DADDY!

Alex has been saying "Da, Da, Da, DAAAAA!" for the longest time, but while we were tooling around town today he got to saying "Dad-Di", which was really cool. His sense of mimicry has improved a lot, whereby he'll make that geniune effort to copy what you said. Whenever he said, "Daddy" we'd make a big deal out of it. He would say it in a rather high-pitched, playful tone, but it was cool enough to make me smile and be proud of him. He did it for a few more times at home, and that was really something.

The other thing he learned today was how to drink from a straw. It was a less messier alternative to drinking from a normal cup, especially when we're outside and don't have a sippy cup handy. We would place our fingers a few inches from the tip of the straw so that he wouldn't try to swallow the straw, and then he'd drink the milk. He would often take in more milk than he could handle, so whenever he took his mouth away from the straw there would be a mini explosion of milk. But that's another notch of life skills.

Ah, but poor Alex won't be dreaming about drinking milk with Daddy. Poor guy's got a cold and he woke up crying just a while ago. The snot's got him so clogged up that he can't breathe normally and its interrupting his sleep. We got him but then came the horrible task of suctioning out his nose. Since I haven't done it in a while, I wasn't ready for him to be so feisty. The last time we had to do it, he'd just cry and squirm. Now he screams, and tries to physically remove your hand away from him. He'd get stiff as a board too, which I'm discovering to be a child's defensive manuever.

Try to put him in the car seat and he doesn't want to sit there, he'd go stiff as a board. "Look, you can't buckle me in! I can't bend!"

Zoe is doing well. Her hair curls into funky little swirls after a bath, so it's kinda amusing to study under close inspection. And for some reason, we could use more soap and give her more baths, but she always seems to smell a little odd. Kinda musky. Hmm. We love her though, and she looks cute in her sleeper which has animal ears. I think I'm just a sucker for animal ears. For some reason there's high entertainment value with hoodies with animal ears. I'm easily amused, I suppose.