Coughy Bird

Does this look like the face of a sick baby girl? Not really, no, right? But Baby Bird woke up in the two o'clock hour and didn't really get back to sleep. She's got an awful, awful cough. So she's home today with Julie, and has an appointment to see Dr. Harrington at 2pm. We will of course bring you the breaking news, almost as soon as it breaks.

But this morning, she was a happy camper. After the boys got off, the girls decamped to the bathroom so Julie could clean it. Like her brother before her, Clara was instantly entranced by the cover of the bolt connecting the toilet to the floor. Really, there is nothing like a toilet bowl bolt cover to set your heart to racing. After the bolt cover disappeared (object permanence having not yet set in has some benefits when it comes to toilet bolt covers), Clara Jane motored all the way from the bathroom to the far side of the bambini's room. Miss Melissa reports that at daycare, too, Baby Bird likes to be in tight little spaces, and tucked up against something.

Bird is napping now. We can report that efforts to push her daytime sleep to a 9am-1pm napping pattern appear to be paying off. Almost-live coverage of today's later events to follow.

You Find Me. . .

The first three books Joe ever loved were Where Is Baby's Belly Button?; Tickle, Tickle; and First 100 Words, from the Bright Baby series. In First 100 Words, there are two pages of animals--farm and wild. We spent many, many a night with Julie asking Joe to find her the pig, or the gorilla, or the tiger. Julie would make all the animals' noises, too. Joe was so great at finding all those animals. And then before we knew it, he was saying di-on (lion) and we were beyond First 100 Words. But tonight, the tables were turned:

Joe [opening First 100 Words]: "You find me. . .the grapes!"

Julie [pointing]: "Right there!"

Joe: "Good job!"

Fans, he's got me down cold.

Baby Bird's First Solid Meal: The Video

For those super fans out there, here is an edited 3 minutes of video from the feeding. It includes extra bonus footage of Joe in the background!

Hello Yellow House!

When Julie rolled up to the house each evening with Joe and Clara, Joe had adopted her habit of saying "Hello the House!"* When Joe's class began a unit on their home, and they were discussing home colors, Julie added yellow to the mix and thus, the new phrase became "Hello Yellow House!" (Julie was really glad our house is a color easily recognized by the toddler set.) Now it's too cold to park on the street at night, so we've returned to parking in the garage. We still say hello to our yellow house, but apparently, it is not the same unless you are greeting it from the front, because after pulling into the garage last week, Joe said he wanted to say hello to the yellow house "through the window." What to do? So we traipsed down the front walk to the steps, turned around, and said "HELLO YELLOW HOUSE!" with a flourish (the flourish is key). And thus was a new routine born.

*Out of Africa fans will recognize that this line is not her own.

Joe's Pajamas

Lately, when we check on the bambini before heading up to bed, we find Joe without his pajamas on. He had several kinds of pajamas: footed sleepers (fleece and cotton), and pants and shirt sets (the kind that are made to fit like sausage casings). He always striped off the footed sleepers. He seemed to not be able to get the sausage casings off entirely, but we would find that he had pushed the legs up as high as he could and had wrestled with the shirt. Was he hot? Uncomfortable? Just excited about his ability to take his clothes off? Worried that he was hot or uncomfortable, we got him some pairs of the looser fitting big boy pajamas. It's a little sad to say good-bye to the footed sleepers and sausage casings, but some things remain unchanged: he's still taking his pajamas off.