Another milestone for sweet Baby Ellen – by our bathroom scale’s estimation, she now weighs in at over 20lbs! Still waiting for her to slow down and “normalize” her growth. But girlfriend seems to have decided that her gigantic stature is normal, which I suppose it is – for her.

Her adorable, big ole bottom is having “compatibility issues” with her diapers, resulting in blowouts every single time she poops. Gross, dude. Also – so much laundry! So we’re trying out a different brand of diapers to see if we can find a better fit for her body shape. (I mentioned this to her daycare teacher, who lovingly joked, “What is her body shape? Marshmallow? hehe!)

She has also started blowing raspberries constantly, resulting in our entire lives being constantly covered in baby spit. But it’s adorable and makes me laugh, so keep it coming, Ellen!

In other, less awesome news – We were rear-ended today! Both the kids were in the car, which scared the pants off me, but we’re all fine. It was a very low-speed impact, and the kids hardly even noticed (Ellen didn’t even stop blowing raspberries!). The guy who hit us stuck around, we exchanged info, he was appropriately horrified at what he had done, and it’s no big deal. Just a dented bumper on my car and some adrenaline that took hours to get out of my system.

The insurance claim is already filed and fault has been established (the other dude is to blame!). The only outstanding items are 1) getting my car repaired and 2) deciding whether to replace the kids’ car seats.

The car seat thing is confusing because our manufacturer says our accident met the criteria to not replace the car seats because it was so minor, but a lot of resources out there say that you should replace them no matter what if they’ve been in an accident, doesn’t matter how minor.

It feels wasteful and like a big unnecessary hassle to scrap/replace perfectly good car seats for no reason. But I obviously want to make sure my kids are 100% safe. Time for a mommy/daddy pow-wow to make an informed, safe choice for our family!