Mt. Pisgah, Maine

A quick google search leads me to identify this caterpillar as a Laurel Sphinx Caterpillar (Sphinx kalmiae). She wishes you a happy thanksgiving.

She’s been tentatively crawling for a couple of weeks now, but just in the last day or two started really picking up speed. Zooom.

[Siuslaw National Forest, Oregon]

I fixed a problem with the subscription emails. I don’t think any have gone out in November due to a problem with a software upgrade. I forgot that I had to manually limit the number of names in the bcc field so Dreamhost wouldn’t reject it as potential spam.

A couple of weeks ago, Ronin picked up on the sign for “milk.” We had been doing it at her when I nursed for the past few weeks or so and suddenly she just started doing it back. It’s really cute—she milks at me when she wants to nurse and then keeps on milking the entire time she eats. Of course, she now nurses about 50 times a day and when I put her down for naps or bedtime, she milks at me in desperation, “DON’T MAKE ME GO TO BED! HELP!” She does it so much that I’ve taken to pretending I didn’t see her at certain times, like if she’s just eaten and is feeling rambunctious and bitey. I’m sure I’m a terrible mother for it and she’ll require years of therapy.

She likes to roll her tongue now (like a Spanish R roll) and spends a great deal of her waking hours cruising around sounding like a motorboat. She is also all over the apartment lately—did I mention she is officially crawling? She is—and when I “chase” her, she shrieks with laughter and flees, checking behind her to see if I’m still coming to get her. Pretty hilarious.

She likes to turn the pages when you read books to her too; this makes reading to Ronin at bedtime a whole new scene. Before, reading was a near-constant struggle to keep her from tearing out the pages and turning them into soggy nubs. Now she’s somewhat interested in what’s next, often before you are done with the current page.

She’s been extra crabby lately again (we had, what, three or four days of pure happy normal baby) and is getting her left top tooth. I can see it as it’s just breaking the surface. She’s been biting everything she can get near. Today I was doing something in the bathroom sink and Ronin was doodling around on the bath mat and the next thing I know, I turn around and she has crawled over to the toilet and is BITING IT! ACK!!!