cecilmom

Seven years of motherhood

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:18:52 GMT

We have an ornamental plum tree in our front yard (our only tree, actually -- isn't that sad?) that blooms for about 4 days each spring. Squonk took a picture of me in front of it in 2003 while I was pregnant with Ragnar, and then we've taken a picture of me and the kid(s) in front of it each year. This wasn't easy this year -- Ragnar does *not* smile for the camera (he smiles often and enthusiastically, just not on command), and Janders is teething and in a mood. But this was the day that we could do it, so we did the best we could. Here's the whole progression of pictures for you, the first four combined (2003-2006), plus 2007-2009 separately.

Bathtime!

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:45:20 GMT

A quick post (maybe more later to tell you all where I've been / what I've been up to the last month or two). But for now, since Squonk is waiting for dessert and a movie with me, here's Janders during and right after her bath tonight. As you can see, she's having a great time.

Staping & States

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:49:19 GMT

Favorite Ragnar Riddle (tm) today: "I am a school thing, and you stape with me. What am I? A stapler!"

Second (distant) favorite: "I am an animal. I live in North America, and I live under the ground. And I am furry. What am I? A mole!"

Today Ragnar and I went to play on the school playground behind our house. The best part of the playground these days is the big US map painted on the blacktop. Ragnar, Janders (in her Baby Bjorn carrier) and I had a great time running to, jumping and stomping on various states. Then Ragnar noticed that some kids had been drawing on the map w/ chalk, and he insisted we go get our chalk and draw on the states too. So we did, starting w/ pluses (what the other kids had done), then adding the first letter of the state's name, then doing "mixed up state names" (anagrams w/ a letter missing). This was a lot of fun. We also looked for animals in the clouds, and then he played in the sandbox. A lovely afternoon. After dinner, he played a computer game where you build towers, then insisted on building ornate towers w/ blocks (something he never wants to do here). During his bath, we discussed what we would do before bed. "Let's read 'Ten Minutes to Bedtime' in the chair, then do an I love you hug in the bed, and then say goodnight," suggested Ragnar. And so we did. All in all a lovely evening. I hope I can remember this when intensive potty training starts tomorrow. I'm so NOT looking forward to that.

And how is Janders, you ask? She's awesome? A big 16 1/4 pounds as of 8 days ago (so probably over 16 1/2 now), 75th percentile for height and weight. The doctor said she looked great. She's still very smiley, grinning whenever you grin at her. She's now spinning herself around in her crib, getting very good at picking up objects, and enjoying swinging in her swing and taking walks in the baby carrier. Here's a picture of her from 2 days ago, in a rare moment of actually happy tummy time (tummy time is one of her least favorite activities):

Easter Art!

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 01:58:20 GMT

Today Ragnar and I were busy, busy, busy. We started the morning making Easter cookies -- butterflies, bunnies (running bunnies and bunny heads), and eggs. Ragnar helped me push down on the cookie cutters and supervised the placing of them on the cookie sheets. Then, after they were baked and cooled, we frosted them together. He helped squeeze the ziplocs into which I'd spooned colored frosting. He decided we should make musical instrument noises as we squeezed the frosting onto the cookies -- "ping," "tweedle-dee-dee," "oom papa," etc. It was hysterical.

Then we made traffic light cupcakes. Ragnar helped spoon in batter (red, yellow, and green) for traffic light cupcakes, and I used the remaining batter to make a bunny cake complete w/ ears and a bow tie. I didn't frost it, because Ragnar doesn't like frosting. So instead, I made a bowl of raspberry lemon frosting which I'll put on the table next to the cake so people can add their own frosting.

Then, I asked Ragnar if he wanted to make placecards for Easter with paint, stamps, or stickers. He chose stickers, and I cut up some construction paper eggs for Ragnar to stick stickers on and write people's name on. These looked lovely, and we'd done five when he decided he'd rather paint them. So he started painting eggs, and Ragnar announced he was going to paint Africa. His exact words were "I'm gonna paint Africa just like the paintbrush does" (does rhymed with "sues"). This actually makes sense if you know the context. Andrew's favorite movies these days are the Disney True-Life Adventures, which are actual footage of animals in various locations around the world. The movies always start with a cartoon paintbrush painting the place where the movie takes place, and African Lion begins with the brush painting Africa. So that's what Ragnar wanted to paint. He painted 9 eggs with Africas, including a few rainbow Africas and a multicolor Africa.

