This week Sydney and I have had a number of opportunities to marvel at how different our kids are, at least thus far in their lives. She has always had a rather suspicious, dark-eyed stare; he looks out at the world with light-blue eyes wide open. When she started crawling and walking, she frequently tested surfaces by hitting her head against them; now that he’s at that same stage, he cries if his head touches anything as he moves about the room, even if that thing is just a piece of fabric. She was never much of a cuddler, preferring to stand and sit and arch with a great deal of intensity until she could move about on her own, at which point she abandoned us in order to explore the world; he is much more interested in cuddling, and spends a good deal of his energy hunting us down so that he can pull on our pant legs and beg to be picked up and tickled. Both are quite lovable, but in very different ways. The only things they seem to have in common thus far is a big appetite. Nathaniel has recently started watching mealtimes with great interest, so we’ve just started slipping him tastes of squash-and-fennel soup (he ate a fair bit of Sydney’s bowlful!), mango, and, today, a large chunk of apple. Given that he gets pretty inclined to cry if it’s been more than an hour since he was fed, we might give him the opportunity to eat solids a bit more regularly . . .
Erin
Alan Schmierer