ocelot

Dec. 25th, 2006

More pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/harperfamily/

And special for Christmas... movies!

More movies at http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=harperfam

Astrid is growing big fast. She's pretty much grown out of 0-3 month clothing (right on schedule - she'll be 3 months on Thursday!). I need to get the 3-6 month clothing out in the next few days, but it's hard putting away the tiny stuff!

She smiles a lot. Both Christof and I think she's more socially inviting than Leif was at that age - she has pretty distinct looks she gives when she wants to be picked up or have her toes tickled.

She's a bit sensitive to dairy and caffeine, and is much happier since I stopped eating them. No more screaming fits in the evening. I miss cheese, though.

She still spits up an awful lot.

You're not supposed to feed solids until at least six months, and I feel bad about feeding Leif solids earlier than that, but I'm starting to remember why. When she sees me eating something, she smiles beseechingly and starts sticking her tongue out, then fusses when I won't give her any. In fact, she's doing it right now - staring at me and chewing on her hand while I eat my lentils.

Other than that though, she's really pretty happy.

More pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/harperfamily/

More movies at http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=harperfam

Leif will be three and a half in a few days. His favorite thing right now is coloring. He colors for hours a day, and then gets on the computer and uses the paint program there for a while. We got him some watercolors for Christmas, so now he spends a while each day painting, too.

He's getting frighteningly good on the computer. About six months ago, we were at the library one day, and out of the blue he just started using one. He'd obviously seen us using them before, but hadn't shown any sign that he really knew how until that day, when he grabbed the mouse and started clicking around. Now he plays all sorts of games.

He adores his sister. So much, in fact, that he wants to be in her face or climbing all over her constantly. We're working on discouraging this.

He loves helping with cooking and baking and pretty much anything. Except cleaning up the bedroom. But even that isn't a hard and fast rule - the other day he said "I'm going to clean up the bedroom!" and then proceeded to do so. When we did the pre-Christmas toy cleanout, I told him to put toys he didn't want anymore in a box so we could give them to kids who needed them. He very happily did that, and would have given away even more if I'd let him.

This morning we were playing a game he got for Christmas, "Hi Ho Cherry-O". Each player has a tree with 10 little plastic cherries on it, and a little basket to put the cherries in. You spin a spinner, and it points to either 1, 2, 3 or 4 cherries, a dog, a bird, or a spilled basket. If you get the dog or bird, you have to put two cherries back on your tree. If you get the spilled basket, you have to put them all back.

When I got a bird, he scooted the spinner a bit further onto the next area to help me, so I wouldn't have to put any cherries back. I was going to discourage that, but then realized that I was discouraging cooperation in favor of competition, and decided we might as well just play it that way. He was having fun, anyways. After he won, he made me keep spinning until I'd filled my basket, too.

He's a hyper crazy pain in the neck at times (especially when he climbs on Astrid while she's sleeping), but I'm really impressed by how sweet and generous and just plain neat he is.

Tonight I made lentils for dinner. They were very good. I would have been happier with less chili powder, but it wasn't painful (I can tolerate much more heat than I actually like), and everyone else seemed to like it that way. The recipe called for a bit of lemon juice, and that sounded like a good idea, but I forgot. Must remember next time.