Joshua's Spot

What ARE they thinking??

As if it weren't bad enough that the Sister of Death has two black belts, now she's going to have heavy artillery, too.

Christine just accepted an offer from the Army to work in the Pentagon. It's not entirely clear to me what she'll be doing, precisely, except that it apparently won't involve getting shot at and is unlikely to have her killing anyone else, either (unless they make the mistake of making disparaging comments about her tattoos).

Those poor ground-pounders are going to have no idea what hit them.

Up unt il this point, it was looking like there was a very real possibility that we could convert her into a Left-Coaster and get her out to Seattle or San Francisco or some other such city that's actually 1) liveable and 2) a heck of a lot closer to Da Boo than DC. This, of course, was merely Stage One in my nefarious plot to slurp the whole Smith Clan westward, the better to keep them under close supervision and more or less out of trouble. I had these glorious visions of taking Boo and Flippy up into the Cascades to meet up with Grandma and Pop-Pop and Auntie Tee-Tee for camping and sailing trips, complete with kumbaya sessions around the campfire and lots of s'mores and suchlike.

Ah well. I guess I'll just have to adjust my mental images of the kind of family get-togethers we're likely to have. Something along the order of Dad and I picketing the Pentagon and throwing rotten eggs at Christine on her way to work. Yeah, that's the ticket.

(Really, I'm very proud of her. Congratulations, Bratnose. Presumably, the Army will even pay somewhat better than, say, being a starving actress. And if not, you can always shoot them.)

We did, however, manage to finagle Bubbe and Poppy Mike back out to Grants Pass - not at all against their will. They've been trying to move back here for a year now, but their house in Cincinnati just sat on the market - and sat - and sat... At long last, they found a buyer, and before the ink was dry on the contract they were out here beating the bushes to find just the right house to settle back into out here in God's Country. So I'm already plotting how to dump, er, enable them to spend more time with their grandchildren now that they'll be just across town instead of across the country.

Somehow I don't see going camping with Bubbe in the cards (the words "Bubbe" and "tent" just don't belong in the same sentence), but we can still manage the sing-alongs, I think. Bubbe must have sixteen thousand songs bouncing around in her head, and somehow manages to pull one out for pretty much any occasion you can think of. S'mores won't taste quite the same when cooked on the gas fireplace in Bubbe's house, but hey, it's a start.

Haa Berr Dey, Gamma

Today, Gramma Kay turns 39. Again. (She's had a little bit of practice at this one, but we'll allow her her little delusions.) She's spending the day with her own mommy, Great-Grandma Deanie, who has had even more practice at it, and is looking darn good for pushing 40 - just ask Joe (if you can get him to come in from patrolling the perimeter for German inflitrators on this Veterans Day weekend, that is).

So Da Boo wanted to write his Grammas a little note to say "Haa Berr Day," and tell them he has a two, and a six, and an eight (from a little number puzzle, and yes, he can, and did, tell you which numbers they are, thankyouverymuch).

I certainly can't remember much about my mother when I was Josh's age - what kind of freak can remember much about when they were a year and a half old, anyway?? - but I spent the past few days thinking about some things I would tell Josh about his Gramma from when I was little.

I remember that whenever I lost track of Mom in KMart, I could always find her from all the way across the store (if necessary) by the sound of her keys jingling on her key ring. She carried this huge, mongo-sized key ring, you see, that looked like something the jailer in Man in the Iron Mask would carry, with enough keys to unlock every door in every house we ever lived in, along with those of half the neighbors too. (She carried a "purse" to match that was more of a dumpster with a shoulder strap, which was a good thing, because she always wound up carrying everything we kids picked up.)

I remember that whenever we went shopping at the mall, we'd eventually wind up in the bookstor e, and she'd let me pick out a few books to take home as a reward for being good. Which no doubt contributed, eventually, to my decision to get a literature degree, not to mention to my lifelong addiction to reading...

I remembe r we'd always wind up with his and hers Mr. Goodbars whenever we went through the checkout line at the grocery store.

I remember listening to lots of what I still call "Mommy music" on the radio - Helen Reddy, Judy Collins, Anne Murray, and sappy girly music in general. I still remember singing "I am woman, I am imbimpible" at the top of my lungs in the back of the car on the way to somewhere or other.

I remember Mom making us all kinds of clothes - play clothes, vests, Halloween outfits, you name it. I specifically remember a set of play clothes made out of an old set of avocado green drapes, which lasted forever - though Mom still and repeatedly denies that any such play clothes (or drapes, for that matter) ever existed. Personally, I think she'd seen Sound of Music a few too many times, but there you have it.

