Hannah Banana

Hurricane? What hurricane?

We didn't have a big storm. We didn't have a lot of wind. We had a rainy day. Once or twice, the rain came down fairly heavily, but it didn't last long. We never lost power. The neighborhood roads had a thin coating of downed brown leaves and pine needles on Sunday, but the winds hadn't been strong enough to pull green off the trees.

Most everyplace was closed, though, in anticipation, so I put off going to the Y until Sunday, and we logged into the library's website to renew our library books instead of taking them back. (Maybe we'll take them back in two weeks, when Jill is visiting. Not only can she help keep an eye on the kids while Matt and I are browsing the shelves, but I expect Penny would love picking out books for Jill to read to her.)

So it was a pretty relaxed weekend. We spent a lot of time at home. Penny's sugars magically leveled out, which lends some credence to the "stress high" theory.

Alex crawled all over the house, either chasing after me (he was Mama's Boy all weekend) or trying to get to the cat's food and water, which has some kind of weird fascination for him. He's pulling to standing with barely an effort now, so I expect it won't be too long before he figures out that if he moves his feet while he's holding on to the couch, he can get from one side to the other.

We also tried him on some Actual Food this weekend - small pieces of banana. They were a Big Hit, and he shrieked with fury when they were all gone. It was fun watching him try to pick them up, though; his manual dexterity isn't all that great, and banana bits are kind of slippery. He'd try to pick one up, and it would squirt away from him. Doggedly, he'd try again -- our boy is nothing if not persistent. He chased one piece all over his tray, up his arm, and down his leg.

He's so much more verbal than Penny was at this stage, I'm tempted to think he'll be an early talker. His most-used baby phrases are "ma ma ma ma" and something that sounds like "qua quo." On one hand, it seemed like he said "ma ma ma ma" most often says it when I was holding him or he was crawling toward me -- but then, he was crawling toward me or in my lap pretty much all freaking weekend, so it's probably a bit of a stretch to think that it actually has anything to do with me.

(It also amuses me to wonder if he's so verbal because, unlike Penny, he's had no ear infections or other problems to interfere with his hearing; or if it's got more to do with the fact that Alex has Penny -- who never shuts up -- for an example and role model.)

We're trying something new for Penny this week -- sending her to school with a snack to have around mid-morning, hopefully to stave off the lows that have been hammering her before lunch every day. It's a tiny, "no-shot" snack -- just two cheese crackers, today -- but that 8g of carbs should give her blood sugar a boost and keep her body from going into starvation panic mode, which is mostly what we expect is causing the lows. The human body is a weird and wonderful thing.

I was going to say that it looks like it's going to be a mildly crazy week, but it's not really that bad. Penny has an endo checkup on Wednesday that Matt will be taking her to, and I've got a couple of random appointments in addition to my allergy shots and such, but it should all work out okay. I'll even be able to fit one or two of my exercise sessions in during the day, so most of my evenings will be more normal and relaxed than last week, when it seemed I was running around like a headless chicken.