Progress

I think this blog is going to be short. This past week went by in such a flash...or maybe I should say flood given all the rain we had. At any rate, I can't remember it.

"Look at what I just did!"

All I know is that Alden is getting up on his knees and beginning to really crawl, although he mostly defaults back to army crawling in 2 moves. Today we were outside planting in a new flower bed, and I had a nice tarp and blanket with toys for him to sit on. Of course, he went straight for the grass, water, and mud. He was a huge mess by the time we finished. He also is pulling up on everything...even in his crib....oh boy, more sleep trouble for us! I can no longer leave him sitting in a room and expect him to be safe and in the same place. He pulled up on his excersaucer the other day, lost his balance, swung around while holding onto it, let go, and fell straight back on the cement floor just inches from the sharp brick edge of the hearth. Thank God for guardian angels! I had pillows surrounding him, and he still managed to bang his head on the floor. Eventually he'll learn that the falls to sitting are a lot less traumatic, but for now, it's a lot of ram-rod straight falls. He also enjoys finding every scrap of paper and putting it in his mouth. Why do babies find paper so irresistible? Rhianwen has been close to a saint dealing with all his new found freedom. She just moves everything to higher ground and says, "Alden, that's not for you." Well, on good days she does. On bad days it's more like, "ARGH! NO! DOOOON'T PLAY WITH THAT!" and roughly snatches it away.

We've made a lot of headway in the potty training world this week. I just can't wait to get rid of that potty, but it probably won't be until I'm done nursing since Rhianwen can get to her potty on her own but not onto the toilet by herself. To reward her for doing such an excellent job, I got her a "special treat". She was expecting candy I think, but I got a cheap recorder instead. She played it incessantly for 2 days and seems to really love it after getting over the fact that it's not candy. I think she likes it because it's easy to play anywhere and she can keep a rhythm and trill. Most of the time it sounds like the same note, but mommy has a hard time making it sound any better, so I guess that's to be expected. In yet another facet of the gem that daddy is, he claims to have taken recorder lessons when he was young. He can coax more notes out of it, but it still sounds pretty terrible :)

She looks like Pan calling to all of the animals.

We enjoyed a meal with Uncle Christopher's good friend Matt and Matt's dad. It was great fun to have the kids crawling all over both of them. Fortunately neither of them are claustrophobic. We also had a great visit from Grandmama but totally forgot to take any pictures. We had told Rhianwen of Grandmama's upcoming visit, and in order to explain when Monday was, we were saying how Rhianwen would have to go to church on Sunday, take a nap, go to bed, get up, eat breakfast, say bye to dad to go to work, and then Grandmama would come. Well, Rhianwen looked at daddy and said, "Oh, daddy, you go to work right now." As if to say, that if the last thing in that series happened, then Grandmama would magically appear. Grandmama helped mend Rhianwen's quilt and a bunch of other things for us, but not the hole in our backdoor from our self-inflicted break-in when we locked ourselves out on Saturday... She also brought some bulbs for us to plant, some pretty daffodils (I never can tell if they are daffodils or jonquils?), and her famous sour-dough bread otherwise known as "Grandmama's bread". I think we each could eat an entire loaf every day. It's Rhianwen's favorite thing to eat, and apparently one of Alden's too.

Grandmama's bread is hard to beat. This is his second try at finger food (his first try was broccoli also a favorite)...it makes for a very happy baby at meal-time.


"My name is Uncle Sam."