Who says Bumbos are just for babies?

In case you were wondering, 31/2 year-olds and 8-month olds can still fit in Bumbo chairs. These two chairs are in our church nursery, and Elizabeth and Frankie were trying them out.

Frankie loves her "big sister" Elizabeth so much! No one can make her laugh the way Elizabeth can!

Arson

Okay, so the 9-year-old boy next door has stepped over the line. The other week he was playing with his mom's lighter: setting pieces of paper on fire and flinging them from his bathroom window into the alleyway between our houses (which mind you, is only about three feet wide). He caught his own window sill on fire, and some things in the alleyway. This resulted in the Cambridge Fire being there in about two seconds flat (bless them), closing off our street, and investigating the situation. He admitted to what he'd done (not without some stern talking to from the firemen that this was a serious situation), and it's on the books as arson. This means that the fire department has to do an investigation, the police department, and DSS since it was a minor who set the fire.

Having the street shut down by two fire trucks on a Sunday evening at 8:30 PM brought out many of the neighbors, and we all started piecing together our grievances against this child. We realized our collective story about him was more serious than any of us had realized, and I think I'm relieved that DSS is going to get involved - maybe he'll get the help he needs. The Fire Chief was very concerned about the other incidents we were sharing with him, and encouraged us to call the police and create a record any time we saw something suspicious. We have begun to do this, starting with the bike that showed up in our backyard (that we know he put back there and was probably stolen). The police came and collected it.

We've also talked with several of the other neighbors, and are renewing our efforts collectively to set some boundaries with him. For example, if we catch him in any of our yards to reprimand him, and contact the owner. It's hard, because the kid clearly needs people who care about him, but he also clearly needs boundaries and discipline. While we're not the ones primarily responsible for disciplining him, we can at least discipline him when it concerns our property. At this point too, it's not just for his sake, but our own safety.

Sigh. I had hoped we had a few more years left before he turned into a real threat.

Nathanael, what do I do with this block?

As with everything else, Frankie, we put it in our mouths.

Frankie at 8 months

Okay, so this post is about three weeks past due, but I wanted to post pictures of Frankie's 8 month photo shoot:



Where to begin? At 8 months this is what Frankie's up to:

• She's got a tooth! And it appears that the another one of the bottom and the top front teeth are on their way.
• She's crawling with the best of them. Okay, so she can't keep up with Nathanael, but I think we can finally call what she's doing proper crawling - she's past the army crawl stage.
• She's starting to cruise - I think that's the term - where she pulls herself up (usually with a little help), and takes steps while holding on to furniture (and Mommy perched nervously behind her ready to catch her).
• She can move from her crawl position to a sit, which, when she first figured out how to do, resulted in several sleepless nights for all of us. She'd get in a sitting position in her crib, and then forgot how to get back down, so would cry until we came and rescued her.
  
• She can wave, which sometimes she does at perfect strangers.
• Her favorite foods are Cheerios, yogurt and oatmeal, green beans, and apples.
• She is a very deliberate child. My dad noticed this when he was visiting, and it's one of the things I want to remember about Frankie at this age. Maybe she's always be deliberate, but at least right now she doesn't like to do something until she's sure of herself. She'll try it, and work on it, she's just careful about it.
  
• She likes her personal space. This one cracks me up. The two other babies she spends the most time with, Nathanael and Hannah, love to grab at Frankie's head, arms, legs, socks, whatever they can reach. Frankie gets really mad when they do this. Hannah's not crawling yet, and Frankie has figured out how to quickly move in, grab the toy Hannah's playing with, and crawl away before Hannah can lick her forehead (Hannah's preferred method of 'playing' with Frankie).
• She can find the one item on the floor that she shouldn't put in her mouth and put in her mouth. How do kids do this?
  

Frankie's favorite cheese is Brie, which turns into a sticky paste after she's been trying to pick it up for a while. Notice how she's gotten clumps of it all over her cup, and then cheerios have stuck to the Brie. It reminds me of one of those home-made bird feeders we used to make as kids that were pine cones covered in peanut butter and then rolled in bird seed (that really just went straight in the squirrels' bellies)

New Hampshire '07

We went to New Hampshire a few weeks ago with my parents. We did lots of hiking, resting, eating, and sewing. It was a beautiful week - not a drop of rain, and the trees were in full color.


Maisy probably had the best time of all


New baby backpack for Frances


Nonnie and Pawpaw

Enjoying the fall leaves

A scenic trainride in North Conway

Maisy dog was welcome on the train - woof!

We had to keep a good hold on her during the ride to make sure she didn't try to jump out and run after any chippys she saw along the way.

Riding the train was tiring...

For everyone!

We're back!

I apologize, loyal friends and family for the long gap in blog postings (a whole month, sheesh!). We've been busy this past month, and Frankie has made some significant developmental strides.

The first of which is that she is now crawling. She's still slow, and it takes her a lot of effort to stay upright for a few steps, but she's doing it. Here's a video of the precursor to the real crawl, the scoot, or what Heather labeled as the army crawl:



She is also waving, playing peek-a-boo herself (video coming shortly), loves to feed herself finger foods, and is making more and more intelligible noises (like ma-ma and da-da). She also sometimes noticeably mimicking the words we say, which always makes me really excited. I don't think they count as words yet, but the sound awfully close. She is known to sometimes parrot "Hello" (sounds like eh-do), and "Night Night".

More pictures and stories to come!

The Tech Shuttle

On the mornings that I go to work, I drop Frankie off at Heather's and take the MIT Tech Shuttle over to the other side of campus where my office is.

Riding the Tech Shuttle is usually what you would expect -- students wearing I Love Math t-shirts, discussing experiment results on the way to the lab; although sometimes you get a little more for your money.

For example, during finals week last May, two students got on (separately) who were in the same class and on their way to their final. It was apparently open book, and so they both brought large rolling suitcases full of books to take with them. I don't know how they thought they could possibly sift through that many books during the final for an elusive answer, but you have to love them for fulfilling our stereotypes of MIT undergrads.

This morning the bus was driven by a man in his mid-forties, and I distinctly heard him tell some students to "Chill Out" as they got off the bus and thanked him for their ride. It seemed like maybe he read an article from 10 years ago on how to relate to the college kids by speaking their lingo.

Nerd Pride, baby.