Binky hunting

is one of my regular daily activities now. We have four in circulation -- pink, purple, blue and green -- but it's rare to turn up all four at the same time. First, there's the walk-around visual search, then the hands-and-knees looking under the furniture search and, if neither of those turns up a binky, I have to start looking inside anything that has a binky-sized opening. Sissy's pretty sneaky sometimes.

We were down to two binkies for a couple of weeks, until I found the green one in the back corner of the patio and the blue one under the ottoman that blocks the electrical outlet next to the aquarium. Now I haven't seen the pink one in a few days.

The reason I have an ottoman blocking the electrical outlet next to the aquarium is because Sis likes to pop out those little plastic things you put in the plug openings to keep babies' fingers out. Yep, she just pops them right out. Repeatedly. So I've had to arrange chairs, mirrors and whatnot in front of them to keep her little fingers out of danger. Plays hell with my decorating scheme but, oh, well.

Lately I've noticed that Brittany will cock her binky over to the corner of her mouth so she can chat and chew at the same time. It's hard to carry on a conversation with her, though, because she doesn't speak English. I tried to write down some of her chatterings, but a lot of her words seem to be all consonants and defy any attempt at transcription. Anyway, it goes something like this:

Shekh! Thulom deegumm tcheegah. Ah didi dah, haw put tleekow. Shedecomow dugawah digum. Wah duk op shuk bubu da. Shigilum bugulayah gigum. Bwoogah ummegom dibidah. Awayah!

And she sings, too:

Dah! da-da-da, Dah! da-da-da
Dah! da-da-da, Dah! da-da-da

And on and on...

She's pretty good at getting around now. She learned how to stand up without pulling up on something and she started running around the backyard for the first time this week. She has a little toy lawnmower out there that talks and makes lawnmower motor noise but she likes to dance to the motor noise instead of pushing it around the yard.

She was playing in the Toy Room (used to be the dining room) the other day when I heard her making distress noises. Not quite crying, but it sounded weird so I looked around and saw that she had high-centered herself on the side of her little doll-sized playpen. Head and arms inside, feet flailing outside.

Ain't never a dull moment with Little Sis around.