'A is for Alice'

Friends of ours gave Alice this customized hat: "A is for Alice."

It's cute, and instructional. (The hat also provides fodder for my languishing "Baby Fashion" series.)

Alice's brother has gotten good at identifying letters lately. When Elliot sees an A, he'll say, "A is for apple." He knows it stands for Alice too, but he can't pronounce her name. If you ask, "What else does it stand for?" he'll say, "A is for baby!"

That's just confusing.

Second-Child Syndrome

Alice turns two months old today, and we couldn't be more thrilled with her.

So I feel a little guilty about her second-class treatment on this blog.

By the time Elliot was two months old, I'd written 77 blog entries about him.

Not counting this entry, Alice has 25.

God forbid we have a third child — they'll be lucky to get a couple tweets and a poorly cropped Flickr photo.

If it's any consolation, Alice, your low profile is only going to save you embarrassment later.

Learning to Say 'Water'

You may have seen this video from the TED conference that's circulating the Web.

If you click to the 4:25 mark, you hear a time-elapsed clip of a baby learning to say the word "water."



As you'll recall, I made my own video of Elliot's first words.



But I think if I had to make a presentation about Elliot learning to say a word *properly*, that audience would still be sitting there now.

Dude, You're Doing It Wrong

The good news: Elliot has taken to his big-boy bed with very few complaints or late-night sorties.

That bad news: He doesn't really understand what the pillow is for. That forces him to sleep the wrong way across the bed.

Alice Has Zombie Arms

Alice likes to sleep with arms stretched out in front of her.

Is she dreaming about her insatiable hunger for brains?

Worst Goodie Bag Ever?

When we were leaving Children's Hospital, they offered us a bunch of free packets of Neosporin for Elliot's wound.

Unfortunately, they put them in this "biohazard" bag.

Thanks, Children's Hospital. Way to take a nice gesture and make it TERRIFYING.

Our Trip to the Children's Hospital

We had a scary incident the other night: Elliot tumbled off the couch and into the coffee table. The corner of the table cut into the side of his head, and he started to bleed.

The poor guy is always doing bodily harm to himself in one form or another, so I wasn't that concerned at first. But there was a lot of blood, and when Kelly called the doctor for advice, it was recommended that we take him in.

We went to Children's Hospital of Oakland, where a nurse and two doctors checked him out. They weren't overly concerned with his head wound, which didn't require stitches. But they asked about some of his other injuries. I looked over and realized that in addition to the latest problem, he had two large bruises on his forehead (from the aforementioned "ouch reports"), a bloodied eye from when he slid head first into gravel, and some random scratches. He looked like a performer from a toddler production of "Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark."

Then the doctors went away for a while...a VERY long while.

It seemed pretty obvious they were arranging to remove him from our custody.

I looked at Elliot. Well, buddy, we had a good run — two and a half wonderful years. I hope they're good to you. Do you think they'll let us keep Alice?

As it turns out, they were only gone that long because hospitals are slow and bureaucratic. Hooray.

They came back and gave Elliot a juice box (which didn't seem entirely appropriate considering it was almost 11 at night), then sent us home.