I remember Mom used to get dressed up every Halloween, at least as elaborately as we kids did, and seemed to love Trick or Treating like she was eight years old herself.

And she always made the best funny faces. She had, and has, an incredible talent for making people laugh.

Happy birthday, Mom. If you're half as good a Grandma as you were a Mom, Josh will be a very lucky Boo indeed.

Gone and Back Again...

...and I'll bet you didn't even notice. (After all, silence sounds pretty much the same on a blog, whether it's coming from Oregon or New Hampshire...)

Yes, while you've been (not so) patiently waiting for me to get off my sorry ass and let you know what's been going on, we've been off to deepest darkest New England on a little cross-country jaunt to hang out with some friends whom we haven't seen since our wedding. Jean and Beth (and one-year-old Melissa) and Meredith and Kelly (and 2-1/2-year-old Grace) and Roger (who is more than sufficient unto himself, thankyouverymuch) have stubbornly persisted in inviting me and my growing numbers of hangers-on to join them for their annual gathering every year, in spite of the fact that the last time I made it out there Bill Clinton was still president, the economy was still growing like gangbusters, and France was still everyone's favorite foreign country. This year, we finally decided we'd wrench a week away from job, house, and extended family obligations, and catch up with my few remaining old friends before they all forget what I look like. So we shlepped off to Grantham, New Hampshire (not far from Hanover, where one would find Dartmouth, if one had any interest in looking for it), where Jean's wonderful dad and step-mom have a condo in a beautiful area surrounding a lovely little forest-clad lake.

The short story is that we had a great time, Joshua loved the water (mostly), we didn't get him to take very many naps (surprise!!) so we didn't get to see much of New England, but we had a great time even so. The kids seemed to enjoy each others' company, especially Josh and Melissa, who are close enough in age, size, and capability that they were following each other around all week, teaching each other all kinds of things that we really didn't want them to learn. (Grace was enough older that she mostly just observed the silly antics of the little tykes from a safe distance, with lots of running commentary and questioning peppered at her parents, along the lines of, "Daddy, why is that baby hitting himself on the head with a stuffed bear?")

The major focus of the week, predictably, was The Beach - namely, a little private strip of sand alongside the lake, with a nice shallows at the edge of the water so the kids didn't get in over their heads too quickly, and a floating platform for the older kids... and even Jean's Dad's little sailboat for us wannabe Captains Nemo to take out whenever there was enough wind to ruffle the lake a bit. My favorite memory of the week was watching His Poopiness trying to return the entire beach to the lake, one fistful of sand at a time - pick up, throw, pick up, throw, all week long. It was also precious to watch him around the water - he'd wade in until he got up to about mid-calf, then stop and shuffle his feet a little bit (wary, I think, after his first attempt to wade in, when he wound up falling on his face in the water and spluttering and crying, until I picked him up and had him try again), then turn around and walk back up onto the beach until he hit the dry sand, when he'd shuffle his feet again and say "hah" (Boo-ish for "hot") and turn around and walk back to the water. He'd repeat this circuit for an hour at a time if you let him.

Da Boo also spent a lot of time collecting rocks, checking out bark, playing with shovels in the sand, kissing Melissa and Grace and the neighborhood dogs and anyone else who didn't get out of his way fast enough, and running around the condo we rented getting into everything. In other words, he was pretty much his normal self, up to and including not napping during the day. (At night, we had him sleeping in our bathroom with the doors closed, which was embarrassing - but hey, ya do whatcha gotta do.)

I'll be working on processing and posting the pictures and video shortly. I'm still trying to recover from the coxsackievirus that Melissa gave me, via Joshua, which knocked me flat on my butt earlier this week. (It's not Melissa's fault - Jean practically barricaded the door when we first arrived and warned us that Melissa was just getting over it and that it's incredibly contagious, but we recognized a lost battle when we saw one and chose not to worry about it. Joshua was miserable with it for about 36 hours in the middle of our visit, but I didn't start feeling it until we were in the middle of our first, long plane ride back. It's not fun - kids, don't try this at home.) In the meantime, suffice it to say that we had a great time, we really enjoyed everyone, we're home safe, and it's great to be back in our own house - which is pretty much the story after every trip away. (Which makes one wonder why we leave in the first place... oh, yeah, to see people. Okay, then, that's a good reason...)

