Does anyone know a book or movie or TV show that has a scene where someone cups someone else's face in his hands and says, "Tell me a story!" while looking deep into her eyes? Caspian just started doing that a day or so ago, but he always does it the same, like he's quoting something...?

We're pretty sure Caspian has an imaginary friend named "Tey-tah," who is red. Sometimes Teytah is an elephant, too, but it's always red. A lot of times, he'll ask to visit Teytah or go to Teytah's house, or he'll mention what Teytah's doing. Sometimes we'll ask where Teytah is, and it'll be sitting on Caspian's potty or hiding under a chair or hanging out on an empty patch of floor. It took us forever to decide that Teytah is imaginary, after running through every conceivable real-life person whose name sounded like "Teytah" (Caspian was very insistant and always consistent in his pronounciation). Occasionally, there's also another "person" named "Taddy," but Taddy is nowhere near as omnipresent as Teytah.

A month or so ago, Caspian started a new aspect of play with his "pirates" (what he calls his assortment of Fisher-Price figures, which includes pirates, dinosaurs and cavemen, circus, and vacationers). He started having the baby blue dinosaur ask the mommy blue dinosaur to nurse! The weird thing is, the mommy says "no" most of the time.

His current choice of skill development is jumping, which he will be more than happy to show you if you ask. He'd turned over the little Rubbermaid-type box in which we keep his "pirates" and was jumping off of it over and over (always barefoot and holding one of my hands). He landed wrong on one jump and started crying and limping, but he was over it after a few minutes. He climbed back on the box and announced, "No hurt self anymore" repeatedly as he executed his next jump.

He loves telling people they're doing a good job (including himself, if you don't do it when he thinks he's performed especially well — see "jumping" above). For example, we were blowing into his pinwheel and he said, "Good job blowing, mommy!"

Part of his nighttime routine is reading a story in bed. It always used to be Goodnight, Moon, but he's been rotating a variety of books for the last few months. One night last week, we were getting ready for bed and he kept insisting, "Maggot rice! Maggot rice!" He never varied what he said, but we could not understand what he wanted! We tried interpreting it as "magic rice," too, but he never seemed satisfied. Finally, I realized he was saying "Margaret Wise," as in Margaret Wise Brown, the author of Goodnight, Moon! We laughed sooo hard.

He loves to read and recite. We were reading a Sesame Street Golden Book, "The Together Book," and (on a whim) I asked him which word on the cover was "book". He pointed immediately to the right word. When I asked how he knew that was the word "book," he said "B". My smart monkey. He'll read books aloud to himself and spontaneously recite poems or songs (ABCs, Little Miss Muffett, Row Your Boat, etc.) all the time, although his OBSESSION is the VeggieTales theme song. Who knows why, but he has latched onto that song! We only have the first two VeggieTunes CDs, and he asks for VeggieTales every time we get in the car. Sigh. Usually, he specifically requests the theme song. He even sings the "bmp, bmp, bmp" for the tuba intro. It's pretty funny when he switches to falsetto for Junior Asparagus' parts. We have to sing "The Bunny Song" to get him to brush his teeth, too. I love hearing him sing that one, especially the part where Mr. Nezzer is reprimanding the backup singers as they're singing (Caspian does both parts). He even sings "bun-neh" instead of "bunny," just like Mr. Nezzer.

Last weekend after dinner, I asked Charlie if we were going to eat the J-E-L-L-O he'd made (I spelled it so Caspian wouldn't be disappointed if Charlie said "no"). Caspian cried out, "You want Jell-o!" (he is "you" to himself, since that's how we refer to him). So much for spelling secret words.

Merbaby is a KICKER! For the last two weeks or so, we have enjoyed "Happy Hour" — a kickfest that starts around 7pm and goes until about 10. I LOVE having that constant reassurance. Funny story, though. I got to take a nap the day after Thanksgiving (thank you, Charlie), and when the boys came to wake me up, Charlie leaned down and said, "Hi, baby" in a deep voice right into my belly. He must have startled the baby awake, because as soon as the first syllable came out, Merbaby kicked HARD and suddenly. S/he has only done really hard kicks one other time, and that was on Saturday evening at my parent's house. We weren't doing anything special, but after some normal kicking, s/he gave four walloping thuds right into my belly over the course of 5 or 6 minutes! I don't know if the kicks were just in a weird place or if they really were harder, but man, it almost took the wind out of me.

13w 2d and 17w 5d bellyshots


I had only gained 2 pounds at my last check-up (between 10/14 and 11/13). The heartbeat was 147 this time, and that stinker doesn't like to hold still very long for the tech. I'll be 20 weeks on Thursday, and our big u/s is next Tuesday. ing for another exhibitionist!

My biggest pregnancy symptom right now (other than getting kicked around) is not sleeping. Grrrr. My knees and hips ache and I can't get comfortable. After a few fitful hours, my REM sleep ends sometime in the early morning, and then I try to deny it off and on until I give up and get up. It had been holding steady around 5:30 or 6, but it ended at 4:30 and 3:30 on Sunday and Monday. It's hard to have a lot of energy, but I'm trying for Caspian's sake.

There is one other pregnancy symptom I'd forgotten from last time that may be uniquely Hilary: a tanking game mojo. I am what one might call a board/card game nazi, but when I get pregnant, apparently all my gaming prowess goes toward nourishing my baby. For example, I placed dead-last in 3 separate rounds of a WORD GAME we played with friends on Saturday. If you know me, you know that is a big deal!