The menagerie

(Today when we went left Target, Chloë noticed the crescent moon up above. We named it for her, and she gazed on it. Then we tried to put her in the car and she pitched a fit because she couldn't see the it anymore. It was annoying, but I kind of love that I have a child who had a mini-tantrum about the moon.)

Chloë continues to be obsessed with water and with her Baby Neptune show. On the weekends we go downstairs after getting dressed and watch it twice. We'd watch it more if I let her, I'm sure. We've now moved to daily baths, every other day a "splash bath," which we got from our friends Nancy and Don, wherein she just gets in the tub and plays rather than being scrubbed. Recently she's gotten especially interested in her rubber bath toys, particularly the octopus and the turtle, because the three main characters on Baby Neptune are a duck, an octopus, and a turtle. So we taught her "octopus," which she pronounces "Oppy," and "turtle," which comes out "tuhtuh." They squirt, and she's been having a fabulous time squirting them--mostly at herself. She gets this surprised look whenever she squirts herself in the face, though she does it all the time.

She also has a stuffed octopus, also from Baby Einstein, so presumably it's the very same one as the one in the show. Its eight legs have different colors and it says the colors when pressed, or plays music when its head is pressed, but it's gotten kind of epileptic the past several days so we've turned it off. Chloë loves it anyway, and has added it to her bedtime menagerie. This has grown from a single stuffed dog we gave her some time ago to five: the dog, which she still identifies by panting, the doll I made her, the sock monkey her (well, my) Aunt Karolyn and Uncle Mike gave her, the Seattle bear she spied on my dresser and adopted as her own, and the octopus. When we put her down for sleep she names them all: "[pant pant pant], Baby, Eee eee eee, Beh, Oppy." She pulls one or two in her arms and hugs them tight, then snuggles down, content in the midst of all her toy friends.