Cael's friendship with Clio remains strong. He continues to refer to her with her full title, "My friend Clio," and be unusually distressed when she is not with him. This morning he wanted her to play but she wanted to snuggle in Ryan's discarded bathrobe on the floor of our bedroom.

(Password: Allie)

Clio appears to be unmoved. (Literally.)

Lyrics:

Dance, dance.
You've got to feel better with your owie
You've got to! You've got to! (Yeah, yeah!)
You've got to! You've got to!
Now you've got to feel better with your owie
You've got to! You've got to!
And you've got to get down
You've got to! You've got to!
And you've got to - and you've got to feel better with your owie

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Clio is likely allergic to something that's currently blooming, because she got a cut or scratch and it reacted much like the cut or scratch she got last time this year, which is to say - we took her to the vet for the good drugs.

I told Cael that we were going to be taking Clio to the vet, and he took this very seriously. He insisted that he be the one that break the news to her. He went into the living room and sat beside her on the blanket, gently petting her tail. Then, in a very calm but serious tone he said, "Clio, you don't feel well. You have an owie. You are going to go to the doctor. You'll feel better with medicine."

He dealt with the entire thing with a great deal of gravity.

When we were at the vet, Cael sat peacefully in the lobby until Clio's name was called. As she rounded the corner to the exam room, he started keening. Loudly. The tears were instantaneous and I could hardly make out what he was saying. Eventually, I could decipher the words. He continued hysterically wailing, "My friend Clio! I don't want my friend Clio to go!" for about five minutes, until Ryan came out of the exam room to retrieve Cael so that he could go sit with his newly minted best friend. Once in the exam room, Cael proceeded to comfort/distract her by reading her his new BabyBug that had just come in the mail.

For someone whose previous interactions with Clio were 95% poking with blunt objects, it was all very touching.

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Give him back, New York! :(

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I usually make it a policy not to cook anything that calls for white wine, as I find that leads to having to actually drink the stuff, but I make an enthusiastic exception for this meal. Newly discovered and already one of my very favorites:

Sausage and Fennel Orzotto

We do sweet Italian sausage and half the pepper flakes because that's the way I roll, but I'm sure it's great in its intended form as well.

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Finn has been saying "Uh oh!" for quite some time now. He seems to be under the impression that it is more versatile of a word than it actually is. He uses it when he drops things, throws things, or just plain feels like it's getting too quiet.

This is his first foray into consciously using a word solely for its intended purpose:

While reading a book to Finn I pointed to a picture of a dog and he said, "Ruff ruff!" I totally thought it was a coincidence, but he continues to make the same sound when you point to dogs or ask him what a doggie says. (Though not every time. Sometimes he just looks up at you with an expression that says, "You really need me to tell you this? Aren't you supposed to be teaching me? If you really don't know, why don't you try asking Clio and leave me in peace.")

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"What?! The red cheek? No, Mama! I'm not even a little bit tired! I'm just SUPER CUTE!"

"Not tired at all. Nope. I like to space out when I eat. I find the half-lidded eyes make the pancakes taste sweeter."

"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE. IS IT NAP TIME YET?"

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Grandma T.

Aunt Sarah, Mama, Aunt Lolo

Cael and Finn

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Where's Uncle Marty?

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Ryan came home from work and made some Chicken Cordon Bleu breadbowly things that were as tasty as they look.

We're a lucky bunch. ;)

(Recipe!)

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You don't need a kitchen scale when you have a perfectly functioning scale on the floor of your bathroom.

True story.

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Finn has plastic shapes that drop into their box through cut-outs on the lid. It has six different shapes, so it's a little advanced, and he gets a little confused, but if you point him in the right direction he has no trouble twisting the piece to get it to drop down.

I was letting him struggle with finding the correct spot on his own when he decided he'd had enough. He lifted up the lid, threw it to the side, and started tossing them all into the box.

You could tell he was thinking, "Why are we making this harder than it has to be? They fit just fine like this and you don't have to do it one at a time!"

Now he won't do it the right way. I'm pretty sure he's convinced he finally solved the puzzle.

I guess he did.

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Cael: I don't eat poop.
Allie: That's good. You're not supposed to eat poop.
Cael: It's not food. It's not even a snack.

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We knew he was going to be gangly. He's a spawn of Ryan, after all. What we didn't know was that it would come in the form of a cyst.

We recently noticed that Finn has a big, bulbous thing on his left wrist. Though I was leaning toward taking Finn to the ER the moment I noticed it, Marty assured me it wasn't a broken or malformed bone and the triage nurse on the phone said if it wasn't hurting him then we could just wait for his next appointment. After going back through pictures, we realized that this is not a new development - we just hadn't noticed it before because the fat rolls were hiding it. I'm not sure if he had it at birth, but you can see it peeking out about six months ago for sure.

The doctor was not concerned. He said it is probably a ganglion cyst (though he had not heard of one on someone so young). The interwebs seem to support the doctor's diagnosis, at least aesthetically (the Wikipedia image looks identical to Finn's).

Anyway, we're supposed to just watch and let the doctor know if it gets bigger. Or, if we want to go medieval on him, we can smash it with a bible. I'm leaning toward just watching it.

So, for our records, here it is today:

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The lens I have on the camera right now does not allow me to look through the viewfinder and pull the boys at the same time, so I didn't get the ideal pics of this, but you can still get the gist.

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[As Ryan is leaving for work]
Cael: Daddy, drive safe-a-leee! Don't drive faster! You might bonk into any cars!

--

Allie: And what's this?
Cael: P!
Allie: It's like a P, but it has an extra line on it, see? It's an R.
Cael: Mama, you're really great at this. Good job!

--

[Allie takes PlayDoh from Finn, who is putting it in his mouth.]
Allie: No, Finn. You can't eat that.
[Finn cries.]
Cael: Mama! That not nice! You don't take toys from Finn!
[Cael starts pushing Allie toward her bedroom.]
Cael: You get time out now!

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