Oral baby

Paul loves having something in his mouth. Usually this something is a pacifier, though he's getting better at manipulating things and putting them in his mouth. He's also definitely more observant, especially of me, which translates into Paul diving for anything that I stick in my mouth. Today he's gone for my breakfast cereal, an orange, juice at Trader Joe's (which subsequently spilled all over the floor. grr), and my toothbrush. I don't think he really wants to eat--I've given him little tastes of my food and he doesn't seem impressed--but he really wants to put stuff in his mouth.

Just now he grabbed his dad's fingers to suck on. The same fingers, incidentally, that had just cleaned and seeded half a dozen roasted green chilies. Sometimes it's just not a mystery why Paul isn't warming much to his dad.

Pronouns

This morning we were discussing farts and stinkiness (topics of great interest to three-year-olds everywhere) and Derrick listed off people who were stinky, including grandpa and her brother, but leaving himself out rather conspicuously. I told Sylvia to say, "My dad's stinky."

She said, "Your dad's stinky."

Yep, she's figuring out how pronouns work.

roly poly

I admire people who actually keep records. This blog is, at the moment, the closest thing I have to a journal (which is why it occasionally includes posts that border on or enter into TMI territory, and why I sometimes put down thoughts on people, politics, and religion). I am lately especially impressed by people who keep baby books. Sylvia keeps dragging out her baby book, which I filled out all of one page completely. Lately I've tried filling in some of the gaps--mostly things I can look up on teh interwebs or things I actually recorded on this blog.

Since someday I may do the same for Paul, he's recently passed another milestone: he's rolling over. Derrick's dad got him to roll over from his front to his back on Sunday and I've gotten him to roll over several times over the last couple of days.

AGU was last week, so Derrick's parents came out to watch the kiddos while Derrick and I acted like adults for the week. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, mostly because I got to see friends I haven't seen in a while and hear about cool science. Oh, and eat out at the wonderful restaurants in SF. There's one Thai restaurant (The Old Siam) we went to three times during out six day visit.

The best thing, though, was remembering that I do like science a lot, and that there are still a lot of cool, useful questions to be asked.