Oh, hullo friends.

It has recently been brought to my attention by two separate persons that I have not blogged in a while. Eleanor had a cold and then a fever and THEN a rash, and sometimes I am adaptable and capable and sometimes I am like, THE BABY HAS SPECKLES I CANNOT DO THE DISHES.

You give the medicine like this.

But she's fine now, and my dishes are done, and now I am out at a coffee shop, eating tarts and reading YA novels about monster-hunters and OK FINE, spying remotely on Eleanor via space technology. She is still napping.

We went to the zoo yesterday, but those photos are still in my phone, so you will have to wait until tomorrow or check my instagram feed for photos of Eleanor the Baby Kangaroo.

In the meantime, on this my baby's nine-month-birthday, let us capture some of her delightful habits in e-print, so that when she stops chuffing like a horse I can look back and remember how, when she caught sight of a toy she really liked, she would chuff like a horse.

Or how she likes to get a hoodie string in each hand and then rev them, like a motorcycle.

Or how she wakes up at, like, 4 am these days, and I can hear her down the hall all CHA CHA CHA BZZZZZZT WUHWUHWUHWUH MRRRRRRW and then she goes back to sleep for a few hours.

Or how she is the HAMMIEST ham at library story time. Or how Morgan and I sit her and Jess across from each other at the gym so that they can screech at each other and share toys, and Eleanor looks at Jess all baffled like, That mirror-baby has hair. Or how she croons at the actual mirror-baby with a sweetness formerly reserved for toast.

Did I mention that she has six teeth now? They make her look so ferocious.

Being ferocious also makes her look ferocious.

And she's still not crawling, thank goodness, but sometimes if you prop her up on all fours, she stays that way for a bit.

Also, holy crap, nine months. She has now been on the outside for as long as she was on the inside, and it has not been terrible.

Those hours, we kill them any old way we can.

We have a couple of games we play a lot. One of them is Shouting Into Cups

(it makes great sounds)

and another is Hey Look, A Loose Thread

and yet another is Ole Sock-Hands.

While in BC, we played a variant on Ole Sock-Hands called Ole Sock-Hands And Also, Here Is A Toy, Now What Are You Going To Do.

Eleanor won that round.

We mixed it up by replacing Toy with Cheerio.

After a couple of minutes of relentless swiping (but, weirdly, no apparent frustration) she got a bit of help

Good work, feeties.

Cuzzies!

So we hung out a couple of times with Eleanor's cousin Hazel, who is five months younger. In two years that won't be nothing, but right now it means that they are Different Species, and trying to get them to interact with each other AT THE SAME TIME is like herding cats.

Hazel will be all like, Hey Eleanor, and Eleanor will be like, This looks like a fun toy.

Or Eleanor will be like, Hey Hazel,

hey, Hazel,

hey, Hazel

and Hazel will be like, Doo de doo, baby thoughts.

One day they will be running amok and we will be like, remember when they just sat there, gawking at each other?

(Hey, remember when Eleanor tried to borrow Hazel's eyeball? Best keep tabs on that one.)

We are classy up in here.

A lot of the time we have casserole or stir-fry for dinner, because then the whole meal is one dish. But then sometimes we have what I like to call 'Pinterest food,' like these ciabatta toasts with ricotta, blueberries, and honey.

I feel like 'artisanal toasts' is experiencing a moment, and I, for one, can get on board.

Eleanor only got the blueberries because honey = botulism and I can't give her toast fingers ever since she got teeth because now she just bites off bits and more bits until her mouth is full and she gags and I am like, CHEW, child. Chew and swallow. But she was happy with her blueberries and her salmon and her pureed asparagus (she is going to have the grossest pee later) and also she has learned to drink out of her sippy cup.

She is the Ron-Swansoniest.

You can tell she knows she's funny.

I present to you, with no comment, this video.

We also exercise the brains.

One of the fun things about going back to BC was that Eleanor got to expand her Repertoire of Experiences. I mean, she's very familiar with the stretch of sidewalk between our house and the store, and intimately acquainted with the carpet, but in BC she learned about fishnet stockings

and beards

(became rather an expert on beards, actually)

(got something of a PhD in 'beards')

and learned to play the piano (it is done with the feets).

Her already-not-insubstantial brain grew three sizes that week.

We are the fittest.

