Oh, These Kids

I hear from the lunch table today:
E:"I look around, and once again, I'm on my own. My man ain't here, he's gone, and done me wrong"
Yes, we ARE Muppets fans, how did you know?

Jamie is inches away from walking. About a week ago, he let go of the coffee table and tried to take a step to me, while I was on the couch. He fell down. But he hasn't stopped trying. He also, apparently, taught himself how to (in Shawn's words) rappel down the stairs. After months of me trying to teach him. He's speedy! So now, nowhere is safe from this boy. Well, nowhere under three feet. He can go up and down stairs, he cruises and take 2-3 steps, and pulls things out of cabinets. Tonight, I had my phone in the front pocket of the hoodie I was wearing. He could see the edge, and was trying to pull it out. I was quietly pulling the phone back in from the other side. He gave up, looked up at me, and put his right hand, flat, up to his right ear, and cocked his head over to his shoulder. Then said "Ha?" I almost let him have the phone for being so damned cute. Maybe a fluke? I thought so at first, then put my flat hand up to my ear, and he cracked up and did it again, and "talked" to me for a minute on his "phone." Hilarious! What a big guy!

This Girl Has Her Own Way With Words

Picking Shawn up from the Metro tonight
Me: All right, I'm just going to pull the car over there. This place is a distaster zone
Em: A disaster?
Me: yeah, I don't even know what's going on here
Em: Is a disaster zone a fancy way of saying not nice?

Before bedtime tonight
I'm kissing Emmeline's cheek
Em: Please lay down
Me: Ok, I was enjoying kissing you. You're so kissable!
Em: I'm also so snuggable! I'm your snuggle worm!
Me: My snuggle worm??!! I'm not sure I want a snuggle worm!
Em: But I'm not yucky!

Calling Meme the other day, the phone is ringing, but not going to VM
Me: Ok, Em, I think Meme will call us back later, or we can call her another time.
Em: No, I will wait, the phone is still purring.

He Really Loves to Dance

6 Month Check In

We had Jamie's 6 month check on Wednesday. Little guy is weighing in at 14 lbs 13 oz, which puts him in the 10th percentile! You'd never know it, the way he eats. He has been chowing down on everything (except avocados) we've put in front of him. Bananas, applesauce, pears, melon, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, butternut squash, you name it, he'll stuff it in. He tries to feed himself, poor thing. Doesn't work well.
He is definitely, officially crawling. Tonight, he got his knees up under him, and sort of tried to launch backward into a sitting up position. Didn't work. But, he's getting faster everyday, and I'm getting more nervous that Babies R Us doesn't carry enough gates for our house.
Two little teeth are trying their best to work their way through on the bottom, but no luck yet. Just lots of drool.
Basically, my little guy (or muffin man, or Buster, or small fry, if you ask Emmeline) is getting to be quite the baby. Not an infant anymore. I kinda like it!
Emmeline, for her part, is getting to be such a preschooler, along with the requisite imagination, that I can't keep up. She has a host of imaginary friends, and they all do such interesting things together. I can't even keep track of all the funny things she says.
Her absolute favorite, most loved pastime right now is watching The Sound of Music. I have no objections to this. Is there a more family friendly movie out there? Only bad people at the end, and only bad because we KNOW they're bad. They don't even actually do anything bad in the movie. Em can't quite grasp or pronounce Nazi, so she calls Herr Zeller a Nasty or a Naughty. HILARIOUS. She wants to see the "muppet" part with "old lou" (this is yodeling), and now asks me almost every day what some of my favorite things are and how I can solve a problem like Maria. She loves Captain "Bontrap" and Frau Maria. She's a little caught on the nuns though, calling them "ones" for the fist three viewings of the movie. We're obviously not Catholic. Luckily, because this movie is so long, we often watch it over a week. We watch 30 or 40 minutes at a time, so we really stretch it out. Luckily, I heard through the Christmas grapevine that a DVD version is coming, which is really fantastic since the copy I have is, yep, on VHS! I had to drag out the VCR and dust it off. Still chugging along though.

Here He Goes

My camera (with its video function) is broken. My phone requires a memory card to take video. Shawn's camera, despite its many options, does not take video. My Flip was unavailable for comment. So, in order to prove that Jamie is (pseudo) crawling, I have taken some pictures, flip book style. I present for your review and entertainment, the following:

I know it might be hard to see, but he was going for the tag on the boppy. This only took him about a minute, and that was mostly cause he was pausing to listen to the camera click.

A Few Pictures

I got my toes!

James saying A-looooooooha from Hawaii

Emmy and Jeffrey loving the fish

Love the Aquarium

Bless Us, Every One

When we started saying grace before dinner with Emmeline, I wanted to keep it simple. To that end, we have always just said "Dear God, thank you for our food, and thank you for our family. Amen." I thought that was simple enough for a little toddler to grasp - to the point. Now that she's so very old, she likes to help me. Now, dinner goes more like this:
M: Dear God, thank you for our food
E: And our milk!
M: and our milk, and thank you
E: and our forks!
M: and our forks, and thank you for our family
E: and thank you for Jamie's blue elephant
M: yes, Lord, thank you for all the toys that we're able to give to our children. Amen.
E: You didn't say thank you for our dinner!
M: I did. You were too busy thanking God for everything else.

I like that she's so very thankful, but I'm also kind of hungry and would like to get to the eating part of our dinner. Bless her.