Anya loves color. This shouldn't surprise me. But she is only 3 months old! In the past week, she has shown us her love of color by being mesmerized by the t-shirts of whomever is holding her. It started with my Belle and Sebastian shirt. The one with the members of the band shaped like Russian dolls. Lots of reds and blues and oranges. She just stared and stared.

Then it was Jeff's Saatchi Gallery shirt. This time we knew it was the t-shirt because he was wearing a v-neck sweater and only the top of the image was peaking out. To this, Anya put her hand on his sweater colar and gave a big tug. "She wants to see the whole thing," I said to Jeff's surprise. And when Jeff pulled off his sweater to reveal a giant red image, Anya's eyes got big big big.

Then came Edie's Pacman ghosts. Anya was mostly fond of the orange ghost. Not sure which one he is, but she loved him.

So figuring that she is ready for images, I sat with her and read picture books last night. I had been doing this a lot while I was home alone with them, but no one ever even looked in my direction. But last night, Anya was all "gaaas," while reading "Peek a Who?" And so we enter a new world.

Rachel has become equally aware of her surroundings, but in a different way. She likes moving things. She spent 30 minutes! in the bouncer the other day watching the fish move and water bubble. We also caught her looking back and forth from her daddy to the television during a match of Battlefield 2 for the Xbox. Speaking of which. We know all the warnings about babies and television/video games. But I am wondering if we are planning on ignoring them. Obviously, we have so far. Is it just that children who watch tv and play video games don't interact with their parents as much and thus are less smart? What if Rachel and Jeff form some sort of crazy team and play age appropriate games together? I don't envision a day when we would put our girls in front of the Xbox and leave them to play on their own. What on earth would Jeff be doing that would be more important that playing video games with his girls?

Anya slept through the night last night, again. While calming her sister down at 5 this morning, I found Anya quietly sleeping, sucking her thumb. And when I went to get her to feed her at 7, she smiled at me from around the thumb in her mouth. I thought, she is the best baby in the world. This Anya of mine. And I want to do everything that I can make her the happiest person in the world. Every day. Every minute. And I get to start with color. How lucky am I?