Yes, I still exist

Having two children leaves me with very little time for the pondering and writing I need to maintain this blog. Actually, there's a lot of things I've not really had time to do since the son was born. I've hardly had any time to work on the daughter's spaceport beyond simple repairs. Spare time seems to go to cleaning and reorganising rooms and just trying to have enough space in this home for 4 humans.

R is 9 now. As she gets older I'm less comfortable putting details about her life out there. Part of it is that it's not my story to tell. On the other hand it's my life too. So I generally keep details here to a point where she won't hate me for this later. That said, she's a proper human now. She's grown. Her legs are only 10cm or so shorter than mine. And she seems to know more about cellular biology than I ever did (Thanks lockdown). She also can fall alseep on her own now without being tricked, but I do still read to her from a book every other night because we both like it and, TBH, it's the only recreational reading I ever do these days.

The boy, T, is 15 months now. I've skipped a lot of his life on this blog. He's very different from R, even though they look really similar, especially in the first few months. They both got teeth really early (like at 3 months). They both started walking early (he started at 8 months, but slowly built up to it over the course of 2 months when he could walk around the room just fine. she started at 10 months, but just decided I walk now and in the space of 3 days was a pro). I don't think many of the differences between them are boy vs girl. They're just different people with brains and bodies that work differently. Plus he's grown up more than half his life in some form of isolation or lockdown, so he's not had much physical socialisation. No idea if that's had a big impact on him or not, tho.

Some interesting things about T:

• He never got into crawling. He bear walks – back legs slightly bent, knees nowhere near the floor.
• Until quite recently he's had no sense of stairs. To go downstairs he'd just walk straight off the step and just expect someone to catch him. Needless to say, the stairs have been babygated off.
• His favourite book is We're Going on a Bear Hunt. When he was young, he didn't like any other books. The only way to keep his attention in another book was to start a page with We're going on a bear hunt. We're going to catch a big one. followed by the book's actaual text.
• bear was his first word. He has a very easy time with words that begin with B, to the point that he inserts a B to make words he can't otherwise pronouce. He says up as bup.
• He's picked up some baby sign language and will actually make signs. "Hurt", "Done" and "More" are the 3 he uses most. The last of which make sense since he eats amazing amounts of food.
• When he wants me to sit next to him, he pats the surface he's sitting on with his hand. I always dutifully join him there. Whenever I pat the seat next to me to get him to join me, he ignores me and acts as if I did nothing.
• He learned to say no pretty early on. Not in a terrible 2s kind of way, but more in a helpful way to answer questions. Do you need the loo? no.. He may have said yes once or twice, but I can't really tell. He certainly never says yes when we ask if he wants something. He laughs uncomfortably and manaically, which is a good sign. But no words.

I could go, and at some point I'll go into more details about things. When I have the time.