The last two months

An update on our nest:

School is back in session for Mark, who is getting his Masters in Computer Science part-time through WashU. He's taking a class on artificial intelligence this semester, which (so far) involves working with speech recognition software and designing games that a computer can play with a human. He has also been working a bit of overtime at Boeing, so his days are looong and the weekends aren't long enough.

Andrea has mostly been doing her usual mom stuff. She joined a book club with other moms she knows, but sadly missed the meeting where they actually talked about the book they read (A Curious Tale of the Dog in the Nighttime). It was an interesting book about an autistic boy who tries to solve a local murder mystery. The next book up is The Kiterunner, which she just picked up today.

Phoebe was a very very bad dog at the beginning of this two month period, choosing to use the house as her own personal potty palace and running away at every possible opportunity. BUT, praise God, we've changed our routine - mainly putting her in her crate when we're out running errands - and she has gone back to her sweet, submissive state.

And Taylor, who is of course the most interesting family member to write about, has made HUGE leaps and bounds since I last wrote. She is now crawling!!! And ::tear:: breaking in that soft baby skin so that her knees are rough and dry from friction with the floor.

She can say "mama(mamamama)," "baba," "puh," "ffff," "hehbeh," and other funny syllable combinations. She's getting close to waiving. She's pulling herself up to standing a bit too. I predict she'll be walking in the next month or so.

My hope for the next couple of months is that I'll start putting together a MyPublisher book of our photos from 2008, I'll make some alterations to her Halloween costume (she'll be a strawberry), and we'll get a bit further with baby-proofing (i.e. a new entertainment center with some sort of door to hide our dvd player, etc).

I'll leave you with a funny photo from a few weeks ago.

THIS is what happens when your baby becomes mobile.