Here's the results of our flurry of creating today:

I also got the seeds started. No soaping, sadly. There are only so many hours in a day (or so many hours I can stay awake).

From the Mixed-Up Animals File of Ragnar

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:41:19 GMT

Ragnar: I wanna do a riddle.
Me: Go for it!
Ragnar: I am an animal, and I live in the savannah, and I have the letters B, E, A, R, Z. What am I?
Me (feeling confused): A bear?
Ragnar: No, a mixed-up zebra! Let's do another mixed-up savannah animal riddle!

And he proceeded to do riddles for mixed-up leopard, cheetah, and elephant. I did one for lion.

A nice evening. Squonk went to services, and Ragnar, Janders, and I hung out together, watching a bit of Walt Disney's Bear Country (an old True Adventure animal video), playing a bit of Up to Ten (if you have a little kid and don't know about Up To Ten, check it out! It's wonderful), playing Cariboo & Hullabaloo, and reading stories together. It was my first evening putting both kids to bed by myself, and it went delightfully well. I have great kids.

Tomorrow: easter egg cookies from Cooking Light (the dough is in the fridge now), and some kind of egg placecards for Easter dinner at Grandma & Grandpa's house if I can figure out what Ragnar & I can do for them. Oh, yeah, and more traffic light cupcakes, and some time, I hope, I hope, I hope, a chance to play with the new soap frosting recipe from WholesaleSuppliesPlus since the last of the ingredients for it arrived today. Oh, yeah, and I have to start the seeds for the peppers and tomatoes. Sigh. Probably I won't be lucky enough to find the time for all of that though...

Sad News: Terry Pratchett

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:06:30 GMT

One of our favorite authors, the wonderful, wise, funny Terry Pratchett, has a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. I can't tell you how much this depresses me. My grandmother died of rapid-onset Alzheimer's in 1996; it was the most awful thing I've ever experienced.

Pratchett has donated 500,000 pounds to a British Alzheimer's research fund, and fans of his have begun a campaign to match that donation. You can learn more at http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/.

Daddy's little girl

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:13:12 GMT

Here's Janders & Squonk modeling their matching "Big Daddy" and "Daddy's Little Girl" sweats from my parents:

And here's Janders showing off her new sunbonnet, which is WAY too big for her.

Cuteness!

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:38:11 GMT

Here's Janders posing in her bumbo seat (TM).

Ragnar Art

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:42:23 GMT

Ragnar & Janders & I were hanging out yesterday morning due to Ragnar's day off school for MLK day. I showed him the new Color Wonder markers & paper I'd bought (that stuff is really cool -- the markers don't show up on anything but the special paper, so you can't make a mess of yourself or the table, etc.), and he decided to draw a picture for me. Here it is. The blue items are awake bowling balls, the yellow one is a giraffe with a long neck, and the pink thing is an elephant complete w/ ears and trunk. Although I chatted with him while he was drawing and suggested the ears for the elephant and giraffe, the drawing is 100% Ragnar's. And I'm super proud of him for it, especially given that only a month ago the only drawing he did was scribbles and "lighting" (zigzag lines).

One more Ragnar bit

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:06:39 GMT

We were reading What Time Is It, Mr. Crocodile? earlier, and I asked Ragnar what one of the monkeys was doing. "Riding on an asterisk," he replied. The monkey was actually riding on / swinging from a ceiling fan.

Riddle me this

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:15:39 GMT

We've been doing riddles with Ragnar this week. I think I need to work on my technique some.

Me: I am green and you find me on the ground in the summer. What am I?
Ragnar: A sand toy!

Yes, he does indeed have several green sand toys.

Me: You make me by combining black and white.
R: A zebra!

Other riddles we tried (more for posterity):

Me: I am wet and you can splash and play in me.
R: A pool!

Me: I am a red fruit that grows on trees.
R: An apple! Do some more, with animals!

Me: I am a small bird with a long beak that can't fly.
R: A kiwi!!!

(this last is probably overclued for Ragnar, who loves kiwis).

Do I dare to freeze a peach

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:37:58 GMT

If I didn't have kids, I would post about food, crafts, and language. The latter two subjects will have to wait (though let me put in a plug for the Language Log, written partly by a former professor of mine, Mark Liberman -- if you're at all interested in language and/or linguistics, you should be reading that blog).

