Kid Korner

A few random Molly notes, just in case anyone was worried I traded her for a handful of magic beans:

-She has learned to give raspberries. Never proactively; but if I give her one while carrying her, she'll giggle, then contort her little body in a way I would snap my spine if I tried, lift up my shirt like we're coeds at spring break, put her little lips on daddy's belly, and give the tiniest little "pffft." I realize words can't adequately convey the massive degrees of cuteness this entails, but just picture the most adorable thing you've ever seen, then double it. Not even close.

-Molly knows almost all of her colors, in the sense that she can say and repeat their names. But I'm a little worried she's color blind, because every color you point to is "pink." Observe:

"Molly, what color is this?"
"Pink!"
"No, silly, that's red! Can you say 'red'?"
"Reh!"
"Very good! And what color is this?"
"Pink!"
"Noooo, it's blue! Can you say 'blue'?"
"Boo!"
"Good! And this color?"
"Pink!"
"Yes. Yes it is. Thank God. And what's this color over here?"
"Pink!"
"....."

Then again, before pink every color was yellow, so maybe she's just working her way through the spectrum. One can hope.

-On a related note, Molly is also learning her shapes. Thus far she knows circle, oval, diamond, and... octagon. Or occagon, as the case may be. She's also getting "trapezoid." Oh, that's right. My child does not know "triangle" or "square," but she knows "octagon" and almost "trapezoid." We breed 'em advanced in this family.

-Not that her appearance left any doubt -- the child looks identical to myself and my sister from old baby pictures -- but a paternity test will not be required at any point. The reason is that Molly is a born reader. Most of the time she'll bring a book over, plop herself down in your lap, and settle in for story time. But every so often she'll just take a book off by herself, sit down, and start quietly leafing through it. And when she was starting to get clingy at bedtime whenever we left the room, what was the solution? Put a few books in her crib. Problem solved. In another couple of years she'll be sneaking a flashlight to bed so she can read after bedtime. She is her daddy's daughter all right.

"Whosoever twists this cap, if he be worthy..."

Ann's been drinking a lot of G2 lately, and we've both noticed an interesting phenomenon: some of the bottles are pretty hard to open. I'm no weakling, but it definitely takes me more than the usual amount of effort to twist off the cap so that Ann can enjoy her artificial fruity goodness. (Did I mention we're expecting our second child and Ann can't drink anything with caffeine in it? No? Uh, well, we are and she can't.) We've decided it's kind of a Sword in the Stone-esque challenge on Gatorade's part to weed out people who really don't deserve to drink it. Can't get the top off? Clearly you're not athletic enough to be drinking our product in the first place... kindly replace the bottle immediately and go find some chocolate milk or something, fatass. I guess it's kind of working -- if nothing else, it's convinced me that it's time to start exercising regularly again. I refuse to bend my will to that of any non-carbonated electrolyte-laden beverage.