So This Is What Life In A Gizzard Would Sound Like

Lydia has teeth, about eight of them. She has four or five on the top of her mouth - not quite all the way there yet, but protruding enough to hurt when she bites your fingers (or face) - and another three or four on the bottom. And she grrrinds them. The sound of her thin little bottom teeth scraping across the much thicker stumps lining her upper gums - shudder - it sounds like she's chewing gravel. I hope that this is just a phase, and one she passes through quickly, because otherwise we can expect to be seeing plenty of the orthodontist, and I'll be spending much of my quality Lydia-time suppressing my vomit. I've come to grips with the messy eating thing, I can handle the diapers, and I've starting mentally preparing myself for the inevitable winter face-full-of-snot and the teeth-brushing business - but this teeth grinding thing, I honestly don't know if I'll be able to stomach it.

On a cuter note, Lydia has become an excellent faker. She has learned to fake a coughing fit when eating something she doesn't like (that being everything but apple sauce, cereal, avocado or mango), and will now perform a fake-coughing call-and-response number with her Dad, who perfected his own faking routine to much success back in elementary school. She has a ways to go before she is convincing though, as every fake-fit is followed by a huge stumpy-toothed grin.

Then there is Lydia's post-bath routine, captured on film here, which is a thing to behold. Outfit in nothing but a hooded towel that drags behind her like the train of a soft linen wedding gown, she has taken to racing around her bedroom, wobbly, bum in the air, looking for things with which she can use to pull herself into a standing position; the crib seems to work well, the empty clothes basket... notsomuch. With the hood on her towel and long linen train, she looks like a little naked baby ghost Pope. We are gathering oodles of digital footage of this, which I'm sure will be viewed with seething angsty teenage embarrassment by Miss Naked Baby Ghost Pope in 15 years or so, provided these technologies are not obsolete.. which they probably will be... so we'll have to spend a minor fortune transferring this data to whatever direct USB-to-frontal-lobe format is being used in 2024... or whatever...

Yay Friday!