1. Noah is loving floor time. He still doesn’t sit up on his own very long (like more than a couple seconds), but that seems to be because he instantly knocks himself over so he can pull himself all over the floor to play. He turned seven months on Sunday. I mean, look how big and adorable he is in those pictures. Right?
2. Aria is very toddlerish. Really, truly. Suddenly one of her most common phrases is “Stop it!”. So, that’s not my favorite thing. We have a lot of conversations about not hitting/shoving things in others’ mouths/screaming/shrieking/telling people what to do. Most of the time she’s actually trying to play with her brother, or to communicate with him (for example, the shrieking is in response to his shrieking), and I can tell it’s frustrating to her when the response she gets is Noah screaming and me explaining why her methods aren’t the best. Poor, sweet girl. It’s so tough to grow up.
3. So, the kids and I have colds. Also my mom, my sister, and my brother. Pretty much everyone who spent last Sunday evening with us, when Aria started displaying a runny nose. (LJ, do you have a cold?) We were going to honor this day (Valentine’s Day) by making these cookies and taking them to our local fire and police departments, and to our general practitioner and midwife’s offices. But, since we’re all snuffly and sneezy, we figured they probably wouldn’t want our gifts. Hopefully next Friday I’ll tell you we feel 100% better and have delivered cookies. (I did a trial run on those cookies, by the way, and they’re great.)
4. Andy and I don’t do Valentine’s Day. It’s not some grand stand as many people make. It’s just that we don’t care. 🙂 We don’t go out often, and Valentine’s Day is about the last day I would ever ask my introverted husband to go out to dinner. And we don’t do gifts (though I wouldn’t mind if Andy wanted to bring home DeBrand truffles every February 14th…are you listening, honey?). I didn’t marry a man given to romantic gestures, and he certainly isn’t going to make one when he feels obligated (he’s got a stubborn streak, that one). But what he does is take care of us beautifully every day of the year. 
5. I just finished Veronica Mars on Amazon Prime, and am wondering why I’d never seen it. I like it ever so much. Though the emotional responses of severely traumatized people are a little ridiculous (there’s a plotline wherein women on a college campus are getting raped, and every one of them immediately starts publicly crusading for reforms that will supposedly stop the rapes. Pssh.) Regardless of that, it’s really fantastic. Joss Whedon once described it as “BEST. SHOW. EVER.”. That holds water to me. I am now eagerly anticipating the film.
6. We’re doing our devotions a bit differently this year. Aria no longer requires being strapped in her highchair to sit through reading her Bible (in fact, she now asks for it), so we do it at varying times, depending on whether or not I’m eating breakfast at the same time she is. Though, sometimes I ask her if she wants to read her Bible, which usually elicits excitement, and she responds, “Nope, I’m busy”. My dad preaches each week from the passages our church body has read that previous week. I haven’t participated the past few years, choosing to focus on other reading plans, but this year I am reading along. It’s lovely to know we are reading the same passages, and to hear practical teaching covering exactly what I’ve read that week. We also have a Q&A time in our meeting, so we can ask any questions that have arisen as we read that week. Andy put the daily readings in my Google calendar so I can just check my phone to get that day’s readings. It’s working splendidly thus far.
7. Sunday evening Jo, my college roommate, and I saw Pentatonix perform. This group of young people won season three of The Sing Off a couple years ago. The concert was incredibly fun, and interesting.

Pentatonix performing an original song at the concert we attended:

This is the performance on The Sing Off that first blew me away:

The secret sauce is the bass and the beatboxer. Here’s the beatboxer (who was premed at Yale and speaks fluent Chinese – you know, like most beatboxers do) playing his cello and beatboxing: 

And here’s the bass (who is classically trained) doing something amazing called overtone singing. Both pitches you hear, the high and the low, are being created by him.