A week to go!

Blogs will be few over the next few weeks. I apologize for this, but we are preparing for the big move to our first owned house. We get the keys next Monday and will move in very soon after. I will try to put up pics of the baby to keep the grandparents, aunts, and uncles happy. Wish us luck!

A Blog NOT About the Baby

For the one or two people still interested I bring you the story of Peter's spider. Yesterday a pesky fly was buzzing about the living room. Kind Peter tried to catch it with a glass, but accidentally killed the creature in the process. As he was carefully picking up the tiny corpse, he saw a spider on a little web outside the window. This is a nice spider that stays out of the way and keeps little bugs out of our herb garden, we'll call him Wally. Peter flicked the dead fly onto Wally's web and came back inside. After half an hour the spider was on the fly beginning his feast. When we woke this morning, Wally had created an entirely new web that showed of the fly in a very fashionable way. Peter made that the happiest spider in the world.

In other news, I found out today that I won a Village Green door prize for attending Applefest 2007. I will be picking up my apple basket tomorrow.

Developmental Milestones Not Mentioned in the Books

This week saw a return to the doctor for her 15-18 month visit (ostensibly to give her vaccinations, but she managed to run a fever postponing the shots a couple of weeks). During the visit we're always given a list of things to look for developmentally. Unfortunately they seem incomplete. In an effort to provide more education, I present them here:

• Child should be able to remain precisely out of reach. Instinctively knows the location where, even if you are leaning forward, will be able to evade capture.
• He/she will show awareness of any items containing a liquid other than water (ex. coffee mug, wine glass, bottle of beer) that are left unattended.
  
• Given a choice of drawers or cabinet drawers, child can sense where items containing highest 'Toddler Index"* are and go straight to them.
• Child can seemingly 'hear' attention being paid to them from anywhere in house and requires it to maintain a minimum volume. Any unacceptable dips will be accompanied by a reminder as to why he/she is center of the world.
  

* "Toddler Index" calculated by dividing the dollar value by the average number of times the item must hit floor before breaking. As an example, a $20 porcelain item would have an index of 20 ($20 / 1 x), whereas a $4 stuffed animal would have an almost infinitesimal value ($4 / 10000).