And Yet, So Little Has Changed

So Much Has Changed

This is a picture from April of this year. Tray's cousin Francis took a bunch of photos and she gave us a disk of them this past weekend when we were in Georgia again. I can't believe how different Penny looks in these pictures. I can tell it is her, but wow it's almost like a different baby.

Penny with her cousins Clint, Natalie, and Bennett. Owen was present, but not particularly keen to be photographed at the time.

Venison

Penny did like deer! She ate almost a whole (small) slice of tenderloin. She just kept stuffing piece after piece in her mouth and would not eat any apple or squash. She is definitely on a meat kick this week, and we are so glad it now includes deer.

Turkey Day Catch-Up

Here is the first of a couple of posts to catchup on recent Thanksgiving-related activities. We went up to Troy a week early to celebrate Thanksgiving because I had a job interview at AUM (Auburn University in Montgomery). I did fine, but it was pretty clear that they have an inside candidate for the job (an existing adjunct instructor). So even though they aren't "making a decision" until this week, I am not holding my breath. But, hey, I got an all expense paid trip to Troy for Thanksgiving. And I got kidnapped to tour the archaeology lab featuring the collections from Fusahatchee and all of David Chase's collections. That, plus the lasagna from Mr. G's was totally worth it. Also, we took Penny on the trip. She has pretty much dropped her afternoon nap now (she still takes a morning one) and that made it a lot easier to travel with her. Before, it was very hard to find a long enough stretch of time to travel. If we tried to travel during nap time she would just get increasingly hysterical because she would be so tired but couldn't sleep in the car. But now that's not much of an issue anymore and we are down to just run-of-the-mill "I hate my carseat" fussiness. She had a ball playing with all the stuffed animals around the house up there. At one point we turned the tables on her and piled all the animals onto her (instead of her piling them all on us). Here she is, looking adorable, and kissing the polar bear.

I see...

Penny's new thing is to say "I see..." whatever. She has said "I see Daddy" before, but today she was pointing out all kinds of things including "I see a dog" when reading one of her books. She is just changing so fast. I swear she picked up maybe 10 new words today. It's MADNESS (one of our fav's)! In addition to using sentences more and more (Boo ride the horse), one of the coolest developments is her ability to tell me things that she wants. This afternoon I was eating a bowl of Crispix with rice milk. -- Incidentally, as a consequence of going dairy-free for so long there, I have learned that different cereal tastes better with different types of milk. Banana-Nut Cheerios and soy milk are awesome. Rice milk goes great with Crispix and various Kashi cereals. Lucky Charms really needs to be plain old cows milk. Anyway. -- I have read that babies/toddlers like rice milk because it tastes the most similar to breastmilk. Penny kept asking for a "bite" of my cereal and she was just slurping up the milk off the spoon, although of course the milk was by then Crispix-flavored. But then, she started asking for "apple," so I cut her up some. She'd ask for apple and then she'd say "bite" when she wanted cereal or "spoon" when she just wanted to slurp the milk. It was SO cool to be able to give her exactly what she wanted to eat with each bite, and I'm sure cool for her too.

Also on the eating front, Penny is no longer a self-imposed vegetarian. Over the last two weeks she's started eating meat and is in fact kind of on a meat jag this week, somewhat shunning other things in favor of meat. She's eaten ham, chicken, turkey, pork chop and pork loin (in fact, "pork" was one of today's new words). Oh, and some spaghetti too. I need to make a beef roast to see what she thinks of that now. We're planning to eat some of the deer Tray killed this weekend tomorrow night, so hopefully she'll like venison too.

Bossy

When I change Penny's diaper, after I have the clean one on her she often will try to open the diaper back up. I have to tell her no a lot. Recently, when I do tell her no in that situation, she will shake her finger at me and say "nnnnno". It's really funny - and hard to keep a straight face when I'm trying to get on to her.

Also, she likes to say "hush" a lot. Our next door neighbor has a yip-yap dog -- a jack russell terrier I believe -- and Penny heard him barking today and kept saying, "Hush, Dog." She's so bossy!

Horsey

If you lay down on the floor, Penny will climb up on top of you and say "Horse" and start bouncing up and down as though you are, in fact, a horse.

She also loves to give us kisses - and hugs too. She gave Tray and I each no less than 50 kisses tonight at bedtime. And this morning she laid across my stomach and said "hug". It was a nice way to wake up.