Eloise learns to write - by whatever means necessary.

Lordy. Where I have been? I guess teething, sleepless nights, work stuff, highly enjoyable visits from friends, sinus infections, stomach bugs, more teething have all kept me from having the energy at the end of the day when Eloise is asleep to do anything other than cook dinner and turn into a zombie with The Frenchman in front of the telly.

Eloise is getting more and more mobile. Not quite crawling - a bit of a backwards shuffle - but she climbs on people and pulls herself up. Of course with this new mobility comes more accidents. She hits her head on all sorts of things these days. Kid has a got a very high pain threshold though, and rarely cries. It wasn't until this morning that I realized that this high pain threshold can have negative consequences.

As is our usual routine in the morning, if Eloise wakes up before 7am (which is always), we bring her into bed with us (if she's not there already) and I let her nurse while we sleep a little more. When she's done, I sit her up, give a book or toy, and try and sleep a little longer. This morning while The Frenchman was taking a shower, Eloise was sitting up, reading Handa's Surprise with a stuffed squirrel next to her while I tried to get a little more shut-eye. Periodically I would open one eye and help her turn a page or make the squirrel dance and then quickly fall back asleep. She happily babbles away looking at the pictures of Handa and the animals in Africa eating fruit. The next time I open one eye I notice something red on her hands and the book. I quickly sit up and I see that Eloise has a rather large paper cut on her finger and is smearing blood all over the book and her face as she tries to turn the page herself. She didn't cry at all. How am I supposed to keep her in one piece if she won't even let me know when she's bleeding?

After I took her to the nurse to make sure the cut was ok (it bled for quite awhile) and dropped her off at school I went back home to clean up the carnage. This is her book:

Just in case there was any confusion as to who this copy of Handa's Surprise belongs to, my daughter has signed her name in blood.

While I was sleeping next to her.