Tonight I'm enjoying a yummy smoothy, which contains about 1/4 c of lowfat vanilla yogurt, 1/3 c cold water, 3/4 c fresh strawberries, 3/4 c frozen white peaches (from our local orchard, Pryors, which has THE BEST peaches and apples and pears in the world -- if you live anywhere near us, ask me for directions), 1/2 a frozen banana, and maybe 1/2 T sugar. Mmmmmm. Anyway, wanted to share with you all a tip a friend's mom shared with me last summer. You can freeze peaches whole. Just stick them in the freezer, and when they're hard, pop them in a big ziploc bag. To eat them, put them under running warm water and rub off the skin (it will come off easily), then pop the peach in the microwave till it thaws (it takes about 2 mins in my fairly dinky microwave). I ate the peach I froze and thawed this way at lunch. I ate it with a spoon, pit still in. The flesh falls off the pit as you spoon it apart, so that when I was done eating it, I had a completely clean peach pit with no peach left on it. I've never eaten a peach so efficiently -- only the thin skin and pit were left behind, and I got all the peachy goodness. Next summer, I'm going to freeze an entire bushel of peaches at their peak -- yum.

Hey! And Button Maddition!

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:54:00 GMT

Ragnar is really enthusiastic about reading these days. He'll just pick up random pieces of paper with words on them and read them out loud. We were shopping in Bloom today, and he out of the blue said "Hey!" I was thinking "Hey? This kid has never said anything like 'hey' before." But then he continued: "If this isn't on your list, it should be." And I realized he was reading me a sign. He got a thank you note the other day from his teacher (whom we had given mom-made soap and notecards). It contained the sentence "Your mom is very talented," which Ragnar read as "Your mom is really tired." Probably his version is more accurate. :)

The last few nights, Ragnar's last activity before bath, bedtime story, and bed has been "button maddition." Squonk's sister gave him a set of craft stuff for Chanukah, including some oversized plastic buttons for lacing. Being Ragnar, he found a non-standard way of playing with them. So he does "button maddition." He'll say "let's do some square maddition. I have three pink squares and four blue squares. How many buttons do I have? Seven!" The second night of this, I offered to write the equations on the whiteboard for him. He was enthusiastic about this. Squonk then taught him commutativity, so for three pink squares and four blue squares, he'll dictate 3+4=7 and 4+3=7. Tonight, he wanted to help me write, grabbing my hand and guiding it. I predict within a few days he'll be writing the numbers by himself.

On a slightly related note, last night he figured out adding one, so that he can now add one to any number from 1 to 99. Another new piece of math knowledge: we were playing with some foam numbers today, and I showed him 846 and told him it was "eight hundred and forty-six" (up until now, he only knew 1 to 100), then showed him 546 and 746, telling him what they were called, and then I showed him 346, and he told me right away it was "three hundred and forty-six".

Another popular activity is button "patterens" -- Ragnar or I will make a pattern out of buttons, and the other one has to complete it. We started out easy: red circle, blue square, red circle, blue square, red circle, ? But now we can do more interesting ones. Tonight I did blue circle, blue square, blue triangle, red circle, red square ? and he put down a red triangle, then continued with green and then purple all on his own.

He didn't want to stop this to go take a bath, until I pointed out that I had some foam shapes he'd never played with that we could use to do maddition and patterns in the bath. He zoomed up the stairs for that. Here's the tub when we were done (and yes, that's Miss Janders's hand in the one picture, as I was holding her while taking pictures of the tub -- not easily done, mind you).

And what's Janders up to, you ask? Eating and growing. We're pretty sure (though our scale isn't *that* great) that she weighs about 14 pounds now and is close to 22 inches long. That would means she's grown 3" and almost doubled her birth weight in just over 2 months. You go, girl! She's also very, very smiley. Any time I talk to her she turns to look at me and grins this big wonderful grin. She's also giving us a 7 hour stretch most nights. Woo hoo!

So that's what it's like to have a girl :)

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:06:12 GMT

When they brought Janders in for nursing about 4 hours after she was born, I noticed two of her fingernails were purply-blue. The rest of them were fine, so I wasn't worried, but I was mystified. Turns out she grabbed onto her cord stump, which was painted with some purply-blue stuff after birth. Not even a day old, and she already wants to paint her nails. :) Wish I'd gotten a picture, but her nails were wickedly sharp at first, so we were keeping them tucked in, and by the time we got them trimmed, the colored nails were colored no more.

