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So, I think I've got this one figured out.

You have a baby.

Then you spend five or six months adjusting to the fact that this. baby. can't. do. anything. You feed it, teach it to sleep (or not), wipe its orifices, help it burp, dress it, bathe it, talk to it... And in response, you might get a smile or coo. But you are more likely to get spit up in your face (or in your mouth, if, like P one time, you are doing "flying baby" at the moment). Or perhaps a quizzical look that seems to say, "And what did you say your name was again?"

And then, all at once, miracles begin to happen! Your baby laughs at your silly faces! Your baby rolls himself over on his own! Your baby changes his own diaper! (Ha ha, just checking to see if you're listening!)

Sarah just hit that point. She is Accomplishing Things right and left: rolling over, getting teeth, sitting up, eating solids... I'm not kidding - all in the last two weeks! I usually try to send emails out to our immediate family members when these things happen, but I finally just stopped because I figured I was probably already on their spam radar as it was. (And now you know why I haven't been blogging - I've been too busy filming every moment of my daughter's waking hours! And, thanks to the teething, her "waking" hours include most of them.)

Anyway, I suspect God planned it this way so that we'd be fully accustomed to having a tiny and utterly incapable human around -- and then, ta-da! They start doing things on their own. Time to get out the outlet covers and put on your jogging shoes!

And apparently the shock doesn't wear off quickly; Luke surprises me almost every day with how much he's grown. Right now he's in a big "figuring it out" stage. For instance, I bought him a bunch of those cheap plastic Sesame Street placemats in hopes of containing the oatmeal hurricane that is his breakfast, and one morning he was really studying the one that teaches the ABC's. It has the lowercase letters of the alphabet along with your typical ABC pictures of apples, balloons, cats, drums, etc., and I was trying to convince him that the lowercase "a" was truly the same as an "A," since he is only used to uppercase letters at this point. And as I've mentioned before, he's pretty stubborn about what he thinks.

But evidently, some things sink into even the most mulish minds. That night, we were all sitting on the couch, and Luke pointed to the wall where we've hung an engraved plaque, and he said, "Look, an apple!" We were both justifiably confused for a moment - the plaque isn't illustrated or anything, and the rest of that wall is bare - until I realized that he was seeing the lowercase "a" and remembering that it went with the picture of the apple, according to his placemat. Not bad, for a two-year-old...

Luke is also starting to be capable of an astonishing number of physical feats, climbing and jumping being top of the list. He has climbed onto and jumped off of every seat and every bed in our house - thankfully we're not to tables and dressers...  yet.... The other night, he even monkey-jumped from the armrest of the recliner to the side of the crib (at least 3 feet), stunning his father and myself so much that we couldn't even scold him for it. And the playground, well, that's just heaven on earth for that child.

Every good parenting book will tell you that it's a good thing when your kids start doing things on their own, Becoming Independent. And there's no doubt that my heart swells with each new milestone my kids reach. But as I enthusiastically cheer them on, I also fight feeling mournful about the helpless babies that are no longer - or anxious about the freedoms and failures and figuring-it-outs that they'll have to deal with in the coming years.

But then a diaper needs changing or a child needs feeding, and all those worries are passed over for another day, perhaps when I have a little extra time...

Luke helped me make his daddy's birthday cake
and has since insisted on helping with most other meals.
It's not the worst thing in the world, to have a helper
in the kitchen... even if he can't do much more than
stir wildly and touch every single ingredient.

Sarah may be a little too eager to grow up...

Sarah proudly sitting on her own.

I couldn't pick between these pictures, so it's a two-fer.

Not crawling... yet...

My laundry is getting heavier these days...