last week sometime, i was accused of–well, i suppose ‘accused’ is a strong word to use–not writing as much about oren as i do about seb. it’s true, and that doesn’t say much in my favor since i don’t write a whole lot about seb lately either. in my defense, the things that seb does and says blows my mind, and there is a conflict between his three-year-old misbehavior and sweetness that is much more interesting to me to write about. as a second child, oren may always be on the sidelines of what seb is doing, just because seb is doing everything first. what oren is up to is old news, so to speak.

that said, with seb as the template, i’m realising how much fun it is to have a baby at oren’s stage. oren is going on nine months old, and he’s just cute. his wide blue-moon eyes soak up everything around him, watching and learning as the world goes by. aside from the teething angst, oren mostly smiles and laughs. he’s too young to fight with me yet, thank goodness. i get enough of that with seb. two weeks ago, oren figured out sitting up all by himself, so now he’ll play seated on the floor: lumpy legs sticking straight out in front of him, back staunch and straight, his arms flailing around at his sides, his toes clenched on feet rotating around and around and around in his excitement to be seeing the world from a new perspective. yesterday he played with me for a while. we had some blocks out, circles, triangles, squares. he picked up one in each hand and cracked them together while screeching in glee. one of the blocks inevitably ended up in his mouth. as he was sucking on it, his eyes found mine, and suddenly, he took the block out of his mouth and offered it to me. i obligingly took the offered block, making funny gnawing sounds on it with my mouth. oren laughed and laughed. back and forth we went with oren laughing in between. good stuff.

Posted on August 29th, 2006