Crooked Nature

Notice the angle at which Naomi is holding her cup. The sipper spout is at the same angle in her mouth that the handles are to her head. This is always how she drinks. Just an odd twist of personality I wanted to record.

Other unique characteristics of Naomi: she is pretty good at imitating us. I don't have any experience with a young baby doing that. So, for instance, if Jon growls at her as he shows her a toy dog, she will take the dog and repeat what he has done. And today I was playing with masking tape. I put a small piece on her nose and laughed. So she turned around and did her best to put it back on my nose (I helped a little) and then she laughed. So cute!

correction

The information for YouTube I wrote before was wrong, sorry. Here are the direct links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xebk8N54axw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWqmuGma55I

Naomi highlights

A few memories of Naomi for the past month or two:

I love how she counterbalances her belly with her elbows.

Our hill-baby, complete with shirtless overalls and broken-picket-fence mouth.

Am I getting cuter, yet?

For those of you who are video junkies, I've uploaded some more funnies of Naomi on YouTube. Search for "Overcoming Obstacles" jonnypalmseed, and you should find them. That is, as long as my upload is successful.

Enjoy!

Birthday Party

You'uns is all invited (though I know you probably won't make it) to our girls' birthday party this weekend.

Physiology

Ever since the Easter Egg Hunt when Adara ran full-force into a glass wall and bloodied her nose, she has been fascinated with the idea of blood. Looking at a broken baby doll, she asked me, "What's inside the baby?" I told her it was just air. Naturally, she then asked what was inside of her. Bones, blood, muscles, tendons, and other stuff, was my response.

Now, if you ask her what's inside of her, as Jon did this morning, she will reply:

"Bones and blood."

Taking it a step further, Jon asked her, "What's inside your head?"

"Air," she said, without even pausing to think.

Being the compassionate parent that he is, after Jon had caught his breath, he supplied Adara with the correct answer: "Blood and brains."

Black Holes

Okay, totally unrelated from the post I just barely published, but I remembered that this morning our little Adara was completely fixated on black holes. She might have gone to bed the night before talking about it, too. She kept talking about how she was afraid of falling into a black hole, and something about a black hole in the middle of the earth. "Are we going to earth?" she asked this morning. "I don't want to fall in the black hole. You're not going to fall in the black hole, are you mom?"

And, random association here -- just remembering wonderful things my child has said recently. A few weeks ago we were driving to church when Adara asked, "Mom, why do we go to church?" (This was the beginning of her "why" phase. I'm looking forward to the end of it.)

I tried to think of a good answer. "Because it's Sunday" was the winning idea.

As it turns out, Adara had a better answer, which she told me as we were walking towards the chapel, "I like church." Maybe when I no longer have to police my children during sacrament meeting, and when I can attend a meeting where I can focus on feeling the Spirit (let's just say I'm the primary chorister and I have a pre-nursery age child), then I, like Adara, will also be able to say, "I like going to church."

Not that I don't like primary. I do love to spend the majority of my Sunday worship time doing wiggle songs and music games. What could be more fun? (No, I'm not being facetious.) I just feel remarkably un-spiritual. And I know it's not because of the calling. It's just that I'm not used to bearing 100% of the burden of seeking and retaining the influence of the Spirit in my life. It'd be really nice to have an uninterrupted hour or two when someone else could lead me into that state of being. . . . Oh well, I guess it's time to grow up and learn some personal responsibility.

Parental Guidance Recommended

I'm apologizing in advance for the graphic content of today's post. This was just too fun not to share.

Adara came down the stairs today and announced, "I have to use the bathroom." I put her on the big potty but I did not expect anything to happen. (Potty training has been a slow process for us.)

A short while later I heard, from behind the closed door, "This poop is hard to get out!"

Then, after we sang a short song to help her relax, "Wow, it looks like a hot dog!"

Needless to say, I was very pleased. In retrospect, it seems almost depressing that this was the high point in my day. However, yesterday's high point was watching Adara play with a caterpillar. I rather wished she'd have left it alone; I was afraid for its life. But it survived, and she had a great time discovering.

Reality

(Inspired by a friend's post.) Adara knows, intellectually, that monsters aren't real. But she's still afraid of them. And she knows that toys aren't real because they can't talk, but cartoons can, so that makes them real, right?