M&M's

You know the old commercial that says "M&Ms: melt in your mouth, not in your hand"? Well, it's true. But when they melt in the mouth of a two-year old, chocolate and colored drool gets all over the two-year old's chin and shirt and I have to use OxiClean to get it all out. (I think I'm actually turning into a "stain-removing professional", by the way.) Caleb's shirt that he has been wearing today is just one of those stained articles of clothing. We went to the Mall of America today to do a little shopping and have lunch with my good friend, Lily. We were on a mission to buy 6-9 months clothes for Hannah since she has now outgrown her 3-6 month clothes. On a tangent, Lily asked the very smart question "she grew out of all of her clothes just today????" Well...no....it's been going on for a few weeks. I'd set aside a shirt here that didn't fit, or a dress there. Today, I couldn't get her cute little jean-capris over her badunk-a-dunk tushy (size 3 diapers, after all), so I decided that it's time to move her up to the next size. The only 6-9 month outfit that she had to wear that was appropriate for the warm weather was this outfit:



(Not the most flattering picture, but she's cute in anything, wouldn't you say?)

Caleb loves Elmo, as I'm sure you already know, so he thought Hannah looked "super cool". Speaking of Caleb (and one more slight tangent), his new idea is that he wants to keep his sister "safe", as every brother wants to do. So safe, in fact, that this morning while she was laying on the floor, he put a rectangle-shaped laundry basket over her (like a cage) and put his weight on the top so she couldn't kick it off. I was asked why I didn't take a picture of this. While it was a funny situation, I laughed more when the basket was NOT over my infant daughter... Hannah didn't mind it too much---her major concern was being confined and not being able to roll around. :)

Back to the story at hand, at the mall, we successfully got Hannah some new summer clothes and met Lily for a great lunch at Ruby Tuesday. Caleb was bit antsy at the restaurant, so I bribed him into having good behavior by telling him that I'd buy a cookie for him. It seemed to work well, and when we got to the cookie store, he actually wanted a huge rice krispie bar with M&Ms in it rather than a cookie. I thought that would be okay, knowing that he wouldn't eat the whole thing. While walking around the mall, I noticed after he had been eating it for a little while that people walking in the opposite direction of us were looking at Caleb with big eyes (he was sitting in the front of the stroller and I couldn't see him) and then they'd look at me, too. I just figured they hadn't seen a two-year old with such a big rice krispie bar before. When I finally went to the front of the stroller to get the rest of the bar away from him, I saw a chocolate-sticky mess all over Caleb's chin, hands, shirt and even his legs. Now, I know why those people were looking at me---they wanted to see if I was crazy or not! Well, that's what wet-wipes are for, I guess. :)