Slobber of LOVE

My discovery of the week is... ...cleaning!!
There's my clean team! Yesterday was a cleaning Saturday. Our apartment really needed a deep clean. Steve and Eliza helped by dusting and rearranging some book shelves. Picture above is our new favorite baby mechanism that my mom got us off ebay! It's a great hiker kinda backpack and is SO comfy for all of us involved while walking the dog or just doing chores around the house!

But it was actually relieving and kinda fun for me to devote a whole day to scrubbing bath tubs and dishes, packing away too-small clothing, washing and ironing linens, etc. Never thought I'd be able to say that! This probably means that my apartment is about as clean as most of yours on your messy days, but I'm still trying!

Saturday was always cleaning day in the Meldau house, so it just felt right to get some long needed chores done that day. There's something refreshing about pushing up your sleeves and getting sweaty while puttin' your "shoulder to the wheel" and wearing the "worker's seal" (although I'm not sure Steve would agree...). Grandpa Buzz would be so proud!

Eliza's getting old enough now that I am able to have more time where I'm not completely worn out and she's not totally screaming to eat every hour. She even let me get a whole load of dishes loaded while she watched me from her swing on Friday while Steve was at work-- usually we just have to wait until after she's asleep to get them done!

So those of you in Virginia already know this, but here in Charlottesville the season has suddenly become fall! Seriously it was in the 90's on a Wednesday and then it was a blustery 60's-70's Thursday with leaves falling everywhere.

So I busted out some of the winter clothes I had for Eliza, and they've proved to be a bit big. I tried to buy big so that they would last for more of the cold season, fall and winter. Most of them are in 12 mnth sizes to 18 mnths. This means that her little hands are covered by sleeves a lot of the time (but they're nice and toasty hands!) and I also have to roll up some pants that hang over her feet (also toasty). I'm sure she'll grow into them soon enough, though!

Eliza's discovery of the week is...

...probably shrieking, grabbing Steve's glasses and applesauce! She can shriek so loud sometimes it's really surprising--but it's happy, playful shrieking. And she's become quite adept at yanking off Steve's glasses (and mine when I haven't put in my contacts yet-- but I've been doing contacts more and more as her grabbing has increased in strength and frequency).

She also likes to grab my hair and taste it, but perhaps I've mentioned that before.

And she loves applesauce. She ate a whole jar in one sitting at lunch today. Crazy kid! Steve says she inherited this from him b/c applesauce was his favorite snack from like age 1 to 13 until popcorn usurped its number one spot.

Bumbo Breakfast time before church with Daddy!

Eliza's favorite activity of the week besides sitting up SO well and all the time is... she likes to hang upside down. She lies down on my lap when I'm on the couch or a chair and she hangs her head upside down and just looks all around at all the upside down things for a really long time. Steve and I found this kinda strange, but I read in a baby development book that 5-6 mnth. olds like these kind of changed perspectives. Interesting.

Our least favorite development of Eliza's this week besides poop explosions 5 out of the last 7 days is... her wiggling!! She wiggles ALL the time! Almost anytime we hold her in our laps (except when she's upside down) or in our arms or in chairs or car seats or when she's EATING, she's wriggling and sliding all over. Steve sat down with her last night to read stories and 2 pages later she was lying sideways like between his knees (if you can picture it- it was crazy). Maybe we can get a picture later. But she's already getting hard to keep up with! She will sit still if we put a mirror in front of her, though. We hope this doesn't foreshadow too much of a narcissistic future.

Most slobbery skill of Eliza's this week is... KISSES! Yes, she gives kisses-- huge, wet, eat your face kisses. No point in wearing make-up these days. But I never loved slobber so much!! The Slobber of Love...