Goodbye 2009

The past month has been a barrel of laughs. The best story so far is this:

Me: "Zander, does Uly have a secret compartment like Mega Byte [the robotic dog he got from Santa]?"

Z: Nooooo.

Me: What's the difference between Mega Byte and Uly?

Z: Uly is a meat dog. She has meat alllll over her.

Matt and I could not stop laughing. To the point that Zander finally asked me what was so funny. What indeed? I lamely explained that what he said was true, but a funny way to say it.

A friend commented that perhaps Zander would be the next Terry Bisson. Indeed! (I am a huge Bisson fan.)


In arguably bigger news, Elinor started walking. It was just after Hanukah started, about the 13th of December. She loves to practice walking. In fact, she got two walk-along toys for Christmas, bringing the total in our house to three. But at least they're all different. One turns into a scooter, one breaks down into a largish lap toy (above), and the other folds flat.

What else do you get a nine month old?

Elinor, who may turn out to be our adventuresome child, helped herself to her first bite of cheese a few days ago. She snatched it right off my plate while I was sitting in the couch. (Between her and the dog, the couch is not a good place to have a snack any longer!) The good news is that she LOVED it. Wisconsin Sharp Cheddar, of course. She was practically climbing my leg to get more. This is a quiet relief for Matt and I because Zander really does not like cheese and it is baffling to us how this happened. Did our mutual love of cheese somehow cancel out in the gene pool? Apparently we just needed to keep trying.

Zander's work on writing continues. He will try out all letters if you show him how to draw the more difficult ones (R and Y were our big challenges last night but he did awesome). Last night he wrote you all a special message:

"Happy New Year!"

If you look closely, all the letters are there (even the exclamation point), just not in the order you were perhaps expecting.

We'll ring in the new year quietly tonight with a nice dinner at home (and probably that bottle of lambic that was overlooked at Christmas), maybe a pay-per-view movie, put the kids to bed, watch the ball drop, then go to bed five minutes later.

Have a safe and happy new year!