Professor Daddy

Beth has taken to calling Scott "Professor," as in, "Professor, you come here right now!" and "Professor! Professor! Where are you? Oh, there you are." He loves it. We're living in Boston, I'm trying to teach her to say "wicked awesome," and she comes out with "professor." Love my kid.

Yesterday morning I caught her trying to feed Sarah toast. She'd broken off bits and was trying to shove them in Sarah's mouth (Sarah, of course, wasn't complaining in the least — her expression was more "Lemme at it!" than "Toast? I don't think so. Not yet, anyway.").

"Bethie, Sarah can't have toast yet. She can't chew it. She doesn't have any teeth."

A moment of worried concentration, then: "We'll buy her some!" Aha. The solution to all of our problems. I love how her mind works.

"No, sweetie, we can't. It doesn't work that way. Let's feed her applesauce, okay?"

Then Sarah took a morning nap (maybe her fifth? Ever?) and Beth and I were out on the front deck blowing bubbles. (This is hilarious: She can't figure out how to blow just right, so she either spits at the bubble wand or breathes at it.) Eventually I told her, "We're going to have to go wake up baby Sarah and go to Costco."

"And buy her teeth!"

Wow. Oh, just so you know: we didn't really look hard, but we're pretty sure Costco doesn't carry false teeth. At least not for babies.

Tuesday's splash park debacle really needs more explanation.

I'm trying to make friends, really I am. So I'm taking her to the ward playgroup, and the e-mail that went out about it said "splash pool," and I assumed (wrongly) that "pool" meant "pool" (as in short-person wading-style pool) instead of "overgrown sprinklers." She was terrified. Sarah would let me get her feet wet before complaining about it, but Beth just flopped down on her towel in sunbathing stance and screamed and cried when I even suggested going near the water. I kept my cool, though, and on our way out of the park I sat down with her on the grass and said, "This wasn't really a pool, was it?"

"No."

"Tell you what. Not tomorrow, but the next day, we'll find a real pool, you and me and baby Sarah. Okay?"

"Okay."

So (this being "the next day") we went. She had an absolute blast. The local pool is insanely, cliquishly, wonderfully local: you have to be a resident of the town just to buy a day pass, the red-suited lifeguards all look like they grew up swimming there in the summers, kids have to pass a swimming test to go in the deep end, and by late afternoon the place is chock-full of kids playing "Marco!" "Polo!" and swimming underwater and throwing beach balls around. Plus, it starts at just a foot deep, which is great for little Bethie who's only about three feet deep herself. We went this morning, slathered on sunscreen, put on hats, and spent an hour and a half walking around the kiddie half of the pool, coming back to our towel for snacks, and going back in again. Sarah finally lost it around lunchtime, so we came home, ate lunch (what's more appropriate for a pool day than PB&J?), took naps (all of us — I was wiped out), and went back. This time she was an old pro: she didn't need to hold my hand every minute, she went in up to her chin, and she even slipped while she was climbing down from the side of ramp and fell in. I thought it would be the end of things, but no — she kicked and splashed for a few moments while I hauled myself (Sarah in tow) from where I was sitting on the pool floor and righted her.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes!"

"Was it fun?"

"Yes!"

"Do you want to do it again?"

"Nooooo...."

Sarah, by the way (and I feel terrible that so many of my comments about Sarah are "by the way"s — she's tremendous, and calm, and tough as nails — "quietly determined" would be the right words for her), is a total water baby. She stood up in the pool, holding onto my hands; let me swing her around on her back and her tummy in the water, and played beach-ball catch with an older boy (six? seven?) who thought (correctly) that she was a cutie. She also has the cutest baby swimsuit ever. It's a purple patterned halter-style tank suit with ruching on the sides and red and orange beads on the halter tie. I want one for me.

Beth played catch with three kids. She wants to take swimming lessons this fall. She pled with me to let her stay when I told her it was time to go home for dinner. Yay!

