I'm too Funny for My Own Good and Livi has Spaghetti Brains

The other night I was playing with Olivia, mimicking some weird new sound that she started making, and she thought it was the funniest thing she had ever heard. So funny, in fact, that she threw up all over my hand, a little bit on my chest, and on her own arm and tummy. Hmpf. The only "after eating" rule I was aware of was no swimming. Add no hearty guffaws to the list.

Then, tonight, we came home from the grocery store, set some hamburgers on the counter to make for dinner, and I just happened to look at my cell phone. Hmm. Two missed calls? Must be important! After listening to the first word of the first message, I immediately realized that I am a schmuck who forgot all about her dinner date with three very good friends, in spite of the fact that it was written on the calendar and I had been thinking about it for days. Lucky for me, being an hour and a half late for dinner doesn't make my friends think too much less of me. Since Reuben has been "training" Olivia to walk every day, she thought the restaurant would make an excellent practice track and wanted nothing to do with her highchair until the meal arrived. Lucky for me, again, the people around us in the restaurant thought it was cute rather than annoying that Olivia wanted to see what they were all eating.

Towards the end of our spaghetti and green beans meal, Olivia started making this startled expression with her face, and grabbing at her nose while coughing and gagging. Obviously, when I wasn't looking, she either inhaled some marinara from her ever-nasal-exploring finger, or she was doing her best impression of this guy by snorting a noodle:



Doesn't he look silly? Is that a bucket I see at the bottom of the picture??? Geez, how many noodles is this guy planning to eat this way?!

Anyway, I didn't know what to do. I've never had to deal with a foreign object in a sinus cavity before, let alone with a person who doesn't know how to blow her nose, yet. I couldn't see anything up there... so I kind of squeezed the sides of her nose into the tissue, as if I were milking a cow. Thankfully, I didn't get any milk, but Olivia seemed to feel better. Then she sneezed a bunch of times and stopped making all those weird faces and sounds. I hope she doesn't end up with some festering spaghetti noodle in her brain that requires emergency surgery all because I didn't come prepared with that stupid bulb syringe snot-sucker thing and instead tried to milk her nose. I wonder if Reuben's neti-pot would work on Olivia...

Here's a picture I took with my new camera of Reuben and Olivia practicing walking:

It looks all hazy because I forgot to turn off the flash as I took pictures through the storm door. They are being waylayed by the crazy neighbor kid from down the street. I have a whole different post to write about her and her evil brother, so stay tuned.

Here's another one that I snapped before she realized how awesome my new camera is:

Oops... the awesomeness is discovered:


Can you tell I trimmed her bangs? I love my new camera.