Labeled

Note to self: hide labelmaker immediately. Iz found it a couple of days ago, so now many of our household items' identities have been clarified for anyone who might have been confused: "My Room" "Fish" "TV" etc. She wanted to label the cats as well, but we talked her out of it.

The now-labeled TV is the same one on which she finally got to watch the Teevo'd Presidential Debate she's been bugging me about for days. I wouldn't watch it as I can't deal with conflict (though I can read about it indefinitely), so she had to wait for her dad. Her conclusions: George Bush thinks he is a fantastic president, but that John Kerry will be a terrible president. Kerry thinks exactly the opposite. George Bush looks like a monkey. He wants to send more people to war, and that's bad.

She also made name tags for herself and her classmate Tori, and everyone else who came to dinner last night--though once Tori arrived Iz was far too on fire to remember such trivialities.

Dinner was faboo. I am, as previously mentioned, an absolute sucker for mashed potatoes and gravy. Even though I hate cooking meat, my cravings overwhelmed that particular revulsion and I roasted a chicken for the first time in over ten years so as to have gravy drippings. The mashed potatoes were made with Plugra butter, and cream. I had three bites of chicken and two mountains of potatoes. I would cook it all again tomorrow if I had the time.

Leelo has been more of himself lately, language-wise. Especially in language-eliciting situations such as getting us to come jump on the bed with him.

He has also become quite the monkey--his agility and fearlessness are shocking. Seymour caught him scaling the interior of the kids' closet in order to get to Iz's top-shelved Tinker Toys, and I caught him climbing our TV cabinet to get one of the supposedly out-of-his-reach games on the top. He almost had both items.

As I mention a lot, one of the nicest things about our boy is his snuggliness. He really likes to cuddle with us, especially in bed. He goes to sleep in his room, but frequently wakes up in the wee hours, and comes sneaking into our quarters. He nestles right in next to me and goes back to sleep instantly--most times. I love it when he does this--but if I'm to resume my nighttime nursing pattern of rolling over, slapping my teat in the baby's mouth, and falling back to sleep, then we're going to have to start denying him entry. It won't be pretty. And it doesn't seem fair. But I really won't be able to trust him anywhere near an infant. Sigh.