Brilliant kids, spacy mom

Sarah's almost, almost crawling. She'll get up on her hands and knees, rock back and forth, study the floor in front of her, then flop herself down like a little inchworm to get her hands farther forward. It's working quite well. I expect her to actually figure out how to alternate hand movements within, oh, a week, at which point we're going to have to buy baby gates to keep her off the stairs. Yikes!

It's been such a week.

Saturday was just awful. One of those days when I shouldn't be allowed around heavy machinery or loaded weapons or small children. It was hot (90-plus degrees), humid, and I had no ability to focus whatsoever. First, on my way out of the house to the grocery store, I actually backed the car into the deck (itty bitty dent on the bumper, no damage to the deck). After battling two children, cramped aisles, long checkout lines and Beth crying most of the way home because she wanted to drive (but wouldn't actually climb in the driver's seat while I was loading the groceries — it was "Too hot! I burn myself!"), I clipped one of the side mirrors trying to pull into the garage.

Grr.

The mirror was still (mostly) attached to the car, but I figured the universe was telling me to stay inside for the rest of the day. So later in the afternoon, I got domestic and homebody-ish: I decided to finish cleaning the oven.

(The oven was absolutely grimy when we moved in. I don't think anyone's cleaned it since it was installed eight years ago. And this is a self-cleaning oven. All you have to do is set it to the clean cycle and wait four and a half hours. But I digress.)

I ran a cleaning cycle a few weeks ago, and while it mostly worked, it also left some still-icky spots that I figured I'd get with some spray-on oven cleaner. So I took the pizza stone out of the oven, picked up the blue spray can, covered the inside of the oven door with foam, recapped the can, and looked at the clock so I'd know when my two hours of soaking the grease-encrusted mess would be over. And then I thought, "Wow, that oven cleaner really smells good," and I looked twice at the blue spray can, and realized that I had just covered the oven door with spray starch.

Grr, again. I wonder: Should I include stories like this in the article I have to write about our family for the ward newsletter? "Libby likes to read, play the violin, and have completely spacy days where she does everything — everything — wrong."

We got new cell phones, which is a source of endless wonder for Beth. "Is that Mama's new cell phone? I want to hold it. I call Aunt Gigi?" Last night Scott was trying to set up his new Treo (ooo, the tech geekiness we exude!) and had the instructions laid out in front of him on the living room floor.

Beth marched over and picked up the paper. "I have to read it," she explained, and proceeded to peruse the instructions. After quite a bit of deliberation, she gave the paper back. "It says 'cell phone.'" And she walked away.

(For the grandparents who are convinced of her budding brilliance, it didn't. She can't read. It said "smartphone," and it had pictures.)

But today after our wearing trip to the park, where Beth was afraid of the sprinkler-type water play area, and another grueling grocery run (don't ask — it's too painful to tell — but it involves me forgetting to change Beth out of her swim diaper before putting her in the shopping cart), we still had to stop by the tailor shop to pick up Scott's pants that we'd dropped off yesterday morning. I found a parking spot a few doors down from the shop, hauled the girls out of the car, and told Beth, "We have to find the tailor shop. Can you help Mommy?"

"It has a number eight on the door," she said.

And so it did. I'm going to let her park the car next time.

Farm girls

We went to a farm! The ward playgroup was held at a farm out in Natick today. Beth thought it was glorious. As soon as she heard we were going to a farm she started talking about piggies.

(It's not really that kind of a farm. It's a pick-your-own-apples kind of farm, but lucky for us there's a petting zoo section with a single placid cow, some ostriches and emus, a big collection of sheep and goats, and a solitary sleeping piggy. Beth was afraid of the ostrich, and when confronted with the big ugly guy's head shrank back and said, "I don't know him.")

She got to pick her own apples off short apple trees, and ride "trains" (a long motorized peoplemover thing, plus a kid-sized caterpillar one), and pet the goats, and play on a playground, and have lunch with some new little friends who are just older than she is.

Sarah sat up in the front seat of the stroller and watched everything: the animals, the other babies, the apples. She wasn't really thrilled about the stroller — Sarah would much rather be practicing her hands-and-knees maneuver right now — but she was patient with our needs to get out of the house.

