Kid Update

Things with the girls change so fast that I can't keep up. We've been without an honorary member of our family since the beginning of August, when our dear babysitter April left for grad school (darn that recommendation letter I wrote!). She had been with us since Allison Clare was younger than Gillian is now . . . she even stayed here at the house when Gillian was born. Inexplicably, witnessing the chaos of our lives seems not to have deterred her from wanting to become a professor, so she is off to a master's program now but recently sent word that she's setting up Skype so she can keep a virtual eye on AC (and probably make sure that we are caring for her up to April's standards!). It's been less than a month since she left, but I can already tell that AC's language has changed quite a bit in just that short time: yesterday, I could hear her playing with her one of her new babysitters and her language was much more complex than I remember overhearing (somehow it was more noticeable when I only heard her and didn't see her at the same time), and, fortunately, more decipherable to someone new.

For the last two months or so, AC has been really into role-playing. It started out with her just pointing to herself and saying, "I Gin Rose [her name for Gilly]." She would want to be held like a baby, or burped. Then it would change mid-conversation. I'd be saying, "Hi Gin Rose, where's Munchkin?" and she'd burst out, "No, I Daddy!" Now her role-playing is related to books and movies: "Okay, I'm Fiona, you're Shrek. True love's kiss!" or "I'm Woody, you're Buzz, this [Sam] is Andy and this [Gillian] is Slinky Dog" (both movies, though she encountered them as books). Bewilderingly, she often refers to Gillian as Chris, assigning her the role of the African-American young man by that name on Sesame Street. Then again, the race and gender might be off, but they do share a certain rotundity and baldness.

She's learned some songs recently, and her favorite is "Where is Thumbkin?" though it started out "Where is somethin'"?

Gillian is discovering her capabilities as a person with hands. She's grasping at things and handling them all the time, and one of the only experiences that makes her crabby is when she wants to hold something that is out of reach. She has just started eating solid foods; we knew she was getting ready because she first started staring at them as they passed, then began yanking at my dinner plate if she was sitting on my lap while we ate and crying if I pulled it back on the table. So far she has had rice and oat cereals, and I bought some green beans at the farmer's market yesterday to cook for her ceremonial first meal. She seems kind of obsessed with books (they might be her favorite objects, besides a set of measuring spoons April gave us), and nothing delights her more than a Williams-Sonoma catalog that she can hold and crumple, making noise and watching the pretty pages flash by.

When she's happy to see you, she tilts her head and even her upper body way over, so she's hanging sideways, and beams (think Triangle Pose if you're into yoga). Against all reason or rational self-interest, she adores her big sister, whom any neutral observer would find it difficult to identify as friend or foe, since AC is always flailing knees and elbows, and shouts of joy or anguish, and the occasional flying object. But AC will be throwing a tantrum, and Gillian will turn to gaze on her with this gentle, radiant expression of benevolent delight.

She is the most even-tempered member of our household, heaven help her . . .