Milestones today!

This morning, I backed out of the garage and cracked the hell out of the mirror on my brand new car.  Seriously, the damn thing has 812 miles on it and already needs a new drivers side mirror and has gotten a new back passenger-side tire.  Being my car is rough.

But I probably would have never mentioned it because life has been very blah and un-bloggy (read a lot of books, ran a lot of errands, attended meetings that were inconvenient because I had to keep driving 20 minutes home to feed the baby, sent a lot of email-- YOU KNOW, the usual).

Then, today, after lunch, after Cooper had been safely stashed away in his crib for nap and I was getting ready to feed Dorothy before heading out for office hours and class, THIS HAPPENED:



Walking all by her little ten-month-old self!  She has been toddling a couple steps at a time for a few days-- hence the giant bruise on her forehead (nasty collision with the downstairs coffee table) -- but today she learned how to stand up from sitting down without holding onto anything, and she was OFF.

Then, after we praised the hell out of the baby and Ben started to pick up teeny pieces of grilled cheese sandwich off the floor, we heard a familiar stompy sound and sure enough, Cooper appeared in the kitchen looking pretty pleased with himself.  "No nigh nigh," he informed us.  "But no me-me," he said emphatically.  He starts a lot of phrases with "but," and he has recently started calling me "mommy" and himself "me-me."  HE IS ADORABLE.

Ben and I tried not to laugh our faces off, and we (Ben) put him back in his crib.  While I was feeding Dorothy in her room, I heard some suspicious bumps coming from his room, and after I deposited her in her own crib, I opened Cooper's door a sliver to see him happily playing trains.

That's when I insisted that Ben and I rethink our plan to keep Cooper home with us another year and wait to start him in preschool until 2015 when Dorothy can start 2 year-old preschool.  When I imagined this cozy scenario, I imagined a NAPPING COOPER in a CRIB.

I enrolled him in preschool today, snagging the very last 2 year old spot at the school we wanted because this town is freaking insane about preschool and you really need to register by February 1.  WE GOT LUCKY.

So, after dinner, this happened:

Big kids, both of em.