Dispatches from the Jolly Front.

So Jolly has been really loving the tubes of yogurt we bought a massive box of... originally with the intent of eating them frozen as popsicles, but Jolly seems to dig snarfing them down in a refrigerated state. They're a very convenient way of taking yogurt with you - a frozen one will be cool but no longer frozen by the time you've gone somewhere and it's time for a snack. However, feeding him yogurt from a tube feels ever so slightly wrong, because it feels a bit like I'm feeding a duck in a fois gras production plant.

Since I'm playing at single mom for a couple of days (Ephiny is at a conference for four days), we've been trying more utensils of late. This is related to Ephiny's absence because it obviously makes an even bigger mess than usual, and I'm the more "entropy-tolerant" parent. Jolly seems to enjoy bashing his fork about at things, and when things are speared, it is victoriously gleefully waved around - and then removed via hand and conveyed to mouth. Still, some direct fork-mouth action has been observed. But, in between he resorts to shoveling entire handfuls of things into his mouth. Once upon a time, he did use his pincher grasp, but now it's all about cramming as much food as possible down the hatch. This is possibly why I don't feel bad about the yogurt gavage.

Also, I'd like to note that it's not just the cylinder block that is confidently sorted now - the cube as well! Elusive triangular prism is still elusive, but I'm waiting for it!

More standing without holding onto things and lurching from one piece of furniture to the next. Also, a LOT of walking on his knees. Not any proper walking on his feet yet, though, but I'm thinking my days of enjoying having a crawling-only baby are probably numbered. Bad things I anticipate: probably even more babyproofing and even quicker escape time. Oh, and probably even more dramatic potential for head injuries. (Did I mention here that I found my first white hair a few days after Jolly's sofa mishap? The one perk to my mousy indeterminate haircolor: I'm not going grey, I'm getting highlights.) Good things I anticipate: ability to take child outside when grass is wet, because rainboots are more practical than an entire waterproof smock.

Oh, and after a meeting today (Jolly came and ate lunch during it) I got told today by a coworker that it is just "so important for kids to go to daycare for their verbal development". He then elaborated that "kids just get so much more out of it than being home with two PhDs." I smiled sweetly and said, "Well, I'm really pleased we've avoided daycare so far because it's so important to me that he becomes fluent in my native language." The bilingual child card for the win. Coworker looked befuddled at the fact that my native language isn't English... that's right, Coworker, that's exactly how awesome my verbal development is. [To clarify, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with daycare and I get that there are a lot of benefits to socializing in groups with other kids... I just resented the passive aggressive "don't bring your kid in" message.]

After that, we went and celebrated our German cultural heritage, by which I mean went to the German bakery. That's always our reward for making it through meetings. Jolly was so, so excited about the enormous bag of 24 pretzels.

Four molars just in! Total # of teeth: 12 -- over halfway there. Still waiting on incisors and the rear molars. He's enjoying clapping his mouth open and closed and making clicking sounds, and still remarkably good natured about the whole teething thing, though the molars were definitely a bit more dramatic than the front teeth, probably because they're four-pronged.

And now, I am going to go get in some me-time with a dippy romantic movie and the Nordictrak, and "keep up the good work" as I just noticed my doctor wrote on the receipt from my physical last week. :)