There was also the birthday party that we all went to. When the lights went off all of a sudden the first thing my wife said was "Where's Leif?". Sure enough, the blackout was Leif caused.

so it wasn't that Leif was calm this weekend - he's just giving you amnesia on top of everything else.

Yeah, pretty much.

I'm very convinced that baby mobility is driven entirely by baby's desire to move (with rare exceptions). Some babies can contemplate the entire universe while sitting still, and that's sufficient.

She wants to move, just not while on her belly. She'll probably skip to the walking part, with my luck.

Heh. Considering that her mother is well content to spend an entire weekend in bed (as long as she has a laptop or stack of books), I'm not sure why you think the disinterest in mobility is unusual.

True. I'm really teaching her to be slothful and catlike.

I also worry because Lillian has no interest in solids.

Not to worry. Even Franny ate solids eventually. Actually, she didn't develop much of an appetite for foods until she weaned onto milk at about a year. Her caregiver at daycare said that's common.

Annabel doesn't look thin to me, she looks like a toddler. She's grown legs.

You know if you guys are having trouble getting people to spell Annabel and Emeline correctly my friend is going to have some difficulties if she does decide to name her girl baby Rhiannon like she said she was going to after I karaoked it on Saturday.

All my life people have misspelled my name, but since I use a variant spelling it never surprised me. However many people manage to misspell Frances. Whatever. I can't be held accountable for their inability to spell.

Annabel is just as beautiful as ever.

Actually I think she's a little more beautiful.

Getting long

My goodness, she certainly is.

Em's a skinny little thing, but she's not like, unhealthy skinny. Just lanky.

Em's a skinny little thing, but she's not like, unhealthy skinny. Just lanky.

Yeah. I want to give her her Just Say No to Drugs speech some day:

Honey, don't smoke pot, the munchies will bankrupt you.

I know I come off as abrasive, but I hate hate hate seeing parents overly worry about kids. I watched my uncle do it to my cousin with very very very bad results and want to save you from that awful hurt.

I hear you--I have my own set of parenting peeves, none of which apply to people on this board, but I can go off on lengthy rants about sports parents from hell (because I figure for every Tiger Woods or Ichiro Suzuki who fulfilled his father's expectations and seems happy with his life, there's at least 200 wrecked childhoods and troubled adulthoods) or parents who believe in absolutist gender roles--there's this religious wingnut website that sells toys to teach kids proper gender roles, and if I have another kid and it's a boy I swear I'ma buy their All-American Boy crossbow for Annabel and the doll for her brother and send the wingnuts pictures.

I have been using this board as a bit of a venting forum. I don't think I worry as much as it must seem like I am, and I also don't think I'm transferring the stress onto Annabel, unless occasionally pointing out that saying "done!" would be a simpler way of getting us to take her out of her highchair than dramatically ripping off her bib and tossing her utensils and uneaten food to the floor counts.

All my life people have misspelled my name, but since I use a variant spelling it never surprised me. However many people manage to misspell Frances. Whatever. I can't be held accountable for their inability to spell.

Do they spell it like boy-Francis?