advanced parenting

we've moved beyond chocolate or poop.

the new question is: soap or snot?

Alice is 7 months old!

Better late than never...here is Alice's 7 month picture. Alice entered her seventh month fairly mobile (which increases the degree of picture difficultly) and in fairly crabby spirits, which have left her parents sleep deprived and even less organized than usual. This crabbiness has been attributed at some point or another to the following causes:

1) Vacation Hangover---aka grandma withdrawal--following a week with near constant grandma (and grandpa) admiration. We've been told by friends that it takes two days to recover for every day on vacation. eek!

2) Clothes that cover the knees---how is a baby suppose to learn to crawl when her feet get caught up in all that stuff.

3) Illness--our baby wouldn't just be crabby (the doctor gave her a clean bill of health on Thursday when we went for an ear check)

4) Diminished cuteness--how is a baby suppose to maintain maximum cuteness when all her parents will put her in are the same 2 onesies (see 2).

5) teething--to which we've blamed every period of crabbiness for the last 5 months--she's bound to get teeth eventually, right?

Thankfully, Alice is in good spirits this weekend and has hopefully remembered how great it feels to be a good sleeper!

Motor skills & an update

Sarah's latest theory, picked up from a friend, is that Alice develops her motor skills in waves - fine motor skills develop, then there's a pause for gross motor skills, then back to the fine motor skills, then back again to refine the gross motor skills, etc.

Many people have noticed that Alice has plateaued a bit in terms of crawling after advancing so rapidly two weeks ago; according to Sarah's theory, this is because she's currently in a "fine motor skill" stage. Thus her pincher grasp and ability to pick and stack small things is currently improving.

What Sarah doesn't know is that real reason for all this is that two weeks ago Daddy suddenly realized that he preferred an immobile baby to a crawling baby, and so has stopped training her in ambulatory skills. Instead, he's now training her in gnawing skills and smashing towers skills -- two of his own personal favorite activities.

Also an update: apparently the national weather guys now say that what did all that damage to the trees and our neighbors' wasn't a tornado, but straight-ahead winds. So to make the story more impressive, we're describing it as a "hurricane force gale." At one point, the local news website had Grandpa on as the lead video: www.wbay.com ("Hurricane Strength Winds Cause Damage In the Town of Brooklyn...")

Something more destructive than Alice

Alice has now officially survived both an earthquake and a tornado! A twister passed right next to Grandma & Grandpa's house in Green Lake while we were eating dinner. Grandma & Grandpa's house is largely unscathed, but the next-door neighbors weren't so lucky. Their roof stayed on, perhaps because of the tree that collapsed on top of it. Also note the flipped over pontoon boat and lift, the aluminum rowboat which was blown over a hundred yards from the lakeshore up their hill, and all the rest of the hundred-year-old trees that were blown over. The neighbor to the south lost some siding. Nobody was hurt. The county sheriff said the weather service from Milwaukee will come up tomorrow to assess the area and grade the tornado.

After witnessing all the destruction, Alice decided she was hungry.

We also added a picture of Alice and Grandma playing in the shade of one of those old trees from yesterday.

A day at the park

Alice found lots of new things to explore at the park, including how sand/gravel feels (but no tasting!), what fun pony rides can be, and the strange loud echo Daddy makes as he comes down the tube slide.

...but Daddy trained her

Alice may have done her first real crawling on a day when Kirke was busy at the hospital, but he'd like to remind everyone that he selflessly put in all the long hours and hard work of training her in the first place -- as evidenced by this film from the archives...

What a difference a week makes...

Last weekend, Alice was helplessly getting sucked under heavy furniture of doom, now she has mastered a form of forward propulsion! We fear that life may have just gotten a lot more exciting.....

Farmer's Market

Squash was all it took for Alice to get some zzzzz's during our farmer's market adventure this morning!