Children

I have been quite busy lately. But I wanted to document the stuff that Frances and Johann have been doing.

Johann:

Today, Arial sat Johann up on the floor and he stayed sitting for a few seconds. This is the first important step to being able to put him down occasionally. As it is we have to hold him or put him in the excersaucer. That's something he's started doing lately too. He is quite happy in the excersaucer for a fair amount of time. That is really nice.

We finally put batteries back in the bouncy seat (to make it shake) and I bent it back to it's normal shape (it had bent down from having a previous child sit in it a lot). Now Johann loves it as much as Frances did. We kinda gave up on the bouncy seat early on because he didn't seem to like it and Frances learned how to turn it on (but didn't care to turn it off) so the batteries never had any charge. I wish we would have tried it again sooner.

A little over a week ago, we started feeding Johann baby food. We do this during supper (one person eats while the other feeds, then we swap). It was much easier to get him to eat than it was Frances. At first we thought that he was just naturally inclined but we decided that we were just better at feeding that we were with Frances.

Frances:

This evening Frances and I went on some errands. In the middle there was about a 15 minute drive and Frances was starting to get antsy. So I decided to get ice cream from McDonald's. She got a small cup of vanilla. I put a bib on her and she ate very happily the whole way. She didn't make much of a mess. It felt a little weird though, I suddenly became a dad taking his daughter out for ice cream. I'm so old...

Frances is so good with Johann (when she's not trying to poke his eye). Sometimes she runs up and says "Big hug" and hugs him. Other times she gives him Eskimo kisses. When we change his diaper with her in the room, she usually gets out the diaper and opens it up for us.

She definitely is in her terrible twos though. You can tell that she is testing the boundaries sometimes. Today, she went down for her nap and I told her that if she got up from the bed that she would have to go into her crib. She then spent a half an hour with her legs dangling off the bed with her toes inches from the floor. She knew that if she touched the floor she would have to go into her crib but she wanted to see how close she could get.

Another time, she was throwing some balls in the living room (which I'm fine with). She threw one against the wall and I told her not to do that. She kept doing it. I tried to get her to throw the ball into the open space in the living room (she doesn't have strong enough of an arm to throw something all the way across the room). Finally, I told her that if she threw the ball against the wall again, I would take it away. She then slowly touched the ball against the wall. Technically, she didn't throw the ball but I didn't like where that was going so I took the ball away.

mwz

eMusic 3

Last months new music:

Tonya Donelly - Sleepwalk
This is a four song EP. I like Tonya Donelly and this album is alright.

Throwing Muses - Throwing Muses (2003)
This is a pretty solid Throwing Muses disc. It took me a couple of listens to get into it but now I like it well enough. There are a couple songs that get stuck in my head which is double edged. I like the songs but they kinda give me a headache when I just keep singing/humming/whistling them.

Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Apparently, Arial and I saw Neko Case at Lilith Fair a while back. She is in the book I keep of bands that I've seen. More recently she had a song on a sampler album that I got from eMusic. That song is easily the best track on the album but the others are still pretty decent if you are in the mood for Sarah McLaughlin type fold.

Superchunk - On the Mouth (no link)
eMusic must have lost the contract with Superchunk's label because all trace of them has been removed from the eMusic site. I'm glad I got this when I did.

Superchunk is a band that I would have really liked in high school. I wish I would have checked them out sooner. There are some good songs on this album but they would have been way better if I could be nostalgic about them.


Pavement - Crooked Rain Crooked Rain
Track 10
Eventually, I'll get the remaining two tracks.