SNOW DAY!

Bobby slept through the night for the first time last night! I'm not sure this qualifies as a trend, however. We went to California for five days to celebrate Thanksgiving -- Roger counted that Bobby ate in 10 different restaurants during those five days (that's just the number of different restaurants, not the total Dining Out experiences). He also stayed in two different hotels and met six new family & extended family members, not to mention countless nice folks who couldn't help but say 'hi' to him in restaurants, airplanes and elevators. He did all this while weathering a runny nose, cough and fever AND while hatching two new top teeth. And, after being home for merely five hours, Mom & Dad left him with a baby-sitter while they went to a meeting (actually, while they dialed-in to a meeting from the guest room, because it was too snowy to drive. More on that later).

So needless to say, once he'd gotten into his jammies, had some milk and gotten into his own bed in his own room with his humidifier going, he was ready for some sleep. In fact, he barely woke up long enough to have a little milk at 7:30 this morning before falling asleep again in our bed. Daddy, having stayed up until midnight and gotten up at 4 to finish some work, also needed some sleep this morning. Mom, on the other hand, having slept through the night for the first time in a year (those who have been pregnant know you don't sleep through the night that last month) is feeling great -- I barely even notice the cold that was making me miserable yesterday.

And then we woke up this morning to discover that the whole Puget Sound region is having a snow day!! Both Roger & I have a lot of work we should be doing, but Roger's office is closed and I can't get to mine, and Nanny Jude can't get to us, so we're just staying put.

Mom

Bobby's Menagerie

Bobby has a really great relationship with his pets. Symbiotic, you might even say.

For example, at meal time, Bobby dangles his sticky fingers over the side of the high chair and Homer obligingly licks them off. If Homer's not right on the spot, Bobby peers over the side to look for him. (A preview, no doubt, of Bobby handing food to Homer under the table in another year or so.) During Bobby's meal, Homer stations himself between me and the high chair. Presumably he's deduced that, thanks to gravity, anything that falls off the spoon on its way from the plate to Bobby's mouth is probably going to fall in that space between me and the high chair, and he wants to be right on it. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is that the food falls on his nose, where he can't reach it, and Scylla has to come along to clean it off. Once Bobby's done eating (and out of his high chair), Scylla goes to town cleaning off the seat to remove any stray Cheerios, shredded cheese or avocado pieces.

Penelope, meanwhile, is probably going to be the instigator of Bobby walking. She spends a lot of time hanging out in the living room with him. She wanders right up next to him, waits for him to take notice, and then sprints off just barely ahead of him. He then powers across the room after her (still crawling, but at high speed) and gets there just as she jumps up onto the window sill or the back of the couch. He stands up, gets close, and she takes off across the room again. This can go on for 20 minutes. Bobby thinks she's the most amusing thing ever. Her motivation is less clear. After a little while she starts to get stressed out and slithers between the rails of the baby gate, but she's usually back within a few minutes. No matter how relaxed she seems (and I've seen her lie down in the middle of the floor and roll over on her back as if daring him to catch her) she always knows exactly where he is and never lets down her guard.

With one exception.

Bobby's got a few plastic balls that came with a toy. Like so many toys, the main part is less interesting than the peripherals. This one is a little box with holes in the top, a mallet, and four balls. You're supposed to pound on the balls with the mallet 'til they go through the holes and roll out the bottom. This is a little advanced for him, but the mallet is fun and the balls are fun.

Penelope agrees. Penelope drops all inhibition when she sees Bobby holding onto these prized toys and sidles right up to him. She waits for him to let go of one, then snags it and races around the room dribbling it. Bobby thinks that's funny, so he chases her. Thanks to the slant of our living room floor, the ball periodically rolls back to Bobby, so they actually end up playing together.

Until the ball rolls under the couch.

Mom

The Walking Wounded

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. In his quest to start walking unassisted, Bobby took a tumble yesterday and cut his lip on those pesky teeth of his. By far it seemed more traumatic for Nanny Jude (well, and Mom) than for Bobby. I violated several city speed limits getting home -- by the time I got here, he was slurping on frozen watermelon quite cheerfully, and making a funny turtle face as he experimented with his new fat lip. I imagine that at this age, with his body changing so rapidly anyway, it must be hard to know what's permanent and what's temporary. Anyway, Bobby recovered, and eventually so did Jude (who had handled everything perfectly but was nonetheless a bit shaken).

Little spills notwithstanding, he's quite an adventurous little guy, constantly crawling over things and pursuing new things to play with. He's fascinated with technology -- here he's trying to grab the camera, but his favorite is the cordless phone. But he's also pretty intrigued by low-tech things as well. Pretty much anything new is fodder for his inquisitive hands and brain.






We had a great time this weekend celebrating Cousin Etta's First Birthday. Bobby almost slept through the party, having chosen that morning to take a particularly long nap. Fortunately plenty of people besides us decided to ignore the part of the invitation that suggested the party would be ending at Etta's naptime, so there were kids to play with.

Mom