets a lullaby, we sit with her for a few minutes and then pat her on the back and head out. She's not even whining about it any more. At nap time, I usually lay her UCLA blanket over her to keep her warm. At night, not so much because she's in fleece jammies and her fleece sleep sack. Her blanket is folded at the end of the bed though, and for the past few nights, sometime after Tim leaves, she's been crawling down to get it and throw it over herself. It ends up bunched up by her head, more as a security blanket than a warmth provider, but it's pretty cute.

We continue to talk a lot about the impending arrival of her new brother, which she doesn't really understand. I mean, she's two and I don't expect her to get it. But we talk about how things are going to be once he's here. The other night I was changing into my pajamas, and since she has no concept of privacy or personal space, she was about four inches away from me, yapping away. Then all of a sudden she goes "I used to drink milk from you. When I was a little baby. But now I'm a little girl. I drink cows milk." GOOD TO KNOW. She also sees little babies nursing at our mommy class lately, and will tell me that her brother is going to drink milk too. Hopefully she'll be as cool about it when it actually comes time for me to nurse him, instead of having her in my lap all the time.

She also continues to obsess about "what are we going to do NEXT!" She likes to discuss the day the minute she gets up, and will continue asking about what we're gong to do NEXT as I'm getting her ready for bed. Lately she also likes to ask questions with really obvious answers - every morning she asks me "is that a bird house?" when she looks into our back yard. We're currently working on turning the questions back to her and telling her "if you know the answer, you can just tell me, you don't have to ask!" Because otherwise, she will happily ask me the same question a half dozen times in rapid fire succession. And she's impossible to ignore. The best is that when I say "what do you think it is?" she always ends up just doing her "I don't know/I don't want to tell you" grunt, and then goes "it's a birdie house. For little birdies."

Moving on, yesterday was my college roommate Pari's baby shower. She's due with a little girl less than two weeks before Lambeau's expected arrival, so that's been very exciting for the two of us. Just like always, she makes me do something first so I can later talk her through the process. The party was up in LA and started at 2, so we ended up leaving Ellie to nap at Gigi's house (not Grizz's house, GIGI'S HOUSE) and Tim and I had an afternoon and an evening out. We did get crap from Pari's parents for not bringing along their favorite two year old. It was a fun time though, and the first time that I've seen our friend Chris in a million years.

The old crew, now with three out of the four of us as parents (or almost parents.) Fluff, Megara, Asshead and Loser. We are very good with nicknames.

Tim and I ended up getting dinner at a Salvadorian place just down the street from our old apartment. No matter what, we always seem to end up in Culver City when we head to the Westside. Sure, there are fancier places to eat, but somehow visiting our old haunts always makes us happy. It's been raining here and when we drove in it was so clear that I knew we'd have been able to see the Hollywood sign from our old apartment window - we joked about going up and knocking to see if they'd let us check out the old dump. Maybe our old keys would even work! Funnily enough, on New Years Eve Tim got a call at 3 in the morning and I answered it because it said something about "home/downstairs" and in my sleep addled state, I thought it might be his friend Cory, because it was a 310 area code. It was actually just someone standing outside of our apartment building, trying to find someone. Apparently his cell phone is still in the code box, if you punch *75.