Eleanor and I went to our first mommy-and-me exercise class (it's called....something. Fit Together or some other hideous pun) and I thought it would be, like, doing sprints with your stroller or some nonsense, but it's just an exercise class where you can put your baby down on a mat and there are toys and then you do your lunges and things and when your baby squawks you go and pat them or whatever, and the instructor is like, If your baby is fine then do your squats like this, but if you are holding your baby then do your squats like this.

no photos of the class, obviously, so please accept this photo of the osh kosh in lieu

Also, all the babies are, like, minutes old, which means that I am in better shape than most of the class because my baby is practically driving.

and this one of ole sock-hands. When that game gets old, I'll let you know

But not crawling! And this other little baby, Amelia, is totally crawling even though she's only 7 months old, and it is the slowest little army scootch that you will ever see but it is inexorable. And Eleanor is sitting there watching this and getting ideas, and Amelia is inching her way across the floor, and her mom and I are all *lunge* and *lift* and *curl* and *press* and Eleanor is babbling away at Amelia in, like, German (there's a lot of 'ja, ja, ja, ja' in it) and Amelia is scootching and Eleanor does this thing that she does all the time now where she holds a palm straight out like she's hexing you and goes 'Hnnnnnnnnnn!' and Amelia is like *scootch, scootch* and it's even odds these days as to whether Eleanor is going to pinch you or very gently stroke your face so I was sort of holding my breath but she very softly petted Amelia on the head and then they 'nyang nahng nahng nahng'ed at each other because as much as I think my baby is a special snowflake, I'm starting to realize how much Babies Of A Certain Age sound exactly like each other.

A quick summary.

So. Eleanor and I went home for a quick visit, and a week is not long enough to see ALL THE EVERYONES. So we saw my family, and we saw Joel's family and Eleanor's cousin Hazel (whom she tried very hard to eat)

and we saw Kelly and Eleanor's boyfriend Felix (whom she likewise tried to eat)

and we saw Robyn and Meredith (whom she sat placidly beside and did not try to eat

not because Mere is bigger than she is, but because she was busy with the table, thanks)

and then we saw this ear of corn.

You can tell how hard she's concentrating because her feeties are making little feet-fists.

Home is where my baby lays her enormous melon.

We have been a-gallavanting in BC, which is why no postings. Now we are home again (home again, jiggity jig) and Eleanor is teething and has a cold and the weepies, so her face is constantly damp.

I will blog more later, but now I have to go sprawl in my bed and die of exhaustion. Getting a baby from A to B is a feat, I tell you this.

Sometimes it backfires.

Do do you see that black food truck, just under the center orange block?

No, because it is so very far away? That's Alley Burger, one of twelve (TWELVE) food trucks at the Calgary Farmer's Market Sundown Chowdown, and for some reason we were like, Yes, this line-up seems reasonable.

This is how close we were, an hour and a half later, when they announced that they were out of burgers.

But we were so, so hungry, and all the other trucks had lines at least twenty minutes long, so we got Alley Burger's stupid poutine

and fine, it had a pleasing amount of cheese curds. But I wanted the BURGER with the cheese curds on it.

Eleanor spent the entire time in line amusing the young family in front of us.

Stop me if you've heard this one!

And you can't tell, because the photo is blurry, but she had her Crazy Eyes on all the way home.

A busy week, this.

I have been remiss. It is time once again for a Bunch Of Things.

We went hiking again last weekend, with our friends Magnus and Chelsea and their dog, Seamus. Seamus is a Very Good Doggie who curled up in the back of our car and didn't even peek his head over the back seat until halfway through the drive, at which point Eleanor was like

and then she was like

but then later she was like

After the hike we went to the Highland Games, which seemed to consist mostly of tossing Various Household Objects either high (the bale of hay) or far (the rock on a chain). Also, caber toss.

Right? And then also we went to Ikea and got cinnamon buns and coffees for $2

and also other things that were not $2 and two of which we will have to return tomorrow (at which point I will be getting another cinnamon bun, believe you me). Happy baby was happy, and everyone cooed at the happy baby.

One day when we are ridiculous millionaires I will get Eleanor this ridiculous lamp for her room.

Right? But because we are whatever the opposite of millionaires is, I got her this from the thrift store for 50 cents.

I used to have that exact one, I'm sure. I also made a peach and basil salad with bocconcini.

It is getting chilly now, so I've started putting pants on the infant. She is obsessed with her belt.

And then today we dug out the box of Long-Sleeved Thing And Also Hats. She has a handful of hats, but this is my favorite.

You can't really tell, but it has ears.

In conclusion, I leave you with this series of photos of Eleanor And The Side Of The Freezer, without comment.