Nearing one

First the big news: Augie, Ethan, and Emmett had a little get-together held in their honor yesterday to celebrate their surviving a year on the outside, and as you can see from the picture at left: it was their party and they were going to cry if they wanted to, to quote Ms. Gore. The picture was actually taken immediately before the singing of "Happy Birthday", there was all kinds of commotion to get people into the room, and the kids had to wait patiently while three Sarah-made carrot cupcakes awaited directly in front of them---I bet most would wither under similar circumstances. The party was hosted wonderfully by Anne and Alex and was a whole lot of fun with babies all over the place. Emmett was given all kinds of great gifts and got to eat his first cupcake. It was a big day in all kinds of ways and made today seem awfully boring in comparison.

I guess, to be fair, I should post another picture of what the scene looked like when people were assembled and the kids were able to tear into the cupcakes. See: no more tears. The kids made quite a mess with the cupcakes, but were pretty excited to eat sweets---especially Emmett who learned that not all food tastes unsalted or unsweetened and that food can have a non-mush-like texture. It was definitely a day of learning for young Emmett.

Though one would think that a first cupcake is quite an accomplishment, this would not be his last new experience for the day. I walked into the dining room to find a scene unfolding that ended up looking like the picture at left, where Emmett and Juliana were to be found open-eyed kissing. For the past week-plus Emmett has been kissing all of the humans that appear in the books he reads, so a more attentive parent should have seen this one coming. I did not. Actually, the most crazy thing to me is that you take a couple of young kids like this and they already know to tilt their heads in opposite directions to keep their noses out way. Nature or nurture?

In addition to parties, there have been other things going on (not as exciting as first kisses, but things none-the-less). Emmett really seems to be picking up pointing this week---he is even starting to move away from the hand point to the finger point. His favorite items to point out to us: light fixtures, light switches, trees, pictures, and a ceramic mouth that Andrea made in her youth which hangs above the doorway in our kitchen. We spend a lot of time asking him "where is the..." questions and he responds, sometimes, with points at the questioned objects. It is amazing how entertaining all parties involved find this game.

Other than that, we have been primarily just keeping on. Emmett still is having his short periods of standing unassisted, but hasn't decided to try to go anywhere while standing...at least not without crawling first. I am trying to add more self-feeding foods into his diet and recent successes have been waffles and frittata. Vegetables seem to be the hard one to make hand held without some coagulant (he eats sweet potato pieces fine, but kale isn't as easy to just slop in front of him).

Nothing hugely exciting, but we are still here.