The Rubster (pronounced Rooooobster)

This five-month-old girl makes us so happy... and exhausted. She wakes up a lot at night and she rarely naps longer than 40 minutes but that's just enough time to shower and blow-dry so I'll take it. I feel really worn out but, oddly, it's a blissful kind of tired. Don't get me wrong, it's not happy all the time here in the Roe apartment. Sometimes both kids are screaming and I scream myself, then dash to my bedroom at the end of the hall, shut and lock the door and lie on my bed for a few minutes in order to regain my sanity. And one time, instead of turning into Target on Route 1, I came THIS CLOSE to just driving south as far away as I could get. But I turned into Target, navigated the aisles, bought way too much and then went back home to tough it out.

Because honestly, I couldn't live without this girl (and my two boys too). I even love it when she cries (most of the time). Her bottom lip curls out and tears instantly appear on her cheeks and then - get this - she cries "Mama, Mama." Yeah, it's probably more like, "mamamamamama," and an accurate explanation might be that she is learning to sound out consanants but I like to think that she is already calling my name.

Ruby was pretty ornerny for her first couple of months. She is not super patient, explaining her speedy entrance into this world (I'll blog about that sometime). She would sometimes scream uncontrollably and when she did this around other people they would naturally ask what was wrong with her. We would jokingly tell them that she hates life and sometimes I really thought this was true. She still has her moments but she is so happy most of the time. Despite her short sleep cycles, she is very easy to put down. In fact, that's about all I do. I wrap her up and put her down and she goes to sleep. I almost feel like this alone makes up for any of the hard times we have had with her.

When you smile at Ruby, she scrunches her nose and her arms flail rapidly because she is just so excited and she exhibits the bodily control of the egg noodles I'm making for dinner tonight. When she talks, the sides of her tongue roll up, making for a pretty interesting dialect. She inserts everything she can grab into her mouth and spits up what seems like most of the milk she drinks. But we know that can't be the case because of her weight. She is in the 90th percentile for her weight - small compared to her older brother at that age, but gigantic compared to most of the other dainty babies surrounding us.

We love our chubby little Rubster.