A couple weeks ago our president delivered his State of the Nation address. It was sad. I’m not going to write about that.

I’ll much rather write about the State of The Minion. Squishy is called The Minion now. First, because she’s becoming less squishy every day, and second because she speaks fluent Minion. And third, I’ve decided to pursue a career in arch-villainy, and given the quality of minions available on the open market these days, one can’t start training them early enough. If she’s to inherit my evil empire one day, the sooner she starts learning the family business, the better. Haha! HaHaHa!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

What was I talking about again? Oh, yes. The Minion.

Can you believe she’s seven months old already? I can’t, and I’ve been around for all of them. I can’t believe I’m saying this but, “They grow up so fast, don’t they?”

She’s mastered rolling over, and is rapidly mastering sitting on her own. If we hold her hands she pulls herself upright. She’s getting better at reaching for and manipulating stuff. It’s just amazing to see how she figures out to do new stuff every day.

We started her on food in November. The first mouthful was met with a look of utter confusion. By the third mouthful she was grabbing for the spoon and complaining if we weren’t fast enough with the next spoonful. Yeah, I know. How are we supposed to fill the spoon with food if she’s holding on to it? She’s a bit unreasonable that way…

We’re trying to expose her to new flavours every few days. She loves her veggies. Fruit not so much, but we’re getting there. She doesn’t like anything with pieces in it at all, and we’ve had a couple incidents of explosive expectorating, but all in all, eating is going well.

Then there’s the poo. As any parent will know (and based on last time’s comments many parents do know) I can’t write on the state of The Minion without mentioning poo. It stinks. Newborn poo doesn’t stink. It has the colour and consistency of thick butternut soup and if you’re not careful it would start squirting out in the middle of a diaper change covering you and everything else in the vicinity. But it doesn’t stink.

New foods means new digestive processes, and that means new smells. Lots of new smells. None of them pleasant. Dirty diapers are down to about two a day, though. And at least one of them usually takes place at daycare. The ones that don’t, however… *shudder*

We put her in daycare in January as the wife had to go back to school. It’s going very well, for which I’m very thankful. I don’t think I would have been able to handle it if she started crying when I drop her off every morning.

Lately, though, she starts lauging the moment I arrive to pick her up in the afternoons. Makes my day every time. In fact, even if I walk into view at home her face lights up. Even if the last time she saw me was literally ten seconds ago. Daddy’s girl, as the nurse said when she handed Elizabeth to me that day I got to hold her for the first time.

A few weeks ago she got sick, as in having a fever and everything. We all did. We believe in doing stuff as a family. Even sinus infections. She got better, but this morning appears to be coming down with something again. Having a sick kid is not fun. Getting a sick kid to take her medicine is just shy of impossible. I did finally get to try out the Snot-Vac 2000™, so there’s that…

• Parenting
• The Squishy Files