On the way home Beth had to sing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" over and over and over. (She was pretty creative with it, too — used a bunch of the animals she'd just seen — didn't resort to kitty cats for several miles.)

Late September is apparently Asian pear season, so we'll be back for that. And we saw pumpkins nestling low in their big leaves, so we'll be back for that too.

Yes, all the synapses are in working order

Grandma was taking pictures of the girls and their baby cousin tonight when the itty-bitty digital camera slipped out of her hands. Something was obviously wrong with it — she couldn't turn it on or off — so I said, "Let's try reseating the battery."

At the word "battery," Beth's ears pricked up and she toddled off toward the kitchen. We fussed over the camera and she reappeared a moment later holding out a big D-cell battery on her open palm. "Here you go."

Smart cookie, that.

Swimming Sarah

Sarah's having such a blast with the hardwood floors — she can scoot around quite easily on her tummy, mostly backward. And she'll pick up her arms and legs, balance on her tummy, and do a lovely Superbaby. Such a cutie!

The big move

Highlights from the past week and a half:

• Scott asked me to pack up the clothes the girls would wear on the trip up to Boston, and I replied with, "Yep, I'll pack Beth and Sarah tonight."
  
  Beth, who had been watching (and occasionally helping) the whole packing process, got this totally worried look on her little face and said, "No, mama, don't put me in a box!"
  
  "Oh, sweetie, no," I said. "I won't put you in a box!"
  
  "Not baby Sarah either?"
  
  "No, not baby Sarah either. I'm going to pack your clothes in a suitcase so that you can have them on the trip."
  
  "Oh. Okay."


• Forget the Waldorf-Astoria — my favorite hotel is now the Homewood Suites. There's a kitchenette, enough room for two portable cribs, a swimming pool, breakfast every morning, and dinner most weeknights. It's clean. There are highchairs. It isn't too terribly expensive, especially after you add up what you'd spend on those meals. And the girls lovedlovedloved going swimming last Tuesday night. Sarah, who hadn't been swimming before, was apprehensive for about two and a half minutes before deciding that she was born to be a water baby. Seriously. She kicked her legs and waved her arms around and giggled. Seeing her in a swimsuit is about the cutest thing ever.


• We read the last Harry Potter book all the way up to Boston and then all weekend while we were waiting to get into the house. Excellent, excellent book. (And if you haven't heard my rant on this before, you're getting it here: What is with the crazy evangelical folks who think the Harry Potter books are evil? Come on.)


• Beth didn't throw up in the car. Yay Dramamine!


• Beth did, however, throw up in the Friendly's in Sturbridge. I think I'm at fault for giving her too many fruit snacks to keep her quiet while I was reading Harry Potter to Scott.


• We figured out on the second day of our drive that listening to a tape of old Sesame Street songs will keep Beth quiet and happy for hours on end. No exaggeration, no kidding.


• Closing on the house? Totally anticlimactic. We signed a bunch of papers, the girls played in the corner, the sellers' agent was woefully unprepared and glaringly unprofessional. Our agent, whom we adore, actually handed us her garage door opener and let us stay at her house for four days before our furniture arrived.


• Boston is impossible to get around in. We bought a GPS unit for the car and improved our navigational skills only marginally. It's just bad.


• Oh — if your profession depends on an internet connection, e-mail access and a collection of software your husband is unlikely to have on his computer, just don't move. Ever.


• Stephanie, you were right: Bear your testimony the first chance you get in your new ward. All spirituality aside, it gives people a chance to size you up. (Thanks for the tip, girl.) Someone from church actually recognized me today at Costco and said hello. That random enough?


• Scott got to use his cordless drill to take apart a window on the second floor. Then he and the movers hoisted our couch up over the balcony and squeezed it through the window to get it into the living room. Fun to watch.


• Today's the first day it's actually been bearable to be in the house without air conditioning (which we only have in the bedrooms, thanks). Ninety-plus degrees in Boston is just hot.


