Milestone Minutiae

Whenever Emmett is bugging Luke, by jumping around making strange sounds in his face, for example, Luke will yell, "Emmett's doing a rude thing!" Sometimes when asking Luke why he hit Emmett, we'll get the same answer, "Emmett was doing a rude thing!"

Henry is almost 6 months old, and he's been really grabby when I'm holding him and eating, so I brought out the high-chair and started trying to feed him. He likes to play with Cheerios on his tray, and over a few days has pretty much figured out how to get them into his mouth. They usually come out again pretty quickly. Once in a while he actually gums one long enough to eat some. By far the majority end up dropped on his lap, but Jenny has kindly taken to cleaning out the high-chair at the end of each meal. I'm also surprised how many cheerios will fit into his little neck folds. I fed him some (tasteless) rice cereal and he didn't seem too interested, so I moved on to applesauce a couple of days later. When I got some into his mouth he made a face like I'd served him lemons. That was followed by bulging eyes, gagging, and spitting, like a cat with a hairball. I figured it was just a totally novel taste, so I've continued trying just a couple tastes of

Emmett was playing tic-tac-toe with a boy he met at the park. They seemed to be having a great time, jumping up and down gleefully in turn, so I started paying attention to their games. They seemed evenly matched. I watched six games, and only the final one was a tie! Who knew tic-tac-toe could be so exciting and suspenseful?

Luke and Emmett have both started yelling, "Stop making that racket, I'm trying to sleep!" at each other. Usually no particular noise (above the typically present din) is being made, so it's pretty funny.

Henry is belly-crawling all over now, but it's not the "arm-over-arm" army man crawling I've seen before. He throws both arms out and plants them on the floor, then he pulls in his left leg and pushes with it. I can't tell if he's pulling with his arms, or just using them to stabilize his torso when his leg makes the big push.

About 30 minutes before taking David to the airport, Luke wanted to paint. We keep the art supplies where they can reach them, so he brought over some yellow paint and asked me to open it. I told him I was sorry, but it was too close to time to go to the airport to start a messy project, and he'd have to wait until we got back to paint. He wandered off to play. A few minutes later, Emmett came out of the hallway carrying paper with yellow paint on it. "Luke's painting!" he called. Where? "In your bedroom on the carpet!" ARGH!!! Once again, he had been very careful, and there was not a speck of paint on the carpet around where he was painting. I've moved the paint supplies up (and told Luke why). But I guess I was wrong, both about how messy painting is* and whether or not there was enough time! *at the table, Luke usually makes hand prints in his paintings, which is why I think it's too messy of course.

Luke's been digging in the dirt on the side of the deck with his orange shovel. I've been asking him not to make dirt piles on the deck, but not really nagging him about it. Today I saw him in the house with the shovel so I told him it was an outside toy and asked him to take it outside. He gave a little Luke grunt, but he took the shovel outside. A couple of ours later when David came home he found the shovel, full of dirt and carefully placed on our bedroom floor. After another grunt, Luke took the shovel and dirt back outside. (none was spilled on either trip!)

Luke wrote on his belly and right foot with a ballpoint pen. When I asked him about it, he said it was for Halloween. He pointed to his belly and said, "See? Spooky!" Then he pointed to his left (clean) foot and said, "Not spooky," and finally pointed to his written-on right foot and said, "Spooky!"

Yesterday 18 inches, today 8 feet, tomorrow - the world!

Today I saw Henry intentionally scoot about 18 inches in order to capture a toy. He'll scoot forward and then reach out with his hand, to see if he's close enough yet, and then scoot again if he's still short of the goal. It's the farthest he's gone with a clear goal while I've been watching. Time to get the gate on the stairs up!

Today while I was making dinner Henry was in his bouncer, so Luke and Emmett decided to bring over a toy and play right next to him. Henry watched intently while Emmett played the xylophone (and Luke's toes). Luke and Emmett also like to play with the toys on Henry's bouncer, so they really do all play together already!

Emmett is a great big brother. I was watching while he and Luke wrestled on the grass outside. Emmett ended up pinning Luke several times, but as I watched I could see him roll over and pull Luke to the top of the pile. They each spent some time as top dog! Luke got upset a couple of times but never enough to come inside to get help from me, he always went back for more. I'm impressed by Emmett's ability to keep it fun for both of them.