What is JM doing? Clara-isms! Gracie's future occupation

What is JM doing?

• He's trying so hard to crawl! He's not there yet, but he can sure rock back and forth on those knees. He's doing pretty well at getting around even without the crawling though. He just pulls himself along on his belly (it's made easier by the wood and cork floors)!
• He's also into chewing on everything. He's got two sharp little teeth on the bottom, so you have to watch him. He tried to chew on my leg the other night. He settled for the cuff of my jeans. I've got a good story about him chewing on things & trains - I'll post some pix and a video soon.
  
• Now we know that JM loves socks - his "look" (as Gracie would call it) is to wear them hanging about an inch off his toes. Then he likes to suck on that extra bit until it is thoroughly drenched. Dee-sgusting as the girls would say! When we are out with him, people are constantly warning us that his socks are about to fall off. Little do they know - you don't want to touch those suckers (ha, ha) once they are cold and soggy!
  
• Apparently the fascination with socks can be hereditary. When we were in Amarillo for John Michael's baptism, Joe was telling us about how Mike always loved to chew on his (Joe's) socks. Well, the other night, Mike was in his socks and JM was on the floor and guess what??? Mike ended up with wet socks.
  
• Starting to eat more foods - loves green beans (sampled tonight for the first time), does not love zucchini (horrible shudders, followed by raspberries to get that horrible flavor out of the mouth), loves peaches, pears and probably any other fruit I get around to pureeing.

Clara-isms!

• "Ligging" Room - this is where we spend lots of our time so we get to hear lots of references to this!
• "Oak" - the best part of the poached egg
  
• In a "jippy"- the way Mommy would always like you to pick up your toys, instead of dragging it out so it takes an hour
• "Noggie" - most people call these little blankets with ribbons "taggies", but Clara decided this was a good name for JM's (who is our first baby to really like it - he seems to find it endlessly fascinating)

Gracie's future occupation

• Event/Party Planner - If you were to spend more than a day at our house, you would come to this conclusion as well. At least several times a week we have some sort of celebration or event at our house, all orchestrated by Gracie. About a year ago, the fascination was with holding birthday parties for her various stuffed animals. She has since added more variety into her schedule. In the last few weeks we have had: a fall carnival & festival, a fall parade, Elvis's birthday party (with actual presents - even though we have no idea when her real birthday is and we usually celebrate it in April), an afternoon at Texas Hot Tubs (the restaurant that Gracie & Clara run from the kitchen in the living room), a tea party complete with water and M&Ms, a piano concert last night (she used her song book from the library and "played" and sang about six songs for us - we were warned several times about no talking), another parade, and the list could go on & on if I could remember it all! Sometimes you can get worn out with all the celebrating.