Today

Erik and Adin had a bath together this morning. Erik requested that I please not wash Adin's hair, a nice touch of empathy. Adin refrained from crying for about 5 minutes, then lifted his arms to be taken out. I wrapped him in a towel and we watched Erik play for a while.

Adin is very close to crawling. The problem is that he practices his crawling when I'm not near him, as he reaches for things too far away. When I am around, he just wants to hold my thumbs and practice standing up.

Erik is branching into more imaginative play. Two years ago I claimed a used puppet theater and loaned it to some friends with a toddler. Last night they returned it. I didn't think Erik would be very interested but he kind of was. He asked me to make a curtain for the curtain rod, and entertained himself (mostly) while I sewed it. Then I did a puppet show for him with our pathetic cast of puppets: a monkey from the $1 bin at Target, and four stick puppets from Barnehage.

The stick puppets are: Papa, wearing a baseball hat, shirt and boxers; Mama, wearing a firefighter jacket; Erik, wearing normal clothes; and Eleanor, wearing pink and purple clothes. As the Monkey interviewed each person, he complimented Eleanor on her purple pants and shirt, then corrected himself that the shirt was actually pink. This turned out to be the funniest joke Erik has ever heard and he acted out the "play" several times, cracking himself up. I harbored hope that he would act out the play next week for family celebrating Christmas with us. Sadly, the more times he does the play, the more mumbled it becomes until by this evening no one who hadn't heard it 6 times already would have any idea what he said. He even bungled his punch line and cracked up so much on the purple shirt line he forgot to say the shirt was actually pink. Oh well. Maybe he'll think up a new play by next weekend. I did a Nativity play which he politely watched and then requested I do the silly one again.