Ragnar is doing well with his little sister. He goes over to check her out, pats her gently, and when she cries, he tells her not to cry or to be happy. Otherwise, he's pretty much ignoring her, which I think is fine. He can adjust to her gradually this way.

Ragnar finally figured out the computer mouse this past week. We went from 2 years of seemingly no understanding at all of how to move the mouse (and how the mouse moves the cursor) to perfect control of the mouse. Previously, anything we did on the computer together was us clicking on things at his request. But now, he's playing games that ask him to hit moving targets or click on elements less than 1/4" wide, and he does it with amazing accuracy. Sometimes his aim is better than mine. This is awesome -- it opens up a whole lot of things he can do himself, and he's very proud and excited about it.

Janders is doing great with sleeping now. The first night she was home was a nightmare -- she slept for 2-10 minutes at a stretch most of the night, crying constantly. She would quiet when we'd go in, but then be crying again right after we left. Around dawn, she did sleep for about 1/2 an hour two times, but that was the best we'd gotten all night. Squonk and I were both a mess.

But the next day, we went out and bought a few of those Swaddle Me things. She seemed to like being swaddled in the hospital, but our swaddling skills are subpar, and I was afraid she's come unswaddled in the middle of the night and then have blankets wrapped around her face. But these thingies are like swaddling for Dummies. There's velcro to keep them in place. So who knows -- maybe it was the Swaddle Me, or maybe Thursday night was an aberration, but we've now had two nights where she slept soundly in her crib between feedings (3 - 4 hours at a stretch), so life is good. It's a little tiring getting up 2 or 3 times a night to nurse for most of an hour at a time (and don't even ask how painful nursing is the first week, while you're toughening up, though I seem to recall it will be much better soon), but it's sooooo much better than that first night at home.

During the day, she eats and snoozes and coos a bit. She's got almost scary neck and head control already -- she can pick her head up and look around when she's on your shoulder. Yesterday, when she was in the playpen (which she does not like), she came *very* close to turning over onto her tummy. She'd kicked all the way up onto her side. Yeeeikes -- strong little girl. Though I'm all for strong girls. :)

She's also eating very enthusiastically -- like her brother was, she's a champion nurser. Sometime we'll introduce the bottle so Squonk can share in feedings, but not for a bit yet. I'm supposed to stay at home and "rest" for the first two weeks, so might as well let her practice nursing exclusively for a while yet.

Back to work, if Janders will let me grade a few papers. But first, a picture for you all of Squonk & Janders relaxing at home:

Penguin Ragnar Rides the Bus

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:45:07 GMT

Ragnar did *not* want to wear his new horse costume to school today. Despite our trying to talk it up for a week, he was steadfast: NO HORSE COSTUME. Okay, fine. How about last year's penguin costume, which looked like it would just barely fit? No. NO PENGUIN COSTUME. Okay. So we resigned ourselves to letting him wear the creepy crawly spider shirt Grandma bought him. And then, right before school, I suggested it might be fun to wear the penguin costume on the bus (the horse one would never work on a bus -- way too unwieldy). And what do you know -- turns out, though penguin costumes at school are a silly idea, penguin costumes on the bus are AWESOME!

Here he is....

He came home in regular clothes. I mean really, who wants to wear a costume to a Halloween party at school???

Happy Halloween, all!

The Writing on the Wall & the Ringing of the Bell

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:37:17 GMT

The way to make bathtime fun for Ragnar is to offer spelling with foam letters or writing with bath crayons. Last night, having just finished a puzzle with numbers in it before bathtime, we suggested spelling numbers. Here's Ragnar posing with TWENTY-FIVE, and TWENTY-FIVE in its full glory once Ragnar had exited the tub. No, we haven't taught him about the hyphen yet (though he does know about apostrophes and, of course, exclamation marks (otherwise known as decoration points)).

This past Saturday, my sister got married. It was a beautiful, simple ceremony, and she and her husband looked tremendously happy. Ragnar had a key role in the wedding: he was the Bell Ringer. The wedding was held in my parents' backyard (which is gorgeous, especially since my dad spent the summer designing a new patio and deck, putting in a beautiful trellis with a little stone path, and landscaping everything). So at the end of the ceremony, to celebrate the newly wedded couple, Ragnar climbed up his play equipment and rang the bell proudly. He did a great job (as did Squonk, who got him to the bell on time, while I stood at the front as a hugely pregnant maid of honor).

