Flaunting it

Autumn is my favoritefavoritefavorite season. It's tragically short here in Minnesota, which really makes you want to squeeze the joy out of every nice day you get. In academic life, through grad school and adjuncting, I could always make time for a stroll in the woods or coffee outside at my favorite cafe - some little thing to cherish the fading year. Then I started - reluctantly - working in the corporate world, and nice autumn days were just one more way for fate to mock me.

Being a SAHM isn't always a walk in the park, but it beats being a cubicle jockey by a marathon's worth of miles, and one of the reasons is that it's given me back my autumn. This has been an unseasonably cold October, but the past week has had a couple of really glorious days. On one of them, P and I took our babies to the Peace Park at Lake Harriet where a new statue was being dedicated. There were Japanese drummers, a cheesy folk singer, and loads and loads of paper cranes. The sun was shining, the park was full of bleeding heart post-hippie tree-huggers, and the babies dozed happily to the cacophonous sounds of the Taiko drums. Then, today, the Hatchling and I had to run an errand near a little shopping district in Edina, so we took the opportunity to take a stroll around the neighborhood, stopping for coffee (me) and wee crumbs of scone (the Hatchling) at the local coffee shop. We sat outside and watched the cars go by, and people stopped to tell me how adorable the Hatchling is, and we soaked up the autumn sun like vitamin D-deficient flowers. And I thought to myself, This is the good stuff. I hope I never take it for granted.

Stats

The Hatchling's 6-month checkup was this afternoon, and it appears that we've given birth to a small sumo wrestler.

Head circumference: 43.5 cm (90th percentile)

Weight: 18 lbs, 6 oz (90th percentile)

Height: 28 inches (97th percentile)

OK, make that a small WNBA player. Either way, we look forward to living on the endorsement royalties in our golden years.

My daughter, Bill the Cat

So I don't know if it's the new teeth or what, but as of yesterday the Hatchling is channeling either Gene Simmons or Bill the Cat whenever she smiles. And since she's a pretty smiley baby, the results are hilarious. You look at her, she smiles, and out comes the tongue. She's also taken to making lots of "phbbt" and "ack" noises. The spitting is especially enjoyable when she's just taken a big bite of sweet potatoes. Now if we can just get her to make the universal "rock and roll" fist we'd have a killer Halloween costume.