Patience mantras

I'm officially subscribing to a patience mantra to get me through the next phase of my life. Instead of blissful exploratory independence, Vivian's crawling has created lots of drama in our house. Firstly, she mainly likes to crawl over to things where she can pull up to standing and look around. She's still very wobbly and has to yank her torso all about to keep track of Pip's whereabouts, so this leads to frequent tumbles. So I always have to keep my eye on her and hands nearby. Secondly, she doesn't want to explore toys on her own, she wants Pip's toys. Or sometimes Pip wants her toys. But 90% of the time they want the same toy. Pip seems unable to grasp the concept of sharing with her, who up until this point has basically left him alone. Poor thing is getting toys pulled nastily out of her hands left and right. I keep righting the wrongs and imploring Pip to share -- any guesses how this is being received?

Vivian is fighting back, though. She crawls over to Pip and grabs his hair, cheeks, eyebrows, and mouth. At first just gently enough to be annoying and he swats her away, then with a vengeance that leaves tiny little pink finger marks. Take that! But all with this sweet face, as if to say, "hey, just checking you out honey!"

Some pics over the last few days ... Pip playing with the car set from Grandpa. It requires hand-eye coordination on a whole new level and I fear it will be quite a while until the cars stop flying off the tracks.



Pip caught sleeping peacefully, ugly doll hugging away at his neck.


Karen and Molly visited today and Vivie (of course) stood up with Karen and explored her mouth too. I think we have a dentist in the making.