• Beth and Sarah had been increasingly frantic about the move. The first few days were like a vacation, then Mom and Dad got serious about something, then we took them to an empty unfamiliar house and said, "Hey, this is where we're going to live! Won't that be fun?" Then we didn't actually get to live in the house for a few days, and then it was hot and humid and everyone got cranky and a bunch of men were moving a lot of things into the house and it was past naptime and everyone got hotter and crankier.
  
  In the middle of the moving-in-the-furniture chaos, the phone/internet/TV guy came to hook everything up. (Somehow this house made it to 2007 without getting cable...but that's another story. And we have co-ax cable draped and duct-taped around the moldings until we can get a contractor in to embed it in the walls. Again, another story.)
  
  But the technology all eventually got hooked up, and the TV got unpacked and put on top of a great steamer trunk we bought in Pittsburgh, and Mommy found the on-demand kids' shows and found (drum roll please) an episode of The Wonder Pets. And everything was immediately, miraculously better.
  
  Beth slumped down in her chair — I could actually see her shoulders relax — and five minutes later she was asleep. Poor kid. She really needed it.


• Oh, we have a terrific downstairs neighbor. She's been saving Bed Bath & Beyond coupons for us, she's fed us dinner twice, and we just genuinely like her. We're counting our blessings.


• First room to be almost completely set up: the kitchen.


• Second room: the guest bedroom. We're hoping for lots and lots of visitors (and you know who you are).

Mad skills

Sarah's swimming! I put her down today within visual range of Beth's wagonful of blocks and she managed to squirm herself over to it, bat a bunch of the blocks out with her arm, and then play contentedly with the blocks. Hooray! She's learned a new skill. She's so determined. And so determined to be self-sufficient!

She's also started to play peek-a-boo. If she's sitting in her car seat or bouncy chair with a blanket, she'll grab the blanket with both hands, pull it over her head, and then pull it back down under her chin. That's when the big silly "I'm so proud of myself!" grin shows up.

We're cleaning things out as we're packing, and Scott found my big makeup case full of, well, makeup. Old makeup. There were five or six pieces I wanted to save (including my vial of Lip Venom, yum). The rest of it got tossed — but not before it was thoroughly inbethtigated.

Beth loooooves makeup. Part of our morning routine includes the two of us putting on lip balm together. So she had to go through every single tube and pencil, take off the cap, and probe around. She ended up with lipstick and eyeliner all over her face, and she was very, very serious about the whole process. This was important stuff.

'Course, I'm not about to let a two-year-old run amok with makeup. I left her with a bag of makeup sponges, a brush, and two new tubes of lip balm. And the big boxlike makeup case, which zips shut and has a mirror in the lid. She's thrilled. When Scott was putting her to bed she pled with him, "Want makeup!"

"The makeup's downstairs, Bethie."

"No, put makeup in crib!"

So she either wants to sleep with it or put it on in the middle of the night so she can (mad skills alert) climb out of the crib, open the door to her room, and sneak out to hang with her delinquent friends. (Okay, I'm just kidding about the sneaking out part. But she can do the rest.) Sigh. We'll try to keep a lid on this makeup thing until she's, say, thirteen. But it's cute.

Beth the acrobat

After being an acrobat at the backyard circus a few weeks ago, and literally dozens of Mommy-assisted somersaults, she finally figured it out on her own! (She went over to hug my friend Margaret after her first somersault at the library this week, but she's had plenty of hugs for her own family since.)

Share the joy, people. Here you go:

Life's rosy! And pink.

Two things:

1. Scott defended his dissertation today...and passed! (I know, I know — no one's surprised. But it's such a great milestone that we have to celebrate it.) Things are looking nice and rosy for our little family of four: a completed and defended dissertation, imminent graduation, then a move to a Real House and a Real Job.


2. I took Bethie and Sarah to the pediatrician's office today. We all (and I mean all) have pinkeye. Glargck. We've been fighting off this awful unrelenting cold for nearly a week, with its sniffles and migraines and sore throats and swollen glands and fatigue and general malaise, and now on top of it we all have drippy itchy eyes and a few rounds of antibiotics. So, so gross.

