This and that

For those of you waiting with bated breath since my last post, we're staying put. I think we've now talked to all three of my regular readers, and so I don't need to go into details on why. Just know the Bear is taking whatever project work he finds and pounding the virtual pavement.

Eli and I both got a clean checkout from our maternity doc last week. At seven weeks four days he weighed 14 lbs 1.5 oz. For those who love statistics and comparison, he was 95th percentile for weight, 90th for head size, and off the charts for length. I actually missed the doc's length measurement, but the week before I measured him down at the health unit and he was 62 cm.

Yesterday I had one of those moments where some fact that you know already just becomes so incredibly obvious that it jumps up and slaps you in the face. I was nursing Eli. His body was cradled against my left arm, and his legs were draped over my right leg. I looked down at the real estate he was covering and was duly impressed. He's huge!!

And on the topic of large heads, I got a good chuckle this morning when Trin picked up a hat that the Bear's step dad had left on the table. It fit her perfectly, as did two other of Larry's hats that she found.

Tweetie is learning all sorts of things these days and it's fascinating to watch. She understands more and more of the things we tell her. Sometimes she even does what we ask ;) Sometimes she's surprisingly clever, or sneaky. Like after breakfast when I asked her to turn around so I could wash her face. She promptly complied, turning around and giving me a sly smile as she passed and completed a full 360 to face away again.

She loves to climb, and run and explore. She's getting more creative at finding ways to express herself. When she gets hurt, which happens a lot when you combine the earlier mentioned loves with a body that keeps changing, she's more able to let us know what hurts, which is helpful when it's not so obvious as a bloody knee. And recently she has her own special variation on magic kisses. She'll offer a finger on each hand to be kissed better, and then plant the kiss appropriately herself.

But just now, before I came down to check on Eli and finish this post, she melted my heart as only your own child can do. We're at Grandma's right now in the Kootenays, and there are lots of doors here. Trin likes to open and close doors, so I've had to bolt the front door at times and keep an eye on her around other doors. The way a few of the doors are hung, they also tend to slam rather loudly in the hands of a not quite two year old, which I've been trying to discourage. Now, the Bear had come up and made his coffee, so I was going to head down and leave Trin with him. On opening the door to the stairs, Trin was right there wanting to follow me (she was giving a much more detailed explanation in her own language, but I'm not that fluent yet). I knelt down to explain that I was going downstairs to wait for her brother to wake up, but that if she came down with me, he'd be awake much sooner and that wasn't necessarily what I wanted. I think she was mostly listening, because her next move was to close the door for me. I was still squatting in the doorway, however, so the door was stopped by my knee. It didn't actually hurt - she hadn't built any momentum to the swing, yet, but I thought this was a good opportunity to reinforce what we'd been working on with closing doors gently, and watching for other people or animals.
"Ow, that's my knee, Trin."
She pulled the door back fully open, stepped toward me, grasped my leg, bent over and kissed my knee better.
Awwwwww,