There has been one major *win* on the eating front. BROCCOLI! She is actually eating it. More than once! This is seriously the best thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. Of course, after brief initial enthusiasm, she now shuns ravioli, things sausagey, carrots, sweet potato, pasta, and blueberries. 90% of my daily mental energy goes into inventing new foods for her to try (and, after a brief honeymoon, discard forever). The latest brilliance: carrot/zucchini muffins; after initially picking suspiciously at the orange strings in the muffin, she seemed to decide it was something from the Treat family and ate the muffins without a second thought.

[Note the extended unedited video is of a Grandparenty nature.]

As you can see in the video, animal sounds are a big hit. Curiously, her pig sound is “hOM hOM”–not sure how that happened but it cracks me up. She’s similarly obsessed with her books. Current favorites are “Are you my mother?,” “Sheep in a jeep,” and “Hop on Pop,” all of which we read fifteen billion times per day. Then there’s the Big Book of Baby Animals, which she goes bananas over. Another good deal of the day is spent on the floor with the book propped up against the couch, Ronin manically running back and forth flipping the pages, oh look there are the kittycats meow meow, and the ducks quack quack, here’s a lemur … um …, oh look the baby horse neigh neigh. Often there are tears when the big book goes away (and it is a difficult book to hide; it is maybe three feet tall).

[Another obsession: things in ziplock bags. Or outside of them, as the case may be.]

She walks unassisted to now. Not very often, but she can. She is absurdly unsteady and it’s a miracle she still has her teeth with the number of face-plants she’s taken. Yesterday she stumbled on the concrete steps leading up to the house and just rolled all the way down. I expected to see blood but amazingly she managed to only bump her elbows and forehead. Catastrophe narrowly avoided, somehow. She wasn’t pleased with the fall and has since been a little more cautious with the climbing.

The weather here turned insanely beautiful the day before yesterday and we spent the day playing in the grass. We mowed the yard with a nearly seized-up push-mower (a workout) and tried to keep Ronin out of the dog poop (a battle lost, tragically). We have a space to put a garden and we might also build a raised bed in the front yard where there is more sun. I’m pretty excited about it; I’ve never really had a chance to plant a “real” garden.

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