A few things about right now.

Jim likes books now, particularly board and cloth books with easy-to-turn pages. We keep a couple such books in each room, and he'll frequently bring one over to whomever is sitting nearby so that we can hold it and tell him about the pictures as he turns the pages. When we get to his favorite pages, he says "DOH" and stabs at the picture with his index finger so we know to read it to him repeatedly.

His favorite page of his favorite book. "Beware the crab! I think he knows / Just how to pinch your tiny toes!"

We're down to four chickens now, from our original fourteen. Out of those, one died from being smothered by the others. One got very very sick and Noah had to execute it. Three were meat chickens and wound up as roasts, salads, and soups. Five turned out to be roosters and got sent off to Freezer Camp so as not to irritate the neighbors with their bad attempts at crowing. So now we've got four hens, and they're pretty cute. I'm calling the silver one Amelia and the gold one Gertrude, but I haven't been able to settle on names for the two little red hens. Any ideas?

Amelia is up in the chicken house, with one of the red ones behind her. The three in the front are ex-chickens.

A week or so ago we tried weaning Jim off the boobies because he was developing a serious biting issue. Like serious-serious. Blood serious. So we cut down to just nursing before naps and bedtime. It DID cut down on the biting, but I just couldn't do it. The poor little dude would just walk up to me throughout the day, put on his very saddest face, and start signing 'milk' in a very tragic fashion. I scared Noah pretty good with a crying fit the other night to the effect of "He only had one word (MILK!) and we took it awaaaaaay *sob*" Not sure if I was totally overreacting or what, but we're back up to nursing around 6 times a day and hoping the biting will go away if I just ignore it.

The biting isn't confined to nursing, actually, but it's much less painful everywhere else. He's kind of confused about kisses, I think. He does this thing where he leans ominously toward you with his mouth wide open, and when he makes contact it's a toss-up whether he'll bite, go "ummm!", or make a *ppbbblllrrt* noise.

Oh, and one last thing! Jim has a new sign, in addition to milk and all done. He now signs GOOD. Sort of. I taught it to him wrong. I taught it to him as a thumbs up, and he mimics it by waving his index finger very dramatically. So now he's got more words!