Monday, July 23, 2007

Auntie Stef Came to Visit

Teeth were checked...

All clear! Yay!
Zora had a great visit (except for the car bits) with Auntie Stef.

What's That?


It's Zora!

Having a little avocado.


Tuesday, July 17, 2007

GUYS-- YAMS!

YAMS.
YAMS.
YAMS!
GUYS... YAMS!

YAMS.

YAMS.
YAMS.
YAMS.
YAMS.
YAMS.
YAMS.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Beach Day!

Maya came down from the Green Mountains to visit Li'l Rhodey for the weekend. We had a belated kickoff to beach season at the local edge of the world. We ate clam cakes, underdone fries and lots and lots of sand.

Here are my two favorite daughters:


Thursday, July 5, 2007

SIX MONTHS OLD!

Hooray!!!It's official: only six months left on our no-questions-asked return policy. So far, so good, but I'm waiting to see what happens with those ears and that hair before I make my final decision.


No, I'm only kidding. It's character! She's a keeper.

We were a travelin' family in the month of June. We visited our Western Mass fam, our Vermont fam and our O-high-in-the-middle-O fam. Zora flew (in a plane) with no complications, and drove across several states (in short chunks) with her usual protestations. She hates the car. We try to accommodate her by breaking up drives across this great land of ours into two-hour chunks (coinciding with naps, of course), but even that sometimes is too much. Inevitably she stops crying as soon as she hears the e-brake click into place, and by the time I unfold myself from the front seat, she's smiling through the leftover tears.

Some photos.
Asleep in the sunny guest room of our dear Somerville friends, saving up the shouts and accusations for the ride to Vermont.

With the VT Family.
I couldn't get a photo where everyone was looking at the camera. Here R considers her daughter's patchy curls.

Of course she was fine in Vermont and even seemed okay at the outset of our return trip. She didn't disappoint, however, and decided she'd howl and sob from the Massachusetts border to our home in the Ocean State. Good times!

Zora did well on the plane and had a good time visiting Ohio. Wherever she goes there is no shortage of people who want to hold her, and the Buckeye State was no different.

Here we are on the lawn of the beautiful Toledo Art Museum.


Here we are in an enormous and strangely beautiful cemetery in Cleveland. She's being held by her Uncle Joshua.

Here she is in an Akron restaurant that had its own special kind of beauty: a sundae bar and more types of pie than you could shake a stick at. She's being held by Nana.


And here she is on one of the two worst beds I've ever had the misery of trying to sleep on. Incredibly, they were in the same room! Comfort Inn of Akron (the one off of Market Street, right off of 77), you need to step your mattress game up.

A Declaration of Independence

So we had a very nice, damp 4th of July, with hot dogs and hamburgers at the home of Roger and Janet, the site of our wedding. All officially-sanctioned fireworks were called off for the weather.

We returned to Providence around 10:00 or so, while the city was demonstrating its usual teeter on the edge of utter lawlessness. Opening the car door was like stepping into a war zone, the air thick with firework smoke while bright explosions burst into the air from a house on every block. The occasional police cruiser rolled slowly down the city street, in passive appreciation of our neighbors' investment in thousands of dollars of illicit pyrotechnics.

We hit the hay around 11:30, while the bombs bursting in air continued indefinitely. Zora had different ideas, though. Despite repeated attempts to nurse her to sleep, I kept stirring awake as she crawled all around us. The last time, I woke to a squeal of delight and caught her STANDING, having pulled herself up on the edge of her bed. Did you hear me? I said STANDING. Damn, chile. And tomorrow is just six months.

---------------------------------------------------------

This evening, Z decided to stage a reenactment, to quell any doubt about her Super Baby skillz. You can follow along step-by-step, if you have a hard time with this maneuver, yourself.



and . . .
HUP!
Just in case there are still any doubters, here it is on the flip-side:
(and yes, she is trying to climb up onto the couch. Lucky for us all, she hasn't figured that out. Not this week, at least.)

Cray-Zee!