Baby Love

Lily has recently discovered baby dolls and it is so cute to see what she does with them. Note: In our house, Evie has set the definition of "baby" to include stuffed animals. Lily appears to be following suit.

When handed her Lorax (Dr. Suess character), Lily squeezed it and shrieked with delight. Then she proceeded to eat its hair. Apparently, she is vacillating between the "everything is a chew toy" and "everything is a baby" stage.

Last night when I gave her a little duck "baby", she held it tight, rocked side to side and patted it on the back. Then she proceeded to eat its hair. You might be sensing a theme.

My favorite trick of Lily's related to babies is when she sees one of Evie's baby multitude (neither the Octomom nor the Duggars has/have anything on Evie when it comes to progeny - unless you count the fact that theirs are real...) unguarded. She will walk over to the baby, grab it by the leg (must have learned that from Uncle Tim) and take off as fast as she can - which isn't fast at all considering she has only recently decided that she prefers functioning as a biped. But, from the look on her face, she is getting away with robbery and couldn't be more delighted. Mysteriously, Evie seems to always know when this occurs and is horrified that her baby has been snatched - though moments earlier she appeared to not even be cognizant of the baby's existence.

Yesterday was quite interesting in the "Lily meets babies" department because we had a real, live baby in the house, Cayden Fisher. Evie calls him "Baby Cayden" and I am pretty sure she will still call him Baby Cayden when/if they are in youth group together someday. It is a good thing he is so easy-going. Let's hope that lasts. Anyway, I was a little surprised at Lily's reaction to Baby Cayden because, when Lily was added to the household, Evie did not have a similar reaction. Must be that the extra six months from 1 to 1 1/2 really facilitates that "territorial" instinct. Lily was thrilled to see Baby Cayden. She would walk over to his car seat and display her utter euphoria by means of a high-pitched squeal that vaguely resembled her typical "Hiya" greeting. I can't imagine why Baby Cayden began crying. She, being much more the sharer at this age than her older sister, thought Baby Cayden needed toys - so she filled his car seat with toys, When he didn't respond as she saw fit, she banged to toys into his head as if to make him more aware of their presence. Needless to say, we had to create a Lily-proof barrier around Baby Cayden. Even then she would peek over at him and "talk" to him in a sing-songy voice. Baby Cayden just cried. I think she had ruined her opportunity to make a good impression - he was scarred. And scared.

It's back to fake babies now and I think we are all happy about that.

Totally unrelated, the Ankeny DQ had 1/2 price day today so we took the girls and met Aunt Amy for supper. Here is how that turned out.