Fall is here! October 2010

Click here to view these pictures larger

Good boy, Oscar, good boy

I forgot that with babies, they're like dogs. One week to them is like 2 years to us. Since my last post, just over a month ago, Oscar is a completely different kid. Well, I mean, sort of. He still hates naps, bats (read: hits) at our faces when he's excited and shovels more food in his mouth than turkey a week before Thanksgiving, but what he DOES as a kid has changed tremendously. He's pulling up to standing and then letting go, a lot. Sure, he doesn't know what to do once he lets go, but he's very proud of himself for considering it. He also has started to talk. He was finally fed up with how dim we were in translating his different grunts and slaps (I'm sorry, "sign language"), so he's taken to forming sounds that are intelligible to someone other than himself. His first word is exactly, and a little creepily, the same as his sister's: ra-ra. He says it whenever we ask him where to look for our cat, Roscoe. He finds him, smiles, and then says, "ra-ra" in a very loving way. I could only hope for so much in how her refers to me, but no, I get a yelling or whining, "MAMAMAMAMAMAAAA!" when he wants something. So, I'm not counting that as a word yet, not until he says it with a little more affection and a little less 'tude. Also, as of the last two days, he can mimic "Uh-oh" when he drops something if you say it to him first. Kind of counts.

Halloween is just around the corner and after much diliberation, Annie chose to be my parents' deceased mini schnauzer, Zoe. This all came about after asking one night what ghosts were. It was bed time so I was trying to make the answer as un-scary as possible, so I said that ghosts were just our way of pretending we could still see the people we loved even after they were dead. And, since the only dead being she knew alive is Zoe, I used her as an example to illustrate my point. It went something like this:

Me: "It's like if you saw Zoe but you could sort of see through her, and you could talk to her, but you couldn't touch her..."
Annie: "Uh-huh."
Me: "So... that's a ghost..."
Annie: "I want to be Zoe for Halloween."

And, after many days of checking to make sure her decision was firm, Zoe it was. To the second-hand store we went! We got a gray sweatsuit, had our neighbor sew on a white circle of fabric for her belly, I made ears and a tail and sewed them to her hood and bought some fluffy fringe for her cuffs, and voila! Zoe is reincarnated. I think she would be pleased with the results, may she rest in peace. Pictures will, of course, follow.