Speaking of hugely pregnant, Janders is due in just over a month. Hooray and yikes!

PQQDLE!

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 20:54:41 GMT

Ragnar spent about an hour before his nap today spelling. I made this set of polka dot letters for him for Chanukah or Chrismas last year, but he wasn't interested in it at the time. He became *very* interested in it (discovering it himself on a shelf) last week, and this week, we discovered he didn't have enough letters. He ran out of Os while spelling poodle, so Scott convinced him to use Qs for Os. So yesterday he spelled PQQDLE, CQLLIE, and RQTTWEILER (we're going through a dog breed phase -- can you tell?).

So today I made an expansion set for the letters -- lots more vowels, especially Es and Os (spelling Foofoo and Snoo from Dr. Seuss's I Can Read with My Eyes Shut uses up a lot of Os fast). As an extra treat, I made a set of exclamation points for him. Ragnar loves exclamation points ever since my mom taught him about them last fall. So now every word has an exclamation point: FOOFOO! SNOO! CATERPILLAR!

The only wrinkle was that Squonk's "a Q is like an O" campaign worked a little too well -- despite the fact that I gave him 20 new Os, Ragnar still insisted on spelling poodle as PQQDLE! We did convince him to use Os after that, but I fear he'll lose points on spelling tests in elementary school if they ever include pqqdle... I mean poodle. Oh well. There's a proud tradition of misspelling in my family -- my mom lost points on a spelling test in grade school when she spelled a word the way her father, to be funny, pronounced it -- she wrote BURGULAR instead of BURGLAR. I'm not sure she's quite forgiven him yet.

Here's a picture of Ragnar when he'd almost finished his spelling session, and another of the completed session itself once we'd dragged him off for his nap.

In other exciting news, R is learning to write! He now makes Is, Ls, and exclamation points, and he's working on circles. Squonk is also teaching him tic tac toe, and he's making some pretty good tic tac toe boards too.

Happy 10th, Sweetie, and Happy Puzzling to the rest of you

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 21:36:55 GMT

10 years ago yesterday, Squonk showed up on my doorstep. At least, that's what I call the short version of the story of how we met. I'll spare you all the long version. But suffice it to say that that day changed my life in absolutely wonderful ways. And I say that even in the midst of long-running morning sickness. :)

The second or third day after we met, Squonk and I spent some time laughing over Tom Swifties, bad puns like this one: "That's a Yugoslavian pen," Tom said acerbically.

Last night I suggested we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the weekend we met by creating a Tom Swifty puzzle for our friends. The puzzle exists now in two versions. In both, your job is to determine the missing adverbs from 26 Tom Swifties, with one answer adverb for each letter of the alphabet. In the version below, the answers are in alphabetical order (i.e. the answer to #1 begins with an A, the answer to #2 begins with a B, etc.). The number in parentheses at the end of each Swifty tells you how many letters the answer contains.

If you'd prefer the trickier version where the answers are not in alphabetical order, you can find it at

squonk_npl's livejournal.

Enjoy, and feel free to post answers in the comments. I'll make the same request Squonk did -- please just give one answer per person, so more people can play.

Happy July 28th - 30th, all.

