It's tough to be the only non-photographer in a family full of experts. But truly, this is the funniest image I have ever captured on film.

It looks like the movie poster for Children of the Corn: The Next Chapter. If I were better at photoshop, I would totally add a tiny meat cleaver to Lexi's clenched fist.

Early New Year's Resolution: I will blog. I will.

But in my defense, the past three months have been the most hectic in recent memory. Why, you ask?

Welcome Alexandra Genevieve Wilkosz, born October 22nd, 2009 at 12:24 p.m., 6 lbs., 12 oz., and 19 inches long. Lily adores being a big sister, and I adore being the mother of two beautiful little girls. The last nine weeks have been a haze of broken sleep, late night feedings, and diaper changes, but I have to say I love it.

...and I can say with authority that even with over a hundred channels, there is nothing good on tv at 4 a.m. Nothing. There's not even Law & Order, and I thought that was on 24 hours a day. (L&O is on at 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., but I digress.) I have become an avid NetFlixer, since Lexi thinks that a proper middle-of-the-night feeding should last 60-90 minutes.

But now that I have wireless internet and a laptop, maybe I can start blogging during the 4 a.m. feeding.We'll see how that goes.

July - from Colorado to Pennsylvania

So at some point I announced to everyone that I wasn't traveling after my sixth month, because it's just too uncomfortable. And then we got lazy with scheduling. So then we ended up doing all of our traveling in July. This is all my fault.

In the second week of July we went to Colorado to visit Jason's mom and her husband Larry. It's a long travel day, because they live about 90 minutes outside of Colorado Springs, but it's a gorgeous drive, and Lily weathered it quite well - we didn't even have to use our "Special airplane undies" (read: Pull-Ups). Lily had such a great time - Pat and Larry have three dogs and two horses, and for her it was like living at the zoo. And then we went to the zoo - does it get better when you're two years old?

Lily learned the horse feeding/care routine with Larry. She came back the first day from the barn and announced to me, "Mommy, there's horse poopy. Don't touch it." She sat on the horses, but it may be a few more years before she's allowed to actually sit on them while they're, you know, moving.

Colorado is truly beautiful - we spent quite a few hours just sitting and looking at the mountains. Admittedly, I did this in part because it was about 104 degrees outside. But all in all, we had a blast - we even got to make the Onorato Family Ravioli Recipe.

When we arrived home, we discovered that the part we had been waiting for had arrived, and we could finally make - wait for it - Lily's Big Girl Bed. She was an eager assistant when it came to assembly, and still periodically points out to whoever will listen, "I put that bolt in!" So the crib is now bye-bye (err, in the basement), and the Big Girl Bed is decked out in Tinkerbell sheets, pillow and comforter.

Next post - Pennsylvania!

I'm Baaaack!

So after many months (let's not count) of NOT blogging about the adventures of Lily, I'm going to make an attempt to re-commit. It was a lot easier to write a coherent paragraph when she was less mobile, I have to say. Computer time is limited to post-Lily-bedtime, since she is convinced that the computer should be used solely for her entertainment - YouTube videos of puppies, and Netflix Instant-watching The Wiggles.

Lily is doing great - she is astonishingly verbal for someone who just turned two. A kid at the zoo last week was testing boundaries (that's hippie-speak for being an evil brat) and smacked Lily on the leg while we were waiting in line for the zoo train. I opened my mouth to discuss it with(verbally buggy-whip) her, but Lily beat me to it - she whipped around and said, "OW! Hey kid, why'd you do that?" Said kid looked at me open-mouthed, as Lily repeated the question to me. I answered, "I don't know Lily, maybe she'll apologize." The kid did, with a thoroughly astonished and chastised look on her face. She seemed unprepared for a 2-year-old to give her what for. It was awesome.

Meanwhile, the new baby and I have been having some serious discussions. Scooter (EDD 10/30, for those of you keeping track) seems to view all food as the enemy, and has been dishing out some killer heartburn. This is quite frustrating, since I'm now hungry ALL THE TIME. I'm pretty sure I wasn't this tired when I was pregnant with Lily, but that may be just because I could sleep every minute that I wasn't working. I've developed some new games to play with Lily, including "Run in Big Circles Around Mommy", "Bring Mommy the TV remote", and No, YOU Walk Up the Stairs, Mommy isn't Carrying You".

That's all for now - oh, the pictures up top are two of Lily's favorite birthday presents.