Mark's Thesis Done!

Look at those happy faces!  Mark finished a wonderful thesis on wave energy this morning.  Alianna is glad she will have her daddy to play with again.

Mark has been working the last three months on building a wave database, analyzing the data and writing about it.  He has been disciplined and worked really hard.  Today he got to turn it all in.  He still has to make a poster, but the hardest part is over.  Alianna and I will soon have Mark all to ourselves, for a little bit at least until he starts a job.  We'll start looking as soon as the poster day is over.  Where will we end up?  Any guesses?  We have no idea.

A couple of Saturdays ago (8 Aug), Mark needed a break, so we hiked Arthur's seat.  These are the remains of an abbey that was partway up.

On our way...
Can you see Mark and Alianna admiring the view?
Here we are at the top.  Arthur's seat has a beautiful view of the city.  We had such a nice sunny day to hike too.

Alianna has been eating now for a little while.  She eats every meal with us and loves to try new things.  She does get messy though!

Alianna is just getting her teeth (Can you see them on the bottom gum?).  I noticed a couple of days ago when I reached in her mouth to make sure it was empty before taking her out of the highchair and she bit down on my finger.  I felt a little prick!  The two bottom teeth seem to be coming in together at the same time.  Alianna likes to feel them with her tongue.  I see her stop playing, feel her new teeth, then pick up where she was.

Alianna still likes to walk around.  I have been trying to show her how to use her walker so I am not hunched down following her around all the time, but she still reaches for mom.

Yesterday we reached a huge milestone.  Alianna crawled!!  I had seen her move a couple of inches barely crawling, but yesterday was a full blown crawl.  Mark was working on his thesis with papers spread around him on the floor and Alianna went for the paper.  Before we knew it she had a thesis page in her hand (maybe she wanted to help?)

We took Mark's thesis away from Alianna and put a small blank paper across the room.  She crawled right to it!  And of course tore it up and put it in her mouth.

Before Alianna crawled, she learned how to go from laying flat on her stomach to sitting up.  Then she rolled around the room, slowly.  Mostly she rolled to something close that she wanted then sat up and played with it.  Laying to sitting is great; now she just needs to learn how to go from standing to sitting gently.