Independence Day

Bethie celebrated her own independence by holding not one but two sparklers at the picnic we went to. It was a solemn little celebration: Beth and a sparkler and a few tentative waves of same. But a celebration nonetheless. She ran around with the other kids, chased the puppy someone brought along, slid down the slide into the wading pool (after the splashing big kids got out), asked for and received a chocolate chip cookie and a sippy cup full of grape soda.

It's kind of a week of firsts. We took the girls to see Ratatouille on Monday night, their first movie at a theater. Sarah nursed for a good chunk of the movie. Beth said "Uh-oh!" during the scary scenes and cried during the sad ones. (Beth, incidentally, loves popcorn.)

Tonight she got on the phone with her Aunt Gigi and told her about the movie: "I saw movie! There was a rat. He cooked cookies! And his friends." If you're going to cook, her reasoning goes, it might as well have chocolate chips involved.

The circus!

My friend Brooke, who has more good ideas eight months pregnant than most of us have when we're in fabulous physical and mental shape, organized a backyard circus for the kids. It was darling. And hilarious. Beth was an acrobat (she did Mommy-assisted somersaults and then climbed Daddy) and Sarah was a clown (strictly a sideshow act, but boy did she look cute).

Beth's buddy Eleanor did a magic act (soooo cute to see a two-year-old do magic tricks!) and had this fantastic moment of "Oh, wow, people are paying attention!" when she got applause. There was a brief flirt with being shy about it...and then she just lapped up the attention. What a kid.

(Tangent: My mom sent Beth another round of books and Grandma-reading-books-on-tape, including a really cute one about Gossie and Gertie, two little goslings who are best friends and do everything together. At the end of one of a whole bunch of readings of the story, I asked Beth, "Do you have a best friend?"

Well, duh. "Eleanor!")

Back to the circus. There was an elephant trainer (with a daddy as the elephant), and an unintelligible but quite dapper ringmaster, and a few trained monkeys, and a trapeze artist, and even a tattooed strong man (those tattoos looked suspiciously like Crayola marker, and I heard several remarks about the incongruity of a CTR tattoo). Afterward there was homemade ice cream, and kids running around the backyard, and the sun hadn't even started to go down when we left at 8:00. Ah, summer!

The wheels on the bus

I went in to get Beth up yesterday morning and found her sitting in her crib, back against the side, legs stretched out in front of her, with her blanket and dolly Annabelle sitting in her lap.

"Mommy! I'm riding on bus!"

My super-literal child's little imagination has finally kicked in — and it's a wonderful thing to watch. She's starting to play with Play-Doh (which usually means picking apart a ball of the stuff or having Mommy make something for her), she wants me to make her a blanket tent in her room (where she'll sit for, like, half an hour with her dolls and books), and she's having good little conversations with her dolls when she goes to bed at night (Scott encourages this when he puts her to bed: "Can you tell Annabelle and Baby Margie what you did today?"). She's building some new skills, too: besides the potty endeavors, she's learned to put on her own shoes — as long as they're slip-ons like her "skate-rat shoes" (the Vans my sister gave her for her birthday) or her rain boots (which she insisted on wearing yesterday and had on her feet while she was still in just a diaper and tee shirt). During my Saturday cleaning mini-frenzy she helped me wash out the bathroom sink. Took her job very seriously, too.

Thanks to my friend Brooke, I'm also flexing the imagination muscle and learning some new skills: she had the terrific idea of getting a group together to make our own quiet books for our kids, and we've come up with this fabulous Pittsburgh-themed book: all the things a little kid can do in Pittsburgh. We have three pages done now: sort the fruits and veggies into the right colored bin at Stan's Market, zip Mr. Rogers' sweater, dig for dinosaur bones (and assemble the dinosaur) at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. More to follow. Mine will be the carousel at Schenley Plaza (move the animals up and down the poles on the carousel) and a button-the-wheels, open-the-door-and-see-the-driver Port Authority bus page. Beth loves the Stan's Market page (she hasn't seen the other two yet) and will contentedly sit at the dining room table taking the little felt pieces off and Velcroing them back into the right place. Somehow I've become the resident sewing expert for the quiet book group, which makes me laugh — taking sewing in high school was one of the ways I kept sane, but it's been, like, 17 years! I'm having inordinate amounts of fun, though.

