Wise beyond her months

may, originally uploaded by skweerell.

Sim is 11 months old but will be One year old on the 17th. I took this picture of her in our front yard and it made me laugh because she is sitting as if she were older and really posing but really she's just leaning on my leg.

Sim's learning to do so many things like wave bye-bye and give kisses. All the colds we've had this year have given her the unusual ability to blow her nose already. She'll also spit things out on command, which is good but also a pain because she puts things in her mouth so I'll tell her to spit it out. (sigh) She especially likes to play this game with mulch.

She can oink (or grunt rather) like a pig and also say "Ahhhhhh!" after a nice sip of tea. She loves tea. She's also learning to blow because she can see that it's useful for dandelion puffs and bubbles and food that's too hot.

She's a sweetie.

Sim, the big spider

Sim has started crawling properly this week. Her tum is off the floor and she's moving all fours rather than dragging herself around like a baby seal. Ro is both amused and annoyed by this turn of events. Sometimes as he dances around her he says, "look , look baby's crawling!" But when he realizes she's crawling toward one of his toys, he throws himself down a few feet in front of her and says, "Uh oh, Signal!" Meaning the signals that drop and stop trains in Thomas the Tank Engine parlance. He then extends his arms in an attempt to stop Sim's progress but she crawls past him anyway. If Ro is sitting with me, and Sim starts crawling toward us. Ro leaps up, points at Sim and says, "Oh No! A big spider! Run, Mommy, Run!, Help!"

Ro is currently really into the ABCs and he really likes reading comic books, so he's especially attracted to comic book with sound effect bubbles. I heard him reading out the letters (A-U-G-G-G-G-H) the other day and was totally baffled as to what he was doing. Eventually, I realized he was spelling out "Auggggh!, Crash!, Blam!" and stuff like that - the sound effect type things. I'm not sure what he gets out of comic books. It must be something like us looking at hieroglyphics - interesting but mysterious.

happy mother's day

Daddy got me a nice sketchbook, pencils, pens, and a neat pencil box for mother's day. We've made a pact of sorts -- to start drawing again --- and drawing regularly. I really need to do it at least a few times per week but I have no idea how we'll fit it in with everything else going on.

We went to my mom's for mother's day lunch. Sim was tearful most of the way there, so Ro held her hand and talked to her and it calmed her down and she went to sleep. It was great. She adores him. He's still being sweet to her but it's a lot harder now because she's mobil and getting into his stuff. She wants to do what he's doing. She also wants to touch him all the time - preferably slap at him, tug his clothes, or pull his hair. He is not thrilled. He feels a bit hounded these days.

construction paper! baby on the move!

Ro's sunday school teacher offered him a sheet of "construction paper" yesterday in class. He was really intrigued. "Construction Paper! WOW!" I avoid the term,construction, when discussing colored paper because I know he thinks construction involves lots of yellow vehicles moving dirt. So, before he got disappointed, I quickly tried to explain it was just your usual colored paper but come people called it construction paper because you could make things out of it. Construct being another word for make or build. blah blah blah blah blah..... I think my commentary goes over his head. It didn't matter though. He wasn't in any way disappointed. He grabbed a pencil and set about drawing wheels, which I eventually realized were parts of a construction vehicle of some sort. He drew a front loader and then a dump truck and finally a crane. You can tell what the dump truck and crane are but the front loader is a little obscure unless he tells you what it is. Now, I guess he thinks construction paper is for drawing construction vehicles. I'm so weirded out that he can draw as well as he does -- when he hardly ever does it. He only picks up a pencil/marker/crayon maybe twice a month at best -- but every time he does something coherent and not just scribble. He drew Calvin and Hobbes a few weeks ago.

Sim is on the move. Today, she scared me. I was playing with her on the floor and I got up to go sit by Ro and when I glanced where I had left her on the floor, she wasn't there. I scanned the room and didn't see her at all. I was feeling a mite alarmed when she peeped at me to let me know she was standing right next to me. She'd pulled herself up to standing using the couch, which is a first. She's been toying with it for about a week. She's been able to pull up for quite awhile but she wouldn't do it on anything but a hand or an arm for some reason.