And we have walking. 10-20 steps at a time. Stella lifts her feet high and marches/waddles proudly to and from siblings. She does best when holding something - even if it is not attached to anything at all.

It's like she waited for Ian.

Today Daron was staring at her across the Shabbos table and said, in all seriousness, "are you sure she's a girl? She looks like a boy?"  Dorothy was confused enough to ask if we knew? how we knew and Daron realized certain body parts dictate as Dorothy asked when we knew she was a girl. He gently explained.

Today, there was battle in the playroom, redone by me a few months ago with IKEA.  Daron and Dorothy wanted to race cars but each had a vision of the race track that conflicted with the other.

With an audience, Daron did his best to compromise offering several solutions, simplifying to one on the yellow carpet, the other on the boarder. That was no good for Dorothy who held her ground, complaining. When i asked what it was she wanted - she emphatically responded "both" " i want to race on the yellow carpet and the blue" - Daron continued to offer land for peace until finally she agreed to the yellow carpet - a far larger space than the boarder- and yellow was where Daron had begun.  Do i fault her for not being a wall flower? Or applaud?

Intensely rewarding to have Ian back. Little mini snippets of camp activity discussed- but mostly it is enjoyable to make food that is good - i have cooked more in the past week than the entire month since Daron and Dorothy don't eat much. Same time, she asked for spinach leaves today, he is no longer taking Miralax and both are in a fight to 10 stickers for trying new things.

Still nursing Stella morning and night, tried to ditch morning today but was really uncomfortable most of the day. Tough to cut back emotionally and physically.

7.22

Stella started to stand a while ago but life is so full it is hard to write!

She says " woo woo" "uh oh" "meow" has six teeth.

We want to visit Ian at visiting day and it was just incredible to see him. First order of busienss was he took us deep into the woods to find salamanders. we had to leave the stroller by he bunk.  Daron and Dorothy followed with incredible enthusiasm as Mike held Stella and I held a smile as we followed him to the tune of "mumble mumble poison ivy" and "mumble mumble salamandar" but even as we spoke to him on Sue's cell phone as we were minutes away from camp he asked if Avery Lijah and Grey were with us becuase he wante to show us salamandar way.

Turns out he has never seen a salamander there and we are still not sure why he had opportunity to venture so far back behind camp, but overall (aside from wheezing and coughing and seeming exhausted) he was OK. And it was wide open arms and smiles and "Smelly stelly" for Stella. By the end of the day  all fo the kids were crawling with Stella across the lawn at Moshava. It was hard to leave him there. I cleaned out the plastic bin under his bed, all the while flabergasted that I was the mom.  I seem incapable of accepting that I am the mom - when I think a mom should clean out his bin, it seems impossible that I am that mom, yet I find myself inexplicable drawn to the bin, cleaning out pretzel bits.

Dorothy went to her first Mets game today. She loved the ice cream, the guy that gets dunked in the water and had a good time. She is a swim obssesed Daron still hates to swim. Happy for him Ian comes home tomorrow.