Stay tuned for pics 'n' movies, and perhaps more travel stories. Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel.

Spring (and change) in the air...

First and foremost - Joshua has a new little cousin, as of yesterday. Felicia's sister Rachel (and, incidentally and far in the background, where he should be, her husband Erik) gave birth to a 6 pound, 9 ounce daughter named Hannah, after a disgustingly ridiculous number of pushes, like, four. We're hoping Felicia's next delivery is like that:  get to the hospital, get your epidural, go "eh", and there's yer baby, plop, just like that.

(Rachel's story, I'm sure, would be rather different. But then, what does she know? She was on heavy medication at the time. MY version is probably no less fictional than hers would be. And Erik was in a chauffer-driven car on the way out from NYC for most of it, so I think we're pretty much free to make up our own story here, people.)

Joshua would be absolutely thrilled to hear he has a new little baby girl-cousin, if only he spoke English well enough to understand what we were trying to tell him. Felicia and I, however, are thrilled, and we can only assume that Grandma Jo is beside herself, since she's been too busy with SOMETHING for the past couple days to complain about the lack of blog activity.

Meanwhile, back on the home front...

WE'RE DEEP IN THE MIDST OF THE WEANING PROCESS.

Sorry for shouting, but it seemed appropriate. Consider it a fair, if virtual, taste of the decibel level that we've had in the house the past couple days, since we began this whole dramatic change in our entire delicately adjusted way of being as a burgeoning family.

Hey, we had to do it sometime. The spur, I think, was Felicia's increasing desire (entirely unrelated, I'm sure, to Hannah's arrival in the world) to Be Pregnant Again, and thus to Have Another Boo. This, obviously, is not so easy when one is still breastfeeding, and thus pumping all those ovulation-suppressing hormones into one's system (and I'm not talking about mine, here, people). So the Decision Was Made that we should start the process of getting this Boo off his Booby, and we put the plan into effect a couple days ago. Mom would not breastfeed him except at night (*), and would stop pumping except for (temporarily) doing one session before she leaves for work, so the Grandma and the Daddy would have at least one bottle of booby-milk to give the Boo when he wakes up in the morning, and to eke out thereafter through the day as needed. (Since Daddy is up about, oh, four HOURS before the Grandma every day, and since the Boo is still at least somewhat hungry for the booby-milk when he first wakes up, this means Daddy has gotten it all and that it's all gone by the time Grandma wakes up and gets her sorry butt moving in the morning. HA. Serves her right for getting a decent night's sleep, the early bird gets the worm, gotta strike while the booby-milk is hot, and all that.)

* You can see the obvious loophole. Given that His Poopiness has NEVER consistently slept through the night, this "no booby-feeding except at night" loophole is big enough to drive a milk truck through. What this means, in practice, is that for the time being, he's getting about 80% of his daily caloric intake between 6pm and 5am, when he and his momma are conspiring to MORE than make up for all the booby-feeding sessions they're missing during the day. But I digress.

And the corrollary to this loophole is that Daddy and Grandma get to struggle by all day on nothing but solid food, water, juice, and whole milk (so sue us, we accellerated the American Academy of Pediactrics-approved schedule for introducing cow's milk by a month) all day, and then Momma gets to come swooping in at the end of an increasingly hairy afternoon and play Supermom, presenting the Superboobs to the rescue of us all. At least until Daddy insists that it's time for the other shoe to drop, anyway, and tells her she has to give him a glass of cow's milk or a sippy-cup full of water, just like the rest of us mere mortals.

To be fair, Felicia has been surprisingly good about following along with The Plan, now that we've finally decided to implement it, after many months of delay and hemming and hawing. To my surprise, she's even decided that it's time to start enforcing the Sleep-Through-the-Night Plan, AT THE SAME TIME, which deprives them both of some otherwise easily-justified midnight booby-time. (No, all you moms out there who are wondering, she is not suffering from exploding-boob syndrome, nor is she leaking all over herself, nor is she in serious pain.  Sure, her relevant bits feel a bit like she had a silicone implant by the end of the day, but she's otherwise fine - though I keep warning the Boo to stand back when it comes time to do his bedtime feeding, for fear it'll be akin to drinking from a fire hose. Still more proof that Felicia was genetically engineered to be Supermom, if any more were necessary.)

