Eve is seven months old today! Go Eve!!
She was so happy she started clapping :) And how did I reward
her… I put her in a big, fluffy, movement-hindering duck
costume! She spent the day with a “what the heck is going on?”
look on her face. Welcome to life, Eve!

Eve has just discovered that her hands
open and close. This fascinates her! She sat through dinner
last night fixated on her opening and closing hand. So far it
seems to just be the right hand that opens and closes, but then
she’ll bring her left hand over to touch and feel her right
hand, like she’s trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s
amazing how everything is so new and interesting to a
baby.

Lex has become really self-reliant lately.
Just a few examples… Thursday morning he and I ate some
yogurt together (he gets bites of mine because it’s too much
for him to eat alone). Then I went upstairs to shower and he
was down here with Alan. Alan says that he went into the
kitchen and found Lex sitting on the floor eating another
yogurt. Apparently he got it out of the fridge (he does that
for me), opened it, got out a spoon and started eating. This
morning he opened the fridge, got out a plastic container of
cantaloupe, got a fork, and started eating. Yesterday he put
his sneakers on all by himself too. Used to be just the Crocs,
but now he can manage Crocs and Vans. Cool, but scary. They say
that infants have developmental bursts, and I think it must
last through the toddler years too. Besides the physical stuff,
he has started actively working on his pronoun confusion and
he’ll often say something and then correct himself. Or start to
talk, stop, and start again the correct way.

Lex also got in Eve’s crib again during nap time today —
twice! The first time she was sleeping and over the monitor I
heard her laughing and Lex saying “I think Eve is happy.” I
went up and found him tickling her and both very happy. It’s
hard to be upset by that, despite the fact that he was supposed
to be sleeping and she WAS sleeping. Later he got back in, but
she had fallen asleep and didn’t wake up. He took forever to
take his nap and she was exhausted! They are working on
figuring out how to nap together. I was hoping her good napping
would rub off on him, but it looks like he just keeps her awake
instead.

Today, Tessa is trying to get him to get a
book off the bookshelf for her while she is nursing. It is
standing up so that the cover is facing out. He goes over to
the bookshelf and looks around. She says, the one on the top
shelf, standing facing out. He starts to grab a book laying it
its side under several other books and says, “I think this is
it.”

She says, “no no, the one on the
far right.” (Yes, he knows his left from his right.) He looks
around, with full body movement they way one does when looking
quickly around a shelf that is three times your size and then
goes right back to the same book and says, “I think this is
it,” and starts trying to pull it out from under the pile
again.

She says, “no no, to the right of
that, the one standing up.” Same thing: he looks around with
big sweeping motions, back to pulling on the same book, “I
think this one is it.”

“No, the one with
the letters R-O-B-I-N on it.” (Yes, he can pick out objects
just from a series of letters.) Same thing: big, fake-look,
sweeping scan of the shelf, and goes right back to pulling on
the same book, “I think this is it.”

After a couple more rounds like this she takes a
difference tact. His hobby horse is leaning against the shelf,
so she says, “You see your horse?” He goes over and touches the
horse’s head. “It is right next to your horse,” she says and he
grabs the book and brings it right over.

Now, I would not have thought too much of that but last
night, he gets a little too crazy in the tub with Eve, and
since he is already washed at this point, I just say, “so sad,”
grab him out of the tub, throw a towel over him, and tell him
to dry off. He wails for a second with a pissed cry, tries to
get back in, and failing to pierce my stellar tub defenses,
goes in a corner, squats down, and squeezes out a little pee
with a clearly defiant air about him saying, “you peed on the
floor.”

I grab him and put him back in
the tub, quickly finish up with Eve, whom I have some how
managed to keep from drowning all this time, and leave him in
the draining tub water to rinse the pee off his feet (less than
2″ of water: enough for rinsing pee, not enough to drown). As
I’m doing the post-bath thing with Eve on the changing table, I
hear a Little Lex voice talking about getting out of the tub
now. I go and look at him and say sternly, “you stay in the tub
until I am ready for you.” He obeys, I go back to Eve, and a
minute later he says, “you pooped in the tub. You peed on the
floor and then you pooped in the tub.”

I
am crushed at the sound of this. I walk to where I can see him
from their room, and ask, “did you poop in the tub?” He looks
me square I in the eyes and replies with a confident, “yeah.”
Dejected, I approach the tub to survey the carnage, but to my
great relief and confusion, I find none! Then, I look at him
grinning up at me and I realized exactly what was going
on.

He is 2. Not quite 2 and a half. And
he is already messing with our minds. As Tessa puts it, “we’re
in for a long life.”

My baby is 6 months already!! My how time
flies. She’s such a happy baby too. Scooting around, jabbering
away, and smiling at everyone. I love her!!!

I saw a cool idea for a 1/2 yr birthday cake, but decided
that Alan and I don’t really need a cake today :) Especially
since we have pumpkin bread, halloween cookies, and ice cream
already. Happy 1/2 birthday to Eve anyway!

Lots from me today :) I wanted to share
(and document) Eve’s newest development. She can sit up! Just
in the past few days she’s getting pretty good at it. She can
sit up, unassisted, and play with toys or chew on her teething
biscuit or just watch Lex being silly. And when she gets tired,
she flops over and finds a new position she prefers better. So
funny. She also rolled from her back to her belly last night,
for the first time that I’m aware of. It was the middle of the
night and she was in her crib, so I’m pretty sure he did it by
herself, with no help from Lex. She squirms so much in her crib
that you never know where you’re going to find her. At 4am this
morning I went in to re-plug her and she was on her belly with
her head at the opposite end of the crib. I was feeling around
for awhile trying to figure out where exactly her mouth was so
I could get the plug in (didn’t want to turn on the lights).
She is also starting to get the idea of motion. On her belly
she can get hereslf completly turned around, she’s starting to
get her knees up under her and she can schooch forward and
backward and reach things. I even saw her up on her toes for a
quick second as she moved herself about an inch to the side. So
cool to watch these developments. She’ll be moving in no time
(*sniff*) and then I’ll really have my hands full!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD17CY8cuE4]

Happy 5 months to Eve today!! She’s smiley
and happy and getting mobile :) I put her on the floor in the
living room, ran down to the basement for a minute and came
back to find her completely turned around and about 2′ away
from where I originally put her. And she was sooo proud of
herself :) It’s been a good 5 months.

On a bit of a whim I fed Eve some bananas
yesterday. She did pretty good. She still has some of the
tongue reflex going on, but she ate about 1/4 of a banana,
which is a good serving for a wee little baby. She also seemed
to like them a lot, opening her mouth really big and reaching
for the spoon. She looks so tiny in the high chair! :)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2il9aueCO4]

I forgot to mention in my previous post,
to celebrate Eve’s 4mo birthday she is now sleeping in her
crib. Last night was her first night and she made it all the
way through! Well, she technically woke up at 4:30am, but I
went in and reswaddled and replugged her and she went right
back to sleep. Nice and easy. I’m not sure who woke whom up,
but they were both wide awake and raring to go at 6:00am this
morning. Hopefully that doesn’t continue! :)