Elizabeth seems to be at a "Love it" stage. And by that I don't mean that she's telling everybody she loves them. She loves stuff. She goes around the house looking at things and saying, "Izzat you coat, Daddy? I love your coat" or "Izzat Katherine's new toothbrush? Katherine, I love your new toothbrush." I have to remind myself that it only gets more fascinating from here. The other night I was reading her a book before bed, and the phone began to ring. Mind you, the phone is three rooms away, so I figured I'd let the machine get it. Elizabeth wiggles away from the book and starts climbing down from the bed. "I be right back, Daddy!" she says. "Where are you going?" I ask. "I be right back," she says. "I get the phone." Sure enough she walks down the hall into the bedroom, gets the phone, and brings it back to me. It has long since stopped ringing, but I go through the charade of answering it because it was just too cute.

Katherine, meanwhile, has begun spelling on her own, although don't tell her that or she'll freak out and stop doing it. As I cleaned the kitchen last night she sat at her doodlepad and would say "How do you spell Mommy, Daddy? What's the first letter." I'd say, "Well, sound it out, what's the first sound?" And she'd say "mmmmm….M!" And before you knew it, with no more coaching from me, she'd spelled the whole word, either from sound from memory, I'm not sure which. She hasn't quite mastered spacial planning, let, and often the first 2 letters of the word will take up the entire paper while the rest have to find space wherever they can. This is particularly charming when she spells her name, which is a very long name with lots of letters, none of which feels in the least obligated to line up next to its brothers. So while she does in fact get down a recognizable version of every letter, it looks like alphabet soup. I love it.

Rumor has it that Brendan is rolling over on his own now, though I haven't seen it yet. So we're playing that relatively cruel game where you shake a toy in his face and then place it deliberately out of his reach to see if he'll stretch for it and roll over. So far, nothing, just a frustrated 6month old wondering why Daddy got so mean. 🙂
He's also teething, which means he's gone schizophrenic on us. His only moods are big toothless grinning at everything and everyone, or screaming himself purple. The latter usually happens at about 3:30 in the morning. Why couldn't we get one of the kids that wakes himself up because he's got the giggles? Oh well.