I'm sorry to say, for absent Alastair's sake, that it has been an eventful past week where baby accomplishments are concerned. Clio now has two very visible front bottom teeth coming up, and is right on the brink of crawling, with lots of rocking and creeping and downward dogging and shifting from sitting to all-fours. (She often does these things while making grunts of such arduous effort that I'll sometimes go and sniff her butt to see if, in fact, she's been...er...multitasking.) She's moving enough that today -- not without a little pang -- I lowered her crib mattress down to the "big girl" position.
She also continues to be an excellent clapper. And her toy piano playing has really advanced. Now instead of just banging her hand on one section of the keyboard repeatedly, she'll bang it up and down the keys. It's very minimalist, very modern. A bit over my head, to be honest. I'm sure whenever I plink out "Ode to Joy" on the thing, Clio's thinking, "Could this melodic structure be any more predictable?"
Elsa, meanwhile, has started waving when waved at, and is suddenly taking a more toddler-ish interest in stuffed animals. When I hold up a stuffed monkey, for example, and make it jump around and talk in a stupid monkey voice, she gets all happy and delighted about it. But her most exciting new trick is dancing. I first noticed it the other day when all three of us were feeling antsy and bored, so plugged my iPod into the stereo and started dancing around the living room like the nutjob that I am. The girls thought this was hilarious. They beamed and giggled. And then Elsa started bobbing her head and rocking back and forth, almost in rhythm to the music. I thought that, like the ghee=cat thing has turned out to be, it was just a fluke. But ever since then, almost any time there's music playing, she starts to dance. Especially if it's got a groovy beat and a mod new sound. Observe:
Please forgive me for ignoring Clio's cries of distress while filming Elsa. It's just that every other time I started to roll tape, Elsa would become fascinated by the camera and stop rocking out to crawl over and try to grab it out of my hands. Clio was fine, by the way. She just thinks the Beatles are totally derivative.
