Here’s another video Paul found, a song written for a baby nephew by the baby’s uncle. I love it, the kids love it, and now I love the name Arlo.

If you have time, I wonder if you’d mind going over to my Milk and Cookies post to help me choose presents for Henry’s birthday. I am STUCK.

And incidentally, do you realize Henry is turning TWO this month? Two. TWO!!

Then: newborn with bird limbs and woodland-creature eyes. Barely big enough to wear a tiny side-snap baby Dior shirt I bought at a consignment shop when I was pregnant with Rob.

Now: nearly 2, grubby and loud and taking over the household.

You guys are SO LUCKY, because this is one of those times when my exuberance overcomes my common sense and I tell you about a contest I am myself entering, thus dramatically decreasing my own chances of winning. And I don’t know if you know this, but I can’t accept either payment or gifties for saying nice things (it’s the rules with that BlogHer ad over to the right), so you can be sure my motives are pure, if a little dim.

Our own Bird has a contest up for her shop Redbean Dream, and ska-WEE it is cute stuff. (All these photos are hers; I asked permission before I yoinked them, because I am SO POLITE and also because I am so in awe of artistic talent.)

One prize she’s giving away is your choice of an illustrated letter. This is “F is for fleur de lis,” but you can choose your own letter, your own color, and your own picture. Doesn’t that kind of thing get your mind clicking? I’m all, “S is for Swistle”! I could get the S is for Swistle done on a Swistle-colored background! With, like, a picture of that little skirt (“S is for skirt”!) that’s my avatar for no good reason except that I liked the skirt and couldn’t find it in Elizabeth’s size and so got a little obsessed with it.

She’s ALSO giving a second prize, your choice of a fine art print. Don’t let me influence you, but Fleur de Pea in pink (it also comes in blue or yellow) is my definite favorite.

And then she’s going to pick a THIRD winner to get a SURPRISE prize. Which, OMG fun.

You only have until Friday to enter, so GO GO GO. And if you win, I will try to be genuinely happy for you.

Never Crabby Shirt update! Cindy used a random number generator to choose two winners:

1. El-e-e of hello, self
2. Dawn of the May 15th, 11:26 a.m. comment

El-e-e and Dawn, email me (swistle at gmail dot com) with your mailing info and I’ll send it on to Cindy.

I’m finally getting caught up with photos.

OMG—MOM?!?

Mr. Pickles thinks airplanes are so CLIQUEY

Mr. Pickles is already tired of looking out the window and wants to know when food will be served. Got some bad news for you, Mr. Pickles.

(More photos at The Chicken Game Flickr Group, which everyone is welcome to join.)

SaLy at Incubation Nation wrote a post about the new “never crabby” shirt from The Children’s Place, and that reminded me that YOOPS I forgot to post something I meant to post a long time ago, which is that reader Cindy emailed me to say that has two of the old never-crabby shirts in size 4T and she’d be happy to send them to someone who wants them.

Remember those shirts? We pretty much ALL bought them. I think I bought it in 2T, 3T, and 4T.

Anyway, if you have a use for one (or two) in 4T, leave a comment and Cindy will pick someone to send the shirt(s) to!

So, doll collecting: more controversial than potty training. Good to know!

I am reading American Psycho, so I’m having trouble doing anything else. I get so grossed out I have to put it down, but then I’m so mesmerized I have to go back to it.

I had a happy Postcrossing thing happen: at the airport I bought a postcard OF the airport—and then today I drew the name of someone who collects airport postcards. I’ve never seen someone request one before, so it was pretty exciting.

I’m still settling in from my trip. I haven’t gotten through my email yet, or through the posts in my Google reader, but I’m getting there. And then I need to go through five kersnillion photos of THIS:

Niestle

Perhaps the first thing you will notice about this picture is, “Hey! That’s the old couch! Paul must have fixed it!” And you would be right: he did fix it, so now we still have it, but in the playroom rather than as the main piece of furniture in our living room.

Or perhaps the first thing you will notice about this picture is the SEVENTEEN DOLLS sitting ON the couch.

