Quick Hits

Life as we know it now:

Sania giggled at us the other day. We've graduated from full-force cooing (often with endearing little peaks that sound like one second of pure joy) to periodic actual giggling. Usually this occurs during the portion of "If you're happy and you know it" when Katrena manually wiggles Sania's butt.

Reid is taking swimming classes. It isn't clear that he is enjoying himself that much. He is into the experience, but it is hard to get him to go, because it is a monkey-wrench in his regular Saturday schedule of not-going-to-daycare and he's suspicious. Also, I think he believes me and the baby are potentially doing something fun while he's at the pool, and he wants in on the action.

Early food restrictions K accepted when first breastfeeding Sania in order to combat baby-belly-discomfort (phasing out citrus, certain vegetables, etc) have all been relaxed. The cabbage restriction was tested this week with a Primanti Brothers Sandwich featuring cole slaw, and the baby fared well. So we're a family of omnivores, directly or indirectly, once again.

As I mentioned earlier, Reid and I now ride together on my bike, which is great fun. The other day, we were going down a hill, and normally when we go down a hill, we open it up a little, but this time we were going toward a narrow path to some of Arlington's miles of excellent bike trails, so I was braking while we went down hill, which feels strange on a bike. As we were riding, I felt Reid's two hands on my lower back, gently bracing me. He said, "No worry, daddy. I help you never fall down." I love this kid.

Sania definitely inherited K's sleep habits. She has been documented sleeping longer than seven hours a night. This isn't a regular occurence, but rest assured, we enjoy it when it happens.

Of course, Reid's potty-training is going well, except for the part when he regularly wets the bed. If I can swing out of bed before Reid's bladder capacity/sleep-willingness to suppress night-urination gives out, I can coax him over to the potty and preserve the sheets. Ironically, the very moment that the baby is letting us sleep, and we would like to take advantage of Reid sleeping, we are forced to wake Reid up. I mourn this development.

Since Sania is growing so much, we are taking a long view at a potential clothing crisis. At her current rate of growth, Sania's dimensions will exceed the size of this smoker capable of preparing 100 pounds of meat at a time. (Anyone interested in seeing a chart of projected child growth based on early childhood weight gain can visit the Trixie Update archives.) But the clothing crisis is this: She is wearing summer 6 month clothing now, clothing we anticipated she would be wearing at the end of September. It is a safe bet that she will be wearing 9 month clothing before summer ends. Our 9 month clothing includes a lot of long pants, sweaters and wooly baby-bag-looking getups. Maybe we can cut some off, so she looks like Daisy Mae of Dogpatch.

Reid's birthday approaches. He seems relatively conceptless about this entire development. Also, time still has no meaning. You say, "you're birthday's coming soon," because you're a parent and a mental case and you want him excited about his birthday. He says, "It's my birthday!" And you say, "No, your birthday's in seven days." And he's disappointed, because seven days and 100 years mean the same thing to him. Not today. Actually, we have some fuzzy time-logic that we're working out with Reid right now. He seems to have confused 'today' with 'now.' A parent promises something he wants for later today, say, after we've gone potty and had some lunch. And he begins to cry and demand that we have it 'today.' We say, 'yes, today, as soon as we're done with lunch and going potty,' but it is too late. You've lost everything, because he wants it today.

Sania went swimming for the first time over at his friend Jay's grandmother's house. It was nice. She smiled and smiled and couldn't figure out why she was wearing a hat. When I get the pictures out of the camera, K won't let me show them because she's the one holding Sania, but maybe I'll get some photoshop out and see if we can get a witness-protection blur across her face.

Reid is now a figure-of-speech memorizer. He's an idiom-addict. K's favorite story about this involved driving somewhere with Reid and refusing some unreasonable request (watch a movie, fly an airplane, reverse the passage of time). Reid became angry and put K in time out (from his booster seat), demanded redress for his grievances and generally expressed sputtering dismay for whatever had just been decided. Then he said, "This is crazy, mommy." What three-year-old says that?

Sania has made Henry's blog! Check the second picture in this post. Yeah, baby. Cross-blogging the babies!

Okay, that's it for a bit. We were out of town last week helping Nonni recuperate, so we're low on photography. But here's something to keep Sania's breathless fans happy. Enjoy.