maybe this is one of those things that only a parent can really appreciate, but odin has recently deduced that since the upstairs bathroom is his favorite place to practice his outside voice and he happens to be up The Stair Master, he can go and practice his outside voice any old time he likes, as long as we're not foiling his attempts with The Gate!

so, periodically throughout the day, he'll eagerly take to the stairs and occasionally stop during his ascent to see if we're following him.

it's a little hard to tell from the photograph, but he's filled with excitement and almost can't quite scramble up the stairs fast enough.

"great! you're still there!" he seems to be thinking. "i've got something really cool to show you!"

once at the top of the stairs he heads straight for the bathroom, every single time and wastes no time leaning up against the shower door just like he likes to do after his bath.

and after a slighly dramatic pause and a quick glance to make sure that you really are still watching, it's time for the real purpose of all the effort.

"aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!"

we might be a little happier if he used an a more appropriate "inside voice" and maybe it'd be better if he spent time practicing his consonant sounds, but it's impossible to not giggle along with him, which i think he finds tremedously amusing and encouraging.

for the two people that might be interested in the most minute tweaks to odin's feeding regimen and may also remember our slightly tongue-in-cheek stance against sippy cups, i'll justify the appearance of what appears to be a just such a cup in his hands because, well, handles are easier for grasping and getting every last drop of water into one's mouth!

we'd still like him to get used to drinking out of a regular cup rather than relying on a sippy lid so we removed top; but i wouldn't be surprised if you catch us with a fully functional sippy cup in the near future :-)

books such as "super baby foods" ( an adequate resource if you keep in mind the caveats mentioned in the amazon reviews ) remind us that it's important for odin to get some liquids while eating solids and sometimes our glass with no handles makes it a little too tough for odin to get the good stuff before dropping it.

so, we compromised :-)

and while i'm mentioning tweaks, i'll also mention that we're doing our best to make a more concerted effort to transition odin away from baby food in a jar to the homemade stuff. we've come to rely on organic food in from a jar, not so much because we're lazy ( although there might be a little of that :-) ), but because until very recently every time we tried to make him some homemade food he'd gag on the chunks no matter how smoothly we thought it might be pureed. but now that he's getting a little more proficient with his chewing skills we're trying to sneak in the homemade foodstuffs.

and sneak it in we must!

we suspect that he's grown accustomed to the super tasty food in a jar, as he will register his discontent at being forced to eat a meal prepared with our own hands!

hopefully he won't figure out that the we've slyly begun mixing in a bit of the homemade food ( in this case, the green mush is green beans and rice that we prepared ) with the jarred stuff ( the orange color is supposedly a corn mush of some sort ).

i feel a little guilty about tricking him. but we can't seem to get him to understand that it's for his own good ( insert ironic comment about the inevitability of becoming just like your own parents here )!