Nothing much is going on here. No, I guess that'’s not exactly true. There'’s nothing going on in the areas I need to progress (those areas being in and around that damned edifice we thought we'’d be calling home by now). All other areas (those being all things concerned with my children) are busy--like crazy busy. So, instead of boring you with the non-existent details of all the non-existent work not going on in our existent-but ever-so-very-badly made house, I'll give you a boring update on my very wonderful monkeys.

Piglet is now eight months old. Why is it that pregnancy passes so slowly, but once the baby has fled the uterus time shoots into overdrive? I was pregnant with her for nine thousand years yet she was only born yesterday. Ugh. Time, you's one nasty beyotch! Anyway, she's now known as the Mad Mobile Midget. Why? It's one of those things I can't quite describe. You have to see her in action. We put her in her walker and she's off, like a mad dog, tearing up everything in her path. She's mad, she's mobile, and, for the time being at least, she looks like a midget (though this too shall change--she's already much taller than the babies who are older than she is). She's charming and adorable, and when she cocks her head over to the side and sticks her tongue out at you it melts your heart. If it doesn't, there is something inherently wrong with you and you should be exterminated. She's active, like very active, like we need to glue her down or else she's gone again active. Not only can she sit up and crawl, she can pull herself to her feet and skootch around the play pen--and the living room if I leave her on the floor long enough. And she can walk, if you hold her hands. She likes to jump too, though she doesn't quite get off the ground. She does go through the motions, though, holding on to the bars of her crib or play pen and my God her legs are strong. Speaking of those legs of hers, everyone remarks about her fluffy thighs--until she kicks them, that is. That's ain't baby fat, y'all. She loves music and has a special place for some of her mom's favorites. Alanis Morissette makes her very happy, and probably ranks up there as her favorite. She also like the really hard stuff, and Marc has taken to calling her the 'punk rock girl'. And she's still a redhead--though thankfully without the temper. I hope this never changes--the temper part.

Muppet, my darling monkey boy, spends his days going back and forth between being the most wonderful little boy ever and being the person on top of the list of all the folks I want to beat senseless. He refuses to take a nap anymore, although we still lock him in his room for a while in the afternoon. He punishes us for this misdeed by destroying everything he can reach--and some things he can't. Today I found the entire box of plastic for the diaper pail pulled out and strewn across the bedroom. This tiny disaster only served to hide the fact that all of his books (though thankfully none of mine) we're strewn about underneath. He was, of course, out of bed and running around his room when I came to get him. When I opened his door he greeted me with a "Coucou mama! Ca va?" or "Hiya mama! How are you?" like I wouldn't notice that WWIII had just taken place behind him. He's talking all the time now, and his vocabulary grows every day at astonishing rates. You can actually have real conversations with him now, so long as these conversations center around tractors or motorcycles and their various paraphernalia. I am beginning to see how things work inside his head, and I'm frightened to see that he's not the little boy I thought he was. The more he is able to communicate, the more I realize I'll never really know him as well as I'd like. He's full of surprises and every day shocks me at least once. Potty training is still an on-going thing and he's really making progress so I shouldn't complain, but I'd love for it to go a lot quicker. There I go wishing his youth away again--I'm a horrible mom.

And of course, as I'm still in computer purgatory, I can't post any pictures to dazzle you all with. That's a problem I'm working on, slowly but steadily, with bouts of cleaning up behind Muppet and Piglet and myself tossed in. No, I don't see the end yet, but as I try to do about the house, don't loose hope.