Edward sailed through his two-year check up today, demonstrating all the appropriate milestones for his age as well as his attention-grabbing tactics (he threw the chalk at us when we were talking too much to the doctor and not paying enough attention to him.) He's up to 28 pounds (no surprise to anyone who has carried him over ice and snow these last few weeks!) and almost 34 inches, which keeps him in the 50th and 36th percentile, respectively. His head circumference, just shy of 20 inches, is in the 82nd percentile. Lots of room for that big brain! One of the developmental milestones our doctor asked about was whether his vocabulary was at least 50 words. She thought she'd heard at least that many in the first 10 minutes she was with us. It got us thinking about quantifying his vocabulary and during an after-dinner game of chase, John stopped at the desk long enough on each lap around to jot down a few words. Without even breaking stride he came up with more than 100. What a little chatterbox!

Yesterday the sun was shining for the first time in quite a while and Edward actually woke up from his nap in time to enjoy it a bit. As soon as he was fully awake (he usually takes a few minutes to snuggle before hopping down to his afternoon activities) I said, "Let's go outside!" He willingly donned his jacket and boots (not always the case) and followed me out. At first he wanted me to carry him, but I persuaded him to follow me down the walk to look for the moon. Thankfully it was visible, so that kept him going all the way around the block. He shouted "Moon!" over and over and pointed to it. I told him it was his lucky day so he started saying "Lucky day, lucky day." He suggested the park, but when we got there he decided he didn't want to walk across the snowy expanse. So I suggested we look for "Randy's bunny" (our neighbors have a rabbit in a cage on their porch and generously allow Edward access.)

It is difficult to pull him away from the bunny for the last leg of the journey around the block, but the chance for another look at the moon was incentive enough. I tried to capture a bit of video, but he was not in the mood, as you'll see below. We particularly enjoyed the paparazzi response at the end. By the way, the round-the-block journey took about 40 minutes!

In other health news, my appointment was much the same this week with low blood pressure and an active baby thwarting attempts to establish a baseline heart rate for the non-stress test. This is not a problem except in that it makes the test last longer.

John and I have been getting down to some serious business in trying to come up with possible names for the baby. For a long time (until just this week actually) we had nothing on our "mutual" list for a girl. I suggested names and he rejected them. One of John's colleagues suggested that John, Mary, William and Edward are all "pilgrim names," and she and her husband came up with some pilgrim options for both boys and girls. I thought this was hilarious, but then I did a Google search for "pilgrim names" and found a list of all the passengers on the Mayflower: 15 Johns, 8 Williams, 6 Edwards and 6 Marys among the 104 passengers.

Sunday over lunch we had our longest brainstorming session to date and agreed that we'd each come to dinner with suggestions every night until we had at least one contender. Then a friend of mine counted 24 days until January 10--24 days, 26 letters in the alphabet, we decided to start with A and work though to the end (skipping Q and X). We actually have never had a solid choice for a girl's name, even though we didn't know Will and Edward would be boys. There are differing opinions on what this means. Some say not having a girl's name ensures we'll have a girl. Others say it's a sign that we just know we'll have a boy. Either way, we want to be prepared to introduce the child shortly after he/she makes an official entrance to the world.