So, we're into Day Three of this scheme, and so far so good. Mom hasn't had her entire upper superstructure explode (knock wood), the Boo hasn't starved yet (ditto), Daddy is still here to write it all about (ditto ditto), and although Da Gim is feeling pretty neglected and gunshy, even HE is still relatively intact, a few pulled dog-hairs notwithstanding.

Grandma and Grandpa, however, are AWOL, so it's hard to say how they feel about this whole thing. Grandpa Ken returned from Michigan last night, and shlepped the Grandma off to the coast within a record-setting 15 hours, meaning he'd hardly even taken his laptop out of his briefcase before he'd kidnapped my main helpmate in this whole daytime childcare/weaning scheme.

Shocking. Time to import another grandma, for backup.

Boog Envy

I have to say, all of Cuz Boog's family photos and various happenings are finally bringing home the richness and wonder of having, like, a gazillion kids around to keep life interesting, and reconciling me to the idea of willingly allowing myself to become even more outnumbered than I already am by smallish, pooping, peeing, noisy critters (and yes, this means you too, Gimli).

But please, if I ever succumb to the folly of growing anything resembling that beard, someone please shoot either me or it, whichever tries to crawl away first. (Doug, you live in OKLAHOMA. However cold the winter has been, the Yukon, this is not...) Somehow, I think someone has been spending WAAAY too much time in Scandanavia, and hasn't thought through what "Boog the Bold" would sound like, as a pillaging moniker. Just a thought...

Snot-Free, finally (except for me)

After so long with Joshua suffering from some ailment or other - laryngitis, teething, colds, flu shot aftereffects, you name it, we've had it - the transformation now that he's finally managed to kick all of that is little short of miraculous. The past couple days have been a true joy. The little tyke has been happy, and curious, and playful, and CALM, and full of smiles and laughs for his parents. Where did this kid COME from? (And, more importantly, what can we do to make sure he STAYS??)

Daddy, meanwhile, is still walking around with a head and throat and chest full of gunk, but really, who cares? It's not about me, pshaw.

Felicia's day off yesterday coincided with one of these Wonderful Boo Days, which warmed my heart. Not that she loves him one tiny bit less when he's sick or cranky or trying out his nascent (but nevertheless impressive) manipulation skills on the only test subjects that are ready to hand - but still, I love it when she can spend some real, rare quality time at home with him (and me and Da Gim too, but whatever) when Da Boo is working hard to win the Best Baby in the Universe award. It wouldn't be fair to hoard those days to myself, after all...

(There are some new photos in the album of these two goofing off together, if you're interested.)

Incidentally... we received a complaint about one of our photos, namely, this one:

Mr. Snarky wanted it to be known that a) this was a one-time aberration, and is in no way representative of the way he and Joshua normally get along; b) he is to be known as "T'Nonc", not "Uncle David" (what can I say, you make friends with a Cajun, you have to put up with the occasional Frenchified oddities; it means "little uncle," like, whatEVER); and c) he objects to the prominent placement of said photo on said blog, and wants it removed forthwith. (As if!)

Personally, I say photos don't lie, and we here at Joshua's Spot will never succumb to threats from stylistic terrorists, Cajun or otherwise. (I'll just have to watch carefully to make sure I know what he puts in his gumbo, next time we eat over.)

I think what he's really got his panties in a twist about is the contrast between THAT photo and THIS one:

Don't worry, T'Nonc. Boo doesn't really love Uncle Patrick better. He only wails at the ones he loves. (Trust me on this one, I have reason to know.)

Sick babies, and sick uncles

Felicia's brother Marc popped up from Las Vegas, where he's been making himself all too much at home for the past few months, to pay his baby nephew (and, incidentally, sister and brother-in-law, and puppy-nephew) a short visit in between parties and wheeling-dealings. Marc's life down there sounds like every 14-year-old's wet dream:  hanging out with strippers, parties every night, getting shlepped around in limos everywhere he goes, knowing who to know at all the best places in town to get free food and free drinks and free passes past the bouncers and all that stuff.

Our life, meanwhile, was so inspiring that Marc took two naps yesterday, and was about to drift off into a third when he finally managed to drag us out by the hair to go to the gym. (Hey, we asked, and he said he didn't want to do anything but hang out while he was here. We just took him at his word.)

Gimli certainly pulled out all the stops to give Uncle Marc a hero's welcome - to the point where Marc had to beg us to pull the dog off him. Joshua, meanwhile, was apparently cute and cuddly enough to evoke lots of comments from his Uncle Marc on how cute he was, over and over again - in between complaints about Felicia's near-constant ever-so-slightly-off-key singing to impromptu baby-inspired lyrics, that is. I have a feeling Joshua was aiming for something other than "cute" - "impressive," maybe, or "brilliant," or "manly-manly," or even just "tall" - but I guess he'll just have to settle for "cute."

