Monkey Down!

Earlier today, I heard Tate exclaim from the other room, "Oh NO!". I went in to investigate and found poor little Snowy the Monkey had been brutally mutilated by our dog. Because, you know, Spencer is pretty evil:

Oh, wait, no. Spencer is this big pile of dumpy ineptitude:

Poor Snowy required medical attention, STAT, so Eric and Tate took him upstairs to do some repair. This is what Snowy looks like now:

You can't really tell from the picture, but his left hand (paw?) is bandaged up as well. Note the Spongebob Band-Aid on top of the gauze. Tate thinks putting those Band-Aids on his own skin will cause him to erupt into a fiery inferno, but apparently they're a-ok for a stuffed monkey. You're a brave little simian, Snowy.

My baby girl is walking. She started doing it in earnest two nights ago. Before she would take a step or two before doing a spectacular collapse into the carpet, but now she steadies herself, raises her arms above her head for balance, and lurches away. She looks like a drunken Weeble Wobble. Imagine this dude floundering around my family room, only with a little radish-sprout ponytail. Oh, and as a girl.

The best part is listening to her laugh delightedly, so proud of herself. That little sprite's gonna be quick. She can crawl at the speed of light already. She looks like a little spider skittering across the floor. I keep trying to post a video of her walking but something inside my computer is being stupid and not letting me. There's one on my Facebook page.

And of course, since she's been walking for a whole 48 hours, she's already acquired like 5903 bumps and bruises. The best was when she tripped and hit her crib with her mouth. It's amazing how much a mom will freak out when she sees blood pooling around her baby's teeth. I was going into psycho mother mode. Everything's fine, though. She tried to eat a rock a few minutes later so no permanent damage to teeth, gums or tongue, apparently. Or maybe it was just a particularly irresistible rock. She is quite the tough little broad.

Tate is turning into quite the reader, which delights me to no end. I've been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, and was determined to pass that down to my kids as well. Apparently, though, all of our books have some sort of subtext that we ignoble grownups cannot see. For whenever Tate reads to himself, each and every book consists of the text: "Oh Sa So Sil-lay!" That's what he chants to himself as he turns the pages. Every time, every book. "Oh Sa So Sil-lay! Oh Sa So Sil-lay!" Then he'll come to a page that he recognizes and it'll be something like "Oh Sa So Sil-lay! I love you alllll the time!" or "Oh Sa So Sil-lay! Michael likes to poop on the potty!" He likes to read in bed for awhile after I tuck him in, so I'll stand outside the door and listen to the "Oh Sa So Sil-lay! On the track, the trains are running!". I love it.

And what the hell ever happened to these dudes???

Those Yip Yips kicked ass. I heart the Yip Yips and they're not on Sesame Street anymore. How I miss the Yip Yips.