Successes and Random Animalia

So last night, our little ones gave me two blessings:
1) Joanna slept until 5:30!!!!!!  I got like SIX hours of uninterrupted sleep!!!
B) While his timing was impeccable (he woke up at 6:30 to tell me this, so I'd been back asleep for less than an hour), AJ _woke_up_ to tell me that he needed to go potty.  Then he got up, sat on the potty, peed (in a timely fashion), got re-dressed, got back in bed, and went back to sleep!  Not without help, but still.  He might not be in pull-ups forever after all!

Then, after I got them into the car to go pick up CaptainConundrum and get to work, I brought the trash out to the dumpster.  The sides were closed, so I opened one of them and got the scare of my life.  Immediately, a squirrel (who'd apparently been trapped) tried to jump out of the opening.  But then saw me and freaked out and jumped back _into_ the dumpster while I screamed and jumped back.  But then he was scared to come out and I was scared to throw my trash in, so (after I re-collected my senses), I pounded on the outside of the dumpster enough that the squirrel made his escape (angrily chattering at me the whole time - like _I_ was the one who'd trapped him in the dumpster) and I was free to dump my trash.

It was quite exciting.

Turning, Turning, Turning Through the Years...

This happened the night before Easter. She's wearing the Tigger outfit because I was meeting the family at a restaurant for dinner after Amplified that night and when Daddy asked AJ what the baby should wear, this was what he picked. AJ was also wearing his Tigger hoodie. Apparently Tigger's _not_ the only one.

Anyway, so when we got home, she was playing on her little play mat. On her back. A few minutes later, this video was taken.

Now she's a little roly-poly. You put her down on her back, look away for 2 seconds, look back and she's halfway across the room, having cleared multiple obstacles to get there. But it only happens when you're not looking. You look away again and she's on the other side of the room, AJ's latest drawing is scraps of pulp, and her face, hands, and clothes are smeared with "safe, non-toxic" "washable" markers. Look away again and you find her under the dining room table, ticked off because she can't get the whole table leg into her mouth.

AJ enjoys sitting on the quilt under her play mat as she lies there, batting at toys and trying desperately to fit a beach ball in her mouth. Then, when she touches him, he screams like a banshee, and tells her "No no, Baby! No touch AJ." He doesn't seem to get that he's in _her_ space. I think he just sees it as an opportunity to boss someone around like he's bossed around so frequently. He similarly likes telling the cat "no no" for non-crimes like walking across the room.

Anyway, the video's not so exciting, but it is actual footage of her actual first successful complete roll from back to belly. Or at least the wiggling on the belly part post-roll.

AJ's Word of the Day

So AJ likes him some Veggie Tales. He's seen the ones we have enough now that he has names for each of them. Not necessarily _their_ name, but _a_ name. Often it's the name of one of the prominent characters (e.g., "Cue" = Minnesota Cuke). Lately he's been asking for "Be Bo Bah."

Any guesses?

Be Bo Bah = Larry Boy

But before you begin to ponder exactly how "Be Bo" = Larry, I'd like for you to know that "Be" actually equals Larry. "Bo" is Boy. "Bah" is actually Bob. He's actually saying "Larry Boy Bob." "Bob" represents not only Bob the Tomato, but also Larry the Cucumber and Veggie Tales in general.

Rai and Jiri at Lungha.

Nature Documentary

I feel like the Discovery channel should have had a camera crew in my living room over the past few minutes. One of AJ's many Christmas/Birthday presents from his Nana and Grandaddy (VNB's parents) was a box of alphabet flashcards. As they are on relatively thick card stock, we left the box of them out in the living room with his other board books.

Before now, he's occasionally chewed on the box a little. This morning, he found the box and was just playing with it while sitting amidst all of his other books. Next thing I knew, he'd managed to get the box open and had the letter "C" card out of the box. That's when I really started paying attention.

He then directed his efforts at getting another card out of the box, but they were too tightly packed in there. It was during this time that I decided to blog about this. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to get video of it, but we all know that a) the camera distracts him from what he's doing causing him to stop the very thing I'm trying to get on video, and b) it'd take me three weeks to actually download the video and post it.

Well, in the time that it took for me to load the blogger page, he'd managed to pick up the "C" card, and one-handed, dump some of the other cards out of the box. Since then, he's reached into the box repeatedly and pulled more cards out, then played with them briefly before returning to the box for more (he just pulled out "W" and "X" which are on the same card for some reason).

I really wish I _could_ get this on video because you can just _see_ the wheels turning in his little mind as he figures out how to get things to do what he wants them to do. He doesn't just scatter the cards either (not to say that they don't end up scattered, but he doesn't just toss things all over the place). He sits and picks up each card individually and studies it - turning it over and over in his hands.

I seriously feel like Jacques Cousteau or someone should be narrating this for me.