(At least we didn't stick you in the puppy costume for Uncle Marc's benefit, little boy.)

Marc leaves this morning to go back to his whirlwind life, leaving us boys to go back to our normal (nap-inducing) existence. Just in time for the baby to come down with a really bad cold, oh joy, oh rapture. Joshua was acting increasingly miserable yesterday, and Felicia says he's definitively sick as of last night. So this'll be fun. Added on top of the fact that he's still teething like mad, trying to get those top three teeth out, and that he's decided lately that naps and bottles and stuff are for babies and is thus wearing himself out and making himself very hungry by about, oh, early afternoon every day - which has all made the past week or so utterly exhausting, at least for his daddy - this cold is going to make the next couple days a REAL bundle of laughs.

I can't wait.

Importing grandparents, at any price

This past weekend, we raised the stakes in our ongoing campaign to bribe, borrow, or blackmail our way into getting some grandparents to move out here to give us permanent reinforcements. We dragged Grandpa Ken and Grandma Kay up to the North Umpqua River, east of Roseburg, to a wonderful place called the Steamboat Inn, where we spent some serious quality time from Friday evening through Sunday afternoon. Grandpa Ken and I spent all day Saturday doing manly-man things, namely fly fishing for steelhead, which mostly seems to consist of hooking a lot of bushes and rocks with the fly while pretending to be trying to lure the fish to bite an artificial fly, in spite of the fact that steelhead aren't even very interested in eating real ones. Predictably, we didn't get much action - although Dad did catch one pretty nice steelhead, something in the six-pound range, which put up a very satisfying fight, right down to leaping out of the river in just the way the TV fish do on all those fishing programs he tends to watch when he has too much time on his hands on a Saturday morning. This, of course, merely got his optimism level up, so we had to practically drag him off the river once it got to be full dark and pry the fly rod out of his twitching hands, while he protested that it was still light enough for ONE MORE CAST, JUST ONE MORE...

I, in true David fashion, caught just one little fish, and it was one that the guide didn't even know they had in the Umpqua, a trash fish called something like a Western squaw fish, which apparently the Department of Fish and Wildlife will pay people to get rid of, it's so useless and nasty. This, folks, is the story of my fishing life.

Meanwhile, while we were off getting cold and wet and muddy, scrambling all over the banks of the river in a mostly futile hunt for fish we weren't even allowed to keep if we did somehow magically happen to catch one, Felicia and Grandma Kay were having a spa day, getting massages and taking naps and generally reveling in hedonistic glory, while taking turns playing with the baby. So a good time was had by all, and we merely wished the weekend was much longer.

Felicia, in the midst of all this, was continually escalating the level of bribery she was willing to engage in for the purpose of convincing the grandparents to relocate across the country and thus be available for on-call babysitting duty. I think by the end of the weekend she'd gotten up to offering a new car and a split-bamboo fly rod, with a couple more grandchildren thrown in to sweeten the pot. Grandpa Ken is still holding out, I think because he's curious to see just how much he can milk this particular opportunity.

Joshua, meanwhile, is changing all his habits, all at once, now that he's getting solid food. Contrary to what we were TOLD to expect, he's actually sleeping LESS at night, not more, waking up every hour or so and crying until he gets booby-time, and then going back to sleep just to roll over again an hour later to start the whole process over again. This could get old really quickly. During the day, he's too busy checking out what's happening and what Grandma Kay and Grandpa Ken are willing to do with him to take his usual naps, so he's just one constant source of busy-ness, day and night. I'm really hoping he settles down into some kind of routine - any kind of routine - by the time the grandparents leave. Otherwise, I'm going to start adding my own contributions to the bribery pot, out of sheer desperation.

There are some new pictures in the photo album, for you addicts out there - including some of His Poopiness trying out the attempt to provide distraction so daddy can get things done, namely, a brand-new baby walker. Sooner or later, after all, the jumper is going to wear out, and he's going to want to go places. Just trying to stay ahead of the little bugger...

