1. Eric is walking! He is our earliest walker. It's kind of strange, almost comical, to see a nine month old baby walking around.
He also blows raspberries, plays peek-a-boo, and is great at throwing all his food on the floor. He's at that age where he needs a clean outfit and the floor needs mopping after every meal. I put a bib on him, sometimes, but it feels sort of like trying to use a hanky as a dropcloth when you're painting a house.
2. Lots of rain. We enjoyed a hot, dry summer during May and June and at the beginning of July switched to getting many rainy days. I enjoy hearing the rain dripping on the leaves outside in the morning when the house is quiet. After that first week of rain, all the plants seemed to get greener and bigger. I tried to take a photo of a magical sight -- thousands of green chokecherries adorned with water drops on the tree outside our living room window. I couldn't capture it in the photo, but it looked like the tree was hung with jewels.
In this photo you can see the chokecherries are just starting to get their first blush of color. In a few more weeks they will be dark purple, almost black.
3. I just finished reading Born of Gilded Mountains by Amanda Dykes. I read it slowly over two weeks, and while I have to say Amanda Dykes' writing style is not my favorite, I appreciated the beautiful message in this book about how God is in the business of redemption when life doesn't turn out how we hoped. Also, good for her for having a single woman as a main character. I don't come across many books like that.
4. I had to add "Don't use the xylophone as a skateboard!" to the list of things I never imagined myself saying before I became a parent. I could understand, though. It looked kind of fun.
That reminds me that a few months ago I was explaining to the pediatrician that I thought Eric was very smart and one of the reasons was that he could sit up and whack his Fisher Price xylophone with the hammer. The doctor got a longsuffering look on his face as though he had to listen to many parents tell him about how their baby is a genius. So Christopher and I are not going to be entering Eric into the World's Smartest Baby contest -- don't want to make all those other parents feel bad, haha.
5. Awhile ago, the kids were talking about what they would wish for if they had three wishes. Micah said he would wish first for a chocolate donut with sprinkles. "You shouldn't wish for that!" I said. I was feeding the baby his apple blueberry puree, a dull task, so I had time for these philosophical discussions.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because you would eat it all up in three minutes and then what would you have?"
"Two more wishes." He said this as though it should have been obvious.
I guess it's the little things in life.