It's baaaaaack!

Okay — temporarily. And somehow I missed four episodes.

Sarah and I got home tonight from our quiet book making frenzy and a grocery run, and Scott bounded downstairs and asked, "How much do you love me?"

Turns out he found Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and recorded a new (!) episode tonight. NBC is airing the rest of the season. They started May 24, so I'll have to find the episodes I missed, but hallelujah! At least I get the rest of the season.

I am such an addict.

Hey, Sarah can sit up (propped on her hands) for about a minute at a time. And she's discovered her feet — she'll grab them while she's sitting in her bouncy chair, hang onto her toes, and grin. Happiest baby in the world! She's growing like crazy, too. She's outgrown her cradle (the lovely one my mom made for my oldest cousin over 40 years ago) and is sleeping tonight in the Pack-n-Play (which will be her bed for a few months until Beth gets a big-girl bed and passes down the crib). And her long, long feet! They're actually a bit too long for the size 2 shoes she wore today, but they're so narrow I don't know how I could keep size 3s on her feet. (She always looks so proud of herself when she gets a shoe off...especially if she can stick it into her mouth afterward.)

Numb. Confused.

I just finished reading/proofing Scott's dissertation.



It's actually fascinating stuff. He starts with pointing out that while organizational computer security measures are usually concentrated on technical solutions, anything that's in place can easily be compromised if people who work for the organization don't follow security policies. He's right — be honest now — how many of you have jotted down a hard-to-remember have-to-change-it-every-three-months password on a Post-It and stuck it to the front of your monitor?

Then he goes into his research question: why don't people follow security procedures? What factors influence people's decisions whether or not to follow procedures?

After over 150 pages of truly mind-numbing literature review, methodology, data collection details and construct reliability and validity (gack!), he gives his conclusions — among them, that people consider punishment for not following procedures to be more motivational than reward for following them (interesting), that there's a high prevalence of apathy (probably because the IS people who make up the policies don't have day-to-day management responsibilities for the people who are supposed to follow them), and that the way people perceive risk and what they actually do about it have a really, really dysfunctional relationship.

The end is in sight — defense scheduled for July 11th. It's not really a spectator sport (thought technically it's open to everybody). Maybe I'll invite people after all, and we can sit in the back and do the wave.

Go Scott!

Poop!

Yep, that's right...Beth finally went poop in her potty. Twice! She did it yesterday and then came back for a repeat performance today. She's so, so proud of herself.

And I am so, so regretting buying the big container of blueberries yesterday at Costco.

Zoo pictures...

...are up, here. A few are even included on the zoo post below. Finally.

Obsessions

Five things Beth is obsessed with:

1. TV/video characters, including Elmo, the Wonder Pets, and Nemo


2. Being up high. This includes standing on her stepstool to help me make meals (she stirs pretty well), climbing into her high chair by herself, and sitting on the arm of the sofa to watch the above-listed TV characters.


3. Stickers


4. Where her parents are at any given moment. "Where's my daddy? Where he is? Oh, there he is."


5. Making sure that anything that belongs to her isn't being used or touched or breathed on by anyone else, especially baby Sarah.

Five things Sarah is obsessed with:

1. Milk


2. Watching Beth. If she's lying on the floor and Beth is behind her, she'll even crane her little neck around so she can see what Beth is doing.


3. Watching anyone eat food


4. Kicking her legs and arching her back. This is going to get her in trouble if we forget to strap her in her bouncy seat or the swing — she's pretty good at kicking and arching herself out of anything we put her in.


5. The crinkly fabric block Scott bought her over the weekend

The (un)talent show

I'm doing this to the music of "76 Trombones Lead the Big Parade," since watching me blog has got to be the most boring thing EVER.

We're at the family reunion, in Colorado, and it's been fun — and tonight's the talent show. Or untalent show. The big announcement is that Ryan's working toward dental school. I'll have TWO brothers-in-law who are dentists, lucky me.

