Minutiae

I opened this new post window with the idea that perhaps I could start with one random piece of information and sort of stretch it into something worth reading. I mean, I do hold a degree in English Literature (i.e. take a small concept that can be covered in your standard five-paragraph essay, write till your fingers bleed and submit twenty pages of brilliance, thank you very much Professor Poosty-Pants). Not tonight friends. I can seriously only think of maybe one really cool new thing that Iris has done in the past few days: she uses a walker.

Of course now my mind goes straight to your standard, geriatric tennis-balls-for-wheels style walker (happens every time I tell someone about Iris in the walker), but I'm pretty sure everyone knows that I mean a baby walker. Is that what people call it? I've heard jumparoo or something, but I think that's the wheel-less alternative for folks with dangerous stairwells. ANYway, Lola's old walker has been recently exhumed, and I got to see Iris like, walking... in the walker. Her little socks were actually sort of grungy on the bottom from walking around today! What kind of person's feet get dirty on the bottom side? Oh yeah that's right, the sort of person who WALKS (ish).

Oh excellent, I just remembered something else! Iris is thisclose to being able to hold her own bottle. From almost exactly the time that she started staying home with Kyle during the summer she has enjoyed bottles with intense aplomb. There is always a bunch of bouncing and panting, and just wanting to get the bottle to her mouth so badly that she gets all worked up and can't eat. These little fits of love for the bottle have always included this crazy thwacking at her face for the first few minutes of bottle time. I always thought she was just really super stoked to be eating, but as the motor skills develop, I can see that she did have ulterior motives in mind. She's been doing it for so long I didn't catch on as fast as I might have, but she's been honing her ability to actually grab the bottle with her hands and hold it up. She's aaaalmost got it, and it's so cute.

On the honing of the motor skills note, Kelly and I watched Iris nearly pick up a bottle off of the table and bring it to her mouth. She was sitting in the bumbo seat (it's that little molded foam/plastic thing that looks like it's made out of roller coaster ride parts) on the kitchen table, and the half-empty bottle was sitting directly next to her. She reached down with her left hand and grasped it by the nipple, then hoisted it up off of the table just high enough to grab the body of the bottle with her right hand. Then she struggled for a few minutes to actually lift it higher than three inches off the table because it was a glass bottle, and full of liquid, and we can really only expect so much of the muscles of an infant. Still pretty cool to watch though.

I'm telling you, tomorrow she's going to ask me for something in a full sentence, perhaps even in another language, and I'm really not going to be that surprised. I'll be sure to let you know when she solves the formula for cold fusion though.