Devil Dogs, Ping Pong, Churchill and other randomness

Remember when I said that Matthew's picture taking skills had improved?  He's now gone a little avante-garde.  Using his patented "finger over the flash" manuever, he managed to take this darling satanic shot of our dogs.  We even "posed" the dogs for this shot - as Sky was in June's bed and Matthew insisted he get out and June get in her own bed.  

 Though not all of his pictures are cutting edge.  Here's a cute one he took of James and Catherine in her adorable overalls from Aunt Sharon:

 

As an aside, though Matthew is very particular about the dogs being in the right beds, and using possession labels like when he's setting the table ("mommy's fork, daddy's fork . . . ") or pointing out jackets, our days revolve around moving away from these toddler rules of possession which are super strong in our house right now.  

Source: thechive.com via Leah on Pinterest

Though many of Matthew's interactions with Catherine involve his belief in the aforementioned rules (especially #3 and #5), Catherine is really starting to reciprocate and interact with Matthew by taking a keen interest in what he's doing.  A regular occurrence at dinners recently is that Catherine will start laughing at something Matthew's doing:

 So he laughs in return:

 

Which only makes her smile more:

 Which only makes him giggle more:

 And so on:

 And so forth:

Until this ping pong effect of giggles devolves into smiles and laughter all around.

Speaking of Catherine and table manners, she's still rocking the solid food and had quite the time with stir fry the other night.  We skipped purees and spoon feeding the same as with Matthew which clearly requires the Churchill-esque pose with a snap pea was the same as Matthew:

 And the flashback:

However, the rest of the experience has been crazy different.   Maybe we're more mellow and so Catherine's more mellow but this time around Catherine will sit with us the entire meal and as long as there's still food on her plate she'll explore.  With Matthew I remember stressing about cooking the foods too soft or cutting them too big as he'd easily take of hunks and then fuss to move them around in his mouth and gag far more often.  This might have had something to do with Matthew's ridiculously plentiful teeth at 6 mos but Catherine hasn't had these problems and when she does get too much food in her mouth, she quietly spits it out and tries again.  There's nothing she's tried that's really given her difficulty and I've been far more adventurous this time with the foods/textures we offer her: 

If I had to say (you know, so I have some milestone to go back and record in her non-existent baby book!)  I'd say this week her favorite foods are peas and carrots, though tomatoes might be a close second.  (And just for Papa she wolfed down some cauliflower for breakfast the other day.)  Due to some general blah-ness combined with business on my end we've had a lot of breakfasts for dinner this week and I'd be remiss if I didn't add sausage and eggs to the list of food she's enjoyed with reckless abandon.