Merry month of May

Having entertained Saturday and acomplished some overdue home improvement projects Sunday, we all went to the zoo on Monday. It was hot. It was crowded, which is what we get for going to the zoo on Memorial Day. But it was still fun. Yelena likes pictures of animals in books but, except for the fish in some of the African displays and the penguins, she was pretty much uninterested in the three dimensional article. "Yelena, look, there's a giraffe. Right in front of you. Giraffe." Baby gazes intently down at the bubbling water.

The smell of grilling everywhere prompted me to suggest to Eli that we journey up to Ken's. Once there, Yelena was riveted by the Cubs game on TV. No interest in giraffes, lions or bears, but TV! Whee!

In other Yelena news, still no mobility. When she's on her tummy she tries to swim, kicking her legs and paddling her arms in the air. Hopefully she's making a connection between movement and motion. She is also starting to sometimes scoot in her knees and pick up her hips in a crocodile pose. Yelenasana. She loves to stand and is getting better every day. She's talking a lot more, but she's not doing the "babababa, googoogoogoo" babbling that babies are allegedly supposed to do. What I understand about language acquisition that's not necessarily an essential step, but the books (which I stopped reading) are really into it. She's making more and more consonant sounds and trying them out with different vowels, so linguistic development in progressing. Every day when Daddy gets home from work, Yelena sees him and says, "Ooo!"