Grandma-less again, alas

Grandma Kay went a-leavin' on a jet plane yesterday, to the general dismay of all and sundry. Joshua, Gimli, and I are all discovering that we became pretty thoroughly spoiled while Grandma was in town - Joshua got held and carried around and smiled at and sung to and otherwise played with all day long a lot more than usual; Gimli got a complete Surplus Person to hog all to his puppy self whenever Joshua's back was turned; and I, well, I actually Got Things Done. I tore out the flagging summer veggies to make room for the fall/winter crop, I got more or less caught up on our backlogged household chores, I even (finally!) emptied the chametz box from Passover that's been sitting around on the floor of our hallway ever since (that's FOUR MONTHS, people).

And now that it's just the three of us (daddy, baby, and puppy) around here during the day again, we're all finding that we've gotten flabby in our routine while Grandma was around to provide extra GrandmaPower. Which just confirms my existing conviction, that one must have a grandparent in town at all times, no matter what. (Grandma Jo, are your bags packed??)

Thankfully, we'll have only a short hiatus, since Grandma Kay and Grandpa Ken will be coming back out in just a couple weeks, after what appears to be the most Rube Golberg-ish trek across the continent that one could possibly take, involving everything from trains to buses to ferries to Ed's Pretty Good Airline to, I suspect, probably a dog sled or two, all on the lame excuse of celebrating their 40th anniversary. (Put it on your calendars, in case you've forgotten, folks! September 18th, which is just around the corner.) As long as they arrive safely and on time to spend some time with their grandson, I don't care if they get here by rickshaw.

In fact, I'm surprised they missed that one...

Meanwhile, I've fallen sadly behind on the baby blogging (all Katrina-related opining aside). I've got about six hundred million photos that Mom took while she was here that I somehow have to wade through and get posted, plus a movie clip or two, plus updates on all the various stuff that's been going on in our little household. Oh, and photos of the Big Dig, which is coming along quite nicely, to our great surprise - our ideas about contractor timeliness and reliability seem to have been more thoroughly affected (for the worse) by our landscaper than I'd thought, it seems. I'll get a start on it all shortly, though I have a feeling you'll be sorry I did before too long, since there are a LOT of pictures. Don't say I didn't warn you.

One of my favorites, just as a downpayment: 

Grandma and her boys

For the record:  Gimli did indeed pee himself the moment he saw Grandma come through the door. (Also for the record:  *I* did not.)

Joshua and his Grandma are busy getting to know one another, while Daddy just tries his best NOT to be a hovering hen fussing to explain Joshua's every slightest habit and every little technique I've developed for handling him to my mom, who has after all handled a baby or two in her time. Given how much I was looking forward to dump... er, "having help" with Joshua, I have to laugh at myself over how hard it is to just walk away and let my own mother deal with the little tyke herself. I didn't THINK I was a nervous parent... hm.

Gimli, meanwhile, just picked up where he left off - i.e., all over Grandma. She is, after all, his own personal chew toy. (And to think she's really a cat person.)

Felicia and I took advantage of the availability of Free Babysitting to go to a friend's wedding on Saturday. Apparently, there were bets laid on how long we'd be able to stand being away from the baby. I'm not sure who won, or even what the stakes were, but all things considered, I'm proud to say that we actually managed to keep ourselves out of the house for a good four and a half, maybe five hours, before we finally succumbed to our baby cravings and ran for home to bury ourselves in baby hugs. Just in time, as it turned out, since Mom was having some technical difficulties with our Dr. Browns bottles, largely due to the fact that she was trying to use a Dr. Browns nipple and collar with a Medela bottle (you contemporary parents out there will understand; the rest of you, just take my word for it, this doesn't work very well). So it's probably a good thing we swept in just in time to give His Poopiness his evening dose of booby and rescue the Grandma from the attack of the mysteriously leaking misassembled bottle before True Panic ensued.

Other than that, Grandma, baby, parents, and puppy are all enjoying themselves fully as much as anticipated. Although I still somehow seem to be spending as much time at the house as usual, rather than taking advantage of Free Babysitting to Go Out And Do Things Without The Baby In Tow. After all, one wouldn't want to rush into these things. We have to ease ourselves into leaving the baby alone with Grandma kind of gradually, to prevent shock to the system.

My system, that is. Joshua, I'm sure, is perfectly happy glomming on to any available adult-type person who will succumb to his baby charms, the little baby slut.

The first batch of pictures from Grandma's Visit are in the album. Note that none of them have Grandma in them - if you think that's a coincidence, you don't understand just WHY my mom took up photography in the first place. (Think: best possible way to get out from in FRONT of the lens...)