Four Part Harmony

It’s always a bit discouraging when I get around to downloading pictures from the camera and I realize that it’s the end of the month and I haven’t even created a “January” folder for uploading pictures to yet.

It feels like January has gone by in a weird kind of hazy lazy blur. We’ve had snow, floods, and lots of cold and very windy weather. We started a big rearranging project before the holidays and everything is in pretty much the same state of chaos that it was in mid-December. Both the kids have gotten hit with back to back, week-long respiratory something-or-other, and Nicki and I have been pretty much just doing our best to keep the day-to-day stuff of life taken care of.

Still, now that I sit down to reflect on it a bit, a lot of monumental things have been happening around here. Not a lot of photos, but I’ll post a few here.

One sad bit of news, traderjoefish is no longer with us. We discovered that he had died one evening last week. It was really difficult deciding how to tell Anna about it. We didn’t really have any idea what she would think about it. We decided to wait until after school the following day, and then I would mention that traderjoefish had died and then just be ready to field questions. I was nervous. Everything went just fine though. She was very curious, asked a lot of questions, and wanted to see him and everything. I told her we could bury him in the garden so he would help our plants grow next year and she thought that was a pretty good idea.

So, rest in peace traderjoefish. You deserved to be swimming in some tidepool in Thailand, but instead you were in a little plastic aquarium on our kitchen countertop. Weirdest white elephant gift ever, but you were a pretty good fish all in all.

Now with that sad news out of the way, some pretty nice things have been happening as well. Milo has been starting to eat some food. His first taste of anything other than breastmilk and water was actually a fork with sauerkraut juice on it. We took some video of that which was pretty hilarious. That was a few weeks ago though, and since then we’ve tried a few different things. He’s not the voracious eater Anna was though. He turned his nose up at three different kinds of squash, and so far hasn’t been all that fond of pear either. He likes sweet potato though, that’s what he’s eating in this photo.

Despite is not being all that keen on solid foods, he’s still growing like a little weed. He’s sitting up by himself all the time now (though he still topples over every once in a while). Here he’s helping out folding some laundry.

He’s a pretty smiley boy most of the time.

He’s also really close to crawling now. He’s up on all fours quite a bit, but usually ends up scooting himself backwards or flopping down on his stomach in frustration before he can make any forward momentum. Still, he’ll be on the move in no time, which should be a new challenge.

Anna and Milo are still best buddies. She’s got nothing but love for him (unless he’s trying to chew on something of hers, which happens about a hundred times a day), and he spends all day beaming big smiles back at her.

All in all, even a weird lazy January isn’t all that bad with these two to keep things interesting.

Hope this transmission finds you all happy and well. So long for now.