This is a little embarrassing. After William was born, we’d planned to have a third baby about 2 or 2.5 years later. Then Paul lost his job and couldn’t find another for almost two years and so I went to work full-time. There’s never a “perfect time” for a pregnancy, but there are definitely times that are better than others, and this was not one of them. So we delayed our plans.

Evidently I went a little crazy? That’s all I can think of. Because I had NEVER been interested in dolls before, not even as a child, and yet I started collecting them, and collecting clothes for them, and CHANGING their clothes, and COMBING THEIR HAIR and so forth. Then Paul got a job and I quit mine and got pregnant and totally lost interest in the dolls and packed them all away, so draw your own conclusions.

We’re going to be putting in a second bathroom, and it’s going to mean a loss of storage space in the basement. My doll collection, totally ignored for more than four years now, takes up five huge Rubbermaid bins. I’ve been reluctant to cull, though, because what if I get interested in dolls again? Some of these dolls were acquired only after expensive, time-consuming quests. What if I get rid of them and then WANT THEM BACK?

Well, but this is getting silly. I can’t just hang onto them forever, and Elizabeth is, so far, uninterested in dolls, and we need the space. So my goal is to pare it down to what fits in ONE large bin. That way I can keep my top favorites and my favorite outfits, just in case either Elizabeth or I suddenly get interested, but can also free up space.

The problem, of course, is deciding on favorites. I’m very influenced by how hard the dolls were to find and how much they cost, or by how badly I wanted to buy them originally. I’m TRYING to judge only by how much I LIKE the doll, but it’s tough. Doll #1 was a $20 Walmart doll that eventually went down to $8 on clearance. I bought her new from a large stock of the same doll. Doll #11 was a hard-to-find doll from a line of dolls that sold for $80-100 each before the line was discontinued; I bought her used on eBay after many failed attempts, in a very exciting auction that I WON and went around feeling thrilled about for WEEKS. I prefer Doll #1. But it’s hard to ditch Doll #11.

All right, yes, this is all just a stall while I’m supposed to be culling. Fine, I’ll get back to it now.

Oh, hello! I am home! In the first hour, I:

1) Removed a tick from Henry’s scalp
2) Removed clumps of peanut butter from the underside and leg of the coffee table
3) Cleaned up the results of a child over-using air freshener without permission (and then threw away the air freshener because what are we, an anarchy now?)

Note that it was not until the second hour that I:

4) Peed

And I have not yet:

5) Unpacked
6) Read my email
7) Deleted any of the “over 1000” (!) posts in my Google Reader

Paul proudly reported that he brushed everyone’s teeth TWICE while I was gone. So THAT went well. And my parents, who took over the shift I usually work alone, did not run screaming into the sea, so THAT went well too.

Seat choice report, for those of you who didn’t read my laboriously-thumbed Twitter updates: my favorite seat on a Southwest plane is the window seat in row 20. It’s right over where they load the luggage, so you can count pink suitcases and be glad yours is a carry-on because GEEZ do they have to SLING them around like that? That’s rough enough to break a SOCK. And oooh, nice muscles! It’s close enough to the wing that you can make sure the wing is still attached and so you really feel like you’re On An Airplane, but not so close that the wing blocks your view. The seats toward the front fill up first, so that I had a whole row to myself for one flight, even though the front half of the plane had people sitting even in some of the MIDDLE seats. But it’s not so far back that the bathroom line is standing next to you. I hesitate to recommend the seat, since the next time I fly I might find YOU sitting in MY favorite seat, but I guess there are lots of flights I WON’T be on.

The view from window seat row 20

What else? Oh, yes, here’s my recommended Carry-On Snack List:

1) apple
2) baggie of pecans
3) empty water bottle filled at a water fountain after security
4) candy bars
5) chocolate-covered dried cherries
6) baggie of roasted salted sunflower seeds

I found this covered all my snacking needs satisfactorily. Raisinets make an acceptable substitute for the chocolate-covered dried cherries. Milk chocolate Dove with almonds was my favorite candy bar.

Can it get better than this? I put it to you than it cannot.