I Scream For Ice Cream

Myrna's getting grabby. She's learned to climb, which has greatly improved her reach, and completely changed the landscape of the livingroom for her. Now she can pull toys off the shelf, though they tend to fall onto her head. We've had to remove all the magazines from the coffee table, and now just place junk mail there for her to find and destroy. Laptop chargers, a continued attraction for her, have nowhere to hide, but they do get their revenge. Our Mac chargers use magnetic connectors, the idea being that, if you trip over a cord, the charger will disconnect rather than yanking your laptop off the table. But this also means that small people who use stretched cords as climbing supports end up kissing the carpet.

All of this has meant further childproofing around the house. We've felt the real toll, however, on our regular ice cream runs. We've become pretty friendly with an ice cream joint maybe a ten minute walk from our place. Conveniently enough, it's next door to our regular source for diapers and baby food, so we find ourselves lining up for cones at least three times a week. From time to time, I've let Myrna sample some. This week, though, there hasn't been much choice in the matter. Thursday, Kelly carried Myrna in the Baby Björn. We got our cones and, after her longing stares went ignored, Myrna attacked Kelly's ice cream with a two handed grab - gripping the cone with her right, and smearing ice cream with her left. Then, each time Kelly went for a bite, Myrn pulled forcefully at her wrist, so that she could get a taste first. And by "taste," I mean ravenous, greedy chomp, each bite approached with the fear that it might be her last. It'd be one thing if this was, say, banana ice cream. But Kelly was eating ginger caramel ice cream, and Myrna couldn't get enough. Today I got the same treatment. I was able to keep my ice cream out of Myrna's immediate reach, but the tugs on my arm were stern and surprisingly powerful. I held her off until the screaming began. It was clear that she felt she some claim on my two scoops.  As the picture can attest, she won this battle. 

Sunday Ads

My two favorite parts of the Sunday newspaper are the crossword puzzle and the ads. They are Myrna's too. We keep her away from our current crossword (not quite from the Sunday newspaper, but from the NYT Sunday Crossword book), but yesterday we let her indulge in the ads.


In answer to the Rolling Stones' question "Who wants yesterday's paper?" Myrna answers with a resounding "ME!"

9 Months

Myrna hit the 9 month mark yesterday on the 20th of August. I'm a big fan of fractional birthdays though it is only with Myrna that I can really get anyone else interested (nobody wished me a "Happy 1/6th Birthday" the day before, nor did I wish Chris a "Happy 5/12 Anniversary") . Time really flies, and she continuously is doing new things. She loves standing and now will crawl around the apartment to find us (or to find something more exciting than us). She has almost even grown out of all her 3 month onesies, and we've been happy that she can sport all her 6 month summer clothes now.

It's been really hot here (maybe not quite as hot as Seattle, but 90s and humid and absolutely no air conditioning anywhere), so there has been a few days of diaper napping in front of the fan.
Although she's certainly not the biggest 9 month old baby on the block, look at how much she's grown.
That's her a week old, when she had to be under heating lamps when her clothes were removed. Skinny baby she is no longer! More pics of her in her new summer outfits and her diligent reading of her dad's Film Comment are on her August Picasa Page.

Back in Köln

We spent a lovely long weekend back in Köln (the first since we left at the end of February). We left beautiful sunny Freiburg, for a rainy Köln Wednesday, but that was ok because we were ready to visit our much missed coffee shop, Kaffeebaum.
We were so sad, when we learned that it was closed for a long summer holiday. Fortunately, they opened back up on Saturday (our last day there) so we were able to properly enjoy four cups of coffee and load up on beans (one kilo at that). But the rest of our favorite places were open - including the kid's consignment shop Lollipop, where we quickly spent the money we had waiting for us from selling clothes in February on new winter clothes for Myrna. We're super excited for her to sport this coat in Stockholm, at which time she hopefully will have grown into it.
We stayed in quite a lovely apartment, that among other things, had sparkling clean floors, and Myrna spent most of her time at the apartment crawling and sliding around.
We also saw friends and Chris caught a few shows at C/O Pop - a large musical festival in the city that he was writing about. He learned that he really isn't a club kid that can stay up all night, returning home at 5:30 am.
And just because we love train excitement - we got some first hand knowledge about medical emergencies on DB trains, after the car seat fell off the luggage rack and hit me and Myrna on the head. Thankfully there was no detour to a hospital in Mannheim.

August

It's August, and we finally got around to starting a new Picasa Album for the month. See all the mischief Myrna is up to - attacking crosswords, crawling under couches, etc. Last night at 9:30 she had a spurt of energy as she discovered that she can crawl out of the living room, down the hall and into her own room. She was on a tear.

All Smiles

It's virtually impossible to get a candid photo of Myrna these days. She has keen ears for the camera's start-up chirp and whirring zoom mechanism, and promptly strikes a sunny pose. I've effectively taken this picture a dozen times this week.

I can safely say that she didn't inherit this from me...

More Garden Goodies

Our latest gifts from the garden included this gigantic yellow zucchini
Myrna is only a tad bigger than it. The last of the July photos of Myrna have been uploaded to her July picasa page - a new one will start soon.