Eleanor is 7 months old! Well, technically she was 7 months on Monday, and I took the picture on Tuesday. I uploaded it to the blog on Wednesday, but I haven't been able to sit down to type an actual sentence until today. What can I say, my life is a work in progress these days.

So on Monday, when Eleanor actually turned seven months, I consulted my handy "What to Expect the First Year" guidebook to see what types of things she should be doing. At the breakfast table I mentioned to Andy that I didn't think Eleanor would talk any earlier than the boys did (who both had delayed speech) since she isn't "babbling indiscriminately" (ga-ga-ga-ma-ma-ma-da-da-da) the way the book says she is probably doing at this age, and I recall the boys weren't doing that either. I said this in front of Eleanor, who was clearly offended at my lack of faith and who spent the rest of the day saying "ga-ga-ga-ga." Way to show mommy up Eleanor.

Hammie's speech is also undergoing a change now, and he now says "daddy" instead of "Da-doe" almost all the time. I'm a little sad to see "Da-doe" go, especially since Hammie sound very much like a big boy saying "daddy." But, big boy status does come with some advantages too, and Hammie has started sitting on the potty in the morning, before bed, and randomly during the day. This is very exciting (especially for me) so to commemorate this development I took this photo of the boys (which they will be horrified by later in life) using the potty together!

I think the winter is starting to wear on all of us here. The boys are fighting frequently, my stress level has reached code orange, and Eleanor is just out of sorts. Andy has a nasty cold, so he isn't exactly the stabilizing force int he household right now either. Still, we seem to make it through each day with relatively little blood shed, and at least a laugh or two over the chaos. It struck me recently that many people can't really understand what our lives are like day in day out now, since most people don't have three children as close together as we did, and those that did have probably blocked out this part of their lives. Anyway, to give you some idea I have uploaded the following video, which I have titled most appropriately "Andy trying to watch the news." Yeah, good luck with that.