Last Saturday Bill decided (the day before) to do the Kendall Mountain run in Silverton. It’s basically a half marathon up a big mountain and then down the big mountain. You start at 9,318 feet, run up to 13,066 feet, then down down down again. Bill did awesome! Was happy and cheerful at the end! And only had a few monster blisters that have taken a week to heal as souvenirs. Way to go, Billy!
Little Miss Grabby Hands likes to snatch at anything. She’s tasted curry, ketchup, pickle juice, and coffee by virtue of sticking her fingers in my plate and moving them immediately to her mouth. Can’t say she’s really been a fan of any of these grown-up foods, but she’s interested in exploring anything we bring to the table. Or anything we put near her, edible or not. Tessa is a very intentional baby. You can see her look at something, concentrate on it, and then deliberately move her body and hands toward it to grab it. She’s not some fly-by-night, trial-by-error, shoot a sea of bullets and one will probably hit the mark girl. She focuses on what she wants, takes aim, and gets it.
In that vein, Tess is in the fun phase of “throw it away and then try to get it back.” So we’ll be sitting on the floor playing with toys and she’ll throw all of them out of her reach and then see if she can somehow maneuver herself within range to bring them back for play. This is a fine game on the floor and will eventually be how she teaches herself to crawl. It’s a bit more frustrating, say, at the table where things just drop to the floor out of sight and reach. Mama don’t play that game (more than twice or three times).
Guess who loves orange food? Sweet potatoes and carrots have been instant hits. I seem to remember Maggie was the same way. And of course bananas always get high marks; applesauce seems to be growing on her too. So far she’s eating real food twice a day and she’s loving it. She gets super excited when she sees her spoon come out. Another future foodie!
Tess has kind of switched up her middle of the night eating habits. A couple weeks ago she was all over the board for when she woke up. Always just once, but sometimes as early as 1, sometimes 5, and everything in between. This week she’s settled on 1, which is not making me very happy. It falls in a weird place in my sleep schedule I think, and I can’t remember how or when we started to regulate or eliminate Maggie’s mid-night feedings. Guess it’s time to hit those parenting books again.
And I don’t think we’ve updated with our opinion about her hair color. We’re thinking Tessa will be a blonde. Her hair is going in that direction, and her eyebrows have always been fairly invisible. So one Ariel princess and one Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) princess in our family we think.
We may have entered a bug phase with Maggie. There is this guy, a huuuuge beetle we found dead in the gutter on our way home from a hike. Maggie just sat right down and picked it up and started looking at it from all angles. She was very curious about how it died (perhaps drowning in a huge downpour the evening before, perhaps heat exhaustion and dehydration from earlier in the day). And also very curious about if the ants would do a good enough job eating him up now. The last thing she said upon leaving him in the gutter was “let’s come back and check if the ants have eaten all of him up.” And a couple days ago Mags came in from the backyard with something between her thumb and index fingers and started walking upstairs. “Whatcha got there, Maggie?” I asked, feigning nonchalance. “A roly poly. I’ve decided he’s going to be my pet upstairs.” “Bugs belong outside, sweetie, especially when we’re staying in someone else’s house.” “Blah blah blah blah blah blah.” “Blah blah blah blah blah blah.” “Blah blah blah.” “Blah blah blah.” “But it’s just a rock. I’m just pretending.” “Oh. Ok. That’s ok then.” When I went upstairs later, I looked on a windowsill and there indeed was a roly poly. “Maggie, this is a real roly poly. I thought you said it was a pretend one, a rock.” “Well, it’s just a rock that moves.”
Magrilless 