Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow

Am I procrastinating? Now there's a question that implies the answer. Yelena is allegedly asleep -- I can't hear her and there's no way I am going in the room to verify this supposition -- Theo is howling like a werecat for no good reason apparent to human sensibilities, and Eli is at the Ben Folds concert. Ben Folds is performing at the Chicago Theater and Eli has really fantastic orchestra seats, all up close and personal like. I saw Ben Folds at Ravinia in the summer of 2004. I went primarily to see Rufus Wainwright, but he appeared to be back on the meth and was dreadful, out of tune and OD'ing on the idiotic repartee. Ben Folds, however, was great and made me a fan that night. At one point he started playing Wham's Careless Whisper and, half way through, stopped and told the tittering audience, "Yes, I am going to play the whole f#^*ing song." Go Ben.

I have this drash mostly written and, frankly, I needed a few minutes away from Good and Evil to clear my head before proofing this puppy. (For the record, Theo is clearly insane, running up and down the stairs, sticking his head into the office and, before I can pet him and soothe the savage beast, tearing back down the hall wailing.) So, Yelena developmental update time anyone?

She is really, and I mean really, into cooing. Methinks we have a verbal child on our hands. It started almost a month ago and now we have great conversations. My favorite is when she sees something interesting and says, "Oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, oh oh, oh, oh." She has all her vowels down and is really into "k" and "g" with some "m" "b" and "f" thrown in. "Fl" is also a favorite and she makes gurgly noises connected to vowels that make me wonder how anyone has a problem pronouncing the "chet" sound in Hebrew or the French "r" (or Israeli "resh") since babies can. We had a nice chat after nursing tonight and I was able to put her to bed still awake, which happens about 3-4 times a week now. Napping still not her strong suit. I think my mother cursed me by saying that I should have a child just like me.

Her grip is strong and she's starting to grab thing; until a few days ago only things put in her hands or my hair and my shirt/bra while nursing but now she is beginning to grab a ring if I show it to her and then put it near her hand. She is big into watching things, and has been tracking with much aplomb for a while now.

Her head is fully under control and we are working on sitting up. If I'm holding her arms or supporting her lightly she's great, so hopefully soon she'll be able to do it on her own. She loathes tummy time, unless she is on me, which she loves and does manage to get her head up. I was starting to get worried that she would not learn to crawl, never develop hand-eye coordination and never get top score on an arcade game (and that my pediatrician would yell at me) but today in Mommy-Baby yoga there was a seven month old who was scooting across the classroom like a crawling pro. When talk turned to tummy time and I mentioned Yelena wasn't so into it, the mother of this locomotive baby said that her daughter hated it too and they only did it on her or daddy's tummy. And she was an early crawler. So, I'm just going to stick to my primary baby mothering philosophy of doing everything within reason to keep my baby from crying and keep her on me for tummy time.

Oh, she's darned cute, too. I'll post a few pictures this weekend. I am going to either go pet Theo or throttle him, I haven't decided.