So Rebecca made balloon animals for all the kids, and Alan's kids sang to Grandma, who reciprocated by reading the kids a story, and we even got Beth to sing "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." (She did a good job, too.)

After putting the kids to bed, and dealing with the excessive whispering that ensued, we came back for more: rice pudding, poorly told jokes, Ryan actually participating (juggling smooshed dinner rolls), and David singing (over and over). David and Alan sang a great song about Scott getting stuck on the T in Boston. We're getting it all on video, again, and someone (hopefully not us, this time) will put it on a DVD for posterity. It's all pretty cool. And this is a pretty talented crew, even when they're un-talents. Me? I'm blogging, as a spectator event.

Zoo!

We're in Colorado for the annual Boss Family Reunion, and it's a zoo. Really: Ten adults, seven kids, and two more on the way. It takes us four (full) cars to go anywhere. So today we took all seventeen people in all four cars down to Colorado Springs, had lunch at a picnic area in the Garden of the Gods, and spent the afternoon at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

Wow. Wow.

This isn't a huge zoo, and it's probably under-funded. But it's a great, great zoo. The animals look healthy and well cared-for, and they're so close to visitors! Bethie got to feed a giraffe, which alone would have made my afternoon. ($1 for three giraffe crackers, walkways right at the giraffes' eye level, so they're up close and personal for kiddies. And adults.) I remember briefly petting a giraffe once at Hogle Zoo when I was a kid. The long tongue! The long eyelashes! Today we stood and talked with one, and felt its horns (they're called ossicones — I looked it up), and petted its nose. Such a treat. We took Sarah out of the stroller to have her meet one of the giraffes too. She's about as big as its head.

There were great signs up to tell about the animals (I've been looking at the spectacled bear at the Pittsburgh Zoo for a couple of years now, but just found out today he's native to South America), and zookeepers who stood and talked with all of us about the four 19-month-old mountain lion cubs, and gorgeous peacocks strutting around. I wasn't about to do the petting zoo with Beth (she's terrified of the big old mangy goats in Pittsburgh), but her cousins were doing it, sooooo...we washed her hands and I went in with her. Two clean, dainty pygmy goats — not much bigger than Beth — were in there with a keeper, and when I held my hand out they licked it and nibbled curiously. I held Beth's hand in mine and they licked her hand, then tried to nibble her sleeve and raincoat. Instead of freaking out (this is the third day this week she hasn't taken an afternoon nap) she took it all in stride. "Again, Mommy! Do it again!"

My favorite moment, though, was walking through the wallaby enclosure and getting to pet a motherless baby wallaby that a zookeeper was carrying in a denim pouch. (I have neither the vocabulary nor the italics to describe this.) So little, so soft, and when it curled up its big legs and feet wrapped all the way around to its little head. I thought: This is like carrying Sarah in a sling, or in her Snugli, and right now she is just as little and soft and vulnerable as this baby is.

(I'll get pictures up, I promise. I'm blogging in the dark while the girls are asleep back at our hotel. But in the meantime, you can check out the zoo's giraffe cam.)

Later this evening, headed north on I-25, in the past-bedtime dark, we heard Beth murmuring something to herself. I turned around. "What's that, Bethie?"

"Goat eat my shirt. Goat eat my shirt."

"Yes, Bethie, the goat tried to eat your shirt."

From the back seat, a moment later, a giggle. "That's funny!"

Househunt v2.0

We have a house! Probably. We all know what happened last time. Caveats aside, though, it's a very neat place in a terrific neighborhood: a two-story condo built in 1920 and redone in 2000. Photos are here.

So the whirlwind househunting tour has been a success. I don't think I ever want to do it again, but I haven't felt this much like a superhero since 1978 and the Wonder Woman Underoos.

And Bethie has been just fine. Truly. I've talked to her over the phone several times, and she sounds like she's having a blast: trips to the library and Phipps Conservatory, time alone with Daddy, and the company of her little buddies Daniel and Eleanor. I miss her so much!

(Okay, I miss Scott too. But Scott doesn't need me to put his hair in "bunny rabbit ears" — Beth's term for pigtails — in the morning.)