big pictures

New tricks:
WELL... seeing how it's been over a month since I last updated this site, I have a lot to say. Karen is crawling with great speed and confidence. She's pulling up on everything. When we were in the states late April, she started to cruise and now she's cruising all over the place, including pushing her walker and our kitchen chairs across the floor.

Karen is obsessed with dogs. If she sees a dog or even hears a dog, she goes wild--she must stop everything to see the dog. I even think she says "doggie" (although it sounds like dah-kah). Karen followed Smore around everywhere when we were at Dads last month. Our downstairs neighbor has a dog which barks a lot and is on the balcony almost all the time. When he barks, Karen perks up and wants to go see him.

Karen cut the two top center teeth the first week in May, and I can feel the bumps for the two (one on each side) next to those. Maybe they'll cut through by the end of the month. Despite all her teeth and some persistence on our part, she's not eating all that much "solids." Even at a good meal, she eats less than a tablespoon-worth. We tried giving her wheat this week, because a lot of good finger-foods are wheat-based (pasta, bread, pretzels, etc.) but she broke out with a pretty bad diaper rash, so we're off wheat and we'll try again next month. We tried giving her yogurt, and it was a relative success--although that doesn't say much. I tried again with banana, giving her a chunk. She took a few "bites" and then figured out it is much more fun to squeeze it through her fingers.

The weather here is decidedly summery and we got out our baby pool so Karen can "swim" out on our balcony. We filled it up a few inches and played with her in it--next time we'll take pictures. She seemed to like it, but I'm not sure how much she cares that she's in the water. We pour water out of a bucket and she tries to grab the water.
 

In this picture, Karen looks like she's giving some attitude, like: OH! here you go with that camera again?!

Such cheeks. MMMMMM-good

Cute!

Cruising along the edge of the bed. Here she almost looks like she's running, but really she wasn't going very fast.

Her lips are kissably delicious

Karen and Ari watching election commentary on the evening news. Karen is carefully analyzing the consequences of various potential coalition combinations.

This time Ari is watching the news and Karen is watching the camera.

You just have to kiss that little baby, she's so cute.