Some milestones.

Lily and Mommy, ready for a walk around Poho.

Successful parenting means you can be drinking a vodka tonic with game 6 of the Stanley Cup playoffs on, but you're simulataneously stripping high chairs of impacted mashed potatoes with tumeric and 5 week old avocado pieces.

So much of our existence depends on multi-tasking. Even relaxing means doing something; if you don't, there's just more to do and less to relax about later.

Boring though it might be for our intrepid readers, here's a few highlights of what the kids have achieved lately. It's the dangers of doing this style of blog...

- Abby is cruising/crab-walking/clamboring/bouldering/whateverthehellyouwanttocallit with a lot more confidence. She loves to be standing at the coffee table, and has done well navigating around the corners lately.
- Lily steadfastly refuses to learn English (or she's learned it already and simply opts not to regurgitate it back to us), but her Lily-speak has stretched to single-breath, 30 second paragraphs of epic scale. She just babbles on and on and it is compelling stuff, I tell you.
- Abby's crawling is increasing in stability and speed. Timid and shaky at first like the little goofball she is, she's now started to brave the entire first floor with increasing frequencies.
- They both would rather devour books than read them. Still working on that.
- Lily, and Abby too but to a slightly lesser degree, is using objects in appropriate manners; ie, she likes to put the phone up to her ear and pretend to talk. Both of them like to use combs and brushes on their hair. Lily tried to open the front door the other day by throwing my keys at it..."Aaarrrghh, open, damn you!" is what she babbled after I translated it.
- Abby's getting better at body parts. She can point to nose, mouth, bee bo, head, and I think she's almost got tongue. She loves her tongue. She loves my tongue. Her tiny dagger-like fingernails also seem to love my tongue. Parenting is wicked painful sometimes.
- Lily love to be chased. This is, by a wide margin, my favorite game. I snatch her up and toss her around, giggling, then put her back down. She takes a few steps, and I'm back after her and she goes nuts. Of course the cutest part is when I just let her go, and she reaches the "safety" of a piece of furniture, clutches it for life, then turns back to see if I'm coming after her.

Those are the biggies right now. This stage, though, there are a dozen little things every day that I should be taking note of. That's the precise reason for this blog, but all these things happen during the day, then the sun sets, now it's 10:30, then I get forgetful (remember that vodka tonic?), and the specifics of the day melt a bit, then quickly evaporate and they're gone.

Day one hundred and fourteen.

Abby also ready for a walk, looking quite hip.

Oh yeah, this is a notable thing, although it's been happening by both girls for at least a month now. They like to feed us. Cute as a button, right? Yeah, then you get a mouthful of pre-chewed steamed brocolli. How cute am I wretching into the sink?

The macabre side of Lily.