Cecil

“No more chilies for me. I can feel that last one right down to my smoking belly”, said Tom __. (12)
“You bet I’m teaching my donkey to repeat koans,” Tom said ___. (8)
“My dear, what a lovely aroma of burning priceless vases,” Tom said ___. (10)
“I need to rely on you to fix the damage to the non-shallow part of my pool,” Tom said ___. (11)
“It’s no problem for me to set up this stand for your painting,” Tom said ___. (6)
“I’m so tired of hailing cabs,” Tom said ___. (10)
“Everybody on the planet will come to see my fluorescent male cow,” Tom said ___. (8)
“The farmer next door is breeding mutant zombie bunnies!” Tom said ___. (4-9)
“Do you think we should poach that ailing symbol of our nation?” Tom asked ___. (9)
“M-may is a m-month, like the one that f-follows it,” Tom stuttered ___. (8)
“This sentence is miss some letters,” Tom said ___. (9)
“My mug is missing nearly all of its top edge,” Tom cried ___. (12)
“Here’s a teeny tiny salamander-like creature I just acquired,” Tom said ___. (8)
“December 31 is fast approaching; I wonder what happens then,” Tom said ___. (7)
“My lord, what a wonderful fat insect you have there,” Tom said ___. (10)
“I sprained my wrist killing that vampire,” Tom said ___. (13)
“Is it all right with you if I choose to not go slay that dragon?” Tom asked ___. (13)
“There I go regretting my adolescence again,” Tom said ___. (9)
‘oh no1 there’s something wrong with my keyboard,’ tom said ---. 9110
“I think you’ve put up enough pins to hold that poster to the wall,” Tom said ___. (9)
“Take back what you said about Dolores from the Harry Potter books!” Tom said ___. (12)
“Behold the fantastic wind-direction-measuring instrument only I could have constructed,” said Tom ___. (6)
“Stop hitting those poor defenseless little moles,” Tom said ___. (7)
“I’ve always been afraid of Lucy Lawless,” Tom said ___. (14)
“While on guard duty, I greeted the visitor as if he were from Philadelphia,” Tom said ___. (8)
“And so, it naturally follows that I want to go see all the animals,” Tom said ___. (12)

Spelling Lessons from a 3-year-old, or "There's no E in pheasant!

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 03:02:12 GMT

I can't stand it anymore. So many cool Ragnar moments go by without my recording them. So I caved in and started a livejournal of my own.

Tonight, Ragnar was taking his bath. He's recently decided baths are the best thing in the world again, because he can cover the walls of the tub with words he spells with his giant set of foam letters. He started out with his current favorites: THEO, ANIMAL, ZEBRA, GIRAFFE, etc. But then at one point he decided to try a new word: PHEASANT. Usually when he wants to spell a new word, he announces his intentions and then waits for me to help him. But tonight he wanted to do it himself. "A pink P," he requested, and then "a pink H." I start to feel very proud. He's taught himself how to read pheasant from one of his animal books! But then I hear the unexpected "a purple A." "Do you mean a purple E?" I prompt. No, says Ragnar, an A. I tell him the next letter in pheasant is an E. Then comes the A. He replies, calmly but insistently "There's no E in pheasant," and hands the E back to me. I surrender and pass on the A. Then he asks for a N. I try again. "Honey, after the A comes an S." "No, no S in pheasant." At this point I know I'm beat. I sit back and let Ragnar teach me how to spell pheasant. Turns out I've been misspelling it for many years. It's actually PHANT. (Just to make sure I get it, after he finished putting PHANT up on the wall of the tub, he says, very deliberately, "P-H-A-N-T spells pheasant!" Who knew?

Some of my other favorite quotes from this bath: "Max is hiding on the bathtub wall" (Max is my parents' dog; Ragnar had spelled his name on the tub wall). "Look at all the words hanging on the wall!" He also did a lovely job with ordinals, using up to eleventh correctly. And we're finally catching on to thank you, only a year after please appeared in his vocabulary. Once Squonk joined us, R politely thanked him for letters he got from his daddy -- "Thank you for the C! Thank you for the A!" He also let me share the tub wall with him, after a brief discussion. My first word, PEACOCK, clearly ticked him off -- "Erase the peacock!" But I told him they were my words, and encouraged him to continue with his words, and he acquiesced. So yay for sharing -- maybe we'll be a little better at sharing by the time Janders arrives.

Janders is really making herself known these days, kicking enthusiastically many times a day. Like her brother, she's very active, but unlike Ragnar, she hasn't experiences any in-utero hiccups yet. Now she's a strong enough kicker that Squonk can feel her bumping up against my stomach most evenings. That is without a doubt my favorite part of pregnancy. (I won't start on a list of all the parts I don't like, but you can believe morning sickness that's still hanging on in the beginning of the sixth month is high on the list.)

Today we ran some errands at a local department store. We took R on the escalator for the first time (we just never go places with escalators -- we're not mall people). He was thrilled. Had I realized just how exciting escalators would be, I would have taken him long ago. We rode up & down three times, with him gleefully asking to "ride on the escalator again!" each time. Hey, it's a lot cheaper than those $2 per person little slow creaky carousels at the local carnival we visited last week!

A few pics to accompany this post, of Ragnar spelling and the tub after he got out. (The white letters don't show up well, in case you're wondering about "EBRA.")