For your holiday reading pleasure, I offer: Moriarty and Lorelei, the giggles and the tears

We'll start with the giggles. Lorelei is laughing now. Legit giggling. And her favorite thing to giggle at, actually the only thing she giggles at, is Moriarty. He's a ham so this works out perfectly. It's amazing to see them so bonded already. At dinner the other night he got down on the floor where she was in her bouncy chair and he whispered in her ear. He didn't tell us what he was talking to her about, it was just their first shared secret. (pics on the site) At times his need to be near her can be frustrating. He wants to sit beside her at every meal, get dressed beside her, kiss her when she's eating, etc. But we make it work.

She's had a few milestones. She ate her first solid foods. Like Moriarty, we started with ceremonial bacon. Then moved on quickly to baked sweet potato. We've since added plain yogurt to the list. She got a bilateral ear infection and needed antibiotics. We're hoping the yogurt helps her repopulate her gut. Moriarty is learning a lot about gut bacteria from our discussions. But the illness had her sadder than we've seen since she had her first cold at 2 weeks. She was miserable and cried a lot and just needed family snuggles and time in front of the humidifier. Overall, though, she's getting more physically active and capable. She's rolling a lot and starting to scoot. She sounds very grumpy in that video but it's hard to learn new things! She can now scoot over to a toy she wants, more or less.

Halloween was fun for Moriarty. He got to enjoy it with the Roberts cousins. He is a ham.

I had hoped Ginger Snap would become her nickname but nicknames have a mind of their own. She is Lolipop (LO-lee-pop). We sing Lollipop with modified lyrics. Moriarty loves it and requests I sing it most days. He's learning more rhymes and poems so we play the game where we make up verses together. He'll make up the first line, I'll finish it, and vice versa.

Photos are here, password “mal”