Ooo baby baby it's a wild world...: 10 Months...

Another month has flown by...so sad...but exciting as well. Cosette has had a blast munching on everything from paper signs that say 10 Months to quinoa to buffalo to chicken to asparagus... you get the idea. She loves it all...except cold polenta which I found out today...she much prefers it warm and drenched in olive oil right from the frying

pan. Now that I think about it she's also not a fan of carrots which I find odd...not even the baby food/jar variety. None of my kids in their first year liked/tolerated them...very interesting. Her favorite food has to be freeze dried strawberries, which she eats by the fistful, and then she whines when I go to put the bag away. She also LOVES fruit smoothies! She prefers my specialty: OJ, a banana, frozen strawberries, and frozen blueberries. She's still not crawling, not that I'm excited to start chasing another explorer, but she's definitely interested in a faster way to reach her destinations, so it won't be long. She wiggled, pushed, and twisted her way to get a better view of a dinosaur parade just today!

It's always interesting to see features on our kids that we know they inherited from us...besides the "big head" thing which in her case is completely familial and comes from me. A while ago I noticed that Cosette has a dimple on the top of her forehead. I have one in the middle of my forehead...and I thought from a possible accident. Apparently you can inherit dimples anyplace? It'll be interesting to watch it and see if it ends up migrating, as her skin grows, to the middle of her forehead as well.

I also noticed when she was probably 3 months old, that she has a brown streak in her right eye extending from the outer perimeter of her iris to the outer perimeter of her pupil...just like my brother, Matt. He has very light blue eyes just like her and so the brown is very dominant and we thought it was eerie when we were kids and dubbed it the "lightning bolt." This is the first mark on her that I've found...sh

e had absolutely no birthmarks which I found very unusual. Of course, this may just be the first speck on her way to inheriting Chad's brown eyes...time will tell. Click on the pictures to check it out...look at the eye on the left side of the pic, in the Southeast quadrant. You can kind of see the dimple at the top of the smaller pic.

I wanted to include this cute picture of Alex sleeping on the couch after our special time. Yes, he's still in his pajamas and it's past noon...pick your battles I say! Special time is the one on one time,

with no distractions, I try to give to each of the kids every day. Sounds like an obvious task of motherhood I know, but it's harder to carve out individual time than you may think. Alex LOVES it and gets to choose any activity he wants. On this occasion we played Mr. Potato Head, and then he wanted to read a book, but all the books live in his room where Brennan was napping. So, I surprised him with a very special book I'd been saving entitled The House at Pooh Corner. Sounds like a typical book you'd find in a family library, except that I inherited this one from my Grandpa Lake when he died, so it is extra special. Originally published in 1928 this copy is from a crop of the 131st printings. My Grandpa had received it as a Christmas present from his parents in 1944...as evidenced from the inscription on the first page. Alex loved the first story...even though the pictures are sparse, and I can't wait to read him the others. It's just thrilling to me that Pooh is so timeless...and all stuffed with fluffies! Alex then fell asleep while I was reading an incredible book entitled Priceless: The Vanishing Beauty of a Fragile Planet chalk full of gorgeous photographs of endangered animals and a powerful message about how all life on earth is interconnected...which apparently lulled him into dreamland...ha!

Here are some pictures from our 10 Month photo shoot: