One from the archives

With Autumn's second birthday rapidly approaching, I am feeling somewhat nostalgic. I think it's because Autumn has just gone through a major "growing up" spurt where she is, if not taller, certainly noticeably more mature. I can see it in her face and shape; she's all gangly and kid-like. And I can see it in her skill sets; she is talking and mimicking and learning to make friends. So, here's a little monkey reminder from May 2007...almost 2 years ago, if you can believe that:

From Autumn

Some current ones...I just uploaded a bunch of photos from my blackberry. Here's one of her being weird on the playground. We met some ladies and bebehs from church and she was a little shy. Autumn ended up having a good time poking the wood chips with a stick.

From May 2009

She doesn't look too happy about it here, but Autumn LOVES to help carry things in. We usually give her a light bag of groceries to drag in. A couple of weeks ago, she really wanted to haul the wrapping paper. :)


And we've mentioned that Autumn is a teeny bit OCD, right? Well, the big thing for her is the tub. She absolutely cannot stand to have anything floating in the water. Seriously, it's bad to the point that I warned Mike's parents right before they took Autumn to Birmingham the weekend I had that big conference. We found out about her little quirk when we put her in the tub at Andi's house in Colorado. There were letters in the tub. And she wept. She wept and walked around the tub picking up the letters and throwing them into the bucket. Wept. While Andi, Sophia, and I stared in confused amazement. Autumn doesn't play with many toys in the tub so I didn't really think about it until then but after we came home I got out our letters (I had forgotten that I stored them) and then I watched.


Autumn will fill and empty cups and line up her rubber ducks on the ledge, but will not let them float. She'll play with letters, dunking them in the water and then sticking them on the walls, but never, ever lets them just hang out in the water. She takes the letters out of the container, dips them in the water, sticks them on the wall, and then stacks them before putting the letters back in the container. See?


And, just for fun, here's a non-blackberry photo from another day that I think shows the sheer concentration Autumn puts into her bathtub play:


Hahaha! By the way, I am starting a new tag: "quirks." I guess Mike and I are somewhat quirky people so I guess it makes sense that we'd have a quirky baby. Might as well have fun with our eccentricities, right?